by Joe Stout
When I was a child in the 1930’s there was, of course, segregation here in the South. This was during the Great Depression and everyone had a hard time. I’m sure it was exceptionally hard for the Colored (that’s the name used in those days) population of Greenfield and the surrounding area. I do recall that in those days my parents would furnish some of the Colored people milk and eggs in return for some work including being a Nanny to me.
During my childhood years most of us had friends that were Colored and played together quite frequently. One of my friends that lived on the street behind where we lived at that time was Lee Jr. Sain. They left Greenfield while I was still young and I heard that his wife had killed him many years ago.
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| Lee Jr. Sain and Joe Stout |
Greenfield had no Colored section of town as such, but there were some houses in practically every part of town that were occupied by them. About 10% of the population of Greenfield was Colored and is still today about that ratio.
Here in Greenfield we had grammar school and also dear old GHS, the high school.
The colored, had separate schools but the only high school for them was in Martin and until the 1940‘s we had no school buses for either black or white. There were the one room, one teacher schools for all the kids that lived on the farms out in the country.
The local colored grammar school was located on East Main St.(Soup St. extended) which was also Highway #124 which went to McKenzie. Professor Dodd was the Principal and teacher of this school along with Bertha Smith and Bennie Malone.
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Sometime in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s they were putting on a play at their school that was about the Wild West along with tap dancing and singing. Cowboys and Indians were popular things we played in those days. In this play there was a shootout between two characters. Someone came up with the idea to make a blank by cutting off the lead of a 22 cal. bullet. Of course this left a small amount of lead still on the end of the bullet.
When it came time for the shootout one of the children fired the 22 pistol and luckily the small amount of lead did not hit anyone but did hit something on stage.
This of course caused quite a bit of excitement to all those attending. Professor Dodd immediately got on stage and made this announcement, “There wild be No More Wild West, the rest of the program will consist of singing and dancing.”
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| Bertha Smith, Bennie Malone |
This is another phrase like “Nothing but a freight train Mr. Moseley”, that is used here in Greenfield, that many people will know what you are referring to.