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[00:00:08] Kara Hoerter: Today is Friday, July 8, 2005, and this is the start of the interview with Mrs.Gertrude Brown at her home of 11312 San Domingo Road, San Domingo, Maryland. My name is Kara Hoerter, and along with my partners Ron Wainwright and Kate Mayhew, we will be conducting this interview. This interview is done in conjunction with the Teaching American History project by Wicomico County Board of Education and Salisbury University. What is your full name and is there any reason you were named it? [00:00:43][35.5]

[00:00:45] Gertrude Brown: My full name is Gertrude O'Fallon Cosley Brown. [00:00:49][4.1]

[00:00:53] Kara Hoerter: Is there any reason I will be named for a relative? On what date and where were you born? [00:01:01][8.4]

[00:01:02] Gertrude Brown: I was born here in San Domingo, February 9, 1925. [00:01:08][5.7]

[00:01:11] Kara Hoerter: Were you born in a hospital or a home? [00:01:12][1.6]

[00:01:13] Gertrude Brown: I was born at home. [00:01:13][0.4]

[00:01:15] Kara Hoerter: How old are you now? [00:01:16][0.8]

[00:01:19] Gertrude Brown: I'm 80 years old. [00:01:21][1.6]

[00:01:23] Kara Hoerter: Do you have any brothers or sisters, and if so, what are their ages? [00:01:26][2.8]

[00:01:27] Gertrude Brown: I have two brothers and one sister. My sister is 83, my brother is 73, and my next brother, if I'm not mistaken, I think is... [00:01:50][22.7]

[00:01:55] Someone on the side: He's going to 19, 1923. Okay, 1973, 1972. [00:02:01][6.3]

[00:02:04] Kara Hoerter: Have you always lived in San Domingo? [00:02:05][1.4]

[00:02:06] Gertrude Brown: Most of my life. [00:02:07][0.6]

[00:02:08] Kara Hoerter: Where else would you like to go? [00:02:09][0.9]

[00:02:09] Gertrude Brown: I lived in New York for a few years. I've got the estimate at this point, right 20-40 years? [00:02:19][10.0]

[00:02:21] Kara Hoerter: Is that New York City or just New York State? [00:02:23][1.9]

[00:02:25] Gertrude Brown: I'm in New York State, I'm heading tonight. [00:02:26][1.5]

[00:02:29] Someone on the side: Thank you. [00:02:30][0.4]

[00:02:32] Kara Hoerter: Describe the areas that you grew up in. [00:02:34][1.8]

[00:02:35] Gertrude Brown: This day, which one I know about. How would you describe San Domingo? I would describe San Domingo. Nice place to live. Nice, quiet and peaceful. Nice neighbors and friends. We have a, San Domingo, we have a church. We have our own church. We have, uh, a school. Kind of school. [00:03:07][31.1]

[00:03:11] Kara Hoerter: How was San Domingo created? [00:03:12][1.4]

[00:03:20] Someone on the side: We'll pick you up in a few weeks, okay? Yeah. That's great. [00:03:22][2.5]

[00:03:24] Gertrude Brown: Okay, James Brown was a friend of a church, let's say that. The name of the church was Zion Church, and it changed the name to Little Zion, and then as years went by, the church grew, and the Gospel of the Lord said to change the name again to Zion United Methodist Church. Um, where were your parents from? I'm from the state. [00:04:12][48.0]

[00:04:15] Kara Hoerter: How did your family get here? Where were your grandparents from? [00:04:20][4.5]

[00:04:22] Gertrude Brown: My grandparents, they were the best in my grade. My great-grandparents. Great grandparents? Yes. They were there when they were young. [00:04:29][6.9]

[00:04:30] Kara Hoerter: It was beautiful. [00:04:30][0.4]

[00:04:33] Gertrude Brown: Great, great. [00:04:33][0.4]

[00:04:35] Kara Hoerter: Your great grandparents were massacres, and then when they were liberated, they moved up here, and your family has been in San Domingo. Excellent. And do you have any family in Jamaica, Queens? Um. [00:04:51][16.0]

[00:04:56] Someone on the side: I didn't get that thought. [00:04:57][0.9]

[00:05:01] Kara Hoerter: What jobs have you held in your lifetime? [00:05:03][1.7]

[00:05:09] Gertrude Brown: Okay, the jobs, when I first came out of school, the first job I had was working as a bank. [00:05:16][6.7]

[00:05:25] Kara Hoerter: Do you work on the farms with your father? [00:05:27][1.2]

[00:05:32] Gertrude Brown: I do not have my father-in-law's farm cloths. Cucumbers, cameras, watermelons, tomatoes, one after the other. That's how they were. First thing was cucumber, then cucumbers, then watermelon, then picked tomatoes, then did corn, and... But then I would run from my foot for myself. [00:05:57][25.1]

[00:05:57] Someone on the side: Thank you very much. [00:05:58][0.5]

[00:05:59] Gertrude Brown: We raised our own food. My mother and father did not have to go buy too much in the store. We raised, they raised mostly like many of us. And I put this down, I have to say this. We have plenty of food. We always have enough food to share with our people, our families. And it was seven of us, seven children. We were just ahead of time. [00:06:28][28.8]

[00:06:30] Someone on the side: We'll make enough to sell, maybe we can just make enough for the family. [00:06:34][3.4]

[00:06:34] Gertrude Brown: I didn't know if they ever sold something, but it gave way a lot too. It was a lot giving away. [00:06:43][8.3]

[00:06:43] Someone on the side: To the community to help everybody kind of share with each other very quickly. Yeah. [00:06:46][3.4]

[00:06:46] Gertrude Brown: Yeah, but I'm able to. [00:06:47][1.6]

[00:06:57] Kara Hoerter: We're about when we graduated, so we worked at the basket factory in Sharp Town. [00:07:00][3.7]

[00:07:01] Gertrude Brown: Right. And what did you do there? I did a few tasks. You're gonna score a 7 I mean, I've been at this factory, I think, for a year or two. Over there, I guess, I must say, last year. I worked at the Canter Factors, that was season's stuff. Season's whatever we had. Which cannery did you work at? I worked here, John Rice Cannery at Gettysburg. And I worked, at Gale Sound, tomato factory. That's about it. And then I went back. Yeah, I got it. I got more. Good to know you're here. You can come back. [00:08:04][63.3]

[00:08:06] Someone on the side: That's good. [00:08:07][0.7]

[00:08:09] Kara Hoerter: Do I do it when I'm young? [00:08:10][0.7]

[00:08:11] Someone on the side: That went to New York, New America. [00:08:12][1.4]

[00:08:12] Kara Hoerter: New York, okay, I was like, did I hear R.E.? You are entering New York and it seems like you got very close to your wedding day. [00:08:19][7.7]

[00:08:21] Gertrude Brown: June 12th, 1948, they may have 50-something years. Congratulations. [00:08:28][6.6]

[00:08:29] Someone on the side: We've had a lot of light. [00:08:30][1.0]

[00:08:33] Kara Hoerter: We can tell by the way you interact. [00:08:34][1.2]

[00:08:34] Someone on the side: That's great, that's great. [00:08:35][0.8]

[00:08:37] Kara Hoerter: It's magical. [00:08:38][0.5]

[00:08:39] Someone on the side: My parents are family, my dad's 80. Yeah. [00:08:42][3.3]

[00:08:45] Kara Hoerter: Mrs. Brown, can you tell me about your early education here in San Domingo? [00:08:49][3.2]

[00:08:51] Gertrude Brown: I went to school out here in San Domingo, you know, I went all the way to school and that was my first school. My first grade teacher was Maynard. Stella Grant. She was from Blackwater. And I went to this school. I went from first grade to seventh grade and several teachers. About how big was your class? My class, yes, it was my class. Or how big is the school? Either one that you can remember. I remember my class was 14 students in my class, and I'm quite sure with the fact in April of 1980, I'm not a child anymore, so. The school had two stores now. And home. Cool. My pleasure. Uh, we need a bit of basic, basic training. Math, English, drop it, spell it, read it. Writing. We always had devotion. First thing morning when the school was taking out at nine o'clock, we were working with devotion. And we always had to sing and pray the Lord's prayer. Maybe a student would sing a solo, I'd say at one station, they would have (Inaudible) And the boys always had to go get the wood in for the next day. Talk to you later, girl. Bye. They had to get the kindling in to build the fire. I don't recall how we got the wood. I guess the vice versa was what we did. [00:11:10][138.8]

[00:11:16] Someone on the side: Come on with the school year. Start in September and end in May. [00:11:21][4.9]

[00:11:22] Gertrude Brown: The schools start in September, and the school year, the end of the year will be between May and September 14th. [00:11:31][8.3]

[00:11:33] Kara Hoerter: To come inside the farm area. To come inside this farm area [00:11:36][3.1]

[00:11:36] Someone on the side: I think we're gonna have a school day for a long time. [00:11:39][2.3]

[00:11:40] Kara Hoerter: Now, do you happen to remember what year you started school? [00:11:43][2.4]

[00:11:48] Gertrude Brown: But I know I graduated from elementary school in 1938. And I graduated high school in 1942. [00:11:58][10.7]

[00:12:00] Kara Hoerter: Now, what was your high school like? [00:12:02][1.2]

[00:12:03] Gertrude Brown: I went to high school and made it to high schools in Salisbury and we were bused down by a bus driver, which was weird. The bus driver's name was Els Brown. Which was Els brown. We didn't have to pay when I was going to school, we didn't need to pay. We should have had children every 25 cents a week. [00:12:29][25.6]

[00:12:30] Kara Hoerter: Do you really want to ride on the bus? [00:12:31][1.5]

[00:12:47] Gertrude Brown: I graduated from Southern High School in June. [00:12:51][4.4]

[00:12:56] Someone on the side: What do you do? What grade are you in? What grade did you complete? I don't have a grade. [00:13:06][9.9]

[00:13:10] Kara Hoerter: And about how big would you graduate in class. [00:13:11][1.8]

[00:13:12] Gertrude Brown: Right. [00:13:12][0.0]

[00:13:17] Someone on the side: Thank you. [00:13:18][0.4]

[00:13:18] Someone on the side: I'd say 250 because we have three different sections. That's right. [00:13:24][5.7]

[00:13:28] Kara Hoerter: There is three sections of the intersection. [00:13:29][1.8]

[00:13:30] Someone on the side: We've got to get agricultural plants to have a home. Academic. The academic and general pledge. [00:13:37][6.5]

[00:13:38] Kara Hoerter: What did you graduate in? [00:13:39][1.2]

[00:13:47] Gertrude Brown: Cough. How many schools? [00:13:51][3.4]

[00:13:54] Kara Hoerter: Describe the Rosenwald or your elementary school. I think I said before, but. [00:13:59][5.6]

[00:14:00] Gertrude Brown: We had a wood heat, and the boys had it getting a little bit mixed up, a little mixed up. We always had, you know, three, three recesses. Yeah, um, it was a little bit of a recess. Yeah, a nice recess. After you have lunch, you can go out and play whatever you want to play. Basketball, not baseball. Basketball. Uh, uh, tennis, uh. Fly real, fly, fly relay. That's a princess. That's our princess we pay. At the end of the year, end of month of May, we always had a club, we called it, you know what I'm saying? That was in this county that took me to all the schools we go to, so I'm there. I had a competition, but if quiet school was there, we played against quiet school. Whatever school was here, each school played against another school. Whoever won, we got a plaque for the class. [00:15:39][98.9]

[00:15:43] Someone on the side: What were the supplies like at your school? Did you have your textbooks, or did you get something that you didn't have back then? [00:15:50][7.7]

[00:15:51] Gertrude Brown: Textbooks? I think it's the Arena Textbooks [00:15:53][1.8]

[00:15:55] Kara Hoerter: I thought I would be able to say goodnight. [00:15:56][1.2]

[00:15:57] Gertrude Brown: Everybody had their own individual vote. I think, I'm not too sure, everybody had at least four votes. I haven't been on a movie in a while, but I fished a bit and I'm glad I got it. And, uh... Time with dividing those four subjects. And we had one teacher, there was always two classes, one in the middle of my teacher, for two minutes a night. It was fifth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade. And second grade. They were all in one class. Sometimes in seventh grade, some years in seventh. There was one teacher on his, on his team. One beacon for us. [00:16:57][60.8]

[00:16:58] Kara Hoerter: I don't know how many students there will be in that one hour. [00:17:00][2.1]

[00:17:00] Gertrude Brown: I don't know who I'm wrong with, they uh, they're fine for me. [00:17:07][6.5]

[00:17:09] Someone on the side: How many teachers were there in your entire school? Four. Four teachers. [00:17:12][3.6]

[00:17:16] Kara Hoerter: Is there a principal? [00:17:17][0.6]

[00:17:17] Gertrude Brown: Yes. By the principle of talk too. [00:17:21][4.2]

[00:17:25] Someone on the side: Did you know that there was another school in Sharp Town, that there's a white school in Chinatown? Yes. You didn't know that? Did you have, there was no kind of interaction with that school whatsoever? No. It's like you're in your community right now. [00:17:41][16.0]

[00:17:45] Kara Hoerter: Was there ever any violence from the other communities towards the school? [00:17:49][4.2]

[00:17:53] Gertrude Brown: The teachers were never allowed in. The teachers and the parents were not allowed. This could not be there. [00:18:01][7.2]

[00:18:01] Someone on the side: What are you guys doing down there? [00:18:02][1.3]

[00:18:08] Gertrude Brown: When we were going to school, if your teacher corrected, at that time your teacher could be a repute, if the teacher reputed for something that you did, and you went home and your parents, somebody tell your parents, and your parents repute you too. So I guess that's one reason why we were different children than we are today. We got punished hard. The wrong door. It's not, it wasn't that I'm gonna get you or you're gonna get punished for this, but now we got punished at that particular time. But that didn't happen today. And my parents could correct your children. And your parents could have corrected my children. But today that cannot happen. [00:18:59][50.5]

[00:18:59] Someone on the side: Have a good day. [00:19:00][0.3]

[00:19:01] Gertrude Brown: So that's why I feel like that we were a little better students than we are today. And it's not because we had fine clothes or what that was because of the way you brought up, the way your brain. Now, when did this school close? When did the community school close. [00:19:17][16.2]

[00:19:23] Someone on the side: And start with when the rosy wads will grow into a boat. [00:19:28][4.9]

[00:19:35] Someone on the side: 1955, we closed the old school in 1956 we closed it [00:19:40][5.6]

[00:19:49] Gertrude Brown: Thank you for the fire, the closed road. Thank you, 55, the old school was closed, the one that I went to. It was closed completely. And they formed a new school, and thank you for 6. New Yonkers, earlier Jones, the late Jones. [00:20:04][15.0]

[00:20:07] Kara Hoerter: When did integration start up? [00:20:08][1.3]62 Ok, so who's the story going to Mardela?

[00:20:09] Gertrude Brown: Mardela and Sharpe Towne. Mardela and Sharpe Towne. [00:20:16][7.6]

[00:20:17] Someone on the side: and that was at the elementary school that they started, right? When did this school out here close? You know, the one that closed down here in Cookeville? I don't know, I guess that would have been when they built North Weston. The little elementary school in the next door, I think it was. That one? Mm-hmm. So this school was closed before Blackfield. Right. Over there. Right. When did they, um, the county sold to the American Legion? That's right. [00:20:48][31.0]

[00:20:51] Someone on the side: What role did the school play in your community? What role did the school play in your community? [00:21:07][16.4]

[00:21:08] Gertrude Brown: The school played a very important role in that community. It was open to all kids during the school months. And at the end of the school year, the school was completely closed. They wouldn't open anymore until September. And they wouldn't make it very well. Especially from September to May. [00:21:35][26.6]

[00:21:40] Kara Hoerter: When you mentioned the field day, did your school have any other activities outside of school, such as maybe dance or some sort of social event? We always had them. [00:21:52][11.7]

[00:21:53] Gertrude Brown: Social events, like holidays, we always have, at school we always had Christmas play before before we celebrated for the holidays. We always had Thanksgiving, more or less like plays. And Easter, we always had Easter. And we always have, uh, This was, I think, I had this in my head. PTA meeting, we had a presentation, so it was a, it was uh, it wasn't mine. [00:22:35][42.2]

[00:22:36] Kara Hoerter: Was your PCA very active? Yes. [00:22:38][2.1]

[00:22:47] Someone on the side: Yeah, do you ever remember anybody coming into the outside of the place? Do you remember any of my friends in the business? [00:22:54][7.0]

[00:22:55] Someone on the side: I went to your school when you were younger. So yeah, I'm glad that you're not here, just to kind of come in and look around and see how you all are doing. For a bit, yes. [00:23:02][7.7]

[00:23:03] Gertrude Brown: So that is the superintendent, the superintendent and the school will come, uh, they will come again. One out of his name is Tiaman. Ah, it's my wish here. I'm just going to check out. [00:23:39][36.0]

[00:23:45] Someone on the side: Were they also in charge of the wakeboard? They were going to pay attention. [00:23:49][4.1]

[00:23:50] Gertrude Brown: At least two times a year, that's all I can. And they would correct you, the children, just like the teachers, while they're visiting you. If that's wrong, if the kids were doing something that they shouldn't do, they would come after you. So, you were just, I was quite sure anybody could correct me. So, that was it. Today, I think that, I feel like that... I can't, the fool has said that I blame the children for it, whatever. I blame it. Ask for love, and I blame you. But the kids, the kids are just not like anything else, they do what they can do to get by with what they're doing, yeah. [00:24:45][55.1]

[00:24:51] Kara Hoerter: Um, did you know it was called a Rosenwald School before we came here? I never heard it before, that's why I asked you. Oh, is there anything else about the Decree San Domingo that you would like to add in? [00:25:05][14.3]

[00:25:11] Someone on the side: He has a nice deck, doesn't he? [00:25:12][1.6]

[00:25:15] Kara Hoerter: Well, thank you very much for your time. [00:25:15][0.0] [1208.5]