Black Appalachians Oral History Project
Interview with Christine P. Price, Interview 1
Date of Interview: 4 March 1991;
Blacksburg, VA
Interviewer: Michael A. Cooke, Assistant
Professor of History, Virginia Tech
Transcriber: Cindy Hurd
Note: This interview was done in 1991
as part of the Black
Appalachian Oral History Project (Ms91-019) by Dr. Michael
Cooke of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
In this project Dr. Cooke conducted 22 oral history interviews
(on 25 tapes) of and about blacks in Appalachia, predominantly
in Montogomery County, Virginia.
Note: Underscores (e.g., ______) indicate
parts of the tape that were unclear.
{ Tape 1, Side 1 - Tape 1, Side 2 }
Begin Tape 1, Side 1
Cooke: The day is March 4, 1991. I am
conducting an interview with Christine P. Price of Blacksburg.
Mrs. Price, can you give us a brief sketch of your life, your
birthdate, your birthplace, education, and occupation.
Price: Well, I was born July 21, 1915
_______.
Cooke: And what town were you born in?
Price: Lawton.
Cooke: When did you first come to this
area?
Price: As I've said I think about 60 years
or more.
Cooke: So you hadn't even probably started
school yet? So you never even went to school in Giles
County?
Price: No.
Cooke: Did you have any older brothers or
sisters that might have went to school there?
Price: Well I had three older brothers and
five older sisters.
Cooke: What did your father and mother do
when they were living in Giles County? What kind of occupations
did they have?
Price: Well, he worked at the rock quarry
and the farm.
Cooke: He did both?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: Did your mother work at all?
Price: Well she took care of the house.
Cooke: That's housework. That is work.
Price: Yes. And the garden and all like
that. And the cows.
Cooke: That is work.
Price: Yes, that's work. That's what she
done.
Cooke: Why did he leave the area of Giles
County?
Price: Well just to get us closer to school
so we'd have a school.
Cooke: Were there problems with your older
siblings? They said they had to walk to school early
before...
Price: Yes, they just couldn't go. The
weather would get so bad they just couldn't walk that far. I
forget how many miles they said they had to walk.
Cooke: And there was probably very few
schools for blacks.
Price: Yes.
Cooke: That was very inconvenient from that
stand point. So your parents moved here. What did they do upon
moving here? What kind of jobs did they have once they got to
this area?
Price: Well they didn't have any at the
time, nothing but he had these team of horses. He plowed
gardens and all like that. Back then you know they didn't have
tractors.
Cooke: So he did farmwork?
Price: Yeah, farmwork.
Cooke: Now you mentioned before when we
were off-tape and I guess we should get it on-tape, you said
your father got hurt in an accident? Was that before he
came...
Price: Yeah, that was before he came
here.
Cooke: So that might have been one of the
reasons he came?
Price: Well, yes I guess because it was my
second oldest sister, I think they said she was a baby when he
got hurt.
Cooke: Can you tell how he got hurt?
Price: Well they said a rock in the quarry.
I guess they were blasting rock and it crushed his leg and they
had to take it off.
Cooke: His leg was amputated?
Price: Uh huh. ______.
Cooke: He couldn't work in that employment
anymore?
Price: Nuh uh.
Cooke: So he came here and did farmwork?
Operated teams of ...
Price: Yes. Plowed gardens, everything
around in town.
Cooke: When you first came to this area,
what area of Blacksburg did you all settle in? Did you live
here?
Price: Out in the part they call
Newtown.
Cooke: Oh yeah, off of Gilbert Street.
Price: Out there where Hunter Bell used to
be. It was a big ole' house between on this side the Mays'
house out there. They got burned down and that's where we moved
to.
Cooke: So how far were you from Hunter
Bell's property?
Price: Oh, it wasn't too far.
Cooke: Actually I guess his wife, cause his
wife was the one, her family really owned all that land there
probably.
Price: Well yes, her family lived there.
They owned that.
Cooke: I forgot Mrs. Bell's maiden name.
What is it?
Price: Green. See one of my sister's
married her half -brother, Johnson, legally __________.
Cooke: So you lived in Newtown? That was
one of the larger black communities back in the past.
Price: Yes at the time. See that's where
the Hall is now.
Cooke: How many people lived in
Newtown?
Price: Oh well when I was ________ right
many out there.
Cooke: If you had to guess, 50 or 100?
Price: Oh no, not quite that many but I
mean I had two aunts out there but neither one of them had
children. Ethel Bond, and then a family, Youngs, that lived
right down below the Hall there was a house there.
Cooke: Oh you're talking about...
Price: St. Luke's.
Cooke: Artfellows/St. Luke's Hall which is
now a carpentry shop I believe.
Price: Yes. Ethel Lytton and somebody
worked in there.
Cooke: That's how I came across the order
of St. Luke. Some materials and records that they had left in
the attic and when they closed it, they probably forgot it.
When the owner, the guy now who assumed ownership of the place
was going through the materials he came across the materials in
the attic. So that's how I came across your name.
Price: Well, that's where we had out
meeting, out there.
Cooke: Did you have the meeting on the top
floor or the bottom floor?
Price: The top floor.
Cooke: And both the Artfellows and the St.
Luke's had their meetings?
Price: And the household group you
know.
Cooke: How did they use the bottom of the
hall?
Price: Well at times we would have a group
of dancers or something like that.
Cooke: But they never let people go on the
top floor.
Price: Nuh uh.
Cooke: Was it about the same size in terms
of the top floor and the bottom floor were about the same
size?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: That was your private domain.
Price: Yes, that was it.
Cooke: You didn't want anybody...
Price: We did private things up there and
no one else if you wasn't a member was supposed to know.
Cooke: That's right. That's obvious.
Because that was a fraternal order?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: Tell us about the Independent Order
of St. Luke? Did both men and women belong to that fraternal
order?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: Was that different than most of the
orders?
Price: Well, yes. Now Artfellows, nothing
but men belong to that. But the household group, men and women
could belong to that.
Cooke: That was kind of the auxiliary?
Price: Uh huh. Of course the St. Luke's had
a ________ as juveniles who could go in there. After we got a
certain age we would be transferred over to St. Luke's
________.
Cooke: Were you a member of the juvenile
division?
Price: Yes. I was.
Cooke: How did that work? Did your parents
say, "I'm going to pay your dues." or whatever it was?
Price: Yeah. I believe it was 35 cents or
something in there. Seven of my oldest children were in the
juveniles too.
Cooke: How far does your family go back to
be involved in the St. Luke's order?
Price: Oh well, a long time.
Cooke: Grandparents? Or just your
father?
Price: Not that I know of. My Aunt Ethel
and her husband were St. Luke's. Then my mother was and my
Daddy too _______________.
Cooke: One question I guess I need to tie
up is when did you come to the Blacksburg area roughly? That's
a rough question.
Price: It sure is. I guess around 1920's or
something in there.
Cooke: 1920's huh?
Price: 1921 or something like that.
Cooke: Yeah, because you would be, around
'21, you'd be six.
Price: Yeah.
Cooke: So somewhere around '21, '22,
somewhere around there.
Price: Yeah, somewhere along there.
Cooke: You said your children were involved
in St. Luke's so it was kind of passsed down?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: Was that true of most families
involved in the Independent Order of St. Luke's?
Price: Yeah, mostly.
Cooke: What kind of services did the
Independent Order of St. Luke's provide?
Price: Oh well, it wasn't that much but it
was something to us. I mean they gave, if you got sick or
something, they'd give you three or four dollars you know
_____________.
Cooke: Sickness insurance?
Price: Sickness insurance and all and all
depends on what amount policy you paid for. See that was
something the Grand Council in Richmond ____________.
Cooke: Was the order of St. Luke, was it
just located in Virginia or elsewhere?
Price: Elsewhere. It was in West Virginia
and all over.
Cooke: All over the place?
Price: All over the place.
Cooke: We're not just talking about some
small local organization that might have been started up
locally by someone. This was something that was a major
institution.
Price: Yes. Meg L. Walker. I guess it went
down after so many of the old ______ died out they had it in
Richmond at the Grand Lodge down there.
Cooke: Her name stands out because she
seems very prominent.
Price: Yes.
Cooke: What kind of activity besides social
- did you all have scholarships or benefits? What were some of
the activities that people were engaged in?
Price: Of course you mean the efforts of
St. Luke's?
Cooke: Yes.
Price: Well yes, my oldest daughter got up
and won a quilt for selling the most tickets you know on a
quilt, watchacallit, she selling them on the quilt and all. She
got a quilt for that. She still got it, sleep under that old
quilt.
Cooke: So you could win awards and...
Price: Yeah, you could do different things
like that. Miss Lily Reynolds, she was one of the matrons and
my aunt Ethel Vaughn was one.
Cooke: Yeah, I remember seeing Ethel Vaughn
there. You keep saying that name and I see it. So these people
were your relatives?
Price: Ethel Vaughn was now Lily Reynolds
wasn't.
Cooke: She's connected with Pat Burger
isn't she?
Price: Yeah, she raised Pat Burger. She was
Pat's daddy's, I mean...
Cooke: She was a leading member of my
church, same...
Price: Yes, she was.
Cooke: There's a window in our church named
after her. I can visualize it.
Price: Yes. Well Miss Anise Scott, she
lived where the Snells live now.
Cooke: I think she's also a member of St.
Paul right?
Price: Yeah, she was. She was a member
since she was ___________ too and a household group, she
was.
Cooke: Was there many people who had
affiliation with both groups or several groups?
Price: Uh huh, yeah.
Cooke: So there was nothing wrong with
being a St. Luke and then being a Household _______ or an
Artfellow.
Price: No there wasn't a thing wrong with
it.
Cooke: So they weren't really competing
against one another.
Price: Nuh uh, no they wasn't.
_______________________.
Cooke: There was no animosity at all?
Price: No.
Cooke: We can't let you in because we know
what you are and you can tell all things to the enemies, right?
It wasn't that kind of mentality?
Price: No.
Cooke: That's interesting. Well let's talk
about education and talk about how you were _________. What are
some of the things that stand out in your mind when you were a
young girl growing up in Blacksburg?
Price: (Laughs)
Cooke: That's another loaded question.
Price: The main one, my big brother was
born in '24 and I'd tell him everytime I'd get outside playing
with the other children, he's wake up and mother would call me
in to take care of him. I told him he totally messed up my
childhood.
Cooke: So you didn't have one?
Price: She say, "Christine, the baby's
awake!" I'd have to go in and take care of my baby brother.
Cooke: That didn't hurt your ability to go
school did it?
Price: No.
Cooke: It was just when you were home?
Price: Home, yeah, just then.
Cooke: Can you describe what it was like
for a young black woman or a young black girl at that time to
be going to school in this area?
Price: Well, it was alright for me because
it wasn't segregated or anything at the time.
Cooke: It wasn't segregated?
Price: Not when I went, no. I walked from
out there at Newtown up in here to the Middle School.
Cooke: You mean it wasn't segregated?
Price: Nuh uh. It wasn't segregated around
here...I mean it WAS segregated, cause my two children were the
first two that went. My son that is in Colorado and my oldest
girl.
Cooke: OK, let's get this straight. You
went to a segregated school.
Price: No, I didn't. No.
Cooke: You didn't?
Price: No, I just went to a little one room
school up on...
Cooke: You had black and white
children?
Price: No.
Cooke: Just black?
Price: Just black. There wasn't no busses
or nothing. We had to walk.
Cooke: What's the name of the school? What
did they call it?
Price: They just called it the Black
school.
Cooke: It was just a school?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: How many teachers? Just one
or...
Price: They had two. Cause they had the
little old school house for the other grades then they build
another one of the other grades, the higher grades, and had a
teacher for each one.
Cooke: Now, did they go all the way from
first to eleventh?
Price: No, first to the eighth I
believe.
Cooke: First to the eighth? That's right
they didn't have a high school.
Price: No, they didn't have a high
school.
Cooke: So you'd a had to go Christiansburg,
or Christiansburg Institute if you wanted to go to high
school?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: How many of these people were
attending the school over the years? I mean the time that you
were going could you give an estimate on how many Black
children went to school?
Price: Oh it was right many of them. It
used to be a right many over the years I told you.
Cooke: 25-50?
Price: Oh yeah. You know Laura Annison, I
know her name must be down there ______. Now she taught me when
I went to school and then she come around and taught some of my
children.
Cooke: Any other teachers you can think of
who were here then?
Price: Mrs. Sears.
Cooke: Is that the lady related to John
Sears?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: Or was that John Sears wife?
Price: Which one you talking about?
Cooke: You said the one who was a Sears,
Mrs. Sears. Was it W. C. Sears?
Price: W.J.
Cooke: W.J. I'm sorry. Was it W.J.
Sears?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: And that was his wife teaching?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: John Sears was the guy who operated
the barber shop?
Price: Yeah, he was one of them. Then the
Carroll who used to live right next door.
Cooke: What was his first name?
Price: John.
Cooke: John Carroll?
Price: Warren. Warren Carroll.
Cooke: Oh, Warren Carroll.
Price: Then it was John Warren. He lived up
on Lee Street.
Cooke: Yeah, Carroll and Warren right?
Price: There used to be a whole lot of
Black families. Tillman ran the cleaning shop over at VPI.
Cooke: That's right. I guess various other
people too. Charles Johnson now is the...
Price: Well, Charles is over ________.
Cooke: He's in the military probably.
Price: No he's in Wake Forest. His home's
down in Wake Forest. That's where he come from. Charles
finished CI and then I think John Sears barber shop used to be
down here on College Ave. The Warren boys, the eldest Drury,
one of _______ boys, he was a barber down there.
Cooke: I didn't know that.
Price: Pete, little Pete Carroll over here
and all.
Cooke: Where did they learn their
trade?
Price: I guess from like the fathers.
Cooke: Did they get any help from
Christiansburg Institute?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: Because they had barber training
here.
Price: One of my sons took barbering over
there.
Cooke: Did you go to the Christiansburg
Institute?
Price: No, I didn't.
Cooke: You never did.
Price: No, I just went...Miss Nettie taught
to the tenth grade and I just went up here because my youngest
sister come out and at the time we had to pay taxes to
drive.
Cooke: Oh, yeah. There was no county so you
had to pay. That kept some people from going.
Price: No county nothing. Uh huh. The
brother next to me, he started here and then I quit and after
he went to West Virginia to go to the mines, that was that so
it fell on me so I just kept working a little bit and sent
her.
Cooke: What kind of work did you do?
Price: Housework, cook, you know for
private families. White families.
Cooke: Were they connected to the
university?
Price: Well, no.
Cooke: I know from talking to some people
that the professors quite often had live- in maids. Were you a
live-in maid?
Price: Oh no. I just had to straighten up
over her on Fergus Street, just old family. Now one of the
daughters was a secretary down on the campus and one was a
nurse in the infirmary over there. Miss Swopes.
Cooke: So were you still living at
Newtown?
Price: No, we had moved up here. My daddy
bought that house right up there.
Cooke: When did you all move from Newtown
to this area?
Price: I really don't remember...about six,
seven years when we bought the home up here.
Cooke: So in other words about the late
1920's.
Price: Something like that.
Cooke: Do you have any idea why you left
the property in Newtown?
Price: Well, it wasn't for sale.
Cooke: Oh, you were renting?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: Oh, so you were renting. Do you know
who you were renting with?
Price: Well, it was some family named
Page.
Cooke: Another Page. Are these the Page's
that you were related to?
Price: Well, they were from Wake
Forest.
Cooke: Oh, these Pages are from Wake
Forest?
Price: Yes.
Cooke: Your father was originally from Wake
Forest?
Price: Yes, my father was from Wake Forest
too.
Cooke: How close were they in terms of
relations to you. You were a Page.
Price: Well, I really don't know.
Cooke: Might have been cousins or
something?
Price: Cousin, yes.
Cooke: So he did look around for a property
to buy?
Price: Uh huh.
Cooke: Did this community have a name? Over
at Gilbert Street they called it Newtown. Did they have a name
for this area?
Price: No I guess not. Well, it was called
Bitter Hill.
Cooke: Oh, Bitter Hill like up on Lee
Street.
Price: Yes.
Cooke: Oh that's Bitter Hill. I used to
live over there. I interviewed somebody else and they said
Bitter Hill and it didn't register. So Lee Street that's a high
hill so that well deserved the title Bitter Hill.
Price: Well, that's where...not as I know
of. See when we moved it wasn't a street it was all built up
______ in there. There wasn't a street there.
Cooke: So you really didn't have great
service in access to the public road?
Price: No.
Cooke: Did you all ever petition the town
and say, "Why can't we have a road or something?"
Price: Yes they finally got it through.
Cooke: Did you have a petition though?
Price: Uh huh. We did.
Cooke: Do you know when that road was
built?
Price: No, I don't.
Cooke: It's been a long while.
Price: Yes, it's been a good while.
Cooke: Did any whites live in this area? or
near Bitter Hill?
Price: Oh yeah, sure. There was a white
family that lived all down here where these fraternity homes
are.
Cooke: So those were private homes?
Price: They were at times. The Martins
and...
Cooke: And now they're all kind of
fraternities, the fact though the fraternity _______ the
university.
Price: Yes. The trailer court was over
here. A few years later. And all of them were white. So we
really as far as I know got along pretty good. My daughter
wouldn't tell that because she had a rough time going up here
to the high school.
Cooke: What daughter was that?
Price: My oldest one. I told you.
Cooke: Her name is...?
Price: Anna.
Cooke: What kind of problems did she have?
Was this during desegregation?
Price: Yes. That's when, I told you, she
and my little blind son now was first ones to integrate up here
at Blacksburg High School.
Cooke: Your son is named...?
Price: Philip.
Cooke: What kind of problems did Anna
have?
Price: Well, you know, the kids picking on
her and all like that.
Cooke: Picking on her just for being a
kid...
Price: For being black.
Cooke: Oh for being black.
Price: There wasn't but two black even
there.
Cooke: They must have been _____.
Price: See Philip, one of the teachers,
Mary Louise _______ down here, kept him back from graduating,
mixing folk, he just couldn't march in, she wouldn't
____________ of marching in with his class ________.
Cooke: So Anna didn't feel that she was
very comfortable being the first?
Price: Nuh uh.
Cooke: Is she still living in town?
Price: Yeah, she lives out on the county,
_________ into town, Cambridge Square.
Cooke: Is she married now?
Price: No. She's not married. Not she was
working for AT&T until they closed. She's not doing
anything. Looking for work.
Cooke: That's interesting. I would be
interested to get her experiences.
Price: (Laughing) I don't know if she would
or not. She can't stand it. Of course Phil will just laugh
about it.
Cooke: Did they both graduate from
there?
Price: Yeah, Anna marched in with her
class. But I told her just ___________ for her brother. Her
youngest brother now he's King Rex of Blacksburg High. First
black, and there hasn't been one since.
Cooke: He was the first black to be
what?
Price: King Rex.
Cooke: What was that?
Price: King!! Crowned the king! So that was
Tony. He lives out in Heathwood, he and his wife and two
boys.
Cooke: That must have been some experience.
Did anybody ever bother you, call your phone or make harassing
calls or mail anything of that nature?
Price: No, they didn't. I mean we seemed to
get along alright.
Cooke: Just the children had a little
problems?
Price: Course during that time, I believe
he was a Linkous, used to live right down here on the corner of
Wharton and Jackson in that old house there. He used to walk up
every morning to school with Phil and his sister. I mean you
know it's just like some people now pick on you. I mean some of
them. You haven't got as far as you think you have around these
white people. They don't get much better than that, some of
them. And some of them do.
Cooke: That's the truth. That's a very good
point. What about the black businesses in this area? Do you
recall growing up if there were any black business
establishments? Did they own any stores or dancehalls? We know
they had the Artfellows and the Independent Order of St.
Luke...
Price: Yeah, they had that and Kid Wade did
own a shoe store right down here where the Post Office is on
Jackson. Years ago he owned a shoe store right in there.
Cooke: Any other Blacks have any successful
businesses? What about that Sanders cleaners, do you recall
that? Right near South Main. Your not familiar with that?
Price: Well, what I'm thinking about is
right across from the National Bank.
Cooke: Yeah, that's it.
Price: Well it belongs to the Warrens I
guess, it did. But I can't remember...the only time I remember
anything is Mary Taylor running the cleaning shop on campus. I
know that building used to belong to the Warrens. It did, I
don't know _______________.
Cooke: I just don't know. Any other
business, black cab companies or black restaurants?
Price: No. Well there was a couple of black
cabs. My husband drove a cab and his brother that lived up
there, he drove a cab. There was only two black cabs.
Cooke: That was Leonard Price and
his...
Price: And James.
Cooke: James Price.
Price: They called him "Chippy". Rett and
Chippy.
Cooke: Who was which?
Price: My husband was Rett.
Cooke: I remember seeing that somewhere.
Chippy was his brother. They worked part-time operating
cabs?
Price: Yeah.
Cooke: Do you know when they were doing
this?
Price: Well, Chippy did it up until he
died. He was driving a cab when he died. But Leonard gave it
up. He retired from the electric check-out here on the road.
When he was working for the girls dorm on VPI he drove a
cab.
Cooke: Was that Hillcrest?
Price: Uh huh. Then he stopped that and
went over to the electric check-out.
Cooke: I don't believe Hillcrest today is a
girl's dorm. Just making it for the record. At one time
Hillcrest was a girl's dorm but I don't believe it is
today.
Price: I don't think so, no.
Cooke: Any other black businesses that you
can think of? Or fraternal organizations?
Price: No.
Cooke: Were there any dance clubs? I
remember talking to one person, do you know an Aubrey Mills?
Did they ever operate a dance hall or something?
Price: Yes. I don't if it was Aubrey or who
but it...
Cooke: Was it on Penn Street somewhere?
Price: Yeah, on Clay and Penn. Used to call
it Moonglow I believe.
Cooke: What did they do at Moonglow or did
you even go.
Price: I didn't go that much.
Cooke: You stayed away from moon glow.
Price: I never was one, I never cared much
about dancing or nothing.
Cooke: Moonglow.
Price: I think that's what. I think Sears
and Richard Christian owned one down in Nellie's Cave, ran one
down that way.
Cooke: They did?
Price: Uh huh. WJ Sears, Jr.
Cooke: WJ Sears, Jr. operated it.
Price: Well I think he and uh...
Cooke: Did he live in Nellie's Cave or he
just operated it?
Price: He just operated it.
Cooke: Because he lived in this area?
End of Tape 1, Side 1
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