M., Sadie, May 19 and 25, 1976, tape 1, side 2

Sadie M.: What are you-- 19, started [??] My church. Let me check your knowledge. 75, 74. Peter Gottlieb: Which-- would you have any idea whether Union, the congregation of Union Baptist, was made up largely of Blacks who, like your family, had recently come up to Pittsburgh?

Sadie M.: Yeah, and they had come out of a genuine part of Virginia. Georgia, the Carolinas. West Virginia.

Sadie M.: Fact I don't think there was a living soul that wasn't out of a Southern state.

Sadie M.: Miles chase. Another church, she passed. All the risers and the burls [??]

Sadie M.: No, I think they were all. From out of another-- from the South.

Sadie M.: I don't think there was anybody actually, just one. I mean, just there as adult.

Peter Gottlieb: Do you ever remember any other-- any of the other Black people in the Pittsburgh area ever saying anything to you or to anybody you knew who had come up from the South about being from the South and making fun of the ways of people from the South?

Sadie M.: Mm-mm. Fact, I've met several very prominent white people who are big men and big business and hey, they say, hello there, Sadie. I said, Hey, you know, call on mister. Down Alabama we soul brothers, you know he, I see what he eats, he eats cornbread and eats possum and sweet potatoes because really I've had people move from the North or go on business, you know, down to. A very big, prominent people into the Southern states and they almost die because they can't get used to that breakfast. 'Cause our breakfast does not consist of a bowl of oatmeal or a bowl of Rice Krispies. Our breakfast consisted of fried chicken, hot biscuits, grits with gravy. You would have insulted me highly if you had have offered me a piece of toast. Any bowl of cereal. Today I don't eat breakfast simply because I don't have time to get up and prepare a meal the way they eat. They eat their big meal in the day, right? 1:00. The big meals are done and cooked. See, they eat breakfast and big great big breakfast at 1:00. We have another one done simply because they were farmers and we have a whole lot of stuff sticking to your ribs. If you want to go ahead and fight that hot sun all day.

Sadie M.: So there was a, five o'clock in the morning, had a great big meal. Fried potatoes or whatever it was, ham, whatever was out there, ham hocks, it was nothing for them to eat, string beans and potatoes and cornbread at five o'clock in the morning. I've had women that tell me when they came back here, you know, they tell me, My God, see you doing stuff. Oh, yeah. I'm. My kids went to school down in the cafeteria they're servin' possum, some fat back, the kid's five. It's only a matter. Now, the funny thing about human beings is they can adapt for just any situation. I come up here, every Sunday morning. Until today, Edison. He wouldn't dare cock a bowl of syrup at your kid. He wants to know where he laid out his bucket kid. You were born to that, you know, because it's what my mother was. To me. You know, she did a damn good job of brainwashing me into her ways. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: In return, I pretty much did it to my daughter. As your father did and mother did to you. So we are only a. We are what our parents are.

Gottlieb: I just have one more question for you. Uh, did either of your parents belong to any lodges or fraternal organization?

Sadie M.: My father was a Mason. I was initiated into the Order of the Eastern Star. You have to get prestige in your family. The, uh-- I don't know about the other organizations, but I do know the Eastern Stars. Very. And you've got gotta have some stuff on you, you know, before you even consider going to Eastern Star. And I was asked, I don't know whether it's 'cause I lead the Concerned Parents or 'cause [unintelligible].

Sadie M.: Try talk somethin' polls, but did to the best of my ability what I thought was right.

Gottlieb: What about your mother?

Sadie M.: She was going to join the Eastern Star and I don't know. I think the hospital belonged to. That's what she belonged to. And she went in the four [??] and the thing that go along with being a Mason's wife.

Gottlieb: Was she involved in clubs that were related to the church? Sadie M.: Oh, yeah.

Sadie M.: Uh, the, uh. What do you call it? The. She belonged to the choir and the BYP. She was BYP. She was on the Helping Hands Society. When you die they all go and help lady out. Saw that the children, saw that the kids were taken care of, saw that the house was clean.

Gottlieb: Was your father a Mason in the South? And do you know-- he was only alive a very short time after you moved up here in your lifetime? But do you know whether he was connected with a lodge here? Sadie M.: [simultaneous talking] Not-- Not here. Gottlieb: He wasn't? Sadie M.: No.

Sadie M.: He didn't have time. Gottlieb: Yeah. Sadie M.:Yeah.

Gottlieb: Well, I'm sure that I've only skimmed the surface of the subject, but those are. That's the outline of my questions anyway. Um, if you felt that I've left out anything that's important to an understanding of this whole movement from the South to the North, I'd appeciate--

Sadie M.: [simultaneous talking] There would be many things. Only in Benjamins. And I'm not sure-- Gottlieb: Oh, yeah, yeah. Sadie M.: Oh, sure, sure. I could tell you about the gardens and how I learned to plant a garden. Different things like that. And my mother taught me different things, she's seven. And someday I will. You have time to stop. I will tell you what is the basis of our capital. This. And how are you going to do? Would you like to eat or not? Silence. Living things. When she was about five, she was not doing too well. Her family, her mother took them down below Selma, Alabama, I was pretty much close to New Orleans and the things that she told me. What-- Whether she believing this on Samoan culture or. She did. And some of the things that she told him being up here in the North where they don't affect you and you don't see them every day, many, many times, I wondered if it was fantasy in her mind or did she actually see it. So, you know, when you see like, I'll tell you about their superstitions because they brought with them from Africa, they live with them. And I mean that they-- they-- you can tell they-- they have a new side [??]. So they live very close to both sides of the wall. Things, and see, there are things that Black women do, that Black men do. I mean the Caucasian doctor. Gottlieb: Mhm. Sadie M.: Things that they think happens when they're pregnant or having children. You actually get a different frame about bringing with you your different hypothetical.

Gottlieb: Yeah. You think that, uh, Black women of your generation, uh, have carried these beliefs on or did it die out with your mother's generation?

Sadie M.: It is possible, because I tell you, the movement of 1968. I don't know whether we as Black women took a leap back into the past or whether we actually totally did what we thought we did. I do know one thing. And they talk about who's free. And the only person who has ever been free in the whole world has been _______[??]. Even under slavery she was free. Right. And she has been the Advocate for Black women because it was her I got. We know that she's had to be a lot stronger in her native tongue. And I do believe that, I admire her for the strength and the fortitude of a Black Panther. This is why we very seldom find her being [unintelligible]. But usually you take the Black woman and you educate her. We just do a complete brain wash on her. We have to do it when she's really young to set her up. Or she's motivated by the, uh, when she was. For the different layers of power that whatever she possesses, her needs would be. But I've always admired woman like the ones that do. Now, the woman she had to do more than the Jewish woman had to do. And she was pretty much in the same thing. She fight to defend and to raise. The only thing about the Jewish woman she did have standing beside her. Her husband. Where the Black women didn't. Because a majority of the time and even till today, your statistics will read. But we force a more of the hospitals, white. The mothers stay at the hospitals. And because she's, more children to take care of. And a lot of people say free or loose. This is not true. She doesn't know who the father of her children are. This is not true. It has been found many times that without him she fared better because she was on welfare. He was coming home every night. Believe me. He was there. He would have blew her head off if had, he had ten different. But she's had to be on here. She had to be canny and she had to be foxy. Yeah, but the stuff isn't like one of our children, things we see. And he was responsible for a lot of this. It's changing a whole lot now, done in those minds. I think where it really jumped off was in 1968. When it became beautiful than any other color.

Sadie M.: Because you guys are how you cut a slice of the bride. Pretty years, is pretty close. Because you're Black doesn't make you do anything like encourages or give you the right to be obstinate or unmarried or a thief or more rights, no more than anybody else has. This is one thing I staunchly believe in is the dignity.

Sadie M.: To be courteous. And respect to all the people in return. I think we can expect it. No more, no less.

Sadie M.: '68 did its thing to do a spot because we got younger girls now 18, 19 years old because that's that was the time. You know as well as I know how hard it is to get a job. Gottlieb: Mhm.

Sadie M.: Unemployment, underemployment. That's my whole proposal. Is that a problem? And you get a job and it's got to go. That's good enough.

Sadie M.: Hey, anytime you want an honest dollar, you're making darn good at what you do. Because anytime you do any job and do it with dignity, it's a job well done. That is how I look at it. I come in here in the morning, hey, I run the sweeper, wash windows. I scrub floors, they walk in, and I got someone work for me. Okay. Do you have any difficulties? You know, you were not at home. Suddenly you no damn better than I. So let's get it together. Or find a job somewhere else.

Sadie M.: This is what our people gotta do. We gotta break that stuff up. You know about-- our kids are pretty darn snotty. Well.

Gottlieb: Well. Either one. Whatever you feel like talking about. Tell me about your mother's-- You were telling me a little bit about some kind of home remedies that you would use on you if you got sick.

Sadie M.: As far as the home remedies were concerned, most all Black children in the spring of the year got their sulfur in molasses. You know what I mean? You really got it. And after was it? You got it one Saturday, one Friday night, because you had school all the days you didn't get it once. You had to be in school because you were going to be in for a real good run for your money. And usually Friday night, before you went to bed, you had a great big tablespoon of dry mustard and molasses. Sulfur and molasses was, it was stirred up in the Karo. Molasses was thick and you had almost choked up stuff. I'd drink a couple of glasses of water and that's the secret to it is like two glasses of water. You were allowed to go to bed with that nasty taste in your mouth because the next morning you were going to really get it. And those times you could get a bottle of castor oil for about $0.20, a whole quart of it. Then you got your great big glass of castor oil on top of that sulfured molasses the night before. You don't think you had a ball because you did a run for two days. You know what I mean? And they say they run everything out of you. And there's no doubt that that's exactly what it did. That ran everything out of you. Another part of the cleansing, as it is called in the spring was the poke salad.

Sadie M.: All right. Is it on? Yeah.

Sadie M.: The poke salad, the watercress and the dandelion. These were supposed to be the three smartest things that any human being would ever chomp on come spring of the year. And you pick them when they were nice and tender and very white on the low side. They were taken and prepared, washed up horrible, you know, a minute boiling up with the mineral water. And boy, was that water bitter. Ever got any of that. Then my mother had a way of doctoring it with the bacon grease and the brown onion and vinegar. Very tasty. But it did its job of-- a lot of people may laugh at this, but going back to nature and its own nature jagger now, these are three things that you could get out of a woods going around where there's grass, eat them every year. And really it is a very good blood builder. One thing I remember long after my mother was dead, the fact that I had a baby in 1959 and in ten days had was rushed back into the hospital for a gallbladder operation. And I was in a four bed ward and I had three great big healthy sisters, you know, who had had minor surgery. And the nurse come in with a card and she passes three cards around to these three beds with these great big, healthy females and says to them, You have to repay the blood bank. When she starts out of the room, Hey, you know me, don't leave me out.

Sadie M.: Where's my card? I say. And she says to me, Well, you didn't need blood when you were operating on. So she says, I'd be very thankful that you have a good blood builders. In other words, the marrow of your bone and treats blood real fast. It didn't need the blood, nothing. And she said, Yeah, I read your chart and I see where within two weeks you had had a baby and a major operation. I don't know whether this was from the poke salad, dandelions or that watercress, but I like to believe it because my mother always said you would never have to worry about a transfusion if you eat your collard greens and your mustard seed turnips. Good things. She says, very good blood builders, and being barefoot through the summer was another one of the things that most youngsters did. And she was always afraid of the rusty nail and living in a poor locality of both long fences and cans thrown out on dump. A lot of children were prone to run into a rusty nail or a tin can that was rusty. I don't think my mother ever knew what tetanus was. I learned about it later and with the education and so forth that came later.

Sadie M.: I don't think she knew what tetanus was, but she did know that if you should happen to step on a nail that paralyzed could set in. So they had a very good old remedy of lard, that is rendered down fat lard with turpentine. That was the thing, kid. And if you ever stepped on a nail and then had some lard with some turpentine slammed on it, you were really having a hot foot. I've had pretty bad accidents with cut-- cutting as a small child, bruises and all that. And this is what you'd always use according to what the cut was. If it was cut and profusely bleeding, she right away went into the sewer, got a spider web and laid it on there. You'd be amazed that this is what did it. I don't know if an artery I mean a vein would or an artery, whatever it was, which I'm sure she would have got us to the hospital because I don't think the spider web could have stopped that. But it did have a tendency to stop profuse bleeding. There were many things that she had for bleeding, different things that being a man I won't tell you about, maybe some other day, a female come in, I'll talk about that. But these are some of the things that they use as medicines.

Sadie M.: If you were very ill and had been like, you know, say, the flu now with pneumonia and you had been ill in bed for 5 or 6 weeks, then run down and they had the remedy for you. It was a little yellow flower that they would pick, rinse it off, boil it down, add a little bit of vinegar-- not vinegar, lemon juice and sugar. And you were passed like a little whiskey glass of this before your meal. Hey, I'm not kidding you. In about 3 or 4 weeks, you were looking pretty good. Six months, you were pretty much back on your feet. If this remedy didn't work, you know what happened to you? They buried you because you died, right? So these are some of the things that my mother taught me. The funny thing about it, I'd watch a salt shaker being knocked over by her and, you know, automatically grab 2 or 3 parts of the salt and she would sling over her shoulder and amazingly, we are what our parents are. I mean, hey, by the time I was 11 years old and I knocked that shaker over, what a couple. I never knew why, but I'd seen her do it. And I figured, boy, you better do it too. So therefore, the sugar went over the shoulder.

Gottlieb: Did you ever find out why she did that? What her belief was.

Sadie M.: There was something supposed to be about an evil spirit and the salt-- salt coming from if you remember back into the Old Testament, when Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed and pillar turned and turned to the pillar of salt. So this is where the salt comes from and over the shoulder.

Gottlieb: Mm.

Gottlieb: Well somebody was turned into a pillar of salt because they turned around and looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah burning.

Sadie M.: And the salt is saying it's there. Don't look for it. Stop it, with the salt it does. That's okay. The latter bit. Until today, I've never figured out why she would never walk under a ladder. And until today, I don't walk on them either. I don't know why. But if there was a ladder there. Around it, whether it's an automatic instinct from watching my mother not walking around it. And another funny thing that there was cracks in the street. Everybody thinks that's a kid's game. But those kids didn't pick that game up by themselves. There was a reason that they did not walk on cracks in the street. There's another one I can't explain to you. She didn't walk on cracks either. Black cats better not pass because she would go ten miles out of the way and I'm riding in a car and I one cross. I say, John, I go, might, because now whether there's something to the black cat. To the walking under the ladder. I don't know.

Gottlieb: Did you believe in any other kinds of spirits?

Sadie M.: Seeing them? Yes. She has told us many times of apparitions she saw. Uh, the one thing that she instilled in us very strongly was to believe what the Bible said. And she has shown us many times in the Scriptures where these things do exist, that evil spirits walk on the earth as well as good spirits.

Sadie M.: The only thing I can say about that is that the Catholic religion does have an All Souls Day the day before Halloween. So apparently not only did it come from my mother, but it came from generations. And it could have been something that was brought, say, from around the world, from another culture, because I'm sure my mother was not a Catholic. She may have had Catholic people that they worked for and so forth and so on. And I am sure that many people that she met as a young girl growing up must have left a lot of imprints on her also. So some of the things that she was as an adult when I met her when I was born, she could have picked up many places, but I do each day enjoy very much the tales she would tell. We had lamplight, and if you've ever sat in a room with a lamplight, a nine by 12 room with a little small lamp, you know, there were shadows, so forth and so on in the room. And my mother had a very rich voice, and she could really tell stories that would really make your eyes. I remember after a story from her, I'd walk around holding on the bottom of her dress. We all slept with her that night.

Sadie M.: There was a time when she'd have us all in the bed. All five kids would be piled. And really, I think she always got a big kick out of that, that, Hey, here's all of her kids from the son and the four daughters, scared to death piled up on top of the parent. My mother was a very stern woman, didn't take any garbage. If she'd have had money, I wouldn't have wanted to work for her because she would have made you, uh, follow a straight line. There were many things that she taught me that when I was 17, 18, 19 years old, I thought she was a square. By the time I got 30, 35 years old, I found out that she was not square at all. And dealing with young people today, I pretty much see myself in those young people and saying, Hey, if you can just guide them to the point where they then start seeing I am not a square when I'm trying to lay out to them the education and the accountability, the reliability, the credibility. And these are the things that will be so essential to later on. And I have a lot to remember about my mother. She was a tiny woman. And when she hit you, she hit real hard. She made us be very independent because she knew we had no father. And she would always

Sadie M.: say, you never know what will happen tomorrow. If I would be gone tomorrow, you would have nobody. So you have to learn to stand on your own feet. I think this is what has set me in the step that I am in today. I am a very independent person. I try to be honest and fair with my fellow man. I don't think that I am better than anybody on earth. And I also believe that there's nobody on earth any better than I am. I think the lines of communication between people are left open.

Sadie M.: Sooner or later you can solve any problem in the world because when you close your lines of communication, but you lose things. I get angry as any other person does. I don't cajole and beg because I figure, Hey, you're an adult. I'm dealing with you. You're seeing me angry. Wait until I cool off and I'll be my old sweet self in five minutes. I'm talking about myself. And I'm supposed to be talking about the past. How'd you get me into that? Gottlieb: I never said anything.

Gottlieb: Did your mother ever talk about dreams that she had had? Did she believe in dreams as a kind of prophecy?

Sadie M.: Yes. Dreams are a part of prophecy. I think really intuitively, we ever used our inner most part of our brain and the subconscious and the conscious. Dreams,

Sadie M.: I think are-- what we would like to be. Or a part of wishing what we would like to be. And I always like to believe if you wish hard enough, you'll make it so. I know that dreams sometimes are part of a physical. If you're ill and quite sure your dreams can't be right. That dreams can have meaning. I've seen too many people wake up from a dream and tell me, you know I dreamt this. And sure enough, a week, two weeks, three weeks, that same identical thing happens. Now, whether this is some sort of phenomenon or if there is a real meaning to being a psychic, I don't know. I do believe that we were smart enough. You can also go back to this Bible and say, if you had the faith of a mustard seed you could set a mountain to move. Dreams. Like I say, a lot of times I believe our desires. But my mother definitely believed in dreams. And the one dream she has all told us the whole part of her life was when my father died in October of that year they came back from the South. In November she had a dream that he came back to her and he said to her, You will have enough problems, trials and tribulations, raising those older children.

Sadie M.: So I shall come and take the baby. She knew this Christmas. She knew it in February and March because my sisters told me about it now. And she pretty much gave the baby up. Gottlieb: Yeah. Sadie M.: Right. Simply because she had missed one of. The six month old had passed. She has dreamed many dreams. And the one thing that she has told us about dreams. Is a fact. If you don't want them to come true, do not tell them before 2:00. Right. If you wanted to come to the first the bed, tell everybody that you know and you're doing a story well. So therefore, if I have a real bad dream, I never even mention it. Nobody ever knows it. Another sign that she-- superstition, wasn't a superstition. It was a friend. And I had heard a lot about it long before it happened to me. This was one of the sure things that I knew from what she had told me that happened. And this was the owl. Now, we lived there in Swissvale. I had never seen an owl, believe me. In Swissvale. Yeah, go ahead. Out for the night. And she had said to me that any time that there was going to be a death that an owl would appear.

Sadie M.: And we were all home one night there on Agnes Street in Swissvale and the houses were made, you know, the living room, the kitchen, two bedrooms. That's what you had period at one point. And we were coming out of the living room into the kitchen. And in the hallway there was a window. And she-- there was a friend visiting us. He was in front. My mother was following him. And the kids, we followed her around like a, you know, the little peep, like a duck follows his mother or a chicken. Wherever she moved, we moved. I was right behind my mother when the man said to her, There's an owl sitting on the windowsill. And sure enough, I looked around and there was. That's the first. I have to tell you the truth. The first time I could ever remember seeing an owl. And he was sitting looking backwards. The funny thing about an owl, head turns. Whatever they want. But when they look into a room, they're usually sitting in the opposite direction. But he was sitting sort of with his head. And I remember my mother saying, Oh my God, he's sitting normally. I tell you.

Sadie M.: It was a Friday night. The next morning, around 11, we were down on the floor with some magazines when a knock came on the door. And my mother said, come in because they never said, you know, they'd say, come in. We went. My sister and I were down on the floor with the book open and. This man walked in and had been there the night before. When he walked into the room because she-- when she said, come in, she looked and walked into the kitchen. We're still in the living room on the floor when this man. And I was standing there. He walked up to two us kids on and we were down on our hands and knees. You know how kids write in a book. He stopped there. And my mother. I heard she might walk back, back to the door by that point. And she said, oh, my God, you know, can't never occurred to me. We're still down and there's blood. It's dripping down on this book, you know. And I look up and his mouth had turned all the way around like this.

Sadie M.: He had just been shot in the mouth up in the street, and he came back down to my mother. So right away, they called the cop, let the cop in and the cop took him and brought him to the Braddock hospital. That was Saturday morning. Sunday morning. Shooter got the bullet down in his mouth. And died. Slit open up. They was just pushing the thing up on the street. She said I knew when

Sadie M.: that owl was sitting in that window in the back that somebody was going to die. You know, I always got a feeling that she was-- know that wasn't us, you know. Did you ever get that feeling that this is pretty much so those superstitions are quite something else now. She told me some tales, and I don't know whether to believe or not. You know what I mean? I never saw them, so therefore I couldn't say whether they were true or not. I know she used to tell us about some of the ghosts that were in the old houses, the old haunted houses in the South, and some of them was way out. You know what I mean? One of her had time to tell you. He goes on, you know, for about an hour. When you hear that one your hair's curling. But she spoke quite a bit of New Orleans and the white factor. She also spoke very much about the zombies and the coming back to life of the dead. And I never saw anybody come back. So I could not justify this as a truth or something that was handed down and blew out of proportion as it was handed down.

Gottlieb: Tell me something about the route workers.

Sadie M.: Well, love potion number nine. Okay? A lot of people believe that. Affairs of the heart and luck can be cured by potions, so forth and so on. I don't believe that that's the one part of the fallacy that I never paid too much attention to. But there are women and men very strongly believe that with the socks, the sweat and the hair or the nail pines at harm one or to a person.

Sadie M.: Personally, I believe. There are a lot of it is fallacy. I do think that the human body can be invaded with foreign objects through sweat glands. So forth and so on. Poisons can be introduced to do harm. And it doesn't have to be any. It's just playing outright murder, the foxgloves and so forth.

Sadie M.: And things like that. I don't think there was any spell that's put on me. I think that anytime anybody goes out, that was just another way of putting a contract out on somebody for-- for a dollar, you pay, what, a couple thousand dollars for it. Now, back in those days, if anybody did anything to hurt you and they did it through the sweat or through your stomach, you had been just plain out of right murdered. Now the love part of us. Part of your hair. Or wore it at around your neck. Hey, kid, you can do it all you want, and you're not going to get anywhere if that female or that male doesn't like you. I staunchly believe this.

Gottlieb: Did you know woodworkers [??] in Braddock and the Braddock area?

Speaker3: Uh, some of them, yes.

Sadie M.: Soothsayers, Fortune tellers. I've gone to them. Some have been real good, and some of them have been real stone phonies. I mean, I could almost work this on you by saying I see your uncle because more or less on one side of your family there was a male and he is your uncle or your aunt. More than likely you had a blonde one and a brunette 1 or 1 or the other. So I think a lot of this stuff has been magic. Gottlieb: Mhm.

Sadie M.: And hey, it's a part of something fascinating about life. But when you get down to the real stone, things that have happened in tribes, when a feather has been found, a white feather, and this guy goes off and clean up some dyes from the fact that he thinks somebody put the hex on him, then I think you have really did what I first said it. If we had the faith of a mustard seed, we could say, move, mountain move. Because then I think what happens and this is so important until willpower takes over and it just plain wills himself unto death. But as far as jiving me with witchcraft.

Sadie M.: I've seen them take salt and sprinkle it and I've seen them take different things I don't think would have made any different. Maybe it made them feel better because they went through the ritual because another part of the human being is hope springs eternal. In a mn's heart. And every time he's up against a wall here, regardless of what his problem may be, he is hopefully thinking and looking for a way out of it.

Sadie M.: So I think this is part of being a human being. And when all things else have failed, you've seen this in the cases where terminal disease is heard, when families have done everything and seen every doctor, then they turn to things unknown. This is say, hope springs eternal. This is part of being human.

Sadie M.: Part of the approach we have to do for being so imperfect as human beings.

Gottlieb: Mhm. Did you ever see any of these superstitions in your grandfather?

Sadie M.: In my grandfather I saw the one thing that's more beautiful than everyone else. This was a reproduction abut was. Out of one man which goes on to another man. He fathered by one like 18 sisters and brothers to my mother when she passed. He-- if I get the kind of chronology correct you had about 29 kids.

Sadie M.: He was a damn grown man. He was 91 years old when he went back, remember he say he went back South. And when I was about 13. He was about 91. He was blind, had cataracts and the other, had an operation. Walked on a cane. Every Sunday.

Sadie M.: He wanted to be taken to see the ladies. So as far as I'm concerned, I remember that old man, he was beautiful. He-- It makes me think of the one thing that I often say is when you stop looking at beautiful women and beautiful men, you ought to be dead. So I think that's how you pretty much summed my grandfather up. Uh, with him having 29 young offsprings, it did build a partial nation. You would be amazed. We've had some funerals from the family when everybody summons them from different parts of the country, and you can't even get-- There's no room for anybody but the family. Our family reunions make it look real ill because there are a wide variety of people who sprung from Allen Sewell [??] was his name.

Sadie M.: Cousins, nieces and I guess all of them. I don't even know them. I have never seen them. We have a whole lot of relatives in Alabama. If I met them on the street today I wouldn't know 'em. We have a whole slew of them out in Detroit, Michigan. I wouldn't know them. In fact, there's a whole lot of them growing up around the outlying districts of Penn Hills and Wilkinsburg, and they're out Garden City and Monroeville and hey, those kids are growing. And I see them. I know they're part of the Sewell offsprings. And so coming up from the South was a big step for a lot of Black people as it was in the early, the-- you know early part of the century, 19 and 20s, 30s, 40s. And also in the late 70s and 80s, a migration back South. And I think as the Jewish people migrated back to Israel.