Wilmot Fraser and Pauline Mansfield

00:00 My name is my name is Pauline Mansfield. I'm 66 years old. Today's date is August 30th 2013. We are in College Park Georgia at our family reunions my relationship to my partner here today is cousin in the Middleton family.

00:20 I'm Wilmot Alfred Fraser Mi ages 74-73 in October 16th. 74 - 74. It's creeping today's date is the 30th of August.

00:41 2013 and I'm in Atlanta. I've driven here from Charleston today and I'm a little loopy but I'm here and I'm sitting here with a cousin Middleton line Pauline Mansfield and we're going to discuss some family lower.

01:04 This is such an exciting day because number one we're reconnecting with old family and connecting with new family. It's just wonderful. I love it. And I just wanted to just spend a few minutes chatting with you. Cuz I actually I don't know you as a cousin really I only know that wonderful little story you told today and I will family Round Table about your and how it originated. It's just tell it to me again so I can just absorb it once more.

01:44 This goes back to the roots of family. In fact, because the person who

01:52 Was responsible initially for creating these benne Wafers was my great-grandmother Lucinda.

02:00 Middleton Fraser and the sister of my great-grandfather and she became a Frazier because she was a woman and she took her husband's name when she married.

02:18 But one of the things that she used to do and our family is always been associated with school since even before and education even before the it was legal to teach people to read and write teach African-American people to reason right that's that's very important thing. We were there in the secret schools in the school. Yeah underground school when it was a crime and African-American how to read and write and in any case as she came she grew up during and after slavery and but she she was very resourceful woman and went out and decided that she would she knew how to make a a dollar so she started making these benne Wafers benne Wafers are small sweets that people

03:18 Still using Charleston still making Charleston, but they are made the principal ingredient is the benne seed it's a sesame seed but because it comes to us from Africa we call it and is associated with the area West Africa. We call it Benny because this is just been easy to capture and benne seed is made from benne Wafers and made from Benny seeds and flour and sugar and so children and some sort of butter or margarine in some sort. And so

03:59 She hit on the idea of making these cakes is Betty cakes. Sometimes they're called wedding cakes with children with by after school and has kids do like to have something sweet to end their school day. And so she is she on this this idea continued with the people like out there a new outfit she's passed on now, but she left but for many years out there was Benny Benny cake maker in the family to buy I learned the recipe from out there as a matter fact. Yeah and I get some special kind of Middleton Fraser love that goes into the making of the Bennett.

04:59 Yeah, you know that today is number one is very sweet. And number two is coupled with learning, you know, so after you've learned something then you can have something sweet family secret that we don't tell that makes it unique one secret that Alpha told me about was that the real secret is in the dropping another was not the making of the do but in the dropping of the Joe on a sheet on a baking sheet, but how you drop it is. This is very important so that it becomes very very well. Yeah, it's it's about it's about how you dropped at the secrets in the dropping and I just I have a little business now that I'm retired.

05:59 I have a little business call Frisch's Homestead noise and farm in Charleston. It's a place where people who are interested in African American history and culture can stay and be exposed to a number of the exhibits. We have there that relate to African American history and culture in the Lowcountry Gullah history and culture you like to call it. And so I give people when they come they're welcomed you see with a glass of champagne and ab anyway tour for people who everyone who comes gets too personal to ask you. Do, you know, I will be a Baptist and I know the middletons are methodists X-ray, but we are Baptist always were and I assumed we became Baptist because of my grandmother's

06:55 My grandmother's

06:59 Predilection for for for for for that religion she she read all her children as Baptists and that's how I became a total immersion. And as a result of that we we will nurse people and get all the calls you when they come to phrase it so they get to get to see a lot of different I get to see ironwork. They get sick thing. They get to see call basketry they get to see they get to hear music that relates to the African American Experience again.

07:45 Cooking of course benne Wafers and they get other plant life that's around. They learn about that and there and I'm work. I think I might have mentioned iron work. And what else is there and painting because there is an actual School of painting that is Still Remains very and comes to us.

08:16 So

08:19 I'm sorry for feeling with my

08:27 And so we've been doing benne Wafers and things that relate to education for some time. And is that that that stream of of activity? I think that's reflected in a big problem with the Middleton family has historically. Follow the middle hits history in Middleton history for so long, but are we in the anyway?

09:01 Related to ancestors of the Gullah culture. I mean I'd I just don't know that I'll people come from one of those out Island know we don't have we don't have a history of being

09:21 You know in in South Carolina our family is very old family and it's been around since for over 200 years in that in that area. So they just sit at the time as a family when people were still being brought into the United States and enslaved directly from Africa. So if you recognize that

09:50 The population of South Carolina

09:54 I was once very very much African American.

09:58 Or African. Are African weave. There were three times as many Africans in South Carolina during the 18th century as there were Europeans. So the Pain by three times we outnumber people so our culture tended to change it to 2 to stay intact and a growth especially in areas where African-Americans were isolated on the islands very special place, but in and around throughout the Lowcountry, the influence of African culture was very very important and had a lot to do with not just the way people spoke but the way they

10:46 Cooked clothing that they wore the kinds of kind of religion. They practiced even their their ideas about many things were conditioned heavily condition by African culture. And so it's not just something there.

11:11 Was involved with the language the Gullah language and Salat that's involved with the Gullah language. But in addition to it all the other aspects of human cultural Endeavor that living beside one another tended to to to to to to create the entire rice cultivation me with a project of the entire rice culture of South Carolina, which was the thing that made South Carolina wealthy initially was an African invention Europeans knew nothing about how to cultivate rice and rice is not a easy crock to call you back. I have to plan it out in the water and you have to irrigate it and with a very very sophisticated system of gates that allow the water to come in and then allowed to reseed.

12:11 This is not an easy thing was an easy thing to do. So the engineering of the rice crop was a great contribution of Africa to the rich richness of the Lowcountry and to the wealth of the United States because the Lowcountry was a part of the United States is that time for my education the people of the Gullah background ended up on these outer islands where they bought to the outer Islands.

12:48 By British ships or Spanish ships just to that Alan or did these people come to Charleston and then ended up migrating somehow out to the I I wasn't sure they were initially brought into

13:09 What was known as Sullivan's Island Sullivan's Sullivan's Island Sullivan's Island was an entrepreneur slave entrepot it was in fact, it was a fort but it was a slave entrepot a place where the people who were taken off of the slave ships the ones who survived the divorce, we're taking off the slave ships and put into quarantine for a. Of time until it could be ascertained that they did not carry any diseases are play that would enter the colony. So this was a very careful process.

13:52 That had to be traded even before that. Sometimes they had been.

13:59 What was called seasoned in the islands down in Barbados and islands in the Caribbean? Some of the first rice plan is for example in Charleston actually were English people who came from Barbados and they brought with them people who had been enslaved in Barbados during an episode around the 17th or 17th century Charleston. If you have people come not only from mainly coming from from Barbados and from the islands of the Caribbean but later as it's proven and shown that this slave culture is very very lucrative and you can be

14:49 Great source of wealth for the colony more and more people were brought directly from Africa because they were not they were not didn't have time to season them in the islands that once it was brought into the port light Charleston which and Charleston was the port where more than more than more than Jen than two-thirds of all the Africans imported into what became the United States came through. The Port of Charleston was a port where this kind of activity.

15:28 Not just not seasoning but what quarantine took place then after they were quarantined they were brought into.

15:38 Various public areas where they would be imprisoned and then put out into the street and Charleston call vendue range pain during vendue range v e n d u e r a n g e it's a French word of all knew. It was the place where they brought the Africans in and let them stay out there in the street so they could be observed by the potential buyers in this area where they could be.

16:20 Auctioned off and picked out and then put on a block and auctioned off and then they were transported to various local plantations or neon islands are another place is most most of the transportation at that time to the islands by boat. So they be loaded onto other boats and then taken to these various now because he's on his were isolated and because it was so many Africans that they had marooned on these islands. They

16:56 Tended to perpetuate their culture. They tended to do the things that they knew how to do that. They had learned before and Africa and to use the had to learn a new language. And in order for that their captors to make them to habituate them to the labor that I had to be performed. So they they were taught enough.

17:23 To learn about the commands various commands. They themselves had a system attacks system and a system of gang work that allowed them to accomplish what they needed to accomplish you don't work by working together so that so that the end they didn't they were the people who who took down the road and and made those made the Wilderness a rice field. Where did your interest in the Gullah history the Gullah culture come from? Well, I guess because because I came from I was born in that area now when I went to school when I grew up in South Carolina, I grew up in the

18:14 1940s 1950s and South Carolina, so

18:20 And I attended a note of a noted institution of teacher education Avery normal Institute was founded right after the Civil War to train teachers to teach the formula and the formerly enslaved people how to read and write and I was a student at that school what became later on Avery high school, but before that my first years I attended it.

18:54 It was it was still was Avery Institute, but not Avery normal Institute any longer Institute at that point many graduates who went on to do marvelous and great things the most important one of the most important.

19:20 Graduates of Avery was dr. Ernest Everett. Just doctor just was.

19:27 I Pioneer and cell biology what we know today about

19:34 The cell

19:36 Would not be known had it not been for the researcher furnace job and Europe. He was considered a god of science. Not just not just an ordinary scientist at all, but a real real super science. There is a

19:53 There is a United States postage stamp that recognizes and there is a and his mother found it a little town just actually a part of the City of Charleston now, but call Mary that was named in her honor call Marysville his mother and

20:19 Ernest Everett, just attended Avery attended Howard toilet Howard and did researching many institutions around the world and and was a Pioneer and cell biology. So he's just one person who graduated from over there many others my father made a name for himself and Charleston, and there's a school named for Wilmot J Frazier Elementary School from Margie Frazier Elementary School in the 19 in the 1970s. Just after he had retired Feliz the principal in Charleston at several School 7 elementary school and he retired as a

21:14 As a assistant superintendent for elementary education writer.

21:28 Sounds like historian cook bottle washer in totality describe who you are. Well, I'm a person and I'm very interested in things that relate to African American people because I was taught as a child to Revere my ancestors and to

21:58 Utilize their experience to live a successful life Myself by my parents and Bye Bye by Mariah young Fraser. She taught and she was she's very early involved in special education and teaching handicapped children. Remember taking courses there a Columbia University and in in New York we go to New York and summertime very often. My parents were both graduates of Avery. How about they went to

22:38 They went to take courses after having graduated from Avery to complete VA degrees and then masters degrees and they did they continually educated themselves throughout their lives. And you've done the same. I tried to do the same thing. I think I've think I've been very successful in educating myself. I'm happy with what I've been able to learn and I continue to try to learn new things everyday the work for African American men in particular is a hard one in America. Have you living in Charleston or anywhere else? Cuz you did say you'd lived other places experience the harshness.

23:20 A being a black man in America to the point where it really really left a deep wound.

23:28 I came along I wework I came along at a time when

23:34 Racism was rampant in the South but my parents were able because the fact that they were educated to.

23:48 Earn a decent living so they had the economic means to

23:54 Shielding protect me their offspring from some of the more harsh.

24:03 Treatment that could be

24:07 Meted out to African Americans during that time. I never knew hunger.

24:14 But they were kids who didn't know where the next meal was coming from. I never knew a time when I didn't know where I would sleep or homelessness are.

24:29 Lack of shelter, but that kind of existence played many African-American children at that time. And even today we're still played with the same kinds of problems homelessness hunger in the midst of great plenty. So I was able to I think live a pretty happy life though one time.

24:59 One thing I recall.

25:02 About learning

25:06 American racism

25:08 Was was also related to education.

25:13 I grew up in a in a cottage. There was a cottage at 139 Shepherd Street and Charleston and right across the street from that Cottage was a school Hanson Brick school with columns Greek Revival architecture. Call the union Mitchell school, and then there was a big playground out in front of it call Mitchell Mitchell Park, and I remember asking my parents why I couldn't go to that school.

25:45 And they that was when I when I learned about race in America, what did they tell you? They told me that there were?

25:58 People who didn't want

26:01 Ask to learn very much, but that we had founded schools for ourselves and going onto to educate ourselves. And so and there was this good school Avery that they wanted me to go to so that that was how I learned. It was me in the sense that every was a good school and any good school as you can't sit students and the experience is beneficial and so you can't you can't down.

26:41 A situation that is beneficial to you something some ways.

26:45 We see that today's quote on integrated schools.

26:52 Don't do such a good job at educating African-American kids. And so I think that we need to think we need to talk to look at our I'm not at a no way Africa segregation. I'm simply saying that African-American.

27:11 Have the ability to educate their children and they should do and they should always use it make sure that they employ that if I can share something real quick cuz I bought a vivid memory when my children were in going to high school actually even elementary school, but more high school. There was a neighborhood School are small and we were being encouraged to send the children on the big yellow bus. They called The Big Cheese miles from home to the white school and I absolutely refused I said we pay taxes just like they pay taxes and I insist that my children get the same thing.

28:03 At the other end as it turned out it was one of the best decisions that I made because that's cool head teachers who cared who really really cared and my son was one of probably 61 high school graduates in this class, but that was like a small private school and I believe that strongly so the message that your parents sent is one. I I believed in strongly. I think we need more people to believe that we can do what we can do what we do well and that's to support what without but that was just a passing thought it made me it came back in a flood and you know my children of the brightest and best in their mother's eyes. And so I agree with that there may not be there.

29:03 Big white columns in the big playground, but that that's not what it's all about. That's not what

29:16 Even though we were being I was being denied an opportunity to go to a school. That was right. There there in front of me everyday right across the street from my house.

29:29 There was still another opportunity for me to learn and to learn in an environment that was nurturing and caring and I could give you the special kind of knowledge that I needed to survive and be a creative human being in this world. So I'm very grateful for that. I'm very grateful that not that I don't think that we can attain.

29:59 A state where every school is a good school solutely, you know how you know when I wanted to ask you your experience about

30:19 To see how I can put this in Charleston. We know about the black white.

30:25 Racism but amongst our own people lives very often dark light.

30:33 Conflicts and discrimination. Did you ever experienced that in Charleston? I had some

30:44 There was a

30:47 A feeling that

30:53 White was better.

30:56 This was a whole message of racism and the Discrimination that existed among African-Americans themselves.

31:08 A rose in large part because of the

31:13 The the horrors of slavery

31:17 The

31:21 Raping of black women by white slave masters created in the entire class of people who believed

31:36 In many instances, talk to believe that.

31:41 Their skin color lighter skin color was afforded them certain privileges of benefits and very often within the context of the racist Society Avery the school that mention sometimes it was said that

32:00 Only light skin people went to Avery of course was not true a large number of people who were like, but that didn't that didn't mean that only light skin people went there. I think that the

32:23 Skin color skin color

32:27 Advantages white skin privilege in America generally afforded people or whatever Hugh greater privilege

32:40 The less black they were other that's dark they were as people and that's something that should never exist, of course, but it did exist send it existed in the context of white racism and it's a part of white racism is not only just in United States other parts of the world as well down in Latin American countries, you know where you have the where you had actual

33:10 In Charleston that was a caste system as well, but kind of caste system where we're light by the time I grew up with it dissipated. It was pretty much what what what is active iPhone example of because my parents were well off. My father was a school principal. My my mother was a school teacher a lot of the times

33:37 The circles in which lighter skin children tended to associate I was a part of that.

33:47 Because this was

33:51 A mixture, I guess if cast and class will you had will you have people some of who may who thought that they were more than that there were some advantage in their skin color?

34:09 Being brought together with people who?

34:12 But we seem to have a little bit more economic Advantage. Most people most African-Americans were not professionals and

34:22 If you were professional then there were certain advantages that you had and that that was a part of how we grew up. We got rid of a lot of those Notions of self-hate do during the 60s with the black is beautiful movement and we can to see that there are many things that are more important about people than what they look like on the outside.

35:00 What is the book about why did you choose to write it?

35:03 Dizzy Gillespie was a great friend of mine and one of my mentors. Yai. Yai play African drums. And when I was in high school, I was in the school high school band and I played a flute at that time. This is Gillespie live next door hit his wife the rain live next door to my aunt Thelma very Inn in New York. I wish to go to New York eats summer and they lived next door here in the rain live next door and I would practice my flute, you know during the summer that sort of thing in this is Band came over to rehearse down in his basement very often. So I take advantage of my the fact that I was in the neighborhood to go ahead and ban and enjoy, you know, enjoy the camaraderie and we we develop the great friendship over many years and I was able to

36:03 Later on, he asked me to to to write his his Memoirs and so we we did a book in 1979 call to be or not to buy and memorize Dizzy Gillespie and it is it was very well received both among the

36:23 Wood & Water prize when the Golden Apple award as the best jazz book of 1979 in New York the best won the Golden Apple award and we we will get that book is still around is that we are not to God and to be alot to you know, the most famous phrase in the English language and so did he said it reminded me of the Bebop 2 battery. So we we put together to be an active app and it has stood the test of time and still still being published after how many years is 19.

37:23 Will a Dynex reunions we must have a copy for the table? Because we we put out books that have a family has written today and it's just throwing that we didn't have yours. You have a copy call me and ask me to bring a copy with me. And so I have a copy. Please put it out. So people will know and I will know know know about it. I want them to know it because I want them to purchase it. Alright, I do whatever I just want to celebrate the gifts of our family. I'm happy to celebrate the gifts of the family and I and we do have some notable authors in this family beginning, you know, I was able because I did to be or not to be. I was able to guide Karen and

38:23 The meaning to a publisher. Yeah, and they ship it to me to get that book published in New York and it was in it turned out really really well, whatever threshold have you yet to cross a different thing. I don't have I don't have any children. So if y'all know of any I don't have any children, so maybe I can do something to help help help children. I've been at work pretty hard I thinking and I'm I'm trying to do something new in Charleston to this doesn't have to do with you.

39:21 Portable benefit children because it's Museum museums are good children like museums to I remember Museum was at one of the few places. You could go in Charleston where that wasn't segregated what yeah, you can go to the museum and all the people who came to the museum had to be in the museum at the same time. It wasn't safe walking around looking at you. There wasn't a day for black people in the day for white people.

39:56 And it will be a museum of Gaba heritage, heritage museum repairing that now as a matter fact this weekend. I'm meeting with the architect and John Rivers and we're going to put together a small Museum that houses Gullah artifacts particularly The Color of Money paintings that were done by Jon Jones. They showed here in Atlanta at the King Center few years ago. These are paintings taken from Confederate Currency. Yeah, I toured after American studies for many years and never knew that African-Americans were depicted on Confederate Currency. And in many many inches is over a hundred and ten examples. He really so and me paintings of them. So with that that that that the ticket that collection will be housed at at the amen song Museum as well as others. They'll be quiet basket Fuqua

40:55 African and linguistic and musical behaviors and you know, he his work is just so incredible and we have learned so much through his work and it has open our minds to the Gullah culture and I just think that opening the museum is just one more level of Education. That's just so incredible. Is this something on the clothes Horizon? We've been planning this for some time and we're about to try to get a grant

41:34 To establish a digital Museum first and then we'll go to a brick-and-mortar museum. After what we want to get collections together photograph those collection have them available on the web and use that digital Museum as a way of bringing in funds to establish the brick-and-mortar museum to do that within the next two years. Well, you know, I am sorry that I've missed having a conversation with you over the past several reunions have missed a couple but this should certainly has been in the education for me. He has been a happy.

42:14 Time coming to the reunions. I don't want to thank you very much for lean for organizing this and keeping the Middleton reunions.

42:23 Have I been part of our Lives because that's that's really cute family life is key to the building of all of the life among human beings and and and and you helping us immensely by doing that we're going to do that. Today is something that maybe you can think about how you can incorporate this in our future reunions is to get these young people to get out children involved in not only a history line, but the line about people, you know are people is a whole because they just

43:03 I don't know if their lives are so comfortable is young people that they don't see the importance of carrion. I'll history and that's one reason why we wanted to just give the reunions A Different Twist this year and so in your thinking in your continuous creative mind if you can come up with some things that can help. I'll Middleton children to understand the beauty of not letting it fall off the cliff.

43:39 Well, I think you doing that and when someone comes in and they bring us as we saw this afternoon and bring drinks and they bring six of their kids to to this Union. Just tends to make things continue at that brings continuity and they'll be others. I'm sure this is a family that has a great spirit that believes in what it believes in and particularly in we know we believe in education and human uplift. So I don't see us falling by the wayside anytime I am has been an absolute joy, and I appreciate your doing this with me. Thank you for doing what you did to make this happen. Thank you very much. All right.