Doris McClure BMB Chp 15 === [00:00:00] Jean Greene: to our program today Mrs. Doris McClure. Mrs. McClure has been a stalwart, backbone pillar of the Utica campus of Hinds Community College. She worked for [00:00:18] Doris McClure: 23 [00:00:22] Jean Greene: and a half years. as the administrative assistant for Title III but ended that position as [00:00:30] Doris McClure: Budget Analyst and Office Manager. [00:00:33] Jean Greene: Budget Analyst and Office Manager. They could just say the woman that runs Title III is what they could say. But, I'm so pleased that she is willing to join us today to discuss Chapter 15. And I'm gonna let her bring this in her own way, as they say. So, Mrs. McClure, tell me about Chapter 15. [00:00:56] Doris McClure: Okay, Chapter 15 starts out with [00:01:00] Mr. Holtzclaw. said he did not understand why the people was afraid of white cap. His experience had been very great with the white people, but white cap was they was very active. He knew they was active over in Lincoln County. And the Black people was afraid because they was a malicious group. We would say they did lynch people even though it wasn't too active in this era. So he figured that people should not have been afraid because they was not that dangerous. But however he goes on to talk about the governor at that time. He took action to make sure that the people were safe in this area, really to run them out. Huh. But and that's as much as he knew on that part. and during that time right after that, Dr. Washington, he visit Jackson, Mississippi. And there was a newspaper, that was written a [00:02:00] paper that was written trying to encourage all the white people not to attend the visit. So he said Dr. Washington was coming and most of the leaders that was encouraging the white people not to attend, but so many attended until after Dr. Washington left the Coliseum , it fell in and some people got injured there. And so it turned out to be a real good experience. in that building. So a few people got injured. Bishop Charles Galloway was injured, but for the most part, everybody was okay. And from there Mr. Holtzclaw went on and talked about the time in the forming of the, in the boll weevil that came here across this part of the country where they was forming. Cotton, boll weevil ate a lot of cotton and people couldn't hardly make their bales for the year. [00:02:56] Jean Greene: Right. [00:02:56] Doris McClure: But there was a newspaper and [00:03:00] he was always trying to people instructions and help them to learn how to live within this era and make a living. Mm-Hmm, . So he encouraged them. Don't just pull up and leave. It has been proven by experience in Washington that if you change the way that you farm, then you could make a crop and make a living. [00:03:23] Jean Greene: Right. [00:03:23] Doris McClure: So he went on to write this letter that was printed in the Utica News and then proceeded to tell the people how to cultivate the land. Start it a few weeks earlier, two or three weeks early, put some time into the land. Plant early and then take the time and clean around your land, burn the bushes and the hedges, and then dig up the stump where boll weevils would and strive in, and that will help you have a better crop. Work your field, be able to live at home, and cut down [00:04:00] those hedges and you'll be able to have better harvest. And he also went on don't just depend on the cotton, because with the boll he knew that you would not get 100 percent of the cotton. [00:04:13] Jean Greene: That's right. [00:04:14] Doris McClure: So with the boll weevil, go on and plant you some greens, some vegetables, some potatoes Don't just plant enough for you, plant enough to sell to the other people. [00:04:26] Jean Greene: Right. [00:04:27] Doris McClure: That will help you with your income. Raise you some hogs and some chickens to help with your family to also help don't just depend on it He said and then he went on to let them know then you would be able to live at home. You don't have to pick up and leave every time somebody else come and say that Over here we are having a good crop because Eventually the boll weevil is going to go out From county to county to county and it's going to make it over there as well. So don't just depend on [00:05:00] being able to go to the merchant because the merchant already know that the cotton is not going to be that great. cut back on if you farm some things that you can have at home, potatoes, vegetables and all that. Then when you go to the merchant, only ask for what you need. Cut back on two or three pair of shoes for that year. Don't buy the big hats. The Sunday, we call it the Sunday hats in the book. fewer clothes and stuff like that. Just buy what you need and you'll be able to survive. Mm hmm. So, that, that was the beginning of the book he said, there was a couple of things in here that he said, one thing we must all remember in connection with the year is that, we cannot hope to go to the merchants and buy on credit as we have been doing. we should buy those things and those things only. that we need. So that was his exact word to that. He said, I believe you would have nothing to regret at the end of a harvest year. [00:06:00] And after that, he went on to talk about in this book that he will often speak at conferences. The conference that he spoke at this one conference was Here at the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute. And it was also printed in one of the newspapers. And at this conference here, he was real disturbed about the number of Negroes, is what they called them. Negroes that was on the chain gang. that was going to prison. [00:06:32] Jean Greene: Oh, right. Right. [00:06:33] Doris McClure: That was going to prison and having a hard time and thought that they had to do crimes and maybe stealing and all these kind of things. So he was very displeased with this and he wanted to know what could be done to help them. But he let them know he said to complain of obstacles is one thing and to surmount them is another. So he said our salvation here in [00:07:00] the south is very largely a matter of Christian intelligence industry and morality. We must possess these or we must ultimately fail. [00:07:10] Jean Greene: Right. [00:07:11] Doris McClure: So some things we have got to try to do for ourself because everything is not hindering us. [00:07:17] Jean Greene: That's right. [00:07:18] Doris McClure: Nothing has yet a reason to prevent us from being truthful, honest, upright, energetic, and moral men. So if we have hope and believe Holtzclaw feel like if we put our time in, that we could accomplish what we needed. [00:07:37] Jean Greene: You know, when you mentioned that quote, that brought back to my mind when he said to complain of obstacles is one thing, and to surmount them is another. [00:07:49] Jean Greene: This chapter Ms. McClure seems to really come home with what we going through today. [00:07:56] Doris McClure: Right. [00:07:58] Jean Greene: You know, we complain of the [00:08:00] things that a stumbling blocks, right? We don't try to get over 'em or around them. We just kind of sitting and I'm talking. We as in, in people, Black people, and Holtzclaw was saying, well, you know, come up with a. solution, work your way around it, and to use, if you look at the example of that boll weevil came up from Mexico and swept all over the South, and folks instead of trying to stick it out and learn what to do, they just ran away from it, and it followed them on wherever they went. So it's like if you think about the problems that we have and we try to run away from, If you don't change what you're doing, they're gonna follow you on. Think if we could for a minute about how what he's saying, can work for us today. What did he say for the folks? Don't buy what you don't need. [00:08:56] Doris McClure: Don't buy what you don't need. Exactly. [00:08:59] Jean Greene: [00:09:00] So that's something that we need to kind of put back into practice. You know, some of us, I'm not going to call any names that may be in this room who like to buy purses. And may buy more than she needs. So, instead of buying six purses, I have to be happy with the one purse I've got. [00:09:21] Doris McClure: It's like me, I like shoes. And I'm headed to surgery, and I still have some shoes sitting in my closet. I won't call the name of the company, but it's in my box. So there's so many things we can do without, I think. And we have to put the effort to have the things that we need. Because just thinking about him, And reading this, not just this chapter, but this book, every time he had an obstacle to come in front of him, he fell, he had to go back home, he did not have clothes. He [00:10:00] never gave up. Right. He never gave up. He kept going. And so that's why he can be so encouraging, I think, to the people of this time to not give up. At one point in this chapter, he talked about Sometimes there was hundreds of wagons of people just leaving their farm and leaving that, that era. which was senseless to him because, as you just said, the boll weevil eventually is going to make it on over to the next county, the next state, going all over the South. And a lot of these people was, they had, some of them, they had a, wagon. They probably had a little homestead, you know. And so they was leaving without any compensation. [00:10:46] Jean Greene: Right. That's right. [00:10:47] Doris McClure: They were just leaving and moving on. And when he was telling them, stay the course. It has been proven in the agriculture department in Washington. It had been proven that if you prep the [00:11:00] land before, clean it off, it says the boll weevil was just making us do what we should have been doing all the time. [00:11:07] Jean Greene: Right, right. He did say that. [00:11:09] Doris McClure: All the time. And that's, those was his word. Clean off those ends of those rows. I have to say I came from a farming family. So I understood when he talked about this. I know what a boll weevil looks like. I've seen it in cotton. Although I never picked about 20 pounds, but, but still we was farmers. And so there's a lot of preparation. You got to get up and not be lazy about it, get up and do, you know, he said somewhere on back in earlier chapter he talked about some of the farmers that we're not doing as well. It's because they would put the seed on the hard ground, then they would take it, bust a row, and just let that dirt cover them. So the seed were having a hard time, but you encourage them to get good seeds at that. Don't [00:12:00] just get seeds. But to get some good one and plant it and cultivate it and clean it up. These are things we should be doing all the time, just do it a little earlier, you know. [00:12:10] Jean Greene: To kind of get ahead of the, the boll weevil. You know, when George Washington Carver came to help him at the Farmers Conferences, what he said in this chapter, it's kind of what they were telling the farmers at those conferences, you know. Try to prepare your land. And what did he say about raising other crops, Ms. McClure? [00:12:33] Doris McClure: He said to raise some corn. Don't just raise enough for you. Raise enough to sell to other people. Plant you some vegetables, potatoes. Raise you some hogs. Right. And some chickens. Right. So, you know, that means you got eggs, you got meat. Right. Right. That's right. And if you had jobs, so somebody may want to buy some of them. [00:12:56] Jean Greene: That's right. So you're providing for your family and not [00:13:00] just waiting on the cotton to make and what little money you could make from that to try to buy something from the, what do you call it, the merchant? [00:13:08] Doris McClure: Merchants. [00:13:08] Jean Greene: Because you're already owe him. [00:13:10] Doris McClure: And you were not going to be able to get what you got last year because they knew that your crop wasn't going to do as well. A lot of times people, they put stuff on their tab that they pay once they finish all their bales. But if you're only going to get, at this time, once after about five years then, he talked about people were getting Two thirds of their crops back because they had started practicing what they had learned what they had been taught they put it in practice [00:13:38] Jean Greene: Right. I get so much inspiration from this book Thinking about what we are doing now the things we are going through now not just in our Farming but we're sitting here in Utica in a food desert you know, we were trained to, rely on the grocery store to provide us with our vegetables and our meats [00:14:00] and whatever. Now, there was some folks still, you know, raising their own hogs and cows and chickens and stuff, but for the most part folks would, you know, get up and run up to the store to get their potatoes and run up to the store to get their tomatoes and whatever. And then when that left, Here we are in the same shape as these folks Holtzclaw was talking about. So trying to us to put a tomato plant out there, put a pepper plant or okra plant, or throw out some greens. It's, it's just, it's just common sense, but It's hard To get us out of consumer mode and into producer mode and he was trying to get them to produce. [00:14:42] Doris McClure: To produce and produce well. [00:14:44] Jean Greene: Right. Produce well. don't be selfish and just do it for me and my kids. But have enough that you can share, quote, sell. To somebody else who might not be as fortunate to have the land or the space [00:15:00] to do that. When y'all had a farm, did y'all have a garden too? Yes. Was it a big garden? What'd y'all grow out there? [00:15:07] Doris McClure: We would have collard green, okras, tomatoes and actually, when it came to the peas and butter beans, they was over in, what we call the field. So you, because you need a lot of them because you're putting up for the winter. Right. So then we would have sweet potatoes. And, you know, you got those, gather those sweet potatoes up and you put them in what they call the pump house. And they last all winter. You put hay in over them. Okay. So you go outside and you get them. They will be just as fresh as you got them out the field. Huh. They, you know, you had to open them up when you first put them in and let them, what they call, dry out. Mm hmm. And they will keep. They will keep. And so we would have watermelons. We have watermelons that we just would sell in the community. My stepfather let us just sell them. Just for us to [00:16:00] have children, have money in their pocket. Not so much market all the time. But we also did market of tomatoes, and cotton. back in the day. [00:16:11] Jean Greene: I remember my, my parents didn't have, well, yes they did. They had a little tincy garden. But my grandparents Had a big garden, and they had We were talking peanuts earlier. They had a peanut patch way back at the end of where the cotton was growing. They had the cotton part, then they had a corn field where they grew corn. And then way back, too far for me to want to walk, way back at the end was the peanut patch. And I remember getting those peanuts out of the ground and then putting them up so they dry. Lay them out to dry. what I was going to talk about was the garden. Grandmama had this huge garden and I hated working in the garden because she wanted me to help her weed. And you had to [00:17:00] weed by hand. And I was you know, there's worms up under there. And some of them sting. You know the big old stinging worm? Oh Lord, that was, it was, I dreaded working in that garden. I would rather she whup me than have me go out there in the garden. And the other, the other thing was her chickens. I didn't know chickens could fly. I had no idea. She went somewhere and told me to go down, I was grown, told me to go down there and feed her chickens while she was gone. So I went in the front door when I stepped out the back at the chicken feed. I didn't know the things were sitting in the tree, Ms. McClure. I stepped out in the yard, and they knew I had the feed. This cedar tree erupted with all these chickens that came flying towards me. I threw that stuff up in the air and kept on, took off running. Oh, I had no idea, but she had, I don't know how many chickens. And so she had fresh eggs and [00:18:00] all this, these fresh vegetables. And we have gotten away. Well, I. tried doing a little, what do you call it, a little container garden. And one year it was okay. And the next year I got big, beautiful plants. [00:18:14] Doris McClure: Tomato plants. [00:18:16] Jean Greene: But no fruit on them. [00:18:17] Doris McClure: No, yeah, that happens sometimes. It happens sometimes. [00:18:21] Jean Greene: I was like, what did I do? I fed them. I fed them the wrong thing, I guess. I didn't feed them enough to make the fruit. But getting back to Holtzclaw and how that can, if we can take to heart he taught his people in the Black Belt Improvement Society in his Farmers Conferences, with the examples he gives in this chapter, we could turn some things around, even on this campus. [00:18:48] Doris McClure: Exactly, exactly. It would be nice to have something agricultural really going on here. And could be turned around. Huh. Yeah. [00:18:59] Jean Greene: I, I [00:19:00] could see, you know talking with several of the other folks that have been here for a minute. We can see a, a way that, that we could uplift not only the community, but the school. And that would be, that would go a good way to uplifting the area. But, but you gotta have folks who would, what is the word committed to doing the work? Right. [00:19:27] Doris McClure: You know, when they first put that house out there, the greenhouse greenhouse out there they were raising some stuff up in there and then, you know, it brought people in from the community. Even if you look around the building, they have raised beds out there. And made some vegetables out there. And you know, gave them to people. Tomatoes probably some squash, Kale, and different things like that was out there. And then they would have the plants in there. And that helped with your flow of community to people. Coming [00:20:00] back to the campus is exciting. It shows that They were carrying on the legacy of Holtzclaw. [00:20:08] Jean Greene: There's one thing that I'm I have been really excited about that I'm hoping can come to the campus. The, like you said, they had the raised beds and it was open to whoever wanted to come. I remember when we had the pecan trees. And anybody could come in and pick up pecan. So if you wanted to cook pecan, anything, you could come to the campus and just pick them up. And when they cut them all down, I thought, well, that's going to cut down a lot of, you know, traffic. But it's also going to cut out what people in the community had access to. And Holtzclaw had a pecan orchard because there are letters to Dr. Provine, who was the president of Mississippi College, where he wrote to Holtzclaw telling him how much his [00:21:00] wife, Provine's wife, appreciated the pecans from the Utica Institute. And I was like, well, you know, if we could re institute that, just plant a few. Yes. And have that started back. If we could do. Something on the line of what SIPP Culture is doing, SIPP Culture when they are in their growing and harvesting season, they give away fresh fruits and vegetables to seniors. Right. So, you know, that keeps your old folks, older folks, from having to try to scramble and get a ride to get somewhere so they can get some potatoes or greens or squash. When they have just a, and it's usually a good, what is folks say, it's enough to make a mess for you. You know, a meal. So it would be nice if we could sort of put back into practice some of the things that Holtzclaw [00:22:00] mentioned in that chapter. [00:22:01] Doris McClure: I've picked up a many pecans out here. Of course, I never knew they was over here till I started working here. Right down the street right there in front of the D. W. L. building. That was the best one on the campus. That's right. It was big. It was good. And you just, just go out and walk during the day on your break time. It was just a good little place to walk right down there, pick up some pecans. And you know, come back and eat them or whatever. Somebody gonna come in there and try to get them off your desk. was real good. And there were several trees here. There was one over there by the maintenance shop. Oh, that carried a lot of pecans. I still be over there. It may [00:22:41] Jean Greene: be. Yeah. There's one [00:22:42] Doris McClure: right outside the gate, right there. Mm-Hmm. where, you know, of course. I don't know what happened to the one right out from your, from the museum right over there. Oh yeah. [00:22:51] Jean Greene: Well, some some of them got cut. [00:22:54] Doris McClure: Cut. Mm-Hmm. . [00:22:56] Jean Greene: And, and [00:22:56] Doris McClure: so, [00:22:57] Jean Greene: so we had tried a year or so ago. [00:23:00] I think we were going to plant a line of pecan trees from the cemetery to the museum, but I think our first mistake was we got them too small. And when the groundskeeping folks went out to mow, it just looked like a little weed to them and they just mowed them all down. But this next time we're hoping to get more mature looking trees so that it is obvious that this is a tree. And we're going to put it in places and have it sort of secure it around it so that when I put down [00:23:34] Doris McClure: a little white stake beside it. [00:23:37] Jean Greene: Oh, PVC [00:23:38] Doris McClure: pipe is what I've seen them do up there around Raymond. Oh, today, you know, up in material because you know, they won't run over. [00:23:46] Jean Greene: Oh, okay. That's a good, thank you for that. Is there anything else you want to share with us, Ms. McClure? Well I want to tell you that I have, I have enjoyed talking with you about Chapter [00:24:00] 15. And I really appreciate your insight on it. And relating to your upbringing in the area. Cause you a Utica, Carpenter Reed town person. So, I, I want you to know I really appreciate it. If you would agree sometime to come back and let's talk again, maybe not about the book, we may want to talk about something else. We may want to talk about farming. We may want to talk about how you reach out to folks in the community. But thank you so much. [00:24:36] Doris McClure: You're so welcome. And it made me read the book again and again. And again. Cause it wasn't my first time. And I've enjoyed it. And, you know, every time you read something, I see it like the Bible. You learn something new. That's true. Or you remember something and really understood what he was saying, you know, about it. And why he was saying [00:24:58] Jean Greene: it. This [00:25:00] really helps us Mrs. McClure because the premise of the podcast is that we're taking the written word and we have read it aloud so that folks can read the text, but they can listen to it. And then our discussion is to give it a little bit extra meaning so that other folks can kind of step out and understand what was written. So thank you, thank you so much.