[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
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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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