Abstract
In this interview, Celestine Beasley describes her experiences growing up in a sharecropper family in rural Mississippi, migrating to Cleveland's Cedar-Central neighborhood, and her career as a nurse at Mount Sinai. The interview also relates information about race, farming, food culture, and cuisine.
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Interviewee
Beasley, Celestine (interviewee)
Interviewer
Lee, Lauren (interviewer)
Project
History 304
Date
4-27-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
81 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Celestine Beasley interview, 27 April 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 304013.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/839
Transcript
Emma Yanoshik Wing [00:00:01] Say a couple of words into the microphone. Where did you come in from today? What part of Cleveland do you live in?
Celestine Beasley [00:00:07] Richmond Heights.
Emma Yanoshik Wing [00:00:12] Did you hit any traffic, or was it easy to get in here?
Celestine Beasley [00:00:14] It was very easy. It wasn’t much traffic.
Emma Yanoshik Wing [00:00:21] Oh, that’s good. I think I—you could probably start.
Lauren Lee [00:00:24] Okay. This is Lauren Lee interviewing Celestine Beasley on April 27, 2006, at Cleveland State University as a part of the Euclid Corridor Project. Can you state your name and when and where you were born?
Celestine Beasley [00:00:41] Celestine Beasley. I was born in Yazoo, Mississippi. That’s about fifty miles from Jackson, Mississippi. I was born November 16, 1920.
Lauren Lee [00:00:59] Tell me about growing up in the South.
Celestine Beasley [00:01:03] Well, it was twelve of us. My mom had twelve children: six girls and six boys. I was the fourth in the bunch, fourth child. We was farmers.
Lauren Lee [00:01:32] What did you do on your farm?
Celestine Beasley [00:01:34] Well, we had gardens. We had crops. Crops is—well, we raised cotton, corn, vegetables.
Lauren Lee [00:01:45] You raised cotton?
Celestine Beasley [00:01:47] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:01:48] Did you sell it? Did you guys sell it or no?
Celestine Beasley [00:01:50] Well, yes. They would have to take it to the gin, and they would divide the seeds away from the cotton.
Lauren Lee [00:01:59] So your family owned their own cotton gin?
Celestine Beasley [00:02:04] No, no, no. Everybody took they cotton there to be processed.
Lauren Lee [00:02:12] So it was at a store?
Celestine Beasley [00:02:14] Oh, no. It was a big building where they divided the cotton from the seeds. They would take the seeds and keep them to plant for another year.
Lauren Lee [00:02:26] Did you guys have chickens and cows?
Celestine Beasley [00:02:32] Oh, yes, we have chickens, cows, hogs.
Lauren Lee [00:02:34] Is that how you guys ate?
Celestine Beasley [00:02:37] We raised our own food. Everything we ate, we raised, even cornmeal. They’d take the corn and take it to a mill to be ground. They would process part of it into grits. We had to buy our flour, sugar, stuff like that. But even our lard, we made that. When we kill hogs, we taking the fat of it and cook it down to make your lard.
Lauren Lee [00:03:14] Like what we use now, the fry grease?
Celestine Beasley [00:03:21] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:03:22] Oh, I didn’t know that. Do you remember being out on the farm? Like, did you help your family? Was it a family effort?
Celestine Beasley [00:03:32] Yes. We—as I said, it was twelve of us. We—I think there was planting—doing the start to planting around this time of year. The cotton would be planted sometime in May. Corn, they would plant that in May, after the cold spell. We—you know, just like it is now, sometime it’s—be cold. Sometimes it would be too cold for you to do anything. You would have to wait till the weather warmed up, even to get the ground ready for planting.
Lauren Lee [00:04:14] So did you do that instead of going to school?
Celestine Beasley [00:04:16] We went to school.
Lauren Lee [00:04:18] So did you wake up in the morning and then worked on the farm or—?
Celestine Beasley [00:04:23] No, it’s a certain time of year that you’d be farming. Our school started in October, and it was in—around the last April, middle of April, so it wasn’t no farming at that particular time. You would plant everything later.
Lauren Lee [00:04:44] So it was only October to April?
Celestine Beasley [00:04:47] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:04:47] And what do you remember about going to school?
Celestine Beasley [00:04:51] Well, I remember we had to walk to school. It was—we lived a mile from school. We would walk every morning. We’d have to be at school at eight thirty, and we were there until three thirty.
Lauren Lee [00:05:11] Was that—was it an integrated school?
Celestine Beasley [00:05:18] No, we—it wasn’t a mingling of white and Black. The—they had a school, and we had a school.
Lauren Lee [00:05:26] How far was your school from you?
Celestine Beasley [00:05:29] A mile.
Lauren Lee [00:05:30] Oh, a mile? And where was your school? Was it a—?
Celestine Beasley [00:05:34] It was in a little place they called Lake City.
Lauren Lee [00:05:39] Was it off of a lake?
Celestine Beasley [00:05:40] No, but that was just the name of it. If we walked a shortcut, it would be a mile. But if we would stay on the road, it was two miles.
Lauren Lee [00:05:57] What was the typical day like in school?
Celestine Beasley [00:06:01] Oh, we would start school when we get there. It was—when I was young, it was one big building. From one through the ninth grade was there. When you get so you don’t be in that particular school, you’d go off to a high school or some other place. This was when I was at Yazoo City.
Lauren Lee [00:06:37] You said Yazoo?
Celestine Beasley [00:06:40] Y-a-z-double o, Yazoo.
Lauren Lee [00:06:43] Have you been back to Yazoo since you left?
Celestine Beasley [00:06:47] No, I went back to Mississippi but never to Yazoo.
Lauren Lee [00:06:54] Describe some of the differences from living in the South or just any fond memories that you have, you know, that went on in a typical day or just anything that’s going on.
Celestine Beasley [00:07:12] One typical day? Well, if you get—at the time we was going to school, we’d get up. My mom would fix breakfast. We would get dressed and walk to school. When we get to school, we had to—we had devotion in school. Some of the scripture I learned when I was going to school, I never forgot. We had to learn the 23rd Psalm. We learned the 1st Psalm and the—there was another one. I done forgot the name and forgot just what it was. It was something like the 84th Psalm. And the only thing I remember of that is, “Be still and hold your peace, and I will fight your battles for you.” That’s the tenth chapter—tenth verse in the 84th Psalms. Psalms is not a chapter. They are books. So it was the 84th Book of Psalms.
Lauren Lee [00:08:43] And so did that—did learning about God in school help to, you know, shape how religion played into your life?
Celestine Beasley [00:08:55] Not really. That was just something come naturally. That’s all I knew was being a Christian. I was raised up as one. My mom taking us to Sunday school every Sunday. We went to prayer meeting on a Wednesday night. Wasn’t none of us ever in the choir that we had to go to choir rehearsal.
Lauren Lee [00:09:26] So religion always played a big part?
Celestine Beasley [00:09:28] Yes. Yes, it did and still do.
Lauren Lee [00:09:33] And how did religion help you to deal with a lot of the issues that, you know, went on in the South during that time period, like, you know, with segregation and a lot of racism going on?
Celestine Beasley [00:09:43] Well, with segregation, I facing more of that after I left the South and come here than I did in the South. We knew what to do and what not to do. And we just never mingled in that. We never did go to the white people’s houses, but they come to our house. And my mom was the type that she always would tell anybody, If you can’t sit and eat with my children, you don’t come to my house. You—I don’t put nobody before my children. And that’s the way I was raised up, and that’s the way I remembered it. And I never did—I never was faced with segregation in the South because we didn’t never go around the places where we knew we weren’t supposed to.
Lauren Lee [00:10:44] Well, around your area, were there a lot of white people in your area?
Celestine Beasley [00:10:47] No, it wasn’t a lot. They used to come to our house. We lived right on the lake. They would come and go fishing. My mom would cook the fish for them. They used to love to have fried—something we call perch now. There, it was white perch. It’s not—it wasn’t a bass like they call them now. And they sit and ate it.
Lauren Lee [00:11:20] So you guys lived on the lake?
Celestine Beasley [00:11:23] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:11:27] So they would just come a lot of times—
Celestine Beasley [00:11:29] Just like, now, we live—I’d say it’s not near a lake now, but then, our house sit right on the lake. We could go right down the hill and go fishing. We had boats.
Lauren Lee [00:11:46] Oh, really?
Celestine Beasley [00:11:47] Yeah.
Lauren Lee [00:11:47] So you guys were in a like—you were out, like, in farmland, then?
Celestine Beasley [00:11:50] Yes, I told you we was a farmer.
Lauren Lee [00:11:53] Well, yeah, but I didn’t know that you lived out on the lake. So did they pay your mom? I mean, like, was it something where people, you know, knew that they could come and—?
Celestine Beasley [00:12:01] Well, yes, they knew. My mom used to love to cook, so she never hesitated when they would come and go fishing. They would clean them by the time they get back to the house and ask her to fry the fish for them, and she did. And they used to love French fries. We raised our own white potatoes.
Lauren Lee [00:12:29] Do you still remember, like, what goes into farming and making vegetables?
Celestine Beasley [00:12:35] Not making vegetables. You don’t make vegetables. You raise vegetables. Well, I just said we raised our white potatoes. When I was a girl, we used to say Irish potatoes. Irish. And we would take a potato, and they would cut the—cut them in—cut the skin off of them so deep. And we’d take the part with that on it and put it in the ground, just put a little dirt over it, and they would take root. And potatoes—and the bush would grow; potatoes would be in the ground.
Lauren Lee [00:13:27] From just off of a little pieces of potato?
Celestine Beasley [00:13:30] Yes, you would take a potato. You would cut this way, that way. You know? And just get the top like, and they sprouted when you put them in the ground. It would come up, and when they would get so big, the potato would be in the ground under the vine.
Celestine Beasley [00:13:57] Tell me a little bit about your parents.
Celestine Beasley [00:14:05] Well, my mother was named Bessie. She was—nine sisters and brothers of them. I never did know too much about my father’s family because his mom died when he was a baby. His oldest sister raised him. His name was Alfred. And they got married in 1914. At the time, they was living what we used to call the hills in Anding, Mississippi. That’s where they met and married at. We moved to—up on the lake, 1923. I remember when we (laughs) went from one place to the other one because we was on a big wagon, and all of the furnishings and stuff was in the wagon. And we—it took us, I guess, about three hours to come from one destination to another. And all of my young life, we lived in the same vicinity. We didn’t never—
Lauren Lee [00:15:53] Move?
Celestine Beasley [00:15:54] Unh-uh (negative).
Lauren Lee [00:15:56] Did you guys have a horse to pull the wagon, or did you pull the wagon?
Celestine Beasley [00:16:03] (laughs) Oh, excuse me. We had mules. Horses was for riding. Peoples had horses. We only had two horses. We had eight or ten mules, and during the farming, you used the mule to pull the plow. After we had got established, I remember my daddy bought a tractor that he would use for farming. He would break the land, plant, plow it after it began to come up.
Lauren Lee [00:16:46] What were your fondest memories of your parents?
Celestine Beasley [00:16:57] My mom died in 1938 at the age of forty-three. She was very firm with us, but we got—well, we didn’t call them spanking. We got whoopings. It wasn’t then like it is now. They didn’t allow you to whoop children, but my mom used to whoop us when we would do things that we was told not to do. And she was a loving mother. I especially talk about my mom because my dad was always out in the fields when we—after we plant the crop, and he stayed busy outside. And my mom always was, I guess you could say, the overseer of us.
Lauren Lee [00:18:11] What was the nationality of both your parents?
Celestine Beasley [00:18:20] Well, my—I’ll start with my dad. His parents was of a dark generation.
Lauren Lee [00:18:27] What does that mean?
Celestine Beasley [00:18:29] Well, what they call now Black. I always used the word colored. And I never got out of it. I still don’t use the word Black. My mom—her father was white. Her mother was a half-Indian. So that’s the kind of background that we had, that we come from.
Lauren Lee [00:19:06] Like, you said you didn’t really know your father’s—
Celestine Beasley [00:19:09] Parents; uh-uh (negative).
Lauren Lee [00:19:10] —family. Did you know your mom’s mother and father?
Celestine Beasley [00:19:13] I knew her mom, and I knew my great-grandmother, but I never did know my dad’s mom nor dad. Because, I told you, his mother died when he was a little child.
Lauren Lee [00:19:30] Right. But your mom’s father, you didn’t—?
Celestine Beasley [00:19:35] My mom died before her mother did.
Lauren Lee [00:19:37] Oh, really?
Celestine Beasley [00:19:38] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:19:40] Do you know what she died of?
Celestine Beasley [00:19:45] Who?
Lauren Lee [00:19:45] Your mom.
Celestine Beasley [00:19:47] Using the doctor’s word, they said she ate something she wasn’t supposed to eat, and it didn’t agree with her. And it poisoned her system.
Lauren Lee [00:20:03] And that’s what they said?
Celestine Beasley [00:20:08] Yeah.
Lauren Lee [00:20:09] Do you remember her being sick for a long time?
Celestine Beasley [00:20:12] She wasn’t. She wasn’t. She’d take—she’d taken sick a-suddenly, all at once. And within a couple of hours, she had passed.
Lauren Lee [00:20:24] So it was quick.
Celestine Beasley [00:20:26] Quick, yes. And it was so quick and easy that I didn’t think she was gone. When my daddy went to call the doctor, I was there with her, me and another brother. A part of the family had—the older kids had left the South and come up here: my oldest sister and two oldest brothers. And on the way to call the doctor, my daddy stopped by a lady’s house and told her to come and stay with us until he could get back. So when she walk in the house, she says—they all—my nickname (laughs) was Tine. She said, Tine, said, lay your mom down, because she was sitting up. She said, Because she done pass. I said, Can’t be. I said, My momma isn’t dead. And she just come and pushed me back and laid her down until the doctor got there, and he pronounced her dead. And he said her system was so weak that—no, her heart was so weak that she wasn’t able to survive.
Lauren Lee [00:22:01] How did life change for you after that?
Celestine Beasley [00:22:05] Well, you know, you ask me about the South, had I been back. That’s one reason I never went back. I always thought that if we hadn’t been out in the country like we were, they would have been able to get the doctor for my mom more quicker, and she might would’ve survived. So I just taken a dislike (laughs) to the South after that.
Lauren Lee [00:22:40] So is that what made you leave the South and come to Cleveland?
Celestine Beasley [00:22:43] No, I went to New Orleans first. I had got married, and I lived in New Orleans for a couple of years, and I left to come here for a visit. And when we—the night we come in, I—my dad was—had come, too, on a visit, and everybody else was up here, so me and my husband—and I had one child—we went back to New Orleans and straighten things out. And I come back to Cleveland, and I’ve been here ever since.
Lauren Lee [00:23:29] How did you guys communicate? Like, how did you keep in touch with your brothers and sisters that were in Cleveland and then your father? He was still in the South, right? After you moved to New Orleans, how did you guys keep in contact? Was it through the telephone?
Celestine Beasley [00:23:41] Through letters.
Lauren Lee [00:23:42] Through letters?
Celestine Beasley [00:23:43] I didn’t have a telephone, but peoples—a lot of peoples did. But—
Lauren Lee [00:23:47] How hard was it to communicate?
Celestine Beasley [00:23:49] It wasn’t hard. You know, when you get used to something, you just used to it, and you don’t think no more of it. When—whenever I wanted to hear from them, I’d write a letter. We just correspond through the letters.
Lauren Lee [00:24:12] So I mean, it didn’t get—when you moved to New Orleans, you moved—well, you moved with your husband, but was it just you and your husband? There was no other family that you knew?
Celestine Beasley [00:24:21] Not on my side. He had a—his mother was there. He had an uncle and aunt there. But after I come up here and everybody else was here, including my dad, we just decided to move, and we did.
Lauren Lee [00:24:38] So your dad eventually moved to Cleveland, too?
Celestine Beasley [00:24:41] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:24:42] And where—what part of Cleveland did—do you remember, like, when they first came here, what part of Cleveland they stayed in?
Celestine Beasley [00:24:50] On the east side.
Lauren Lee [00:24:51] Was it around the Euclid-Central area?
Celestine Beasley [00:24:56] Central area.
Lauren Lee [00:24:59] What—do I know the two brothers and sisters that moved here first?
Celestine Beasley [00:25:04] Main and Butch.
Lauren Lee [00:25:06] Oh, so your two brothers moved here first?
Celestine Beasley [00:25:09] Yeah. Then, Plessie came third. She come after they did.
Lauren Lee [00:25:13] So everybody basically came here eventually?
Celestine Beasley [00:25:17] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:25:17] Was there any specific reason for coming to Cleveland? Was there other family here before?
Celestine Beasley [00:25:25] Well, my brothers and my sister, they came to Cleveland before my mom died. She had sent—you know, sent them up here.
Lauren Lee [00:25:42] Was it for school or better living or—? I mean—
Celestine Beasley [00:25:47] Well, it was for school. After—the schools that was near us, they didn’t go no higher than the ninth grade. She sent them up here to start—you know, go to high school.
Lauren Lee [00:26:02] By themselves?
Celestine Beasley [00:26:05] Uncle Opie was here. They lived with Uncle Opie.
Lauren Lee [00:26:09] Did he ever live in Mississippi?
Celestine Beasley [00:26:13] I didn’t know him in Mississippi.
Lauren Lee [00:26:15] Oh, you didn’t know him until you came to Cleveland?
Celestine Beasley [00:26:18] I knew him, but he was in Chicago.
Lauren Lee [00:26:21] See, I guess it’s just so weird for me how, you know, you guys all kept in touch with so much moving around without telephones.
Celestine Beasley [00:26:29] Well, eventually, there was telephone.
Lauren Lee [00:26:32] But before that, it was just—
Celestine Beasley [00:26:38] Other—you know, you could always go to somebody’s house and use their phone. When I was in New Orleans, it was—peoples had a phone, but I didn’t have one.
Lauren Lee [00:26:48] Do you remember New Orleans? Was it kind of how—you know, how it’s perceived to be now?
Celestine Beasley [00:26:56] No.
Lauren Lee [00:26:59] No?
Celestine Beasley [00:27:01] A lot that happened after—now, they was having a Mardi Gras when I was living there. You hear them talking about that?
Lauren Lee [00:27:09] What is it?
Celestine Beasley [00:27:10] Mardi Gras.
Lauren Lee [00:27:11] Oh, yeah, Mardi Gras.
Celestine Beasley [00:27:16] And, now, I didn’t live in New Orleans but about two years because after we come for a visit, we moved up here, and I never went back to New Orleans either.
Lauren Lee [00:27:27] You just had no desire to?
Celestine Beasley [00:27:30] Well, I didn’t have no family there.
Lauren Lee [00:27:36] Describe moving here, you know, from—how—well, when and how did you make the move from—?
Celestine Beasley [00:27:42] Well, when we moved from New Orleans here, we just brought clothes.
Lauren Lee [00:27:47] Train?
Celestine Beasley [00:27:50] Yeah, we came on a train, and for to ship clothes, any—I mean, furniture—it would have been cheaper to buy it here then to pay for it to be sent here.
Lauren Lee [00:28:05] Really?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:06] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:28:08] And you had your first kid when you were in New Orleans?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:11] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:28:13] A boy or a girl?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:15] Herman was a boy.
Lauren Lee [00:28:17] I know that, but I—
Celestine Beasley [00:28:18] Oh, you wanted me to say it.
Lauren Lee [00:28:20] Because the people listening won’t.
Celestine Beasley [00:28:21] Well, my first child was a boy. He was born in 1940, July 9, quite natural.
Lauren Lee [00:28:29] In July. Him and Aunt Tina was born on the same day?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:36] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:28:37] What year was she born?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:41] Forty-nine.
Lauren Lee [00:28:47] Where else did you stop in making the move? And why did you leave those places? Or were you straight from New Orleans to Cleveland?
Celestine Beasley [00:28:53] Straight from New Orleans to Cleveland.
Lauren Lee [00:28:57] What was Cleveland like when you first got to Cleveland?
Celestine Beasley [00:29:00] Cold.
Lauren Lee [00:29:01] You weren’t used to that, were you?
Celestine Beasley [00:29:05] No. We moved up here in January.
Lauren Lee [00:29:09] So it was wintertime here.
Celestine Beasley [00:29:12] We come to visit and—just before Thanksgiving, and we stayed for Thanksgiving and went back to New Orleans.
Lauren Lee [00:29:19] And what was Cleveland—I mean, how was Cleveland different to you?
Celestine Beasley [00:29:25] As I said, it was cold.
Lauren Lee [00:29:27] That’s it.
Celestine Beasley [00:29:31] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:29:32] There was no, you know, major difference between white and Black in what’s, you know, Cleveland in the north and from the South.
[00:29:40]
Celestine Beasley [00:29:42] Well, it wasn’t to me. New Orleans, I imagine it was segregation there. But I never did come in contact with it because I never did go much. I always was around the house. And I didn’t—I wasn’t working there. I worked in Mississippi. When I come here, I worked a little while. I didn’t have but one child. And then I got married again because me and my husband separated. And I had three girls and two boys. That mean I had six kids then, and I come to have seven.
Lauren Lee [00:30:46] Was that when my mom was born?
Celestine Beasley [00:30:49] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:30:49] Six kids in Cleveland?
Celestine Beasley [00:30:52] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:30:52] And did you hold the job when you had—after you had all six?
Celestine Beasley [00:30:54] Not until I start to working at Mount Sinai.
Lauren Lee [00:30:58] And did you have to go to school to work at the hospital?
Celestine Beasley [00:31:00] Yes, I did. I went to nursing school.
Lauren Lee [00:31:02] Prior to that, what level of school did you go to?
Celestine Beasley [00:31:06] Eleventh grade.
Lauren Lee [00:31:08] So in the South, when you stopped at ninth grade, was that considered your graduation?
Celestine Beasley [00:31:12] I stopped in ninth grade, but I was supposed to come to Cleveland, and I didn’t want to come. I wanted to go to Chicago. And my mom told me I wasn’t coming to Cleveland—I wasn’t going to Chicago, I had to come to Cleveland where the others was. And I made a statement to her: If I can’t go—if I can’t stay at home with you, I want to stay by with the same aunt. And that’s who was in Chicago. And she made the statement: The only reason you don’t go to Cleveland is you get married. So I got married.
Lauren Lee [00:31:52] (laughs) Just so you wouldn’t have to go to Cleveland? What was it about Cleveland that you didn’t like?
Celestine Beasley [00:31:59] I didn’t know Uncle Opie like I knowed my aunt. I had two aunts in Chicago. And I always said if I had to leave home than be with my mom, I wanted to be with one of those aunts or both of them.
Lauren Lee [00:32:17] Do you still have clear memories of those two aunts?
Celestine Beasley [00:32:21] Not now, because I never lived around them. They was in Chicago as long as I can remember. That’s where they both passed at, in Chicago.
Lauren Lee [00:32:35] Do you still have a lot of family in Chicago?
Celestine Beasley [00:32:38] No, they don’t now. But a lot of them just passed on.
Lauren Lee [00:32:43] And what do you—was there any, you know, special thing about Chicago? Was there any—
Celestine Beasley [00:32:49] Not really. I didn’t know nothing about Chicago. Still don’t. I never lived in Chicago.
Lauren Lee [00:32:59] So your first job, you said, was at Mount Sinai, right?
Celestine Beasley [00:33:01] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:33:02] And that was being a nurse?
Celestine Beasley [00:33:05] Yes.
Lauren Lee [00:33:05] And what were your responsibilities?
Celestine Beasley [00:33:11] Technician.
Lauren Lee [00:33:12] Grandma, tell them—
Celestine Beasley [00:33:13] Well, I started out taking care of patients, and then I was a technician for a group that they call—that’s how I got to be the technician. I was their secretary. And before I got to be a technician, I did nurse’s responsibility, taking care of patients.
Lauren Lee [00:33:44] Was that—were you allowed to work with white people when you were at Mount Sinai?
Celestine Beasley [00:33:51] Uh-huh (affirmative), yes.
Lauren Lee [00:33:57] Was it segregated?
Celestine Beasley [00:33:59] Not that I know of. No more than it is now. But I work with them. I always said I could get along with the devil, so—
Lauren Lee [00:34:08] What year was that that you worked in Mount Sinai?
Celestine Beasley [00:34:14] Let’s—I started in ‘68, until ‘83.
Lauren Lee [00:34:22] What made you stop by ’83?
Celestine Beasley [00:34:28] I had arthritis real bad, and it was bothering me for to stand or walk. And as soon as I got sixty-two years old, I retired.
Lauren Lee [00:34:37] Did you enjoy what you did?
Celestine Beasley [00:34:40] Yes, I did.
Lauren Lee [00:34:42] Did you work at any of the hospitals when your grandchildren were born?
Celestine Beasley [00:34:54] No. I might have been working, but they weren’t born at that hospital because my oldest would be Devin. Oh, yes, I did. He was born at Mount Sinai while I was working.
Lauren Lee [00:35:10] Were you there?
Celestine Beasley [00:35:12] Yeah. I wasn’t in the room. I wasn’t in delivery. Tina was admitted in the morning time, and I was in work. And you didn’t go into the delivery like they do now, but that’s the only child that were born there. Tommy was born at another hospital, and I was working at Mount Sinai. Jessica was born at a hospital; I was working at Mount Sinai. They wasn’t born there.
Lauren Lee [00:35:52] Oh, okay. She was born at Hillcrest, right?
Celestine Beasley [00:35:55] I think so.
Lauren Lee [00:35:58] When you first came to Cleveland, where did you live?
Celestine Beasley [00:36:02] My address was 2250 Ashland Court.
Lauren Lee [00:36:07] Where is that now? The same place?
Celestine Beasley [00:36:10] It’s off of Central, between Central and Cedar.
Lauren Lee [00:36:15] And you were already married with kids?
Celestine Beasley [00:36:18] I didn’t have but one.
Lauren Lee [00:36:20] Oh, you still only had one?
Celestine Beasley [00:36:24] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:36:25] How long did you stay there?
Celestine Beasley [00:36:28] I didn’t stay any more than about a year. I only had a room, and I moved on 79th, off of Woodland. They had some war houses. That’s what I always call them. They was the projects, and I was living there. I lived there. That was in ‘43, and I lived there until in the fifties. And I moved to 7910 Central. That was my father’s house. He had bought it from Uncle Opie. When Plessie and them come to Cleveland, they come to 7910 Central. Uncle Opie was living there then, and he eventually—he had quite a few kids, and he eventually moved to—across the street, 7915.
Lauren Lee [00:37:38] That’s the address? When your dad moved here, he couldn’t farm here. So what did he do?
Celestine Beasley [00:37:44] He worked at Republican Steel [SIC, Republic Steel].
Lauren Lee [00:37:45] Republican Steel?
Celestine Beasley [00:37:48] Uh-huh (affirmative).
Lauren Lee [00:37:51] Was Uncle Opie well off?
Celestine Beasley [00:37:55] Uh-uh (negative). Uncle Opie used to work at National Screw. That was off of 79th, in Quebec.
Lauren Lee [00:38:05] What was the name of it?
Celestine Beasley [00:38:07] National Screw.
Lauren Lee [00:38:09] He was a teacher?
Celestine Beasley [00:38:11] Uh-uh (negative). National Screw was a factory.
Lauren Lee [00:38:17] Oh, so they both worked—
Celestine Beasley [00:38:18] And he was a minister, and he was assistant pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church.
Lauren Lee [00:38:28] So when he came to Shiloh, that’s basically why he came there, to preach? I’m kind of—
Celestine Beasley [00:38:33] I don’t know if he was preaching then or not. Ever since I knowed him, he was a minister. But whether he had been ordained, as you would say—he was a preacher—I really don’t know.
Lauren Lee [00:38:47] Is that what brought you to Shiloh?
Celestine Beasley [00:38:50] No, I joined a church before I went to Shiloh.
Lauren Lee [00:38:55] You joined another church?
Celestine Beasley [00:38:58] Evening Star.
Lauren Lee [00:39:00] Oh, I know where that’s at.
Celestine Beasley [00:39:02] At that time, it was 83rd and Central.
Lauren Lee [00:39:07] What do you remember about the, you know, Cedar-Central area, like, in the 1950s?
Celestine Beasley [00:39:21] There was a lot of churches around. Evening Star was—what—about a block from where we were living. And that minister passed, and they had somebody else there, so that’s when we left and went to another church. It was a little farther. It was on Cedar, 103rd and Cedar—Calvary Hill. You know, we used to be coming home from church, and we would come down Cedar.
Lauren Lee [00:40:12] Walking?
Celestine Beasley [00:40:14] No.
Lauren Lee [00:40:14] Oh, in a car?
Celestine Beasley [00:40:16] Yeah, and we would be coming from Shiloh. Well, see, I joined Shiloh in ‘73. My dad was there, an
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