Segregation

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Transcript
Virginia Standards

Program Information

Program: Witness to a Century
Segment Number: 5 (Watch entire program)
Duration: 00:03:17
Year Produced: 2008
Description:

Most public places were racially segregated until the second half of the 20th century. These centenarians recount their experiences in a segregated Virginia.

The Roaring Twenties. Prohibition. The Great Depression. World Wars. The explosive growth of technology. Testimony from Virginia’s centenarians is used to create WCVE PBS’ one-hour documentary, “Witness to a Century.” WCVE PBS and the Virginia Historical Society have collaborated on this look back at the enormous changes that took place in Virginia in the twentieth century through the eyes of those that lived through them.

For more information visit: http://www.ideastations.org/witness/index.html

Transcript

McMurdo

In those days, Virginia was Jim Crow. They had a poll tax. The Blacks were not welcome to pay the poll tax. They were not encouraged to register to vote.

Carter

Being segregated you couldn’t go this place, we couldn’t go that place. You go to the movies, you had to be segregated. Streetcars in those days, you couldn’t sit– got to sit in the back. We couldn't drink in their water fountains, it's different. Now what’s different in that water than that one. And all the drugstores, places like that, we’d go in, try to get-get service, but just didn’t get it. But that’s the way it was.

Jordan

I had to stay out a semester because there was no High school to go...and We didn't have transportation. My father did not have a car. 15,15:05:08 We either had to ride the bus or walk. It was three-and-a-half miles to Booker T, and to ride on the bus, you sat at the– in the rear of the bus, and the Caucasians filled up the bus from the top. 15,15:08:08 But this particular day, one Caucasian girl was late. The bus driver looked up. And this Caucasian girl didn’t have a seat, so he tried to make this black boy get up and give her a seat. The bus driver said, “If you don’t get up, I’m not going to take the bus. So he locked the door, and took all of us to 18th Street, where the car barn was. When he got there, he called the police. So they took William Brown—and Savilla Buttner. To jail. William’s father worked for rich white people. He was a butler. He sued the company .He gave William the money and sent him to college. And he finished college, bought himself a home in Washington, D.C and then set up a filling station .

We stopped riding the bus because we thought that maybe some of them would be angry because of what we had done. we just had to walk. And so we did.

Coppage

You could go there to the counter, and buy what they had, but you couldn’t sit there and eat it. Of course you always had to wait until they waited on the whites.

They had, I remember, separate-separate glasses. I remember that experience because I was there with a friend. When we asked for something to drink, this waitress she went back and got these glasses. And I remember my friend said Do you have separate glasses for white and black?” She said yes. And so she said, “Well, I’m glad to know that," she said "because I’d hate to be drinking behind any white.”

Virginia Standards

Segregation

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