[ sighs ] you all right? last time i saw mama, she asked me if i had a minute. and i didn't have time just then. [ voice breaking ] and now i'm the one who could really use a minute... and she has no time at all.

>> this is the steele report. >> our top thick week on the steele report, black history month and a fascinating new book written by some local authors. our questioning begins right now. >> now from kwwl, this is the steele report. >> welcome to this week he is -- week's edition of the steele report. i would like to introduce them to you right now, dr. katherine vam wormer is a professor of social work at the university of northern iowa in cedar falls, she's also an addiction specialist and author of several books, including the book we're going to talk about here today which is entitled, the maid narratives, black domestics and white families in the jim crow south. coauthored with charletta sudduth and also david w. jackson, iii.

sudduth, coauthor of the book i just mentioned here. your mother will join us a little later here on the program, too. she actually was one of the maids that you're talking about in your book. >> yes. >> let's talk first of all, it is black history month and charletta, for you, what does that mean after all these years of looking back at the struggles that african-americans have yoefr overcome and have still overcome sng -- overcoming? what does it mean to you? >> it reminds me of my heritage, how far we've come but how far we have to go and part of me getting involved with this book is just wanting to make sure that we begin to pass on this legacy of stories and the trials, the triumphs that my people have had to endure to get us to this point. >> black history month goes back itself to carter wood son, 1926

katherine, you collaborated with a broader look at recruiting her. you're from new orleans and you lived at a lot of times when black maids were in your neighborhood, right? >> growing up in the 1950s in new orleans and when i look back in my mind, it's a whole different world. it's hard to believe. when i moved here it was in the 1990s and i heard about the women in waterloo who had come from mississippi, a part of the great migration. and i thought, well, there weren't many jobs open. share cropping was one and being in domestic service was the other one. a lot of them probably worked as maids or cooks for white families and i want to get their stories. it took years and years because i need an interviewer, an african-american and i had

class and also as a graduate student in social work. she has the perfect listening skills. i thought, charletta, she's the one. she's the one. >> giving your interviews. >> right. charletta had no interest whatsoever. >> interesting. >> i'll tell you about that. i worked on her for years and finally, she came back and she had an opportunity to publish an article. we were going to publish an article together. she was working on her doctorate and i got her to do an interview. she did one tape and when i listened to the tape, it was annie victoria johnson and in the first interview, they were laughing and crying together and i knew she was hooked. so we went from there, david jackson did about 40 of them, altogether we had about 50 interviews and so we had a book.

a book when i listened to the tapes of the remarkable women telling every detail of the food they ate and their relationships with the white families. >> how were the women treated by the white families? charletta, you conducted many of these interviews. you're kind of doing what bob nemeyer has done with world war ii veterans at the grout museum. he's interviewed all of these old world war ii veterans. you've kind of done the same thing with the ladies that came to waterloo, a lot of them mainly from mississippi in many cases. how were they treated here locally and what do they tell you about their experiences? >> wow. well, ron, katherine is right. at the time when i finally said yes, i would work on my doctorate and quite frankly, i couldn't see how i would have the time to do this but, you know, katherine has just meant a lot to me and i thought, yes, i will do it.

and i think that was miss annie victoria. >> vanilla bird. >> and then annie. between those two. and the resilience that they had was remarkable and i would kind of, you know, sit there and listen so i was agonizing, going through my dissertation, the writing of it, and after i think about all they had to endure and suffer for their families, i would leave those interviews thinking, you know what? if that -- what they had to endure for me to even have the privilege to go to uni, then surely i can make it and really those interviews began to be -- i know it's cliche but the wind beneath my wings. i would leave the interviews feeling like i could write another page, go another mile. >> are these ladies still alive today? >> no. >> were they the descendants of

>> uh-huh. >> almost everybody was. that's remarkable to me. i think a lot of people, maybe even the young white and black kids of today, they don't think too much about the struggles that had -- that went on in some of the horrific things that happened to americans, black americans back in those days and in some cases are still happening today. so read a passage out of that, just give me an idea how to set it up what you're talking about. i would like to hear what you have written here. >> i'm going to read a small passage. ruthy ruthy o'neill, she passed away last year. it was lightning, thundering and raining one night. i didn't know white folks call black people darkies. that night, she was talking on the phone and she said, yes, there's nobody here but me and darky.

and she kept saying and darky this and darky that and we're doing fine and darky is doing pretty good. i kind of liked darky. i don't know what or why she kept saying that. my name isn't dorothy. it's ruthy. i went home and i was telling my grandmother what she was saying. and my auntie said, she wasn't saying dorothy. she was saying darky. she said, that's what they call us. i said, why would they call us darkies? and she said, because we're black. >> do you think in those days, that was okay in the minds of whites because they didn't realize it was a derogatory statement or they were looking and saying it? what do you think? >> right. the term "color" is a very polite term and it was used. darky was more old fashioned but i would hear my grandfather use

but he's in the 1950s, that was considered old fashioned to slavery. that term. >> and in your book, and katherine, i'll have you read something here in a minute but you mentioned jim crowe south. that wasn't a real person. a lot of people don't realize that. he came about as a result of a white actor and you know all about this. but really, it was -- talk about very repressive customs and laws to hold african-americans back in those days, right? and that's what they refer to as the jim crowe south and some of the jim crowe laws. you look at them as a 66-year-old white male now, i'm going i can't believe that we have did this, you know, to another race. that boggles my mind, actually. do you feel that way? >> right. and the back gets into the etiquette and it's so strange. they had these rules and the rules pretty well had to be

ways to get around them. that's where a lot of humor comes in the book. they weren't allowed to use the toilet a lot of times in the homes. so their stories of how they would sneak when they were out or somebody had to come take them away and we have stories from white people as well from mississippi as well as black people. and they can confirm the stories and some things they said that they heard are even worse. when asked one woman, well, where did they go to the bathroom and she said, they lived along the levee and she said they just went out to the levee and went in the bushes. you know, it's unbelievable. my mother told about her grandmother who was my great grandmother, when she was at the house, she wondered where they went to the bathroom and they are grandmother said, oh, they go under the house. the house was raised.

they weren't -- they went under the house. my mother was shocked. when kids grew up and heard about the rules, it was very difficult for them because black women were like mother figures, they fed them, they took care of them. one case, it's annie victoria johnson talks about wet nursing, that they would find women to nurse the babies if the white mother couldn't do that so they were very close to these mother figures. we have some -- i heard about my favorite author, william falkner in the book and he was one of those raised by -- his mother was very cold, but there was a black figure in his life. when his mother died, he had her be his maid in the beautiful

it's open to tourists and we got to go there and get a photograph for the book. but he was one of those who was raised by a black woman. so there was a tremendous closeness in the family and then there was the etiquette that didn't seem to make sense. so the little white kids would say, well, you know, mommy, mommy, how come ethel can't come in the front door? how come she has to come in the back door? i know my mother would ask that question of her mother and her mother would say, it just isn't done. it just isn't done. they were trying to follow this -- like a code. but at the same time, they were hugging each other, they were very intimate in lots of ways with each other and it was segregation. people would come from the north and they would say, well, you're so close to each other. they couldn't quite figure it out. but i will say the black men were left out of the picture

history of that, the sex which was one aspect of this. i think the whole segregation thing and the reason people got so hysterical about integration, they didn't want the white kids and the black kids to get together. they didn't want them dating. they didn't want them to get married. so that's what it all boiled down to, that you had to -- the white women and the black women, the white women were sub serviantservian t serviant to their husbands and they couldn't choose how much to pay the woman who worked as a cook. we always called her a cook in our family. but what she could do was give us the black family hand me

got shoes for the kids, we got a sofa, you know, got furniture, a whole lot was given to them. and the best gift of all, that was in iowa. some of them worked in the south and then they came to the north. >> we'll talk about that. we'll take a real quick break here and come back. the reminder of the show will be online at kwwl.com.

>> welcome back to this week he is's edition of the steele report. we have a special guest who joined us, this is annie stevenson. annie is a retired john deere community credit union worker. whether it was veridian credit union. i just learned you knew my late father-in-law and late mother-in-law. they were customers there of the john deere credit union and she happens to be charletta's mother. this is a unique situation. we've been talking about your book and the fact that you were one of the maids that they interviewed because you came to waterloo. tell us about your story. what was that like coming from mississippi? >> yeah. oxford, mississippi. i came up in 1965 and actually, i came up looking for a job. i wanted to earn money so i could go back to oxford and go to college in jackson, mississippi. i did not find a job so i had to

>> i know that feeling. >> pretty soon i found myself staying here longer than i had planned on. and i'm still here. >> you're still here. and did you actually conduct the interview with your mother for this book? yeah. >> yes. i did. you know, i had grew up as a child, you know, listening to my mother recant these stories, taking me back down memory lane many times. and you know, every time they would air, for instance, the story of miss jane pitman, my mother would go into her own story so i really didn't think, ron, these stories would be of interest to the general public. and, you know, my mom being a teenage maid, you know, i knew about it but i didn't, you know -- at that time i wasn't able to put the relevancy with it. >> was this a local family then or mississippi? >> in mississippi, yeah. >> and actually, her story, i

stories with the publisher because my mother went with my great aunt, who is also featured in the story, to make a long story short, my great aunt actually did maid work, they called it day work temporarily for william falkner. >> great author to which you referred to in the first segment. what was it like, ann yip, to be a teenage maid in the south, in the jim crowe south, as the book refers to that, what was it like? >> it was not fun but i wanted to earn money. and we worked probably for 50 cents an hour. when my aunt took me to mr. mr. falkner's home as a young girl, i thought, oh, my god. what a big house this is. she called me pearl. she said, pearl, we're going to clean mr. falkner's house. then she went into explaining

and i thought, mii don't care how famous he is. i don't want to clean that big house. >> was he raised by black women? maybe his view point was not as racist perhaps, right? >> perhaps not. i didn't actually get to talk with him or visit but my aunt did. he had lots of books in his house. i remember that. dust. we had to dust around everything and make sure it was clean. >> so you didn't care how famous he was. you didn't want to clean the house. >> i wish i had known how famous he was. >> but you needed the money and you wanted to go to college. >> yes. >> and i would suspect that education was something that you emphasized a great deal on your daughter growing up. >> yes. yes. yes. >> and obviously that paid off, you know. katherine, do you have a passage you want to read for us? why don't you set that up.

one of the things of the book is the stress on education. over and over it came up. women from the south would come up here and they would go to night school, which you did. >> i went to night school. >> and pursue an education and as one of them said to the grandchild, they didn't understand why they had such a poor education. well, they were working in the fields. especially when you go back to 1930s, before your time. >> before my time. >> they would pull them out of school. they would maybe get through hours of school and the whole season was out in the cotton field. when they moved to the north, they had to either get an education or they had to work as domestic servants. >> right. >> so read this passage. >> this is annie victoria johnson. she was really intriguing. she died a year or two ago and i saw her picture in the obituary

i felt like i knew her. i had heard the story on the tape. she was from mississippi. she says, my mom did the same thing she did for us when caring for their kids. this is the white families. she bathed them, fed them, put them to bed. they slept in our beds. some of the white kids called my mother grandma. my mother was in her 30s then and they would call her grandma or auntie. she loved them just like she loved us. she whooped them just like she did us. the woman would tell her, if they don't mind, you know what to do. and it was, yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am and thank you. and they do that right now down south. >> so you could tell back then that the kids knew that the way that blacks were treated, they could feel in their heart it was wrong. couldn't they? they knew it. >> they could.

so i was thinking, wouldn't you have liked to have been on that bus with rosa parks in 1955? i mean, imagine that moment in history, what a dramatic impact it was for all of us. but i think there are certain places you would have liked to have been in american history. that certainly is one of them. >> wait until you hear where annie pearl stevenson was. she was on a bus. >> tell us that story. >> oh, gosh. it was many years ago. we were integrating old miss college and he was the inner school on a monday and our parents said to the black students, don't go to school today. there will be trouble. and we went to school because we thought we could be a help for him to get into the college.

had to drive 18 miles to get to school, high school. well, the white people and the sheriff and a group of us stopped and they tried to make us turn around. they started beating the bus, they broke the windows. we fell on the floor, glass shattered but we didn't turn around. we kept going until we got to school and we were there to support jay meredith in think way he could. he integrated old miss university. >> and look at the changes there. >> oh, gosh. >> in oxford over the years. >> his statue is right there on the campus. >> it sure is. >> so when you look at what we're experiencing this month, this is black history month so annie, let me just ask you, what does black history mean to you as it begins to wind down for

>> i've seen a lot of changes that i never thought i would see. number one, black president. i never thought i would live to see a black president. the voting system. i remember when we were not able to vote. and that has always been -- i think i worked the polls since i've been in waterloo. >> voting rights are at the center fold of the movement. absolutely. >> my dad never missed a voting and now i don't. and i work whenever i'm needed because that's so important. and the young people don't seem to understand but those are things that i think strike me the most as i look back on history. there were so many things that we could not do. now that we can do them, some won't do them.

community today and these young -- the shots fired incidents involving young black teenagers, charletta, this is a big deal to you because you see this in the schools all the time. what do we need to tell the young people about education and try to get in their mind this is the way out? you know, it's an equalizer. >> yes, it is. it's so funny that you're saying that. i truly believe that education is an equalizer and that that's one reason why i was passionate about the book. i feel like if our students could understand, you know, even if some of these books were in their texts where they could read about the plight, the struggle of their people, maybe that would give them a clue to wake up because now we don't need jim crowe. we don't need the ku klux klan because we're killing each other now. if i could say anything, you