Delta Jewels

by Alysia Burton Steele

  When we went to Sunday school, we just read the Scripture and went home. But a lady came here [to our church] from Chicago and she taught a lesson one morning in Sunday school. I said there’s more to it than that, but I still wasn’t grabbin’ it. So the more I went and the more I was lookin’ at it, then I wanted to know more. I wanted to go deeper, so I did. My kids was tickled, they was tickled, when I went to college. My first day at school, I said, “Oh, this is great,” but I was so far behind, I said, “Oh, I might need to get out of here.” But it wasn’t bad. I said, “Well, my best thing to do was to just listen and hush.” And I started listenin’ and they started making me participate and I’m glad I did. So it just got better and better. Doing the bachelor’s wasn’t as bad as the master’s. I have my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate in theology. We had Old Testament and New Testament.

  I’m not a pastor, you know that’s a calling—God has to call you to that. As long as I know how to help my children get saved, because it’s very important. And if He calls me into it, I’m willing, but I have to wait on Him.

  Going to college was my greatest accomplishment. At graduation, I wasn’t nervous. I said, “Thank you, Lord.” I said, “I hope my kids don’t holler like they do at a ball game,” but you know they did. My brother, I knew his voice, I knew his voice. I felt great, not too important, but just the idea to know what God wants us to do. I didn’t feel too important, like all I was thinking about was a piece of paper. I was just glad to be able to know, like I say, what God want us to do. It’s more than just a piece of paper. [On that day], I remember what my brother Leslie said; he said, “I knew you was a preacher all the time.” And I say, “I’m not a preacher, but I know what a preacher does.”

  After my interview with Mrs. Bettie Clark, she asks me if I’ve heard of Mrs. Dillard. When I say no, she says, “You need to include her in your book. She’s over 100 years old and a sweet woman.” I thought, I don’t want to make another three-and-a-half-hour drive for one more woman, but almost reading my mind, Mrs. Clark asks, “Do you have time to stop by her house?” I immediately say yes, she calls Mrs. Dillard, tells her family about my book, and is told to bring me by—Mrs. Dillard has agreed to be interviewed!

  MRS. LEOLA B. DILLARD, 103

  YAZOO CITY

  BORN FEBRUARY 1912

  MARRIED 59 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  8 CHILDREN

  20 GRANDCHILDREN

  30 GREAT-GRANDS

  23 GREAT-GREAT-GRANDS

  Mrs. Bettie Clark drives and I follow in my car to a big, two-story home on a main drag in Yazoo City. Mrs. Dillard, who is in a chair, and two daughters greet us. I feel rewarded: I get a third Jewel, a bonus centenarian.

  Mrs. Dillard’s daughter Shirley tells me that Mrs. Dillard won $10,000 in 2009 for USA Weekend Make a Difference Day. I would learn she got kicked off a plantation, had three daughters in college at the same time—Mildred, Bessie, and Deloris—and paid their tuition because she didn’t know about scholarships. She held three jobs at one time—one in an employment office, another at First Baptist Church—all while she taught school. I’m often reminded of her simple words: “I think you just have to work to get what you want,” and “I like to see young people get up and do something.” They motivated me to continue this challenging book project.

  It was pretty rough [in the 1920s] for black folks. We lived on a white man’s place. When the voting started, ooh, I went to vote and this white man said, “Leola, if you know what’s good for ya, you’ll take your name off the voting list.” I went on ’cause I didn’t want nothing happen to my children. I took my name off. I went back home.

  [When she lived on the plantation,] I told my husband, “Now, you tell that white man, you tell ’em when school starts, my children go to school.” I don’t guess he told him. So when school started, I told my children, “Let’s go clean up and get ready for school.” So the white man wants to know what’s goin’ on, children supposed to be in the field. I say, “Mister, I told my husband to tell you when school starts, my children go to school.” He said, “I look for the children to work.” I say, “They gonna work evenings and any other time, but they goin’ to school.” Look, I was a cotton-picking person to the fields, but I always wanted some way to school my children. That’s my dream. How in the world would I school my children? He said, “Well, y’all have to move ’cause you ruinin’ my other people.” I said, “You want us to move now or until the crop in?” He said, “You can stay until the crop in.”

  I had to move immediately when the crop was over. I had come over here [in town] and bought a little two-room building anyway. It pleased me to have done it, so we moved. You see, I knew my children were going to school. We moved. We had a cow, a horse—he took all of that from us.

  I started school myself and I finished school with one of my daughters, Mildred. We graduated the same time from different schools. I went to Jackson State. [Mrs. Dillard majored in education and finished in 1960 when she was 48 years old. Daughter Mildred graduated from Mississippi Valley State.]

  I never wanted to leave Mississippi. I never yet want to leave Mississippi. I love it here. I just love it here, love it in Yazoo City. They say it’s not a good place to raise your children, but look like if you do the right thing, both you and your children, and you take time with ’em, and give ’em love and things they should have, you can bring your children up. Some peoples have such terrible children, they don’t think to give ’em love. Let them know, “I love you and let’s sit here and turn the TV off. Get your lesson and let’s read this book. Let’s go to the library together.” Read books, read newspapers, read anything. Just read. Try to advance yourself, children, ’cause there are a lot of children in the world doing good. And there’s so many darn bad. There’s a lot of bad children, bad children.

  And if we would try to improve ourselves, parents, take time to sit down—talk to your children, and try to tell ’em what’s in life. ’Cause if you experience this stuff, you can talk to your children and tell ’em right. I used to get out there and jump rope and I play right there down on the floor wit’ my children.

  MRS. ALMA B. TUCKER, 81

  WEBB

  BORN FEBRUARY 1934

  MARRIED 48 YEARS WHEN WIDOWED

  5 CHILDREN

  7 GRANDS

  11 GREAT-GRANDS

  I love Mrs. Tucker’s attitude. She tells me she was a cook for a white family for more than 60 years. I blink. “Sixty years?” She nods her head. She barely looks 60, she is so youthful. With a light complexion and lots of freckles around her nose and on her cheeks, nothing even hints at her 81 years.

  White folk ain’t never been a problem with me. The white lady I worked for as a maid. It’s the way you go to start workin for ’em. You go in there and she say if she want you to work for her and what she gon’ pay and how many hours she want you to do that. I had to let her know I was grown when I went there.

  They were nice to me and nice to my kids. They never mistreated none of my kids ’cause they know if they mistreat my kids, they had a problem with me. When I worked there, I didn’t have no certain door to go to and no certain bathroom I had to use. A lot of people working there, 20 and 40 years, and got a certain bathroom to go to, certain glass to drink out of. A lady up there in Sumner, I went and told the girl I want a glass a water. She said, “Wait, let me find you a cup.” I said, “What you gonna do with a cup with all these glasses here?” She said, “Naw, Ms. So-and-So don’t like us to drink out the glass,” and I said, “Oh no, then I don’t want no water then. I’m not drinkin’ out that cup.” So the lady must have heard us talkin’ ’cause she come in there and said, “Look up there in the cabinet and get yourself a glass.” And she in there workin’ for her and I’m not workin’ for her, so I reach in there and grabbed a glass, rinsed it out, and got me some water. It’s the way you start with ’em. So the boy that used to work for them, James, used to do a lot of plumbing, come in and he said, “Ms. Tucker?�
�� I said, “What?” He said, “Can I have some water?” I said, “Yeah, you can have some water, get you a glass.” He said, “Which one of these glasses do the black folk drink out of?” I said, “We ain’t have no integrated glasses here.” She was standing there. And he looked at me funny. He bust out laughin’. James know I’mma have a fit with integrated glasses. I washed them all. Why am I gonna have a certain glass to drink out of? It’s just the way you start with them. Me and her got along just good.

  Mrs. Tucker, whom everyone calls Puddin, is a no-nonsense woman. She says what she means. I envision her not taking any junk from anyone. There’s just a way about her. She said the white woman she worked for now lives in California and they still talk quite frequently on the phone. “We never had a run-in as long as I’d been there,” she says, but recalls one day when the woman said, “ ‘I want you to take care of this boy because his mother gotta go to the doctor.’ I said, ‘Naw, I’m not gonna. You see I’m gonna get my hair did.’ She said, ‘You can call that woman and tell her you’ll come tomorrow.’ And I put my hands on my hip and said, ‘And she can call that doctor and tell them to change that appointment!’ ” She left and got her hair done. The next morning the white woman hugged her.

  After being with her for only 30 minutes, I can envision this exchange like a scene in a movie. As we laugh, she says one of the men who worked there heard about this exchange and told her she wasn’t going to have a job if she continued talking to the woman like that. “And I told him, ‘I wasn’t looking for no job when she called me and asked me to come over and help.’ I ain’t never had no problem with white folks.”

  Of the more than 50 Jewels, my husband wants to meet Mrs. Tucker. “Really?” Mary asks when I call to tell her this. I explain that I played Mrs. Tucker’s audio for my college students and everyone loved her mom’s story. “You know, we almost didn’t agree to this book,” she says. “Mama has a sixth-grade education. She’s not college-educated like some of the other women in the book. We weren’t sure what you were going to do with her words.”

  This hurts me a little. “Mary, your mom’s story is very powerful. She’s one of the most powerful speakers I’ve heard. I love what she says. I would never try to embarrass your mom. A lack of formal education doesn’t mean your mom doesn’t have something powerful to add.” I read her what I selected from her mom’s transcript and she approves.

  I tell her that my husband has listened to her story and he loves Mrs. Tucker’s response when I asked her what she wanted her legacy to be.

  I pray that I done paid off my house and I want them to keep it in the family. If they don’t never come and stay, they have a place to come. And they don’t rent it out ’cause they know it’s gone, ’cause someone gonna tear it up. I own just the house and behind it. It’s somethin’ I worked for and I want it to stay in the family. I tell them all, nobody never give you nothing. You gotta work for what you get. And when you get it, you need to hold on to it, especially when you done paid for it. ’Cause most black people, they work hard and they get the land. Then a time come and the white man offer them a couple dollars and it’s gone. Then they gonna go rent somethin’ from the white man when their momma and daddy done worked all their life payin’ for somethin’. They gonna give it to the white man and then turn around and pay the white man rent for stayin’ in the grandmomma house. Uh-uh. My daddy never did wanna chop cotton for no white man. He always sharecropped, you know had that land, rent it from him and worked it, and when he got old, he said he wouldn’t gonna farm no cotton land, pick no cotton. He just gave it up, retired.

  MS. BESSIE M. THOMPSON, 96

  CHARLESTON

  BORN JULY 1918

  SINGLE

  6 CHILDREN

  16 GRANDCHILDREN, 5 STEP-GRANDCHILDREN

  21 GREAT-GRANDS

  I meet Rev. Derrick Williams in his office at the New Town Missionary Baptist Church in Charleston to show him my portfolio. He’s a young pastor, enthusiastic to help, and he’s already talked to Ms. Thompson and her daughter Pat, so they are expecting me. I follow him in my car less than two miles to Ms. Thompson’s house.

  The TV is on. Ms. Thompson is sitting in her chair. She has beautiful big eyes. I learn she’s hard of hearing, so I ask Pat to tell me what life was like for Ms. Thompson, although I prefer to hear the story from the mothers. Pat is eager to talk: “We call her Madea.” She says her mom was a good mother and stressed education to all six of her children. Pat went to college but was put on academic probation her sophomore year. Things weren’t working out because she was having a hard time adjusting to college life. “I decided I was gonna quit college, that I don’t have to be here.” She came home and thought she was going to relax.

  Rev. Williams starts to laugh when he hears that. “I know Mother Thompson doesn’t play!” He made me eager to hear the story.

  Pat agreed, but said:

  Mom didn’t get upset. She didn’t fuss. About a week at home she got her cousin and she said, “C’mon, Pat, get dressed.” I said, “Where are we goin’?” Mom said, “You can’t just sit here, you have to work.” My cousin took me to a chicken factory in a nearby county. I started cryin’ immediately. You know people are in chicken waste up to their knees in boots. And I go, “Please don’t make me work here.” She said, “Without a college education this is the best you’re ever gonna have.” I came back home and she made me fill out that application. The school principal lived down the street. I asked him, “I’m out of school this semester, will you please let me sub and work at the school?” So he said yeah. And he called me every day to sub. That’s the way I got out of the chicken factory. I didn’t wait ’til the fall. That summer I went back to summer school and I was on the dean’s list the following semester. I still finished with my class in four years. That really had an impact on me when she took me to that chicken factory. I don’t want the people that work at the factory to feel that they have less. It was just a lesson that she taught me and now I work in education.

  “Ms. Pat, I want to put this story in the book. Is that okay?” I ask. She says yes, but with hesitation.

  “Listen, I’m not saying working in a factory is a bad life. It’s honest work, but it just wasn’t for me.” She worries that telling me this story will upset people. She worries she will come off as arrogant because she didn’t want to work in the factory.

  “Ms. Pat, I understand, but it’s an important story about life choices and how your mom wanted more for you.”

  She nods her head.

  “How far did Ms. Thompson go in school?” I ask Pat.

  “She quit school in tenth grade. She helped the family by picking cotton. Her last child was graduating from school in 1978, so she decided to get her high school diploma, too. She went back and she got her GED. She and my brother both finished in 1978.”

  I look over at Ms. Thompson, who is looking at me. “Ms. Thompson, you went back to get your high school diploma?”

  She hears me and nods her head yes. “I had all the children in school. They could think for themselves. I said to myself, ‘Bessie, you better try to learn something.’ It was better when I went back because I was older, and if I wanted to know, I had to study and that’s what I did.”

  Pat continues, with pride, to help tell her mom’s story: “That was one of her greatest accomplishments. She was always good in math. When she was getting her GED, her teacher would have her help the other students.”

  Rev. Williams, sitting on the sofa next to me, is nodding his head and I remember my grandmother saying, “They can’t take an education away from you.” I never knew who “they” was, but it dawns on me that Gram meant Whites. Blacks didn’t have choices. Ms. Thompson quit school because she did what she had to do to help her parents earn money to keep the family from going hungry. Other Jewels tell me that their mothers would tell them they couldn’t go to school because they had to work. The family needed them. Ms. Thompson had to help her family, but education was so importan
t to her that many years later she went back to school.

  She reminds me of my mom. Mom told me that when she was pregnant with me her senior year, the high school rules were she couldn’t attend during the day. Even though she was married, the stigma of being a pregnant teen remained. She had to go to night school. Mom worked in a factory most of my life. When she was in her forties, she decided to follow her dream and become a nurse. She worked full-time and went to nursing school nights—full-time. She maintained a 4.0 grade point average the entire time she was in school!

  Ms. Pat snaps me back to reality: “She used to tell people, ‘Use your head for more than a hat rack, that’s why I send you to school. Learn to read and understand things for yourself.’ ”

  Pat adds, “When she told us, ‘You go to school and act like you got some sense. If you embarrass me, I’m gonna embarrass you,’ she meant that. If she had to come to that school, we knew we were in trouble.”

  GRAM WASN’T SURE I LEARNED ANYTHING

  “Lisa, get an education. No one can take that from you,” Gram used to say. My grandmother always instilled the importance of education in me. I could almost hear that refrain as I reflected on the cotton fields while I drove, having just heard that Ms. Thompson quit school in the tenth grade to pick cotton because her family needed her help. She regretted not finishing, so much so that she went back to earn her GED when her youngest child was a senior in high school. They graduated from high school together. I respect what she’s done in her life. I respect what having an education meant to her.