Aired Jan 30 2009
INTRO: Many Michiganders are still excited about the new President. But other than through books, how can you compare these days to the old days? Rural Cass County has a black population dating back to the underground railroad.. One resident can look back personally to 1905. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
TRX1: Cassopolis has 1800 people in and around it. Locals said go to the next town down the road, Vandalia, to the grey house next to the water tower. Mable Harvey will be sitting inside.
AX1: “I’m 103 I’ll be 104 March the 16th if I live to see it.”
TRX2: She wears braids pinned back against her head. She’s thin but strong enough to shift her body toward visitors. She pauses a long time between words. So some of her silence has been deleted for this report. She still goes to the 7th day Adventist Church. But after watching the inauguration of President Obama, she’s pessimistic.
AX2: “I Think I had mixed feelings.”
TRX3: I asked her why her feelings aren’t 100% joy.
AX3: “Couldn’t have 100% joy when I think of the prejudice and the envy that I know exists. I just can’t believe that he has the goodwill of everybody.”
TRX4: She says everyone else should embrace the lord. That will protect Mr. Obama from harm. Mable Harvey was born in Memphis Tennessee. She was near retirement when schools were desegrated in 1964 and the voting rights act was passed in 65. That would have been ancient history. Her mind reaches back to about 1915.
AX4: “I think they might have had about 4 months schooling in the rural areas.”
TRX5: Life was easier for Harvey living in the city but it wasn’t for her country cousins.
AX5: “The boys had to work in the fields. Do the plowing. They had to break up the ground. Get it ready for planting. There was a difference there.”
TRX6: Mable Harvey says she couldn’t avoid picking cotton either. Though she was lucky that girls didn’t have to be in the fields the whole season..
AX6: “Well not until the cotton came up and it was time to chop cotton.”
TRX7: She says black schools didn’t offer the extra curriculars like typing that the white kids got. Only the three R’s.
AX7: “That’s reading writing and arithmetic. No it wouldn’t have made any difference because there wasn’t any available jobs.”
TRX8: There were two career tracks:
AX8: “working in the white folks kitchen and working in the fields.”
TRX9: Mable Harvey left the south in 1935 for Chicago. It had barriers too.
AX9: “You were met with a lot of prejudice there. Because you might read a newspaper add to see what jobs were available. If you were black, there might be some excuse that the job being filled already.”
TRX10: She eventually got a teaching job in Chicago. She was patient.
AX10: “I didn’t get married until I was old. I think I was about 65. I didn’t want to marry somebody and have to separate.”
TRX11: In 1972, she moved with her husband and newly adopted small children to Cassopolis. Other Chicagoans had been coming here for vacation.
AX11: “We look at the country as an area of relaxation. Those folks that I know that came came because they were tired of the city.”
TRX11: When blacks come to Flint, Saginaw and Detroit, neighborhood associations and realtors stopped them from living where they wanted. The abolitionist tradition in Cass County didn’t do that. Land was easy to get.
AX11: “We had two gardens when we first got out here. We liked Kentucky wonder beans. Beats, cabbage, okra.”
TRX12: Cass, Berrien and St. Joseph Counties form the hog belt of Michigan.
AX12: “Bible names clean meats you can eat and some scavenger animals you should not eat. The clean ones are cows and of course one animal that’s a scavenger. We don’t eat that one. That’s the hog. Do you read your Bible?”
TRX12: Mable Harvey is asking this reporter that question. Listening in to the conversation is her new home health aid Ginny Gentry.
AX13: “I just started today yes. She’s a strong black woman. And young people should listen to her. Follow her. Cause she give me strength. Just to listen to what she saying today. And I thank god for her. I thank god for her.”
TRX13: For Michigan Now I’m Chris McCarus in the village of Vandalia, in Cass County.
Tags: obama