Black children excluded from stores
Beavers recalls waiting outside stores as his mother did her shopping, sitting like a dog on the sidewalk. Shop owners' discomfort with black children is one example of what Beavers calls a "crazy" way of life.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Leroy Beavers, August 8, 2002. Interview R-0170. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- LEROY BEAVERS, JR.:
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Well, my mother would take me up to Broughton when she would go pay her
bills.
- KIERAN TAYLOR:
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Pay the light bill or something.
- LEROY BEAVERS, JR.:
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Yeah, that was it, telephone bill, gas bill. That's the only
time. Now we would go up there, I'm trying to think at that
age, I'm talking about the age of six and ten. Because after
ten years old we started going up there, but we couldn't go
into too many places. We had to stand outside while Mother go inside.
They didn't like too many black kids in the store. So my
mother had brought a child down there. Somebody, you had to curb your
child, take care of your business. We had to sit down obedient like that
a dog or something, an animal on the side to wait for
mom to come out. We'd better not move either. Mom either,
like purchase shoes from the shoe store. Mama had to already know my
size, and she'd go in there, and she'd come back
out and try them on outside, things like that.
- KIERAN TAYLOR:
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Unbelievable.
- LEROY BEAVERS, JR.:
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Yeah, well. That was the way of life then. Just sitting and think about
it, it would run you crazy. You've got to just put that on
the backburner and say that's the way it was. You have to
think like this here. You know about caveman days. You know caveman
started on the god damned [unclear] . We
couldn't live like that now today. That's the way
it was. That had to start out, like you think about when they
didn't have any air conditioning. Can you imagine no air
conditioning in the house? I can't. No. No.