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 doing these during the 1940s and so forth because we had a boycott of the
 street cars, of the transportation system her just like they did later. But it's how
 you promote it in the media. They closed down the whole company, the
 transportation company because blacks just decided not to ride the street cars
 and the buses. That was a very successful action. When it came to the
 picketing and so forth I think the children in North Carolina, all these young
 people in North Carolina, Greensborough, started and it just came on up here. I
 know that some of these strong ministers, I remember over this side of town, the
 pastor of Fifth Baptist Church; I know the students would meet there, and some
 of it came out of Virginia Union's Students.

W: This is a time when this is happening all over the South. They were right behind
 Greenville. Well, here's an organization of which I was president and we would
 have these marvelous balls, formal balls, and that was just a great thing because
 we are very social being. Each year you had this marvelous, beautiful thing.
 What we did was to put our invitation in the paper and write cancelled across it,
 because we gave the money we were going to use for this social activity to get
 the kids out of jail. Everyone was rounded. Then, we had things like rags for
 rights. Something came up right around Easter time and we decided that we
 weren't going to buy any clothes for Easter. We were just going to wear rags for
 rights. We wore buttons and we decided not to buy any Easter clothes because
 that costs [money]. So, we like to dress up and we were the merchants best
 customers for Easter, and when we did that it had an impact. We decided we
 were only going shop black. Here's an awakening sort of for me, because we
 are going to shop only in black stores. We are going to find a list of the black
 stores and we didn't have any. At least I looked, where are they. This is when
 you really became aware that we were not in the retail here. We were dealing
 with __ and that's those two huge department stores, and Woolworth's.
 But blacks owned stores and businesses but not clothing stores.

W: Did that stimulate interest among the well to do in the black community to try to
 establish these sorts of places, retail stores, clothing stores?

S: It was kind of a shock. You kind of thought they must be there somewhere. You
 were so used to following this particular line. In fact I Lorraine James did open
 a store downtown. I know that I worked with her. I use to narrate her shows and
 we traveled even to Washington [and] to Connecticut. She's in Bridgeport now.

W: What's her name?

S: Her name is Lorraine James. She has been in the city council in Bridgeport
 after going back home. I think I may have gotten off track from what you asked
 in terms of how I got in, but understand I had been out there.