Oral History Interview with Esher Costner

BETSY BRINSON: I’m with Esther Costner in Middlesboro, Kentucky on March 18, 1999. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson and it is being conducted in the Days Inn in Middlesboro. Well, thank you, Miss Costner. Shall I, what can I call you?

ESTHER COSTNER: Esther’s fine.

BRINSON: Esther? Thank you for meeting with me today. I want to start with some background information about you, like what year were you born and where were you born?

COSTNER: I was born here in Middlesboro, May 15, 1999.

BRINSON: So you have a birthday coming up pretty soon. Can you tell me about your family? How did your family come to this area originally?

COSTNER: My parents, both of them weren’t born here. My mother was born here. My father was born in East Bernstadt, Kentucky, which is outside of London, Kentucky. But his family, my father’s family, originated in a place called Morgantown, North Carolina. How they actually got here, I don’t know. But his grandfather was a Baptist minister, and my understanding, he moved in this direction and his children followed, which I think most of them were adults by the time they came to, or young, maybe teenagers, something like that, by the time they came to Kentucky. Now Mother’s mother is from Morristown, Tennessee and her father is from Rising Fond, Georgia.

BRINSON: From Rising...?

COSTNER: Fond.

BRINSON: Fond.

COSTNER: Georgia.

BRINSON: How do you spell that? Is it one word or two words?

COSTNER: No, it’s two words. R I S I N G F O N D, I believe it is.

BRINSON: Okay, can you continue? Do you know how they got or what brought them to Kentucky?

COSTNER: I don’t really know. I’ve heard that, that my grandfather came with his mother. He was a young boy and they came by the way of the railroad. And it apparently took them several years to get to Kentucky, to this point. I never heard of his father. I always, you know, heard about his mother. And he had two or three brothers and two or three sisters then that were with them, but I really don’t know. And how my grandmother got here, because Morristown, Tennessee is just about thirty-five miles from here. How she got to Middlesboro, I really don’t know.

BRINSON: Did any of your family that you’ve heard about work in the mines? Would that have brought them here, do you think?

COSTNER: No, my grandfather worked on the railroad. My mother’s father. No.

BRINSON: Do you know what he did on the railroad?

COSTNER: No, I don’t.

BRINSON: Okay, well tell me a little bit about your growing up, your family, your education.

COSTNER: I have four sisters. My parents separated, divorced when I was three or four years old. My mother remarried and had four other children. But that was a problem marriage. Basically we were raised by our mother. I’m the oldest. And she did fairly well by us and with us. You know it was a little hard for her and stuff, but I completed high school. I graduated in nineteen sixty-one. I had a year of college, by my own choice, that I did not finish. And so then my sisters, they all are high school graduates. All but one attended college, that was by her choice, she didn’t want to go. Only one of us, of the five of us, that my mother had five girls, is a college graduate. But my sister next to me has like three and a half years of college and my youngest sister has about two or three years of college. But we basically married. And I have two children. And my sisters married and have children. I only have one sister that lives in Middlesboro. I have one in Frankfort, one in Toledo, Ohio and one in Arizona.

BRINSON: So they’ve all left.

COSTNER: They’ve all left. They’ve been gone for several....Well, the one in Toledo left after marriage. So, I’d say she’s been in Toledo, maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years.

BRINSON: I looked up the census, the number of people who live in Middlesboro, which as of about 1990 was maybe eleven thousand four hundred. It’s a pretty white community. How many black people do you think, live in Middlesboro today?

COSTNER: There’s probably, I can’t pinpoint it, but I’d say there’s maybe less than a thousand.

BRINSON: Less than a thousand. And when you were growing up, were there more?

COSTNER: Sure. It’s--economics has a lot to do with the area and always has. And what has happened, as the kids graduated from high school, they left seeking employment, military or maybe some college and stuff. And they just never returned. And it’s probably worse now, because employment is sad in the area, and as kids leave, basically not so much as the military or looking for jobs. Most of them now are leaving, going to college and they don’t return. And families are dying out and there has, you know there’s really no need for people to come back you know, as their families are ...

BRINSON: Right. Tell me about your education here. Did you go to the Lincoln School?

COSTNER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: That was the black school?

COSTNER: Black school, yeah.

BRINSON: Tell me about that school, how many students were there, what grades?

COSTNER: The school was from one through twelve. It was a two story building with a gymnasium.

BRINSON: And where was it located?

COSTNER: Not far from here, so I’d say it was on the east side of town.

BRINSON: Is the building still there or has it been closed?

COSTNER: No, no the building was torn down not long after integration. And integration came about here, I guess somewhere like sixty-four, sixty-five.

BRINSON: Okay, how many students in your graduating class?

COSTNER: Eighteen.

BRINSON: Eighteen? So, not a big school in terms of numbers.

COSTNER: Numbers? No. In, I wouldn’t say that the school ever graduated a hundred students at a time, but the blacks were, there was a larger number of blacks years ago, when the coal mines were in operation and stuff. And I guess when they went down that caused a lot of people to leave the area.

BRINSON: Do you remember any of your teachers?

COSTNER: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Can you tell me about one or two of them?

COSTNER: Well, the lady that I had just called, was Mrs. Blackburn, was my first grade teacher. Most of the teachers now are dead, but upon integration most of them moved away.

BRINSON: Why did they move away?

COSTNER: I couldn’t say for certain, because I really don’t know. But they probably, my opinion of it, is that they probably feared being re-hired.

BRINSON: And there is certainly enough evidence across the South that, that was true. That was a fear. But Mrs. Blackburn stayed?

COSTNER: Yes, she stayed. She had a family and things here. And there was another one and her name was Mrs. Bryan, but she is deceased right now. I mean now. She died back in the eighties, and I think she taught me, maybe in the fifth or sixth grade. But she was, Mrs. Blackburn and Mrs. Bryan were hired into, you know, the system. I mean they were re-hired into the system.

BRINSON: Did you like school?

COSTNER: Uh hmmm.

BRINSON: You did? Did you have any favorite subjects?

COSTNER: No, I guess I couldn’t say I had a favorite subject.

BRINSON: Were you active in any school organizations?

COSTNER: We didn’t have any school organizations.

BRINSON: Didn’t, you didn’t have any athletics?

COSTNER: Oh yeah, we had. I was a cheerleader. We had football and basketball. I was a cheerleader. And then our Home Economics class...

BRINSON: Was that part of Future Homemakers of America?

COSTNER: Yeah, something like that. I had forgotten what to call it. I was involved in that, but any other organizations or anything like, you know...

BRINSON: Was there a student council?

COSTNER: No.

BRINSON: No. Do you remember the principal?

COSTNER: Uh hmm. When I was in elementary school, the principal was, name was Osborne. But I don’t remember when he left. He didn’t die in Middlesboro, but he didn’t stay in Middlesboro long after I entered school. And then the principal was Mrs. E. R. Ball, which she was a cousin of mine.

BRINSON: And what was her first name again?

COSTNER: E. R., Esther R. Ball.

BRINSON: Oh, Esther R. Ball, okay. Were you named after her?

COSTNER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: You were named after her, oohh, okay.

COSTNER: She was a niece of my grandfather.

BRINSON: And what happened to her when the schools were integrated?

COSTNER: She moved to Louisville and she was hired by the local school system. She worked there until she retired.

BRINSON: And what about the students who graduated with you? Did they stay? Did they leave?

COSTNER: They’ve all basically left. I don’t--there may be one or two still in Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Miss Blackburn said to me something about there had been or there are school reunions periodically. Can you describe those to me?

COSTNER: We have a school reunion ever two years, which this year is the year for the reunion. It will be held in July and it is like a three day event. And it’s a joyous time, because you get to renew old friendships, see people you haven’t seen for a while; and the same people don’t come every year. Most of them try to get back, but it may be two or three reunions, you know, you may not see some of the same people, but most of them try to get back. And we have elected officers; we have a bank account; we give three scholarships to a graduating black student from Middlesboro High School every year.

BRINSON: A scholarship to attend college?

COSTNER: Uh hmm, any accredited institution.

BRINSON: And how many people normally come back for a reunion? They bring their families too, I guess?

COSTNER: Yeah, they bring their families. Well, I would say on that weekend, if you would try to get into Day’s Inn, you couldn’t get a room anywhere within the area, because--I would say, we’ve had, we have several hundred people. I can’t just say how many, but we may have six, seven, eight hundred people come back. But our membership is on the decline, because a lot of the older people that attended have passed on. And we’ve lost quite a few within the last couple of years also. And these people were big supporters of the reunion. This thing started in 1972; and I think it was ninety-seven that we celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary.

BRINSON: When you were growing up here, Esther, what was the climate like in terms of race in Middlesboro? Was there discrimination?

COSTNER: Yes, there was, but I’m sure that we didn’t really look at it as discrimination, because we didn’t know anything other than, you didn’t go in this restaurant or if you went to the theater, you went upstairs through the back door.

BRINSON: Which theater was that?

COSTNER: Well there wasn’t but one, well there was two. And this was the Manring Theater. You went around to the side and went upstairs to the balcony part. There was one that was called the Park Theater. Now, I don’t think blacks weren’t allowed in there at all.

BRINSON: And tell me again the name of the first theater.

COSTNER: Manring.

BRINSON: Manring? M A N...?

COSTNER: R I N, well Manerin, M A N R I N G

BRINSON: Okay. Were there instances of violence that you had heard about or witnessed?

COSTNER: I have never witnessed anything. The only thing that, towards violence that I can remember, excuse me, anything about, I have a cousin that was playing little league baseball and they had won a championship and were on their way somewhere for a play-off. And he had gone into, he went into a drugstore with another young boy, which was white. The boy asked the waitress, they had a food counter, for a glass of water. And the waitress gave both of them a glass of water and the proprietor smacked the glass of water out of my cousin’s hand.

BRINSON: So that’s...

COSTNER: You know basically I don’t remember any incidents or anything that could have happened or occurred.

BRINSON: So your cousin was actually playing on an integrated school team at that point.

COSTNER: Yeah, this is like city league, little league, you know, it’s a summer program, little league baseball.

BRINSON: But it was integrated at that point.

COSTNER: Yes, uh huh.

BRINSON: Okay. Do you recall, approximately, what time that might have been? Was that in the sixties?

COSTNER: No, it had to have been in the fifties, because he graduated from high school in fifty-eight. So I would say it was in the early fifties.

BRINSON: Well, that’s interesting. So in the fifties, though you had separate schools, but yet you had an integrated softball league?

COSTNER: No, it’s Little League and Little League still exists. They have Little League. They have Senior League. And it’s like when you become a certain age, maybe seven or eight years old, you play Little League and then at twelve or thirteen, you graduate up to Senior League, you know. And it’s, it’s a summer program that has been going on for years, you know, some way of keeping kids occupied and interested in sports and stuff. And Middlesboro has had great Little League and Senior League teams.

BRINSON: But it is interesting that back before the Civil Rights movement you actually had teams that blacks and whites played together on. Tell me about where blacks lived in Middlesboro. Did they live in separate communities within town? Did they live scattered out?

COSTNER: They were all over town. Maybe in say like, Cumberland Avenue, which is on the far end of Cumberland is residential, you never, you know there wasn’t a black on it. Because it was just an area that you couldn’t probably, you couldn’t buy any if you could afford to, if you could have afforded to purchase. But blacks were all over Middlesboro, you know, it’s not in just one section on the south side or whatever. There were blacks and whites in the same areas in parts of Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Have there ever been any lynchings in the area that you’ve heard about?

COSTNER: No.

BRINSON: Okay. Has there ever been any Ku Klux Klan activity that you’ve heard about?

COSTNER: No, but that doesn’t say that there hasn’t been: I just, you know, don’t know about it.

BRINSON: Okay. So you graduated high school in nineteen sixty-one?

COSTNER: Yes.

BRINSON: And then what?

COSTNER: I went to college for a year.

BRINSON: Where?

COSTNER: I went to Kentucky State in Frankfort and came home and just worked around, little some of nothing. And then I got married and had a baby and basically that’s it.

BRINSON: Ok. What was Kentucky State like for you when you went there? It was a much bigger place than Middlesboro.

COSTNER: Well, yeah, but you know, and it’s like I tell my family now, Frankfort has grown since I was at Kentucky State. When I went to college, things weren’t like they are now; you didn’t have--girls had to be in at a certain time of night; you didn’t have visitations from young men and stuff like that. So, but it was nice. I enjoyed it. It was different, you know. I mean a school where you have a band. We didn’t have a band in high school you know. It was different.

BRINSON: Well, if you were at Kentucky State in 1962, which was certainly an active time in civil rights around the South at that period. I mean there were sit-ins and demonstrations and Martin Luther King. Did you know anybody on campus, who was involved in anything like that?

COSTNER: Uh uh. Because I went in September of sixty-one and I left in the Spring of sixty-two.

BRINSON: Tell me about your husband. Is this the husband that you married when you came...? Okay. And his name is?

COSTNER: Julian Costner. What do you want to know about him? (laughing)

BRINSON: Well, is he from this area?

COSTNER: Yes, he was born in Middlesboro. His mother is from Louisiana and his father is from North Carolina, but his mother came to Kentucky with relatives, I think, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, a young girl. How his father got to Middlesboro, I don’t know. Both of his parents are deceased.

BRINSON: So, did you know him growing up?

COSTNER: No, I did and I didn’t know him. You know I knew him, but I didn’t know him, you know. I wasn’t real familiar with him.

BRINSON: So how did you get together?

COSTNER: Well, he just came to visit one evening, you know; and I had no idea that he was just coming to see me you know, and the relationship grew from there. But you know, it wasn’t anything that--because I was a senior in high school when he was already out of school, you know. And I guess my mother figured that he was a little old for me to date, but the relationship just grew from there.

BRINSON: How much older is he than you?

COSTNER: Four years.

BRINSON: Well, that’s not much, is it?

COSTNER: No, but you know, when you are in high school...

BRINSON: But your mother...

COSTNER: And they’re already out, it’s something.

BRINSON: Right.

COSTNER: Julian is a licensed barber. He did that for several years. Being within this area, you know, there wasn’t really any money. And then well, he is a disabled coal miner right now.

BRINSON: Oh is he? So he worked in the mines.

COSTNER: He worked in the coal mines from seventy-six to eighty-nine.

BRINSON: When he was a barber, his place of business, was he doing hair for both black and white?

COSTNER: No, just black.

BRINSON: Just black and because there was so few blacks in the area...?

COSTNER: Oh, he had business.

BRINSON: He had business.

COSTNER: He had plenty of business, but basically he didn’t, his busiest time was like the weekends, Friday and Saturday, you know.

BRINSON: And then just not enough business during the week to...?

COSTNER: No, no, not during the week, because basically people in the area got paid on Friday. They got their hair cut on Fridays, got the children’s hair cut on Friday; and then he might do a few heads during the week, but not that much. And then a hair cut at the time, a hair cut didn’t cost but a dollar.

BRINSON: Right. Okay. When did you first begin to think about discrimination as a black person?

COSTNER: I don’t know. You always realize, you know that, you know, what discrimination was and that it was here. But when you are born in the situation you knew what your limitations were, so you just, you know, just didn’t go beyond that.

BRINSON: Was there ever a time though, when something happened, either to you or to someone else that you witnessed, that you said, ‘I’m just not going to stand for that anymore. That’s wrong.’

COSTNER: No.

BRINSON: No.

COSTNER: Not that I can remember. I could have said it, but I don’t remember that. Because I don’t remember any bad incidents happening in Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Were there, in the sixties when we had the sit-ins and the demonstrations and whatnot, did any of those happen in Middlesboro?

COSTNER: No, we never had any activists in Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Okay, so no one tried to open up the lunch counter or the theater or whatnot?

COSTNER: No, no, no.

BRINSON: How about, are there any parks? City parks that were separate?

COSTNER: No, we don’t have any. The only parks that we have...

BRINSON: Or swimming pools?

COSTNER: Well, I guess when they built the swimming pool, everything was integrated, I’d say.

BRINSON: It was already integrated?

COSTNER: Uh-huh, I’d say. But the parks, we only have the National Park out here, and then you have the State Park down there in Pineville, but we don’t have any city parks.

BRINSON: Do you remember the whole war on poverty in the sixties and did that affect this county at all? Were there VISTA volunteers that came in and Community Action programs, Headstart programs?

COSTNER: Yes, they had a Headstart program at one time. And I think they had a community and they still have a Community Action program going, but just what, you know, what they’re doing right now, I don’t know.

BRINSON: Were you ever involved with any of the...?

COSTNER: Well, I worked with Community Action from seventy-two to seventy-five. I worked at...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

COSTNER: ...Some with child care. And the, and families, you know, that needed, that had children within a certain range. You had to be within a certain income bracket to qualify for this, but they had centers set up in Bell County for the child care. And what I did was work with the families of the children that attended the child care centers. I basically would, you know, try to work with the children that were at home, that were too young to go and try to teach them some of the same things that they were teaching the kids, you know, mobility, eye co-ordination and stuff like that. Then we furnished information to the parent or parents of the children. We furnished transportation to places that they may need to go, doctor, welfare office, or you know, we’d hand them information about things that were available for them. We tried to get those that didn’t have like the high school education to get their GED’s or if they did, to try to get into some type of training, prepare themselves for the day when their children would come off of welfare.

BRINSON: Were there black families that received assistance from those programs as well as white?

COSTNER: Yes.

BRINSON: Do you think people, both black and white, were treated the same?

COSTNER: Yes.

BRINSON: You do? Okay. How did you become involved with the Democracy Resource Center?

COSTNER: Well, I worked with another agency before, Black Mountain Improvement Association, which they had set up like tutoring, a tutoring program in Bell and Knox County for black students. And I’m sure that they did other things, but trying to help the black student was one of their main things. But anyway, when this, when Black Mountain Improvement went out...

BRINSON: This would have been about when now? What time period?

COSTNER: This was in the nineties, early nineties.

BRINSON: Black Mountain...?

COSTNER: Black Mountain Improvement, yes, was in the early nineties. The director over Black Mountain: BMIA is what we called it, shorthand.

BRINSON: I’m sorry, say it again.

COSTNER: BMIA.

BRINSON: BMIA for Black Mountain...

COSTNER: That was just short for Black Mountain Improvement Association.

BRINSON: Okay, okay.

COSTNER: Renee Scott, I think is maybe on the Board of Democracy Resource. And when I first got involved with it, it wasn’t Democracy. It was Kentucky Local Governments. And I guess they were just, they were branching out into, into different counties, because they were involved with government, local governments. They were wanting people to get involved with their local government and stuff. Well, getting involved with local government in this area, is just a little more than people would want to do, so what we did was to continue to tutor. But we learned a lot from Democracy Resource. We got to know quite a few people through Black Mountain Improvement and Democracy Resource. We, you know, we have found that, you know, through being involved with these agencies and things, you learn a lot. You know how to, find out how to go about getting to the people or to the things that you need to. Whereas, if you had not been involved, you wouldn’t know, especially living in an area like this. We did with the Black Mountain, I mean, not Black Mountain, with Democracy Resource of Kentucky Local Governments. I don’t know if they had changed their name at the time or not, but we did get involved with getting some blacks hired when they opened the tunnel over here.

BRINSON: Opened the tunnel? Over to, is that the Cumberland Gap?

COSTNER: Cumberland Gap.

BRINSON: Okay.

COSTNER: When they first started the procedures for the opening they had no blacks in their employment.

BRINSON: And that was about when? When did the tunnel open?

COSTNER: It’s been open about two or three years.

BRINSON: Okay.

COSTNER: But personally, I didn’t get deeply involved, because I didn’t really. I couldn’t for my job and stuff like that. But I did play a role in getting them some of the information and the people and things that they needed to do and know, in order to do what they had to do for getting someone hired. And I think since then there may be, there has been three blacks or maybe four hired over there. And maybe there’s three or four working there now. I’m not quite sure.

BRINSON: So that was...

COSTNER: But we did get in through Democracy Resource - and John Cleveland, he used to work with Democracy Resource. And Paige, Paige, what’s Paige. Can’t think of her last name now. We did get Reverend Lewis Coleman, who’s an activist in Louisville, to come to Middlesboro and give us instructions and directions and information on what we needed to do.

BRINSON: And what did you need to do? How did you go about that?

COSTNER: They got a copy of something--I can’t really tell you. He came, he gave us names and information about people to contact.

BRINSON: But basically you organized pressure ...

COSTNER: I organized the meeting for him to come.

BRINSON: Oh, you organized the meeting?

COSTNER: The meeting, yeah.

BRINSON: How did you do that?

COSTNER: Well, I called through John Cleveland. Reverend Coleman is on the Board for Democracy Resource, research. So John Cleveland, I talked with John Cleveland and he got in touch with Reverend Coleman. And then maybe I may have talked to him a couple of times, and we set up a date and time for him to come. And then through some of the people that were involved with the local governments at the time, we just got the word out that he was going to be there, you know; and if you were interested in hearing what he had to say, and these were basically people that had applied for employment at the tunnel. And we had a very good turnout.

BRINSON: Where did you meet?

COSTNER: But we got--we met in the Methodist Church fellowship hall—but, ah …

BRINSON: And when you say you put the word out, did you do a mailing? Did you call on the telephone?

COSTNER: No, we did telephone, door to door...

BRINSON: Word of mouth?

COSTNER: Word of mouth type thing.

BRINSON: You went door to door?

COSTNER: No, not really. But you know, word of mouth, telephone type thing. The person that was really directly involved in this tone, issue, the employment at the time of the issue is a male and you may want to talk to him when you start talking to males.

BRINSON: What is his name?

COSTNER: His name is Edward Ballinger.

BRINSON: Tell me who Renee Scott is.

COSTNER: Renee Scott was the Director of Black Mountain Improvement Association.

BRINSON: Okay, was she black?

COSTNER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: She was. Was she from the area?

COSTNER: No, she, I’m thinking Renee is from, she’s either originally from South Carolina or Georgia. But she’s been in Kentucky for a while and she’s still in Kentucky. I think she, that she works for the State now, but she lives in Berea. Liz Nader, she’s on the Board for Democracy Resource or she was. I haven’t seen her in several years.

BRINSON: Well it sounds, you were saying that you couldn’t be too out there, because of your job and all. Were you, you obviously were fearful that you might lose your job for being out front?

COSTNER: Well no, I didn’t mean be out there. I couldn’t get, now see when I was with Democracy Resource it was like part time. A lot of things...

BRINSON: So you worked for the Democracy Resource Center?

COSTNER: Uh huh. And a lot of things that you might need to do maybe during the time, see I have a full time job, during the time that I could be out there doing it, you know. I would co-ordinate things, get it together so that we could have our different functions or you know, make the telephone calls or whatever. But for a lot of the foot work, I did not do. I couldn’t do it because of the availability of my time.

BRINSON: Right. Okay. It sounds, Esther, that somewhere over the years you got more assertive in terms of your involvement with the Democracy Resource Center, the work to get blacks hired over at Cumberland. What happened over the way, did you get angry?

COSTNER: Oh, yeah.

BRINSON: That’s what I’m...

COSTNER: And why am I not active now?

BRINSON: No, it sounds like you are active now.

COSTNER: No, I’m not as active as I was. You know working for Democracy Resource--Black Mountain Improvement was funded programs and they just kind of lost their grants and stuff.

BRINSON: Okay, but somewhere, were those, it sounds like they were more than just paid jobs for you.

COSTNER: Well, you really get into what you are doing, but in dealing with people, it’s not very easy. And you get to the point where you feel like you are not accomplishing anything, then it’s best to just, you know, leave it alone. Bell County is a poor county, a depressed county and when you are dealing with people, and I’m talking about black people, because I didn’t deal with white people in either one of these programs. You have a tendency to get just a little bit disturbed when people don’t co-operate and you’re trying to help, you know. But you do get involved and you get involved, you know, probably a little more than you intended to. But it’s all worthwhile if you can see a finished product.

BRINSON: Have you and your husband ever thought about leaving Bell County?

COSTNER: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Moving away?

COSTNER: Uh huh. We have, several times, but then you think—well, you know--you are not getting younger, any younger, you know and of course, my husband is disabled. As far as I’m concerned I still need to work for a few more days. And you know, when you get a little age on you, it is kind of hard to get employed when you are not certified. And I have no certifications for any jobs.

BRINSON: You work for the school system now in the cafeteria?

COSTNER: In the cafeteria, uh hmm.

BRINSON: How long have you been doing that?

COSTNER: For three years. Before that I worked for J. C. Penney’s for thirteen years. And before that I worked for the Community Action. But I hadn’t worked for about seven or eight years, because about a year after my second child was born I had to quit. And I just didn’t go back working until he was like in the second grade, until after he got into school.

BRINSON: What did you do at J. C. Penney’s all those years?

COSTNER: Well, I was a sales clerk and then I worked in stock: the last four years that I worked there, I worked in stock.

BRINSON: Were there any problems for you there in terms of being a black employee?

COSTNER: No, I made some great friends.

BRINSON: Did you?

COSTNER: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Okay. Let me just. [TAPE GOES OFF AND ON]

COSTNER: If it helps him, because I said I don’t know anything about nineteen thirty on down. And he wanted--I just recently, well in June of last year, I lost my mother. And it was sort of like, it happened quickly. I’ll just say it that-a-way, and we never, we--or ask a question or anything come up that we don’t know, we always, we would always go to her. And my sister and I have a tendency to say pick up the phone to call Momma to ask a question, you know. Or I would say, “Well Mom would know that.” And it’s getting that-a-way, anybody that could give you any information is are gone.

BRINSON: When you were growing up and attended the Lincoln School and there was a white school. What was the name of the white school?

COSTNER: Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Middlesboro?

COSTNER: Well, you had Middlesboro High School and then you had Central School, which was the elementary school and then you had Middlesboro Junior High. There was three schools for whites.

BRINSON: Were there any differences that you were aware of between the black and the white schools?

COSTNER: Uh hmm, yeah. I mean I never was in any of the schools, but you could, you know whenever they sent, you got books and things, they were used books and stuff, because they were ragged and written in and stuff like that; you knew there was a difference. We never had a science room. They set up a lab table in one of the rooms in the school. But they never connected it up, you know. It was the table, but you didn’t have the other stuff to go with it.

BRINSON: Right, right. Was there a PTA?

COSTNER: At our school?

BRINSON: Uh huh.

COSTNER: Yeah.

BRINSON: Do you remember anything about it? Was your mother active in the PTA?

COSTNER: Yes, but I can’t tell you anything. I don’t remember.

BRINSON: Okay. Did you grow up in a church, Esther?

COSTNER: Yes. I belong to the Mount Moriah Baptist Church and I became a member at the age of seven. My family was and is Baptist. My grandfather was a musician for one of the choirs there until he became ill and could no longer function. And I still attend that church.

BRINSON: Mount Moriah? M O R I A H?

COSTNER: Yes.

BRINSON: Okay. Was there ever anything in the congregation, in the sermons that talked about equal rights for blacks, that blacks should have equal rights?

COSTNER: I’m sure there was.

BRINSON: Were there ever any meetings that you attended or that you heard about, of people in the church who were interested in seeing things change here?

COSTNER: No, not that I know of.

BRINSON: Ok. Did you tell me that you belonged to the NAACP?

COSTNER: I did, but they’re not active right now.

BRINSON: Okay. Were they, when were they active here in Middlesboro?

COSTNER: I became a part of it in the late seventies. And I’d say up until just a few years ago, maybe sometime in the eighties. Well, they’re not as active as they were. Before I became a member I don’t remember, you know, just how active it was.

BRINSON: Did your mother or your grandparents ever belong to the NAACP?

COSTNER: Yes they did. I can remember, you know, hearing them talking about you know, being a part of the NAACP, but just what they did or how active they were I don’t know.

BRINSON: But the time you were active, what was going on within the organization at that point? Did you have meetings? Did you raise money for any projects? Were there any issues that the chapter was working on?

COSTNER: I don’t remember.

BRINSON: Okay.

COSTNER: But the man that I gave you the name was the President. He was one of the presidents.

BRINSON: Is that Edward...?

COSTNER: Ballinger.

BRINSON: Ballinger. He was the President?

COSTNER: He was one of the presidents.

BRINSON: Did they ever have any women presidents?

COSTNER: No, I don’t think so.

BRINSON: Okay.

COSTNER: I remember him and two other fellows. One of the other guys, other men that was President is deceased now. And the other one, I don’t know--I haven’t seen him for a while, but he may be still in Middlesboro.

BRINSON: Let me talk abut voting and elections. Do, do you belong to a political party? Do you vote?

COSTNER: Uh hmm. I’m a registered Democrat, but I’m not active with any party.

BRINSON: And your husband?

COSTNER: He’s a registered Democrat, too.

BRINSON: Have there ever been issues that you can recall in the black community that people thought that they should get out and vote for a particular candidate because that would be more helpful to the black community?

COSTNER: I’m sure there has been. I just can’t, not thinking very well now. And I know that it’s your right and your duty to vote. But personally, if I don’t believe in them, I’m not going to vote. I don’t care who’s you are, whether you’re Democrat, Republican or what, you know. And I, I don’t know. I have problems with politics, so I just don’t do any volunteering, but I do vote. And I vote on a regular basis, but I don’t get into it.

BRINSON: Who were your heroes when you were growing up?

COSTNER: I guess if I would have had any of them it would be my mom. Because until I was a big kid, we didn’t own, the only thing we had was a radio. So I don’t, I wasn’t into sports or anything like that. And if you went to the movies, all they were was cowboys and Indians, so nobody, I had....So I don’t....I guess my mom.

BRINSON: Any musicians that you might have heard on the radio or had records?

COSTNER: Well, I liked all the rock and roll (laughing) and whatever at that point. That I can remember them pretty well.

BRINSON: One last question, in the history of African Americans in this country, from slavery to civil rights, there’s been progress, I think we’d agree. Where do you think blacks are in American society today? What do you think?

COSTNER: I don’t think they’re where they should be. I don’t and there has been progress and quite a bit of progress. And there are quite a few blacks that are in positions that they should be in. And I’m sure there are quite a few blacks that are in positions they shouldn’t be in, you know. But I do feel and of course, in this area you can’t be in competition too much, because there’s not that much for competition, unless you are in politics or you are certified. Say a teacher or you’d have to be in the medical field or something for it to be worthwhile around here, as far as salaries are concerned. But the one thing that my husband and I did and I worked hard to do was educate our children, so that they would not have to stay in this area, and accept whatever.

BRINSON: Tell me about your children. You have two boys?

COSTNER: I have two boys. They’re ten years apart. My oldest is thirty-four. My youngest is twenty-four. They were both born here in Middlesboro. They both attended Middlesboro city schools and they both attended Kentucky State University. They both have Bachelor degrees. My oldest has a Master’s degree and my youngest is presently working on his Master’s. The oldest is married and he lives in Versailles, Kentucky and has one child. The youngest is still a single man.

BRINSON: The youngest is...?

COSTNER: Is still single.

BRINSON: And how old is the grandchild?

COSTNER: Two years old.

BRINSON: Two years old, a little one.

COSTNER: My oldest son is a research analyst for Legislative Research and my youngest works for the Revenue Cabinet.

BRINSON: And how do you think life is different for them today than it was for you when you were thirty-four years old? Or twenty-four years old?

COSTNER: Okay, at twenty-four years old? The struggle was, I guess you just didn’t really believe the struggle. At twenty-four I guess I was at the point where I could go in and apply for a job in the store or something like that, you know. Making whatever minimum wage was then, no more than two dollars an hour. I’m just happy that my children don’t have to depend on that.

BRINSON: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

COSTNER: No. No, I don’t think so.

BRINSON: Okay.

END OF INTERVIEW