Oral History Interview with Odessa Chestine

BETSY BRINSON: ...two thousand, this is an interview with Odessa Chestine in her home in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The interviewer is Betsy Brinson. And what shall I call you? Miss Chestine?

ODESSA CHESTINE: Odessa will be all right.

BRINSON: Odessa’s okay? Okay. Why don’t we begin, please, by you giving me your full name, your birth date and your birthplace.

CHESTINE: Well my full name is Odessa Chestine.

BRINSON: You don’t have a middle name?

CHESTINE: Well yes, (Laughing) I did have, Frances, Odessa Frances Major Chestine.

BRINSON: Okay, and you were born?

CHESTINE: And I was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, March the twenty-sixth, nineteen thirteen.

BRINSON: Nineteen thirteen, okay. Well, thank you very much for agreeing to talk with me. As I said on the phone, a little bit, what we are trying to do, is to document the whole period between nineteen thirty and nineteen seventy-five and the effort to eliminate segregation in Kentucky and specifically in Hopkinsville. And Reverend Ford suggested that we talk to you, because you had lived in Hopkinsville a long time. So some of what I’m going to ask you is about you, but some of it may be about the community. Does that sound okay?

CHESTINE: Yes.

BRINSON: Why don’t we begin, tell me a little bit about your family and your growing up here. And if you had any grandparents, if you know where your ancestors came from.

CHESTINE: No, I don’t know a great deal about where my ancestors came from, other than that my grandfather was a minister. And he became a minister because he had been born into slavery as a little one, and his mother worked in the house on the slave property. And he was allowed to play with the children of the slave owner. So when the tutor came to teach the young ones, he was allowed to listen in. And when the tutor came back at the end of the two week period, he seemed to remember more what the teacher had taught than the children did, so the owners allowed him to stay each week; because he could help the children with their lessons. Consequently he, you know, the Bible was the book of choice, he studied the Bible and began to preach and he taught his brothers to read. And that’s where his education came from.

BRINSON: Now did he live in Kentucky?

CHESTINE: I do not know where in the South this was. I don’t remember ever hearing that part of it.

BRINSON: How about your grandparents, though?

CHESTINE: This is my grandfather I’m talking about.

BRINSON: This is your grandfather, oh, okay.

CHESTINE: When my dad was born, they were living in Kentucky, Pembroke, Kentucky. That’s a town near here. You probably know it. My Dad married my mother, her name was Emma Bayliss. And he married her, and she became Emma Majors.

BRINSON: Do you know how they met?

CHESTINE: I didn’t hear the story. It wasn’t talked about in front of me. [Laughing] It might have been talked about, but I wasn’t listening. (Laughter) But at any rate, then he came to Hopkinsville. They came to Hopkinsville from Pembroke. And my father took the Civil Service examination, passed it and became a postman here in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. And he joined the force here. And with that as a beginning, we finally moved to this place where we are now. We’ve been here--I have been here eighty-two years.

BRINSON: In this house?

CHESTINE: In this house.

BRINSON: And the address is one, one...

CHESTINE: One, one, nine Liberty.

BRINSON: Liberty.

CHESTINE: Of course the structure has been improved. It was nothing like this large. But the front frame, the front of the house was there. This is, of course, you can tell, is an addition.

BRINSON: But I can see some of the front rooms. You have some wonderful architecture inside.

CHESTINE: Very spacious, beautiful. Uh huh. That architecture fascinates me.

BRINSON: So you grew up in this house.

CHESTINE: Oh yes.

BRINSON: Did you have any brothers and sisters?

CHESTINE: I had a brother and a sister. My sister died before I was born. My brother was nine years older than I.

BRINSON: How old was your sister when she died?

CHESTINE: I don’t really know. I assume she must have been a baby for her to have been dead when I was born.

BRINSON: Yeah. Did your mother work outside the home?

CHESTINE: No, she did not. She lost, the loss of the baby seemingly affected her mind. And she wasn’t able to keep abreast of what was going on, so she was institutionalized. And I was brought up by a step-mother. And that’s about the size of that.

BRINSON: Where was your mother institutionalized?

CHESTINE: At Western State Hospital. She was later, and very late in life, moved to Watson’s Nursing Home in Madisonville.

BRINSON: Tell me about your early education. Where did you go to school?

CHESTINE: I went to school at Booker T. Washington Elementary School, and completed eight grades there, then to Attucks High School.

BRINSON: Crispus Attucks

CHESTINE: Crispus Attucks. And from there, in the thirties you were interested in, the thirties I went there to Kentucky State College.

BRINSON: What year did you graduate from high school?

CHESTINE: Nineteen thirty.

BRINSON: Nineteen thirty, okay. How many people, approximately, were in your graduating class?

CHESTINE: Oh gosh, let’s see, I would say there must have been about seventeen.

BRINSON: Seventeen.

CHESTINE: Sixteen or seventeen.

BRINSON: Okay. I want to ask you, when you were growing up, were you aware that it was a segregated society?

CHESTINE: Of course.

BRINSON: Tell me about that.

CHESTINE: There’s not much to tell. It was the same situation you found everywhere else. We had separate school facilities. And I had, we bought books. We had to buy, my father had to buy my books for many years. We had of course, black teachers, some very, very good ones. One in particular, used to live next door to me here. She was known as Mrs. Dolly Brown. She was an Episcopalian by religion. And they had a little library, they tried to establish a library. And she gathered books, sent to the church, for her library. And us living next door here, well, I was just forced to read these books. (Laughing) My father was an avid reader. None of us could go to the Carnegie Library. It was off limits to Blacks. And so consequently, he spent an awful lot of money buying books. He bought his own books. And so that got me interested in reading, consequently. And of course, my grand daddy, he read everything. Golly, The Courier Journal was his dose of medicine. He read that religiously, daily. Now, we didn’t take this paper, but he would visit the Courthouse each day. And very few people there were interested in what was going on anywhere. And he picked up the paper and brought it home everyday, and of course he just loved to know what was happening.

BRINSON: Do you remember which newspaper that was?

CHESTINE: The Courier Journal.

BRINSON: The Courier Journal, okay. There were one or two, I’m not sure, you may know this, black newspapers in Hopkinsville. Do you remember those at all when you were growing up?

CHESTINE: Mr. Whitney could tell you all about those. The New Age I think was the name of one of them, and I don’t remember.

BRINSON: Did your family ever read that?

CHESTINE: Yes, they took everything. Read a book.

BRINSON: Do you remember any of the books that were, that you either read from your neighbor or that your father bought?

CHESTINE: Oh no. He had books of poetry in particular, encyclopedias, that sort of thing.

BRINSON: Did you have any favorite teachers at school?

CHESTINE: Oh yes, Mrs. Brown as I spoke of, she was a history teacher and the librarian at the school. She kept a book under your nose constantly, constantly. It was always have you finished this or have you finished that, and such and such a thing came in today. You want to read that. And that sort of thing.

BRINSON: When you were coming along in school, was there any Black history? Probably would have called it Negro history at that point.

CHESTINE: Now what do you mean by that? Did I have a text of that sort?

BRINSON: Well, did any of your teachers teach you about Booker T. Washington...?

CHESTINE: Oh yes, that was a part of every Negro history. We went through all of that kind of material.

BRINSON: So you graduated high school and you went to Kentucky State.

CHESTINE: This is true.

BRINSON: And what did you study there?

CHESTINE: My major was History and Economics. And graduated and came home and taught Mathematics. (Laughing) There was just an odd situation. They were short a Math teacher and I was looking for a job, which I didn’t find until a long time after graduating, it seemed to me like it was forever. But at any rate.

BRINSON: How long was it though really?

CHESTINE: Oh about...

BRINSON: A couple of years maybe?

CHESTINE: Oh no. A little more than that.

BRINSON: No more than that?

CHESTINE: I said a little more than that.

BRINSON: A little more than that.

CHESTINE: Because before I got situated I taught in a one room school, out in the rurals. And I taught at Crofton for ten years. And that’s teaching all grades, you know, all subjects. Then I taught at Lafayette, it’s further back in the country. It’s in South Christian. And I taught there three years.

BRINSON: Lafayette?

CHESTINE: Lafayette.

BRINSON: Like Lafayette? Spelled like Lafayette?

CHESTINE: Yeah, that’s true. Pronunciation I think, is the only difference.

BRINSON: And these were all black schools?

CHESTINE: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: And then you came to teach here in Hopkinsville.

CHESTINE: In Hopkinsville, seventh and eighth grade Math.

BRINSON: At the Booker T. Washington..?

CHESTINE: No, at--the seventh grade had moved to Attucks, to become a junior high. And I came in as that system progressed.

BRINSON: So when you came in, it was still a segregated system?

CHESTINE: Yes, it was still segregated.

BRINSON: Okay.

CHESTINE: While I was working with the math situation there, New Math became very important, and I introduced that to our students at my school. And when they started integrating, I was one of the first to be taken into the integrated situation and left there and went to Coffman Junior High. It was a white school. It was terminated and we went to Hopkinsville High and Hopkinsville Middle School. And so I was swallowed up into that situation.

BRINSON: Let me go back and ask you, the Supreme Court issued the Brown decision in nineteen fifty-four, and then how soon after that did Hopkinsville move to integrate the schools?

CHESTINE: We started it, I think, in sixty-four.

BRINSON: Sixty-four?

CHESTINE: I believe.

BRINSON: Or fifty-four? Did it, was it...

CHESTINE: Oh, I believe it was about sixty something.

BRINSON: Was it ten years after the Supreme Court decision?

CHESTINE: Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know the years.

BRINSON: Well tell me, tell me how you felt about that, all of that change.

CHESTINE: Well, I wondered how I would fit into it. And I wondered how it would accept me. I was just cautious, because there were all kinds of feelings. Everybody had a feeling, I and they. (Laughing) And so it was my determination to be a good teacher. And personally I don’t understand how you can be a good teacher and not, and choose the subjects to teach. And by that I mean the persons, if you are a teacher, you are a teacher. If you have something to sell, you sell it to anybody that needs it. And so this was the attitude that I had.

BRINSON: How about the other black teachers? Did any of them lose their jobs with integration?

CHESTINE: The elderly of that, at that time did, almost en mass, several of them were left out.

BRINSON: And was that because they were elderly and black? What reason did the school system give to them? Do you know?

CHESTINE: Well some of them had not completed their education. But we noted that the same thing was true about the white teachers. But the white teachers were allowed to go and complete theirs on the job. But, oh little things happened.

BRINSON: Were any of the black teachers assigned lower positions?

CHESTINE: Those that were hired, were hired on the level where they were, just as I.

BRINSON: What about the principals of the black schools?

CHESTINE: They went other places.

BRINSON: Did they? Why did they do that, do you know?

CHESTINE: They didn’t have jobs here.

BRINSON: How did the children in the black schools feel about all of this?

CHESTINE: Well, there was a difference of opinions, you know, everyone had said the white schools were superior, so superior to the black schools. And many parents thought that their children were just going to go into a heavenly situation and just get along fine. And then there were others that thought that the children might not bid so well. But they managed. There were a few interruptions. Some white teachers didn’t like the idea of having to be bothered with black children. And of course, a child is easy to insult. They didn’t feel that they were wanted. They were made to feel that they were not wanted, and they reacted in an unwanted situation; (Laughing) like anyone else would that didn’t feel wanted. That’s something that they thought they had a right to.

BRINSON: I understand there is an NAACP chapter here...

CHESTINE: There is.

BRINSON: ...that has been here a good while. Where were they with the whole school integration?

CHESTINE: Often times they weren’t very active, and at that particular point they were not too active. They had become more active later.

BRINSON: What kinds of issues have they been more active about?

CHESTINE: Well, just a normal situation, integrating the facilities in the city for everyone’s use. That sort of thing.

BRINSON: You mean opening up the library...

CHESTINE: That’s right.

BRINSON: ...and the restaurants and stores.

CHESTINE: That is correct.

BRINSON: Okay. When those sorts of efforts were being made to open up public accommodations, were there any sit ins or demonstrations in Hopkinsville?

CHESTINE: There might have been, but they were so minor, that they weren’t brought to light.

BRINSON: Were they ever reported in the newspaper that you were aware of?

CHESTINE: Not to a great extent.

BRINSON: How was the newspaper in the fifties and sixties here? How did they, what kind of coverage did they give to the African-American community generally, in the paper?

CHESTINE: Well it was shaded to fit the paper, the policy of the paper.

BRINSON: Do you remember...?

CHESTINE: No, I don’t. I can’t point out anything. I wouldn’t dare attempt it.

BRINSON: So how long did you teach?

CHESTINE: I taught thirty-five years.

BRINSON: Okay, and then retired from teaching?

CHESTINE: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Tell me did you have a family along the way?

CHESTINE: I’ve had a husband. We didn’t have any children. We adopted a family. [Laughing] And that’s how I got my children. He’s dead now.

BRINSON: Your husband is dead now...

CHESTINE: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: ...but is the family?

CHESTINE: No, no, no. They are living in Florida. It just so happened that this little girl finished Tennessee State College and came to Hopkinsville to work. And she used, she rented a room from us; and we fell in love with her, and she with us. And at the time she was courting a class mate at Tennessee State, and shortly thereafter, after having moved here, they got married. And so we just adopted the two of them as our children. She’s the cause of me being in the hospital, Sunday. (Laughing)

BRINSON: She is?

CHESTINE: Yes, she’s, I was sitting here, I was ailing. I had talked with her about an hour and a half Saturday. I sat here for a few moments and I said, “I don’t feel like going to church and I just think I’ll just stay here.” And the phone rang and it was she. And I said, “What are you calling me about? Who told you to call me?” She said, “How do you feel?” I said, “I don’t feel too well.” “You sure, what’s wrong?” I said, you know, I have heart trouble. She said, “Hadn’t you better go to the emergency room?” I said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that serious.” I said, “But who told you to call me?” She said, “I don’t know. I came in from church and something told me to call Odessa. Just call her.” And in my mind, God must have revealed to her that I was not well, and she called. She said, “I’ll call you back in about thirty minutes, and if you aren’t feeling any better, we’ll see about you going to the hospital, going to the emergency room.” And so I was just sitting here thinking about it and I said, “Oh, I’m not going to any emergency room.” Someone rang the doorbell. I got up to go to the door. And I said, “Well I wonder who that is?” And it was my neighbor next door. She had called next door. I said, “Hello Sputnik, what do you want?” Miss Inez just called me and she said, “Be sure to take you to the emergency room, today.”

BRINSON: What is his name again?

CHESTINE: That’s his nickname, his name is Milton.

BRINSON: And what is...?

CHESTINE: He’s called Sputnik.

BRINSON: Sputnik.

CHESTINE: You can understand when he was born, can’t you? [Laughter]

BRINSON: Right, right, yeah.

CHESTINE: I said, “Honey, I don’t....” He said, “I can’t refuse Miss Inez, because she told me definitely to see to it that you go to the hospital.” So he said, “How long is it going to take you to get some clothes on?” And I told him, so he came back and took me.

BRINSON: Good thing. Were you active, were you and your family active in a church while you were growing up?

CHESTINE: Yes, yes, oh yes. That was part of, you know, grand daddy preaching, you know I had to be in the church. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Were you active with the Virginia Street Baptist Church?

CHESTINE: That’s right.

BRINSON: So are you one of their fifty year members?

CHESTINE: Yes.

BRINSON: I just saw the plaque.

CHESTINE: Plaque, uh huh.

BRINSON: But I didn’t stop to look at the names.

CHESTINE: Well, you wouldn’t have noticed my name in particular anyway.

BRINSON: Well, I might have.

CHESTINE: Okay, okay. (Laughter)

BRINSON: Since I knew I was coming to see you.

CHESTINE: Uh huh, yeah.

BRINSON: I wonder how, was the church active here in the whole integration movement in any way?

CHESTINE: Not too very. It wasn’t mentioned very much at my church. Reverend Lesley, the former pastor, was also a teacher. He taught school as well as preached. And he was determined not to mix it up. He didn’t want to get into it period. So it wasn’t discussed too much at our church.

BRINSON: Why was that? Was there some fear that teachers who became involved would be punished in some way?

CHESTINE: Warren tried to dodge that type of thing. He just wanted to stay out of the way of it, don’t stir it, let it be.

BRINSON: [Coughs] Excuse me. Were you a member of the NAACP?

CHESTINE: I am now, I wasn’t at that particular time.

(Tape goes on and off)

BRINSON: Were you aware though of people--did you know people who belonged to the NAACP here in the fifties and the sixties?

CHESTINE: Oh yes. My father was a charter member for the NAACP.

BRINSON: Do you have any idea approximately how many people belonged to the NAACP in the...?

CHESTINE: I wouldn’t speculate. I wouldn’t try guessing.

BRINSON: Because you didn’t attend meetings in the fifties or sixties?

CHESTINE: I wasn’t, I didn’t think about it. It just wasn’t something that I gave any deep concern to.

BRINSON: I know in some communities in Kentucky the graduates and the teachers of the black schools, even today, have reunions. And I wonder if that is true in Hopkinsville?

CHESTINE: Yes, we have an Attucks reunion, I think it is every two years. And I believe this is the year. It always comes along about the Fourth of July.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: You were saying that they come home July Fourth.

CHESTINE: Generally. It is around that time when they have the Attucks reunion.

BRINSON: How long does the reunion last? And what kinds of...

CHESTINE: About three days.

BRINSON: Okay. What kinds of activities?

CHESTINE: Well, we generally have a general meeting, and then we have the social side and bring in former graduates of Attucks and they make speeches. And they have a big dance, and then we have a picnic.

BRINSON: What happens at the general meeting?

CHESTINE: Well, just items of interest to anybody.

BRINSON: Sort of business?

CHESTINE: Yeah, well, perhaps I would think this year there would be some discussion about the coming up elections and what’s of interest to Blacks; who’s saying what and why; and my opinion and somebody else’s opinion.

BRINSON: So sort of an educational forum.

CHESTINE: Yes.

BRINSON: Has the, does the Alumni association have a name?

CHESTINE: Other than Attucks Alumni?

BRINSON: Attucks Alumni, okay. Do they ever raise money for scholarships or anything like that?

CHESTINE: Probably so, I don’t know. I can’t speak to that.

BRINSON: Do you go to the reunions?

CHESTINE: Yes, I go to the big meeting.

BRINSON: But you don’t do all the social?

CHESTINE: I don’t do a whole lot of...

BRINSON: I want to ask you a few questions about voting and politics in Hopkinsville. And for the Black community in particular, have they always been able to vote? Were they able to vote before the fifties? Or were there problems around their voting, or did people try and buy their votes?

CHESTINE: I don’t know about that.

BRINSON: Okay. Did you vote in the fifties and the sixties?

CHESTINE: I always vote. It was mandatory. [Laughing] My granddad said, “Yes, vote, always.”

BRINSON: Was your dad active in politics?

CHESTINE: Not too active. He was in the Civil Service and they didn’t participate in that sort of thing.

BRINSON: They had the ( ). In the fifties and the sixties, which political party was the most popular in the Black community in Hopkinsville?

CHESTINE: Well, they were mostly Republican until later years, when they discovered that they were being treated better by the Democrats. And so, almost en masse we became Democrats.

BRINSON: And of course you have, in Hopkinsville in the white community you have former Governor Breathitt, who grew up here.

CHESTINE: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: How was he viewed by the black community when he was, I guess he was the attorney for the School Board for a while, wasn’t he? When he was here.

CHESTINE: He probably was. I’m not aware of that.

BRINSON: Okay, but then when he became Governor?

CHESTINE: He and Mr. Whitney were very fast friends.

BRINSON: I didn’t ask him that, okay. But how was he, was he viewed as...?

CHESTINE: He was not a name that we mentioned lovingly. He was not--however those people that were high up in the Democratic workings seem to have thought favorably of him.

BRINSON: I think we are coming to the end here you’re just...

CHESTINE: I think so too.

BRINSON: You’ve been a good interview.

CHESTINE: Go away! (Laughing)

BRINSON: Well you think you haven’t given me much information, but you have. Is there anything else, that you can think of, that I haven’t asked you about, in the fifties and the sixties? Housing, I wanted to ask you about housing. Are there little black--sort of communities in Hopkinsville?

CHESTINE: Well in the East end of Hopkinsville you find a concentration of Blacks. But those that are looking for, or that are able, are buying lots on the outskirts of town and building their own homes. For a long while, the houses conformed to a sort of gunshot type of thing. And we are getting a little away from that, and we’re making more money now, and we are able to afford more. So we are getting in other areas, larger, better homes.

BRINSON: But in the forties and the fifties and sixties.

CHESTINE: There is a concentration in the city in the East end of Hopkinsville.

BRINSON: Hopkinsville has a fairly large black population.

CHESTINE: Yes. Did Mr., did Mr. Quinn tell you how many?

BRINSON: I looked up the nineteen ninety census, but it just gave the total population. But one of the things I wanted to ask you is, has that black population sort of stayed the same or have people left the area?

CHESTINE: Well, I tell you what, I can’t speak to that too well, because jobs, people have left here and found great jobs. And they are doing very, very well. We are very, very proud of our Attucks graduates, because most of them when they come home, they tell us of the new jobs that they have, all the jobs that they have; and the way they are raising their families and everything. And it is all so true to, it’s so pleasant to view that they are doing so well. And they didn’t have to wait for integration to branch out. They received a type of education that gave them the aim, to aim, they aimed well. And they are doing well, in spite of the fact that they went to segregated schools.

BRINSON: But they had to leave Hopkinsville to...

CHESTINE: To find their niche.

BRINSON: ...find their jobs. Are there places where people leaving Hopkinsville are likely to go, like Chicago or Indianapolis?

CHESTINE: Well, they started at Chicago and Indianapolis and Michigan, Detroit and some in California. Some friends of ours are in California and doing very, very well.

BRINSON: How about Nashville?

CHESTINE: Well , we do have those there. I have some students there, and they are doing very, very well. Out there at Vanderbilt Hospital, one of my students is doing quite well there.

BRINSON: As they get older do they ever come back to Hopkinsville to live?

CHESTINE: Oh yes they, not to live. They visit frequently.

BRINSON: But I mean to live, like to retire.

CHESTINE: Why would one come back to Hopkinsville to retire? (laughing)

BRINSON: Well, actually I’ve talked to, and it’s usually women, who say well I lived in Syracuse, New York or I lived in Kansas; but when my parents started to get old, they needed help, and I moved back.

CHESTINE: And the ones that come back here, seemingly come back and get their parents and take them away, give them another life.

BRINSON: Okay. And that just varies with the family.

CHESTINE: Of course.

BRINSON: Right, okay. You don’t think it has anything to do with the town?

CHESTINE: Oh no, they’ve just gotten used to a better way of life. And they, you know when you get something started, you don’t want to come back down here and start over.

BRINSON: Did you ever think about leaving Hopkinsville?

CHESTINE: Oh Lord in heaven. (Laughing) I had to stay with Daddy. (Laughter)

BRINSON: Now is Daddy your husband?

CHESTINE: No, my father, my father. My step-mother passed before he did and of course, I devoted all of my time to him.

BRINSON: How old were you when your grandfather died?

CHESTINE: I must have been about twenty-five or six.

BRINSON: Well, both your father and your grandfather sound like very special men.

CHESTINE: Oh they were. I learned so much from them. They liked to talk politics and they liked to talk issues, and I just enjoyed it.

BRINSON: Well is there anything else you can think of? No? Okay. Well thank you very much for talking to me.

END OF INTERVIEW