T. BERRY’S INTERVIEW Part One

Interviewed by Karen Bernstein

      Mr. Berry graduated from Booker T. Washington High School and The University of Texas at Austin. In this comprehensive interview, he provides information about his upbringing and family history. Mr. Berry describes his education and experiences as an athlete, as well as summer jobs picking cotton in the Elgin area. That experience encouraged him to pursue a career as an educator and coach. His career spanned over 40 years, including 30 years in Elgin schools. Mr. Berry retired in 2019, but continues his work recording Elgin history, while writing books, producing videos, and living in the Houston area near his daughter and grandchildren.

      The interview was conducted by Karen Bernstein who moved to Elgin in 2018 and is a recognized documentary professional. Her work has aired on public radio and received numerous awards. Ms. Bernstein is engaged actively in the community.

INTERVIEWER – T. Berry interview.  July 15th, 2022, Missouri City, Texas.  All right, hello T. Berry.

BERRY – Good afternoon.

INTERVIEWER – Do we have your permission to include this recording as part 1 into the Elgin Oral History archives?  

BERRY – Yes, of course. 

INTERVIEWER – Okay. Thank you.  Why don't you tell me your full name and where you were born?  

BERRY – Well, my name at birth was Tommy Carl Berry and I used that name for twenty years.  I was born in Taylor.  We lived in Elgin, but they had a black doctor in Taylor, Dr. Dickey, who was very prominent in the community.  He did a lot, for the black community in Taylor like helping to integrate the movie theater and eradicating diseases.  At one point in 1950s, I heard he was man of the year in Taylor.  So, a lot of black people that were born during that period, in the late forties and early fifties, he delivered them over there.  

INTERVIEWER – That’s not a name I have heard before, Dr Dickey.  So, that was a time period of extreme segregation.  

BERRY – Yes. 

INTERVIEWER – So, was it nearly impossible for a black person to be delivered by, say Dr. Fleming? 

BERRY – I don't know.  I don't know how operational the hospital was at that time and a lot of black people during that period were delivered by midwives, also. Every now and then I find someone who was born at Fleming but they're the exception rather than the rule.  

INTERVIEWER – I know there was a colored segregated waiting room. 

BERRY – Yes.  I visited that waiting room on several occasions but that was in the middle 1950s.  The only time I've ever spent a night in the hospital, except I spend one this year, one night; but prior to that was when I was about seven or eight.  I had a tonsillectomy there at Fleming.  When I broke my arm, I went to Brackenridge. You would get a severe cut and rather than go to the hospital, my grandmother would tell me to stick it in some coal oil.

INTERVIEWER– Coal oil? Really?

BERRY – Which is similar to kerosene. They/we just didn't go to the hospital unless it was for something serious.

INTERVIEWER – It had to be something really, really serious?

BERRY – Yes.

INTERVIEWER – What are some of your earliest memories?

BERRY – Oh, I remember my aunt. See, I lived with my grandmother and my grandfather and my grandmother's sister. My mother lived in Austin. After she graduated from high school, she went to Paul Quinn College and she got pregnant her freshman year. She came back to Elgin and never went back to college and became a domestic and lived in Austin. At first, she was living with people; just staying in their houses and they didn't want kids staying there. So, I was raised by my grandparents and I remember my aunt took care of me before I started school. I can remember our wood stove that she cooked on. We would have a lot of, what we call dressing today. She called it kushshaw or something like that. It was Thanksgiving every week because we would have dressing and that's an early memory.

I remember they bought me a dog before I started school. I have a picture of me with the dog and I'm trying to shy away from the dog because I didn't like dog. It was a cocker spaniel. A nice-looking cocker spaniel, but it wasn't for me. The dog was still there until I went off to college and I never fed the dog. I never paid the dog any attention. I just don't like animals.

INTERVIEWER – So, what else? Where did you live?

BERRY – We lived on Church Street, which was right behind Mount Vernon Methodist Church. It's a street that's still not paved. Looking back, it was a sort of primitive existence because we didn't have running water in the house and we had an outdoor toilet. No gas. We had electricity, but that was about it. If we wanted some water we had to go outside to the faucet and get it. We bathed in a wash tub, that sort of thing. I remember another early memory. We had bricks that we would heat at night on the stove to put in the bed with you to try to keep you warm because you couldn't leave the fire on at night after you go to bed because it was pretty easy to catch the house on fire. One of my relatives lost his mother and his siblings because of a house fire.

INTERVIEWER – When you say we, can you describe your family, your mothers in Austin? You talked a little bit about your aunt but describe the other people.

BERRY – Okay. My grandmother was named Alva Owens and she was also a domestic. She was really strict; very religious. There was no dancing, no playing cards, or anything like that. I couldn't even go over to any friend's house, I knew, if their parents drank beer or anything like that. But, I'm eternally grateful to her for raising me. She would bring me reading material from her job, like the Taylor Daily Press, it may be a day or two old.

We did get a television. I remember when there was only one person in our neighborhood that had a TV, Mrs. Ruby. She would let some of the kids in neighborhood come over on Friday nights and look at Amos and Andy and the Friday Night Fights that followed. Of course, we couldn't sit on the couch, but I enjoyed that. The thing about the TV, when we did get one, there was only one channel, KTBC. What are you gonna do when Liberace is on? So, I found other things to do. I read a lot and I would read anything. My grandmother would bring me reading material home, even if it was the Progressive Farmer magazine, I would read it.

My grandfather was Caleb Owens. I never saw him work; oh, I take that back. He dug graves. He was probably in his fifties when I came along; at least in his fifties.

He was also religious but my grandparents went to separate churches. He was a Methodist and she was a Baptist. So, it was a mixed marriage. Everyone else in my immediate family were Methodists. My mother was a Methodist, her sister, and their children, other than myself, my grandfather; because they attended the Methodist Church. But my grandmother and my aunt went to the Baptist church and I went to church with them.

INTERVIEWER – What's the difference, in your mind, what was the difference between the two churches?

BERRY – I wasn't in the Methodist Church long enough to find out. I do know they changed pastors almost every year because the association assigns ministers. My father became a Methodist minister in his later years. He was unemployed and said, “I guess I'll start preaching,” so he became a Methodist minister. He didn't graduate from college until he was in his fifties and was too old to get a good job. The association would always assign him to small rural churches because he was a novice preacher at the time.

My grandmother's sister was Bessie Mitchell. She was older than my grandmother and she didn't work for anyone probably because of her age. I'm sure she did at one point, but she raised me. When everyone else was gone to work she took care of me.

That was my household until I started living with my mother when I was in seventh grade. She had married and had two kids at the time. They were living in Austin in the Booker T. Washington projects. My grandmother, my aunt, and I had gone to visit them around Labor Day,1960. My grandmother had a stroke while she was there and died. My mother was pregnant at the time and couldn't even attend the funeral because she was about to give birth. That's when my aunt and I moved to Austin and lived with my mother. In ‘62, my grandfather got sick, back in Elgin. I was in the ninth grade and that’s when we moved back to Elgin, that’s where I finished high school.

INTERVIEWER – That was pretty traumatic in a way.

BERRY – Yes, losing my grandmother was traumatic.

INTERVIEWER – Was that sudden, or did you know….?

BERRY – No, she had a stroke. I was there with her.

I cried having to move to Austin. Two years later, I cried having to move back to Elgin. But moving to Austin was a good thing for me because I became more worldly. I was all over Austin. I walked all over Austin.

I attended Kealing Junior High, which was on the east side, but I'd walk to the northside or southside. In the summer, I was always at the Capitol, because that's where everything was going on. That's where the reporters were and the cameras, and the big shots. When I was in Kealing, we’d skip class and go to the University of Texas. They'd run us out of the lecture halls. So, I became more worldly and that really helped me once I got out on my own. I was accustomed to everything like that. I learned to be tougher and more self-sufficient while living in Austin and that helped me in high school as well.

I didn't play athletics in junior high. Schools were segregated and actually Kealing Junior High played against high schools because there were no other black junior high schools in Austin for them to play against. Instead, they played against smaller, lower division high schools like Taylor and so forth. I couldn't make those teams because you had boys 17,18 years old, still in junior high. When they failed, they just stayed in the same grade and black schools weren’t under the rules of the University Interscholastic League. So, going back to Elgin helped me athletically because it was a smaller town and I was able to become an athlete.

INTERVIEWER– Give us a sense of the time period here.

BERRY – I was born in 1947. I entered school the same year, of the Brown vs Board of Education decision in 1954. But I never attended an integrated school until I went to the University of Texas because Elgin didn't integrate until 1967.

INTERVIEWER – How do you feel about the fact that it took over 10 years for Elgin and not just Elgin, but so many other communities to integrate the schools?

BERRY – Of course, at Washington High, we had inadequate facilities and hand – me - down equipment. We weren't getting the best education possible. Now, that wasn’t on the administrations or the teachers. They did the best they could with what they had. But when I went to UT, I had never looked at anything under a microscope. Things like that. We never knew what year integration was going to take place. At the end of the school year, you never knew if it was going to be the next year so you had to be ready. But integration never came, during my school years. But no, I loved Washington High. I loved Washington High.

INTERVIEWER – Can you tell us what it was like for you?

BERRY – It was like family. It provided opportunities for leadership. Now I didn't study as hard as I could have during high school. I started coasting because I had learned so much in elementary; during those early years, from all my reading.

I got Christmas presents, like a set of encyclopedias. I was so elated when I got a globe for Christmas that had all those countries on it with those cool names. When I got to high school, I was focused more on athletics and social life, but I knew enough to get by. But when you go to college, it's like a slap of the face. You've got to study. Yeah. I probably would've studied harder in high school had integration taken place because it would've brought out the competitive juices more in me.

INTERVIEWER – Why do you think it…. did they ever give an explanation why it was taking so long to integrate? Do you remember?

BERRY – When the Supreme court made that decision, they didn't give a specific year in which the integration was to take place because they had those Southern justices on the court and they wanted the decision to be unanimous. To get them to go along, they didn't name a specific year. They just said “with all deliberate speed.” So, that encouraged Southern districts to resist as long as possible and the only reason they did finally integrate, at last, is because the federal government was putting pressure on them by taking away their federal funding.

INTERVIEWER – Otherwise, there might still be a Booker T. Washington.

BERRY – Yeah.

INTERVIEWER – Years just after your grandmother died, what was your relationship with your mother?

BERRY – Oh, we had a good relationship, but I was becoming more independent because when she was at work my aunt took care of…. I had three siblings that lived there. Vicky Bonner was my oldest sister and then Leland Bonner and Alvin Bonner. I'm about 10 years older than Vicky. So, my aunt took care of them, so I was free to roam all over town, all over Austin. By the time we moved back to Elgin, I was in high school. The only friction I had with my mother was over things like curfew, because the horse was out of the barn by then. I had been roaming for years. Other than that, my mom and I had a good relationship. Now, I didn't have a good relationship with my stepfather.

INTERVIEWER – What was he like?

BERRY - Oh, we rarely ever spoke.

INTERVIEWER – Really?

BERRY – Yes.

INTERVIEWER – Was it a strange dynamic because you were a child of a different relationship?

BERRY - No. No, that wasn't it. It was other things, but we rarely ever spoke. No, my mom and I got along great. I understood why I was living in Elgin and she was living in Austin. I never blamed her for that. I think at times she thought I did because later on she would ask me, “do you love me?” Things like that. I think she never forgave herself for that, but I never held it against her. I loved her.

INTERVIEWER – You understood.

BERRY – Yeah.

I never saw my father until I was seven. He was from Waco where Paul Quinn was located. His mother, my grandmother in Waco, was named Alice Caufield and I would go and visit her during the summers and during the Christmas holidays. I would either catch a train, when passenger trains were coming through Elgin or I'd catch a Greyhound Bus; always by myself. I think my first trip to Waco was when I was about eight, by myself, on the train.

INTERVIEWER – Explain Paul Quinn. Paul Quinn is…

BERRY – A historically black college. It was in Waco for many years. And I think it's in Dallas now, but I enjoyed going to Waco.

INTERVIEWER – Is that where your mother and he met, at Paul Quinn?

BERRY – Yes.

INTERVIEWER – Because she was studying there?

BERRY – Yes.

My grandmother in Waco was quite different than my relatives here. She was over a YWCA in Waco. My grandfather on my father's side, I only saw him a couple of times. He lived in Dallas and had another family. His name was Smith Berry. He didn't treat my father like he treated his other kids.

INTERVIEWER – Really?

BERRY – Yes. He never married my grandmother; they just had a child. The other kids, my father's brothers and sisters, he gave them all land in Dallas, but not my father.

INTERVIEWER – What do you think was the reason?

BERRY – Well, they had different mothers.

INTERVIEWER – Oh, that must have been hard for your dad. So, what was your dad like? Or what was his reaction….?

BERRY – My dad…. Shortly after I was born, people used to ride the rails back then, he jumped on a freight train and went to Chicago and stayed there for a number of years before he came back. He became a waiter in Chicago and that was his primary occupation after he came back, until he started doing voter registration and things like that in the sixties.

INTERVIEWER – Oh really?

BERRY – But before that, he was a waiter. He did that until he started preaching. He did a lot of voter registration work.

When I was in Austin in junior high, I used to work for all those people who were running for secretary of state and other offices because they all had the offices there on Lavaca Street. I would go and ask if they had anything I could do, for pay; I wasn't volunteering. They would give me flyers to hand out or bumper stickers to distribute. Some of them got distributed and some didn't. I was just trying to hustle; trying to get some money and I'd work for either side, of course. At that point I wasn't a Democrat or Republican. When I was a in middle school, I thought Eisenhower was doing a great job. I didn't know he was against, the Brown vs Board of Education decision. I became a Democrat when Kennedy was elected. What really prompted me to do so was when Martin Luther King was arrested and Kennedy tried to intervene on his behalf.

But I used to try to find ways to make money. I used to go around looking for soda bottles to turn in; anything.

INTERVIEWER – You were an enterprising young man, right?

BERRY – I was trying to get enough to get me a dime Baby Ruth. It's funny when I was in high school, those sausages at South Side Market were so good back until you didn't wanna leave Elgin; you didn't wanna move. A lot of times after school, me and my friends would go down there on Central and stand out front of South Side and try to panhandle. When we’d get enough to get a quarter's worth of sausage, we would go in and get some sausage. Those sausages were good back then.

INTERVIEWER – Yeah, nothing like now, right?

BERRY – Oh, they’re a little different now. I mean like today, I'd say my favorite food is shrimp, but back then it was Elgin sausage. I try to stay away from barbecue today.

INTERVIEWER – It catches up with you later on. How do you think Elgin was looked upon, because you had the advantage of being outside of Elgin for a while? So, in the fifties what kind of place was Elgin? How was it viewed?

INTERVIEWER – Well you have to remember, when I was living in Austin and in middle school, Austin was segregated as well. Still, there were more opportunities as far as places to go. The movie theaters in Austin were segregated. There were places to go; you may couldn’t go in them. It was just more excitement.

In Elgin, I remember when I came back to Elgin in ’85, the first couple years driving around downtown Elgin I would get misty eyed sometimes thinking back how things were in the fifties. Like the City Café; Blacks couldn't eat there. You could go to the back and they would hand you out your food. I ate one meal in the kitchen sitting on a soda crate. Just things like that. There were places that…. because things were segregated, it was pretty depressing at that time. You just had to make the most of it and believe one day things were going to be different.

INTERVIEWER – What were the kind of things that would've excited you as a nine or 10-year-old boy? What were the things that you looked forward to? What were the things that you liked to do?

BERRY –Sports…. sports, yes.

INTERVIEWER – That was an early dream?

BERRY – Oh, do you mean as far as occupation?

INTERVIEWER – Yes, or no. What were your passions?

BERRY – Oh, sports, reading, and while growing up, I watched the news. And I loved history because when my mother had gone to college and came back her freshman year, her college textbooks were there. And I remember this one book in particular, I think it was called, it was called, The Negro too, in American History. I read that book. I would read that book and that's when I really became fascinated by the Civil War. I read about all those battles and we saw them in the movies and after reading about them or seeing them in the movies, I would fight those battles. Even if I had to use a stick horse, I would fight those battles by myself in our gardens and around the yard. But really, sports were my passion.

Back then it was baseball. My grandfather listened to the baseball game every day. He would listen to baseball games on the radio and he had never been to one in person. Shortly after I graduated from college, I took him to Houston to see the Astros play. It was something that I really wanted to do. But it was baseball, because basketball really didn't come on TV at that time and football, you’d have a game on Saturday one on Sunday.

INTERVIEWER – So, baseball was your first sport?

BERRY – Yeah. Yeah. I loved baseball.

INTERVIEWER – Then when did you get to basketball?

BERRY – Oh, football came next. We played football in Elgin before I moved to Austin. But in Austin we played football and baseball. And in Austin, everyone called me Bull because after I moved there, I lost a couple of fights and I had to really learn how to fight because we were living in a rough place. I got that name Bull because we were playing football one day and this guy was fussing at his teammate because I was rushing the passer and he couldn't get his passes off. He said, “can't you stop him?” The other boy said, “He keeps coming in here, like a bull.” So, they started calling me Bull. People I see from back then, they don't know my name. A lot of my friends that I had back then, I don't know their names. All I know is their nicknames.

So, next, it was football. In high school, it was football. I played basketball, but I went to college to be a football coach. During my sophomore year, no my junior year, Texas high schools were all integrated and black schools competed against white school. When Houston Wheatley came to Austin, where they had the state tournament on there at the University of Texas; on that campus. I attended and I had never seen basketball played like that before. That day, I decided to make a career change. So, it was baseball, football, then basketball.

INTERVIEWER – Tell me a little more about Booker T. Those years.

BERRY – Oh, the friendships, the friendships. We were all close and for the most part, we still are.

INTERVIEWER– Can you name some names for me? The people that you're closest to.

BERRY – No, because I'd offend someone.

INTERVIEWER – Oh come on, why would you offend somebody?

BERRY – Because I may leave them out, because there are so many names, but I'll tell you who lived around me in the neighborhood. Okay?

INTERVIEWER – Tell me what that was like. A lot of why we're doing this project is because Elgin is changing so fast, and in another five or ten years, it's gonna be completely different even in those neighborhoods. I think I told you that when I was at the Mount Vernon Baptist Church…

BERRY – Methodist Church. Mount Vernon is Methodist.

INTERVIEWER – Oh, not Mount Vernon.

BERRY – Mount Moriah, Pleasant Bethney…

INTERVIEWER – Oh, Mount Moriah

BERRY – That's the church I joined.

INTERVIEWER – Oh, it is? Really? Do you remember those lots that were right across the street, empty, I think. Is it Mount Moriah or maybe it was Pleasant Bethney I was trying to think of who is the pastor there.

BERRY – I don't know the current pastor.

INTERVIEWER – I'll find it on the map for you. Yeah, but there are two vacant lots, beautiful lots, like right across … where Mount Moriah is on the corner.

BERRY – Mount Moriah is across the tracks. It's on Main Street.

INTERVIEWER – Oh, okay. No, that's not the one that I'm thinking of.

BERRY – Now when you cross the tracks….

INTERVIEWER – I'll show you on the map, there are two vacant lots across the street and they both had real estate for sale signs on them. And I was like, oh no, it's gonna be, but seriously, in another few years. Yeah. It's gonna look completely different.

BERRY – We lived behind Mount Vernon and directly behind us was my grandmother's brother's house. So, I had cousins like Ray Lynn Ward, Harry Ward, and William Ward. They lived back there. The Terry’s lived a couple of doors down and in front of me were the Cathy’s, and the Kelly’s lived up by the tracks and Curly and Larry Thomas lived in the neighborhood. We played a lot of sports.

Sometimes when they would want to come over and play, I would hide from them. I like playing by myself as well. I invented a lot of games to play at home, especially in the summer when it's so boring. I invented a lot of games. I would play football; I would play baseball by myself. I invented a football game with soda water tops. See the thing about playing by yourself you can always win. But I enjoyed playing with them as well. And the Osborne’s lived in the neighborhood; so, we were forever playing and going to other parts of town playing ball. We’d pick cotton and go to the cotton fields.

INTERVIEWER – What was a typical job you liked when you were in middle school, high school, if you wanted to make some money?

BERRY – In middle school, I was in Austin. Like I said, I'd try to find little hustles, like selling newspapers; stuff like that. But in Elgin, it was the cotton fields. I remember I had a push mower. I would go to the other side of town and ask people if they needed their lawn mowed.

I remember when they tore down that big hotel. Do you know where the barber shop is? On the other side of the street there was a big hotel. When they tore that down, I got a job there. I went to Western Auto and bought me a hatchet. They hired us to chop the mortar off the bricks. I think we got a half a cent a brick. At the end of the day, I was all white all over from the dust.

INTERVIEWER – So, you worked in the cotton fields, when was harvest time? BERRY – In late August, early September.

INTERVIEWER – Was that mainly the time that you…

BERRY – Yes, even when I stayed in Austin, when it was cotton picking time, I'd come back to Elgin to pick.

INTERVIEWER – Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Who were the people who lined up to pick cotton?

BERRY – My grandmother's brother, Uncle Jim Webb, was usually my supervisor. He was usually over the gang that I went out with, which included my cousins and other people and he would get on me because I wasn't able to pick 300 pounds.

INTERVIEWER – What kind of work was it? What was it like?

BERRY – What was it like?

INTERVIEWER – Yeah. What was it like to pick cotton?

BERRY – Hell on earth. That's why I don't go outside today. When you see me outside today, I'm on my way to some building. I hate being outside. That left an indelible impression on me.

I used to coach football and that's the reason I stopped coaching football, because it was outside. I played football and I good at coaching and playing it, but when we were in high school, you had to play football.

INTERVIEWER – Why?

BERRY – I mean, you try to talk to a girl and the girl would look at you and say, “you don't even play football.” Because, it was like, “you didn't go to war, are you a coward or something.” When I first started playing the only people that got leather jackets were football players. You didn't get one for playing basketball or running track or anything. That was a coat. That was a free coat and you got a free lunch if you played football. Football was a big thing in high school because you had to defend your school against those others schools like Emile High from Bastrop, Mary A. Brown of Smithville…it was bragging rights. I’m trying to think if there were any other jobs I had.

INTERVIEWER – What did picking cotton pay? How did you get paid, by the pound?

BERRY – Yes, I can't remember how much it paid per pound. When you chop cotton, everybody got the same amount, but when you picked cotton, it was by the pound. 

INTERVIEWER – What about the processing plant that was there at the time? The cotton gin.

BERRY – I didn't know anything about. When they emptied my sack, that was all I wanted. I wasn't concerned about what happened to the cotton after it left.

INTERVIEWER – Tell me, what was it like with the railroad tracks being the division line in the town.

BERRY – Now there were Blacks that stayed on the west side, over close to 290. It was mainly Hispanics there, but there were Blacks sprinkled in. There was a Black community on the north side, but the majority of Blacks were on the south side and we were separated by the tracks. When I was at home, the only white person I was assured of seeing was the mailman, if you didn't go anywhere that day.

When I walked to town, I walked the tracks. There was a road next to the tracks but that road wasn't paved and there were dogs and I hated dogs. I remember I got a bicycle for Christmas. I was about eight, and I was riding down Martin Luther King and a dog got after me and when I got through with that experience, I never rode that bike again.

The only young white people I interacted with, were the people where my grandmother worked, the Hagman's. They owned a furniture store. Sometimes I would go with there and play with Buddy, Randy, Barbara, and Susan.

The Hispanics I knew were Pete and Gilbert Bega. They lived on the other side of the tracks on Main. Their cousins lived on the road by the tracks. We would play ball on that field behind Booker T. Washington by the tracks.

I would see young white kids that worked in the stores. We weren't friends or anything, but I knew who they were because I'd see them in the newspaper. We didn't get put in the papers very much. But I would read the Elgin Courier and I knew who a lot of the white kids were. A lot of times, when they played football, we would go to the games. Normally, we would stand outside the fence because you could look through the fence and watch the games. That was when I was in high school. A lot of times they would come to our games as well, but we didn't have much interaction.

INTERVIEWER – Oh, do you know what I wanted to ask you about…. what we talked about it once before. Remember, I was telling you about all the controversy around Coon Neck Road. Remember that? Did we talk about that, Coon's Neck Road?

BERRY – We may have, but I don't know anything about Coon Neck Road. I don't remember hearing anything about it while growing up.

INTERVIEWER – No, because it was there. I think it was an old sharecropping settlement. Like it may have been one of the Free Men's Colonies.

BERRY – Well of outside of Elgin, in those rural areas, that wasn’t a part of my world.

INTERVIEWER – No?

BERRY – No, because number one, we didn't have a car. My grandparents didn't have a car. My mother, growing up, of course didn't have a car. She never learned to drive. Her sister, never learned to drive. When I got my first car, I was a sophomore in college. I didn't know how to drive. I had a heck of a time getting it back to Elgin. So, I never ventured out to those rural areas outside of Elgin. I’m not familiar with them at all. They’ll bring up places today, I don't know where they're talking about.

INTERVIEWER – So that was like a whole separate other world.

BERRY – Except, to go out there to pick cotton. See, the McShan’s were my friends. I don't even know where they lived. All those friends that didn't live in Elgin and lived out in the rural areas, I don't even know where they lived unless they lived in Littig. Because we would always go to Littig. I was familiar with Littig.

INTERVIEWER – Tell me about Littig, I find it interesting. I'm really fascinated by it.

BERRY – Well, I actually… I didn't go to Littig until I was maybe a sophomore in high school and I went there for social reasons. That's why I became somewhat familiar with it, but Kimbro, we had a lot of classmates that lived in Kimbro. I didn't know where that was.

INTERVIEWER – No. Were you aware of white supremacists or any like social clubs or organizations.

BERRY – You mean in Elgin, no. I wasn't familiar with them, but there may have been. I'm sure there probably were some types get togethers or organizations. I don't know if those organizations were secret or what, but they were secret to me. As far as I was concerned. I wasn’t aware of any.

I just tried to stay away from and out of the hands of the police because the police were pretty strict in those days. I had a friend who was beaten by the police and died the next day or that night. They used to have this little cell. When I say cell, I mean jail cell. 

BERRY – When I would walk to town on the tracks and I would come off on Brenham, do you where the cleaners is? Well on the left side of the cleaners by Brenham, there was a jail there, but there were no policemen there. They just put you in jail there.

INTERVIEWER – Was it an outdoors jail?

BERRY - Yes.

INTERVIEWER – People have described it to me. Oh, it was there. I didn’t know it was there.

BERRY – Yeah, and I didn’t want to be in there. I'm sure it didn’t have a heater. I’m sure it was hot during the summer and cold during the winter. But you could come up there and say hello to people. I didn't want to be in there. Like I said the police officers were pretty rough.

Of course, once you caught up in that situation, you didn't have any help. It was just you against them and against the courts or whatever. I just tried to walk a straight line as far as that was concerned. I got in trouble in Austin because I used to steal in Austin; when I was in middle school, with the boys I ran around with, and I started doing the same thing when I came back to Elgin. But when I got involved in athletics, I dropped it because I didn't want to jeopardize my position. If it wasn't nailed down, I'd take it. I was just trying to survive.

INTERVIEWER – Yeah. Understandable. Yeah. All right. So, to be continued.

BERRY – Okay.

Continued in Part Two