Ybor City Tape

Wilson interview

 43

W: Well, you got to know the parents. You got to have a better

 understanding of the children. Why they did what they did,

 toe things.
 they
M:' I think / need that today in some cases.

W: Yeah. Well, in one family there, the momma and two of the

 daughters were prostitutes. They had one marriage license be-

 tween them. I mean, you just ran into everything. I had

 kids in school whose brothers and sisters went to the nigger

 school.

M: Because they were black?

W: Well, this one looked a little more white than ...than dark

 skin so he could get by in a white school.

M: In others words children from the same family might go to

 different schools because they looked darker.

W: Yeah, one of the parents was white perhaps and every so often

 you know, in a mutation situation you have a white child and

 you have two or three blacks and so forth. And I've go into

 homes where they've introduced their mother as the maid 'cause

 she was black.

M: Why would they. do that?

W: Well, they were ashamed of the fact that she was, the kids were

 ashamed of the fact that her mother was black and they were

 afraid that if I found out that they had that much nigger blood

 in them that I'd take them out of school and put them in

 nigger school.