Interview with Verna Miller Smith, August 20, 2020

Partial Transcript: Today, which I think will be the first...

Segment Synopsis: Verna Miller Smith, born 1946, talks about her grandparents, who were born into slavery. She refers to court records she found documenting their value as slaves and her lack of knowledge or documentation about them otherwise.

Keywords: Anthony Elder; Athens, GA; Clarke County, GA; Laura Elder; Oconee County, GA; slavery

Partial Transcript: Um, so, let's talk about your parents.

Segment Synopsis: Smith details her parents careers, her father being a sharecropper and World War I Army veteran and her mother a teacher at a one room school. She discusses going to school as a child.

Keywords: Athens, GA; Ernest Elder; Maddy Louise Jones; Oconee County, GA; WWI; Watkinsville, GA

Partial Transcript: So you lived in Oconee County...

Segment Synopsis: Smith recalls moving to Athens when she was in the second grade. She shares memories of living on the farm, such as the time she and her sister accidentally set the curtains on fire.

Keywords: Athens, GA; Oconee County, GA

Partial Transcript: So you moved to Athens...

Segment Synopsis: Smith recalls moving to her mother's family home in Athens. She describes the Brooklyn neighborhood of Athens and her experience of the community as a family.

Keywords: Athens, GA; Baxter St, Athens, GA; Hawthorne Ave, Athens, GA; Mount Pleasant Baptist Church; Union Baptist

Partial Transcript: Where Hawthorne Avenue now...

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes the structure of the Brooklyn neighborhood, including the location of houses and streams.

Keywords: Athens, GA; Brooklyn Rd, Athens, GA; Hawthorne Ave, Athens, GA; Mount Pleasant Baptist Church

Partial Transcript: But because the farmer's market was there, and there was a road in the back...

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes attending a farmer's market near her house. She talks about how her only interactions with white people growing up were with two store owners, mentioning how she would go buy tobacco for her father. She also talks about a white man named Mr. Anderson who helped the Black community.

Keywords: Brooklyn, Rd; Thomas Lay; local produce; segregation

Partial Transcript: We went to that feed store downtown.

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes buying shoes downtown with her father. She talks about how her family struggled financially, but discusses how they never went hungry because they grew food and owned livestock. She also talks about segregated businesses and bus stations.

Keywords: commercial activity; family farm; poverty; segregation; transportation

Partial Transcript: Do you have memories of Hot Corner and that business district downtown?

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes walking through Hot Corner, a Black business district in Athens. She discusses local movie theaters, talking about how she she went to Harlem Theater instead of the segregated Georgia Theater. She also talks about how her family grew most of the food they ate and raised livestock on the land they owned in the Brooklyn neighborhood.

Keywords: Black-owned businesses; Morton Theater; Sol Abrams; family farm; funeral homes; segregation

Partial Transcript: Was there property on the other side of Brooklyn?

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes attending Athens High and Industrial School, the first four-year high school for African Americans in Georgia. She talks about moving to New Jersey after she graduated in 1963 and moving back to Athens in 2017.

Keywords: education; family; mariage; segregation

Partial Transcript: So two years later, you come back?

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes visiting Athens with her new husband. She talks about how her neighbor, Helen Johnson, was forced off her land so the city could build public housing. She discusses the public housing development formerly called the Jack R. Wells public housing neighborhood and known as Pauldoe.

Keywords: Lemuel Penn; family; land dispossession; racial violence

Partial Transcript: I want to ask a couple more questions about your dad?

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes her father who was a sharecropper in Oconee County before he inherited land in the Brooklyn neighborhood. She discusses how her family lost increasing amounts of their land to eminent domain when roads were built and expanded. She explains how her father stopping raising livestock in the late 1960s after the city told him he could no longer grow corn to feed the animals.

Keywords: Hawthorne Avenue; Watkinsville, Georgia; farming; fishing; hunting; inheritance; land dispossession; local government; regulations

Partial Transcript: I want to talk about your mom, too.

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes how her mother was a teacher, mentioning how she met her father while teaching night school. She discusses the limited careers open to Black women which primarily included domestic labor and the poultry industry. Smith explains how these limitations motivated her to move to New Jersey. She talks about how her mother got certifications at the University of Georgia and graduated from Fort Valley State University.

Keywords: Rosenwald School; education; employment; poverty; salary

Partial Transcript: I can remember one night, before I graduated high school...

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes an incident in which she was threatened by UGA students, and she talks about being harassed by drunk students after football games. She discusses how she wasn't allowed to go places on her own and had to be home by sundown due to her parents' fears of violence.

Keywords: Athens High and Industrial School; YMCA; dances; racial violence; racism; segregation

Partial Transcript: So what do you see in the change there

Segment Synopsis: Smith talks about how white people have moved into historically Black neighborhoods in Athens. She describes increased development and gentrification, and she mentions how her family lost land to eminent domain. She also mentions family photographs and papers.

Keywords: East High Road; Hawthorne Avenue; family records; photography; urban renewal

Partial Transcript: I wanted to ask you about your father's pension from his service in World War I.

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes how her father's military pension was illegally cut off which she did not discover until right before his death. She talks about Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, discussing how her father used to roast hogs to raise money for the church. She also describes how her family did not have running water or indoor plumbing until after she left home.

Keywords: Barbecue; Black chiefs; Black veterans; Veteran's Affairs; census; cooking; fundraising; outhouses

Partial Transcript: Is there anything else, right now today, that you would like to add?

Segment Synopsis: Smith describes the high rates of illiteracy in Athens, stating that the University of Georgia needs to do more to help the local community. She also talks about witnessing but not participating in protests for integration in Athens.

Keywords: desegregation; illiteracy; inequality; resources