Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

lawyer who became a judge there. He was very enraptured with the music at
our high school, so much so that he took a group of our students to his
hometown, which happened to be Bloomington, Illinois, one year to sing in
some programs they had up there. That was a long, long way from Blytheville
in those days. You know, over three hundred miles, and that was a twp-day
trip almost, you know.
Q: Went by train, I suppose.
A: No, they drove up there.
Q: Oh, they did?
A: Yes.
Q: You weren't in this group.
A: No, I was a little too young, but I remember when they went.
Q: Did you get to know anything about a lawyer's trade, as it were?
A: No, not really.
Q: So, you didn't know any of them that well?
A: No. Well, I knew them but then 1 just wasn't involved, you know, wasn't
something I was involved in.
Q: On trips--now, you had traveled to Toledo and to Chicago here and so on--
what was it like traveling by train as a black in the 1920's and 19301a?
A: Well, I was quite young but I do remember we were segregated into a, you
know, black section and when we went from St. Louis to Toledo, I remember
that we sat in the mixed part of the train. There was no segregation between
St. Louis and Toledo. My mother says when I got on the car, I was four years
old, that I said, "Mama, are we in the right place? This is the white folks
train," or something like that. And my uncle, who had got on the train with
US, says, "No, that isn't. Anybody can sit anywhere they want to now, when
you're going this way."
When we were going out to Toledo, there were a couple of teachers on this
train, white teachers, two women. They got to talking to me and teaching me
nursery rhymes and stuff and my mother said I picked them up so fast, these
ladies asked her to let them adopt me and take me with them and my mother
said, "No, no way. 'I Couldn't leave me, couldn't let me go. I don't know
whether they meant it, I guess they did, they asked anyway. They just liked my
answers. They were teaching me nursery rhymes and 1 was picking them up fast,
you know, so they just kind of liked that. I guess they were a couple of
unmarried ladies, I don't know.
Q: Did you have any problem eating on the train?