LEONA PARHAM: She can't sing either.
GEORGE STONEY: Well that's an opp--
PARHAM: Somebody's going to have to help her.
GEORGE STONEY: OK, I'll do my best. We've got you sitting (inaudible).
(piano playing in background)
(indistinct background sigining
PARHAM: You not singing.
ETTA MAE ZIMMERMAN: I told you I couldn't sing.
00:01:00(piano still playing)
ZIMMERMAN: Why didn't the Yanks (inaudible)?
GEORGE STONEY: Let's try --
PARHAM: He played "The Yanks Are Coming."
(break in video)
GEORGE STONEY: And we'll sing it by yourself, OK?
PARHAM: Well, I don't sing.
00:02:00(piano playing) (Stoney and Zimmerman sing indistinctly)
PARHAM: What words do you say at the end?
ZIMMERMAN: I'm fenced in too far as you'd be concerned, I can't -- I just
can't make it anymore.PARHAM: OK, (inaudible). My fingers won't (inaudible).
GEORGE STONEY: What about the other one we were singing, uh -- (plays piano)
ZIMMERMAN: Yanks are coming.
(piano playing)
00:03:00ZIMMERMAN: Well that's it.
GEORGE STONEY: Try that again 'cause I think you can do it this time. [plays piano]
(women singing indistinctly)
PARHAM: That's it.
ZIMMERMAN: Can they play "Yanks Are Comin'"?
PARHAM: No, I can't play that, can't even get the tune in my head.
GEORGE STONEY: "Over There."
(singing)
ZIMMERMAN: Sing the words, sing the words. I don't know all the lyrics.
00:04:00(piano playing)
PARHAM: No, singing the wrong (inaudible), over there.
ZIMMERMAN: I best not-- understand with this thing anymore. Might as well give
it away but I don't even remember that one.PARHAM: My daughter plays when she comes home, and I do enjoy hers.
ZIMMERMAN: I don't remember but two men had come down from (inaudible) but I
enjoy it a lot, they playing it at (inaudible).GEORGE STONEY: Well, we've got some questions.
ZIMMERMAN: Was it summertime?
PARHAM: No.
ZIMMERMAN: Over here in --
PARHAM: Out in the [corn?].
JUDITH HELFAND: Leona?
PARHAM: Mm-hmm?
00:05:00HELFAND: Leona, you told me that you got a message. How -- how'd you hear
about your sister, and your dad, that's really important?PARHAM: Well, one of the -- well, the people that did go up there, you know, to
check on 'em during the week, and I don't remember who told us that they were coming home that day but they were on their way home. (inaudible). I don't remember reading it in the paper, I just remember somebody coming and saying that they were coming home.HELFAND: But how did you hear that they were rounded up?
PARHAM: Oh, that was -- that spread like wildfire from Newnan to Hogansville.
ZIMMERMAN: Well, there were four boys up there, just finished school. Ralph
[Trussell?], Joe Princeton, and these other two boys played ball. I don't remember their names but they come right on over Hogansville and spread the word. They knew where we lived. 00:06:00PARHAM: Oh but back then everybody knew
everybody else, you know. We -- it was just like one big happy family, all one crossed-up family. We just (laughter) (inaudible) to see it.ZIMMERMAN: But I didn't see where we were wrong in trying to (inaudible) at
(inaudible) mill. You can't let people do nothing. Trying to get them to organize.HELFAND: Leona, you said that, um, she had your coat with her.
PARHAM: (laughter) Or a coat --
ZIMMERMAN: Whatever -- it was cool weather, and, uh --
PARHAM: I guess she said, "Well, since you're not going today, I think
I'll just wear your coat," she always sleeps late anyway, you know, she's always late getting started, you know --ZIMMERMAN: Well I wasn't awake (inaudible).
00:07:00PARHAM: You went out the door putting the coat on though, that's -- so I said,
well, back then, we didn't have but one coat. (laughter) No, I did have another coat, that actually that one, you know, a coat that I just wore all informally but I left (inaudible) --ZIMMERMAN: But we didn't.
PARHAM: But I didn't mind her carrying the coat on, if she done needed
something else she'd had got that too.HELFAND: Were you sorry you didn't go?
PARHAM: Well, in one sense of the word I was but I felt like --
GEORGE STONEY: Oh sorry, just say, "Well I was sorry I didn't go."
PARHAM: OK.
GEORGE STONEY: OK?
PARHAM: Well I have a sister at home that needed me too.
HELFAND: That's what you were telling me, (overlapping dialogue; inaudible) --
PARHAM: I was sorry that I did-- I couldn't go and be with Etta Mae.
HELFAND: Why?
ZIMMERMAN: Well, I, um, just --
00:08:00PARHAM: Well we always, uh, we've always done things together. The family
stuff together really. 'Course, my daddy was up there but he was a sick man when they got him, but. We lived (inaudible), you know, we were -- I run across people now, and tell me about my ma-- my mother. She didn't let us go anywhere 'cause she was afraid we'd (inaudible) 'em, but we could bring anybody home with us we wanted to.GEORGE STONEY: Now, we were talking with some ladies over in Newnan, they
obviously had create respect for your father.PARHAM: And for my mother too.
ZIMMERMAN: Well some of them didn't even know who [momma was?] (inaudible).
GEORGE STONEY: I just wondered, they -- they treated him almost like his -- like
00:09:00he did their preacher or something, and I wondered why.ZIMMERMAN: He did preach occasionally. (laughter)
PARHAM: Poppa first taught school, he was a bible scholar, and then he was--
ZIMMERMAN: (inaudible) preacher, he there was. He taught school first. And he
-- then he was a last -- well he's a book agent next, went all over the place selling books, but I think he read just about all the books he sold. And after that, he was a (inaudible) Methodist preacher. I heard him preach one sermon, Poppa didn't know when to quit. (sighs)PARHAM: But if I ever wanted to know a passage of scripture, I can go to him and
ask him where it was, when can I find a certain passage of scripture. He'd tell me chapter and verse. So he -- uh, I would say he was a bible scholar 00:10:00'cause he knew it almost from back -- from front to back.GEORGE STONEY: I think you were telling me a story about his reading of the --
reading the Tom Watson paper --ZIMMERMAN: Oh yeah, he (inaudible) --
PARHAM: He got involved in reading something, the world could've burned around
him and he would never know it. And they told a joke on him at East Newnan, and I don't doubt it one bit. He was going to Breman, Georgia, so we had -- there was a little train that run through there that -- that's the way we traveled back then, and, uh, it came at two o'clock meaning it arrived at Newnan at two o'clock. Well we didn't have a -- we just had more or less a little, oh, stand out there, where, you know the people to wait but there was a place to sit 00:11:00so we was sitting there reading his [time watching?] paper, and, uh, finally took his watch out, he said, "Well, it must be about time for that train," and there was another man up there at the same time, they said, "That train, Mr. Zimmerman, that train went through here an hour ago." He missed it. He was sitting up there --ZIMMERMAN: Not an hour ago.
PARHAM: That's what he told him, uh, about an hour ago.
ZIMMERMAN: (inaudible).
PARHAM: And that's just how involved he could get in something, you know, that
he loved. And he did love books, and, uh, if, uh, he was a strict disci-- disciplinary man, if we wanted to go someplace, and our mother didn't think it 00:12:00was quite the thing to do, she'd say, "Go talk it over with your fa-- with your daddy," we did. And, uh, he usually -- he said no, it wasn't the place for us to be.ZIMMERMAN: Oh [boy?], he was (inaudible).
PARHAM: Well I said if he was reading, he could've gone on and stayed all
night, and he wouldn't have known the difference hardly.ZIMMERMAN: Nine o'clock.
PARHAM: Well he (laughter) he would be up some time --
ZIMMERMAN: [Twelve?] o'clock then. That time I had square dancing for a week
(inaudible), I never -- I wasn't over my -- but when he heard a (inaudible), it'll --PARHAM: His feet wouldn't stay still.
GEORGE STONEY: Well, now --
PARHAM: He was a good man, (break in video) he, uh, well, as I said, he was a
good man, he was strict. And when he -- but if he really got involved in 00:13:00something that he loved, he just -- he just let the world go by, he didn't pay any attention to anything that went on around him. He could just shut things out that easily.GEORGE STONEY: How did that affect your education and your family's education?
PARHAM: Well, now you might think since he was an educated man that he
would've been more interested in our education --ZIMMERMAN: We got old enough to go to work, we went to work.
PARHAM: But when we got old enough to go to work, we went to work. Uh, one
thing I said we had a large family, it took a lot, you know, to feed and clothe us.ZIMMERMAN: My momma --
PARHAM: But my father did not work for a boss, he was (laughter) his own boss, I
-- so that's what we did, we made our -- brought our little checks home, and, uh, that took care of the family. 00:14:00GEORGE STONEY: Could you talk about his politics?
PARHAM: Mm. Well if he liked a man, he would go all the way. Anything, he'd
get out, you know, and, uh, work for 'em but if he didn't like 'em, a politician, he just didn't like 'em, and he'd do everything he could against 'em, you know. I don't mean he -- he was crooked about it or anything like that but he always tried to make his point, why you shouldn't vote for that particular person. And when they walking in for the -- that woman could go, you know, we didn't used to vote, he was -- he made sure that we voted.ZIMMERMAN: But he'd pay the poll tax on me for seven years, (laughter)
PARHAM: Before she would vote. But I said it, he believed in women having
00:15:00rights. So we didn't usually worry about it, we just voted like Poppa voted. (laughter) We'd always be right. But I don't believe that he was always right but that's what we thought. Poppa knows -- and he did, I said, if he had, uh, lived to see television come in, he'd had busted the screen out. If, uh, if the (inaudible) politician -- (laughter)ZIMMERMAN: He was (inaudible) a little bit.
PARHAM: I think he would have. (laughter) It would infuriate him, be here, you
know, he listened to the radio but he would argue up a storm with it. "Now, you know you're telling a lie," you know, it's that stuff. He was a -- he was a real complicated man in some ways but he was a good man. He thought everybody ought to see things like he did, I think that was his way he looked at 00:16:00politics. He couldn't understand why people couldn't see what was wrong with theirself. (laughter)ZIMMERMAN: I don't know how long it was, Leona on the (inaudible) but her
husband's father, and my father, and like must have been about the same age.PARHAM: There's like four weeks difference.
ZIMMERMAN: But most (inaudible) called Poppa, an old man.
PARHAM: Old man Zimmerman.
ZIMMERMAN: He said, "Well I could outrun you any day." But he had chronic bronchitis.
PARHAM: And this would have meant they were in their last years too, they was --
ZIMMERMAN: Yes, we all said -- she looked out the door and saw them two old men
running -- running down the street, so she don't know what in the world was happening, but most (inaudible) come out the head because Poppa took his coughing, had to quit. 00:17:00GEORGE STONEY: Now you was telling me how he got his bronchitis.
ZIMMERMAN: Sleeping on the ground, that's probably --
PARHAM: In Atlanta, when he --
ZIMMERMAN: They killed that truckload of people up but --
PARHAM: But he didn't have to go.
ZIMMERMAN: But --But if he went to the doctor -- but he didn't --
GEORGE STONEY: I -- I --
ZIMMERMAN: He thought fruit would cure him.
GEORGE STONEY: Can you tell the story again, uh, because I'm not sure he got
it clear, so he was getting on the truck, and the -- and the fella said, "You don't have to go," and --PARHAM: That's right.
GEORGE STONEY: -- but he went anyway, could you just tell that whole story just
as though we'd never heard it before?ZIMMERMAN: Well, when there's -- Eugene Talmadge called out the troops as soon
as he knew he was elected. And we were in Young, Georgia. Tried to get the workers to come out. And they sent a -- he called out the troops at two o'clock in the morning, that's what the little boy told me. And they 00:18:00convinced, uh, having us to get on the truck. There was a good amount of men, I don't know just how many women but some of them was from LaGrange, Sargent. But they told that little boy, or he looked like a little boy, he was one of the troops, he said, "Grandpa, you don't have to get on that truck," but he did. And the first night, they slept on the ground 'cause of army blanket. But they did put up some tents. I don't know how many slept in one tent 'cause the -- I believe it was about 100 men, close to it. But the one that men (inaudible), but now we were -- they were not all from Hogansville. 00:19:00PARHAM: But our father took a cold from that -- that first night, and isn't that we
got over it, really.ZIMMERMAN: But he wouldn't go to the doctor. He thought fruit would cure anything.
GEORGE STONEY: OK, now we're going to break for just a --
(break in video)
00:20:00[Silence]
00:21:00[Silence]
(break in video)
JAMIE STONEY: If you want to bring them in there now --
(break in video)
GEORGE STONEY: OK, now -- no --
PARHAM: This is my --
GEORGE STONEY: -- like this, you see where my finger is?
PARHAM: Yes.
GEORGE STONEY: I want you to be that close. OK, go.
PARHAM: This is Grandma (inaudible). Grandmother Zimmerman, and this is
Grandfather Zimmerman, and this is my mother and my father, and this is my gra-- my mother's mother, and this is her father. This is Etta Mae trying to plow with a mule and the back garden.ZIMMERMAN: [I wanna do it now so if you?] (inaudible) --
GEORGE STONEY: Now just point to your -- point to this and tell us -- tell us
about how that picture got made.JAMIE STONEY: Which -- which one are you point--
00:22:00PARHAM: My mother and father. Well that -- we just didn't have a picture of
'em, a late picture, and, uh, we --ZIMMERMAN: Had a brother go to war.
PARHAM: Well, uh, one of our brothers was in service in France, we wanted, uh,
him to have a picture of our mother -- our mother and father, so we went to Newnan and had -- had this made. Or we did have some little snapshots, but he never wore a tie, he wouldn't wear a tie. But she wanted to slip some kind of a tie on him anyway, and she got this bowtie (laughter) she always had to fix his collar for him, and dress him really almost, and then she such a hurry to get it on him, she put it on -- on upside down. It's upside down bowtie. But I don't know if, uh, if it's really that noticeable, she noticed it first 00:23:00thing when it -- when the picture came.GEORGE STONEY: Tell us about your grandfather.
PARHAM: Well I don't know --
ZIMMERMAN: I thought that --
PARHAM: -- a lot about my grandfather except I remember seeing this one with the
white beard (clears throat) because he was sick, and they paid a visit to our house now, I guess I was about four years old. And he died in a few weeks after they visited us.ZIMMERMAN: He had (inaudible) [flu?].
PARHAM: But he -- he was just, uh, from all accounts, he was just a real good
person that most people loved him.GEORGE STONEY: Did these people work in the mill?
PARHAM: No, they were cow farmers.
ZIMMERMAN: Well, also there's three lawyers in the -- in the --
PARHAM: Yeah, and this family, she had, oh --
ZIMMERMAN: They were --
00:24:00PARHAM: Well she had three sons that were lawyers, and two preachers came out of
that family. And one -- one son was, uh --ZIMMERMAN: Almost (inaudible).
PARHAM: Yeah, one son that was, uh, I think he -- he had, uh, almost completed
his course in law --ZIMMERMAN: But the --
PARHAM: -- but he died as, you know, just a young man, so. And, uh, and all
these, I don't know that much about him because they moved to Texas when I was -- no, before I was born. And all I know about my father's family is just 00:25:00those things that he's told us, and that our grandfather told us when he'd come back to work.ZIMMERMAN: Well, you know I'd come up.
PARHAM: But he did -- he came to visit about once ever --
ZIMMERMAN: Five years.
PARHAM: -- five years.
HELFAND: Leona?
PARHAM: Mm-hmm?
HELFAND: Before you told me that the [Barker?] family looked down on cotton mill
work, they were upset about that.ZIMMERMAN: Oh, the country people did.
PARHAM: Oh, I'll, uh --
ZIMMERMAN: (inaudible)
PARHAM: -- back, you know, before --
ZIMMERMAN: The, uh -- but her brother and son leave the country about the same
we did.GEORGE STONEY: Could you say that again about how country people felt about
cotton mill workers?PARHAM: Well, they just felt like they were --
ZIMMERMAN: Scums of the earth.
PARHAM: -- white trash, you know. (laughter) And, uh, well, I -- I don't
really know how that -- how they were because when we moved to the, uh, mill village, I was nine months old. My family moved to Douglasville, and there was one other child born after we moved to there. What they called the cotton mill 00:26:00there, you know.ZIMMERMAN: It was a cotton mill.
PARHAM: Well, yeah, it was because that's what the --
GEORGE STONEY: Why do you think that -- why do you think they felt like that?
PARHAM: Well I really don't know because, uh, I don't think where you live
has anything to do with your character. It's like you were brought up and all--ZIMMERMAN: Your childhood --
PARHAM: -- you know --
ZIMMERMAN: -- follows you.
PARHAM: -- oh.
ZIMMERMAN: When I come --
PARHAM: I do think the way you -- you are reared has a lot to do with your life,
and, uh, the kind of a person you were. I don't mean that by -- that by having good parents that you were always perfect because I've never seen a person -- person [in my life?], we all make mistakes, and sometimes, uh, children break their parents' hearts too. 00:27:00GEORGE STONEY: But now, you people -- after the strike, I gather that there was
a lot of ill feeling in the town, could you talk about that?ZIMMERMAN: In the --
PARHAM: Well --
ZIMMERMAN: -- mill too, and they sure did.
PARHAM: -- it didn't last that long, not really. It was -- it soon blew over --
GEORGE STONEY: Mm-hmm.
PARHAM: -- and, uh, people got back together, they were friends and neighbors
like they'd always been. I don't think it really affected this town too much.GEORGE STONEY: I notice now that you people and the people in Newnan -- I notice
it now, you people and the people in Newnan are having joint, uh, anniversaries.PARHAM: Well, do you know we never -- we never quit visiting -- visiting each
other -- oh -- 00:28:00ZIMMERMAN: What do you think about 200 men at one reunion?
PARHAM: There were 250 there, at the second on Etta Mae (overlapping dialogue; inaudible).
ZIMMERMAN: Two-hundred-and-fifty at the second one, yeah, uh-huh.
GEORGE STONEY: Then, you know --
ZIMMERMAN: And we had the 25th this year but it had to be moved, we made it the
sportsman's club in Hogansville.GEORGE STONEY: Do you ever talk about, uh, the --
ZIMMERMAN: Old times?
GEORGE STONEY: But, uh, do you ever talk about the strike?
PARHAM: I don't think it's --
ZIMMERMAN: I don't think it's ever really come up in [Georgia?].
GEORGE STONEY: Could you say that again, and just say, "I don't think the
strike has ever come up"?PARHAM: I just don't think the strike ever comes up, or would ever come up
between good friends.ZIMMERMAN: Well we had a -- the sportsman's club started as a tri-county club.
PARHAM: Yeah, and that was three counties.
ZIMMERMAN: But it got this (inaudible) Hogan.
GEORGE STONEY: What do you think would happen if, uh, for example, this film was
shown to your association? 00:29:00PARHAM: Hm, well I don't think anything disastrous would happen. Uh.
GEORGE STONEY: I mean, for example if we showed this -- this stuff you've been
looking at this morning to the -- to the club.PARHAM: Well, I don't think --
ZIMMERMAN: Uh --
PARHAM: -- do you think it would make that much difference?
ZIMMERMAN: I wouldn't know, at least some of 'em would --
PARHAM: Well, I'll tell you, a lot of these people that were there --
ZIMMERMAN: There's one woman that took it over after we had the sportsman's club.
PARHAM: Uh, you know, they had sense then because --
ZIMMERMAN: He was a little boy, when we lived in (inaudible)--
PARHAM: They had a man (inaudible) still kicking around because of the --
we're not keeping very high.ZIMMERMAN: There's lots more money.
PARHAM: Not as I would have.
ZIMMERMAN: Well, in the (inaudible).
PARHAM: But I -- I think that friends, if they're really good friends, they
stay together no matter what. 00:30:00ZIMMERMAN: The children we went to school with, after years and years of going,
I guess , maybe. Seventeen, eighteen years without seeing someone, and they'd refer back to Momma. She wouldn't let us go nowhere but we could bring anybody home, and she has, uh, two cakes out on the table, and some of the plates were [salt?]. Isn't that cra-- (laughter)GEORGE STONEY: So, uh --