Patricia Jackson - Fire Hose (clip)

Patricia Jackson: ...walk from this church and remember growing up as little kids we could walk from here and go to Big John’s pharmacy, which was just on the corner there of Franklin Street. But when segregation time came and when the students, and the white people that were in charge, now we couldn’t go there. So, every time we went, you could go by there--

Carolyn Briggs: You couldn’t go eat.

PJ: --but you couldn’t sit down. “What do you mean we can’t sit down? We sat down before.” So, we went in and sat down, and you know what happened to us? They called the fire- they called the police from Chapel Hill, and they came down, hooked their hoses, and hosed us out of the place.

Della Pollock: Inside?

PJ: We were kids- yeah- we were ten and eleven years old being water hosed. Yeah, we were inside and were told to get out but we decided that we weren’t going to get out. So, they said, “Oh yeah, you’re getting out,” turned the hoses on us and hosed. That’s why I wanted Carolyn to stay, she and I were together when that happened to us.

DP: Oh really?

PJ: Oh yeah, horrible.

DP: So, what actually happened to you?

PJ: By the time we got hosed, now we’re so humiliated that time but then too, we’re twelve and thirteen, so it’s kind of funny, so you kind of brush it off and get up and run home, you know, and tell what happened to you. And then, you know, your mother is saying- okay now your mother who’s still coming from the era of well this is still the university, some place that they you know lawed and magnify, you know- “What were you doing?” So, we got a beating for being down there. You know, ah just, you know so---