|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Hard work, strong values
by Debra A. Golden, Wake Weekly Staff Writer
There's a plaque on the wall over Mary Baker Crenshaw's bed that thanks her for "generations of love, caring and guidance."
Nearby, on another wall, a bright balloon, long deflated, wishes Mary a Happy 100th! Now 102, Mary spends her days at Hillside Nursing Home. She lost much of her independence when pneumonia knocked her down three years ago. But her mind is still sharp, and her memories, like her nieces Sylvia and Margaret, are never far away. Times were hard when the 1900s rolled around. Many black families like Mary's lived on farms owned by whites. The children started working young. Mary herself started picking cotton when she was 8 years old. "I picked the whole day," up to 200 pounds, she said. The better jobs, the land, and most of the money belonged to those with lighter skin. "Growing up then was a whole lot different than what it is now," Mary said, her voice just above a whisper. Like many other black couples in and around Wake Forest, Mary's parents, Tempie and Joseph Baker, lived and worked on farms owned by whites. Whites had their own schools, their own churches, and the blacks had theirs. It was just the way it was, Mary said. "When you were going through it, whether you liked it or not, you had to go by it," she said. That attitude of quiet acceptance was passed down through the family. "That's the way I (dealt with) it," Mary's niece Margaret C. Evans, said. "We were taught to work together in unity," she continued. "We were happy, though, because everyone was together." Margaret C. Evans and her sister Sylvia C. Stallings grew up in Wake Forest, too. After their mom died, Mary served as a mother figure for the two young girls. Mary taught her nieces "spiritual values, educational values, family values, to be close-knit with one another," Margaret said. The three can now laugh about the good old days, the women said, "even though there wasn't much good about them -- because it was just your basic training." Married at 17 to Herbert Crenshaw, Mary grew up working on local family farms owned by the Mangums and the Gills on what is now Wake Union Church Road. "We got our name from Major Crenshaw," Margaret said. Generations ago, slaves were named after their masters. "We had a beautiful relationship with the Mangums," Mary said. "They were white, but in spite of their race, we loved them. My dad cooked 23 years for the Mangums. We saw the family grow up. My brother played with Turner Ray, Mangum's grandson." In spite of the warm feelings between the Mangums and the Crenshaws, the differences were clear. The Crenshaws lived in a small house lit with lamps, while the Mangums enjoyed electric lights. "I got my high school diploma by looking at a lamplight," Mary said, holding her hands up close to her face. Her family, however, made do. "We had what we had. My family provided for what we had and we accepted it." Mary remembers another white neighbor with fondness. Alice Grimes lived near the Mangum Farm, close to where Hampton Inn is now. Because Olive Branch Baptist Church was too far for the Crenshaws to walk to, Grimes held Sunday School for all the black people in the area. "My brother Earl used to stay with her at night while her son went to (North Carolina) State," Mary said. Grimes would give 25 cents to Mary and the other children on special days. "That lady showed love," Mary said. In her later years, Mary worked for the professors at Wake Forest College who lived in the big houses on North Main Street. "I washed, cooked, ironed -- yes I did," she said. Her husband worked at the cotton mill. Mary had a twin sister, Martha Ann. Martha Ann, the "older" twin, was bossy in a nice way, Margaret said, but the two sisters were "very, very very close." The Crenshaws had four children -- Herbert Crenshaw Jr., Leonard, Harry and Martha Elizabeth. Harry, in New Jersey, is still living. Although Martha Elizabeth came back to North Carolina before she died, all Mary's children left the state at one point to find work. "There was no work here in that era," Margaret said. "They had to migrate to a larger city to find employment." Much of Mary's life wasn't easy, but she has managed to pass on the values that kept her strong, Margaret and Sylvia said. Margaret said she learned to be "thankful all her days" from the woman she considers her second mother. She shows her appreciation for what her Aunt Mary has done for her by stopping in to see her as much as she can. A busy woman, Margaret said Mary often tells her to "Go on, you have things to do." "Yes," Margaret tells her, but she reminds Mary that visiting her "is one of the things I do, too." Making it through Bettie Langley, 91, like Mary Crenshaw, remembers a time when blacks and whites led separate lives. She spent her early years on farms in and around Wake Forest and Rolesville on land owned by Bob Williams, Jim Jones, Macon Jones and Joe Daniels. There was a definite racial divide, Bettie said. "Blacks stayed on this side, whites on that side." But what stood out in her mind more than the separation between the races was growing up poor. Most folks back then had outhouses and screen windows and doors, but Bettie's family didn't. One house they lived in was particularly uncomfortable. Mud had been daubed in the cracks in the walls of the log house to keep out the weather. The insulation was inadequate, but to make matters worse, the shingles on the roof warped in the sun and each time it rained "we had to set out pans to catch the water." When it snowed, the children woke up to find their straw mattresses and covers weighed down with snow. "The covers would be so heavy," she said. Bettie attended a number of schools growing up, but many were far from her home. The children walked up to five miles one way to some of them, facing a whipping by the teacher if they were late. "She knew your mama had sent you with plenty of time to get there," Bettie said. Like Mary, Bettie spent much of her early years in cotton and tobacco fields without the benefits of modern machinery. "You had to break the suckers and top them with your hands and kill the worms with your hands," she said. The days were long, Bettie said. "We were in the field before sunup and stayed in the field while the sun went down." Her mother died when she was just 13, leaving Bettie and her siblings to be raised by a cousin. Life got harder after her mother died. In the Depression years, she'd go to school hungry and come back home to find no food in the house. Food giveaways often furnished only meager sacks of flour. "You just had to make it up and that's what you ate," she said. "Oh, boy, we made it through. It was tough." Bettie grew weary of not eating enough, not having clothes, not owning shoes to wear. "I promised myself that if I ever got grown I would eat all I want, wear me some clothes and get me some shoes." Bettie's daughter, Clara Mae, was born in 1935. Although she's had an easier life than her mother did, she remembers picking cotton -- working hard, because Bettie wanted to get ahead. "My mama had dollar signs in her eyes," Clara said. Clara is Bettie's only child, but she raised 38 others. Some were kin to her husband, some weren't. "I love children," Bettie said. "All them up there" -- she motions to her living room wall and the bookshelf in front -- "they've ate from my table." Orphaned at an early age, Bettie remembered what it was like to lose a mother. "My mama took care of us. She fed us, clothed us, whipped us, made us mind. We were never hungry as long as she lived." Bettie said she took in other people's children because of the example her mother set. "I don't want to see no child out there begging bread," she said. Now close to a century old, Bettie is glad attitudes have changed and that blacks no longer have to follow a different set of rules. But she doesn't dwell on it. No matter the color, "we all serve one God," she said. "We're supposed to love people." Slowed down after three heart attacks, Bettie wishes she were still able to make a living. "I'd love to be able to work again," she said. Decades later, Bettie is still proud of the fact that, as a 12-year-old girl, she carried two rows of tobacco. "Don't let nobody tell you work will kill you 'cause it won't, or I wouldn't have made it to 91," she said.
Last Updated On: February 16, 2006
Copyright 2006 The Wake Weekly