R.D. and Euzelle Smith - On their careers prior to marriage (clip)
Interviewed by Alexander Stephens and Alex Biggers on January 20, 2011
R.D. Smith (RDS): I refused the promotion. I said I want to go home. To my wife. We’d been married for … how long we’d been married for?
Euzelle Smith (ES): Well, we married in ‘43, and you came out in, came out of service in ‘46.
RDS: I know, I know. But we’d been married for what, about two months?
ES: What? Oh. We married in July, June, and you went to the service in February. Seven months I think.
RDS: We’d been married, oh not long, that short time, from June to February.
Alexander Stephens (AS): What were things like for you while he was gone?
ES: I worked. The school was right up, Northside, you’ve heard of the Northside School. At that time it was called Orange County Training School, and it was a union school, which meant that they had all grades in one building. From first grade through eleventh grade, and the students then graduated from high school at the end of eleventh grade. Did you know that? We graduated from high school– everybody–North Carolina, Virginia, everybody, the students graduate at the end of eleventh grade. And it was during the war, after I came here, that the state, I don’t know whether it was a national movement or not, but I know North Carolina raised the graduation age or graduation grade to twelfth grade. Because kids were coming out typically around 17, and there was nothing for them to do. They couldn’t get a job and they couldn’t go in the service. So you had a lot of idle young people, and they added the twelfth grade to it.
Alex Biggers (AB): Did you see a lot of that in this community, with idle kids?
ES: There wasn’t anything for them to do. But, you see, you didn’t … kids didn't get into a lot of trouble and mischief and stuff like they do… no drugs and that kind of stuff. But, they couldn’t get a job. And there just wasn’t anything for them to do.
