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An
Oral History
With
James
P. Miller Sr.
Interviewer:
Stephanie Scull Millet
Tougaloo
College Archives
This interview
was transcribed as part of the Civil Rights Documentation
Project.
Funding for this
project was provided in part by the Mississippi
Humanities Council,
the National Endowment for the Humanities, and
the Mississippi
Department of Archives and History.
2000
Biography
Mr. J.P. Miller was born October
11, 1931 in Blaine, Mississippi, in Sunflower County; he is
the oldest of eight siblings born to Laura Williams Miller
and George Henry Miller. As a child, Mr. Miller helped his
parents to make a living as sharecroppers. In 1951, he and
his wife left the Mississippi Delta and resettled on the Mississippi
Gulf Coast in Pascagoula. In the post-World War II economy,
jobs were scarce, but Mr. Miller was hired by International
Paper Company. As soon as was possible, Mr. Miller joined
his local union.
In 1966, Mr. Miller was fired
for making a suggestion to his supervisor, regarding changing
and improving a procedure at work; additionally, Mr. Miller
was charged with insubordination. His union took up his case,
and he was reinstated with his seniority intact; however,
his new position was one of the most difficult and most dangerous
jobs at International Paper Company.
On a month-long vacation, Mr.
Miller moonlighted as a crane-operator at Ingalls Shipbuilding
Corporation, and he decided to stay on there, switching career
paths. Later, he worked a year at Cooper Stevedore, as the
first African-American union member to do so. Ultimately,
he returned to Ingalls.
Mr. Miller is a lifetime member
of the NAACP. During the sixties, Mr. Miller became more active
in the NAACP and also attended mass meetings. From a safe
distance, he even attended a Klan rally. His civil rights
work included filing suit against International Paper Company,
paving the way for African-Americans to be treated on a fair
and equal basis on the job.
Table of
Contents
Childhood 3
Slaughtering time on the farm
5
Crops grown, stored, consumed
6
Segregated schools 9
Boxing as a hobby 11
Harvesting wood with cross-cut
saws 12
Gardening 13
Making cane syrup 14
Churning 14
International Paper Company
21
Segregation on the job 22
Unjustly fired from International
Paper Company 23
Union files grievance 24
Easton King 25
Working in the "bull pen" 28
Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation
29
International Longshoreman's
Association 33
Rehired at Ingalls Shipbuilding
Corporation 35
NAACP 37
NAACP Legal Defense Fund 42
Mass meetings 44
Cross burning 46
Klan rally 46
Medgar Evers 49
Aaron Henry 50
Registering to vote 51
AN ORAL HISTORY
with
JAMES P.
MILLER SR.
This is an interview for
the Civil Rights Documentation Project. The interview is with
Mr. James P. Miller Sr. and is taking place on May 24, 2000,
in Moss Point, Mississippi. The interviewer is Stephanie Scull
Millet.
Millet: This
is an interview for the Civil Rights Documentation Project
of Tougaloo College and The University of Southern Mississippi.
The interview is with Mr. J.P. Miller, and it is taking place
on May 24, 2000, in Moss Point, Mississippi. The interviewer
is Stephanie Scull Millet. And first I'd like to thank you,
Mr. Miller, for taking time to talk with me today. And I'd
like to get some background information, which is what we
usually do, and ask you: could you tell me your name and where
and when you were born, please?
Miller: Yes,
that's fine. My name is J.P. Miller Sr., and I reside in Moss
Point, Mississippi. I was born October 11, 1931 in Sunflower
County, Mississippi, in a little town called Blaine, B-L-A-I-N-E.
Millet: And
do you have brothers and sisters?
Miller: Yes,
I have three brothers, three sisters, and an adopted brother.
Millet: Ah.
So, that would make eight of you.
Miller: That's
right. Eight.
Millet: Eight
in total. Where do you occur in there? Are you the oldest
or youngest or in the middle?
Miller: I'm
the oldest. Number one.
Millet: You're
the oldest. Number one son. And would you mind, for the record,
giving us the names of your brothers and sisters?
Miller: Yes.
George H. Miller Jr., Frank Edward Miller, Tandy Jerome Miller,
and my adopted brother is Byron Miller. My sisters are Julia
Green Williams, Brenda Miller Johnson, Attorney, Betty Ruth
Miller Mitchell. Is that three?
Millet: That's
three.
Miller: OK.
Millet: OK.
Thank you. And I wonder if you could tell me something about
your parents. We would start with your mother's name and when
and where she was born.
Miller: OK.
My mother's name was Laura Williams Miller. She was born,
to the best of my knowledge, in Sunflower County, Mississippi.
Do you want to know about my grandmother, too? Would you like
to hear that?
Millet: Sure.
Yes.
Miller: OK.
My grandmother was named Corinne[?]. Let me think a minute.
Corinne Williams, and I think she was born in Leflore County,
Mississippi.
Millet: Mm-hm.
Leflore?
Miller: Leflore
County.
Millet: Do
you know about what year your mother was born?
Miller: Nineteen
fourteen.
Millet: Nineteen
fourteen. OK. And your father? His name and when and where
he was born?
Miller: His
name was George Henry Miller. He was born in Winston County,
Mississippi.
Millet: Winston?
Miller: Right.
Like Winston cigarettes. And he was born in 1910.
Millet: Nineteen
ten. Way back there. So, how long did you live in Sunflower
County? Did you stay there till you were nearly an adult?
Miller: Yeah.
I left there, I believe, in 19--. I left there permanently
in 1950. But I had gone away for a short while, for a few
months before 1950.
Millet: And
what were you doing in those short months?
Miller: I went
to New Orleans, Louisiana, to live with an aunt, and worked
for a while on the docks.
Millet: Ah.
That must have been a little different than being in Sunflower
County.
Miller: Man,
that was a whole lot of difference. Big city, and trying to
find work to do. A lot of excitement.
Millet: About
how old were you when you went to New Orleans?
Miller: Eighteen.
Millet: Eighteen.
And, can you tell me a little bit about that? What happened?
You only stayed four months, but what were those four months
like?
Miller: It
was really rough because I didn't know the city, and people
had a tendency to give you wrong directions. You're looking
for work, and they might tell you a street is four blocks
over, it might be two or three miles. But anyway, I stayed
there about four months, and I came on back to Sunflower County
for another year. Made another crop, really. A cotton crop.
My parents were what they called sharecroppers. So.
Millet: Did
you help on the farm, with getting the crops in?
Miller: Oh,
yeah. I left something out, too, now. See, I married. My wife
and I married when she was seventeen and I was eighteen. So,
then I got--. After I married, we became sharecroppers, too,
until I left and went to New Orleans to try to make it on
my own. Tried to make a better life for my family. And so,
I came back to Sunflower County and made one more complete
crop after leaving New Orleans. Then I left and came to the
Mississippi Gulf Coast. Pascagoula, to be specific.
Millet: Do
you remember the year?
Miller: Nineteen
fifty-one, I believe.
Millet: Nineteen
fifty-one. So, when you were a child in Sunflower County,
I'm wondering if your school stayed in session for the whole
year?
Miller: Now,
this may not be in the proper sequence, but I'm recalling
a lot of things that happened.
Millet: That's
fine. It doesn't matter what the sequence is at all.
Miller: OK.
Our school, the black schools--. Of course, that was in the
days of segregation. Black schools were supposed to stay open,
I believe, about seven months a year, and the white schools
stayed open nine months a year. And the reason for that was
the black children in general had to help with the crops.
And therefore, you couldn't go to school even the full seven
months, because you had to break for harvesting the crops.
Millet: It
was actually shorter than the seven months.
Miller: Right.
I would say we were lucky if we got five months, totally,
in during the school year. And also, concerning school, the
black children, we lived about three miles out in the country.
A little town called Belzoni. Not Belzoni. Inverness. Inverness,
Mississippi. And I went to a school in town, we'd call it.
It was a--. Well, first of all, my first experience with school
was in black churches. Black churches in the country. Every
few miles you'd find a black church that had school, and the
first school I recall going to was a black Baptist church
called New Hope Baptist Church. My first two or three years
school experience. Then I went to Inverness Vocational High
School. We called it high school, but it only went to ten
grades. Ten grades, and if you--.
Millet: In
the church school, was that first grade or kindergarten?
Miller: That
was from like--. It seems as if they had from kindergarten
on up to maybe sixth? No, it wasn't sixth grade. Had something
called kindergarten and then to first grade.
Millet: Mm-hm.
In the church?
Miller: In
the church.
Millet: So,
from second to what grade, would you have gone somewhere else?
Miller: I believe,
now, Stephanie, I really don't recall how old I was when I
went to kindergarten. Probably three or fours years old. That's
just a guess.
Millet: Wow.
That's young.
Miller: And
then we went to what we called first grade. And then if you
finished so-called high school, that would have been tenth
grade at the school I attended.
Millet: So,
that was considered that you finished the vocational school,
when you completed tenth grade.
Miller: Right.
Even though I really don't know why it was called vocational,
because there wasn't much vocation to learn in the so-called
vocational school. Going into the why's of that, we were supposed
to be taught in the vocational school, like farming. We had
something like learning how to raise chickens, hogs, cows,
how to care for them. How to preserve poultry, beef, and pork.
But really, we didn't. What really happened, the little equipment
and facilities we had, we got it from the white high school.
When they finished using it,
and it was pretty well messed up, of no use, then they would
send it over to the black high school. But we did have, now,
we had some people that were proficient in preserving meat.
Like I remember we used to slaughter. Well, the people in
the neighborhood would slaughter cows, and they taught you
how to preserve it. I forget what we called that.
Millet: Did
you have a smoke house?
Miller: Yeah.
Now, the hogs, my folks, my granddaddy and my daddy after
him, he had smokehouses, and we preserved our own pork which
was very good. It preserved and smoked it and put the--. What
did you call it? Well, first of all, you would cover it up
in salt.
Millet: Uh-huh.
Salt cure it.
Miller: Salt
cure it. And then I don't know how long we smoked it. Once
we got it salted down and everything and took it down and
hung it up on ropes or strings or something. I guess some
type pretty sizeable rope like quarter of inch rope, or something,
and you preserved it.
Millet: What
kind of wood would you use to create the smoke?
Miller: The
wood of choice was hickory wood, but I think if you didn't
have hickory, you just used some other kind of hardwood. You
didn't use pine. You'd use hardwood to preserve it.
Millet: I didn't
realize you couldn't smoke beef. So, it was not a practice
to smoke beef, then?
Miller: No,
we didn't smoke beef. We did something else. I'm trying to
think. They'd pickle it; they called it. Had some kind of
solution. I don't recall what was in it, but you pickled the
beef, and that would preserve it just like the smoke would
preserve it, the pork, but that was a rarity. I mean, everybody
had preserved pork. Even, we made pork sausage. Made what
we--. Have you ever heard of what they call souse and hog
head cheese?
Millet: Hog
head cheese, I can remember my grandmother having it.
Miller: OK.
Well, we made that, too. At hog-killing time, they would save
certain parts of the hog. Well, the head, the feet, and they
made what we call hog head cheese or souse. I never knew the
difference in it because it looked the same and it kind of
tasted the same once you seasoned it. And we saved certain
of the hog's intestines and made what we called, I guess,
smoked sausage, now. Well, pork sausage. And like, now you
can go to the store and buy the little (inaudible) sausage
which tastes good to me. They've got a plant up in Alabama
somewhere. But we would stuff the--. We'd grind certain parts
of the hog up and you'd stuff that meat in the hog intestines.
And you smoked that, too, and preserved it. So, you had, like,
now you go to the supermarket and buy you, if you like pork,
you go buy you some pork sausage. Some Jimmy Dean or whatever
they've got, now. But back in that day, you took care of all
that at home. You had the smokehouse for your meat. You had
a potato-house for your--. No, you didn't have a potato-house;
we used to store the sweet potatoes, like you harvest them
out of the ground. Dig them up, and we put them under the
earth. I forget what you call that, but, and you cover them
with straw, and everything. And up where I was born, it's
real cold in the winter. You know? Just like, what I hear
it's like up North. But when I was growing up, we would get
snow sometimes for weeks. Snow would be sometimes two or three
or four feet on the ground up in the Delta.
Millet: Right.
Miller: And
lakes and ponds would freeze over.
Millet: And
you could still get those potatoes out of the ground, under
the straw?
Miller: Well,
I kind of got out of the right sequence there. (Laughter.)
After we gathered them, we put them in this, something like
a cave-like, but it's under the ground. And you'd cover them
up with straw and different stuff. Otherwise, they would,
the cold weather--. You'd put them in there before the winter.
Then you'd cover them up because if you didn't, they would
be something like frostbitten, and they'd taste bad. But we
had a way of preserving them through the winter. You know?
But you had to cover them up properly, under this--. I forget
what we'd call it, but--.
Millet: So,
you would dig a hole out, and put the potatoes in there, cover
that with straw. And what time of year was harvest time for
sweet potatoes? Do you remember?
Miller: I believe
it was, like, in the summer, like June. Maybe even July.
Millet: You'd
start harvesting in June, almost right around this time of
year, and they would stay through the winter?
Miller: Stayed
through the winter. You had sweet potatoes, nearly all year-round.
Millet: And
they weren't frozen when you pulled them up out of the ground?
Miller: Wasn't
frozen. Once in a while, you might find one was a little frost-bitten
and it tasted funny, but for the most part, they were just
perfect.
Millet: Where'd
you get those potatoes? Did you grow them?
Miller: Grew
them. Yeah.
Millet: What
else did you grow besides sweet potatoes?
Miller: Let
me tell you a little bit more about that sweet potato, first.
Millet: Oh,
OK.
Miller: I'm
trying to think. We used to just stick the vines. Are you
familiar with flowers and things?
Millet: A little,
but we should assume that whoever is reading this, wouldn't
be. So, go into as much detail as you want to.
Miller: So,
I'm trying to think in what sequence we did that, but you
could--. Oh, I know. In order to get the potatoes, you would
plant the whole--. You could plant the whole potato, and it
would have little buds come out on the sides.
Millet: Do
they call those, "eyes?"
Miller: Yeah.
Eyes. Same thing. Irish potatoes, eyes. And then you could
stick the eye in the ground and it would reproduce, or you
could let them sprout some vines. Just cut maybe a foot long
vine that's got the little bud on it and stick the vine in
the ground, and it just would reproduce. And you'd have a
lot of sweet potatoes and Irish potatoes.
Millet: So,
from one potato, you could get many plants?
Miller: Oh,
a lot. A lot. Plenty plants. We also planted peanuts, and
we'd harvest peanuts by the sackful. You'd lay them out in
the sunshine and let them dry, if you wanted peanuts to parch.
But if you wanted to just boil them--. A lot of people like
green peanuts, and you boil them in salty water. So, we raised
cotton and corn. Corn by the acres. You'd shell your own corn.
You'd raise it; you'd let it dry out. Put it in what they
called a crib, a house that holds the corn.
Millet: Now,
when you shelled it, did you do that by hand? Or were their
machines?
Miller: For
a long time, it was just by hand. But then they invented a
little hand rotating corn sheller. You'd put an ear of corn
in it, and turn this crank on the side, and that was much
better. You could shell a lot more corn.
Millet: How
did you shell it by hand? Can you describe that process?
Miller: It
was hard on the skin. You'd have kind of like if you--. Like
I know, I used to work with brick masons. Help brick masons,
and handling those rough brick would get the skin off your
hands. Shelling corn by hand was about the same thing.
Millet: When
you shell it, do you actually wind up with those individual
corn kernels all off of the cob?
Miller: Yeah.
Individual kernels. You'd shell you--well, depending on how
much you wanted--maybe a bushel or two bushels. Then you took
it through the--. They called it the grist mill, and a guy
had a gadget there would grind the corn up, and make meal.
Corn meal. Or he could set his die in there and grind it up
fine enough to be what we called grits.
Millet: Uh-huh.
So, he could control how coarse or fine the corn kernels [were
ground]. Now, did the kernels have to be dry? They couldn't
be still soft and green like right off the corn plant, could
they?
Miller: No.
They had to be--. Once you put--. Well, first of all, when
you harvested the corn, you'd let the corn stay on the--.
The corn that you wanted to save for cornmeal or grits, you
let it stay on the corn stalk until its season is over, and
it kind of dried out. And then that way you could just pull
the corn.
Millet: Is
that an ear? An ear of corn?
Miller: Yeah.
An ear. Pull the ears off. Then if you wanted to have fresh
corn, we called it, you'd just pull it off while it's green
and you'd have what we called, I think we called it roasting
ears.
Millet: Oh,
roasting ears. Uh-huh. Yeah. And you would eat that right
away. Was there any way to save the fresh corn to eat later,
like we do today in a can or frozen?
Miller: Oh,
yeah. We used to can it. I remember right after I married,
I had bought me a pressure cooker that high. [Gesturing.]
Millet: Uh-huh.
What is that? About two feet high?
Miller: Yeah.
And I used to be good at canning and stuff before my wife
learned how. I used to cook and everything, but, as the years
passed on, she's one of the best cooks you want to find, now.
Cook anything. But I used to cook.
Millet: Uh-huh.
Who taught her to cook?
Miller: Well,
I guess mostly her mother. But I do remember distinctly, when
we first married, I used to cook pies and cakes. You know.
But I don't know how to do that anymore. I lost it.
Millet: Who
taught you to cook?
Miller: My
mother.
Millet: Uh-huh.
She didn't reserve that just to the girls in the family?
Miller: No.
Because I was the oldest one in the family, so I did a lot
of things. I learned how to do a lot of things like wash and
iron and cook.
Millet: Well,
what was a typical day like for you as a child? I'd like to
know, like, a typical day if you went to school. A typical
day if you worked in the cotton field. And a typical day if
you, say, had to get up and wash clothes and cook something.
So, what was a typical day like in school? How did you get
to school?
Miller: Well,
you had to get up early. Because if I recall, we were supposed
to be there about, maybe eight o'clock. And we had to walk,
so we had to get up early. Now, I never did have to milk the
cow like some children did. My daddy did that. He milked the
cows and it was sure enough rough, like in the winter time
going to school because, like I mentioned a little while ago,
it was cold, cold up there. And you had to walk to school
in the snow, the ice. Sometimes you didn't have too good of
footwear, either. Sometimes you'd be about frostbitten when
you got to school. It was really, really rough.
Millet: Right.
And this was even as that little three-year-old going to the
church school?
Miller: Well,
that was closer in the neighborhood.
Millet: You
still had to walk, though?
Miller: Still
had to walk. Still had to walk.
Millet: But
you said Inverness was three miles away. So, were you walking
three miles to go to school?
Miller: Six
miles total.
Millet: Three
miles there and three miles back.
Miller: Right.
And now, all this time when we were walking, the Caucasian
children, they had, if I remember, nice buses. And they would
pass us and pick at us. Throw out of the window something.
Call us names. And this is something that just stuck in my
head over the years. You know. I can think about that. So,
then, when you went to school, once you got to school, another
thing I remember clearly, I hear people that's younger than
me, they recall having what we called chapel in school. Maybe
once a week, but when I was a little child going to school,
we had chapel every morning.
Millet: What
happened then?
Miller: Well,
what they did, they would have something kind of like at church.
You know, they would sing, profess, or some teachers would
pray. And we'd sing spiritual songs. Then after you go through
what we called chapel, singing, praying and singing maybe
a couple of spiritual songs, you would break off and go to
your classrooms. But this was a daily occurrence on that chapel,
the prayer in school.
Millet: Then,
what would you do when you got in--? What was your favorite
subject when you went to school?
Miller: History,
I do believe. Of course, we didn't have too much information,
like the kids have, now. But for some reason, we didn't have
access to information that the white kids had. But we had,
somehow or another, we got ahold to some literature on people
like George Washington Carver, you know. We read about [how]
he did so many things with the peanut. Invented so many things
with the peanut, and some other black person, I believe it
was Benjamin Banneker, he had made something. And then of
course, later on, we had a--I don't know if you would call
it idol--but, see, I was real small, still, when Joe Louis
grew up. And he won the title from Maximilian. So that was
a big celebration.
And I remember, all this was
out in the country. Now, I remember when, out in the country
where I grew up, we didn't have any electricity. We had a
wood stove and wood heaters, but as time went on, my daddy
he was a pretty good jack of all trades. He didn't have much
formal education at all but he learned, I guess by the grace
of God, to do many things that, now, you have to have a lot
of schooling. Like my third boy, now he's going to take electrical
something over at J.C. Junior College, and to do wiring and
telephone, stuff like that. But now, my dad didn't have no
education, and I don't know to this day how he could do so
many things, but I remember he wired all the houses up out
on this particular plantation where we lived and he repaired
the houses, did the carpentry work. He fixed his own automobile.
When something would go wrong, he would take the engine out,
hang the engine up in a tree by a chain (inaudible), change
the pistons out, and it was just amazing how he knew how to
do so much and didn't have no formal training. And so, he
was an electrician, a carpenter. Plus now, after farms got
mechanized, he drove the equipment out there, the tractors.
And he was just an all-around man. So, it was something growing
up out there, and reflecting back on how things were then
and how things are now. My boy that's going to school now
for an electrician, he's getting some--. The teacher, she
takes them out in the field sometime, and actually do work
for people. You know. O.O.J.--On-the-job training. And you've
got to have that certificate showing you can do that or you
can't do it.
Millet: Mm-hm.
Right.
Miller: Now,
my daddy--.
Millet: It's
all regulated these days.
Miller: It's
all regulated. I guess that's a safety factor, but I never
remember Daddy having any kind of accident due to faulty work.
People find out, say, "Well, George Miller, he can do that
work." And people would be coming in from all around. "George,
could I get you to wire my house?" Even the plantation owners.
You know. They would find out he could do it. If they didn't
have nobody on their plantation to do it, they would get Daddy
to do it. Of course, it didn't hardly pay much in those days,
but it's good to know how to do these things.
Millet: Mm-hm.
So, you had to get up really early to go to school. About
what time did your school day end? Do you remember?
Miller: If
I recall, it was about 3:30 or so.
Millet: And
what happened after you left school? You didn't go home and
watch television.
Miller: No.
That was before the days of television. (Laughter.) We just
walked home. And a lot of the boys, somehow or another, we,
a lot of the neighborhood boys got involved in boxing. Because
we had several, I guess, idols or role models back then. All
the way back from Jack Johnson. I don't know if you've heard
of him. Probably, he's way before my time, but I heard about
him. He was a black heavyweight champion, too. So, I guess
that was about the only thing we had to idolize, because otherwise,
I mean, of course, now, there was plenty of black people who
went on despite the conditions. They went on and did well.
You know. A lot of them, I guess, were self taught, but like
when I was coming up I remember pretty clear that it seemed
like the kids loved to congregate at our house, and I had
several cousins, and somehow or another we got us two or three
boxing gloves. (Laughter.) I was a little fellow. I mean,
small in stature, but it was unregulated, so it didn't matter
if there was a 200 pound fellow came in our yard and wanted
to box, I would try him. (Laughter.) And my brother-in-law
right now lives in Cleveland; my wife's brother. I had forgot
all about that. We was up in the Delta a few months ago, and
he brought up how, said, "Brother, you know, you was tough
with them boxing gloves. You remember you beat up old So-and-so?"
I said, "Man, I never would
have thought about that anymore." (Laughter.)
Millet: Did
anybody ever knock you out?
Miller: Oh,
man! They never did knock me out, but they hurt my head a
many-a time.
Millet: Well,
how did y'all learn? Did anybody teach you?
Miller: No.
Millet: Or
just kind of went in there whaling?
Miller: It
was just instinct. (Laughter.) So far as knowing the safe
way to do it and protect you and all, we didn't have any head
gear. We'd just get in there and slug it out and just pick
it up on your own how to try to be defensive, and what moves
to make. But it was a lot of fun. We also used to like to
high jump. You know. You put a cane or something, or two guys
hold a rope or something and gradually just move it up and
see who could jump the highest. Things like that. We had something
to keep ourselves entertained.
Millet: So,
you did some athletic activities after school, just organized
on your own?
Miller: Right.
Millet: Did
you not have to do chores when you got home from school?
Miller: Yeah.
We had to. I'm glad you brought that up. We used to, my daddy
and them, the men and the boys, once they got big enough,
they would harvest wood, I think, once a year, preparing for
the winter. So, you would go out in the woods, and you would
cut these logs. Cut the tree down. Some of the trees might
be, from, say a foot in diameter to maybe four foot in diameter.
And you haul it to the house.
Millet: Were
you using a chain saw?
Miller: No.
What we called a cross-cut saw.
Millet: Cross-cut
saw. All manual.
Miller: All
manual. Somebody on each end. And those older men, you know,
they'd fuss at us boys because they called it riding the saw,
when you mash down on it too hard. It makes it hard for your
partner to cut. So, if you got the right rhythm, man, you
could cut up some wood.
Millet: How
long did it take you to cut down a tree that was four feet
in diameter?
Miller: Oh,
man. Probably at least an hour. You'd be sawing on there.
And the men knew how to block out one side. You know. Cut
a niche in the opposite side, and as you saw, the tree would
get, I guess you would call it, it didn't have much fiber
holding because you'd be cut--. And you'd be notched it out
maybe eight or ten inches deep. So the tree, you had to know
how the tree was leaning and all that. So, it would fall.
Millet: You'd
tried to control the fall direction.
Miller: Oh,
yeah. You had to control the fall.
Millet: Otherwise
people get hurt.
Miller: Right.
So, we had to do a whole lot after school. We did all this
boxing. We also had to saw the wood in fireplace lengths.
You know. So, everybody mostly had a fireplace you'd burn
logs in. And then, you'd cut some other wood in a shorter
length because you had wood stoves.
Millet: Mm-hm.
I didn't realize you had to have different sizes for the stove.
You had to have smaller wood for the stove?
Miller: Yeah.
Smaller, but now, if it fell your lot to--. If you didn't
have any smaller, we had what you call wedges. In other woods,
if you cut a log maybe in four-foot lengths, and it's too
big for the stove, so you had something they called wedges
you'd drive down in there and split it.
Millet: Split
the wood?
Miller: Split
the wood. Make it the size you want. The diameter you want.
So there was a lot of things you had to do to make things
work out.
Millet: They
say, "Wood warms you twice: once when you cut it, and the
second time when you burn it." You worked up some warmth when
you were cutting that wood.
Miller: Oh,
yeah, man. I'm telling you.
Millet: What
other kinds of chores did you have? Did you have to work with
the livestock any? Or in the garden?
Miller: In
the garden.
Millet: You
said you had to wash clothes, too.
Miller: Yeah.
Had to wash and iron.
Millet: What
kind of garden did you have? You said sweet potatoes and corn?
Miller: We
had all kinds of vegetables, like squash, beets, peas, and
beans. Okra.
Millet: Mm-hm.
Miller: Peanuts.
Sweet potatoes.
Millet: You
probably canned all that stuff, too.
Miller: Oh,
man. We just had cans for days. You know, you just can it
up and maybe put it back in a box or something. And so, there
was no shortage of food. Now, you might not have what you
like all the time, because I remember, I didn't--. It took
me--. I was an adult before I developed a taste for, like,
cabbage and collards. I love it, now, but back when I was
a child, I didn't like it. And we used to have to make--.
Well, my mother did. Excuse me. My mother used to make. Sometimes,
we didn't have any--. We also grew cane in small amounts.
Millet: Sugar
cane?
Miller: Sugar
cane. So, we'd take that. Had a mill for that.
Millet: And
would you get white sugar out of it like you get in a sugar
bowl, today?
Miller: Well,
we got the white juice out of it, and then you put that juice
in some kind of kettle, or something. And you cook it. Just
cook it, cook it, cook it. And they had a mule or a horse
turning this thing around, grinding up the cane stalks, and
the juice coming out in a container. And so, then they would
actually make sugar cane syrup out of this stuff.
Millet: Cane
syrup. Uh-huh.
Miller: Yeah.
But, now, if you ran out of cane syrup, my mother used to
know how to just take some sugar, and put it in a skillet
or something in a little water, and you boil that, and it
would turn into syrup. Your white syrup instead of, you know.
Now, I like that Blackburn Syrup. Of course, I'm not supposed
to eat any of it, now. I'm diabetic, but it's got a kind of
brown color to it, but that sugar cane syrup you made at home,
it was white. And it just--. Try to dig up you some fat back
or some bacon, if you're lucky and cook you some biscuits.
And you had syrup that you didn't buy from the store. You
made it.
Millet: Sounds
good to me. So, when you got the cane juice, you said they
would cook it and boil it? Then did it granulate when they
were cooking it? Did it turn into a--?
Miller: No,
I guess they had a certain stopping point because it would
just be, some of it would be thicker than other syrup, so
I guess it depended on how long they cooked it. It probably
got thicker and thicker the more you cooked it.
Millet: But
the goal was to have the cane syrup, when you had cooked it.
Miller: Have
the syrup. And, man, you talk about it taste good in the winter
time when it's cold. Oh! That syrup and some hot biscuits,
and we had our own butter. Daddy kept a cow or two.
Millet: So,
your mother did some churning.
Miller: Oh,
I did some churning.
Millet: You
did some churning.
Miller: I did
a lot of churning. (Laughter.) Churn that fresh buttermilk
and cook a fresh pan of cornbread, put some butter in between
it. And so you had fresh milk with the butter churned out
of it, but then you put some butter in the cornbread, and
that made it taste better. So, we had what we called sweet
milk which meant it wasn't--.
Millet: Clabbered?
Miller: We
didn't homogenize it. Yeah. Clabbered milk.
Millet: Did
you eat clabber as you were growing up? As a child?
Miller: Yeah.
Clabbered milk with some fresh cream over in there. Put some
cream over that and it would make it rich, and then put you
a hunk of cornbread over in that. Boy! You had some good eating.
Millet: Now,
remind me, when you're churning, you put the whole milk in
the churn, and it separates into what? Now, some people probably
wouldn't know what churning is. Could you just describe what
the act of churning is?
Miller: Churning
is, OK, when you milk the cow, and you put the fresh milk
in a container.
Millet: In
a crock, a container.
Miller: Then
as time goes by, the milk turns to clabbered milk they called
it, which means it would be lumpy. And then on top of that
clabbered milk, the cream would come to the top. That cream.
So you skim the cream off the top of the clabbered milk, pour
it in what we call the churn. It's a container with a lid
on it, and it's got a lid on it, and there's a hole in the
top of the lid. So, then you've got a--.
Millet: Would
you call it a paddle?
Miller: Well,
it was kind of a round thing on a handle, and you put the
paddle, I forget the proper name for it, but you put it in
there, and then you put the top on, which had a round hole
in it, over the round stick, and you just pump it up and down.
Millet: Mm-hm.
And as you pump, what happens?
Miller: As
you pump, that cream just turns to butter. What we know as
butter, today. And you could just skim it off there and shape
it like you wanted in some kind of container. You could make
it a round piece of butter. You could make it square. Pretty
well could shape it any way you wanted. So, people back in
those days, too, if you had enough butter, you could sell
it to your neighbors or sell them some fresh eggs out the
henhouse. We had chickens.
Millet: You
had chickens, too?
Miller: Yeah.
And it was some kind of experience.
Millet: How
did you keep the butter fresh? You didn't have refrigerators
like we have, now.
Miller: No.
It's amazing. It's amazing. Things today, you can't do butter
and stuff like you could. It just seems. I don't know what
it is, but we just--. They had the ice man running way back
in those days. Had the ice man come around maybe three or
four days a week, and you could buy twenty-five pounds, fifty
pounds, a hundred pounds, and if you had a--wasn't a refrigerator.
We called it an ice-box. And you put your butter and your
milk in there and it stayed cool, but now, even back then,
you didn't hardly catch any milk turning sour. Like now you
go to the supermarket and you put your milk in the refrigerator,
and sometimes it will turn sour in there.
Millet: Just
from being in the car, sometimes, on that trip home from the
grocery store.
Miller: But
back then, you actually could leave some vegetable something
on the stove, and it would stay there for a few days without
turning sour. But you can't do that, now. I don't know what
it is. But, yeah, we pretty well kept some ice in the ice-box,
and we had cool milk, cool water in there.
(End of tape one, side one.
The interview continues on tape one, side two.)
Millet: When
you think back on your experience in school, do you think
you got a good education from the schools that you attended?
Miller: I got
about what they had to offer. They didn't have too much to
offer, but, now, I'll tell you, like I said before. Part of
that is my fault because I know children that went to school
with me, and they had access just to this tenth grade, then
about twelve miles over in Indianola, they had a black high
school, and so, some of them went on to finish high school
and just went all the way to the top despite the hardships,
you know. Some of them are coaches and doctors, lawyers. Believe
it or not, up there in the Delta, when I was a teenager, there
was a black lady in Indianola. I don't know where she came
from, but she was a doctor. You know. And people got the news
all around, "Dr. So-and-so." You know. And she was a black
lady, and it was just kind of unbelievable.
Millet: Very
unusual.
Miller: Yeah.
But now, we had quite a few, back in those days, teachers.
In the black schools, [teachers] didn't have to have a college
degree. I knew plenty of teachers went to tenth grade, and
lower grades than that. In other words, they could read and
write, and add, subtract, divide, and multiply. So, they did
a good service, because they gave the kids what they had to
give them. So, I guess it's just like, today. Now, it just
amazes me. I see children, especially black children, that's
got all kinds of opportunities, you know. They've got a bus
to ride to school, if they--. I think, it's a mile. If you
stay a mile from the school, I think. I'm not sure, but they've
got an opportunity of riding the bus. Then they've got all
kinds of grants, and they've got some companies paying you
to go to school. And some of them just will not go to school.
And back in my day, you know, we didn't have opportunity.
We had to get out there and harvest the crops. Pick the cotton.
Chop the cotton, and all that. Get the corn in. Now, they
don't have to do any of that. All they've got to do is stand
on the corner, and the bus will pick them up. They won't go.
Millet: You
know that's true of not only black children, but children
of all races. And, I guess, each one of us is just an individual
who has their own reasons for the things they do in life.
But, I think as we get older, we realize what those opportunities
were that we missed. It's so easy to look back and second-guess.
But, you know, I remember being a teenager, and I really didn't
understand what an opportunity I had. I just seemed to take
it for granted. That was just the way it was supposed to be.
Did your parents ever get to
own their own farm?
Miller: No,
they did not. Daddy sharecropped until he came down here to
the Mississippi coast. In fact, I came down here before he
did, but then, he came down here, and he did well. He didn't
have a lazy bone in him. He worked construction for a few
years.
Millet: Do
you know how old he was when he changed? Did he give up sharecropping
and decide to come to the coast and work?
Miller: Yeah.
Right. He had a sister; he had two sisters down here, that
left the farm, and so, he decided to come down here and try
it down here. So, he ended up, his last years he spent as
a longshoreman. ILA, here in the port of Pascagoula. Well,
he went other places. If work got scarce here, he'd go to
Gulfport, Mobile. Even went to New Orleans, but that's--.
He retired as a longshoreman.
Millet: As
a longshoreman? Do you know if he joined a union?
Miller: ILA
Local 1752. I got a card in my pocket, now. (Laughter.)
Millet: That's
great. That's great.
Miller: Yeah.
Local 1752. And he got in the union when he came down here,
and he worked hard, but when he retired, he had what we call
a gravy job. You know, real easy.
Millet: Oh.
Yeah. Good. By that time, he had earned it, hadn't he?
Miller: Oh,
yeah. He had earned it.
Millet: Yeah.
I forgot what I was going to ask you. Let me think for a minute.
Miller: I had
so much I wanted to tell you.
Millet: Did
we leave anything out? Can you think of anything about your
childhood?
Miller: Well,
we left a lot of stuff out that I thought of between the time
I started making this note, and then I stopped and went and
finished cutting the grass. And the stuff I was thinking about
while I was cutting the grass, I said, "I've got to tell Stephanie
about this." (Laughter.) It left me.
Millet: I remember
my question, now.
Miller: Can
I just ramble on?
Millet: Of
course you can.
Miller: I tell
you. Some things I remember that just upset me. You know.
Stuff I had to go through. And now, the children. We was talking
about the children a while ago; they don't have to go through
any of that, and they won't take advantage of the opportunities
they have. Now, I remember back in the days. This is probably
unbelievable to--. Did you grow up in Mississippi?
Millet: I grew
up in Gulfport.
Miller: Gulfport.
OK. You're salt water; you're alright. (Laughter.) I used
to work with some guys from Gulfport. Wilson Evans. He was
ILA president over there. But he's gone on, now. But I think
about back when I was coming up, and even, I would say up
until I was in my late teens, there was an unwritten law that
a black man, black male could get in some serious trouble
by just looking at a Caucasian woman. You know. That was just
against the rules. You don't look at them. And another thing
that, I don't know if they had a law on the books for it,
but if you were walking down the street, and you met a white
person, you just had to get in the ditch, in some cases, because,
you know, you just wasn't supposed to pass beside, too close.
Millet: Didn't
matter if you were seventy-five years old and the person approaching
you was fourteen, you still had to give way.
Miller: You
had to move over. Now, that probably wasn't the case 100 percent,
but you did run into that, like, where I grew up, up in the
Delta. And you mentioned about the age difference. That was
another thing that kind of rung a bell. When you were, say
from birth, a black man, a white man may call you, "Boy,"
and then, maybe, on up till maybe sixty or sixty-five, you
were, "Boy." Then, when you got that age instead of giving
you proper respect as an elder, they'd call you, "Uncle,"
or even call you, "Preacher." And at any time back in those
days, if you happened to, well, I'll use the term "dress up."
You know. You'd look decent to go to town or wherever, even
if it was on the job, they'd call you, "Preacher." If you
kind of had on some pressed khakis and a nice shirt, well,
you were, "Preacher," then.
Millet: So,
they were making a kind of a snide comment?
Miller: I guess
so.
Millet: About
someone wanting to, I don't know--.
Miller: I never
did figure out why they would want to call you, "Preacher,"
or "Uncle." I really never did get the meaning of that, but
I know that signified letting you know you were still a black
man, because, now that you're old enough to be called, "Sir,"
due to your age, or due to your stature, also, you could be
a Ph.D. in a bunch of fields, but you still were just, "Boy,"
or "Uncle," or "Preacher."
Millet: Never
"Doctor," or "Mister," or "Sir."
Miller: Right.
Right. And I just notice how much things have changed, now.
You know. Most people you meet, now, white people, they're
courteous. You know. They're courteous; they say, "Sir." Right
now, of course, I'm of that age, now, I guess they see I'm
grey-headed and bald-headed, and they'll open the door for
me, and I say, "Thank you."
They say, "You're welcome,
sir." You know. And that's insignificant to a person that
never was exposed to this stuff.
Millet: The
other way.
Miller: Yeah.
So, but to me, I often make the comment to my wife, say, "Man,"
I say, "Honey, you know, things have changed." Because you
just see now how--. Now once in a while you run into somebody
that's thinking back to slavery time, but for the most part,
you run into white people, now, they're intelligent, and they
give you the proper respect. Show respect whether it's in
the street or wherever. So, we still got some problems, because
you run into problems every once in a while, but things have
changed so much. Stephanie, I remember, since I've been on
the coast, when a black man, maybe went to the bank for help.
Maybe you had a steady job. I've been lucky since I've been
down here. Thank God. I always had a job. In fact, I had two
or three jobs. I was working three jobs at one time. Working
midnight, day, and then second shift till I went back at midnight.
Millet: Oh,
man.
Miller: And
just took a nap wherever I could. You know. On my own lunch
break, or something. But now, even at this age, you would
think that people in financial institutions would be afraid
to maybe help a fellow at my age, because you know, I'm getting
close to what God promised me. In about a year and a half,
I'll be reached that seventy years.
Millet: Oh.
Congratulations.
Miller: That
we're promised in The Word. But I can go to--. Well, I started
to say either one of two major banks, but we've got so many
major banks around here, now. But I can go to two of the major
banks, and if I need some financial help, I just tell them
what I need, and they just let me sign and let me have it.
No security. And I remember there was a time if you needed
financial help, and a black man, you would have to be a millionaire
to borrow a hundred dollars, because they just wouldn't let
you have it. It was off limits, but thanks be to God that
things have changed, and nowadays if you do halfway right,
and be responsible, you can get help.
Millet: I have
a theory that maybe in the coastal counties, on the coast,
there is more tolerance, maybe, than in [north Mississippi].
I think maybe the farther north you go in Mississippi, the
more you might run into intolerance. And as I say, I grew
up in Gulfport, and none of my friends, none of my teachers
were Southern. You know. They were from different places,
with Keesler Air Force Base being there and a harbor town,
and so close to New Orleans, and Mobile, there were just people
from all over the world. And so, you know, we may be more
fortunate in this part of Mississippi than in some other parts.
But I was thinking back to about 1950, when you first got
here. What did you do after you arrived at the Gulf Coast.
You were, I guess, about eighteen, and your wife was seventeen.
Did she come with you? And what did y'all do? How did you
make your life?
Miller: I had
an aunt living in Pascagoula. God bless her. She took me in.
And the third day after I got here, I had walked. Well, I'll
tell you why I came here in the first place. My aunt, this
particular aunt, she used to come home up in the Delta. She
had an automobile. She had a purse full of money, because
she was working. That was during World War II, she was working
at Ingalls in the rod room or something. Anyway, she had a
steady job. So, she would come home, and she always had money.
And she would talk about Ingalls Shipyard, Ingalls Shipyard.
So, I said, "Man!" So after
I married, I had a lot of cousins and uncles and things had
migrated to, like, Chicago, and Michigan, and places like
that. So, I said, "Well, I'm going to the coast. I'm going
to Pascagoula, and I'm going to get me a job at Ingalls. And
then, I'll go on to Chicago, and make that my permanent residence."
Millet: Oh.
OK. So, you were coming here on your way to Chicago.
Miller: On
my way to Chicago. Just stopping through.
Millet: Fifty
years ago. (Laughter.)
Miller: Yeah.
So, man, I got down here and World War II was over, of course,
And where there had been, according to what I heard, people
just in droves working at Ingalls, making money. But that
had dwindled down to maybe a hundred people, so there wasn't
no work at Ingalls in fifty-one, when I came here. Man! So,
I had never heard of International Paper Company. Hadn't heard
of a veneer mill. They had, they call them BVD now, I think,
in Pascagoula where they make siding like that, or paneling.
Millet: Uh-huh.
And that's a veneer?
Miller: Veneer
mill. Yeah. They called it veneer mill, then. Now, I think
the official name is Pavco. P-A-V-C-O. Man! I walked. I went
to every union hall. Of course, now they had a black union
hall on Canyon[?] Street in Pascagoula. That's another peculiar
thing that just amazed me. They had a black woman who was
a secretary at this labor union hall. And the white fellow
was a business agent. The black lady was one of the Barryall[?]
ladies from Pascagoula. She was secretary. So, I said, "Man!
That's amazing. This lady's got this responsible job. A black
woman." And so I went down to the laborer's union hall every
day. Sometimes checked two or three times.
Walked over to the veneer mill,
and everybody told me, "Man. Just people in droves looking
for jobs. No work."
So, somebody mentioned the
paper mill. They said, "Apply to the paper mill." I'd never
heard of the paper mill.
Said, "Where is the paper mill?"
Said, "Oh. That's out over
there in Kreole, past Moss Point." They had what they called
the two, one bus, then. It used to run from Kreole. There's
a place out from Moss Point called Kreole. In fact, that's
where International Paper, they actually was located in Kreole.
It's just a suburb of Moss Point. So, I scrapped up. I think
you could ride a round trip from Pascagoula, all the way out
to Kreole, and back to Pascagoula for about twenty cents,
on the two, one bus, they called it.
Millet: Hard
to get twenty cents at that time?
Miller: Oh,
man! I think when I arrived down here, I might have had four
or five dollars in my pocket when I got here.
Millet: That
was a lot of money, then, though.
Miller: Just
knowing that I was going to work at Ingalls.
You know. Nobody had told me that Ingalls was just about closed
down. So, I made it out to the paper mill on the two, one
bus, and Stephanie, there were people just all around the
personnel office. Every direction you looked there were people
just trying to get a job. It was hard times here, then. This
is the third day, now, that I'm here. And so, it was in November.
Kind of getting cool. So, I had on some kind of felt hat,
and I had on a plaid sports jacket. Just to keep warm. Not
to try to be sporty. It was kind of cool. (Laughter.) And
so, that was before the days of--. Back in those days, if
you were black, even here in Pascagoula and Moss Point, there
were certain jobs that you could hold at these plants. They
had "white" jobs and "black" jobs.
Millet: Was
that kind of unofficial? Or was it way out in the open?
Miller: Oh,
that was in the open. Like in the contract book, they had
about six locals represented at the paper mill at that time.
And five of them were white, and one served all the black
people at the paper mill. That was before the days of black
women at the paper mill, too. We didn't have any black women.
Had a lot of white women working in certain departments. So,
I'm standing out there about middle ways of, I guess, a group
of people about 150 feet long, and they were all the way up
to the steps of the personnel office and back in all directions
where you could get a spot to stand. So the personnel director,
I think he was standing on, either at the top of the steps
or maybe even, the bannister had a wide arm rest. But anyway
he looked way over there, and he said, "Hey, that boy over
there with that so-and-so kind of hat and that plaid jacket."
I said, "Man, that sounds like
me." So, I made my way up through the crowd, man. Made my
way up through the crowd, and like I say, then your credentials
didn't mean nothing because you have a certain job you were
going to do, anyhow.
So, he said, "Boy. Where you
from?"
I said, "I'm from Inverness,
Mississippi."
He said, "Where the hell is
that?"
I said, "That's up in the Delta."
"Oh, yeah, I've heard of the
Delta." Said, "You want to work?"
I said, "Yes, sir. I want to
work. I'm looking for a job."
"If I hire you, are you going
to come to work every day?"
"I sure will."
So, he said, "Go on in there."
Sent me in the office. The personnel office. And they asked
my name, social security number, all that good stuff. Said,
"Can you go to work? Start to work tonight?" This was late
in the evening, like five o'clock or after.
I said, "Yes, ma'am."
So, they told me, "Go out there
and catch that two, one bus. Take this slip and go down to
Dr. Weatherford[?]." I believe he was. A doctor that was here,
then, in Pascagoula. And said, "They're going to give you
a physical." So, I went on down there. I think about four
of us made our way down there, and that was November. I believe
that was November 3, fifty-one. They examined me and sent
me back to the paper mill, and I worked twelve hours my first
night. I went and worked--
Millet: Isn't
that something?
Miller: --from
seven o'clock in the evening until seven the next morning.
And I spent nineteen years and three months out there before
I finally quit and went to Ingalls.
Millet: So,
from that first twelve hours, nineteen years and three months.
Miller: Yeah,
now we could deduct about three and a-half months, because
I got fired in the midsixties. Unjustly. Let me tell you how
I got fired, now.
Millet: Well,
hold on just a second.
(There is a brief interruption
in the interview.)
Miller: OK.
I had two thoughts when we broke just then. Maybe the other
one will come to me when I get this first one out. We were
speaking about how I spent nineteen years and three months
at International Paper Company, but I mentioned deducting
maybe three months because I got terminated in sixty-six.
And I want to tell you how that came about. Back in those
days, well, you just didn't question. In those days, we had
all white supervisors in the department I was in. So, you
just didn't question anything the supervisor said. You didn't
question it. So, we had a big crew working up there on a repair
job on number two machine. At that time, we had five machines
at the paper mill, plus (inaudible). And so, I suggested a
better way to do what we was doing, maybe, because I worked
in what they called, the official name was the general yard,
but the nickname was the bull gang, because it was hard work.
All the hard work, you had to do it.
And so my supervisor, he told
me, said, "Don't talk back to me. And just go on, and do what
I said to do, and don't ask no questions."
And so, I said, "Well, I'm
not talking back, but I'm just telling you how I feel about
it."
So, he said, "I tell you what.
You go see the general foreman." His name was Mr. Daphney[?].
Clyde Daphney. And my supervisor, God bless him. He's gone
on, now, but his name was Aubrey Strahan[?]. So, he sent me
to see Mr. Daphney. And the trucks for the supervisors, they
were radio-equipped. So, I guess he had called him on the
radio and told him he was sending Miller back there.
So, when I got back there,
he said, "I tell you what. Just get your stuff, and go on
home." He said, "I heard about you was up there sassing Mr.
Strahan." And so, they fired me. Fired me right that same
day. Fired me, [and] charged me with insubordination.
Millet: And
you'd been there over ten years.
Miller: I had
been. Let's see, in sixty-six. Yeah. I'd been there over ten
years.
Millet: From
fifty-one. Right?
Miller: OK.
From fifty-one to sixty-six.
Millet: Fifteen
years. So, for making a suggestion to your supervisor after
fifteen years, they fired you?
Miller: Uh-huh.
They fired me. So, we had a good International representative
then, even though he was a native of Jackson County, a guy
named Claude Ramsey[?]. In your getting around, you'll probably
hear of Claude Ramsey because he stood up for everybody. So,
naturally, I was a good union man. I got in the union the
minute I was qualified to get in the union, so, I called my
union president, a fellow we called Preacher Houston[?]. He
was a bona fide preacher, and his name was L.A. Houston.
So, he said, "Well, Brother
Miller, what did you do?" I told him. He said, "What!?" He
said, "Well, I'm going to call Dan Martine[?]," that's the
business, the International rep, "and let him know." Said,
"We're going to protest it. We're going to file a grievance."
So, we filed a grievance and went through a grievance procedure.
So, it went all the way to the division level which was in
Mobile. In the, I guess you would call it industrial relations
or labor relations. The vice president was a man named Doug
Barrow. He lived in Mobile. His office was in Mobile. And
he had a division level job. So, man, they had turned me down
every step I went; I lost the case. Because everybody testified
against me.
Millet: People
must have been afraid to stand up and tell the truth.
Miller: Yeah.
Yeah. That was the case. We had one black man who testified
against me, but Preacher Houston said, "Man, if you couldn't
tell the truth, you should have just kept your mouth shut."
And so, we had a meeting after that and the black man that
testified against me, he said he want |