Reeling in the Past: San Domingo, MD
About This Recording
African American residents of San Domingo, MD, Describe their upbringing and lives in that area of the Eastern Shore of MD. March 10, 2009.
This recording is part of the Digitizing Delmarva Heritage and Tradition "Reeling in the Past" collection. For more information, see the Edward H. Nabb Center finding aid.
Recording Date: March 10, 2009
Duration: 1:03:06
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcu90Rc1IM8
Transcript
[00:00:38] Introduction: Digitizing Delmarva's heritage and tradition. [00:00:40][2.2]
[00:00:50] Newell Quinton: I guess the best way that we have learned about the origin of San Domingo is looking at our church history and the church being Zion United Methodist Church. Art records show that the church really started in 1850, but really the community goes back even before that, with James Brown being a free black coming to these parts. We date James Brown back to a census that shows that he was really a free-black man in these areas even as early as 1820, which we find to be very impressive. And it seems that the community actually grew around some efforts that he and his family did and again it's important for us to try to document our origin and I guess I give a lot of credit to this to his great grandson Hubert Brown who has studied the census even as 1820 and 1832 and three or four different census records but anyway when you look at the census of 1820 you see a lot free blacks in this area, and it's important also to see their occupation, and many of them were seamen. Are Mariners as is recorded in the census. So we have James Brown coming here from the Caribbean and obviously we're not sure exactly where but if you start and so we say around 1820 we know that James Brown came here. We know that he went to Dorchester County to find a woman to marry and her name was Mary. We also know that James Brown and his family. Flourished in this area. He became a landowner. His property is not too far from here. It's east of here over by what's now the Shields Road off of North Tule Road was his family property. And our whole community then started emanates from that and his sons and other free blacks that moved here that interface with his family. My own great grandfather John Quentin married James Brown's granddaughter, Sarah. And that's how we're connected with James Brown. But anyway, the important thing that we say to the youth of the day is that the community actually was started with free blacks, trying to find a place to live. And then we sort of trace those families from James Brown and then the church itself. The church was founded in 1850. It wasn't the United Methodist Church at the time. It was referred to as Little Zion. And it has a rich history, too, over close to now 200 years, but starting in 1850. It's important also to look at James Brown. James Brown actually was deceased before, or around 1850, or shortly thereafter. And our records show that his sons actually were very prominent in the community, as well as in the church. And the property in which the church actually stands was donated by one of his sons. I think his son was Bard Brown, and I forget the other son's name, who donated land for the school, originally sons, which we'll look at shortly. But it's from that community. The name San Domingo is important when we trace our history of the community Unfortunately, so much is not known, but as we learned in school about the black struggle of African Americans in this country, we know there were many revolutions. One revolution was in Haiti, in Santo Domingo, where blacks revolted and one of the symbols they gave to whites was the revolution there where they killed several whites. And San Domingo then was a a message to whites to stay away from black settlements, and so we believe that revolution really is where the name San Domingo really came from. So many people settled in this area actually came from the Caribbean. We don't know if they really were from Haiti itself, but we know they were from the Caribbean. As I said in the census, we know there were sailors and mariners, so we believed that came from there and picked up the significance of the revolution. And adopted the name of Santo Domingo to know it was a free settlement and a message to white people to stay away. And that seems to make sense to us in terms of what was occurring here. It's a significant community in terms of the number of people that are actually here. And it's kind of impressive to know that they were free even before the Civil War was over and to know the emphasis behind The revolution in San Domingo is... Picking up that name as a way for them to protect themselves in this area. And a lot of youth ask that question because it's hard to convey to the youth the significance of black people struggling even before the Civil War to retain their freedom and also to flourish. So they have some way to work together and to protect them from the whole institution SLAVERY and other people that would not like to see them flourish. So anyway, we believe that name is either from their origin or from the revolution itself is used as a message to the white communities to leave them alone here in this community. And many of them probably were from Haiti. I don't know, I can only recall certain, uh... Discussions from my father and other people that uh... They knew of some people that maybe had ties to haiti but you can't uh... I can't verify that it's only in I've heard I know one person was mister sherman brown who uh... Lives not too far from here when I was a teenager and mister shermon brown would talk a lot about uh... Or knowing people who came from haiti but there's no way to verify that So, you only have to assume that many of them came... On the waterways, to include my great grandfather was a seaman who moved from the Caribbean. In talking about the area and the families that lived here and I think it's important to talk about the spirit of cooperation and a sense of pride and ownership and throughout From our youth, that's really what was communicated to us. I do not ever recall being in San Domingo where we really understood or knew or really thought of ourselves as being poor. And it's important to understand that from the economy's standpoint, because the spirit of cooperation and helping each other overshadowed the economic status. It was more what you had to do to to support the family structure and support the community, and people shared with each other what they had or helped each other to the degree that people, there was this spirit of cooperation. People knew that that was the way they survived, that's the way their parents survived, and that's what was communicated to us even when all of us lived at home. So you had, everyone in the community knew everyone else. As expansive as it was, I didn't know of, um... Of any family that I did not know. And so people knew where to go to, what household to go to help resolve some issue, whether they were working on an old vehicle, whether they would build in a shed or a garage. There were carpenters here. There were people who drove wells. So it's just a matter of knowing who had the skills. And they share that willingly to be able to survive together. When you look at what people worked, certainly a significant number of the people who worked on the farms in the outlying areas. And that was really important when I talked to youth about how people survived. It wasn't only that they worked in my youth, we worked 10 hours a day on the local farms, either in the... Crops and whatever was grown. Most of these we call them truck crops at the time because there was vegetables and fruits that were picked and packaged and shipped off to up and down the East Coast, particularly New York, Philadelphia and all. But the idea was that you knew you had a job. So in the summertime in growing season, you were working on the farm 10 hours a day. But, the important thing I say to you is, but that wasn't the end of the day because of the, after you finish your job, so to say, which outside the community. You then return to the community where most families had a garden plot. So you did those chores that were necessary for the family itself to have vegetables and food after you finish your 10 hours a day. So the economy. Per se, it's better for me to say people did what they had to do to survive. Certainly nobody thought of themselves as being wealthy. It was more of a question of being self-sufficient and doing what you had to to make ends meet. And that spirit really carried itself all through my dark foot. Even going through colleges was to do what you had to do to be sufficient to be successful having a job plus working at the house or in the community, either growing your vegetables raising your own animals for your own food as well as saving as much as you could from your job I know that many of the men here and women too in this community when I was a teenager at all I don't know of anybody here who did not work. They worked either in the community or outside. Most of them worked on the farms or in some either chicken factory or the basket factory here in the local town, a shop town, or in a canyon house. But they still came back in the communities and had their own chores. It was interesting too, even the women that did not work outside of the community, they were always busy within the community, whether we're sewing, taking care of children. While other people worked. So you had this really, the only thing I can say is community spirit of helping each other to survive. The idea of an expanded or extended family, we didn't know what those terms meant at the time, but that's really what it was. I don't anybody who was treated as a stranger it was we all knew what family we belong to. And you could go to any place in the community and get some support, or you had the spirit of sharing in a corporation. So I think really, in a nutshell, that's how the people survived, and that's they thought of themselves as being self-sufficient. I know my uncle had a little store. His name was Norman J. Brown. And I call him Uncle Norman, but his name was Norma. The people that worked outside of the community coming home would always, to me, I stayed with him a lot I remember up until I was 10 years old to stop by his store to pick up staples. He would have canned goods, he would have a block of cheese or this sort of thing and he had a kerosene that we call cola and a gas pump And invariably people stop by and get what they needed from him. On their way coming home from work either on a farm or in a factory and they didn't have money to pay so he would maintain this ledger that he called a book so he was telling me just writing on the book so he kept this book on what people owed him and at the end of the week then he would sell me he said well don't worry about it they'll just settle up and that term settle up was what people came to know So, at the end of the week, end of work week... When they came home from work people would quote settle up with him being the store owner either they would do a bartering they would bring him something or they would pay him or what have you but anyway that terminology is really what they were comfortable with they would settle their debt with him whatever he had on that book for what goods they used during the week either bring him All the matured to sell. Or simply pay him. It's really the most important thing I would say in terms of the economy and how people live was a spirit of cooperation, working together, and that they were doing things together for the whole community to be successful. There's no sense of competition or getting ahead. It was we had to do something together, even working together for butchering animals. Or harvesting crops, whatever it was, you had this cooperative spirit taken. I think San Domingo is no different than any other community. And wherever you go in my youth here on the shore. The community was held together by the church. We were raised with the thought that there's two institutions that were absolutely critical for the success of black people, and that was a church and a school. So if anything occurred within a community, it had to, I guess I assumed, based on what I observed and what I was a part of, you were at the church or the school. Those two institutions. And to some degree to this day, even it's still that way. So the church was the center of the community. Any crisis that occurred, you would find the whole community come into church to discuss that. It wasn't a casual thing. Our whole day of Sunday started off with morning worship service. We had Sunday afternoon service at three o'clock Sunday in the afternoon and that was expected. So every young person, every child in the community knew that on Sunday, that was the course of events. And there was no discussion about it. So we had a robust Sunday school. And I guess it's unbelievable today. It's hard to get used to the day to think about coming back to church at three o'clock in the afternoon. But that was our routine. Three o'clock in the afternoons was Sunday school. Every child in the community was in church at 3 o'clock in afternoon was Sunday School. Sunday morning, I remember coming here with my father for what, in those days, was class. And class was a period of time before service actually started where most of the seniors would come in and have their testimonies and witnesses even before service started. That was very early. But then you had the regular church service, and that was the emphasis of religious worship throughout my whole youth and adulthood, and I think throughout the whole history of San Domingo was the church held everybody together. And I do not believe we are unique in that regard because of our relationship with other blind communities at the time. We visited many, many communities because we had the annual camp meeting during the of time. Well we would move from our home church to other churches to worship and to have a revival throughout the whole summer and so even in those communities the focus was on the church and in that revival service so you hear the older people in our community still talk about the camp meeting days where every community had a scheduled time for that revival or that camp meeting and ours was always the first week in August we would knew that everybody and all the surrounding communities would be at Zion for camp meeting. And when we left here, we would go to Mount Nebo, which is here in Columbia, Delaware. And so it was throughout the whole summer, the community would be moving together to have this worship service. I learned later on from I got fortunate to meet a superintendent in the Methodist Church, and we were talking about the camp meeting experience, and she shared with us that Camp meeting was much more than a religious experience of worship service. That it really was a way for the black communities to unite and renew acquaintances and for people to find out how other people and their family were doing. So it was a question too of saying, do you know where someone is and how are you doing? It was more of that idea as well as the worship service It held them together. Held all these communities together, as people spread out. So that was very important to me when I heard the superintendent share it from that standpoint. And I can see that occurring in my experience here in Zion and San Domingo, because we had people living in distant places would make an effort to be here for camp meeting. People living as far as New York, Philadelphia, Wilmington for sure would always know that they would be home for camp meeting. And that's a three or four day period of time. So I guess the question is, the importance of the church in the community, I would have to say it has always been the nucleus in the black community. And if it's not the church, then you have to be the school. And education. Education has always been very, very critical institution to us. And I think because our parents really were denied the opportunity to go to school because they were working, and they valued education as a way to have a better life. So we were always taught that the way to a better life is to gain an education. We're very fortunate in the sense that we had a school here in San Domingo where many... Black kids from surrounding communities and all, came here for grade school. And of course during those days, a period of segregation, we were then bused from San Domingo and surrounding to Salisbury High School for our high school education. So we all went to Salisbury High school. That is the whole county, all black kids in the county at the time went to Salisbury until the period of integration. You know, and there's some... I tell the youth today, there are some fun things about that too, is that we not only got a great education because you had a great sense of concern for the welfare of the students, you had the families involved, the parents were totally involved in education and grade levels here in the elementary school and the community. I was always thinking about it now, the relationship between the parents and its teachers. I don't know how you could describe it, it was highly valued, I would say, critical. When you had the teachers living in the community to some degree, well, a lot of teachers lived here in the communities, in boarding houses, and they had a relationship with the families. You would see them often time visiting with families after school, up until, I guess. Up until the mid-60s, that was a spirit. And even in high school, there was this great concern that we had to be as successful, if not as good as, as better than the other schools, not only black schools or white children in order to be successful. So you had that drive. Shared with us with our teachers. I never forget going to Salisbury High School when my teachers asked us that we have an aspiration to go to college. And some of us who were fortunate enough to go on to a higher education were actually challenged at that point to the degree that you have to be better than your counterparts in the big cities in order to be successful. And so it was that determination not only from our parents that was a challenge given to us in order to be successful, coming from a country environment that you had to excel because we felt that, or we were given the idea that the schools in the cities were better than the schools in the country, or those students would be. Academically superior than we would be where we had this drive to excel. I give great credit to the teachers who taught in that area because we were well prepared when we went to higher education. And of course, we're talking about being competitive in a segregated system. As when we finished Salisbury High School, our idea was, for those of us who are fortunate to go, We didn't think outside of the state, we thought that we could go to Merlin State at the time, we could to Bowie, we could got to Morgan State, and I don't think there's many of us, and I'm talking about up to mid-sixes. I finished high school in 1962, and I know there were a few of us who maybe went to other schools if you were really successful, if you're really lucky and have the financial backing. I remember one of my classmates went to Hampton that I thought was highly unusual, and one of them got to Howard University that I though was unbelievable. So for those of us who could go on to school, we looked at Bowie because many of our teachers went to Bowie being teachers. At that time we called it Bowie State Teachers College. Or you went to Merlin State, now the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. Or some of us went to look at Morgan State. And I think we looked at Morgan probably because of Morgan's influence into the Methodist Church, that we had this, we're leaning to Morgan because of our church presence here in the Methodists Church and knowing that the influence of the Methods Church in Morgan and also many of our teachers were graduates of Morgan. So you had a double connection there. But anyway, we didn't really think it was highly unusual for us to think outside of those three institutions as possible to get into a higher education and that was monumental in itself so fortunately with working in the summertime with student aid programs or national defense student loans that sort of thing some of us were able to go to higher education but um... So it was great from and then you never ever got away from the influence of the teachers who work in that environment and the church, being supportive of the youth from the community who are pursuing higher education. And it was, that was very important, still is. So we still try to do, encourage people from the communities to pursue higher education, circumstances might be different, but the fundamental reason to do it is still the same, to be successful and try to achieve. A better quality of life because our parents were determined that their children would have a better way of life than they did and the way they thought that was possible was through education. [00:26:31][1540.6][1542.7]
[00:26:33] Alma Hackett: And growing up in the community of San Domingo, education was very important, not only to us, but also to our parents. Because it was with education that we had a bright outlook for our future. Now, being a black community, we all attended school here in San Domingo. And after completing. Elementary school. We then went on to Salisbury High School. It was when I was in the sixth grade that schools were that they moved the seventh grade to Salisbury High, and so we all attended Salisbury High and I think that the change came to San Domingo when the school was integrated, because once occurred, I feel that's when you got a change in the community. Up until that point, everything was self-contained here. And we took great pride in it. We knew our history. We know we had to go on and work and strive. But with integration, we saw that... Our children were beginning to lose a connection to the pay. We saw them forgetting the history of the community. We saw less pride. Students not seeing the value of an education, and we think part of that was because when we were close-knit, our teachers lived here, and they instilled within us that we could go on and be successful, and they drilled that in us, and so it became a part of us I went on to college. And majored in education. Because I always had a desire to be a teacher. Why? Because our teachers were such excellent role models for us that many of us wanted to be just like our teachers. It was so positive. And we were so well prepared, even though we came from a rural setting. Now, I went on to Morgan State. But we were so well prepared that when we got there and we tested we tested out on some of the one-on-one courses and uh... I believed in children always wanted to teach and that drive was there and so I came back tried to do my best to instill in my students the value of an education and why it was important to go on and be successful. And I might say now I started I started teaching in the sixties. As time went along... Instilling in students the value of an education became more difficult, and I think that relates back to the home because growing here growing up as we did, and this community, even though we were segregated, see I think our parents realize the value an education Today... And even though some may disagree with me on this point, I think many of our young people are, they don't have the backing at home, or they don't have that support coming from home where, and parents instilling in them how important it is to go on to get a higher education. And maybe it's because, we always say because, They have so much, whereas we didn't have a lot. And as been mentioned before, we worked all summer in the field. And each day that we would go in the feel, we would say, I'm not going to do this the rest of my life. And so that was always in front of us to move on. A little high. [00:31:30][296.9]
[00:31:31] Newell Quinton: Well, as we said a moment ago, the two institutions, I think that the black community has always looked at in terms of critical was a church and a school. And our history here shows that San Domingo, I think was a robust community and had to be for the size of school that was built here for grade school kids. I mean we have what's called a three teacher school when you look at the archives of Rosenwald and Tuskegee Institute archives which are now down at Fisk University and when we studied that we learned that the school was characterized as a three-teacher school. Was very, I was curious why a three teacher school having gone there, I went to, for me, I went the elementary school here from 1950 to 1957. And quote, as I said, the all black kids in San Domingo, Mardela, Hepburn would have gone to this school here. So we really didn't know that it was a Rosenwald school until we started looking at how to preserve it. And I was asked a question by a lady from the Maryland Historic Trust when we tried to pursue a grant, were we dealing with the Rosenwald School? And lo and behold, we looked at the archives at Fitch University on Rosenwald to find out that there were seven schools built in Waccamco County for the education of African Americans during that period of time. And sure enough, one is here in San Domingo. At that time, of course, they call it the Sharp Town College School. But it's important, and I worked with Mr. Paul Tuart from Westover, who did an awful lot of work in documenting the information needed to make it for our national registry. What was indicated there was that the people here in San Domingo. Learned the Rosenwald's Foundation, and have petitioned the Board of Education to replace the one-room school here in San Domingo with a better school. The people donated the land, as I said, who were descended of James Brown to donate the land. They donated the timber and the labor in building the school. That school was built in 1919 and it still stands today. Exactly the way it was when we all attended it. I guess the thing that I would say about the school being a three-teacher school which I found very interesting, of course that in itself stimulated me to look as much as I could about Rosenwald Foundation and the architect from Tuskegee Institute and the way they define how these schools should be built and then I came back and look at the school here in San Domingo to find that it has all those characteristics that. The architects of Tuskegee defined as being able to illuminate the classroom with natural lighting. So you have these huge banks of windows on the east and south side of the building. And also in the second floor you have this bi-folding doors that allow the school to be used as a meeting place for the community. It's interesting in one of the footnotes in the information archives. Is that the school itself was intended to not only be a place for education or teaching but also a meeting place for the black community and thereby these bifolding doors would give you an auditorium type environment and so I being a student there in the fifties things of this nature were never dawned on us why it was the way it was but now after studying it it all sort of comes to life and it's a great insight. In the architecture fabric of the building, that the way it was designed, the way it was built, and so why it's so important for us to maintain it, because it does provide so much to the history of the black experience. I guess the important thing to note that the relationship between Rosenwald, Jewish Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington was significant in the sense that the way the community and any other community got money to build those schools, it was a true partnership. There was a commitment from the community, a contribution from the Rosenwald fund, And then the third part was the public funds from the state or the county. And we had the same thing in this situation. I think if I recall correctly, this school cost, I think, I can't recall, close to $5,000 in the construction of it with the donation of the lumber, the labor coming from the community, $600 from the Rosenwald Fund, and $3,000 coming from the Board of Education. I might have to verify those numbers, I can't recall. But the important thing was he had this partnership that had to exist in order to get the school. I guess in thinking about San Domingo, I think about the community when I was a teenager and to think of the number of homes that were present, the number families and to thinking that, oh gee, you had as many. I'm going to say as many as 2,000 people living in this rural area. Many of the young people today, the youth of the day, raise the question about why it was never ever a town or an incorporated development. And I share with them, I say, well, I think the answer to that is looking at it from historical standpoint in terms of the struggle that the people had, that is the African-Americans that started the community maintaining it, and they were, they had to be more concerned about maintaining a lifestyle. And although the community was very robust, it was self-sufficient, and its great sense of cooperation and maintaining a relationship with the other communities, I think was most important. And, uh, even when people came here to visit... It was interesting to note that we're so close to the community or the town of Sharptown and the town or Riverton that you have this pocket here called San Domingo. And if you look at the geography of it, I guess if you went north of here, a mile and a half, you'd be in the town Sharptown. And west of here another mile and half, Thank you for watching. I hope you've been Riverton. And then further down the road you'd be in Mardala. Well, I do not recall. A situation where there was any sense of hatred between the communities or people had had uh... Harmony i think is uh... The best way to describe it People from San Domingo actually went to Sharp Town for to do uh... Business, to do the shops, to bank, and also to work. People lived in San Domingo and the white people lived in Shrunk Town and that was a I can't think of any other word, the norm. The status quo and it stayed that way up until the 70s and the community survived and here in San Domingo I think people accepted it. Worked together but that part was never an issue because the driving force was to do what you had to do to support your family and support your community that community spirit was always there and uh... Telling people how to get to san domingo is always kind of interesting because if you don't know where it is You could actually get lost. So you've got to know, they lay all the land, and I think the families that stayed here all those years, it's kind of really important to say how they survived, how they flourished. And even with the change in the economy, just in time, people tend to move out of San Domingo. They moved to Salisbury or they moved to Delaware for, because of economics, for jobs. As the agriculture industry changed, as the places to work changed, and people, the younger people moved away. And with them moving away, then you had a decline in the number of families that were actually here. But... And I guess to this day we have a lot of people that still come back here for worship service because their roots are here, but they live where the jobs are. So they're pulled away because of that, so to speak. But I find it a great place to live. I guess if I had to share one thing with you, I'd take people all the time to the graveyard to look at the history, because having a church here, as I said, as a or a senator community. You can you can look at the graveyard and see the history of the community for the last two hundred years with the sons of James Brown bird here and you can actually measure the generations with the children of the founding fathers all the way up to the present time just by walking the graveyard and even in my own family i know that our great-grandfather. As I said, was John Quinton, and he's married to James Brown's granddaughter Sarah, and so we go to the cemetery and look at their eight grave spots, and then we look at our grandfather, George O. Quinton and his children, and our father is here, George B. Quintin, and so we already have three or four generations here that we can track, and most families here in San Domingo can do the same thing just by going to the... Same return, looking at the generations that from the origin of the community up to the present. As I mentioned a moment ago, there's two institutions in the black community that have always been critical and still is. The church and the school, and I said many of us, I wouldn't say many of, some of us were fortunate enough to go to grade school and then to high school and on to higher education. And in our family. I'm one of eight siblings, and we're able to go to higher education. And the drive for that, I think, I know for sure was from our parents to be able to have a better quality of life. And my parents always say they want you to have a life better than what I did. So after great sacrifice on their part, the drive to have the job and to save money and go to school. Was a driving force. Well, our oldest sister, this is after we were some adults and had, I guess, successful careers, depending upon how you define success. But we've been very blessed to be able to do that. Her concern was that we ought to do something to. Recognized the sacrifice and efforts of our parents to ensure that we were able to go to college. And so she had the idea that we should generate scholarships to assist other kids here in San Domingo and at Zion United Methodist Church to be able to go school. And that was the catalyst that started the John that as a family, we ought to... Help other children here in the church to pursue a better lifestyle or go on to school. Not that other families were already doing it, but there are so many kids that may not have the drive or the finances to pursue education or really believe that they can. So it was a combination of all those things to encourage them to pursue their education, Do whatever we could to give them financial support and to encourage them along that way. So we started the George B. Quinton Scholarship Fund for that reason. Really following the desire on a part of our sister to do something to recognize the sacrifice made by our parents. We were very successful. And I think maybe the numbers might escape me, but maybe up to $15,000 were given in scholarship to some students here that were members of the Sunday school class here at Zion United Methodist. And we still pursue that as terms of making scholarships or awards for financial support to students from the community who are pursuing education. We're very fortunate to work with the associated black charities in terms of looking at non-profit organizations to apply for a grant to look at what we were doing in terms about capacity for in rural communities development. That was very fortunate for us because we were able then to look at ourselves as an organization, what we were doing, and then trying to see what else we could do in small communities like San Domingo to be a force, our catalyst in helping people, particularly. We were focused on small communities, preservation of our history and culture of African-Americans. And then that expanded from a scholarship to the John Quinton Foundation, where we really look at other programs to help youth in developing life skills. And life skills could be a variety of things, but education is always prominent in that effort to pursue education. But more than that is just to be successful in school or to learn how to deal with circumstances they're faced with today and today's. Society just being able to become successful. I guess one of the things that we try to do also is to focus on history and culture and that's why the school is very important to us as an institution because it's a reminder of the sacrifice made by past generations to help us to be successful and it should hopefully become a culture center where we can continue to talk about the struggle and thereby be a catalyst to encourage people to move forward. So the foundation... It does well in assisting where we can within our resources, but more importantly, I think, is to give people the support that I know that we got, if not financially, just in encouragement that you can be successful and to overcome certain barriers just by having a drive to achieve a greater lifestyle. So that foundation is named, we expanded it from George B. Quentin Scholarship to John Quentin Foundation because we're making a connection back to the origin of the community. And as I said before, John Quinton, we can trace our roots back to John Quinton, who came here to San Domingo from the Caribbean, and he married James Brown's granddaughter. So we start there. Hoping that other members of the Quintin family can also come on board and support the effort, because we know this is really where we can document our beginning back to using the census as that basis. That's what keeps us focused. [00:49:00][1049.1]
[00:49:01] Alma Hackett: With the John Quinton Foundation, we said that we would take on, along with that scholarship, a goal to instill in students the value of an education. And with that, and with funding from the Associated Black Charities, we tried to work with a tutorial program where we set up to tutor the kids so that they would also see a value of education. And at the same time. [00:49:01][0.0][1346.0]