R.D. and Euzelle Smith - On working while at Hampton (clip)

Euzelle Smith (ES): Both of us were what is now called Self-Help students. We used to call them working students at Hampton. One year you had more work hours than class hours, but you started building up your account. And then after that you would have work…part-time work. And you never got cash or anything, it was all credit, you know, to your account. So that’s the way both of us got through school, by working and sending ourselves.

R.D. Smith (RDS): When I graduated Hampton, Hampton owed me money.

Alexander Stephens (AS): Really? [laughs]

RDS: Oh well, well yeah.

AS: And where did you work when you were at Hampton?

RDS: In the kitchen.

AS: And where did you work?

ES: I had a whole lot of jobs. I worked in the kitchen.

RDS: You worked in the cannery, too.

ES: In what?

RDS: The cannery.

ES: Yeah. I worked in the kitchen first. Then I worked in the dining hall, because meals were served family-style. The tables were set up, and that was one of the jobs that I did with a group of girls. We had to set the table. We had napkins, we had silverware, and the waiters brought the food in platters and put it on the table, and the guys came out and sang the grace, and then you would eat. So there was a group of us who set the table after each meal. And it was a job that I enjoyed because it was a group of girls working together, you know. I worked in the cannery. See, Hampton was almost self-sufficient. ‘Cause they had a farm and all that. They raised the vegetables and the fruit, and they had chickens and raised, what? Hogs– (overlapping)

RDS: Hogs and– (overlapping)

ES: –and cows and all that kind of stuff. Working in a cannery was canning food that was raised on farms and then that was put away for the meals, you know, during the year. And then I had jobs in the training school, something like a teacher’s aide, a teacher’s assistant. And, uh…

RDS: You worked in the dye kitchen.

ES: Yeah, I worked in the dye kitchen. Anything that you could get.

RDS: Twenty-five cents an hour.

ES: [Laughs]

RDS: That’s about her pay, huh.

AS: Twenty-five cents an hour.

RDS: Uh-huh, that’s right.

ES: But like I said, you never saw the cash. You never saw…it was your account.

Alex Biggers (AB): Right.

AS: Paid your way through school that way.

ES: Mhm.

AS: Alex do you have a question?

AB: No.

AS: I was just going to ask you if there’s a part of the house that you are particularly proud of… of building, or…

RDS: A part of this old house?

Euzelle Smith: I think he spends… He spends a lot of time [there]. We call that his den. Because that’s where he carries on his little projects… and all.

Alex Biggers: Is it like the sunroom, I’m assuming?

Euzelle Smith: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Mhm.

Alex Biggers: Okay.

[Phone rings and phone call continues to end of clip]