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