Description:
Cordelia Sanders talks about her life.
Transcript:
Interviewee: Cordelia Sanders Interviewer: Willa Olden, Cordelia’s first cousin and caregiver; also at least one guest in the background Interview Date: 5/7/2007 Interview Location: Metropolitan Daily Living Center
File Name: Cordelia Sanders 5-7-07.wav
Willa Olden: What is your name?
Cordelia Sanders: Cordelia. Should I say my married name or my maiden name?
WO: Use ‘em both.
CS: Cordelia Campbell Sanders.
WO: What is the date today?
CS: The date is the 7th day of May.
WO: What year?
CS: 2-7.
WO: And where are you today?
CS: I am at the Metropolitan Daily Living Center.
WO: Where are you from?
CS: I am from Boswell, Oklahoma.
WO: And what is your age?
CS: My age is 80 years old.
WO: Tell me a little bit about Boswell, Oklahoma. Give me a little bit more detail. Were you really born in the town of Boswell?
CS: No, I was born about 15 miles on the outskirts of Boswell, way down in the country.
WO: Did that little community have a name?
CS: Yes, that community was called Clow’s Chapel.
WO: Clow’s? As in C-L-O-W apostrophe S?
CS: Right.
WO: Who is it named after?
CS: That little community was named after my grandfather.
WO: Why do you think it was named after your grandfather?
CS: Well because, believe it or not, the white people, they owed a lot of my grandfather. My grandfather was pretty favored by the white people.
WO: Okay. Talk about your living conditions in that wonderful Clow’s Chapel place.
CS: Oh, I lived in a nice 3-room log house.
WO: Okay. Tell me more about that.
CS: We had quite a – my mother and my aunt, which were sisters, they decided to live together since they both had gotten rid of their husbands. [laughter] I don’t know how because back in those days they didn’t let us know what was going on. When both of them got single, they decided to live together. So we were living in a little log house and we had three bedrooms and a kitchen. That was it.
WO: Okay. No living room, huh?
CS: No. Where we had the heater was in my aunt’s bedroom.
WO: What kind of heater did you have?
CS: It was an iron heater. One of those iron dudes.
WO: A potbelly stove?
CS: Yeah, with them big tin pipes.
[both laugh]
WO: That went up through the roof?
CS: Yeah, there you go.
WO: Okay. How about your facilities such as heating and gas and plumbing and so on? Tell us about that.
CS: Our heating system was wood. As I said, we had the potbelly stove, and the way we secured our wood was my mother and my cousin and I was the ones that used the cross-cut saw. We sawed ‘em up, and my aunt would get some men from the country, from the neighborhood, to throw the trees and Mother and I and my cousin would be the ones to saw it up.
WO: Were you blind at that time when you were sawing wood?
CS: Oh, yes.
WO: Didn’t matter?
CS: Didn’t matter at all. I was right on the other end of that. At first, I don’t remember just exactly how old I was, but it took my cousin and I both to make two. We were on one of the ends of the handle and Mother was on the other end. It took two of us two make one but we helped her saw up those trees.
WO: What kind of thing did she say with the two of you all on the other end?
CS: [laughs] Mother would say we was heavy, bowed down and too heavy and everything, but we were doing the best we knew how and so she would put up with us.
WO: Was your mother also blind?
CS: Yes. My mother was blind.
WO: Where’d you get your water from, Cordelia?
CS: We had two little sources we’d get our water from.
WO: You’re kidding. Two sources?
CS: Yes. We had a spring and we had a well. We drew water from the well sometimes and when we’d take a bath and everything, we’d get the water from the spring and pack it up in housing buckets.
WO: How about your plumbing?
CS: Plumbing? That was out. We just had an outhouse. You didn’t plumb! We’d go way out back and get in the outhouse.
WO: How about your education?
CS: Long time before I even started any education - I was about 12 years old before I got to go to school where I could learn Braille and what have you. For a while, while I was at home, I would go to school with my little cousin. She had to go. She’d come up by herself there, kinda. Her big sister had gone to Galveston and her brother Joe had gone to Galveston, so she didn’t have anybody. I think it was about a couple of miles or so that we had to walk to Clow’s Chapel School. That’s one reason they named that school after my grandfather, Clow’s Chapel. We had to walk to school. I walked to school with her for a while just for company because I couldn’t read or do anything that they had. I went to school with her just for company, and then finally a man that was in the war with my dad, the first World War, I don’t know how he found out about me down so far in the country. He found out about me and he got it started where I could come up to DB&O to go to school.
WO: What’s DB&O?
CS: This was a place where they had deaf, blind, and orphaned Blacks. Even though they had a blind school in Muskogee, it was segregated. We Blacks were not allowed to go to school with the whites in Muskogee, so we went ten miles on the other side of Muskogee. The deaf, the blind, and the orphans, we’d go to school together.
WO: In Taft?
CS: Huh?
WO: Was that in Taft?
CS: Yes, that was in Taft, Oklahoma. Ten miles on the other side of Muskogee.
WO: What kinds of things did you learn in Taft?
CS: I learned how to read Braille. That was the main thing to me.
WO: So that’s one of the things you’re most grateful for?
CS: That’s one of the things I am very grateful for. I can read my own Bible, read my own Sunday School lesson and everything, and that was really beneficial to me. We were not supposed to go to school with the orphans. We were not supposed to go to school with the deaf, but that’s the best we could do. They had a deaf school, I heard, in Sulphur, Oklahoma, but the Black deaf children were not able to go to school there. We all went to school together. Me, us blind students and the deaf students were in the room together. We didn’t go to school in the room with the orphaned children, but we were all in the same building. The deaf and the blind was in the room together, and if you’ve never been around a bunch of deaf children, you just ought to have been. That is a noisy bunch. They don’t realize that they are making the noise that they make. It was about five of us blind in the room with about 31 or 32 deaf children. You can imagine the kind of discipline we had. We didn’t.
WO: Do you have any college education?
CS: I went to Langston one year and then I did go back another year or two, but when I got to my junior year I believe it was, they decided – the dean at Langston decided they were not qualified to teach me the major that I wanted. I wanted to be an elementary educational teacher. By the time I got to my junior year, they decided they wasn’t able to teach me well enough that I could be an elementary education major. So, they wanted me to change my major to a reading course. I didn’t because the way I got to Langston to get that far was the rehabilitation paid my tuition and paid for my books, and really to start all over again from freshman on up to a senior, I didn’t feel like the rehabilitation was gonna go back and do that for me. I did not, Mother did not, we didn’t have the money to go to school any longer.
WO: Explain how you function at Langston being blind. How did you get your assignments and so on?
CS: Well, the way I got my assignments at Langston, the rehabilitation paid a young lady to read my lessons to me. That’s how I got my assignments when I was out there.
WO: Who used to travel with you and take you out there when you needed to go from home to school and so on?
CS: Nobody traveled with me. I traveled by myself going to school. I truly know what it means to sit on the back seat in the bus. I was on that long seat in the back on that Continental trailer every time I went to school.
WO: You musta been Black.
CS: I musta been.
[both laugh]
WO: When you lived in the log house, how many people lived in there with you in that three-bedroom, no living room house?
CS: Pfffbbbt. Well now let’s see. The boys all had one room, and girls had room. I don’t think it was hardly ever a time that there wasn’t at least three of us in the bed together.
[both laugh]
WO: So you don’t have siblings, so who were these people?
CS: In our room we had two beds. My mother had one bed, and we girls had the other bed. Some slept at the head. Some slept at the foot. You know how that go.
[both laugh]
CS: That’s the way it was. Some slept at the head and some was at the foot, but we slept.
WO: How do you function living alone, since you have to live alone for several years now?
CS: I have been in my home for about 40 years.
WO: About 45. You moved in ’61?
CS: I moved in there in ’61. I know my house pretty good. When I was in the country and when I was coming up down in the country, my mother did not spare the rod for me to learn how to cook. My auntie had two girls, and I was one, and every morning we had a morning each to go in and fix breakfast. So, I learned how to cook at home. I already know how to fix food for myself.
WO: Was it wonderful growing up with my brothers, fixin’ food for them?
CS: Yeah. It was so wonderful. Every time we made some biscuits and would sit at the table and they threw and hit the syrup jar with them.
WO: They said they were hot!
CS: And laugh and make fun of them!
[both laugh]
CS: Your brothers was something else. They made fun of our cooking terribly.
WO: There’s only seven of them! Wasn’t that many!
[both laugh]
CS: Yeah, sure. They made fun of them but they went and got ‘em when they got through making fun of them.
WO: Throw them on the table.
CS: Throw them across the table and hit the syrup with ‘em. They ate ‘em.
WO: Did you have a milk cow?
CS: I sure did. I tried. I didn’t exactly get the right kit on it but I had a cow that I milked.
[both laugh]
CS: I helped them slop the sows and pull hog weeds and everything the rest of them did. I did everything but I just only – the only thing they wouldn’t let me was go to the field and chop. I know they figured I was going to chop everything.
[both laugh]
WO: All the cotton and peanuts, all gone.
CS: Everything was up there that I would chop. So, they didn’t let me chop, but I learned how to pick cotton. My grandfather made me a sack out of a gunny sack. I’d put it on my shoulders, and they’d put me on the row, and I learned how to pick cotton. I used to pick about 12 pounds a day.
[WO bursts out laughing]
WO: You go, Ca-dee!
CS: I thought I was doing good.
WO: Twelve pounds!
CS: My grandfather was bragging on me.
[both laugh]
CS: I was really getting it. I had me a gunny sack. Put me on the row with somebody and I made me about 12 pounds. I would go up and weigh it and it’d be about four pounds. That was great – they said. I don’t know. Anyway, I learned how to pick cotton. I got stung by the cotton worms and everything but I had to be out there. I’ll slop the sows pull hog weeds and everything else.
WO: Tell us about how you spend your time now.
CS: The way I spend my time now, I love to sing. I look forward to going to choir rehearsal every Thursday evening. I love to go to prayer meeting, so I go to prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings. I come to the Metropolitan Center on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays just so I’ll have someone to yak with. I get tired of being at home by myself all the time, so I come here for a little company. I come and talk with them, with the ladies.
WO: That sounds like a good deal. How about Handicapped for Christ?
CS: About twice a month we have a what we call a Handicapped for Christ meeting, and it’s a spiritual meeting. We go and listen to a sermon and we sing and we pray and then they always serve us a lunch. Then we come back home. That happens about twice a month.
WO: Is it first and third Thursdays? From about 10 –
CS: Yeah. We have a ladies’ group from a church that volunteers to bring us food on the third Thursday. They always bring us lasagna. Every one.
WO: Never fails.
CS: Never fails. Lasagna.
WO: I know you enjoy it.
CS: Lasagna every third Thursday.
WO: Well, you don’t have to guess what your menu’s gonna be.
CS: No. [laughter]
WO: Every third Thursday. How do you get there?
CS: Our minister over at the Handicapped for Christ usually asks different people to pick us up.
WO: What about once a year? What do you do once a year in relationship to that?
CS: Once a year Handicapped for Christ has a Thanksgiving get-together dinner. We have been meeting at the church on 10th Street. I can’t think of the name of it right now.
WO: Olivet Baptist?
CS: Olivet Baptist. Yeah. We meet at Olivet Baptist, but here lately just this past year we’ve had to change because their prices kept going up and up and up, maybe a little higher than we could stand. Our minister changed our place.
WO: But once a year when you go out of town, what is that when you travel?
CS: Oh. Once a year I go out of town. I go to different states and I really enjoy that. This is a national church conference that we have for the blind, and we have a get-together every year once a year. It have been being in July, but now they have changed and we go in September. We will be going, if the Lord bless, this year in September.
WO: Where are some of the places that you’ve been? I know you travel a whole lot more than I have.
CS: We’ve been to Michigan. We’ve been to Denver, Colorado. We’ve been to El Paso, Texas. We’ve been to Louisiana. We’ve been to North Carolina. We’ve repeated some of those years. This will be our second year to go to Lansing, Michigan. Some of the places we’ve even been to Saint Louis. We’ve been to Kansas. We just go different states every year. We repeat some states sometimes, but most of the time we go to a different state.
WO: Why don’t you use a seeing eye dog?
CS: Well, really, I would prefer not to have a seeing eye dog. I love dogs, but I don’t want my dog in the house. I love my dogs to be outside. I love cats but I don’t have a cat because I can’t clean up behind them. I don’t want to be asking other people to do that cleaning up cat hair and dog hair over things, so I just don’t have one. Most of the time when I travel, I travel with a sighted guide, so I really don’t need one.
WO: You don’t need a seeing eye dog. Okay. Well, I think you do pretty well. I want to tell you that you have an interesting life and an interesting story that you can share for the next 100 years. Then I think 100 years from now we’ll come back and listen at what we did.
[both laugh]
CS: You mean my ghost will come back. I know God is good, but He’s not gonna let me live no hundred more years. I did good to live this hundred.
WO: I have a request from someone in the room to ask you to sing a verse of anything of your choosing.
CS: Oh. Let’s see. What can I sing? Caught me off guard.
WO: I knew it did. What do you sing at Saint John? You’ve been there the last hundred years. How long have you been there?
CS: Ever since 1957.
WO: Right after you came to Oklahoma City?
CS: Yeah. After I came to Oklahoma City – I knew some of the people here. I knew the Emrys and I knew the Spigners. They belong to Saint John’s, so naturally that’s where they took me. That’s how I got in at Saint John. I haven’t been jumping churches. I just stayed where I am. [unintelligible]
WO: Sounds just like [unintelligible].
CS: Can’t get into another church and then gotta get used to those ways when you’re already used to this one – Saint Johns. I just stayed there. Put up with them.
WO: Some of the songs that you sing at Handicapped for Christ – can you come up with one of those and just do a verse? One verse?
[CS clears throat]
CS: Yeah, let’s see. [Singing in a soprano voice with strong vibrato] Great is Thy faithfulness, oh God my Father. There is no – [speaking normally] I done forgot it now. I could sing it if I had the music. Let’s see. Oh. [Singing in a soprano voice with strong vibrato] The name of Jesus is so sweet. I love its music to repeat. It makes my joys full and complete. The precious name of Jesus, Jesus, oh how sweet the name Jesus! Every day is the same Jesus, let all saints proclaim its worthy praise forever.
[applause in the background]
WO: All right, I think that’s a good way to end. Thank you, Cordelia. Oh. My name is Willa Olden. I am the youngest of ten kids of that aunt that Cordelia talks about that lived with her. To tell you about me, when Cordelia when away to Taft to school, my sisters are 18 and 16 years older than I am. By that time, we had built another house, and we did have a four-bedroom house, a kitchen, and a real formal living room. By being so much younger, I got her room all by myself ‘cause she had to go away to school. Isn’t that wonderful? I had my own bedroom ‘cause I didn’t have sisters young enough to be at home with me. I just had brothers. I grew up with about four of the boys. It was a heap of us. Oh my goodness. That left scar right there is where I fell on that wood heater. Still have it. I didn’t burn my face because I protected with my arm. I was four years old. I’m her first cousin, to her sister’s children, and her caregiver at this point.