This interview excerpt is from a continuing series of transcripts from the collection of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida.
Barbara Sampson Carter [C] was interviewed by Bruce Barton [B] on Nov. 18, 1973. Carter, a Lumbee Indian, talks about her frustrations with the poor treatment of Lumbee people in the county’s social services department, as well as the struggles to create an equitable education system for Native students.
Transcript edited for length and clarity by Beth Grobman; a full transcript of this interview is available at tinyurl.com/iguana2595.
B: Barbara, Thank you for this interview. Could you give us a little resume?
C: I’m 27. I was reared on a farm — which I didn’t like then, but I’m proud of it now. My mother taught school. I went to Pembroke High School, where I got married when I was sixteen. That took a lot of my teenage life away from me. I really had to accept responsibilities as a mother and a wife, when I should have been home, going to basketball games and all that kind of stuff teens do.
B: Why did you did get married at such an early age?
C: Lack of facts, really. [Laughter]
B: They didn’t have sex education in high school?
C: No. I was blind to sex education. I got pregnant and didn’t know how I got pregnant. That is the reason I got married when I was sixteen, because I was pregnant, and didn’t know how I got pregnant.
B: Do you think it was the fact that you’re an Indian and went to a school that didn’t have a course in sex education?
C: Yeah, if we would’ve had that in school, then you’d know what can happen.
B: When you went to high school, was it an all-Indian school?
C: Yes, it was.
B: Do you think that this was part of the problem, being isolated from what other people were doing and thinking? Do you think it would have been better if there had been Indian, Black, and white kids going there so that they could learn from each other?
C: Probably so, and I’m sure if we would’ve had white kids going there, we would have had better education, better books, better everything, because I can remember — like, when I was in high school, when we got our typing books, we really thought we were getting new books, but they were books that the white kids had used in Lumberton, then they gave ’em to us.
B: Growing up in Robeson County as a Lumbee Indian teenager, what did you do for recreation?
C: Nothing, really. That’s probably one reason I got pregnant.
B: Well, where did the kids go?
C: We went to ballgames, or to a movie. We didn’t have any dances, and that’s not been that long. I really don’t see any improvement in recreation. There’s really nothing, and like, if you went to the movies, over in Lumberton, you [the Indians] had to sit upstairs in the balcony with old hard seats, and it was cold up there.
B: You mean they had segregation in the movie theater?
C: Oh, did they ever! They had tri-racial segregation — had a section for Blacks, one for Indians, and one for Whites. That must have been a little stiff on their financing, though. It seems like it would’ve been a lot easier just to have bathrooms that said “Female” and “Male,” instead of bathrooms that said “White Women,” “Black Women,” “Indian Women,” “Black Men,” “Indian Men,” and “White Men.” Three sections in the movie.
B: It’s interesting how we all just accepted that as a way of life back then.
C: I don’t know if we all really accepted it. I remember one time, going to the movies, and my girlfriend — she was really a good-looking Indian girl, with black straight hair, black eyes, and olive skin. And my hair is dark brown, and skin’s just a little lighter, but we went to go downstairs [in the white section], and I paid my money, and the lady didn’t say anything. And then my girlfriend paid her money, and the lady said, “Don’t you belong upstairs?” I said, “Look lady, no, she don’t belong upstairs. We paid here, we’re going in here, or we don’t go in at all.”
B: So you didn’t see the movie?
C: No, ’cause she wasn’t going to let my friend go in downstairs.
B: I remember, that the thing that was frightening to me growing up as an Indian teenager in Robeson County was seeing so much violence among Indian people. I don’t ever remember hearing about an Indian killing a white. It was always Indian killing Indian. Is that what you remember?
C: Yes, but, you know, that’s not really our fault. That goes back to there was no place for us to go, you know, so they resorted to this kind of stuff.
B: Do you think it’s better now?
C: Yeah, some. Not much. Like I said, I don’t see that much improvement in the recreation, as far as places for the kids to go.
B: Are you proud to be an Indian?
C: Yeah, I’ve always been proud to be an Indian.
B: Would you just as soon be named a Lumbee Indian as anything else?
C: I’m first Indian, and then a Lumbee. The name doesn’t really matter that much to me, whether it’s Lumbee, Cherokee, whatever, you know. I’m first an Indian.
B: Well, did you know about the piece of legislation passed in [19]56 by the United States Congress that you, as a Lumbee Indian, have a name, but aren’t entitled to any of the other benefits of other Indians?
C: Like reservation Indians? I think that’s a bunch of bull.
B: You think we’re better off than reservation Indians?
C: Yeah, I do. I think we have an advantage. Like, to me, that BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] is like communism. They’re gonna tell you how to spend your money and where to spend it. And if it’s my money, I’m gonna spend it where the hell I want to.
B: You really think that the average white in Robeson County feels superior to the Lumbee Indian?
C: I think any damn white person feels superior. I don’t care where they are or who they are. It might be a little — it’s not as bad, I’m sure, but all these white brothers telling me, you know, “I don’t feel any better, I don’t this, and I don’t that,” but really deep down inside, I think they do.
B: You have two children. Do you get any kind of subsistence from the county? Do you work for a living?
C: You know, we got enough people on welfare. I’m an able body. I can get out and work and support my kids myself.
B: So, where do you work?
C: At the Lumbee Regional Development Association. It’s a federally funded program for Indians. I work with the adult education program. We have a total enrollment of about 230 adults in six centers.
B: These adult students, are they all Indians?
C: They are all Indian, and I can really see where we’re really doing some good. One of the recruiters, Laneda Jacobs, [had a client who] would always give her an excuse. This guy could not read or write. He had drinking problem. He was just — nothing! He was just wasting away, and Laneda, who is a very convincing person, finally got him in school. He started going to school, really, really, dug on it, you know, and he enjoyed it so much. He starts to read, and he starts to write, and after he’d been in school a while, when he went to the insurance company where he’d always made his mark, and the lady said, “Well, you can put your mark here,” and he says, “Lady, I don’t mark anymore … I can write my name.” He did so well that we had a vacancy for a recruiter, and he applied, and he is one of the best recruiters we have. He’s our living testimony that it can be done.
B: Do you distinguish between white people in Robeson County and white people outside? Do you see a difference?
C: Surely. Before I came to the job that I’m with now, and I’ve been there almost three years, I was working in Scotland County, which I really enjoyed. And I worked with two white ladies, three Black guys, and two Indian guys. The little white lady I worked with was from Rockingham, and she was a wonderful person. I just loved her. She was just one of the greatest people I’ve ever met.
B: So you couldn’t say that, point-blank, all white people are terrible?
C: No, I don’t say all white people are terrible, but even her, as much as I hate to say it, she probably felt a little better. But if she did, she was pretty good at hiding it. She didn’t ever let it show. But right on the other hand — like I said, there was two ladies I worked with from Rockingham. There was this old lady who was about fifty-five or sixty. She was as prejudiced as you ever saw.
B: Had you ever had any contact with Blacks before you moved out into the working world?
C: No, none other than my nanny, the lady that stayed with me when my mom was teaching school.
B: You mean you, as an Indian, had a Black nanny?
C: Yeah, and I loved her very much.
B: How did you find Blacks there? You know, all the misconceptions we hear about, they’re out to rape all the women, and they’re sex crazed, and they’re gonna run away to Africa with all the white women. Did you find that to be true?
C: Well, there’s fools in every race, but just like the little white lady who I thought so much of, there was this Black guy. His name was Curtis Fisher, who is one of the nicest persons I have ever met in my life. I mean Black, white, Indian. He is one of the greatest guys I have ever met, and his wife was the same way, and I visited in their home a lot, and he was a very well-educated person.
B: So you found out that probably most males, Black and Indian, aren’t probably just out, all of ’em, panting after white women?
C: Right.
B: Do you have aspirations to go back to school?
C: I plan to go back to college. Our program with adult education will be up in June, and if we’re funded another year, there’s a possibility that I will continue to work with it, but maybe I can take some college courses at night.
B: What do you plan to study?
C: I’d like to major in sociology. Like in Robeson County, over at social service place, it’s the most unfair place you’ve ever been to in your life.
B: Is it mostly staffed by white?
C: Right. That’s unfair to start with.
B: So white people are out to help Indians and Blacks, and the administrators and people giving the help are white?
C: And those people over there look down on you like you are nothing.
B: This is at the welfare department, where you get food stamps and all that stuff?
C: Right. You know, those people are coming over there — first, the only reason they’re going is because that’s what they have to turn to. They need food stamps. They need welfare checks. And you know they must feel bad to go there to start with. They hate to ask for handouts. And you’re standing there — like, this elderly lady had been standing there for a long time. She gets up there to the counter, and the lady’s voice is so hateful to her and so rude. You don’t have to be like that about people. You can respect people, I don’t care what color they are. She’s so mean to ’em, and it’s not really fair what goes on over there. I wish there was something I could do about it, and I think if I could get a degree in that, I’d like to work with my people.
B: Have you found Indians to be prejudiced, for instance, against Blacks?
C: I have found Indians to be prejudiced against Indians.
B: No kiddin’?
C: No kidding.
B: So you think the problem is within our own ranks, say — or do you think the problem, if we’re ever going to change anything, we’d have to get ourselves together?
C: That’s right. Clean up our own backyard first.
B: What do you think is the best way for Indian people to help themselves?
C: To get educated. I think that’s one of the best, and unity to pull together. But see, then, if you’re not educated, you don’t really understand all this stuff, and people can play you away, paint you a lot of pretty pictures.
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