enough to support everyone. He left Leamalie's sister and brother there and went to work in town. His grandparents lived near Tylertown. They owned la

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1 2-46 Interviewer: William Jones Tape Log Interviewee: Dewitt Brumfield and Leamalie Holmes Tape #: DB1 Mono: Stereo: X No. of Sides: 2 No. of Tapes: 1 Interview Date: March 3, 1998 Location: Bogalusa, LA. Tape Index Counter No. Topic 000 Introduction 005 Both grew up in Mississippi. Brumfield in Pike County. Family "farm, farm, farm. Cotton, cotton, and corn. Pickin' cotton. And I left when I was 17 years old." Oldest brother was living in Bogalusa. "You know how youngin' are glad to get out and get to somethin'. You know, get out'a the country. I left the country in 1937,1 believe, and I stayed here with my brother." He would go back home and stay 4-5 months. He worked the paper wood truck, hauling paper wood until Then he started working at the paper mill. 016 He came at 17 years old, "just as early as I could get away from home." His brother worked at Great Southern Lumber Company and he came to live with him. Parents still own land in MS. They own 40 acres in Pike Co. That allowed them to not work for other people. His grandfather had 6 children, and gave each of them 40 acres. Father's name was J.K. Brumfield. Grandfather was Joe Brumfield. 028 Doesn't know how he bought the land. "I don't know how the folks back in that time, where they'd get the money from. You know what I'm talkin' about deacon Holmes, they could own a lot 'a land. And my grandfather on my mother's side, he had 80 acres, right there adjoined, just all up together. My mother married, my parents' place was joined, and they married. I don't know how in the world they got that land." 032 Jack Galley was his mother's father. They both had big farms. They grew cotton, corn, hogs, cows. He remembers it was hard to survive then. 25 cents would have bought groceries for 2-3 people. Rice, sugar, beans. His brother was Robert Brumfield. He was pretty young when he came to Bogalusa. He was 10 years older than Dewitt, and had been their 7-8 years when Dewitt came. Remembers when Robert left. They didn't have anything but cotton and corn, so he came to work in the sawmill. 048 He didn't have a job when he left. "He just came on down. Anybody could get a job, back in those days, when it was the old Great Southern." They sawmill opened around He took the bus, it was about 50 miles. 055 Holmes is from Tylertown. That is just across the state line. Father had a farm. Father left the farm and started working in Tylertown at a sawmill. He walked 5 miles every morning to work. His name was Hollis. That was when Leamalie was 6-7 years old. Father owned a farm, but it wasn't

2 enough to support everyone. He left Leamalie's sister and brother there and went to work in town. His grandparents lived near Tylertown. They owned land. None of his "people" worked "on shares." They all owned land. 070 In Pike, "quite a few" black people owned land. Others worked shares. Brumfield remembers that there were "very few whites" there, "that whole area was black." There was lots of white people in Tylertown. 076 Leamalie's father worked for a little sawmill. It wasn't portable, but much smaller than the GSLC. "It was mostly colored that was doing the hard work, and the whites, you know, they had the easy jobs." Father sold the farm to his uncle and the family moved to New Orleans. They moved from there to Bogalusa, and father got a job at the paper mill. Doesn't know why they moved to NOLA. He worked a distributor company there. Leamalie was about 10 years old. He was about 15 or 16 when they moved to Bogalusa. GSLC was still there when they moved, but father got a job at the paper mill. He rolled soft cake. He had to haul 500 pounds in a wheel barrel. They used that to make liquor to make paper. It was hard work, but easy for someone who was used to it. 105 His sister died in 1937, they moved to NOLA around that time. 106 Brumfield thought Bogalusa was "great." "I thought it was great. Since I never had been out of the country you know what I mean, I thought, ooh, it was beautiful, you know. Get out of that cotton field, you know what I mean. Go to movies and things like that. We had a big YMCA, you could go for recreation, play all kinds of games, you went to the Y, didn't you Holmes. You could go and play, all kinds: dominoes, shoot pool, you know, I thought it was great. That's the first time I had been out of the country, [laughs]" 115 Duke Oatis told me in an interview that he moved from Jackson to Bogalusa and thought in was a small town. I ask about the Franklinton Fair. Saturday was "colored day" at the fair, and they would run a free train there. They played Franklinton's colored high school team in football at 2pm on Sat. The Bogalusa team was better than Franklinton, but Franklinton won sometimes. 134 Older brother was married when Dewitt arrived in town. He met his wife, Ethel, here. She was from Prentiss, MS. People came from everywhere to find work at the sawmill during the depression. They paid 17 cents/hour when he arrived. "That was good money back in those days." Brother was a block setter. That was a skilled job, but Dewitt doesn't know how it was classified. He made "a little bit more than the others. Very little though, not too much." He had never worked at a sawmill before, "nothin' but pick cotton." He learned by watching other people do the job. They didn't have training. 161 Dewitt used to carry his lunch to him every day at noon. The men came out of the mill to sit down for an hour. They shut the mill down for lunch. Holmes used to bring lunch to his father. He could go into the mill to take him his lunch. He worked in the paper mill.

3 170 Majority of the paper mill workers were white, but the majority of the paper mill was white. Dewitt lived with his brother and his wife. They had no children. She worked in the house. Most of the women in town worked in the home. Holmes' mother worked at a cafeteria, as a cook. 183 They didn't have a union when they came to live here. Brumfield returned to Tylertown in Why? "I don't know, just decided to go back to the country." He had hauled paper wood before then. "I don't remember the guy's name, some white fella' I don't know." The whites would own trucks and he would haul wood to the paper mill where Holmes' father worked. 194 The sawmill closed in Both were in town then. Henry Sims told me about them draining the mill pond. They remember when they drained the pond, but not the skidders. Sims said he never seen a skidder before then. Dewitt never went out to the woods either. He remembers they had camps out there with 2 room shacks. They had one next to Franklin, another by Enon. They would cut wood and load freight trains to bring the logs into town. They lived out there. They would build a track for the train. 215 Dewitt knew people who lived out in the camp. They would come into town on the weekends. There was lots to do. "Ooh, yeah. They had music on every corner, they had little guitars, pianos, yeah, all that stuff." Remembers the boogie woogie piano players. 225 When the sawmill closed, lots of people went out looking for work. People went on relief. They would get food, "commodities." "Quite a few" left town. He returned to Tylertown to work on the farm. He picked cotton, raised cows. They didn't buy their food, except flour then. Later, he decided to return to Bogalusa. "I just decided to come back. You know how young people is, sometime they will keep movin' place to place." He started at Gaylord in The paper mill started in Sawmill was older. When the sawmill closed, they expanded the paper mill. 262 There were no jobs when he came the first time, but in 1940, "they was hiring people back during the wartime, and I come back." He was draft age, but he didn't get selected. "They was needin' a lot a men at the mill." Deacon Holmes went in to the service in Brumfield was working at the mill then. 272 Holmes didn't graduate high school. He left in "I thought I was grown. I wish there had been a day that I hadn't." He was caddie master at the Bogalusa Country Club. He volunteered for the service, and went overseas for 3 years. He went to Europe. "I had a nice time when I was in the service, but uh. I wouldn't volunteer no more to go, but I don't regret that I went in the service." He got training. He returned in Returned to the County Club for a while. He used to caddie for Dan Waterworth, who worked at the mill. Holmes was small, about 115 pounds, and they were hiring only "big husky mens." One Sunday, he asked "Mr. Dan" about working at the mill. Told him: "I said, 'Mr. Dan'

4 I said, 'can you help me get in at the mill.' I said, uh, 'I been goin' out there' and I said, 'they been pickin all over me,' I said 'they won't hire me.' And he said, I tell you what you do. He said, let me talk to my supervisor, and I'll get back with you.'" Next Sunday Waterworth came to play golf and told him to come out the next Monday. He went out and they were still hiring the "big husky fellas." Mr. Sherman "looked all over me." Holmes was the last one hired. "He looked at me, he said 'Holmes' he said uh 'I'm gonna hire you because Mr. Dick Murray told me to hire you. But you too goddamn little to work out here.' So I stay out there 39 years, but all the other big fellas that they hired, most of them had been, couldn't have gone in there. But I stayed there." Stayed at the paper mill from 1946 and retired in August of "I was 65 years old. That was long enough." They had a union then. Only the whites had a union when he started. "Our union was 189a and their union was 189." Duke Oatis sued the company and the union in 1967 to integrate the union. 189a didn't exist in There was a strike in "I never will forget that." The jobs were divided between blacks and whites. Holmes: "Let me put it to you point blank. Everybody up there with a white face was your boss. What ever they tell you to do, you had to go and do it. If you didn't you would get fired." Whether they were management or not. "It wasn't anything that we could do about it until we filed a suit, and we won it." That was They could get fired for using the white drinking fountain, or the white bathroom. Brumfield: "Yeah, we come up rough, but the Lord blessed us at the end." Many people left and went "up state." Many of them regret that they left. "See we stayed, we gets? the benefits, you know what I mean. A lot of them don't have no benefits at all, and no retirement, just social security. See we were blessed to get something." Brumfield's brother went to Chicago in He used to work in the paper mill. He was not the oldest. He was 6-7 years older, and came to work at the paper mill when he was young. Then he went to Chicago to work at a plant. He later worked as a barber for 30 years. Holmes. "During that time, before it was integrated, you had a certain job that you could work up to, and you couldn't go no further. But after the mill integrated, if you qualified for the job, then you could get the job. If you qualified for it, they had to put you in that position. But before hand, you stayed back there on the lower paid job." Brumfield: "White man job, black man job." White jobs paid more money. There were no white people who did the same jobs as blacks. Brumfield worked "chuckin' wood" in the wood mill department. They brought wood on cars into the mill and dump it. He unloaded wood from train cars, flat cars and box cars. They also had trucks bringing it in. "No white folks never did work on that wood, too hard for them. That's where I was, that's all I ever did from the beginning to eventually worked up to, go about years good easy money, you know what I mean, operating

5 the crane and all that kind of stuff. Lot of them got up to foremen, whatever they were qualified for." 278 Holmes worked on the turbines in the power house. He worked in the turbo room about 20 years and then was transferred to the wood room. Brumfield worked as a crane operator for about 14 years. "I worked up to where the white man had been gettin' all them good years. That was a good job, a good payin' job too." He made $28.08 for 40 hrs when he started in They got a little bonus. They paid cents on the yard. The yard crew wasn't making $30/ wk. They worked by the day, picking up odd jobs. He "worked shift." He worked 7 days and swing 2. They had 4 shifts, one swing. 460 On free time, they would fish on Lake Pontchartrain. At night, Holmes: "Fourth street was wide open. We go down on fourth street and play dominoes for money, and drink..." Brumfield: "shootin' dice and everything. There were honky-tonks, honky-tonks, and all that stuff." The music was B: "Guitars and pianos, that's all we had back in then." He remembers when records first came out. Before then they had "Guitars and pianos, boogie-woogie, back in those days." Don't remember Little Brother Montgomery. Duke Oatis had a band called the Rhythm Aces. That was a big band. They played at different places. That was a more fancy event. The guitar and piano was "just an ordinary thing." 500 Rhythm Aces was a special event. You had to pay to see them. The other places were free. People would dance and drink. Some places were "just a little old room. White folks used to have black peoples come in and dance. They sold all kind of whiskey and corn liquor." The bars were on 4th street. One the corner of 4th and Florence Ave. they used to go on Friday and "dance and buy home brew and drink it." It didn't have a name. They would have a piano and pay someone to come and play for people to dance and drink. Men and women would play piano. They were people who lived in town, usually. There wasn't much work in those days, so people would do that. [END]