Source: WV History Film Project
ANCELLA BICKLEY INTERVIEW
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE ONE, CAMERA
ROLL 201, SOUND 71,
Q: Ancella, tell me in a sort of general sense how
blacks came into western Virginia?
JJED 0040
AB: Initially of course they came in as slaves with
families that brought them here for their labor. Some
were probably at least working for places such as salt
mines and so on. Then at the end of the Civil War, a
good many of those people who had been slaves left,
and a new population began to come in. Some came
following the mines looking for work; others came to
the railroads, logging, and whatever there was,
whatever industry there was seemed to present
opportunities for work.
Q: Did western Virginia, then West Virginia
have any sort of a special conditions for blacks?
JJED 0096
AB: During the Civil War, and particularly Cabell
County that I know about, if blacks were emancipated
in Cabell County, they had to petition the county
court in order to be able to remain in the county. In
some cases, it was denied; their opportunity to live
there was denied, and so they probably had to leave.
There were some emancipations in Cabell County, a
rather large one of about sixty people, who left the
state because they were not welcome to remain.
Q: Were conditions generally better, say, prior
to the Civil War in western Virginia than in Virginia
proper? in the deep south?
JJED 0160
AB: It has been speculated that it might have been
different; I don't know whether we'd say it was better
or not. Different in the sense that West Virginia did
not have the system of large plantations with an
intermediate system of managements, overseers, and
so on that you had in the deep south. So there were
perhaps a few slaves owned by a family, which would
have meant that there would be a closer relationship
between the slaves and the family because they were
probably living in proximity to one another, working
in the fields together because there wasn't the kind of
wealth that you find in Tidewater, Virginia, and so
on, which perhaps meant that a different relationship
developed, maybe not the animosity that plagued
some of the deep south because of this closer
relationship here.
Q: Before the antebellum period we have at
least one black man, Dick Pointer, who comes out
and plays a very dramatic role. First, if you could,
sort of tell me why you're drawn to that story and tell
me what about it and the details of it that have drawn
you into it and may be offer me an assessment of what
it tells us about that time.
JJED 0266
AB: Dick Pointer is interesting because it is
documented, and it does prove that blacks were
indeed here and it suggest something about frontier
bravery that we think highly of in this country for the
most part. The role that he plays there in defending
Fort Donnally is not one that is repeated in any other
places, certainly not that I know about in West
Virginia or in this area, it hasn't been documented at
that point. And this one has been, so he is a figure
that is a romantic figure; he's one that young people
relate to and could sort of rally around, so he's an
interesting person. We don't know a lot about him
individually. He ends up as kind of a pathetic figure,
I think, kind of wandering the streets of Lewisburg.
He was never able to be pensioned as he did petition
for.
Q: Could you start that part again ....
JJED 0359
AB: Dick Pointer ends up in my view as a sort of a
pathetic figure, who is living sort of on the largess of
other people. He was given a small plot of land to
live on, but I see him as an old man, sort of wandering
around the streets of Lewisburg without any real
income of his own and probably existing on handouts
of people. Of course that's speculation in part.
Q: It's also more of a romantic I guess and
honorable part of the story that he's petitioned for his
freedom ...
JJED 0413
AB: It's honorable at the end as well. I wouldn't
want to think that it was not honorable the way he
finally ended up, but it's almost as if people who gave
any portion of their service to the larger community
are often rewarded, and Dick Pointer was not. He
was not given his freedom; he was not pensioned in
any way, so he really had nothing to live on, and he
was finally freed by the family that owned but it was
not I think tied into the heroic action of those few
moments at Fort Donnally.
Q: You must have imagined in reading about
this story what it must have been like to be a black
locked in a fort in the wilderness of Greenbrier county
in 1778.
JJED 0491
AB: When I did write about him I thought about it,
but as a youngster and given the kinds of relationships
that I think developed often between blacks and
whites in West Virginia, I rather think that his life
might not have been a totally unhappy one given the
circumstances of that area. There might have been
some friendships that developed and there might have
been a kind of easy banter and day to day kind of
existence that might not have made his life so terrible
unpleasant. There isn't anything that of course Dick
Pointer says that we know about, so we can only
speculate about what his life might have been like and
what his thoughts might have been and that can go in
almost any direction.
Q: Before we leave him, can you just kind of
give me a sort of capsule, paragraph about Dick
Pointer from youth to old age. What is his story? ? ?
I know you could probably give me a page. What's
the kernel of the story?
JJED 0600
AB: Of course the kernel of the story is that he was
inside Fort Donnally when the Indians came down
from Point Pleasant attacking the Greenbrier forts.
They knew that they were coming; it was early in the
morning as I understand it. And there were people
who were sleeping inside the fort, and when the
Indians attacked one other man and Dick Pointer
were the two who were awake who rolled large
barrels of water against the door to prevent their entry
and held off the Indians until the other people could
come down and join the fight and until the
reinforcements could come from another area.
JJED 0662
So he has that one moment of action in a lifetime that
has caused him to be written into Ann Royall's
account of her experiences there, which is what
certainly gives us the information that we know about
him. But that's only one moment in a lifetime, and I
suspect that there were other instances of similar
bravery because life on the frontier demanded that.
And we can only speculate why he did that and what
other things he might have done.
Q: What was he doing there?
JJED 0714
AB: He was a slave there; he was a slave owned by
the colonel of the fort, and he had no choice but to be
there.
Q: Do you have any idea whether he was one of
many of the frontier or ??
AB: No, I don't know that.
Q: Moving onto a later period of early 19th
century.
JJED 0753
AB: Before we leave that, when you're talking about
whether he was one of others. There's a story of a
woman in Morgantown who would have lived
perhaps a few years after him who was indicted and
hanged for burning a barn and attempting to poison
the family that owned her or someone in that family,
which suggests there were different dimensions of
slave life in western Virginia at the same period. That
here on the one hand we have a man who is fighting
against the Indians, to save white people who were
living in the fort, and at the other extreme we have a
woman, motives unknown, who is indicted for barn
burning and attempting to kill whites in the area. So,
we have this kind of multi-dimensional experience in
a time frame that is not too far distant from one
another.
Q: I was going to ask about -- it seems like the
first large influx of slaves has to be the salt industry of
the Kanawha valley under probably one of the worst
conditions you can imagine. They were leased slaves
from Virginia and they were working under terrible
conditions, many dying, and if that sort of runs
counter to the image of western Virginia as relatively
a better place for blacks?
JJED 0906
AB: But I don't know how many times that is
repeated throughout the state of West Virginia or
western Virginia. There were not a great many slaves
in this part of Virginia, and Kanawha County
probably had one of the larger concentrations. And of
course there were others up around the eastern
panhandle and what not, and some down in Monroe
County. But you find other stories in other places,
some that we haven't been able to trace down and that
is not at all to defend it, I'm simply saying that we
don't know and that there are stories which are all
over the map. So that you can find something to
illustrate almost any point that you want to
make.
JJED 0969
For example, in Monroe County in 1848, Christopher
Payne was born. Christopher Payne was a man who
became the first black legislator in West Virginia,
then living in Fayette County. But I don't have any
indication that Christopher Payne, although he was
born in 1848 was a slave. He was educated in
Monroe County in some fashion that we don't know
either. I do remember that Ambler speaks of Sunday
school at Rehobeth Church in Monroe County where
blacks were taught to read. So you have these
differences that are occurring in various parts of the
state, and it's difficult to explain them. So the
character isn't the same; you have that certainly in
Kanawha County, but then you have other instances
in other parts of the state that are a little
different.
SOUND ROLL 72, BICKLEY
INTERVIEW
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 2, ROLL 202,
SOUND 72
Q: And so the images come down of slavery
oftentimes is one of silent victims who were done to ?
? We're beginning to find out that's not entirely
accurate, that there were little acts of rebellion, many
of them occurred here in West Virginia. Tell me
about that.
JJED 1095
AB: I'm sure that blacks were not always victims;
certainly not in West Virginia and certainly we know
that wasn't true in the deep south. There are a few
instances that I know about of slave, small rebellions.
The story of Millie in Monongalia County, the
woman who burned the barn and attempted to poison
the owners is one of those stories. There's another
little story of a male slave who was sent to the barn
early one morning to get eggs for breakfast and while
he was there he saw a piece of bacon rind coated with
arsenic that was nailed the wall to catch rats. He
scrapped a little of the arsenic off and took it back to
the house with him and put it in the food and made
everyone ill.
JJED 1177
As I recall that story, he was not given a jail sentence
or anything of that sort about it, which surprises me a
little bit. I think he was kind of was tapped on the
hands a little bit but really wasn't severely punished.
Which interests me also with the Millie story, and I'm
wondering if there was a difference in the way male
slaves might have been treated versus the way female
slaves might have been treated because Millie was
executed. There was a male who was involved in the
same situation with her, though the extent to which he
is involved is not really known, but he was burned in
the hand and allowed to go free, while Millie was
killed. And I speculate that perhaps the value of a
male slave, the monetary value versus the monetary
value of a female slave might have been one of the
things that helped to determine what was justice in
this area.
Q: What's your assessment, your personal
assessment of the importance of John Brown's raid ?
?
AB: The importance of John Brown's raid is kind of
a hard thing to assess in terms of West Virginia ...
TAKE 3
Q: And so right after the Civil War ended, freed
Baptists from New England came in and the Freeman'
Bureau and with quite a few local blacks, start to put
together an educational system for blacks. The same
time there's a state law that says you have more than
30 blacks in a district you have to have a school, and
the state's doing nothing. Tell me a little bit about
this early beginnings of education of blacks in West
Virginia?
JJED 1359
AB: When we talk about education, black education
in West Virginia, we need to go back to during the
Civil War to note that the first school for black people
in West Virginia that we know of was in Parkersburg
in 1862. And that it was established by a group of
free black people in West Virginia, whose names we
have. Now we don't know a great deal about them,
but we do have the names and we do know about one
of the men, Robert W. Simmons, whose
granddaughter is still living in Parkersburg. So, part
of what we have to understand is that it was not just
the benevolence of people who came in from
somewhere else to do something for these people, that
they were interested in trying to help themselves.
JJED 1423
When we look at the records of the supervisor of
schools in Ohio County for example, he notes in his
report to the state that there has been a group of black
people who are interested in education in Wheeling
and they are interested in trying to get a school
started. So by 1866 or so, we have black education
also in Wheeling, which was a push, a self-help kind
of push. When we come down to a place like Cabell
County, there was a kind of push from the black
community to begin to get schools, but we don't really
have a building. We have rented space used in Cabell
County and they don't get real building until much
later. So, not only were the Baptists involved and not
only were the Freedman's Bureau, involved but there
is also a definite interest on the part of black people
themselves to try to get some education started.
JJED 1506
And I would suspect that this stems from the great
effort during slavery to keep blacks from the Word, to
keep us from being able to read an so those people
who were freed slaves and who came into West
Virginia after the Civil War were very interested in
trying to get schools started for their children. Not
only for their children, but for themselves because
many of them as adults wanted to learn to read. My
grandfather was a slave in Virginia and came to West
Virginia just after the 1870's, where he met my
grandmother, who was one of the free black
population settling just across the river from
Huntington in Ohio. And she could read. One of the
stories that my aunt told me about her father was that
his wife, my grandmother, taught him to spell out a
few things from his bible and from his lodge book,
and so it was very, very important for those
people.
JJED 1597
I remember seeing his children read the newspaper.
They were all addicted to the newspaper, though they
may not have had higher education. My father might
have went to the second or third grade, but he read the
newspaper every day. At the time of his death, owned
an International Webster's Third Dictionary,
Unabridged, which is not something many people
would have in their homes today. The Webster's
Third was always a difficult dictionary, but that
he owned an Unabridged Dictionary suggests
something that he had inherited from his slave father,
which was that need to know and need to understand
words and the love for words that many of those
people had and wanted to see passed down to their
children through schools.
Q: ...
TAKE 4
Q: Tell me about how after the union started
raiding the south and ??? conditions for free blacks
because it must have been ? ?
JJED 1700
AB: I'm not sure that anybody has ever really
thought about what it was like to be a black person in
America. Can you imagine first of all what it might
have been like to be escaping from slavery via the
underground railroad? I drove from Huntington
across the river up to a little town called Getaway,
and as I drove through this fairly rural area and some
places following the creek and the other places the
road diverges from the creek, I thought about what it
might have been like to be escaping from slavery
through that kind of territory without road, without
automobile, without moonlight, without starlight, just
trying to get somewhere.
JJED 1763
You don't have any idea where you're going. The
territory is hostile; the people are hostile, and you are
simply trying to move through following the stars, if it
was a starry night to get somewhere. I'm not sure that
that kind of terror has ever really been communicated
to people, and I'm not sure that the kind of terror that
slaves experiences in those years after the Civil War
has ever really been communicated.
JJED 1807
My grandfather was a slave and there's a story in our
family that they had one sister. When the Civil War
ended, my grandfather and his brothers came into
western Virginia and settled down in Huntington, but
the story was that there was a sister who had been
sold south, and we never knew anything about her;
we never knew her name, but my grandfather would
never go into the south. The story was that he -- they
were curious about what had happened to her and
they wanted to go look for her, but he was so terrified
about going back into Virginia and going south again
that they'd never tried to find her. But can you
imagine what this great internal migration might have
been like for black people?
JJED 1868
When you have thousands, literally thousands of
people simply walking the roads, people who have no
food, who have no clothing, who have no money, the
territory is hostile, the people around them are hostile
and they're trying to find someplace to go. And when
people came into western Virginia, this caravan of
people that came after the Civil War looking for a
better life. Now when we zip up and down the
highway in high powered automobiles over concrete
roads, it's very difficult for us to try to recapitulate
what it might have been like for those slaves who
were walking. If they were lucky they had a wagon
or a horse or a rifle or something, but for the most
part they were empty-handed.
JJED 1937
They had nothing, and they were trying to find
someplace where they could go and make a life for
themselves. I'm not sure that we have a real
appreciation for the difficulties of that experience, the
horrors of it. Nights on the road, very very hard, very
hard, and I'm not sure in West Virginia we have
captured what it was like living here at the end of the
Civil War. In Huntington blacks did not own
property until 1880's. And in places where there was
a free black population, I don't know how much land
acquisition there was, that was possible for blacks in
West Virginia, and I think that might have been one
of the reasons that there was such an immediate
exodus once the Civil War is over.
JJED 2012
When you are not permitted to buy land, to build
homes for yourselves, to build sustaining institutions
such as churches and schools and so on, then you
have no stake in the community and there's no reason
for you to stay in it. I think that's one of the reasons
that so many people left I would think. In Huntington
two thirds of the people had been slaves got out of the
city or out of the county really as soon as the Civil
War ended. And I think that is probably true in many
places throughout West Virginia. The new
population ...
WEST VIRGINIA HISTORY, ROLL 73
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 5, ROLL 203,
SOUND 73
Q: Ancella, tell me what options may have been
available to freed blacks coming into West Virginia
after the Civil War?
JJEE 0029
AB: Let's go back and talk about not just free blacks
coming into West Virginia following the Civil War,
but there's a story about a family that came to
Huntington probably during the Civil War or just
before. This man was an escaped slaved owned by a
family they said was called McGattith, but I cannot
find a McGattith family in Wytheville, Virginia.
There is a McGavith there, and I think that was just a
corruption of that name. But at any rate, he came,
took the name Johnson and lived and was helped by a
white family in the east end of Huntington up near
Guyandotte.
JJEE 0087
I think it was called the Clark family, and this man,
Johnson, James Johnson, married and became the first
black person to marry in Cabell County after the Civil
War in 1866. But he was a farmer. He put together
with the help of the Clark family, about 80 acres of
land in a holler they used to call Johnson holler there
in West Virginia and had about nine children and they
all settled in this little community around this holler.
So farming was something that happened. There's
another story of a family that came, again from
Virginia, just at the tail end of the Civil War, coming
down towards Huntington, stopped in St. Albans,
made a crop for one year, and then went on and
bought property in Wayne County, West Virginia,
and farmed.
JJEE 0165
So farming was certainly an option and probably the
opportunity to own land, which was something that
many of them had never been able do before and that
was a very vital concern for many of these people
who were coming in. Others had service kinds of
jobs. Women certainly were working as domestics.
Men were working in some cases as barbers, as cooks,
as butlers. As the big hotels began to develop they
became waiters and cooks and did service jobs in
those hotels. So before the heavy industry began to
develop in West Virginia, I would suggest that
farming and domestic kinds of things and again these
service jobs were the things that sustained those slaves
who were coming in. And I believe that they must
have found life here reasonably compatible because
sometimes there were sort of advance parties which
came, a brother or a relative, and they would go back
and bring others here.
JJEE 0255
So they must have found something in West Virginia
that suggested to them that they could build a
different lifestyle and a decent lifestyle for themselves
and their families here.
Q: Who was Molly Gabe?
JJEE 0276
AB: Molly Gabe was a black women who lived in
Braxton County. She was I guess a West Virginia
mountain women, which is not something that we
often identify with black people. She lived her entire
life in Braxton County. She was a slave there who
was sold to another family when she was very young.
And one of the stories is that when the Civil War, she
was living they say in Clay County. I'm not sure if it
was Clay County. But that she was not told that she
was free. And there is an account that she told to
somebody which I think was a marvelous one, that it
was in the evening in about dusk or so when this man
came running up on a horse and asked her if she, who
she was, and told her he had been sent to get her
because the war was over and that she was free and
she could not be kept any longer.
JJEE 0368
But Molly Gabe a life of service in Braxton County.
She was a midwife. She and her husband farmed.
They carted things about. She worked as a maid.
She helped with washing. She was just a figure that
many people still remember in Braxton County. She
lived to be about a hundred years old and was a very
much loved and a revered figure in her area.
Q: If you wouldn't mind, would you tell me that
anecdote and start with Molly Gabe was never told
she was free and tell me about the man who came on
the horse.
JJEE 0427
AB: Molly Gabe was a young woman, a slave, in
Braxton County. When the Civil War ended, the
family that owned her did not tell her that she was
free. But her mother whose name was Jane Ray,
knew that she was free and sent Molly Gabe's uncle,
Moman Ray, to get her. And Molly Gabe told the
story of his riding up on a horse with another horse,
the reins in his hands and saw her and told her that
she was free and that she could go with him, that she
could no longer be kept by the family that owned her.
And so she was able to be rejoined with her family.
...
JJEE 0499
Molly Gabe was a slave in Braxton County. She had
been sold away from her family to another family and
when the Civil War the family that owned her did not
tell her that she was free. She gives this very poignant
statement of her uncle, Moman Ray, who was sent by
her mother, Jane, to fetch her. And she says that he
came riding up on a horse with the reins of another
horse in his hand and told her that she was free and
that the family could no longer keep her, and that he
would take her back to her family. It's a beautiful
story that she tells.
Q: Was that a typical experience that that fact
was hid from people?
JJEE 0560
AB: I think it was hidden from some; I don't know
how typical it was in West Virginia, but I think it
happened probably more times than we care to
realize, fairly frequently. The think that I find
interesting about Molly Gabe is I don't have anything
that Molly Gabe really said firsthand. I don't have a
video tape of her; I just know what other people said
about her, but there doesn't seem to be any bitterness
or anger, at least in the reported stories about Molly
Gabe. She went back to Braxton County and spent
her life there delivering babies and working for people
and never seems to express any anger about being
sold or any anger about not being told that she was
free.
Q: The last years of the Civil War bring
probably the most famous black immigrant to West
Virginia, Booker T. Washington. What's your
assessment of his story?
JJEE 0646
AB: He probably was the most famous, but don't
forget that Carter G. Woodson was also an immigrant
to West Virginia. And there were some other people
who have not received the kind of publicity that
Booker T. Washington received who also I think
made great contributions to life in West Virginia. He
certainly did not make much since he didn't stay here
very long many contributions to our lives here. I
think that Booker T. Washington was a man of his
times. I think that he did what he could do within the
sphere that he was allowed to work. I also think that
he was a useful tool for political factors in the United
States of that time.
JJEE 0711
There's been an interesting book done, however,
which suggests that his influence, educational
influence at least, was not as great as it has been
supposed. Of course you know that Booker T.
Washington was encouraging people to work with
their hands perhaps more than with their heads, but
there were other schools that were developing all
about the United States at the time that he was in his
ascendancy that were encouraging blacks to be very
literate and to be political, and certainly that was
happening right here in West Virginia. So we have
first hand examples of people who were not altogether
following the Booker T. Washington pattern and were
suggesting that there other ways that black people
could make their mark in this country.
Q: One of the largest groups to come in, of
blacks to come into West Virginia, starts to come in
in the 1870's with the building of the C&O Railroad
and you got a personal story to tell about that. Tell
me about blacks being imported in through labor
agents and the building of the railroad and what that
represented, what that experience?
JJEE 0820
AB: I don't really know a lot about blacks being
brought into West Virginia to work on the railroad
through official sources. There are lots of stories that
are about. I do know that there was a group that
came to Huntington, between seven and ten men, who
...
Q: Your father was one of them is that what you were saying ? ? ?
TAKE 6
Q: Tell me about your own relative attachment
to the railroad and what the railroad represented to
them?
JJEE 0867
AB: My grandfather was a slave in Virginia and
when the Civil War ended, he came into West
Virginia to work on the railroad. One of the stories
that we have heard is that this group of ex-slaves was
solicited by Collis P. Huntington to come and work
on the railroad, and that may be true because they
passed up other opportunities to go to Huntington.
For example the salt mines was still operational in
Kanawha County, and as you know Booker T.
Washington's family stopped there and worked. But
this other group went directly to Huntington and
found employment on the railroad before the railroad
was actually built, before the C&O shops were
actually operational. ...
TAKE 7
Q: Tell me a bit more about how this attachment
formed between black workers, including your
grandfather and the railroad. What did the railroad
do for them and what did they do for them?
JJEE 0969
AB: The railroad gave the ex-slaves opportunities
for paid employment. The jobs were difficult,
dangerous, but there was some fairly steady work for
them and they received a pay check on a rather
regular basis. So many of them, at least in my family,
my father had great loyalty to the railroad because he
felt that the railroad had enabled him to ...
WEST HISTORY, SOUND ROLL 74,
BICKLEY INTERVIEW
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 8, CAMERA 204,
SOUND 74
Q: Describe for me, if you will, the situation for
blacks along the Ohio River, where a river was
literally the borderline between slavery.
JJEE 1043
AB: The Ohio river was the gateway to freedom. If
you could get to the Ohio river as a slave and get
across, you were in free territory and there were lots
of people arranged along the Ohio river were poised
to help escaping slavery. Now of course a slave who
was escaping ....
AB: The Ohio river was literally the gateway to
freedom. ...
TAKE 9 ...
JJEE 1103
AB: The Ohio river was literally the gateway to
freedom. If you were an escaping slave and could get
to the Ohio, you pretty much knew that if you could
get to the other side that there would be people who
would take you in and help you to move further north
and to absolute freedom. One did not stay around on
the Ohio river, however, if one were not freed,
manumitted with papers to prove it because there
have been instances where people from Cabell County
crossed the river and brought escaping slaves back
and particularly after the fugitive slave law was
passed. To kind of hang around there without being
freed legally was not the prudent thing to do.
JJEE 1167
But all along on the Ohio side of the river colonies
began to develop with free black people in them and
certainly there was one or several across from
Huntington that not only aided and abetted escaping
slaves, but presented a view of what life as free people
could be for those slaves that were still on the
Virginia side. For example, we had just across from
Huntington, Macedonian Church, which is built about
1813 and established congregation where they not
only sheltered ex-slaves, but they did some teaching
and some other things. And those institutions of that
sort must have been difficult for the slave owners who
were just across the river to view and to leave
alone.
JJEE
So we have those communities which were
developing. There was land ownership; they were
raising crops; they were involved in shipping and
steam boating and barrel making and they were
beginning to be educated. There were small schools
that were developing just across the river, so those
images had to transmit themselves across the West
Virginia side or the Virginia side at that time. So I
don't think that we should forget the importance of
Ohio and the Ohio river in that whole business of
trying to get freed of slavery.
Q: When that news arrived back in places like
Huntington, what did the blacks do about, how did
they receive it?
JJEE 1306
AB: The news of opportunities for escape came I'm
sure to Huntington. There are a few newspaper
accounts that indicate that people did escape. There
was one story in the newspaper, somewhere in the
1880's of an older couple that escapes and came back
to visit after the Civil War was over, and they talked
about how they had moved through South Point and
on into Ohio from Huntington. So I'm sure that the
word got out that there were attempts to escape.
Q: .... Also along the Ohio rivers is the
abolitionists experimental communities of Ceredo?
Tell me about them?
JJEE 1383
AB: That experiment was a free soil experiment. ...
The Ceredo experiment was a free soil experiment. It
was an attempt to prove that paid labor could be more
efficient and more effective than slave labor. And if it
had worked as it was intended and had times been
different, ultimately that kind of thing would probably
have led to a diminution of slavery. But the Ceredo
experiment might have been in the wrong place at the
wrong time, so it did not have the kind of successes
that Thayer, who was the person who helped it to
begin, probably visualized. I think that the people
who came there, though they probably had some
abolitionist sentiment, I'm not sure they were active
abolitionists, and that probably was because of the
surroundings.
JJEE 1460
They were more interested in trying to make their
settlement go, than they were in trying to free the
slaves. There probably was underground railroad
activity; there was some help there, but I think they
incurred the wrath of people like Albert Gallatin
Jenkins and some of the other locals and so any
activity they had might have been more covert, than
overt.
Q: What is your assessment of the role of slavery
in the formation of West Virginia? Take stock of that
for me.
JJEE 1513
AB: Slavery in western Virginia was not a profitable
enterprise because the mountainous terrain did not
lend itself to the kinds of, big business kinds of
opportunities plantation slavery that one found in the
south, except in isolated places. Of course you would
have found some of that in the eastern panhandle and
in some of the counties. In Kanawha County there
might have been some of that, a little down in Cabell
County, but in the interior of West Virginia we would
not have found slavery that helpful. But I do think
that slave labor was helpful on a small basis.
JJEE 1574
On a small almost sustenance kinds of farms that
were developing in West Virginia, I'm sure that slave
labor helped to clear the land, to do the planting, and
the kind of hard work that occurs on farms. I think
that the labor of some females, such as that Molly
Gabe working as a midwife, doing domestic chores
and that sort of thing probably helped to settle the
West Virginia and from the colonial days forward
probably aided that. The contribution of slave labor
was helpful.
Q: How important was the issue of slavery to the
political formation of the new state of West Virginia?
Was it the cause for West Virginia?
JJEE 1642
AB: No, the issue of slavery was not the cause of the
breaking away of Virginia from West Virginia or
West Virginia from Virginia. It certainly was a
contributing factor. The whole business of
representation and the fact that the eastern Virginians
could count their slaves which helped them to have
bigger representation in the state government and
therefore have a bigger say in what was happening in
the state probably had a great deal to do with it. But
in terms of sentiment for slavery or against slavery
from a humanitarian point of view, I don't think that
that had anything to do with the separation of
Virginia from West Virginia. It certainly came into
the deliberations however when the state was being
established, probably because Lincoln and other
people saw this as an opportunity to experiment with
some of the kinds of things that they might do when
the Civil War was over.
JJEE 1726
So setting up a government in West Virginia and
arguing about whether or not slavery would continue
or not continue probably gave them some training for
what they might do later on. But there were other
causes that -- the transportation and the taxing and
what-not that had more I think to do with the
establishment of West Virginia than slavery did.
Q: So slavery was used to serve as a straw man
in front of these more economic reasons for the
split.
JJEE 1772
AB: It might have been, but I have certainly never
felt that West Virginia separated itself from Virginia
because slavery. I think that that might be one of the
things that is a romantic view and that people like to
say, but I don't think it really had that much of an
impact on it. ...
TAKE 10
Q: And so who was J. W. Clifford?
JJEE 1832
AB: J. W. Clifford was from the eastern panhandle.
He was a lawyer, political activist and a newspaper
man in that he started the first black newspaper in
West Virginia. He is a really interesting person. He
was also involved in helping to make the
arrangements for Niagara movement when they met
in Harpers Ferry and that was the forerunner to the
NAACP. But one of the things that was interesting
about him is that he was an attorney for a case in
1898 where a woman whose name was Carrie
Williams who was a teacher in Tucker County. And
the school board decided when they began to run out
of money that they would shorten the school year for
the black children in Tucker County, and Carrie
Williams was their teacher so she was instructed that
instead of teaching them for eight months she was to
teach them for five months.
JJEE 1907
When the five months ended, Carrie continued
teaching those children for the full eight months and
then sued the board of education of Tucker County
for her money and J. W. Clifford was the attorney and
later her husband. And they won. That was the
interesting thing about it. I think she got like about a
hundred and twenty three dollars for her three months'
salary for teaching in Tucker County. But I think
that was really interesting in that it happened in 1898
that they had the courage to go to court to fight for the
education of these young people and that the court
system of West Virginia was such that they could take
that to court and could win in West Virginia at that
time. I just think that that's the time when the black
codes are being put into place in the deep south and
that West Virginia blacks were feeling free enough to
go to court and fight for their rights and be sustained I
think is an interesting commentary.
Q: Does it also reflect sort of a fifty year
indifference to black education from the Civil War
on?
JJEE 2001
AB: I don't think that there was a real indifference to
black education in West Virginia between the end of
the Civil War and the time of the Carrie Williams
case. ...
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 11, CAMERA 205, SOUND ROLL 75
Q: So tell me about how blacks took control and
became very actively involved in setting up schools in
West Virginia?
JJEF 0034
AB: As soon as black people were able, I think that
they began to agitate for schools. We have the
example of the Parkersburg school in 1862, followed
by the school in Wheeling, which came along a few
years later. In neither of these instances did the idea
for education come from outside. It came from within
the black community, and those people who didn't
have very much money but dug into their own
pockets to provide for the schools all along it is to be
remembered I believe that blacks valued education.
And wherever a few of them came together, they
began to try to see that the advantages of education
would be make available to their young people. And
they worked hard, giving of their own money, when
they didn't have very much to do that.
JJEF 0108
There was a family that came to Wayne County,
West Virginia, just at the end of the Civil War,
bought property in Wayne County and one of the
things that they did ultimately was to give a portion of
their land so that a school house could be built so that
the children, the black children, in that area would
have a place to go to school.
Q: Tell me about the Sumner School? How it
came about and its importance.
JJEF 0150
AB: Sumner school was preceded by a free school
established by the free black people of Parkersburg.
Once the Civil War was ended and the state began to
be active in public education, they were able to move
the Sumner School operation into the public system.
The Sumner school was a school that was named for
Charles Sumner, who was an abolitionist senator in
the Civil War, an I think that it is indicative of the
mind set of the people of Parkersburg that they chose
to name their school for Charles Sumner. The school
served the entire community from the first through the
twelfth grade. Some of their teachers came from Ohio
because West Virginia did not have an educational
system that was in place in this section of the state to
provide for education of teachers and so some of their
early teachers came from out of state.
JJEF 0236
And they were able to establish a fairly satisfactory
educational system that is still remembered by the
older people who live in that community as being a
very, very important aspect of their lives. But again,
it extended from a self help effort that was later
adopted by the state.
Q: Just tell me a little bit more about that, the
1862 school. Tell me about this mind set in
Parkersburg.
JJEF 0278
AB: The 1862 school in Parkersburg was what they
called a "pay" school. There were perhaps eight or
nine people who came together and decided that they
would develop a school and they charged a dollar a
month for tuition for those students who came. They
made provisions that children who did not have the
one dollar, could still be educated. Their school was
held I believe in the basement of a white church in
Parkersburg and their first teacher was a white
minister. I believe his name was S. E. Colburn. But
they felt that education was important. Now we don't
know what the name of that school was. It was not
Sumner at that time. The name Sumner did not
become attached to the school until sometime later on
after the school had been assumed by the public
sources.
Q: Tell me about the environment of
Parkersburg though that led to this? How was
Parkersburg different?
JJEF 0364
AB: It is difficult to reconstitute what made the
Parkersburg black community the one that I believe
that it became. Perhaps it was the proximity to the
Ohio river and the opportunity to have exchanges
with people who were, free black people, who were
across the river because certainly Belpre and some of
those other places had a free black population. But a
free black population did develop in Parkersburg.
One of the most outstanding persons was Robert W.
Simmons, who was one of the persons who helped to
begin the school. Simmons was himself a barber by
trade. Was very active politically; so much so that
when the Fifteenth Amendment was passed, Arthur
Boreman, who had been the first governor of West
Virginia sent Simmons a telegram a telegram to tell
me that the Fifteenth Amendment was passed.
JJEF 0440
Rumor has it that he also was given an appointment
to Hades I believe as a consul but decided that he
would not take it. But the Parkersburg community
that I believe was frozen out of the economic
development of Parkersburg in that they were not
really involved in the oil and gas industry to any
extent, yet those people found ways to make a living
for themselves. They had small business such as
cafes. ...
JJEF 0495
Blacks in Parkersburg were not a part of the oil and
gas industry in they did not find employment in those
industries. Yet, they found ways to make a living for
themselves. Some of them were farmers, they
developed catering businesses; they developed barber
shops; they had small restaurants. One family in later
years had a chicken farm and had a number of
contracts with stores all around the agency supplying
them with freshly dressed chickens. So they looked
for ways to make a living. They took charge of their
lives. I think that that's a very important concepts,
and we were talking earlier about the victims of
slavery. These black people did not allow themselves
to be victims; although they were not given
opportunities to participate in the industrial
development of Parkersburg, they found ways to
make a living.
JJEF 0578
When I talk with the women of Parkersburg,
particularly who largely served as domestics in that
area, one of the stories that they tell that they
sincerely believe that there was an effort on the part of
the white families of Parkersburg that employed these
women, to hold wages to a certain level. They feel
that the white women came together and made
agreements about how much they would pay the
black women who worked as domestics and that
restricted their income through that means.
JJEF 0625
They also feel that as a part of this maintenance of a
pool of black workers for the homes of the wealthy in
Parkersburg, that they did not allow them to have jobs
in downtown Parkersburg, even as maids and in the
stores and what not. That when those jobs were filled,
they were filled with black people who came across
from Ohio from Belpre and not by the Parkersburg
women because of this desire to keep them as a pool
of domestic workers.
Q: I'd prefer that you'd say that again in a
declarative way ... and say that the white families got
together and kept ...
AB: I don't know that. ... I know what they tell
me.
Q: Shall we go ahead then to the 1920's and ...
tell me about how during the 1920's the important
black institutions start to get established in West
Virginia?
JJEF 0724
AB: Perhaps the first black institution that started in
West Virginia was a children's home, a orphans'
home. It was incorporated just at the turn of the
century in Bluefield but never really opened in
Bluefield. The man who incorporated it, Rev. C. E.
Magee, came to Huntington and actually started the
orphans' home on a parcel of land in a place called
Central City in Huntington and then moved it to the
east end of Huntington. Ultimately that orphans'
home was taken over by the state and operated by the
state. Later beginning in maybe 1917 or so, there
began to be the development through the efforts of
black legislators a series of institutions brining
services to the black community.
JJEF 0792
One of these was the Denmar Sanitarium, which
treated tubercular patients in Pocahontas County,
West Virginia. We also had a girls' industrial home, a
boys' industrial home, an institution for the insane and
so on. And again, these were begun through the
agitation of black people in the state and the lead was
taken by black legislators to see that legislation was
passed and that they were indeed established.
Q: Why were these institutions important?
JJEF 0839
AB: Black people felt that their own institutions
were important because it would place them in
charge. Black people were receiving services for
example, the mentally incompetent in at Weston
probably on a closed and segregated colored wing at
Weston. They felt that they opportunities for
rehabilitation and for sound treatment would be better
if the responsibility was placed squarely with black
people who had an understanding for and sympathy
with the patients with whom they were working, and
so they began to move to establish these institutions.
And I must say that there several of them that I think
were remarkably enlightened. Lincoln, for example,
which was the institution for the black insane.
JJEF 0910
And I understand that there were some remarkable
programs which developed at Lincoln. I have also
reviewed some of the courses of study and so on of
the boys' industrial home which was just across the
road from the mental institution at Lincoln, then
called Maggie, West Virginia. And they had I think
an exceptional program for rehabilitating those
youthful offenders.
WEST VIRGINIA HISTORY PROJECT
SOUND ROLL 76
ANCELLA BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 12,
ROLL 206, SOUND 76
Q: Ancella tell me how the creation of two black
higher education institutions came about in West
Virginia?
JJEF 0984
AB: Both West Virginia State College and Bluefield
State College were started at the agitation of the black
population who began to realize that there had to be
some way to provide higher education for the black
youth of the state. And when we talk about higher
education we aren't necessarily talking about college
level courses, but we are also talking about high
school and upper elementary courses because
although there were a number of schools developing
in West Virginia, there were not a whole lot of high
schools, so both of those institutions started out
providing education at that level for black youth.
They also provided ...
JJEF 1054
Both West Virginia State College and Bluefield State
College were started at the agitation of the black
people who began to recognize that there was a need
for something beyond the elementary school
experience for their young people. Both of those
institutions then provided the kind of upper
elementary and high school education.
They provided as well normal education preparing
teachers for the growing number of black schools in
West Virginia. There are a couple of other efforts
that might be considered too in the effort of black
people to develop and control the education for
themselves. One was a Baptist school which was
begun at a place called Hilltop which is very near
Beckley, West Virginia that operated for a number of
years and provided or hoped to provide not only high
school education but some college education as
well.
JJEF 1139
It went out of business somewhere probably towards
the end of 1920 or so. There was another effort to
begin a seminary in Huntington. Again, down in that
part of the west end of Huntington called Central
City. They found property; they hired a teacher and
were going to establish something that they called the
collegiate institute. It never really got underway, but
does suggest that there was black interest and efforts
to develop and control for themselves education in
West Virginia.
Q: What's your assessment of Storer
College?
JJEF 1191
AB: Storer College is a college that has not received
its just due in terms of what it meant when it was
established. In the very deep south you had a lot of
missionary effort establishing education and colleges
for black, newly freed slaves. A lot of that did not
happen in West Virginia, and so Storer College is
kind of a one of a kind in its case providing in its own
right, providing a lot of educational help for people in
the eastern panhandle and probably other points north
of that in West Virginia, but is a marvelous example
of a cooperative effort in West Virginia between the
Freedman's Bureau, the church and black people
themselves who were interested in education
there.
Q: What impact did it have on blacks in West
Virginia to have an institution that taught
teachers?
JJEF 1282
AB: Storer College was the first institution in West
Virginia that began to prepare teachers for West
Virginia institutions, West Virginia public schools.
Before their time, we had no place that was preparing
them then. So there was a sort of partnership
developed between Storer College and the state of
West Virginia to begin to develop teachers for our
schools. Now if you will consider that Storer College
got its start immediately after the Civil War, but West
Virginia State College which was the first higher
education institution and developed in this part of the
state or in the central state, didn't get started until
1891. So, for 25 or so years Storer College was the
only place in the state that could prepare the teachers
for our institutions. Others had to come from out of
state.
Q: Though it may seem obvious, remind me
again of how important it was to have black teachers
teaching black students.
JJEF 1370
AB: It is vital to have black teachers teaching black
students. Vital because they have an understanding
and sympathy for the students with whom they are
working. Not only do they do the teaching of them,
but they understand the cultural circumstances from
which the children originate, and that makes them
able to address the needs of these students in a fairly
dramatic and direct fashion that I think is important.
You can imagine teachers has always been among
black people a profession that we had a great deal of
respect for. And I believe that that respect for
teachers came out of the feeling of the ex-slaves for
education and the importance of being able to read for
them.
JJEF 1441
And so to have teachers of their own and to have
teachers in your family was an exceptional privilege
in many respects. The students looked up to the
teachers; the teachers were role models; they were
neighbors and they were friends and a very, very
important connection that was drawn between
teaching and the students and the whole educational
system that I think is vital.
Q: Tell me why in the way West Virginia
developed economically for blacks a strong middle
class, a black middle class never developed.
JJEF 1507
AB: A strong black middle class could not develop
in West Virginia because the black population was so
small. If you look at counties such as McDowell
county which did have a large black population, you
will find more black professionals operating there.
You'll find black doctors; you'll find black lawyers
and nurses and others who are there to serve the
population. But, black doctors could not serve the
general population in West Virginia. In many cases
they didn't have hospital privileges and so they found
it difficult to even serve the black population that they
might have worked with. And so black middle class,
other than the teachers, was very sparse in all parts of
West Virginia.
JJEF 1566
There were some opportunities in places such as
Huntington through the Barnett Hospital for the
training of black nurses. But if one were to train as a
nurse in Huntington, where was one to work? Black
hospitals were not available and black nurses were
not being hired in the white hospitals and so people
who had certain kinds of economic aspirations found
that they had to leave the state in order to develop
themselves professionally and to have the
opportunities to practice as a professional.
Q: Tell me then why it's such a double tragedy in
the 1950's when the economy of West Virginia
collapses. Schools, many of them serving black
students, begin to consolidate or to be closed and you
have this migration of the few black professionals out
of the state who were here?
JJEF 1648
AB: The loss of the black schools to the black
population in West Virginia was devastating. Not
only from an emotional point of view of losing an
institution in the community that had been one of long
service and around which many of our lives had been
centered, but there was a great economic loss as well.
If you consider simply the pay checks that came into
the black community through the school teachers, you
can see that that would have been a loss. More over
the teachers brought a certain kind of middle class
outlook, role models, the opportunities to undertake
certain kinds of activities, musical activities, dramatic
activities and what not in the black community.
JJEF 1706
Sometimes through the schools, sometimes through
the churches with which these teachers were active,
and so their loss to us was indeed a devastating loss.
There had not been the development of a strong black
middle class population of doctors and lawyers and
dentists, newspaper workers and that sort of thing in
West Virginia because the black population was so
small. So the backbone of the middle class black
population in West Virginia was the school teachers,
and when they were lost to us, there was a rather
severe kind of loss throughout the community.
Q: Have blacks been on the same economic
roller coaster in the 20th century that whites have
been on in West Virginia, boom and bust, boom and
bust.
JJEF 1786
AB: Of course, I think that blacks have had a boom
and bust kind of cycle to their lifestyle and economy.
Anything that affects the general economy of West
Virginia would of course affect black people as well,
but I suspect that the black exodus began before the
boom and bust. Those people who chose not to be
common laborers, who chose to be something more
than a coal miner or a worker on the railroad had to
leave the state in order to find a job.
JJEF 1839
It has only been within the last twenty-five or thirty
years that we began to see black people working in
department stores or working as secretaries, driving
the bus, jobs that you don't think of as being highly
skills but nevertheless jobs that were closed to us in
the state of West Virginia and only been open within
the last twenty-five or so years. So people who
wanted to do those kinds of things, who wanted to do
anything other than to dig coal or to use a shovel or a
pick on the railroad began to leave the state long
before the mines closes in search of opportunity.
Q: Going back again, ... what's your impression
of the level of KKK activity in West Virginia in the
teens and the 20's.
JJEF 1915
AB: There was some Ku Klux Klan activity in West
Virginia in the 20's. One of our neighbors in
Huntington, we were told, was a member of the Ku
Klux Klan, though she visited back and forth in very
friendly fashion though at our house, with our family.
I have talked with a few people. I have not gotten any
first hand accounts. I did talk with a man in Fayette
County who laughed at the Ku Klux Klan in the 20's
because he said that they knew who all the people
were. They could tell by the shoes. One man told me
that his father had been a shoe repairman and so was
very familiar with all the shoes in town, and so when
they looked down. ...
WEST VIRGINIA, BECKLEY INTERVIEW,
SOUND ROLL 77
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 13, CAMERA 207,
SOUND 77
Q: Ancella tell me the story about the KKK and
the shoes?
JJEG 0028
AB: Somebody told me that his father had been a
shoe repairman in West Virginia. And at that time
the Ku Klux Klan was becoming quite active in their
town. And he said that when they went down to
watch the Ku Klux Klan parades they knew who all
the people who were although they were covered with
sheets and they couldn't see their faces because they
recognized the shoes because the shoes had been
brought into their shop for repair. So there was Ku
Klux Klan activity in West Virginia. I having grown
up in West Virginia had no fear of Ku Klux Klan
activity. I'm sure that there was some violence in
some places however about the state, but I don't get
any general impression that there was a great deal of
impact of the Ku Klux Klan in the state.
Q: Have you found, is your opinion the opposite
perhaps that West Virginia by in large has been a
tolerant place?
JJEG 0123
AB: I believe that West Virginia has been a tolerant
place for blacks if blacks kind of stayed in their place.
I would assume that there was some people who,
pushed at the seams, might have gotten ... into some
difficulty.
TAKE 14
Q: Tell me, has West Virginia been a tolerant
place for blacks to live?
JJEG 0177
AB: I think that West Virginia has been a tolerant
place for blacks to live if you pretty much stayed in
your place and didn't push at the seems. I think that
some of the people who pushed at the seams perhaps
got into some political difficulty. For example, there
was a Mr. Barnett in Huntington who in 1900 was the
principal of Douglass School. He also had a
newspaper and evidently some of the things that he
wrote in the newspaper annoyed some of the white
politicians in Huntington and so he was removed from
his job. I can also remember reading some of the
correspondence between John W. Davis and the board
authorities in Charleston where they kind of
suggesting to him that he was being a little bit too
active in certain ways or perhaps was taking
advantage of the system in some way.
JJEG 0260
On the other hand, some of the moves that have been
made in West Virginia have been made by those
people who just refused to accept the status quo.
Anderson Brown in Charleston, for example, who
wanted his children to use the public library and went
to court to be sure that that was possible for them. So
I think that West Virginia has a kind of mixed history.
I believe that blacks were encouraged to move in
certain directions, but they would bump into that
invisible wall if they stepped outside of the things that
were supposedly correct. John Sheeler who was a
history profession at West Virginia State College that
took a doctorate in history at West Virginia
University, wrote in his dissertation that blacks in
West Virginia seemed to accept the separate but equal
concepts and that they pushed for equal opportunity,
that they pushed for institutions to serve the black
population, but within the boundaries of separate but
equal. And I believe that the history probably bears
that out.
Q: Did it bear that out as well in the 1960's when
the whole rest of the nation is going through the civil
rights movement. What was that experience like here
in West Virginia?
AB: I can't speak to that.
Q: Bluefield was called the Mississippi of West
Virginia because it did erupt.
JJEG 0395
AB: Bluefield State College did erupt at the tail end
I suppose of the civil rights movement. But you see
black people in West Virginia were given perhaps just
enough perks to keep us kind of satisfied. I can
remember going into the deep south and having to
ride on the back of the bus. Well, blacks did not ride
on the back of the bus in West Virginia and we did
not ride in segregated cars on the railroad, although
there had been an effort and several times to institute
those practices. They really hadn't come to great
fruition in the state. So we had more of a feeling of
connection and belonging. We voted and in some
cases were involved in the political effort through
legislators or other officials in our cities.
JJEG 0468
And so I'm not sure we were as quite as alienated as
some of the areas where -- we didn't really realize
what was happening to us I think. As we look back
now on the loss of the black schools, not only the loss
of the schools but the demotion of the principals and
the total disregard for what we had accomplished in
those years of struggle to establish education in West
Virginia, of the destruction of our libraries, of the loss
of the books that were in those libraries, the failure to
take account of things like athletic trophies or other
awards that had been won for excellence in any kind
of academic regard, those things were literally taken
and thrown on the scrap heap.
JJEG 0527
Some were retrieved by local black people, but others
were lost. And so that kind of disregard, we didn't
know we were losing those things and when we found
out how much we really had lost, it was too late. You
see it looked on paper really wonderful to say that
West Virginia integrated its schools without
difficulty, but we black people gave up everything,
even the names of our schools. In those buildings that
were kept in service, my high school for example in
Huntington, was named for Frederick Douglass.
Frederick Douglass is an authentic American hero,
and yet when that school began to be of service to the
white population of the city, the name Frederick
Douglass was not considered good enough to be
retained and so the school was re-named Fairfield.
And that occurred throughout the state of West
Virginia.
JJEG 0620
So we thought that we were being integrated into the
system, and we didn't realize that our children were
no longer going to be cheerleaders or to participate in
bands or to be in dramatic productions or go to proms
and have a dancing partner, that we would only be
useful in athletics. We didn't know that at that time.
We believed -- and I think that's something that's true
of black people -- we believe in the system. We
believed, and we allowed our destiny to be in any case
to be decided by somebody other than ourselves.
TAKE 15
Q: Also in the beginning of the 1960's an image
begins to be attached to West Virginia. It's a poor,
rural white family, dirty kids, not enough money,
unemployed. Where were black West Virginians in
that picture that comes out of the 60's.
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AB: Unfortunately people who look at Appalachia
seldom see the black West Virginian. We are a
minority within a minority within a minority, and
people don't really know that we exist. Certainly
there are black people who lived the rural
Appalachian life and have do so for generations who
are involved in hunting and fishing and quilt making
and the rest of that. Yet, there is also another side of
black Appalachian life.
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There is the urban black and some of our cities have a
substantial black population and people are involved
in the life of the city across the board, so some how
we have allowed that image of Appalachia to exist
and I would hope that somewhere along the way we
can suggest that there are others of us who live in this
area who have lived here for generations who have
the same kind of devotion to the area that white
people have but our life style, though it has tinges of
the traditional Appalachian culture and lifestyle to it,
also has a overlay or a sheen of black culture that is
perhaps traceable to our African and slave roots.
Q: Do you think that the nation took notice so
much of Appalachia in the 60's beginning with
Kennedy because it was a white poverty ? ?
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AB: I think that the nation did take note of West
Virginia because there was a black poverty, or a
white poverty really that was found here. I think that
the nation did indeed notice of West Virginia with the
triumphant Kennedy election and that they did begin
to see it as a sort of a national pocket of white
poverty. You can look at all of the programs that
came into this area after that period, the War on
Poverty and VISTA and other things, which were
aimed largely at that white audience and which
ignored some of the needs of the black population of
the state. We just don't have a high visibility, and so
for many people we don't exist.
Q: What's your assessment of what the future
holds for a place like McDowell County, which has a
relatively high black population?
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AB: I don't believe that the future of black life in
McDowell County is going to be a very strong one
unless new industry develops in McDowell County
which offers job opportunities for the black
population. ... I don't believe that the future of blacks
in southern West Virginia is a strong one in terms of
increased economic opportunity and either
maintaining or increasing the black population there.
This can only happen if there is a significant kind of
industrial development in that area. Many of the
black people ...
BICKLEY INTERVIEW, TAKE 16, CAMERA 208, SOUND 78
Q: Ancella, let's pick up that thought again.
What's your assessment of what the future holds for
southern West Virginia which contains the vast
number of blacks in West Virginia?
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AB: I don't believe that the future of black people in
southern West Virginia is a very strong one unless
there are some great economic changes which occur
in West Virginia generally and in southern West
Virginia in particular. I can't think of a great deal
that would draw people into that area, nor keep those
young people who are there there in the area unless
there are economic advantages. Many of the people
who are living there are the older people who had
established homes and who feel that life there is easier
than it would be than if they were to move someplace
else. But the terrain of southern West Virginia is
difficult; it doesn't lend itself to transportation very
easily and so I can' believe that it would be an
attractive place for black people to live.
Q: Both you and your husband are professionals
and I just have to ask: what is your attachment to this
land?
JJEG 1132
AB: My grandfather walked over the mountains as
an ex-slave and came into West Virginia and
established a home. My brother is still living on
family property in Huntington and my dad are buried
in the state and I have a very firm love and
attachment for the state of West Virginia. I don't
believe that my life could be any better any place else,
and so I intend to try to stay here.
Q: When you leave West Virginia and you
encounter an West Virginia they say: Oh, I'm an West
Virginian. When you're away are you a black
American, are you a black or are you a West
Virginian? What comes first in your own
identity?
JJEG 1208
AB: When I am away from West Virginia, I am a
black first. I am a woman second. I guess being a
West Virginian comes somewhere third or beyond
that. That's interesting. My husband was a career
army officer and one of the things that really surprised
me during that experience is that when black
Americans and white Americans were outside the
United States, our major identity was that of being an
American. Once we came back to the United States,
those racial differences inserted themselves and we
became black people and white people, something
that we had not been before. Interestingly, we spent
some time at West Virginia University and that set in
motion a series of circumstances that helped to create
both my husband and me as the professional people
that we are now.
JJEG 1307
It opened up the state to us and made us feel at home
in West Virginia in ways that I didn't know were
possible. I did not go to Morgantown with that; I
went to Morgantown in terror and lived there in terror
for the first month or so that I was there. I am now
grateful for that experience, and I could wish that all
West Virginians could begin to feel the kind of
comfort and attraction to the state that I feel.
ROOM TONE, PRESENCE BICKLEY
INTERVIEW
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