[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 20 (Wednesday, March 4, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E288-E289]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   GROWING UP BLACK IN SHEPHERDSTOWN

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. ROBERT E. WISE, JR.

                            of west virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 4, 1998

  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce for the record an 
article by Mary Corcoran Lehman for the Shepherdstown Chronicle of 
Shepherdstown, West Virginia. This article was written in commemoration 
of Black History Month a few years ago. It is about the life of Mr. 
Charles Branson, a local city councilman, who has lived through an 
extraordinary period of American history and provides a fascinating 
perspective of this time.
  While February, designated as Black History Month, has come to a 
close, I wanted to place this article in the Congressional Record 
today. The contributions of a person or culture to our society should 
not be limited to a specific month, but should be celebrated year 
round. Mr. Branson's story and others like it remind us that throughout 
one's life many people give significantly to the legacy of America 
everyday.

                   Growing Up Black in Shepherdstown

                       (By Mary Corcoran Lehman)

       Childhood for Charles Branson was enjoyable. He was born in 
     1921 at his home on Angel Hill on Shepherdstown's East End. 
     At that time, he says, every black was born at home even 
     though there were two hospitals in Martinsburg. 
     Transportation was a problem, he remembers. Very few, if any, 
     blacks had an auto in the 1920s. Charles' own family, for 
     instance, got their first car in 1934 or 35.
       The families in the East End were very close. Charles' 
     maternal grandparents lived just 20 feet away. The 
     grandparents owned both their home and the home where 
     Charles, his parents, and his two siblings lived and grew up.
       His parents, Charles says, worked very hard. His mother, 
     who died when she was just 38 from complications from 
     diabetes, never saw a washing machine. She scrubbed the 
     family's laundry on an old wash board. ``Later in life I felt 
     rather badly about that wash board,'' Charles says. She also 
     worked as a domestic. His father worked various jobs. He was 
     a laborer at Shepherd College, worked at the Blairton stone 
     quarry and, in the early 30s when the Depression was still 
     hitting hard all over, he worked for the WPA.
       During the 20s and 30s Angel Hill was a mixed neighborhood, 
     Charles remembers. ``We all played together, black and white, 
     in the street,'' he says. ``There were no playgrounds. We'd 
     shoot marbles, set up horse shoe pits and we played ball.'' 
     Angel Hill children also played in the area where the 
     Shepherdstown Day Care Center now is, he says, in a big field 
     that extended back to where Porky May now lives.
       Nathan Manuel, who is now a dentist, was Charles' closest 
     friend back them. ``We had a nice group then'' he says. 
     ``We'd race up and down the street rolling tires.'' He 
     remembers doing this with Robert Washington, Genevieve 
     Monroe's younger brother. ``And I also played with her 
     sisters.'' he says.
       Black and white adults, who lived on Angel Hill, also 
     socialized, he says. ``Society was not integrated then'' 
     Charles adds, ``but as far as the activities of the people in 
     the area it was integrated.''
       When Charles Branson was 8-years old he started school. He 
     didn't begin school at the usual age of six because his legs 
     were badly scalded with boiling water which tipped off a coal 
     stove when he was six or seven. ``I remember taking those 
     bandages off,'' he says.
       When he did start school he realized for the first time 
     that there was a difference between blacks and whites. 
     Charles had to walk all the way from Angel Hill to the far 
     West End of Shepherdstown to attend the black Shadyside 
     School. To get there he walked right past the white school on 
     the corner of King and High Streets. It was about three 
     blocks closer to his home than Shadyside and he says he used 
     to wonder why he couldn't go there. The only time black kids 
     went near the white school was after hours when they played 
     on the fire escape tubes, he remembers now.
       The great black educator Dr. John Wesley Harris was 
     principal of Shadyside during the years Charles was there. He 
     succeeded Charles' grandfather John W. Branson. Harris was 
     the senior Branson's pupil at one time. Branson's grandfather 
     went to Page County, Virginia and taught in Luray. Several 
     decades later grandson Charles would follow in his footsteps.
       Charles graduated from Shadyside in 1937 without ever going 
     through the eighth grade. The fifth, sixth, seventh and 
     eighth grades were all in one class and by the time Charles 
     was in the seventh grade he had heard and learned it all. 
     When it came time for the eighth graders to take the state 
     test, seventh grader Charles took it too and passed. The 
     three others who took the test with him at the Eagle Avenue 
     School in Charles Town passed also. Charles had the highest 
     score so he was named valedictorian of his class and Clarence 
     Holmes was salutatorian.
       The only black high school in Jefferson County at the time 
     was at Storer College in Harpers Ferry. It was a boarding 
     school. Dr. Harris, whose son attended Storer also, took 
     Charles to school in the fall. He came home for holidays. 
     Board at the school in 1937 was $16 a month. ``Even that was 
     hard for my parents to raise,'' Charles says.
       Charles was at Storer for four years. In his junior year 
     his mother died. Life became increasingly more difficult 
     then. He couldn't stay on campus because his family could no 
     longer afford the board so he went to work at a white tourist 
     home in Harpers Ferry. The $2 a month he earned enabled him 
     to continue his schooling.
       The tourist home, Laurel Lodge, was owned by the sister of 
     Storer's Registrar Pansy Cook. ``I wrung the necks of 
     chickens and plucked them on Saturdays,'' Charles remembers. 
     ``They had big chicken dinners on Sundays and for the work 
     they gave me lodging in the furnace room of their basement.'' 
     Part of the job, he says, was to attend the furnace at night. 
     The basement was so permeated with coal dust, he says, that 
     even though he changed the sheets once a week by the middle 
     of the week ``they were as black as anything.''
       Charles had meals on campus and because he had so many 
     friends there he always had a place to keep his clothes and 
     take a bath. ``It worked out very well,'' he says.

[[Page E289]]

       On weekends he would hitch a ride to Shepherdstown with 
     Charles ``Cop'' Shipley, who lived in the yellow house next 
     to Trail's Chevron where David Malakoff and Amy Young now 
     live. Shipley's father Bob was the first state trooper in 
     Shepherdstown. His brother Kenneth was fire chief in 
     Shepherdstown for many, many years and lived in the old King 
     Street fire hall.
       In 1941 Charles completed high school. He remembers that 
     Jennings Randolph, then a congressman, was the commencement 
     speaker. After graduation Charles came back to Shepherdstown. 
     But at that time Shepherdstown didn't have many opportunities 
     for a black man to make money, Charles says. You could maybe 
     work in the apple orchard for Goldsborough and Skinner at 20  
      an hour or see if Shepherd had a laborer's job but that was 
     about it.
       Instead Charles decided to go to New York City with his 
     friend C.J. Jackson. Jackson had New York relatives; he had 
     an aunt who lived out in Mount Vernon, New York. Charles 
     found a job in downtown Manhattan at 125th Street and Seventh 
     Avenue. He started out as a dishwasher in a little 
     restaurant. In six months he had decided it was not the job 
     for him. He went to New Haven, Connecticut where he hoped to 
     work for the Winchester Rifle Works. One of his former 
     classmates worked there.
       When that didn't transpire, Charles got a job in Ansonia at 
     a big old country club where he would up in the kitchen. ``I 
     never boned so many turkeys in my life,'' he says ruefully. 
     ``Time to get on back home.'' Back home to the orchards and 
     Shepherd College.
       He was working at Shepherd for a regular salary of $40 a 
     month and board when he married his wife Ruby in May of 1942. 
     It was during World War II and every able bodied man, black 
     or white, was joining or being drafted to join the armed 
     forces. ``I was working at Shepherd when I got inducted at 
     Fort Hayes in Columbus in December,'' he says. After 
     induction Charles immediately left for Fort Hood, Texas where 
     he was placed in Tank Destroyer Training.
       During the Second World War the army was segregated. Entire 
     divisions of black soldiers were commanded by white officers. 
     Charles became part of the 827th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 
     Company C, Third Platoon. But being commanded by white 
     officers hardly mattered Charles remembers, because he had to 
     answer to non-coms, who were black.
       Charles was a private first class and the assistant gunner 
     in a M-18 Tank Destroyer. He originally received training for 
     tank warfare in Africa but in 1944 after the Allied invasion 
     of Europe tank training changed.
       The 827th was sent to Europe. Charles landed at Marseilles 
     and he and his battalion took part in the invasion of 
     Southern France. ``In November, a couple of days after my 
     birthday, I knew something was happening. Whole battalions of 
     various companies formed. A communion service was held. For 
     the first and only time I had communion in the army,'' he 
     says.
       The next couple of days they began moving north towards the 
     front. Then the snows came. They were especially deep in 
     Europe that year, he remembers. ``They came up to your waist 
     in some places,'' he says. Finally they reached Strasbourg, 
     almost to the Sigfreid Line and headed towards Luxembourg.
       On December 16, 1944 in the early morning Charles saw balls 
     of fire and heard a roaring. It was a hot shell and he was in 
     active combat for the first time. He admits he was scared, 
     ``You'd have to be a fool not to be,'' he says. He was right 
     on the edge of the Battle of the Bulge.
       His platoon moved into an area supporting the 79th Infantry 
     and the all-white 42nd Rainbow Division, MacArthur's old 
     division. During a lull in the battle he and the others 
     crawled out of their tank and black soldiers and white 
     soldiers freely mingled. ``You couldn't get more integrated 
     than that,'' he says.
       Charles observed one instance of death at close hand. He 
     was just 25 yards from a Company B tank that was hit. He saw 
     a soldier trying to come out over the gun turret (snow 
     prevented escape from the bottom). He found out later the man 
     died from injuries.
       In early January the tide turned when the sun came out and 
     U.S. ground forces received air support. Charles saw his 
     first jet plane, a German one, at that time. It dropped one 
     bomb, he says and was gone so fast he wondered what it was.
       The war ended for Charles on October 3, 1945 at Fort Mead, 
     Maryland where he was mustered out of the army with a good 
     conduct medal and a honorable discharge.
       Before his discharge, in August, he would not have believed 
     he would return to civilian life so soon. He was on a ship 
     enroute to the Pacific Theater when a voice over the PA 
     system announced the end of the war and the ship turned 
     around to dock in Boston harbor instead.
       When he came back home to Shepherdstown, he and Ruby 
     brought the house at 308 West German Street where they still 
     live. He bought it for $600. It was a duplex then but later 
     the and Ruby converted it to a single family home. He worked 
     in the orchards until 1946. All the time his wife kept urging 
     him to go back to school on the G.I. Bill. There were no 
     decent jobs to be found, he says.
       In 1946 he was called to work as a janitor at the Army 
     Hospital in Martinsburg. The 65   cents an hour he earned 
     there was three times the 20   an hour he was making in the 
     orchards and by now he and Ruby had four children. The Army 
     Hospital was converted to the Newton D. Baker Veteran's 
     Administration Hospital shortly after he began work and he 
     put in an application to work for the federal government. 
     Still Ruby was urging him to go back to school.
       So in August of 1946 Charles registered for classes in 
     business administration at Storer College. He selected a 
     business administration major because his college advisor 
     told him he would be eligible for a G.I. loan to set up his 
     own business when he graduated. ``But I had no particular 
     business I was interested in,'' he says. ``When I got out of 
     school I had to get a job.'' So he switched to education and 
     social studies.
       The commencement speaker at his 1950 graduation was W.E.B. 
     Du Bois, who had first come to Storer College in 1908, for a 
     meeting of the Niagara Movement, the precursor of the 
     N.A.A.C.P. That 1950 Storer class was the largest class ever 
     graduated from Storer, Charles remembers.
       In the second semester of 1951 Charles went back to school. 
     Although he graduated with a Bachelor in Social Studies. 
     Charles had not completed his professional studies. By the 
     end of the summer session he had minors in business 
     administration and physical education. During one summer 
     school session he attended a class with a teacher at the 
     black high school in Luray, Virginia, Andrew Jackson High 
     School. The man's wife was principal of the school. Charles 
     was offered a job as a teacher and football coach.
       He had no car and no idea how he was going to get to Luray 
     but the $2,400 yearly salary was more than he had ever made. 
     ``I just knew I would get there,'' he says. At first he left 
     his family behind and lived in a rented room but by November 
     Charles had found a house for $15 a month.
       However, in 1952 Ruby became sick and she and the children 
     went back to Shepherdstown. Charles would come home on 
     weekends by train getting in around midnight on Friday and 
     leaving very early Monday mornings. It wasn't a very 
     satisfactory arrangement and in 1956 he came back to 
     Shepherdstown. He worked once again at the VA Center where he 
     stayed until he retired in 1985 after sustaining his fourth 
     heart attack.
       Charles has never retired from public service though. He 
     has served a total of eighteen years on the Shepherdstown 
     Council. He first became a councilman in 1974 but took two 
     years off between 1980 and 1982. He spearheaded the cleaning 
     up of Back Alley after the alley became a dumping ground 
     following the closing of the Town Dump on Rocky Street. And 
     he was one of the founding members of the Shepherdstown 
     Community Club which was active in the present youth center 
     building until the mid 1980s.
       The Shadyside School that Charles attended was closed in 
     1946. Shepherdstown blacks then went to the East Side School. 
     That building now houses the Shepherdstown Day Care Center. 
     Although the Brown vs. the Board of Education decision 
     against segregation in public schools was handed down by the 
     United States Supreme Court in 1954 Charles says schools in 
     Shepherdstown were not integrated until the late 50s or early 
     60s.
       Three of his six children attended segregated schools. The 
     three older children, Rose, Barbara and Charles, attended 
     Jefferson County's black high school, Page Jackson in Charles 
     Town.
       Only the three younger children, Leon, Rodney and Brenda, 
     attended integrated schools in Shepherdstown. All three 
     graduated from Shepherdstown High School.

     

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