Interview with Willie Nickens (SdArch 5-3)

WN: Every boat that went by, fishing boat, had a life boat. And you see, the Titanic, I think they missed saving a lot of lives because they did not have enough life boats. 

IR: Isn’t that fantastic. I’m going to make a note of that just in case we [back on that?]. So after the Titanic, every little fishing boat had a life boat attached? 

WN: Yeah, you see that they run out of oysters down there in the bay. 

IR: That did say not taking any chances after that. Now, do you have any hobbies? 

WN: Cutting grass, cutting hay. 

IR: She’s a gardener. 

WN: Well I don’t garden anymore, but I love it, I used to. Let’s see, no I do not crochet, so the only thing I do now is cut my grass and mess around with flowers. 

IR: Ok. What year did you get married? 

WN: I think in 1917. 

IR: And where were you married? 

WN: Right here in Harrisonburg. I’m a Harrisonburg girl. 

IR: You sure are! 

WN: And I won’t go out now and visit my children! Just hang around home. I love home. It isn’t what I want, but I love it anyway. 

IR: I [love home] too. There’s no place like home, that’s the truth. What church do you go to, Mrs. Nickens? 

WN: John Wesley. 

IR: Ok, you go to the John Wesley. And they’re building the new church, are they not? 

WN: Yes. 

IR: Is that John Wesley Methodist Church? 

WN: Yes. United now, you know. 

IR: United Methodist, ok. 

WN: Now I tell you, I don’t go to church because I have a stomach ailment. I get a little gas, and I get nervous, and it goes to that gas pocket you have in you. I get to the point where, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what the preacher is saying, and this awful rolling in the stomach. 

IR: That’s embarrassing, isn’t it? 

WN: Embarrassing! 

IR: I’ve always said I’m allergic to church, because I’m allergic to women’s 

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perfume and so many women when they go to church put so much perfume on, and I just die. I get allergic reactions, so I’m allergic to church. Isn’t that terrible? 

WN: But I pay my dues. 

IR: You’re a good girl. I’ll bet they miss you. Were you married at the John Wesley, or were you married by a justice of the peace? 

WN: No, reverend, a preacher that was here, and I was married in his room. 

IR: Married in the preacher’s house? 

WN: Uh-hum. But he was a bachelor and he just had one room, and that was down on Elizabeth Street near the fire station. 

[Interview is cut off and resumes in progress] 

WN: …and then when they bought this house, I asked for it, and I really didn’t want to get it[?] I just went on over there, you know. They’re gonna have to throw me out of here. And on several occasions, the other maids came to do the work, and I wouldn’t leave. 

[Tape is cut off again] 

WN: We would stand at the door and count every crack in the floor [unintelligible]. I should live in one of those out there, but they’re grand old places. 

IR: Now I’m gonna go off and leave you and Vicki here, and you think she’s not going to bite you at all. 

VL: No, I’m not worried about her… 

[Tape cuts off – Vicki Lloyd takes the place of Inez Ramsey.] 

VL: I want to ask you about your copper bracelets. 

WN: Well, I put them on. I have arthritis. Well, probably there might be some virtue[?] in them to help, but I still have arthritis. And they’re not very clean now either. Messing around, now, and so, the arthritis consumed it[?]. And I just intend to wear the bracelets. 

VL: Ok, let’s see, where should we start? I want to hear about the bears. 

[Tape is cut off] 

WN: And they also had land up in Raleigh Springs. Do you know where that is up on [Rte.] 33 West? Well, they graze cattle there during the summer, and on that land they had a tenant, and he helped them to catch these little bears on different occasions, of course. And he gave each one to Mr. Newman’s daughter, Minnie, and they kept in the backyard until he got so big, until he craved his native haunts and… 

[Tape is cut off] 

WN: … and my father worked there, and the last one they had, I don’t know what made them do it, but my father put a little hot water on it, and he was scared of my father. And so, when he broke loose after that, well, my father was chasing him [unintelligible] woods, over where is Forest Hills now, and of course he ran that much faster because he was scared of my Daddy, and he had a… 

[Tape is cut off] 

WN: But in those days people got their own ice. They had their own ice houses, and put it in there, and they’d cut their ice and then they’d reach in and pull out this long coat[?]. But anyway, that’s what he had. And he got almost to the woods before my father got close enough to him to stick this ice pick in the back of his neck, and my father went[?] out, and that was the last bear they had. They sent them all away. But while I was out to Madison, a bear was out back, probably out there in the new addition, was seen out there, and he was killed, and he had coal dust, so they think he came in on a coal car. C & 

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W ran by there. And I told the yard man that that was a relative of some of the bears they had at one time down in the yard, he was looking for his bears! 

VL: What was Madison like back then? What was Madison like? I’ve heard a lot about the rules that they had, like the girls couldn’t go downtown by themselves. 

WN: Well now, I went there in 1944. Girls would go downtown by themselves. Now at night, they couldn’t probably go, they had to be in at a certain time. But they got one Dean of Women, that lifted those rules. She slashed rules. And if you promise me that you won’t tell it, it was Ms. Wilkins[?]. Have you met her? 

VL: No. Madison doesn’t have any Deans of Men or Women anymore. 

WN: Now everything has changed. That was Ms. Wilkins, and I think she was next to the last Dean that we had. So she started lifting the rules, and the girls would run away with [unintelligible], and they had clamped some of the rules back. And they very very [unintelligible] they’d talk about her, that they called in kitchen [unintelligible], because she took the rule away, and then when they started to work on her, she started to crack down on the girls for having such a good time with the boys. 

VL: Have you noticed a big change in Harrisonburg since men came to the campus? Do you think there have been any big changes? 

WN: No, not that I can recall there. The first men that attended Madison was a summer school group of, in fact, they were soldiers, and it wasn’t but five of them, and they lived in Messick[?] House. 

VL: And where was that? 

WN: That was the house right on the spot where the Fine Arts building was built. That was Messick. As I said there was three houses in that lot, and the next one was Sprinkle, named after the people who owned it at one time, and the next one was Carter. Now I never did find where the Carter came from. I never knew a person that owned it by the name of Carter. Now it could have been that maybe a Carter donated the money for it or something, cause I was born out there and raised up in South Main. I knew all the older people. 

VL: Where on South Main? 

WN: I lived on, was raised on Paul Street. 

VL: How long have you lived here? You must have lived here a good while if your quince tree is that big. 

WN: Right, well, we bought it the first year, I think, we lived here, moved up here. 

VL: Been here ever since. 

WN: And as for the older people out on the south end, why I knew all of them. I know many of them. Mason Street was opened up. Now that used to be just an alley, and I drove cows out of the lot where the hospitals are. That belonged to a family, people by the name of Siebert[?], which they had a farm back Paul Street, and the house that they lived in is still out there on the corner of Paul and Main. I think the Lindsays[?] own it now. Right across from the Elks home. And they lived in there and then she sold milk and we kids drove the cows. I’m well acquainted with South Main in the older days. 

VL: So where did you take the cows from? From up by the hospital down to their home? 

WN: Yes. Let’s see. That stable stood on what is Federal Street now. That was just an alley through there went back, it didn’t have a name. When Larry Gizler[?] extended Federal. 

VL: I can’t imagine it being like that. I try and try to, and I just can’t. How 

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about school? The Effinger Street school, where is that particular street? Does it still exist? 

WN: No. Well, a part of it does. (Mrs. Nickens thinks about the location) Do you know where the Mills[?] School facing Main Street, coming on Main and that is the street that goes back that way, which I guess is High Street. Goes up to High Street. Well the Effinger Street went right across from that. Let’s see, is there anything else? 

VL: Well that’s good enough. I’m sure we’ll be able to find it from that. 

WN: Well now, on East Effinger, there’s some houses built but the city took over part of that, where the old school was. 

VL: And the school has been torn down? 

WN: Oh yes, yes. 

VL: When was it torn down, do you know? 

WN: Well let’s see. The school up here was built in 1939. It was along there, cause they hauled out of there to Simms. 

VL: We were talking in my class about schools, and we were wondering how the discipline was. If you did anything you weren’t supposed to do what would happen to you? 

WN: Well if you did something bad enough they would switch you. 

VL: Would they take you out to the wood shed or anything? 

WN: Well, one thing they would do, sometimes they did right before the class. But as time went on, they would do that at recess time, when the children were out of the school. I mean, out to play, having a recess. [Unintelligible]. 

VL: And what did you have to do to be switched? 

WN: Anything that was bad. I never was switched! 

VL: I didn’t think you would now. 

WN: I was switched at home! 

VL: Really? Were your parents strict? 

WN: Oh, well you do something to need a switching they put the switch on. And one thing that I would get switched about was driving those cows. Now on the back of that lot there was a creek, and about middle ways from the creek to where Mason Street runs now, there was a real steep hill. Part of that hill is there. The nurses home is built upon that hill now. Well, and there was some more boys, that their parents owned cows, and they would drive cows, and we were all together. Now they were all white boys. And my brother and I, and we go around there and play, and we [unintelligible]. And Miss Siebert had to milk those cows to get the milk that had to go out to be delivered. And she would run up the street there a piece where we lived, just up the street a piece, and say to my Mama, “Patty those children haven’t brought those cows in.” Mama would have to stop her work and run across the field throughout that alley after us, and she would be furious and she would switch us. So I done fetch[?] switching right off that lot, and I never forget them. We had several horses. The Sieberts had a horse named Charlie, and we were privileged to ride him. We would ride old Charlie out this alley way. And the Newmans had horses, and you could ride them. The Newman horse was young, and right where the college ground starts there at Mason Street, there was a big gate that was just nothing but a field. One day I was riding this young horse, name was Burt, and boy would we tear up things going out there, and got up to the gate and Burt didn’t stop for the gate, she just wanted the gate tore down (laughs). 

VL: You put it back, right? (Laughs)

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WN: The people had to put it up, we couldn’t, and there was a switching for that! (Laughs) 

VL: I used to get switchings for riding my horse places I shouldn’t. 

WN: I tell you I love horses. If I were a woman of money I would own a horse. 

VL: That’s my next goal in life is to make enough money to be able to keep him and put him somewhere. When we grew up we always had horses and everything. 

WN: And I also follow the races. I just love `em. When I see them in all the pictures [unintelligible]. 

VL: Do you ever go? 

WN: No, my daughter and I have said we were going, but I still haven’t made it since they stopped racing in Harrisonburg. At one time they had a racetrack here. Over on the west side, but that has been closed for quite a long while. 

VL: I’ve never heard of that. 

WN: It’s all been built up, houses along there. 

VL: I guess the town has changed a lot then. It’s grown enormously. 

WN: Yes. I’ll tell you sometime I get in certain places that I haven’t been and changes have taken place, and I have stopped and I, “Hey where am I?” And a person that has been away for I’ll say ten or fifteen years and comes back is lost, because all the old streets he knew are gone. 

VL: Have a lot of the street names been changed? 

WN: Oh, not too many. But the trick is the streets themselves have just been done away with. 

VL: How about Tin Cup Alley? 

WN: I do not remember it, only by name. That is where the little old either one- or a two-room school house was before they got the Effinger Street school. 

VL: And then after Effinger came Lucy Simms? 

WN: Yes. I only hear people talk about this Tin Cup Alley, and that was off of North Main. There between North Main and High Street. 

VL: What about you parents? You’re talking about driving other people’s cows, were your parents farmers? 

WN: Well my father worked on a farm. My mother’s first husband was a farmer. My mother was married twice, and he worked for the Newmans out on that farm. 

VL: Right. You told me that. I should have remembered that. 

WN: I do not know what year Mr. Newman turned the farm over to his son. Then he moved in town, down where the Elks Home is, on the corner of Main and Paul. That’s where he died. Then the son, he stayed out on the farm [unintelligible]. 

VL: How about your mother? Was she a good cook? 

WN: Yes my mother was a good cook. 

VL: Do you have any family recipes? 

WN: No, I do not. I have a recipe that, what’s her name [unintelligible]? 

VL: Mrs. Ramsey. 

WN: Yes, [unintelligible]. I can’t find it! I’ve got it! I remember I stuck it into something because when you have to cut out of those little things, then here, there, and everywhere they get torn, and one thing or another, and I came across it and I said, “I’m gonna put it in here.” And I just can’t find it, but it’s here! 

VL: Ok. You keep looking for it. 

WN: I gathered those petals and dried them [unintelligible]. 

VL: What does that come from? 

WN: Lavender? It comes from a bush. And I went to all the green houses and 

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everything. I could not locate it. And last spring, I saw in a magazine out of the 

VL: How do you dry a rose leaf? Just pull it off the rose and let it out? 

WN: Well they fall off, you know. And you get enough and spread them on paper and out thin, and they dry. 

VL: And then you salt them? 

WN: Well you put salt in them, you put cinnamon, all-spices. There are a lot of stuff you put in them, and it’s all in that little jar[?]. But I could get everything but the lavender, and that is one main thing of that [unintelligible]. 

VL: How about home remedies? 

WN: I don’t know, about what? 

VL: Well, you have your copper bracelets, no matter how much good they do, you still have them. 

WN: And I have my mother’s old brass kettle that she used to make preserves and in fact, small quantities of apple butter, peach butter. 

VL: Oh, and that’s brass. 

WN: Yeah, that’s brass. That was my mother’s. That’s very old. 

VL: When are you going to make me some apple butter? 

WN: I’ve never made apple butter in it. And that’s when you want to make just a small quantity. I would love to have some of her apple butter. My mother used to make it then but she’d make it in a large quantity. She would either borrow or rent a great big, say a 40 gallon barrel and make it out of doors, and I wish she had taught me the stove. And then you can make it in the oven, too, if you’ve got that much patience. You stew it on the stove, and then after it gets down so low, put it in the oven on low, and every now and then you stir it and it cooks, gently [unintelligible]. But it takes a lot of patience. 

VL: I’m sure it does. Let’s see, did your mother ever tell you any stories? 

WN: Well one story she told me, she was born in slavery. And her master was her father, which they had a lot of children that way, cause a woman didn’t have any say so, whether he wanted it… 

End Tape 1, Side 1

Washington Post

, a nursery had lavender bushes for sale, and I said I was 

willing to buy one. Then I said, well, my daughters like them, and I would have to bought one, two, I have three girls, and a daughter-in-law. Each one and one for myself, and I think they cost six dollars and something a piece, and it was running me right much money. And I kept on fooling around and fooling and didn’t order them. And you can dry these lavender leaves and put them on your linens, and gives them a very nice smell. But I still want to get a lavender bush. And I have a lot of that dry rose leaves. I dry them and salt them and… 

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AFRICAN AMERICANS IN HARRISONBURG 

Transcript 3b: Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens 

July 17, 1978 

Harrisonburg, VA 

Interviewer: Vicki L. Lloyd 

Transcriber: Theresa Staropoli, Oct. 21, 1992 

Burruss Intern in Carier Library Special Collections 

Tape 1, Side 2 [continuation of first interview] 

[Side 2 begins in mid conversation] 

WN: That was a place, I don’t know whether it was exactly in Bath County or not, but a place up there called Arnold’s Valley, and there were Indians living there. This Indian girl fell in love with my mother’s first husband’s father. And they stole her. And the Indians swooped down looking for her, and they hid her under a pile of cowhides. 

VL: Wait a minute, this is, your mother got married at 15? 

WN: Yes, the man she married, his mother was an Indian, but I do not know the tribe. There was a lot of Indians up in [unintelligible]. Then this father, he was born white and part negro. 

VL: Wait a minute, I’m confused somewhere. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lose you. Alright, your mother was married at fifteen to a man who was part Indian. His mother was part Indian. Ok, now who did the Indians come looking for? 

WN: Now what her name was, I do not know. But it was this girl. 

VL: A girl. 

WN: The Indian girl. They lived around in the neighborhood. But any ways, they succeeded in keeping her here, and then they married, and so far as I know they didn’t trouble with it. 

VL: Did you say there were a lot of Indians in this area? 

WN: In general, yes. Back on Hilltop up there I understand that there were Indians back there, and they dug a tunnel, that come from back up through there, down to Main Street here. You’ve heard talk of the big spring? 

VL: That was on Court Square? 

WN: Yes. Well that’s where they had to get their water, and they would come down through this tunnel, I am told. 

VL: Well wouldn’t it be something if we could go find it! 

WN: (Laughs) And now when they built the Kavanaugh Hotel, which you know is up for sale now, there was quite a few cave-ins back there, and they’d have cave-ins. And apparently there over along that trail… 

VL: Do you know what kind of Indians they were? 

WN: No. [Unintelligible]. They’re talking about remodeling that old big spring, which I think they should. And I have poem on it. 

VL: Oh, could I see that? Not right this second, maybe the next time I come back, if you could find it. 

WN: Oh, I know where that is. 

VL: Ok, because we’re hunting. Mrs. Ramsey would also like to know if you still have your certificate from Lucy Simms, and she was wondering if we could make a photocopy of it, or just something so we know what it looks like. Great, I’d appreciate that. We all would.

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WN: Well it won’t take me but a minute to get it if you want it now? 

VL: No. Why don’t we wait until the next time, if that’s ok with you. 

WN: Sure, it’s fine. Sometime when the city is writing up something on the old big spring, I would like for them to run this poem. I don’t know whether they’d run it or not. 

VL: Oh I’m sure they would. It’s hard to find information on that. I just saw a picture of what the spring looked like the other day, but it took, we had to search just to find a picture of it. 

WN: Well that has a picture on it, and I remember that spring. I’ve been down in there. 

VL: Which end of the square did it come up on? Up by Main? 

WN: No, over on the west side of the square, as you go out west to Market Street. That’s where it was. 

VL: Right over there? Ok, do you know if it’s in any way connected? I know there’s a little stream that runs back down in there, see what is it, Denton’s Furniture Store[?] or something? 

WN: Um-hum. What used to be called Black’s Run. Now let’s see how they renamed that, that street back there used be German Street, and after we had the first World War, I(one), we changed it to Liberty Street. 

VL: That’s a suitable name. Was there a big change around here during World War I and World War II? 

WN: No, I don’t think so. In what way? 

VL: In any way. Was there a notable absence of men, husbands, sons? 

WN: Well there was some few. Which I kept my signed papers kept[?] my husband out. And he turned out to be so no good and [unintelligible] I wished I had let him gone on in the service and get some money from him (Laughs). He didn’t make a very good husband. 

VL: I’ve heard that like back, more towards the Civil War time, that Rockingham County didn’t have nearly as many slaves as the neighboring counties did, and other things that mostly during that war, which I know you weren’t around for, but during that war that most of the people here in town were just more concerned with their own business, just getting their own work done. 

WN: Well I don’t know of any slaves that were ever here in town. Never heard of them. And also, this was called Rocktown at one time, you know that. 

VL: Rocktown, I’ve heard of that. 

WN: And Harrisonburg was named after a man, Harrison, and I think there’s a granddaughter that’s still living on East Market Street. She had an article in the paper a couple of weeks ago on, what was her first name, the Harrison? Alice, I believe. I think it was Alice. And they’re all dead but she. 

VL: Is she an older person? 

WN: Uh-huh. No, she’s an older person. I imagine she would be around 90 years old. 

VL: Ok. I wonder if she has any children. 

WN: No, she doesn’t have any. 

VL: It’s such a shame that the family line stops there. 

WN: Uh-huh. I don’t remember either, I know there were two girls, but I don’t remember either of their names. I never heard of a son. 

VL: When was this called Rocktown? 

WN: Oh, I couldn’t tell you the year, but I imagine you could find it somewhere. 

VL: Yeah, I’m sure I could. 

WN: It was in the paper not too long ago. She wrote an article in the paper, and I don’t know whether that she mentioned the year or not, but she mentioned that this man named it Rocktown. I mean it was named Rocktown and he changed it to Harrisonburg after them.

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VL: Well I wonder if it was Rocktown because of the limestone? 

WN: Yes. 

VL: Ok, let’s see, what else can I talk to you about? I have my little list of subjects here. How about, were there any games that you played when you were younger? Any special games? 

WN: Riding horses (laughs)! Climbing trees, and we played leap frog. Hide and seek. I think that’s about all we played. 

VL: Sounds like fun! How about any special songs you sang? 

WN: There might have been some, but right now I just can’t recall. 

VL: Ok, just think about it. I’ll ask you later. How about superstition or ghost stories? Anything special that you remember? 

WN: Yes, there were those. Well I never never happened to me. Well now wait a minute, one thing, I’ve never been able to unravel it. This old horse we used to ride, Charlie, the Sieberts'[?] old horse, he had died, but when he walked along, he had a way of clumping his front hoof every now and then. So one night, my mother was away from home, there wasn’t anyone home but me and I was reading upstairs waiting for her to come home. And I say I heard Charlie go by. 

VL: And you could tell because of the way he walked. 

WN: Yes. 

VL: Did you look outside? 

WN: I didn’t see anything. I was sitting upstairs at the window, and I guess the [unintelligible] was possibly a squirrel[?] from there at that house over there. But we still, we had two very, very large trees in the front yard, but Charlie was dead, but I heard this noise that sounded just like him. And even now[?] as we called it, stubbed his toe. 

VL: Do you remember your mother ever telling you anything like that, that ever happened to her. 

WN: Well, this didn’t actually happen, but she looked for it. Her first husband used to tell her, when he died first, he was going to come back and haunt her, and she looked for him. Even on nights when it was all dark outside then cause there were no lights in here or anything. And by the lightening. She would get up and go to the room where he lay corpse, in those days they kept corpse at home to see them, to see if she could see him, but she never did. 

VL: I bet she was glad! I don’t think I’d want to see. 

WN: But she was anxious, so I guess she wasn’t scared cause she was looking for it. 

VL: How about, did you ever do anything special during the holidays? was there anything that you did every Christmas, or did you celebrate birthdays in a special way? 

WN: No, the only way we celebrate birthdays now is to send a gift, or at least send a card. And my mother didn’t send cards on birthdays, send her children a birthday card, cause she couldn’t write. And it haunts me to this day that I didn’t teach my mother how to write a little bit, her name, anything. I didn’t think about it. 

VL: Well, you have to look at it like if she never knew how, she never really knew what she didn’t have. 

WN: Well that could be, but always someone else had to write her name. 

VL: Well you’re much better off. You went to the Effinger Street School, you were one of the first to get your certificate from there. 

WN: Yes, and I think that’s coming out in this book they’re writing. It was three girls. 

VL: I have your names written down here somewhere. 

WN: Oh you’ve been talking to Miss Hawkins?

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VL: Yes, I have. No, I’ve been talking with Mrs. Ramsey and she might have been talking to her. 

WN: Oh, well maybe I told her. 

VL: You and Vera Jenkins[?] and Maggie Brown[?]. 

WN: That’s it. And I’m the only one living. 

VL: Alright, what’s this G.A. Newman? Was he the same Newman that owned the farm, or that was a different family? 

WN: No. Those were white that owned the farm. G.A. was a negro, and at one time, he was a deputy sheriff here in Harrisonburg [unintelligible]. Wound up teaching school. Now I don’t know where he got his education. 

VL: What kind of subjects did you learn? 

WN: Well, history, grammar, and geography. Spelling. And in the latter years, we took, after we got a young teacher there, something called word study. You’d define the words, and then have to make a sentence using the word. They may have another name now, but we called it then word study. 

VL: Did you ever have spelling bees? 

WN: Yes. 

VL: And did you ever win? 

WN: No. I almost won once when I was out in the church. What was that word? It was a very small word, and I got mixed up with it. 

VL: Well let’s see, you probably had math when you were in school, or arithmetic. 

WN: Oh yes we had math, well, it was called arithmetic then. A young fellah from here, H.A.M. Johns[?], and he is the fellow that really started the school rolling. He would [unintelligible] math, but I was out of school then. Algebra. 

VL: Ok, and there were only four rooms right? 

WN: Well now, when that was torn down [unintelligible] four more rooms were on, but I wasn’t in school then, but when I came up there was only four rooms. 

VL: What did you do for lunch? Did you go home for lunch or did you brown bag it? 

WN: Well you’d either have to do that, or else there was a little store down on Main Street that sold fish sandwiches for a nickel. And you know where they, what’s the name of that old hotel down on North Main? It’s right above that restaurant. Do you know anything about it? 

VL: Where Julia’s Restaurant, wherever that is up there? I know the area. 

WN: Uh-huh. Well there’s a hotel there. 

VL: That’s right where the Kavanaugh is, isn’t it? 

WN: No the Kavanaugh is on the other side of Wolfe Street. 

VL: But there’s the Famous restaurant there, over by that green building, I think it is. 

WN: Famous, Famous. That must be there on the corner, close from the cut rate store. Well then it’s right next to that, this hotel was there. Hotel, Motel. Oh God, how come I can’t remember that name? It started way back with a name [unintelligible]. And then that daughter married Papps[?]. Miss Papps, she’s a music teacher too. But that isn’t what the hotel was called, that was her name. I think that Papps is correct. 

VL: Well you must know everybody in town! 

WN: (Laughs) I know quite a few people and I know the South end very well. I know the South end and older people, I know all about, that would be my age now, and some younger. 

VL: I bet all the kids on the block know you. 

WN: Yes, I guess the kids on the block know me, but I don’t know the kids on the block. They get up and they grow whiskers and they grow these bushes. I don’t know who the devil they are (laughs)!

5 

VL: I want you to tell me one more thing, because I’ve been here now, I’ll catch you another time. What is a double decker sled? 

WN: It’s a long sled. I can’t say exactly how many can ride on it, and someone rides in front and guides it. 

VL: Is it like a toboggan then, or is it set? It’s just a long… 

WN: On runners. And it is guided from the front. It had a contraption up there, that was the guide. And they used to ride it from up on Reservoir Street and come all the way down to the courthouse. 

VL: That’s some sled ride. 

WN: Yeah, and my oldest half-brother was on one riding it. Well it was a bunch of them all there, but a school teacher, Ira Bowman[?], you might run across that name sometime, they lived on Market Street, right on the corner of Myrtle and East Market, close to the cemetery. Now they lived in there. And my brother was on the very back, and he fell off. And when he fell he lost his feet. She grabbed him under her arm, and kept him down. When he got down when the sled stopped he didn’t have any seat in his pants (laughs)! Working on the seat[?]! 

VL: How old was he then? 

WN: Oh, he was a man. Oh yes, the men used to do a lot of sleigh riding around. They used to sleigh right out upon Paul Street. 

VL: I wish I could have seen it. I’d like to see this town with alleys and places to herd cows and stuff. 

WN: Well we had plenty of it. And then right down in town, on part of the Rockingham Bank lot, they had what they call a bazaar, where there was a fenced in place. And any time a cow got out or a horse wandering through the streets, they would pick him up and put him in this place. And then we had court days then too. There were a lot of horses in town. People buying and selling. And really the restaurants really thrived then, there wasn’t but two. One was a fellow, I guess his name was William Locke[?]. He was on Main Street where that book store is right above Womble’s[?]. And the other was down on Water Street, West Water, right below, there’s a building still standing there which at that time, that was a bar. Water Street was full of bars. 

VL: Right, I had heard that. 

WN: Yes, and that man’s name was Holms. H-O-L-M-S. What was his first name? [Unintelligible]. Now he was negro, not white. And all of those people were on the streets just like this on the court days. 

VL: And Court Days were just to buy and sell horses? 

WN: Yes, it’s where they’d bring the horses to see for sale, and people would come to buy. And the streets would just be loaded with people. 

VL: About how often would you have one of those, once or twice a year? 

WN: I think it was, was it once a month? It seems to me to be once a month. Keep your eye open, you might come across something like that. I’m sure you will. And then a lot of people would come in town to do some shopping, from the surrounding towns. They hadn’t built up stores like they do now. 

VL: Right. Was Harrisonburg always the big town in the county? 

WN: Yes, as far as I know. 

VL: Was it the county seat? 

WN: Yes, I think I’m right about that. Harrisonburg was the county seat, cause the courthouse was here, and this is the second courthouse, the other courthouse was torn down, and the banks were here. 

VL: I think that’s probably about all I’m gonna get you to say to me today. 

WN: Oh, I hope I haven’t told you too many stories (laughs). 

VL: No! I want you to tell me more if you’ll let me come back. 

WN: Anything I know I won’t mind telling you.

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VL: Are you sure? 

WN: Sure! 

VL: Ok. When can I come back then? I don’t want to do any… 

End Tape 1, Side 2

1 

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN HARRISONBURG 

Transcript 3c: Second Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens 

Date and Place of Interview: 20 July 1978; Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Interviewer: Vicki L. Lloyd 

Transcriber: Theresa Staropoli, 14 October 1992, Burruss Intern in Carrier Library Special Collections 

Tape 2 with WN, Side 1 

[Side 1 begins with interview already in progress] 

WN: …and that’s for the quince, that was ready. Of course, I can tell you that, cause it’s from and old book and they do not go into detail like the new recipes do. 

VL: Ok, why don’t you tell me then. 

WN: Alright. Peel, of course, and grate your quinces, and for each cup of grated quince, you add one cup of water. I’m going a little bit fast, you should use your short hand. 

VL: No that’s ok. No, I’m recording it too, so… 

WN: And three cups of sugar. It’s expensive stuff this day and time. 

VL: It sure is. 

WN: And boil twenty minutes or to your satisfaction. Now that’s what the recipe says, that’s a bowl[?], but I found that if you mixed your quince, grated quince, and put it on the stove and let it come to a boil, and of course a foam will come on top of it, and skim that off, and then put your sugar in, it gives you a prettier honey. 

VL: What does it taste like? 

WN: Well, you never tasted quinces? Well it has a quincey taste. It’s very good. 

VL: I will have to try that. 

WN: I would give you a taste, but what I have has been made ever since 1975. 

VL: I’ll come back at the end of the summer. No, I’m kidding.(Laughs) 

WN: It’s still alright, but any fruit does not taste as well out, it gets age on as it does when it’s fresh[?]. But still, I use them and I… 

VL: What do you use it on? Just bread or hot cakes? 

WN: It’s delicious on hot cakes. 

VL: Isn’t that sweet? It must be with three cups of sugar, isn’t it? 

WN: Yes, in fact I grate mine by hand. I’ve never found a grater that grates to my satisfaction, and I grate it on my own. A grater like you use when you, say, grate coconuts and things like, old grater. And it really makes a prettier honey. 

VL: When are quinces ready? When will they be ripe? 

WN: About the first of October. 

VL: First of October, so they’re a fall fruit. Are they a fruit? 

WN: Um-hum. So far as I know. I imagine they’re akin to the apple. They look like apple, only they’re fuzzy. [Mrs. Nickens gets a jar of quince honey.] Now this was made in `75. Now that’s what it looks like. 

VL: Can I smell it?

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WN: Yes indeed. 

VL: It’s a different kind of smell. 

WN: There’s nothing like quince. 

VL: I guess not. 

WN: And it smells a little old because I told you, I made it in `75, and it’s still open too. But it’s very good. 

VL: I’ve never heard of it. There aren’t any quince trees where I’m from. 

WN: Where you from? 

VL: Maryland. 

WN: Maryland? My daughter lives in Wheaton. 

VL: Oh, well that’s not too awful far from where my parents live. I don’t live there any more but they still do. I want you to tell me something today about Earl Johnson, is that the right name? 

WN: Yeah, how did you get that? 

VL: Mrs. Ramsey. She called me. She asked me to get some more information about him. 

WN: Ok. Just hold on a minute. [Tape cuts off – Mrs. Nickens brings something into the room] I think she said she wanted to see that too. Are you sure you have enough light in there? 

VL: Oh I’m sure. I have plenty. 

WN: Here is something familiar. “Believe It or Not.” My mother told me about that years ago. Her first husband’s father witnessed that, those stars falling. 

VL: What a sight to see. 

WN: And just as she told me, that paper says. Ripley. I meant to write to Ripley and tell him that, but I never did. 

VL: Well you still have time to do it. I would certainly let him know. 

WN: [Unintelligible]. Well, maybe you’d rather read this first. 

VL: We were looking, we went back through some books that had records of the Olympics in them, and we found two Johnsons. The one was C.E., and one was R.E, and we didn’t know, we needed to know which one was which. 

WN: Well the R.E., Robert Earl Johnson, I think that was his name. 

VL: Yeah, cause here his father’s name is Robert. Robert Earl Johnson. 

WN: He was an old barber here in Harrisonburg, and a big man in the church and in Sunday School. That is him, the first one there. [Unintelligible]. 

VL: That is really something. 

WN: Well I think he was a product of the old Effinger Street School, and that record should not be thrown aside. 

VL: I know. Is it ok if I take this to Mrs. Ramsey? I’ll bring it back to you right away. She wants pictures, she wants to photocopy this kind of stuff. 

WN: Yes. All I ask of you is bring it back and if you don’t bring it back I’ll hunt you down! (Laughs) 

VL: I’ll make sure it gets back. 

WN: I think you’d be a better fighter than I am but I would tackle you. Because he was a sweetheart of mine once, too. 

VL: Really? 

WN: Uh-huh. 

VL: Did you two go to school together? 

WN: Yeah, in Effinger, course he was ahead of me in school, he was a little older than me, but that didn’t keep us from liking one another. 

VL: Ok, good. I would make sure that you get all of this back. I might even bring it back this afternoon if you’re gonna be around. I wouldn’t want to lose it, 

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you know, I’d feel awful if anything like that happened. 

WN: No, no, please don’t! Cause I’ll never get a hold of it again. No way in the world, and I don’t know of anyone here in Harrisonburg that has any of it, cause that was my Harrisonburg paper. 

VL: Well that’s why we want to take a photocopy of it, so somebody else will have it. 

WN: Now who? 

VL: This will be for our class, and see we’re hoping after we talk to all of you people that we want to write a booklet or something, and put these kind of pictures and articles and all that in it. And whatever we do, if we do manage to publish a little book or anything, we’ll make sure that you get a copy and everything. 

WN: I’d appreciate it. 

VL: I hope we do, I think it would be something nice to have. 

WN: And I thought it would be nice for the recreation department to have. For what’s his name, the head of it, Gilner[?]? 

VL: I have no idea. Alright, I’m making myself a note here. We’ll make sure that they get a copy too. 

WN: I don’t know whether he would want it or not, but I thought it would be nice for him to have since he was the product of Harrisonburg, the old Effinger Street School. 

VL: Oh, I’d certainly think they would. 

WN: Oh let me see, I didn’t bring the big screen. I’ll go back and get that. Didn’t you say you wanted to see… 

VL: Yes, that’s ok, you don’t have to go right this second though, I’ll make sure I get it. How about Lucy Simms. What can you tell me about her? 

WN: Well, in my fourth year of school she was my teacher, and she was born in slavery, and Simms school is built on part of the land where she was born. She was born right up on top of the hill there where the park is. There were houses gone, been gone. I believe it was in the Graves family. Gray family. G-R-A-Y, I think. Then the Gray’s married into the Pauls[?], and John Gray Paul was so far as I know, the last owner of that, of the Grays. 

VL: She must have been an incredible woman, because I was just reading she went to Hampton too, didn’t she? And one of the girls in my class had a little book from Hampton in 1929, I think it was, and it has an article on Lucy Simms in it. 

WN: Well dear I’d love to see it. 

VL: Ok, I’ll see what I can do. The booklet belongs to Mrs. Wells[?], do you know her or not? 

WN: Oh yes. Oh yes. 

VL: Well that’s who Carolyn got it from, and it said in there that Lucy Simms taught for 55 years, and in all that time she only missed one half-day of work. 

WN: Well she was from the old times. 

VL: But this book, it has a picture of Lucy Simms, Mrs. Wells’ mother, Mrs. Wells, and Mrs. Wells’ daughter because Mrs. Simms taught all three generations there. And I went up to the school yesterday trying to find a picture of her, and there isn’t a one up there. 

WN: No, I don’t know why. There should be one. 

VL: So do I! It was named after her. 

WN: That’s right. And all the service she gave, there should be a picture of her. 

4 

And I heard that she really bought that land and gave it to the city for to build it. 

VL: There certainly should be something up there in her memory. Did you know her? Did you become friendly with her after you got out of school? She lived just right around here somewhere. 

WN: Oh yeah, that’s her house right down there… 

VL: With the picket fence, right, is that hers? 

WN: No. I’ll show it to you… 

VL: When I leave, ok? And were you living here then? 

WN: Yes, I lived two places on this street. I lived down the street on the corner of Myrtle and Johnson in the house that antiques[?], and I lived there for a couple of years. And then my husband bought this old place, and here I am still. Yes, and I have quite a vivid memory of Miss Lucy. I remember the very last time I saw her. We feel she came out of the house looking for help, and was stricken and fell across the bannister. I believe it was Miss Harris[?], the person who lived down here in the little white house. Not the little white house, it’s right below the little white house next to Miss Simms, came up the street, and she said that Miss Lucy had died, and I looked out and there she was. Hung over the bannister, dead. So we always felt that she was… 

VL: Looking for somebody to help. 

WN: Uh-huh. 

VL: She never married? 

WN: No. 

VL: I guess she was too busy! She did so much! 

WN: I don’t know, I never heard anyone say she had a boyfriend or anything. She must have. 

VL: Somewhere along the line I’m sure she did. She must have been some kind of lady. 

WN: Uh-huh, and I always stood in-good with my teachers. I was the teacher’s pet. I was the goody-good. But I didn’t always respect my teachers. And we could talk, so one day me and her, when I was in her class, we were sitting on the bench on the side of an old big pot bellied stove, and that’s when she told me that she started teaching when she was thirteen years old. There at a place back of [Rte.] 11 somewhere there called Zenda. 

VL: And that’s back of Route 11, on the other side of 11? 

WN: I think so. It’s down on the side of 11 there somewhere, and I’m sure if you want to go down there you could find it, cause there’s still a few people living there. 

VL: Oh we didn’t know that. We thought that it was gone for good, Zenda. 

WN: No, I understand there are a few people there. Let’s see, I know a man, meat cutter over here at Safeway, and he lives down in that direction. You ought to ask him, but I think, I’m pretty sure about that, that some few people down there. 

VL: What kind of town was that? 

WN: Oh it was just a little tiny place. I’ve really never been there myself. It was just a very small place, and most of the people there were kin of one another, a little something like that[?]. 

VL: I’m still taking notes. I’m not taking as many notes as I did last time. The last tape we made, it didn’t come out at all, so this one’s working though. Let me see, when you went to school, you talked about pot bellied stoves. Was that for heat?

5 

WN: Um-hum. They called them pot belly stoves. Way back there. 

VL: Are they those big old black, cast iron stoves? 

WN: Yes, yes. Well they’re different shapes, they were but they called them pot bellies because they had this big pot that you dumped the coal in. 

VL: Who’s job was it to start the fire in the morning? 

WN: Janitor. 

VL: The janitor? Did any of the students have any jobs in the classroom that they had to do? 

WN: No. Now when I was teaching down at Elkton, there wasn’t any janitors, I had to go in and start the fires. 

VL: And what did you have to do? Was it just coal, where you dumped in coal and lit a match? 

WN: Well we started with wood and then put the coal on top of it. After that well burned, you would dump in some coal. The coal won’t ignite just with a match. 

VL: So you have to remember it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the real old coal stoves, you know, I’ve seen the new moderner versions. 

WN: Well, they’re coming back, old stoves are. I know of many different styles. And then we had what they call the hard coal stoves. 

VL: Hard coal stoves? 

WN: Well let’s see now, there are two kinds of coal, anthracite and, what’s that other one? 

VL: I know what you mean, but I can’t think of the word. 

WN: Now which one is the hard one? I think that must be the hard one. Now they were very beautiful, those stoves were. 

VL: What was different about them? 

WN: Well, as a rule, it had a square above the pocket the coal went in. There was three sides that had little square windows in, and they were made of what you call isinglass, a material. And when you got that all fired up, all these little windows showed up very beautiful. And in the top, you’d bed this coal, but you coal in from the top. And there was a funnel that come to the top of the stove down through where the body was that held the coal, and you would fill up this funnel, and it would just automatically as it burned out down here feed itself. 

VL: I bet that was pretty. 

WN: Beautiful, beautiful. And when I was a little girl I used to carry milk out on South Main for the Sieberts[?], the people I was telling you about who owned the land where the hospital is on, and there were a family of people there, and that house is still on South Main too, by the name of Dean[?]. The father was a photographer, and they had one of these stoves in their living room, and of course people didn’t pull shades much then like they do now. And as the dark came on, there was this beautiful stove over there, and I was on the opposite side of the street, and I was standing over there admiring this stove. It was so pretty. But do you know what? I lived to own one. 

VL: You did? Whatever happened to it? 

WN: Well you couldn’t get the coal eventually, and I sold it for iron. But it was surely a gratifying[?] thing to me. 

VL: When did you get that? 

WN: Let’s see my father gave it to me when I was married or around about 1916. 

VL: Where did the coal come from? Did it come through on the train? 

WN: Um-hum. And we had dealers here in town, just like they bring in the soft coal now, they brought in the two grades of coal then. There were quite a few 

6 

dealers around town. Dealers were the only way people had heat. 

VL: Do you remember any of these dealer’s names? 

WN: Well let’s see, Snell and Sons[?], and Kelly[?]. Kelly was Irish. And who else was there? But I do know the Snells are old coal [unintelligible]. 

VL: Who’s job was it to go down and pick up the coal and carry it back home? 

WN: Well they usually called that you buy a couple of bushels and they’d deliver it to you. 

VL: And where would you keep it? 

WN: We’d have a little box or a coal house. 

VL: (Laughs) I don’t know about any of this. Didn’t it make things awful dusty or sooty? 

WN: Yes, there was soot, especially outside. But now oil throws off a film, and the only thing is that the film from oil is greasy but the coal wasn’t. It was a blacker film that came from coal, but it wasn’t as greasy on the inside of the house as the oil. 

VL: Do you remember when you switched from coal to oil heat? 

WN: Yes, where I lived switched from coal to oil heat in `66. 1966. Because I had cataracts, and after having them removed I couldn’t lift that coal to the coal [unintelligible] in the stove, so then I switched to oil heat and got this thing. 

VL: When you had a pot belly stove or something what did you have a chimney? 

WN: Yes, just like this. Every now and then you’d have to take that chimney down to empty the coal, I mean the oil, and clean it. Soot would accumulate in there, only the accumulation in there from oil is a little bit different from coal. It’s not quite as loose. It’s more, kind of solid like. 

VL: How about cooking? Did you cook on the coal stove? 

WN: Yes, cooked on the coal stove and wood stove. Now, way back, they had nothing but the old wood stoves to cook on, and then what they call the “range” came in. That’s what used the coal. 

VL: Was there any difference in like how long you had to let things cook? 

WN: Not that I know of. There may have been a little difference because coal is real, hotter than wood. It makes a stove, the heat is hotter. 

VL: What did you do for lights? 

WN: Kerosene. 

VL: The chimney things, the globe, you don’t have one of them in the kitchen. 

WN: See it hanging up there against the wall? 

VL: Oh, yeah, that’s what I thought they probably looked like. 

WN: Uh-huh. Now that’s on a wall lamp, and then they had others. There was a bowl and then a stem [unintelligible]. And they had different kinds. Some of them were very pretty. Ones with painted bottoms and shades were painted. Some of them were very pretty, and I just fixed that up there last year, you know, and the breeze was and lines were down and everything. I had those up in the attic, I climbed up in the attic and got that thing [unintelligible]. I was not going to be in the dark. But it happens. [Unintelligible] That spring we had big freezes, and we used to have them quite often in the winter. 

VL: More so then we have now? 

WN: Oh, much more. 

VL: I wonder why they stopped. I wonder what accounts for the difference. 

WN: I don’t know. [Unintelligible] and we had these freezes and there were a lot of big trees along the walk then. And there were limbs down, that had fallen and broken off. White wires, we hit a very few wires, but there were still some. 

7 

And I remember one day on South Main I stepped on a wire, and it threw me out to the street off the sidewalk on to the street, and I think the only thing that saved me was I had on rubbers. I couldn’t get the full voltage of electricity. 

VL: You were lucky. 

WN: Actually it was luck. But South Main would be beautiful. All those limbs hanging down coated with all that ice. Just like the one we had last spring, you know? It was beautiful up there. And dangerous too. It was never known whether a limb was going to crack and fall on you. 

VL: I’ll bet it was a cold walk though. 

WN: Yes, it was cold. Our winters were much colder then what they are now. But we got along alright. One thing I want to tell you, when I was in Hampton I had the pleasure, I waited, of serving President Taft brunch. His wife and a party of 40. I don’t remember what he was doing in the neighborhood… 

[Tape cuts off]

1 

Transcript 3d: Second Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens, 20 July 1978, Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Tape 2 of WN, side 2 

[Side 2 begins in mid conversation] 

WN: …And of dead people. And eventually, Miss Mary[?] died and Miss Bessie[?] moved in smaller quarters and the old place was rented out to people. Two apartments, I think there are twelve rooms in the whole house. And, let’s see, who else? There was a fellah by the name of Pugh[?] lived there, and Miss Converse[?] built a house and this fellow… 

[Tape is cut off] 

WN: The first people I remember to live in there were Sinnicks[?]. I think Mr. Sinnick the father, worked for the milling company here, and they had two sons, Harry and Herbert, and they moved from here to, I think it was Baltimore, and I lost track of the Sinnicks. And the Pughs moved down into Linville, which there is a son, if he hasn’t died lately, which I haven’t seen in the paper, still living down there. He isn’t bright in the head. [Unintelligible] Mr. Pugh passed on. Well, then there was another negro family by the name of Kemper[?]. They live right down beside the Cochran[?] house, and now Mr. and Mrs. Kemper are both dead, and his daughter lives down on Lewis Street, back of Liberty. And me, I’m the last of my mother’s family that lived on Paul Street. 

VL: What about you, I know you have a daughter. 

WN: How do you know? 

VL: Because you told me she lives in Wheaton, and you have a daughter-in-law and another daughter? Two daughters and a daughter-in-law? 

WN: I have three daughters. I’m separated from my husband. I divorced my husband. He proved soon over the worse[?]. And I had to wear the dress and the pants both, so I said, “You gotta go.” I couldn’t continue to live with him, he couldn’t support his family. And he was a barber. Shop of his own. The money didn’t come home. And my oldest daughter, I think she was 62 or 61 on the 10th of this month. She is a government worker. Federal worker for the federal government, in printing and engraving [unintelligible]. She’s worked all types of money, and everything that you did to make money. She spent thirty years there. She is retired, they retired her. She still lives in Washington. And she married, too, and her husband was a drunkard. She didn’t get rid of him. And my next daughter, she lives in Lawrenceville, Virginia, and she works at St. Paul’s College, you know where that is? Do you know about St. Paul’s College there? 

VL: I’ve heard of it. 

WN: Well, now she works there, and for a big while she was cashier, and then they asked her if she would like to work with the treasurer. She got a strong head, and she gets anything in her head you aren’t going to knock it out. And she’s good in figures. She’s got a good business head on her, and I never got to educate any of my children or send them to college [unintelligible]. 

WN: What high school did they go to? 

VL: Oh, no high school, cause the high school wasn’t here. That’s why Elizabeth, my oldest daughter went with the government. That was her next best bet, is to get a job with the government.

2 

VL: Working with all that money. 

WN: And my next daughter, when she graduated from Simms, she got a job with the WPA people. And her first place she went was a army camp down here somewhere. What is it? What is the name of that camp? But she was there for a while, and then they sent her to Newport News on recreation, and she wasn’t there too long before the WPA folded up . Works Progress had folded up. And there was a friend of mine there who went to school and when I was in Hampton I met him there. And he graduated as a tailor and he had opened a business in Newport News and so he hired her, and she was good at typing, she taught herself to type, and she worked for him until she met her future husband. He was working in the ship yards. He was a teacher then, working in the ship yards for people going into service. It was essential work, you know, what some of them did. And she met him and married him. Went to Lawrenceville to live, and she worked at the [unintelligible] for a while [unintelligible]. Sixth oldest theater. She was very good at typing. She went up to New York, and took a course in shorthand and, what’s the figures? 

VL: Accounting? 

WN: That’s it. Accounting. And she made “A” on both of those courses in one summer, so she’s got a good head on her. So St. Paul got a hold of her, she’s been there since, since she just dying, she’s 57, she dying now to retire and go home and raise dogs. 

VL: What’s her name? 

WN: Jeanne. Jeanne Travis, of that Charlotte Jeanne Travis [unintelligible]. And her husband is a teacher, and at one time, well he’s still raising the family. Own lots of land, and the mother was in slavery, and the slave, her master, was a bachelor, and when he died the slaves got all the land. They divided all the land [unintelligible] the slaves, and her husband’s father and the mother won all those slaves, so they got a [unintelligible]. And they were raising tobacco and some cotton, but most tobacco, and he’s teaching, too. So they a little too much [unintelligible] now, and he has a tenant on the place and he takes care of [unintelligible] and he furnishes some of the financial, money for the crops and all. 

VL: How about your next daughter? 

WN: Well, my next daughter, I have two sons in between them, but my next daughter probably worships her brothers. Now she lives down in Wheaton. She is married, has two children, and her husband is a pharmacist, and he works for Abbott Pharmaceutical Company[?] out near Chicago, and at the present time, he is supervisor of twelve hospitals, with the fluid, supervises fluids and he has twelve of them. He’s out here in Rockingham Memorial, and he has deceased brothers [unintelligible] and he has King’s Daughters, that’s the one in Staunton, and the University of Virginia. And there’s another hospital out here somewhere he has, and the others are down toward Washington. 

VL: Sounds like a nice job. It’s a lot of travelling back and forth. 

WN: Just about a couple of months ago [unintelligible] but when you work for these promotions and they come you have to take them. But I don’t know how many more promotions he’ll get now before retirement comes. 

VL: Well it sounds like your daughters have made out pretty well for themselves. 

WN: Well the two of them did, but one didn’t. That was Elizabeth who made hers most in searching for bad luck with her husband[?]. He just could not stop drinking, til honest to goodness when he would come up here, I had to pad the bed like a baby, you know, that’s terrible. And he really worked for the Attorney General, in that office. He just would not stop his drinking. And well, my next son, he spent time in the service, and now he is working 

3 

recreation in Oxon Hill, Maryland. 

VL: That’s even closer to where I’m from. 

WN: Is that so? Well he works in the Recreation Department in Oxon Hill, and he’s married. He has no children, and I only have three grandchildren. Jeanne has one son, and he has spent time in the service. Now he’s going to school at Howard. I don’t know what on earth, he says he’s going back to Vietnam and go over there and give them the devil. And he’s taking up for studying Russians and a whole lot of stuff. He isn’t pleased with the deal he got over there, so he says he’s going back over [unintelligible]. 

VL: I bet they will. 

WN: You get away from there. Stay away. 

VL: Stay away. 

WN: But he got some raw treatment over there, he says. They didn’t really treat all the soldiers too good. And I’m hoping he’ll get back up. And the next son is here. He is the husband of the girl who works at Madison up in Alumni Hall. You’ve seen her many times. Edith. And he will not hold a job. He’s been employed out there twice, and walked off, so that’s about all I can say about him. 

VL: Do you get to see `em very often? 

WN: My children? Not too often. Now my oldest daughter is a diabetic now, and she can’t drive up here by herself, but before that she had her little car and she would drive up anytime. And the next girl, well, she comes now and then, but she’s on her job and she’s… 

VL: Do they come back for Christmas then? 

WN: Well, not too often. I prefer them having Christmas in their own homes. They live there, wherever they live. They have their friends there. Now my second daughter has been gone from here since 1939, [unintelligible]. Now, if they want to come home for Christmas it’s just alright, but I do not demand them to come. 

VL: Right, I know what you mean. 

WN: They have their homes, and that’s how you spend your time in you home. Any time I need anything, all I got to do is touch that telephone. And we keep in touch, do more talking then we do writing. 

VL: You must be like me, I hate to write letters. How about your grandchildren? You must like to see them? 

WN: Well, they come now and then. There’s only the girl that lives in Lawrenceville, her son comes in Washington and went to Howard, and he works, goes at Howard at night and works for the electric company there during the day. And who comes next? That’s all that there are, and believe the daughter’s husband[?] down in Maryland. Well, she has two grandchildren. Her daughter graduated from the University of Maryland last June and got married last June, so now she’s living in, oh what’s the name of that place up in Maryland? Largo? 

VL: Largo. 

WN: Uh-huh. And she and her husband had both been working for Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but she has quit and has taken a job, management, in a Giant store. In fact she studied management. And I don’t know whether he’s still with the Blue Cross and Blue Shield or not. And the little boy, their son, yes he will possibly finish high school next year and be ready for college. And the other boy doesn’t have any children and in fact his wife has some children, and neither does the boy who lives in town. 

VL: When you were little did Santa Claus come to visit you? Did the Easter bunny? What kind of things did they bring?

4 

WN: Well, Santa Claus, it was orange, games, some clothes, and the Easter bunny, eggs. And when I found out there was not a Santa Claus, it was a sad day. I happened to, [unintelligible] look out the back window, and I see my mom coming in back with those things. It was a sad day! (Laughs) 

VL: Terrible feeling, isn’t it? What kind of games would Santa Claus bring you? 

WN: Well, checkers and dominos and things like that. 

VL: Sounds like what I’d get for Christmas. 

WN: Are you married? 

VL: No. 

WN: You’re not? 

VL: Not yet. I’m gonna look around a little bit more. I haven’t found the one I want yet. But I did, I found if you need help… 

[Tape cuts off] 

WN: They cut my back the last time. He has a riding mower, and [unintelligible]. I prefer to do it myself. 

VL: But you can’t do everything by yourself. 

WN: And I do a lot of it. 

VL: Well that’s good for you but you shouldn’t over-do. 

WN: And I have a good time doing it. 

VL: Well that shows in your flowers. I’ve been telling everybody about your Christmas cactus and how big it is, and they just can’t believe it that it’s got a trunk on it. I saw it, I can tell them the truth. In fact, your snake plant, or whatever, that is huge. 

WN: That, some people call it a mother-in-law’s tongue, and some mother-in-law’s tongue is that long, she sure can give that son-in-law a lashing (laughs)! 

VL: Did you have plants around your home when you were little? 

WN: Yes I did. 

VL: Your mother had a green thumb too? 

WN: Uh-huh. And really she had chrysanthemums, and [unintelligible], there aren’t so many of them anymore. And then we had violets then, that big. You grew them in beds and they were perfumed. Grow it in like a hot bed when you put the glass over top of it. Those were the first violets I grew. That’s when I fell in love with violets. And the lady gave me those, one of the neighbors had some and she gave me some plants. 

VL: Boy I bet that would make a sweet smell. 

WN: And I tell you, another flower I used to have was called a night blooming cereus. Ever hear of it? 

VL: Yeah, is that the one that only opens once a year? 

WN: Yes, and it opens then at night, and I think it belongs to the cactus family. I believe it does, I’ve never seen [unintelligible]. 

VL: How can you tell when it’s gonna bloom? The bud just starts to… 

WN: Yeah, this bud comes. In fact the whole bud itself is just about this long, and it kind of has a lip on it, I’ll say, and right back here, the main part of the blossom starts, and you can see back up in there formations. It’s a gorgeous thing. 

VL: What color is it? 

VL: It’s kind of cream and pinkish outside, and there’s more cream and a little tinge of pink inside. And it is gorgeous, and usually if there’s anyone around has one, and it’s supposed to bloom, you’ll see it in the paper. Now the only person, the last person that I knew that had one was I think her name was Huffman[?], up on East Market Street. I think it’s Mrs. John Huffman, or John Huffman’s mother. John may be[?] named after his mother, I’m not sure. And it should bloom about now. Whenever anyone has any with it[?], she was the last 

5 

person and that’s been about maybe two years ago that it was in the paper. And you have a lot of company. People just flock to see it. It’s very rare. 

VL: I’ve heard of them but I’ve never known anybody who had one. 

WN: Well now, I got mine when I was a little girl in Staunton. This old lady she was a German, and her daughter married and lived here in town, and I worked for the daughter [unintelligible]. Mrs Nopnagle[?]. And she gave me a leaf and I had it for years. It’s not a pretty plant. The plant itself isn’t a bit pretty. 

VL: Which was bigger then, Staunton or Harrisonburg? 

WN: Staunton, I’m sure. But, Harrisonburg has been a more friendly town then Staunton. 

VL: I’ll agree with you on that. 

WN: Now when I used to go up there as a kid, if we negroes go to a theater, you had to go up an alley way and go in from the side, and that has never happened in Harrisonburg. Everyone has always gone in the front door. Now they didn’t sit together, at first, but you all went in the same door. And the relationship, we’ll say, between the whites and the blacks … is quite different. Quite different. 

VL: Mrs. Ramsey was telling us that during the Civil War, during that period of time, there were maybe 20,000 slaves in all of Rockingham County, and Augusta County had maybe 80,000 [These figures are erroneous]. It was just a big difference that way, and people really did feel different, whereas the people in Rockingham were more interested in just getting their work done and minding their own business and all. 

WN: I know that there’s quite a difference in the relationship. What did you think of that Roots? Did you read it or watch it? 

VL: I watched it. I thought it was good. I’m really glad that they showed it, because I think I learned something from it, you know, just for myself. I was really disappointed at the end when everybody said that Mr. Haley had made it up, that it wasn’t really true. That bothered me. But from what I saw, I think that people need to be, I don’t know, more aware, I guess. 

WN: I think there are really people who opened their eyes, more interested and more aware about themselves. Now when I, and I have noticed from time to time that there are more people going into their backgrounds to see who they are. Cause I told you about this thing down in Richmond in 1920, that they were going to examine peoples blood, and any one person, white person, if he had I think it was 16% negro blood in him that it would frame[?] back on the black race that you’re black. But, it ran so high to many big shots didn’t have that pure blood, [unintelligible] people all left that alone, cause it would raise a lot of stink. But there’s always been a very good relation between the whites and the negroes here in Harrisonburg. 

VL: From what I know of this town, it just seems to me that I can’t ever imagine anybody in this town not getting along. This is the friendliest place on Earth I’ve ever seen. The people are just so friendly. Where else could I go into somebody’s house and sit and ask them these kind of questions? I know in Maryland I couldn’t do it. 

WN: You couldn’t? 

VL: I know I couldn’t because it’s very different there. I’ve noticed the biggest change, it’s so more formal, or something, it’s just looser, easier. 

WN: Well, did you ever hear of a bunch of people down in Maryland that they did not get any education in schooling. Now they look like they were white, but they did not have a clear complexion….

6 

End tape 2, side 2

1 

Transcript 3e: Interview #2 with Willie Nickens, 20 July 1978, Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Tape 3 of WN, Side 1 

[Interview begins in progress] 

WN: …go to the negro school, no, and they also intermarried. If one of them married a negro, he was kicked out, it was a disgrace. And the last bunch that I remember were Butlers[?]. 

VL: Where in Maryland was this, do you know? 

WN: Well I can’t tell you the exact place it was. I don’t remember. But, my son, my oldest son is married into that family of Butlers, but they have changed. They realize who they are and they don’t think that they are above the negroes, because they were mostly fair people. And quite a bunch of them down there never got any education for that reason why. 

VL: See I think that’s what Roots made people aware of, that there’s no need for anybody to be better than anybody else. We’re all the same, you know what I mean? 

WN: It goes like this, a white man, a black woman, they couldn’t have children, a white woman, a black man, they don’t have children of the same race.[?] 

VL: It just all seems so foolish to me. 

WN: Well that’s how you keep a pure race, is there any such thing as pure race.? 

VL: As your race, right. I don’t think so. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there is. 

WN: Well you know the man that broke that law about white and black marrying? He’s from there in Maryland. 

VL: Is he? Now I never heard anything about that. 

WN: And he married a Jeeter[?]. The Jeeters down there. And you know now, they would issue a license for blacks and whites to marry. And it broke down that law. He married a Jeeter, of Big Stone Gap, [Virginia] this place. You know where that is? 

VL: I don’t know. 

WN: Now those Jeeters down there are mixed up. A Jeeter came here to Madison and graduated. I had Carrie Lou[?] in one of my houses. In old Sprinkle House, Sigma Sigma Sigma. And I am positive she belonged to the Jeeters. She was not pure white, and then this case came up and made me think still more. Nice girl and all and everything. Got along with the other girls, but there was something there that made me feel that Carrie Lou had some of my blood in her. So one day she was with the kids carrying on, she said, “When I get married I’m just gonna have babies one right after the other.” And there was another girl present, and what was that girl’s name? I used to remember what her name was, but anyway she said to this girl, “You’re gonna be the Aunt,” and she looked over at me and said “Willie, you’re gonna be grandma.” (Laughs). But I still feel that Carrie Lou had negro blood in her veins. And she graduated from up at Madison so I assure you that they get to the point where you just don’t know. And my brother married a girl, she was a Collie[?]. The father was born in slavery, adjoining plantations. This man over here comes over here, and gets the women pregnant and she told her master who had done it to her, who had gotten her pregnant. So he says to the man, this was after the baby was born, [unintelligible] had a baby by one of my women. He says, “Yes.” And as soon as he is old enough to leave his mother’s [unintelligible] and he took him. He acted like he was white and everything. He educated him, and he turned 

2 

out to be a missionary. He served in Africa. One of my brothers married one of his daughters, and in turn, this boy married a very fair woman, and most of their children look like they were white. Some of them had a little darker cast[?]. Some of them had blue eyes. 

VL: There shouldn’t be any need to have to do anything. 

WN: They are going to mix, so I say, if they love one another, Amen, let them go. They had better marry and live decent lives then to sleep with one another [unintelligible]. But it’s come down to that now. 

VL: It takes time for things to change. 

WN: Go down the street quite often, see a white girl, black boy, hand in hand. It’s out in the open. 

VL: Right. And that’s where it should be as far as I’m concerned. 

WN: If they love one another, Amen, what difference does it make. And why don’t the law allow him to lead a fair square life? 

VL: Do you have a family Bible? 

WN: No… 

[Tape cuts off] 

WN: No, only on my mother’s side, I know that her father was her master. In fact he had two children by grandmother. 

VL: What was your mother’s name? 

WN: Mary Frances, but she went by the name Fannie. She first married a Williams. 

VL: What was her maiden name? 

WN: Oh, Harris. 

VL: And what was your father’s name? We’re gonna trace your roots for you, that’s what we’re gonna do. (laughs) 

WN: Well, I pretty well know my roots. My father was Willis Rouser[?], but now, there’s a mistake there. Rouzy really was his name. R-O-U-Z-Y. But when we kids went to school, we said, “Rouser.” The teacher wrote it down, and my momma not being able to read nor write, she wrote it down as… 

[Tape cuts off] 

WN: We kids were never called by our really correct name, last name. 

VL: That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of anything like that. 

WN: Well now that’s how that happened. And over where my father in Madison, Virginia, they spell it R-O-U-Z-Y, Rouzy. Like Mauzy that has a “M”. 

VL: How about your grandmother’s name? 

WN: Her first name was Nancy. I don’t remember the last name. 

[Tape cuts off] 

VL: How about your grandfather? Do you know his name? 

WN: No. 

VL: And your children are, let me see, I’ve got them written down somewhere. Elizabeth? 

WN: Mary Elizabeth Nickens. But she is a Johnson now. 

VL: Ok, and then there’s Charlotte Jeanne? 

WN: Um-hum. Now she spells her name, we call her Jeanne, but she spells her name J-E-A-N-N-E. 

VL: And then who is next? 

WN: Raymond. Charles Raymond. That’s after his father. 

[Tape cuts off] 

WN: … Joseph Louis, after his grandfather on his father’s side. And Emma Lee, she was named after my sister. Emma, then Lee, L-E-E. 

[Tape cuts off] 

VL: Well, we’re really interested in your mother and father’s last name. I don’t really know what this is going to be used for. I don’t know, we might just 

3 

throw this piece of paper in the trash, I don’t know what she wants. 

WN: Well don’t use anything that’s damaging to me! 

VL: Oh, don’t worry, we’ll let you approve everything before we do anything at all with this because… 

[Tape cuts off] 

End tape 3, side 1

1 

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN HARRISONBURG 

Transcript 3G: Third Interview with Mrs. Willie R. Nickens 

Date and Place of Interview: 24 July 1978, Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Interviewer: Vicki L. Lloyd 

Transcriber: Theresa Staropoli, September 30, 1992, Burruss Intern in Carrier Library Special Collections 

Tape 4, Side 1 

VL: Ok, I need to know the name of Mr. Newman, who owned the farm up here. What was his first name, do you know? 

WN: Moffitt. 

VL: Moffitt? M-O-F-F-I-T-T? 

WN: I think his name was A.M. Newman. I know his name was Moffitt, they called him Moffitt. 

VL: Ok, where was Arnold’s Valley? 

WN: That is up in, I think, Bath County. And that’s just about all I can tell you about it. 

VL: Alright, about the Effinger School, about how many students were there? 

WN: Not too many. 

VL: Not too many. How about how many teachers? Any idea about that? 

WN: At the time of closing, or… 

VL: Well when you went there. 

WN: Oh, only four teachers. 

VL: Four? Ok, there was Mr. Johns[?]. 

WN: Well, he, yes, he came after Mr. Newman. My first teacher was Mrs. Nyser[?] from Elkton. I think her name was Emma Nyser[?]. And then my next teacher was then Maggie Newman[?], Mr. Newman’s daughter, which she now is Mrs. Poindexter[?]. I don’t know if you ever heard her on the early morning program playing for Arnold [radio personality] or not. That old lady that plays at times. Have you heard her? I think she’s over 100 now, and she’s in a home out by Staunton or someplace. I don’t know whether she comes on, I doubt if she’s on the program, but she has stayed alert so long. 

VL: One hundred years is a long time. 

WN: It is. And I’m sure Miss Maggie [unintelligible]. The next teacher was U.G. Wilson, Ulysses Grant Wilson. 

VL: He’s the one that wrote the poem. 

WN: Yes. He was U.G. Wilson. And Miss Lucy, I’m sure they were half-brother and sister, because she was a Simms, and he was a Wilson. 

VL: And who was the other one? 

WN: Mr. Newman. What was his name? George, I believe his name was George. You can find that in the [unintelligible]. 

VL: That was G.A. Newman, right? 

WN: Yeah I guess that was. And then come Johns, and that’s when I came out of school. 

VL: Ok, what was your school day like? Were there any special things that you did? Did you say the Pledge of Allegiance every day? 

WN: Yes, and the morning prayer, and [unintelligible] around 10:30 [unintelligible] an hour around noon.

2 

VL: What was recess? What did you do during recess? 

WN: All come out and played. All the rooms let out, and all the kids were in the big yard. 

VL: Any special games that you played? 

WN: One, just rope jumping. And what else did we play? Jumping rope was probably the most that we played. 

VL: Did you have any little rhymes or anything that you said while you jumped rope? Think about it for a while. 

WN: I don’t think we did. 

VL: How about at graduation, did you have any ceremony at all? 

WN: Yes we did. That was in my class, now, we was the first, and Maggie Brown[?] was the valedictorian, and I was salutatorian. 

VL: And did you give speeches? 

WN: Yes we had a little speech, but don’t ask me what they said!(Laughing) And it was in the Methodist Church, the John Wesley Church. I can not remember the minister at that time. 

VL: Were there any sports programs? Like Earl Johnson became a runner. Did he get started in school? 

WN: No. None of the boys played ball [unintelligible] baseball. Where he started was, he started working out to Massanetta Springs, remember that’s a summer resort out there, and sometimes, at one time it was quite popular, and he would be late sometimes getting started. And of course, to make up time, try to get there as soon as possible, he would run. At one time he told me this, he ran and he made it in three minutes. 

VL: Where did he start from? 

WN: I couldn’t tell you exactly, but it was here in town. Whether it was his home up on Mason Street, or not, I imagine, maybe at the barber shop. 

VL: Where was this barber shop? 

WN: On, let’s see, at that time, I guess it was on Main Street, right below the old Taliaferro[?] store. 

VL: Let’s see. There’s Glassners, The Jewel Box, Hodges[?], Wilsons? 

WN: Wilsons. He took over Taliaferro’s store. So his father had this barber shop right door, right on the corner of Water and Main. 

VL: And they lived on Mason Street? 

WN: Yes. Of course that was all torn up, but I could locate the spot [unintelligible] west side of Mason, all those houses came down, and the east side, there are real old houses still standing. The real old houses, a block or two [unintelligible – Mrs. Nicken’s voice can barely be heard]. 

VL: Do you remember there ever being any epidemics of diseases or anything? I know my mother’s told me when she was young typhoid fever went through. 

WN: Yes, and measles. Mumps, I’ve had these measles, but never the mumps. 

VL: I’ve never had any of them. 

WN: Well now, you don’t have like it then because… 

VL: That’s true. There weren’t vaccinations. Do you ever remember any time when it seemed like everybody was sick? 

WN: Flu, but that wasn’t back when I was a little girl. When did the flu come through here? I can’t say, but I wasn’t a real tiny girl. Quite a few people died from the flu. Our negro doctor was Dr. Dickerson[?], and I don’t think he lost a case of flu. A lot of the white people then called on him because he wasn’t losing any cases, you know. As to why, I don’t know. Could be just sheer luck, or maybe he prescribed something that the others didn’t. 

VL: Where was the doctor’s office? 

WN: At his home, which is, there’s a house on the corner of Wolfe and Mason, a big 

3 

square house. Do you travel down that way? 

VL: I’m on Mason Street almost every day, but I don’t know what the cross streets are. 

WN: Well, he lived on Mason Street, on the corner of Wolfe. You’d say the north corner, and which the house is still standing. He first lived in the old house that this little store or restaurant is in now, then he built this new house. I think he has a son and a daughter still living in Washington. 

VL: What did you do for fun? Did you go to dances, parties? 

WN: Yeah, parties now and then, yes. And in later years, why there were some dances, public dances. And they had an old skating rink, that was one thing they had, a skating rink, in later years. That was on Gay Street. 

VL: Ice skating or roller skating? 

WN: Roller skating. Well they’ve always done some ice skating around, on little ponds, but just now and then, individuals would go skating. I know I played hooky from school once, and this very Earl Johnson was supposed to teach me to use ice skates, and they said they made them too sharp, but I fell and busted my head open. Quite[?] naturally why I don’t have real good sense now. Well, I would never play hooky from school again (laughs). As I started to tell you about the skating rink, now and then they would have fights in there. So this night they had a fight, I was there, and we ran, and I had found a little while before that a wallet, down on the square. In a few days, a man had the ad in the paper for it, and I took it to him. He was a crabby man[?], and he stayed there in the old hotel that they called, what was that old hotel called? But at any rate, I took it to him and with cash and checks in there, it was $2,300 in it. He gave me, I think it was $17, no, he gave me all the cash. 

VL: You must have been a rich lady for a long while! 

WN: And, I had it in my pocketbook, and I was at that dance that night, and running. I lost my little pocketbook and my money (laughs). But at any rate, I got away. 

VL: What a shame! 

WN: I say so too, because I should have bought myself something that I would have forever, cause I was just a little girl, not very old, and I thought it was very nice of him to, which my mother didn’t go with me to return it, and many men would’ve, oh, just given me two or three dollars, you know, but he was so glad to get it. 

VL: Wish I could find a wallet laying somewhere. I could use the money! 

WN: Oh I bet you make plenty good money. 

VL: Not near enough, I’ll tell you. 

WN: Well, we’re never making enough, but still compared with what you used to make, people are making fortunes of education. 

VL: I guess I shouldn’t complain. 

WN: Everything is so high, you just can’t save anything. 

[The interview stops for an unexplained reason] 

WN: …the rest that I graduated did[?] 

VL: Oh really? Now I’d like to see that sometime. 

WN: Ok. 

VL: Not this second though, because I’ll tell you, I have to get back to campus. I have a class in just a very few minutes, and I thought I just had time to stop in and get you to answer just these few questions, and I have one more question for you. Do you believe, or did you ever pay much attention to your horoscope? 

WN: Yes, I really read it every day. It runs in the News-Record. Aquarius, I 

4 

believe you call it. I didn’t read today, at least yet I haven’t. I don’t know what I was interested in today. Oh I know what it was the problem today, my daughter is sick, it just kind of bothered me. I tried to call. She [unintelligible] Georgetown. I couldn’t get through last night. My daughter-in-law’s wife tried to call this morning, and she hasn’t been able to get through. Then it could be the storm that done some damage down there. 

VL: It could have. It was a bad storm. 

WN: Didn’t hurt us, there was nothing in the water[?] 

VL: It sure poured. A lot of rain. 

WN: Yes, and I was thinking a lot about that and I think maybe that was why I didn’t read the horoscope. 

VL: Well I hope it’s nothing serious. 

WN: Well, yes in a way it is. She’s a diabetic, and sugar is giving her trouble. 

VL: My father is a diabetic. 

WN: Is that so? Inclined to, and it fluctuates. So she’s over in Georgetown now, they’re trying to find another formula, I guess I would call it a serum to control it. 

VL: Yes, they have to keep it level all the time. 

WN: You watch it and have quite a bit of trouble with it. [Unintelligible]. 

VL: Do you believe in your horoscope? 

WN: Oh, I do some things. 

VL: Half and half. Just like I am. 

WN: Life is what you make it. 

VL: Did you ever read it when you were little? Pay any attention to it? 

WN: No, no. I really didn’t know anything about that. 

(Interview is stopped and resumes in progress) 

WN: …and I told the man that that was a relative of the bears that used to be up in the Newman backyard (laughs)! 

VL: Where was the Newman house? 

WN: Right where, I think, Moody Hall stands. Moody Hall is… 

VL: Moody Hall faces Main Street. 

WN: It faces Main. Well so did the old Newman house, and it is across from, not Wilson, what… 

VL: It’s next door to Wilson. 

WN: Next door to Wilson? 

VL: Wilson’s on one side, and that Varner House is on the other side. 

WN: The Varner House, I knew her too. 

VL: Oh, now did they live there? Did the Varners live in that house? 

WN: No, the college built it. She was a teacher. 

VL: Oh. But the Newman house was right up in that area? 

WN: Uh-huh. It was a little brick house. It was a long driveway there down to the Main Street. 

VL: How many children did they have? 

WN: Oh, two girls and a boy, and there is a granddaughter living out there in Hill[?] College. 

End Tape 4, Side 1

1 

AFRICAN AMERICANS IN HARRISONBURG 

Transcript 3J: Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens 

Date and Place of Interview: 14 February 1979, Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Interviewers: Inez Ramsey, JMU Faculty, and an unknown interviewer 

Transcriber: Theresa Staropoli, 21 October 1992, Burruss Intern in Carrier Library Special Collections 

Tape 5 of WN, Side 2 

The two interviewers appearing on this tape are not identified at the beginning of the tape, but Inez Ramsey’s voice is distinguishable. She is identified as the interviewer when it is certainly her voice. Questions that are posed by an unidentifiable voice are identified as UI, unknown interviewer. 

[Interview begins in progress] 

IR: Somebody told me that Bob Rawls[?] was a fortune teller, that he used to tell fortunes. Ever hear anything about fortune telling or anything like that? 

WN: No. [Unintelligible]. 

IR: They were afraid of him. 

WN: Oh a lot of people are scared of him. 

IR: Yeah that’s how they told me that he worked here very long and that kids were afraid of him. 

WN: Yes. 

IR: Why were they afraid of him? 

WN: Well, I think he would holler at their mother and make funny noises. 

IR: Maybe give an Indian yell or something!(Laughs) 

WN: And he wore his hair in what they called a doorknob back here. 

IR: What? 

WN: Doorknob. 

IR: What doorknob? 

WN: Twist it up around and make a little knob. 

IR: Oh, you mean like a little bun. They didn’t call it a bun back then? 

WN: In olden days they called them doorknobs. 

IR: Ok [unintelligible]. 

WN: That may have been just among a certain class of people, called it a doorknob cause it kind of resembled a doorknob. 

UI: Did you know what kind of Indian he was, what tribe? 

WN: No, I do not. And I do not know the tribe [unintelligible]. My mother’s first husband’s mother once belonged to that tribe. They were up in Bath County somewhere, in a place called Arnold’s Valley. And they stole the girl [unintelligible]. 

UI: Ok, so you have Indian blood?

2 

WN: Well I don’t because me and my mother, that blood would come form the father. And my mother, her father, she was born in slavery, he was her master [unintelligible]. 

UI: Where did your mom come from? Do you know? 

WN: It was a place called Brownsburg[?]. They grew up in a [unintelligible] and I’ve never even been there. I don’t know… 

UI: It was a plantation up there I take it and you r mom was actually born on the plantation. 

WN: She was born a slave and whatever it was, she didn’t say how long [unintelligible] and the master was her father. 

UI: And how did they happen to come down here to this area? 

WN: Well now she married Ben Williams[?], and he brought her here. She married when she was fifteen. And I don’t know what brought him here, but then they moved here [unintelligible]. 

UI: Do you know how old your mother was when the Civil War ended and she was free? 

WN: Well I think she married her husband when she was about fifteen years old. Now I don’t know how long that was after the war. Couldn’t have been too long. I think they had to hide her out[?], the family. And would not tell her that the war was ended, she was free to go. And her mother sent her word to come home, the war was over. And so she wanted to go home and she attempted to, she ran off on them twice, and one time they put the dogs on her, and took her back. And the next time, she made it. 

UI: Good for her. Actually the war was over and they still tried to keep her? 

WN: Um-hum. [unintelligible] 

UI: Did she ever tell you what it was like when she was young? 

WN: Well, she wasn’t mistreated. The mother seemed to kind of held a whip hand[?] and that old master would switch them for something they did on her especially. The mother would switch her right on top of it [unintelligible]. And he was very good to them. And I think that the reason why she wanted to get out he married, had a second marriage. And this younger woman resented the attention he paid to this child. He thought it was one of their own or something. 

UI: Did your mother ever tell you any more stories about growing up? 

WN: Well she said she was delivered on the table. This happened after he had the second marriage [unintelligible]. She started looking at her and followed her around. [Unintelligible]. And finally she asked him something but I forget what it was. She said, “Fannie, where did you get that dress you have on? And there was a woman who used to go around with a little hand machine, and her name was Miss Vera Marks. And so she said, “Miss Vera Marks made it.” [unintelligible]. He had another daughter by the first wife [unintelligible]. And he asked Miss Marks, “Why doesn’t Fannie’s dress look like Mary’s dress?” And she said the dress she had on was a little straight thing and [unintelligible]. 

UI: [unintelligible] you had a greta deal of affection for your mother. 

WN: Yes. 

UI: Yes, you really did. 

WN: [Unintelligible] 

UI: [Unintelligible] 

WN: Well, we’re just very good [unintelligible]. Now I caught [unintelligible] switching back in those days, if you use the right kind of switch. 

UI: What kind of switch are you supposed to use?

3 

WN: Well, not a half a tree[?]. (Laughs) 

UI: Some people, like the switches they use, they take the hide right off your… 

WN: [unintelligible] 

UI: [unintelligible] 

WN: Once while I was working up at Madison [unintelligible] a little girl and a boy. The little girl was just nasty to her mother. She couldn’t do anything [unintelligible]. So one day [unintelligible]. They get that smack from the little switches, and Charlene[?] go all to pieces. Let her know who’s boss. [Unintelligible]. The next summer she [unintelligible]. 

UI: What ever happened to your mother’s brother? The one you said, that she had a brother. 

WN: Well he’s dead. 

UI: Did he get to leave the plantation too, like she did? 

WN: No. I think it was the affection that the father showed towards this little girl, and this lady resented it, and if she could get her out of the family way[?] [unintelligible]. 

UI: How about the brother, after the war? Did he stay on? 

WN: He moved to Lexington, and that’s where he died. [unintelligible]. 

UI: What did he do there? 

WN: Well, he could do almost anything. If he would go out and see a lady with a dress on, you know he could cut a pattern, and draw that pattern to his liking, design his wife [unintelligible]. And he could make wagons[?].His wife [unintelligible]. Had quite a head on him. 

UI: He certainly did. 

WN: Um-hum. And well he wasn’t taught it was just… 

UI: A natural thing. Very talented. 

WN: Uh-huh. Never had no education. 

UI: [Unintelligible]. You must be getting tired. We should be going. 

WN: No I’m not! 

UI: We’ve way over stayed our welcome. 

WN: No, I’m not tired. 

UI: You have certainly got the most marvelous memory of any [unintelligible] that I know. 

WN: Well, I tell you, God doesn’t take everything away. 

UI: I hope I can remember. I can’t remember yesterday let alone… 

WN: Now, you will remember what happened farther back better than you do the present. 

UI: They tell me that happens when you get older. I told you I can’t remember anything! (Laughs) 

WN: That happens often. It’s true. Now I really enjoyed talking to you ladies. 

UI: Oh, but we’ve enjoyed being here. I’ve got a terrific amount of information down. 

WN: This day I’m gonna kick off my heels and have a good time. Well, my son’s here right now. 

UI: How’s your daughter getting along? 

WN: She’s doing real well. 

UI: Is she feeling well these days? 

WN: [Unintelligible]. She’s doing very well now. She calls my other daughter down in Wheaton [unintelligible]. And the main thing that’s wrong with her is that her sugar drops and [unintelligible]. 

UI: You have to watch that. My mother-in-law suffers from low blood sugar and she 

4 

has to be careful I guess. Every once, she’ll eat a banana [unintelligible]. 

WN: Uh-huh. And I tell her to come on home but she won’t come home. She wants me to pack up and come down there. 

UI: Oh it’s hard to do that. 

WN: Yes it is. 

UI: Ain’t no place like my own home! You’ll never get me out of mine. 

WN: Well it ain’t nothing but I just… 

UI: You have a nice place here. It’s all comfortable and nice. [unintelligible]. Oh you’re not old! You would never be old! You’re young at heart. I’ve got a question, way back when, you told me that when these houses over here were first built that this was an all white community back over in here. 

WN: Uh-huh. Well, now I don’t know how many houses there were, but I am told that especially these three here were built by white people. And the people that built this one, I think were the Goheens[?]. And there’s a Mr. Goheen, mail carrier, I don’t know whether you’ve ever come in contact with him or not. 

UI: No I don’t think so. 

WN: He’s carrying out on the south end there somewhere now. He used to be up here, and I asked him one day [unintelligible]. And he said yes he was, he didn’t know. 

IR: Do you know, like for example, most of the blacks that I know sort of live in this whole geographic area right here, but they didn’t years back. Like you lived way down over on Main Street. 

WN: I lived on Paul Street. 

IR: On Paul, well, I know it’s down by Paul Street down towards the school. When did most of the black families sort of move in here and concentrate in here or has it always been that way? 

WN: Well, after the white people moved out, I think that’s when the houses were bought, and if the owner that lived in it didn’t own it, it wa rented by some white person to them. And then, out of the other houses were built by the negroes. Now there’s a house down here on the corner, do you know where Harrison Street is? Where it comes across Washington? that little short street? Well now that big house that sits there, now that [unintelligible]. And there was another big houses right down below that, about the third house below that big house. Well now that was owned by white people and they lived there. And as time went on, they were bought by black people. Now the old houses across on that side of the street down there especially, now they were built by negroes. 

IR: Ok, but when you were young, really, you sort of lived all over the place, right? Blacks sort of lived all over the place in your community. They weren’t just sort of right in one small area. 

WN: No, they mostly lived on Red Hill. 

IR: Yeah I know Red Hill. That’s my [unintelligible] is Red Hill. 

WN: What do you know about that? 

IR: I think it’s interesting cause I talked to Mr. Curry, and Mr. Curry lived over in Red Hill. And Red Hill stayed so rural for so long, cause Mr. Curry’s not that old. He’s only, what, in his fifties? And when he was growing up in Red Hill they still had chickens and pigs and all sorts of stuff back there and that’s over in Reservoir, where the 7-11 store is. that was called Red Hill, and Mrs. Curry tickled me, cause they both went over here to Lucy Simms, and she said, “Well, only the hicks lived in Red Hill!” (Everyone laughs). Oh yes! She said all the hicks lived over in Red Hill and so when they were in high 

5 

school together, she didn’t look at him cause he was from over there in Red Hill. 

WN: That is the wife that lives right down here? 

IR: Mrs. Curry. 

WN: She lives right over there? 

IR: Bill Curry’s wife. We got a big kick out of that. Mr. Curry is the custodian over at Spottswood School, and we got the biggest kick out of that, I tell you. 

WN: I doubted his wife went to high school, Peggy. 

IR: Bill Curry’s wife did. Well they both went to Lucy Simms. 

WN: Yeah but I doubt if she got to high school. 

IR: Oh now that I don’t know, but they were both over here at Lucy Simms and she said she didn’t look at him for a long time, then she discovered he was a pretty nice fellow. 

WN: There’s some good people up on that hill. Now there’s one man that owned the first negro barber shop that I remember. 

IR: Oh who was that? 

WN: Dennis Lee[?]. And his brother owned the first black store that ever really stood for any length of time. 

IR: Now Mr. Curry talked about a fellah who ran a store over there. Do you remember his name? 

WN: Dixie Williams? 

IR: Dixie. Dixie Williams, that’s who… 

WN: That was my half-brother. 

IR: Oh, all right. Oh, Mr. Curry remembered him. He loved him. Said he gave all the kids candy all the time. 

WN: He was all right. He was my mother’s oldest son. 

IR: And so he ran the store over in Red Hill? 

WN: Yes. He is the only person, the only negro, that ran a store that really lasted any length of time. 

IR: Oh Mr. Curry told me he ran that store over there and that he remembered him well. I think Mr. Curry’s grandparents’ place was right, rest right about here by Dixie Williams’ store was it not? 

WN: Yes, right down below there. What street is that? 

IR: That be by Reservoir… 

WN: Isn’t Reservoir Street the street that runs… 

IR: It’s Hawkins, is it? 

WN: No, Hawkins Street comes this way, north. 

IR: Oh come on. There’s a Franklin, Franklin extension down there and it was Hawkins. 

WN: That runs into Franklin extension. Now what is the name of the little street through there? Well, up there it used to be just an alley, but in the late years I haven’t [unintelligible]. 

IR: Alright, I’m gonna come back and talk about Red Hill. We gotta get out of here. 

[Tape cuts off] 

End tape 5, side 2

1 

African Americans in Harrisonburg 

Transcript 3K: Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens 

Date and place of interview: 14 February 1979; Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Interviewer: Inez Ramsey, JMU Faculty 

Transcriber: Theresa Staropoli, 2 December 1992, Burruss Intern in Carrier Library Special Collections 

Tape 6, side 1 

IR: This is an interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens at her residence on Johnson Street in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The date is February 14, 1979, and the time is approximately four o’ clock in the afternoon. Present at the interview are Mrs. Nickens, Mrs. Inez Ramsey, the interviewer, and Barbara Browning[?] and Nancy Metcaff[?], who are visiting as observers. 

[Tape cuts on and off while miscellaneous events are discussed] 

IR: You were telling me on the telephone that you knew a fella who was a police officer here in Harrisonburg back a few years ago? 

WN: Yes, he was my mother’s brother-in-law. My mother was married twice. It was her first husband’s brother. Joe Williams[?]. Joseph, rather. We always called him Joe, and I think he was the first Negro policeman here. Back a long time ago. 

IR: Do you remember the dates? 

WN: Well now, I don’t know whether you know Mr. Frank Stover[?] or not. Well, he looked up the date, and Policeman Ritchie[?] has it, and he said it was seventeen and, seventy-two and four. 

IR: 1772? 

WN: And I really think after thinking over it, there’s been a mistake there. I really don’t think he was here in that year, although he may have been. It was long before I was born, my mother’s first husband. And they haven’t lived here too long. 

IR: You said this is 1917 that you’re talking about? 

WN: No, no, no, wait. May have been in 1817. 

IR: You said 1772. 

WN: Yeah, and four. Those are the figures that Mr. Stover brought me, he got from Police Ritchie when he retired. Now you can contact Mr. Ritchie. I’m sure he will verify it. 

IR: Well you know, I told you that Mr. Wayland did indeed, in his book, say something about… 

WN: What did he say? 

IR: I’ll have to go to the citation. It was just a remark and he didn’t name him by name or anything like that, but I got the feeling it was quite a while ago. That was back some years ago, and how old are you now, 84? 

WN: Yes, I was 84 in January. 

IR: And it was before you were born? 

WN: Oh, yes! I’m an old buzzard! 

IR: Do you know anything much about Mr. Williams at all? Where he was born, and education system? 

WN: Well I’m sure he had very little education because back in those days, you know, it wasn’t really….

2 

IR: Nobody did back then. 

WN: No. And he left this town with a Mr. Dangerfield[?], a great horsemen. Now Joe Williams was a barber, and Mr. Dangerfield went to his shop, and when Mr. Dangerfield left and went to Kentucky, he took Uncle Joe with him. Now how long he was there I do not know. And then he was a [Coleman?] porter for quite a few years. 

IR: [Unintelligible]. I’m just looking on the list to see if I have his name down. 

BB/NM: What railroad did he work for? Do you remember? 

WN: No, because it didn’t run out of here, it ran out of Washington. 

IR: Do you know any stories about any arrests or anything like that he made while he was a police officer. I wonder what it was like to be a police officer back in those days? 

WN: No I do not, but I read in a book, I got the understanding that this Miss [unintelligible] on hilltop, was visiting here and she came in contact with him, and she asked him what a white person thought of being arrested by a Negro. And he said no one never had resented him arresting them. 

IR: I’d better not talk too much [unintelligible]. I wonder, why did he become a police officer, do you know? Did he have ambitions to be a police officer? 

WN: I do not know. Well one thing, he was a barber and he came in contact with a lot of people, and possibly law making people. 

IR: [Unintelligible] knew about that but I didn’t know you knew his name. 

WN: Joseph Williams. 

IR: Did he die here in town? 

WN: No, he died in Washington. And his brother died [unintelligible]. He was my mother’s husband. Benjamin Williams[?]. 

IR: And what did he do? 

WN: He was a farmer. He farmed on the old Clonvo Sibert[?] farm. I don’t know whether you ever learned where that was or not. You know where Paul Street is? Well Paul Street stops, way back there in those days, where his farmland began. Then after Paul Street was opened, which it ran on through where he used to own, I mean his brother used to live on this farm. The old Sibert farm. 

IR: Oh, so he was a farmer. 

WN: That was my mother’s brother, I mean husband. But brother to Joe. And the first job that I heard my mother say that he had here in town, he rode the old stage coach from here in Harrisonburg to Rawley Springs. See, Rawley Springs was quite a place at one time. 

IR: That’s interesting. [Unintelligible]. 

WN: Now, I just know what my mother told me. 

IR: So he drove a stage coach? 

WN: That was her husband. A brother to this Joe Williams. Now I doubt that there’s any records in here about that. I don’t know. 

IR: You never rode on the stage coach. They didn’t have anything like that when you were growing up, did they? 

WN: No indeed. 

IR: Well, you know, my kids do that to me all the time (laughs)! 

WN: I just know what my mother said. And there was a hotel or a rolling house here in town, on the east side of Main Street, along there where the theater is now. What was it? I can’t remember. But it hasn’t been in the limelight[?] for years and years and years, and I doubt it that very few people know anything about it in Harrisonburg. Because I really, really remember the place 

3 

[unintelligible]. 

IR: There was another hotel over the one we just lost around town. 

WN: Back then I know there was another one. It was the Revere House[?]. Now you never hear anything about that. Now I know when that was in operation, that was right on the corner of Water and Main. There was a shoe store on that block. 

IR: Was it very big? Did it have a fancy clientele? 

WN: No, I don’t think it had anyone fancy. But I do remember well the old Revere House and right back of it on Water Street, there was a bar, in fact there were two bars back up on Water Street. All the bars then were on Water Street, on East and West Water Street. 

IR: [Unintelligible] that all the bars were on Water Street. 

WN: And I really think that one of those old buildings is still standing there now. 

IR: Were there any [tape briefly cuts off]. Did any blacks own any of those bars or anything down there as far as you remember? 

WN: No. In fact, there’s never been a black bar in Harrisonburg. There’s been plenty of moonshine! (Laughs) 

IR: Moonshine! Was there moonshine here? 

WN: Was there moonshine around here! 

IR: Do you know any moonshiners? 

WN: No. Never had any contact with them at all. [Unintelligible] 

IR: Where did they sell it? 

WN: To anyone they wanted to. 

IR: Where did they sell it. I mean, if I wanted moonshine, how would I go about getting some? 

WN: Oh, you would have to contact someone who’s selling it. You learn the name and… 

IR: Just call them up and say, “Give me a pint.” 

WN: Well, you would contact him in the right language I would think. 

IR: Did you ever drink any moonshine? 

WN: No. 

IR: I didn’t figure you would. She’s a tee-totaler. 

WN: No I’m not! 

IR: Oh no, she makes dandelion wine. I forgot. 

BB/NM: Good! 

IR: Now she and I have had a nip together on occasion. 

WN: Now listen, drinks are very pleasant. Drinks are ok if you know how to handle them. 

BB/NM: Well good. 

WN: And there’s no harm in it. Cocktails, mint juleps. I think mint juleps are, oh! They are good! 

BB/NM: Yes, they are good! Maybe she could get your dandelion wine recipe. 

IR: I was just going to say, “You know, I really would like to have your dandelion wine recipe!” 

BB/NM: That’s right! Because you don’t see that anywhere. 

IR: It’s good. And it’s potent stuff. 

WN: Well now you can make most any kind of wine. Anything that will ferment will go to wine. Grapes, blackberries, or anything like that. Peaches. Just like the wine they have there in the store. 

IR: I still want your recipe. 

BB/NM: You don’t have to pay for dandelions but you do all these grapes and all 

4 

these things. 

WN: But you have to get out there and pick `em though!(Laughs) 

IR: Oh that’s hard work picking dandelion greens. 

WN: Oh it isn’t too bad! 

IR: Uh-huh! Don’t give me that stuff. I had to get down and try to get dandelions out of [unintelligible]. 

BB/NM: Well you have to get the whole root. 

WN: Well all you gotta do is have a slender knife and run down in the ground, right on the green, clip it off and pull it up. 

IR: Oh see I use brute force. 

WN: (Laughs) See that root is very slender. And if you can get a long knife and run down there and clip it off. Comes right up. 

IR: That is something, I have to admit. Did you ever hear of a man named Oscar Murray[?]? 

WN: Yes. 

IR: Did you know him? 

WN: It seems to me I did when I wasquite a little girl. 

IR: It would have been a long, long time ago. I think he was a blacksmith. 

WN: Yes. And then we had another blacksmith, Bob Rawls[?], and he’s the one I remember quite well. 

BB/NM: Was he in the articles we read? 

IR: Oscar was. 

WN: Was what? 

IR: Bob Rawls wasn’t Indian, was he? 

WN: No, Bob Rawls was. 

IR: Bob Rawls was an Indian? 

WN: Yes. 

IR: Do you remember him? 

WN: Absolutely I do. 

IR: What were your impressions of Mr. Rawls? 

WN: Well in fact I liked him. And of course I was so small then I don’t know that I had enough thought then to think about a person in that way. But I liked the old man and he had a family. In fact, some of his grandchildren live over across the street there. And the one boy really reminds me of him. 

IR: His name is familiar. Somebody else has mentioned him. 

WN: Well maybe we talked about him? 

IR: It’s possible. And so you had two blacksmiths. Did you ever go to the blacksmith shop? 

WN: No, I never had any use for them. 

IR: You’re a city girl, is that it? 

WN: Well in fact the one that I remember real well is right down on Water Street there where the Rockingham National, the last building is right on that corner, the corner of Water and Federal. 

IR: Would people actually take their horses down there to have their horses shod and things like that? 

WN: That’s right. And there was a lot of that working then because they had no cars. 

IR: It was right downtown, really? 

WN: Yes, it was. Right downtown. And he had plenty of work to do, because he was the only blacksmith in town. 

IR: That was Bob Rawls, was really the only blacksmith. It’s interesting the 

5 

blacksmith [unintelligible]. 

WN: Now, well, they have horses. Now you can’t find many people to shoe those horses. 

IR: Not anymore. There is a practicing blacksmith around somewhere. I think that was in New York that I… 

WN: There’s some places that they can take these horses. I don’t know where it is, but there isn’t any place in the town anymore. Well in fact he couldn’t make a living. 

BB/NM: Well from what I’ve heard, the blacksmiths now travel from large horse farms. They don’t have a set shop or anything. 

WN: Well that would sound reasonable. And the last horse that I remember that were used for city work was the old Express. They hauled their Express with a pull-horse, and at one time, I remember well that my brother, or half-brother, shoed that old horse. He could do that work but he didn’t make it a business. In fact, he could do most anything. 

IR: It was a [unintelligible] plastic[?] shop near where I worked in New York. That’s where I had seen a blacksmith. There’s so few of them around. 

WN: Oh yes [unintelligible]. And since horses have come back, horses have really come back a little, someone’s got to put those shoes on because they’ve got to be shod. If they don’t they could split and can’t get along too well. 

IR: Let’s see. I have some names here. I’m just going to throw them out to you. Let me see if you remember any of these. Do you remember somebody by the name of York Johnson[?] who was a teacher? 

WN: Yes. A teacher? 

IR: That’s what it says. 

WN: I don’t remember if there’s a teacher, but I remember him as a waiter. He waited the door at the Kavenaugh Hotel. 

IR: So he worked over at the Kavenaugh? 

WN: Um-hum. And he may have worked possibly some other hotel. 

IR: Alright. It has him listed here. Now I don’t know if this is a Jr. or a Sr., but it has him listed here a a teacher and I wondered if you remembered he’s a teacher. Now there’s a T.J. Johnson[?] who was a waiter. Would it be T.J. that you’re thinking of? 

WN: No I’m thinking of York Johnson, That’s what they called him, York Johnson. 

IR: That’s an interesting name. I wonder how he got a name like York. 

WN: I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t say. 

IR: Interesting. 

WN: I always thought it was kind of funny too. But now he may have at one time, but when I remembered him, that was when I was a little girl coming along, he was a waiter. 

IR: Yeah this goes way back, back to the early part of the turn of the century. 

WN: Well now maybe it’s not the same person. 

IR: No, it sounds about right. You would have been a young girl at that point. Now how about the Newmans? Did you know the Newmans, George Newman and his son? Where did they teach? 

WN: Harrisonburg. Now George Newman was the principal of Effinger Street school when I first went to school. And also at one time he was a deputy sheriff. Now I don’t remember when he was a sheriff, only by him telling us. 

IR: Do you know where he was a sheriff? Was it here in the city? 

WN: Here, so far as… 

IR: Rockingham County?

6 

WN: I think so. Because he had to take an Indian to Oklahoma, and he said he was one scared man! (Laughs) 

IR: Caught himself a runaway Indian. Did that reservation [unintelligible]? 

WN: I don’t know what it was, but anyway that’s what he said. He had to take him to Oklahoma and he was really scared. And I suppose the law required to send them back. 

IR: Do you know anything about where he went to school, where he went? Did he ever talk to you much about his background? 

WN: No. 

IR: How about George Jr.? 

WN: Well now, I suppose he went to school under his father and I don’t know where else, but I feel that he had some more schooling from somewhere. 

IR: Was he born in Harrisonburg? 

WN: I couldn’t tell you that. 

IR: We got this list, Mrs. Nickens, and there’s names of people on here, I asked if you remembered any of them. 

WN: I remember George Newman, but he’s quite a bit older. And then there’s a daughter, Maggie Poindexter[?], and she’s older. 

IR: Is she still living? 

WN: Unless she has died very, very recently. Nothing’s been in the paper. 

IR: Is she in one of the homes somewhere? 

WN: Um-hum. 

IR: Do you know which one? 

WN: Grottoes. The Newman home in Grottoes, isn’t it? Isn’t that where the Newman home is? 

IR: Now that I couldn’t tell you. 

WN: I think that is where it is. Now for quite a while after she couldn’t manipulate housekeeping herself, she lived in Staunton with her daughter, here in the last two or three years, or maybe just for two years that she’s been over there in Grottoes. And she lived in Grottoes at one time. The Newman home. And she was quite a lady, and she never forgot her music. And did you ever hear of Arnold Felcher[?] speak of Miss Maggie? That’s the lady. 

IR: So she was a musician was she? Did she have a radio show or something? 

WN: I don’t know [unintelligible]. 

IR: Ok [unintelligible]. She ought to have something… 

WN: Now the last time I talked with one of her sisters, her memory was still fairly good. 

IR: How about Jackson Simms[?], would that be any relation to… 

WN: Jackson Simms? 

IR: Jackson Simms. I wonder if that would have been any relation to Lucy? Spelled S-I-M-M-S. I take it back. There’s a Jackson and there’s a John. John Simms and Jackson Simms. 

WN: She had a brother named, what was her brother’s name? I thought she had two brothers. 

IR: Eugene Rollson[?] was one, right? 

WN: Yeah. That was her half-brother. And I believe that her other brother was Johnny. Johnny Simms[?]. He lived in Washington. To my knowledge, I don’t remember him ever living here, but I do remember him coming to visit his sister, Miss Lucy. 

IR: This has a birthday of 1857. But this person seems to have lived here for a while.

7 

WN: He may have in early, what years? 

IR: Well let’s see. This is an old list. It says he was 46 back then, and his birth date was 1857, and that’s about all he says. It says he was registered to vote here in 1903. It’s possible. 

WN: And I do not know when he went to Washington to live. and you know for a long, long time, the Negroes didn’t vote in Washington. 

IR: Now you all didn’t get to vote. When did you start getting to vote? Have you always had the vote as long as you can remember? 

WN: Well when were the women first allowed to vote? 

IR: When the amendment went through. 

WN: That’s right. I registered right there and then. 

IR: And you got to vote. Because I do notice that here in Harrisonburg, there are a lot of black voters registered here in 1900’s, and sometimes they didn’t let blacks in the various areas in the South even vote. 

WN: I know that. But soon as it became a law that we could vote, I wanted to be eligible, now if I didn’t wish to vote, that was my business. But anything that I wanted to vote on, I was prepared to do it. 

IR: And so you have been voting since the amendment went through. 

WN: That’s right! 

IR: There aren’t any women on this list, I’ll tell you. This is an old one. Back when girls didn’t have a chance, right? How about a gentleman named Jesse Turner[?]? 

WN: Well he was a barber. 

IR: Where was his business, do you know? 

WN: He ahd a business on Main Street, on that block between Elizabeth and the Court Square, right back of Jonah’s Main Store[?]. 

IR: Generally, did both blacks and whites go to Mr. Turner to get their hair cut? 

WN: No, they were strictly white, as long as I ever knew anything about it. 

IR: Oh you mean he strictly cut white people’s hair? 

WN: That’s right. And the man that cut the Negro hair was Dennis Lee[?]. 

IR: Where was his… 

WN: Well the first that I remember where he had a shop was where Mason Street crosses Market. Mason Street was opened up. There’s a big old long house there, and he lived in that with several other families and he had a barber shop there. That was the first barber shop that I can remember that cut Negro hair. 

IR: Wow. So there were actually two gentleman and each one had different businesses. How about Reverend Colbert[?], the minister? 

WN: Yes. Now I couldn’t tell you much about him. Now I think he is the man that lived on this street. There was an old house on this street and either he or his parents. And that is the old house down here now that, right across from the Washington house, where Miss Lucy lived towards. It was a two story house and now they have cut it down [unintelligible]. 

IR: Do you know what church he was affiliated with? 

WN: Baptist or Methodist. 

IR: It just says here “Minister.” He’s the only minister listed here. Do you remember any other black ministers in town? 

WN: Well there used to be a Reverend Colley[?]. Now I do not remember when the Reverend Colley ministered. But at one time he was a minister of this church over on the next street, the AME church. 

[Discussion on spelling of Colley]

8 

IR: So he was with the AME? 

WN: Uh-huh. Although my brother married one of his daughters. 

IR: I just thought [unintelligible] the name. Was he over there long, do you know? 

WN: I don’t even remember when he was there, I’ve just been told… 

IR: That he was there? 

WN: Uh-huh. Because Mr. George Newman was there, and Mr. Colley was appointed there, as I understand. 

IR: Did the Newmans belong to the AME church over there at that time? 

WN: Yes. Now I’ll just tell you this. There was I don’t know what kind of misunderstanding it was, but it was a misunderstanding down at Wesley, and Mr. Newman pulled out, and that’s where this church was established over here. 

IR: Oh! Another schism in the church. 

WN: Now I didn’t see that because that was… 

IR: Ok. You think that Mr. Newman then was one of those people who was active in getting the AME church started. 

WN: I don’t know, not the AME, he may have been, I won’t say. But I do know that he is the cause of this church being over here. The AME over here. 

IR: The AME over here on Charles Street? 

WN: Yes. 

[Tape cuts off] 

End of tape 6, side 1 

1 

Transcript 3L: Interview with Mrs. Willie Nickens, 14 February 1979; Harrisonburg, Virginia 

Tape 6, side 2 

[Side 2 begins in progress] 

WN: And Colley was an educated man. I don’t know what school he went to, but he was born in slavery. He and another man on adjoining plantations. This man, the father of Reverend Colley owned one plantation. He goes across and has this child, by one of the slaves, his neighbors slaves. And when the kid was old enough to leave his mother, he took it. He educated him. 

BB/NM: That was interesting, but you don’t where [unintelligible]. 

WN: No because this was what was told to me. This is what he told his children, that the father went to the master that this child was born, and he told him what he done to one of his slaves, and he says, “I know it.” And as soon as he is able to leave his mother, I want him, and I understand that he took him, and that’s where he got educated. Now he may have slipped him in a white school and said nothing because he looked like all the rest of them. White. And he could pass very easily. And his children, after he married, some of them had blue eyes, just as white as any of you all, hair. 

BB/NM: Did they all stay with the black race? 

WN: Yes. In fact, Reverend Colley was a missionary to Africa at one time in his younger days. 

IR: I wish we had’ve talked to him. I bet he’s had a few interesting experiences. 

BB/NM: Oh you know he has! 

WN: Way back there. And years later, it’s been a long, long, time, I was at a service and they had this fella on exhibition. He was an African. And he was very friendly, and I was quite a small kid, and I asked him about Reverend Colley. Did he ever know a Reverend Colley? And he said, “Ronald Colley? Yes!” 

IR: [Unintelligible] 

WN: Well he was on the stage exhibition there, you know that little stage that [unintelligible] and of course the conversation [unintelligible]. 

IR: Did you have any idea about time, like when he was over here at the AME church, do you know when that would have been? He was there while you were small, Reverend Colley was? 

WN: I didn’t even know him back then. I only became to know him when my half-brother, Pete, married his daughter. 

IR: Oh so you did not actually know Reverend Colley when he was over here at the church? 

WN: No. 

IR: But he was still living when you were a young girl? 

WN: Yes, and he left here and went to Asheville, North Carolina, and that’s where he lies. 

IR: So was he still in the ministry when he went to Asheville, North Carolina? 

WN: I do not know. 

IR: Church must know. If he was with the AME church, I bet the AME church would know something about that. 

BB/NM: I would think so. 

IR: Because they go back a long way. 

2 

WN: Well as I understand it, that he took up ministry there when Mr. Newman quit. I don’t know why Mr. Newman quit, whether it was a disagreement or what, that’s as I understand, and I got that from his daughter. 

IR: What was her name, do you know? 

WN: Georgie[?]. 

IR: What’s her last name now? Is she still living? 

WN: Well I’m sure she’s not. [Unintelligible] girl was Winniette[?]. She had blue eyes. And then Lizzie[?]. And Violet [unintelligible]. And Violet Mae[?], she was the younger, she may be living in Richmond now. At one time there, a few years back, she was in Richmond and had married but I do not know her marriage name. 

IR: Ronald Colley. 

WN: Well that’s what she was to start with. 

IR: It would be nice if [unintelligible], anything left from there. 

WN: And there’s no one here that I know that could tell me anything about him. 

IR: There aren’t many that are older then you are Mrs. Nickens. 

WN: I know! 

IR: Did you ever stop to think about that, when you’re 84 years old you’ve got nobody much to call on anymore. 

BB/NM: [Unintelligible]. I hope I look as young and act as young as you do when I’m 84, I tell you. 

WN: And I’ve worked like a dog, too. 

IR: Well you know, she does all the yard work and everything out here. When I worked at Lucy Simms I used to see her out here cutting the grass, and doing all her gardening. 

WN: I didn’t do any gardening. 

IR: I used to see you out there cutting the hedging. 

WN: Oh, yes. I had that. I had done that on the grounds. 

IR: And she’s always been out there working and that kind of thing, and look at her. 

BB/NM: Maybe that’s what kept you young! (Laughs) 

WN: Well I’ve just always been a tomboy, that’s all. And I’m a tomboy yet. Well I came up with boys and I had to keep up with them! If I was going to play with them and they were going to play with me, I did everything they did but one thing. Swim in a muddy pond and I did not do it. (Laughs) I had to ride as fast as they did, I had to climb the trees as tall as they did. Anything they did I had to keep up with them. 

IR: That’s what always just kills me about the old stereotype of the girls, and yet to hear all these tomboys talk and riding their horses and climbing trees and all that kind of thing. 

WN: Um-hum. And it was fun. 

IR: You liked to ride, didn’t you? 

WN: Ooh, yes. [Unintelligible], and I’d always pretend it races. 

IR: That’s where I’m going to take you to the races one of these days. 

WN: When the horses get out there on that stretch, and I’ll get [unintelligible]. 

IR: She and Pat Garber[?] would make a good pair, wouldn’t they? My secretary is so crazy about horses that her husband let her… 

WN: Who is she? 

IR: I can’t remember her maiden name. Her husband is Dick Garber, she’s Pat Garber, and her folks are from Harrisonburg. They lived here for years, but I can’t remember her maiden name. But she loved to ride.

3 

WN: Well a lot of the girls around here used to ride. Of course girls don’t ride nothing like they used to. The set a little older than me, I mean. Not the Negro girls, but the white girls. Now, I don’t know whether you happen to know Mrs. Margaret Weaver or not, she was a Grattan. Do you know Lawyer Grattan, George Grattan, well his sister, Mrs. Weaver is his sister, and his mother was a Roller and she rode. In fact all of the girls out South Main. Now South Main was where the hot shots lived, and all those girls rode horses then. And over here on Mason Street, and Paul Street out, we would burn that place up with those old horses. One time, this was a horse that belonged to the Newmans though not to my father, and we used to drive cows for the Siberts who owned the land the hospital is built on. And we kids had access to these horses. We could ride them and also we could ride the old Sibert horse, Charlie. But the Newmans got two young horses, and one was named Burt, and what was the other one’s name? But they were very spirited! And I remember one day I was going out to get the cows, and it was on this old horse, and right where you enter the cottage grounds from Mason Street, well there was a gate there, that was of course there to be locked. And I didn’t reign the horse in and she kept going in front right on into that gate! (Laughs) 

BB/NM: Did that hurt? 

WN: No. 

BB/NM: Did the horse get hurt? 

WN: No. It was just a board fence, you know. 

IR: It just knock you dead. Wild things you did back in those days! 

WN: But oh! Those were the good days! Very few of the Negro girls could ride. I don’t know of any other ones, girls liked to ride. I [unintelligible] horses. My father owned a horse and the Sibert horse, and my father worked for the Newmans. They owned horses. 

IR: So you were just lucky to be that close to the farm and be able to ride. Why did you give up horse riding? 

WN: Lack of horse. And the last horse I was on, who was the lady who has this horse place down near Woodstock? she used to teach up at Madison. 

IR: I know who you mean. I’ve met her. I don’t know her name. 

WN: Well, then the man used to work for her. See she had a riding stable here in town at one time, and this fella working for her, his name is Lee Wells[?], so he used to tell me, “Miss Willie, I’m gonna bring Peggy,” they had a horse named Peggy, “Up for you to ride sometime.” And I thought he was just kidding and I would say, “Ok.” One day he brought Peggy! I hadn’t been on a horse in about 15 years. I went around the corner and, “Miss Willie!” I asked him what he wanted. “Here’s Peggy!” I didn’t want to get on Peggy. And that was in `39 up at the school, and they already had the driveway. I got on Peggy, and I rode her up the driveway, and I got about halfway up. “Miss Willie you still know how to sit on a horse!” And of course that raised me up, and I went up, galloped around the baseball sometimes and came back and boy, I didn’t sit in peace all week! Oh, my rear was sore! (Laughs) And that was the last horse I have been on. Now I have petted one since. A girl came along a couple months ago. I first saw her down on Main Street and I couldn’t get to her, and a week or so after that, she came up Johnson, and I heard. When I hear a horse’s feet coming I’m gonna look! And so I looked up and saw this girl, and I recognized the horse, and asked her would she please let me pet him. And she agreed. She stopped and we had quite a little conversation. So that was a nice one I petted, but I wouldn’t dare to get on it!

4 

IR: Well I heard you still got your seat. Well let’s see. Now here’s a gentleman named Charles Wilson[?]. Do you know Charles Wilson? It says here he was a teacher. 

WN: I don’t remember him. What year? 

IR: It says that he was 27 years old in 1903. 

WN: No. [Unintelligible]. Now I knew a Fannie Wilson[?], possibly an Aunt of a Charles Wilson that was a teacher. 

IR: And who was Fannie? 

WN: She was a Fannie Wilson from, I can’t remember the place now. 

IR: Zenda? 

WN: Yes. That’s where the Wilsons came from. 

IR: From Zenda? 

WN: Yes. 

IR: And did she teach school at Zenda? 

WN: I do not know. She possibly did but she taught at different places this Fannie Wilson did. And her brother, when he married he had a son and he named him Charles but this Charles never talks. 

IR: There were quite a few teachers and…blacks who were very involved in education and that kind of thing. I think I’ve sort of run out of names for Harrisonburg. Let’s see, there’s John Holmes[?]. These are old… 

WN: I knew John Holmes. When I knew him he was teaching, I mean in the restaurant business. 

IR: That’s what it says. “Restaurant business. John C. Holmes.” Do you know him? 

WN: Yes I know him. 

IR: What did you know about him? 

WN: Well, he was in the restaurant business, that’s all… 

IR: Do you know what restaurant he worked for? 

WN: Himself. He had a restaurant when there were no white, well one white restaurant here and he catered to whites. That was way back when they had Court Days, and the man that owned the white restaurant was, I guess his name was William Lock[?]. 

IR: L-O-C-K, Lock? 

WN: Or L-A-U-C-K or something. I won’t say, cause I was a kid then. 

IR: And so John Holmes actually owned a restaurant here in town. Do you remember where it was? 

WN: On Water Street.There’s a little building down there which I mentioned a little while ago which I think one of the bars, the old Donalds[?] had a bar in there, and I think that old building is still standing. I’ve been looking at it and I’m sure…. 

IR: He actually owned the restaurant that catered to white clientele. Mr. Holmes owned a restaurant, on Water Street. 

WN: Yes, he did. 

IR: Oh, alright. Do you remember the name of it? 

WN: No, don’t believe I remember that name. 

IR: Just call it the restaurant. 

WN: Unless it was Holmes’ Restaurant[?], but after remembered by name though[?]. 

IR: Ok, and you can’t think of anything that’s attached to that. Oh boy, that’s something… 

WN: And then he kept lodgers, too. 

IR: It almost sounds like he had a little hotel almost going, if he had lodgers and a restaurant and everything.

5 

WN: Uh-huh. Well that’s what he did. 

IR: How about Joseph Jackson[?]? 

WN: Well now he was a little old man that usually met the trains. We had two trains coming here then, the station was over on West Market, right across from Whetzel’s. And he would usually have snacks in a basket. But years later I understand that he had liquor under the packages. Of course they would make their transactions there and everybody didn’t buy a sandwich! 

IR: Oh so he was selling a nip on the side! 

WN: I heard later years afterwards that that’s what was going on, but I do know that he did take a basket of sandwiches into every train he’d bring a basket of sandwiches. 

IR: So he really had himself a little snack food business going on into [unintelligible]. 

WN: Uh-huh. And he owned property on the corner of North Main, the west corner, and Rock Street, where there was a little… 

IR: It says here “Restaurant business” is what he was doing, so he was really a business man. He would have probably have been an equivalent of our neighborhood bookie! (Laughs) 

WN: But to my knowledge he never got in any trouble, he never [unintelligible]. Of course he did it very quietly. 

IR: How about F.A. Gasklin[?]? 

WN: Well he was a barber. [Unintelligible] but we called him Flint[?]. Everybody called him that. And he is the man that used to help the policemen at busy times. If they had something big going on, he would fill in. 

IR: Do you remember where his business was? 

WN: He had a barber shop right on the corner where Womble’s[?] moved out. In that old building. 

IR: Did he cater to white… 

WN: White. 

IR: White clientele. 

BB/NM: Remember anything more about him? 

WN: No. 

[Interview is interrupted by phone call] 

WN: [Unintelligible] 

BB/NM: Oh yes. I think so. 

WN: I wanted a nice little house. I never got it. Not what I wanted. 

IR: I still say you got yourself a snug little place right here. 

BB/NM: I think you do too. It’s warm and comfortable. 

WN: But it’s an awful oldhouse. I wanted a nice little brick house. 

IR: She didn’t want to be like us and live in a big old nasty barn house! 

WN: You live in a good house besides this. 

IR: No I live in a drafty old barn, are you kidding. You’ve never seen my house! 

WN: Yes I have! I know when it was built! 

IR: When was it built? 

WN: I can’t tell you the year, but there were very few houses on Franklin Street when that was built. 

IR: It was one of the first ones I guess. 

WN: I know it was, and I know the man who built it. 

IR: What was his name? 

WN: Tom Lokey[?]. And there’s a Frank Lokey[?] living up on Franklin Street. Do you happen to know him?

6 

IR: No. 

WN: Do you know of him? 

IR: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him. 

WN: Well it was his father. 

IR: Oh so the man who was the builder, his son still lives on Franklin Street? 

WN: Yes, his son is on Franklin Street, talked to him not long ago. 

[The conversation about Mrs. Ramsey’s street continues for some time] 

IR: Before I forget it now, you had told me about your relatives going hunting, and you said they liked to hunt. Would you tell me something about, who was it that went hunting you told me? Was it your father? Your brothers? 

WN: No, my brothers used to hunt, but… 

IR: Where did they hunt? 

WN: Oh, around here in Rockingham County. And my one brother, I bet you he could tell you every lying fence in Rockingham County. Oh, he was a great guy to hunt. And his father was a hunter, and his father. And it was his father that I told you about was on the deer blind, and saw this snake. It scared the old man so he threw his gun away and ran. 

IR: Do you think they really saw that big snake? 

WN: I do not know. I couldn’t say. 

IR: What was it you told me, it was the story about the black snake? You told me if the black snake, what would happen if the black snake got on them? 

WN: No I didn’t know that. 

IR: I wish you did. 

BB/NM: Why did the snake scare him so? Was it big? 

WN: Yes. It seemed to have been huge. Now you know back in those days, up in Bath County they hunted deer long before it came to Rockingham County, and these old men were huntsmen, and they would build blinds, is what they call it. Along the path where the deer would go to water. And some of them would hide behind there and you had to be very, very still, or else the deer would smell you and turn back. So he was on this blind and he could hear a little noise. First he thought one was coming [unintelligible], and finally it sounded like it was coming from behind him, and he couldn’t understand that. So, he looked, and mosquitos or bugs were eating him up, and he saw, on top of the brush, it seems to have been the underbrush was very dense, and he saw this great big snake and he said it had gold spots on it. At least it looked like gold. The sun was shining on it. And he said its tongue looked like his hand, and it scared the old man so that he threw his gun down and ran. Now that’s the deal that he told my mother, and she’s the one that told me about it. And in three days, he and a friend, went back and they found his gun, but they could not find any trace of that snake. 

IR: Did you tell me that if a black snake got on you it would squeeze you? 

WN: Well I’ve heard it before. 

IR: Are you familiar with any stories about snakes, that you can remember? 

WN: No. Only this, there’s an old lady that used to live here, she was a Mrs. VanPelt[?], years and years ago. And when she was young, two snakes went through the highway, which was then called the Valley Turnpike, and there were two of them, and it seemed like they had a crown on their head, and that shone like gold. And they would travel all day long, and evidently someone watched them at night, they’d crawl off on the side, and for miles and miles, there were reports about these two snakes. 

IR: I wonder, does anybody know where they seemed to be traveling?

7 

WN: No, but in the end, what happened to them, they do not know. 

IR: Did you hear that snakes travel by two? Nancy tells me that snakes always travel by two. 

WN: Well, I imagine it’s a male and a female. Don’t you think so? 

NM: I don’t know, cause we killed one in our yard and my mother kept waiting for the other one to come because she said there’s always two. 

WN: Uh-huh. Where do you live? 

NM: In Northern Virginia. 

WN: Oh, in Northern Virginia. Do you still have snakes around? 

NM: No. We moved into a new house and it was wooded behind our house, and there was a few snakes, but that’s all. 

WN: Well, there used to be snakes around here, but I haven’t heard of any around in years and years. I think insecticides and things like that have killed them out. 

IR: What would you all do for a snake bite, when you were little, did you hear? 

[The sound quality of the tape deteriorates at this point, making it difficult to understand much of the dialogue] 

WN: Well I never heard anyone to have been bitten or anyone in the family. But as I understand, as I learned in school, [unintelligible] and suck out the poison. You don’t have any other way to get it out, so you suck out the blood and spit it out. 

IR: My grandmother told me that you cut the place and then you take a chicken and cut it in half and slap that hot chicken [unintelligible]. 

WN: Well they say that snakes are cold blooded. That could be. 

IR: Being on the farm, chickens are always available [unintelligible]. 

WN: Well I raised lots of chickens here. [Unintelligible]. Fresh eggs…So a friend of mind from Linville [unintelligible]. 

IR: What do remember about Mr. Wayland? 

WN: Well in my book, he’s a quitter and he didn’t look like a professional man, but you can’t always go by looks. 

[The last few seconds of the tape are unintelligible] 

End tape 6, side 2

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