Beverly Trimble Chp 4 part 1 and 1 other
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[00:00:00] So what we're here today to discuss is chapter four of The Black Man's Burden. With me is Mrs. Beverly Trimble. Beverly Trimble is a friend and colleague and has read this book many years ago. So we're gonna discuss chapter 4.

So, Ms. Beverly, kind of tell me a little bit about what Chapter 4 is about and how it touched you. 

Okay, it touched me that his family depended on him number one. Mm hmm. And after he had taken the brother in, here's the sister. She wants to come because she wants to make something of herself. Right. So she contacted him because she was just working at a hotel and that wasn't working out for her. 

Then you look at his situation. He was so poor as it was. He only had one pair of pants. And he was patching and patching and patching until they didn't work anymore. [00:01:00] And he patched them on the Sabbath day and the preacher preached about, what was that he preached about? He said, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

And you hear this in church when they see people washing their cars and doing work. So that kind of made him feel a little guilty. So, you know, the next thing he did, Miss Washington came by. And she got him a suit and he began to look like a preacher and some of them started to call him names like Preacher Reverend Doc.

Oh, this is Booker T. Washington's wife, right? Yeah, Ms. Washington. 

And it was kind of cute. He said it was a Prince Albert suit. And, you know, I don't remember what those look like in the day, but you probably do. But he said shortly after that he made a substitute teacher and was making eight dollars.

A month. Can you imagine us making $8 a month? Mm-Hmm. We would just starve. 'cause we can't buy a McDonald meal with $8. Not even a dollar menu meal. Mm-Hmm. What's the minimum 

wage now? $8. 

$8 an hour. [00:02:00] 8 75. So in comparison, they thought they was rich back then and you know, he went on and he, he was in Tuskegee.

He went on to work at a school. 

That was Snow Hill. 

Snow Hill, and he became the printer. 

Yeah, I think that was his He was in printing as, as one of his studies when he was at Tuskegee, right? 

And you know printing was important back then, because this is how you get your newspaper, this is how you get your flyers, your menus, and all that thing.

So he went out and promoted it. See what I saw in that was, he had a plan. He went out, first he learned some things about fixing on things at Tuskegee, and Being the printer right then he used his print shop to go out and raise money so that he can buy. What was it the letters that what he needed to print?

He went out and the typeface. Yes the type Yes, he went out and he did that But you know, he said that he wanted to be a lawyer And his dad said [00:03:00] he saw lawyers as liars Okay, and you know, he went on to finish what he started because he promised his mom and she died. So, you know, it's no different from now.

Some of our values existed back then, but they were just a little bit poorer than we are.

he had promised his father wanted him to be a teacher. Mm-Hmm. . Just before he, his death, he went to his bedside and he repeated his wish. That he be a teacher and not a lawyer because he said lawyers are liars.

There you go. 

And he did not want him to be that. So, he didn't study law. It would have been found in his career at Tuskegee where he had, he was encouraged to do that, but he was following the orders that his father gave. And you know, he wanted them to go out there and educate those children.

And I saw that as just such a promise. But you know, he did a lot of [00:04:00] things in the meantime in Chapter 4. He got married. They had a baby. The baby died. And he started to take a job overseas and he had to go to New York. And then a tornado came and tore up the place. 

That's right. He was supposed to get a job, I think, in Montserrat.

Mm hmm. And then he was stranded, wasn't he? 

He got stranded in New York, didn't have any money, and the guy sent for him, and he went back to the school, Snow Hill, to work. 

And the guy was what was his name? Edwards. 

Something like that. 

And so he went back to to work at Snow Hill.

He met and married his wife. Mm hmm. They had a baby, but something happened to the baby. The baby got sick. 

The baby got pneumonia and died. Yeah. So 

Now they're both real depressed about the death of their child. 

They're real upset. They're real upset about the death of their child. Mm hmm. Because, you know, when you [00:05:00] lose a child, a parent never thinks That they should lose their child before they die.

So that really upset them because it was a baby. And that's really emotional for a parent. 

I think the baby was six months old. He was a wee baby. So then it's easy to kind of lose your focus. 

It is. But still he had that focus. To come to Mississippi. I don't care what happened. He went out, he repaired clocks, he fixed clocks, he did all type of things.

He taught school, but he never lost his desire to want to come to Mississippi and help the little kids down here. 

You know, and I'm really impressed by that because Booker t Washington told all his students he wanted them to go out and, and, and take education to the. To the deep dark places and Holtzclaw said that when he determined to go to Mississippi That it was the darkest section of the South for a colored man Mississippi.

He did tell him [00:06:00] that. 

And so he when he decided to come here He knew where he was coming. 

He knew where he was coming But as you progress over through the book, it wasn't really the blacks that helped him When he came here, it was the whites that helped him get the land and all that he needed to start this project.

As a matter of fact, some may have even worked here, but he brought people from Tuskegee too. But before that time, Mr. Edwards had sent and got him to come back. And they made him the financial agent. And then at the end of the year, he went again to Mississippi. As he done before then the trustees of Snow Hill made him the the treasurer of the school raised his salary to 25 a month and Then he began to think perhaps now.

Let me tell you what I saw in all that he went through I Saw [00:07:00] him preparing him on how to get funds How to how to run a school, teach at a school He was building his experience and he didn't even realize what he was doing. He was learning how to be the treasurer, the financial officer. He knew how to teach, so he knew what he needed.

So, what he was doing, although he may not have saw it as a value, because when you come to school at that time, you needed to print, right? Right. So, and then you think about the printing. Some lady gave him the money to buy the pads to do the letters in the print. Right. So, he was, he was blessed in that way.

Right. I mean, he went through every part that he could go through to be prepared when he came here and, and started a school. I mean, it was so good for this town. Then him and his wife, they built a house. Mr. Edwards gave them the money and they was paying them back by the month. 

And that was when they were in Snow Hill that he was doing that for them.

And, and Ms. Beverly, [00:08:00] when I think about, and I know you and I have talked about this earlier, when we think about how Holtzclaw went through all these different trials, he was poor. He had no financial help from his family. family. He had to be the help for his family, for his brothers and sisters.

And we see this every day, 

every day. And the students 

you deal with, the students I deal with that folks come from very poor circumstances and then they are called back home. They can't finish up their education. 

Because they got to go back home and work or take care of a family member. He took care of two family members.

However, it did not stop him from his journey. Right. He continued on. He had a dream, he had a vision, a passion for it. Right. And he was destined that he would come to Mississippi and start a school. 

That's right. Even though the first, second, and third time, yes, he 

did not succeed. He did not. And [00:09:00] that, that sense and perseverance that he had to 

hold on to that dream though, when they lost that baby, he almost gave it up.

He almost gave up. Until somebody gave him that book. Let me see what that book is. Yeah, he read that book. Let me see what that book was. Okay. 

It was about Orson Swett Marden. 

It's the book, Pushing to the Front. 

Pushing to the Front. 

He said he read that immediately. And that gave him that, that zeal he needed.

To want to go back on his journey. But it's just a firm believer. We as a race believe in that God will put us where we need to be when we need to be there. It wasn't his time. He didn't know how to manage a school. He just had been to school. So he came back here and he worked at Snow Hill and he learned a lot of things.

He learned how to work with people. He learned that in order to get money for his school, what is he gonna have to do? He may have to travel outside of Mississippi. [00:10:00] Right. Think about those things. And then he also learned that it's important That you build your knowledge by reading other people's work because it can keep you motivated.

You know, when you're dealing with the students in your area, and they are coming from all kinds of different circumstances when you talk to them and encourage them, are you giving them some of the same points 

that a Holtzclaw did? 

Well, of course, I encourage them to finish their education because I tell them that it's a true statement.

That in a lifetime, if you will complete your two year degree, that's why two year degrees were developed so that people could get a trade and go out there and get a job. And they make more money than people with masters. I mean we got welders have a year that make a hundred and some thousand that left Hinds at some point.

People make a lot of money off of these because 67 percent of the workforce is CareerTech. [00:11:00] All you got to do is get some training. Right. And used to be it was just hands on training. But all the things that we do, like machining, precision machining, used to be the blacksmith kind of like. Okay. Now it's precision machining, manufacturing, whatever you want to call it.

But a student can come right out of school and go to some of these jobs right in Jackson, make 26 to 28 dollars an hour. Sometimes they're so desperate. that they give them a beginner's bonus. You know, they give you the opportunity to buy your tools and do some things. But Holtzclaw was into the business of wanting to encourage little black children to be better at what they were doing.

And it's not in this chapter, but once he started the school, they didn't have anywhere for them to stay. He had to go out in the community, build relationships so these people would allow These students to stay in their home. They didn't know what kind of people they were, but we wouldn't do that now too quick.

But they did that. 

Well, you know, we do different things that are [00:12:00] sometimes just as impactful, but when you were speaking earlier about how Holtzclaw didn't know How to run a school until he worked around with Mr. Edwards at Snow Hill. He had gotten the basics from teaching, from teaching and on teaching and, and had actually gone back home for a while when he was in school at Tuskegee, which is covered in another chapter as well, but he learned that working with folks.

Getting groups of people together of the same mind with his Black Belt Improvement Society that he did and he recreated here at Utica. I see such a correlation between what this man did with nothing. Yes. And what we have to do with our version of nothing. We come here we work every day, [00:13:00] we, deal with, with students at many different levels.

We deal with people in the community in many different ways. And we are recreating what Holtzclaw did a hundred and twenty years ago. A hundred and twenty years ago. So I see that, I see this book. I see this chapter as being really impactful in the work that we're trying to do here at this campus, here at this campus.

And a few years ago, you know, we had Vice President Deborah Mays Jackson. She came in and kind of tried to recreate and get the community back involved in the agriculture. She had everything that they put out for Founders Day made or did. at the school, like the quilt the picture, the art department did the picture, and one department did the quilt, then another area, the carpentry did, the stand and the frame.

And all those things, [00:14:00] she was trying to go back. She even started working with Alcorn on the ag, to get back to what he stood for, and what he wanted to school. It's not going away, because without the agriculture. We cannot eat. We won't have clothes. That's true. People don't think about the big picture.

You need people to work in it. Not just people to go out there and plant. You gonna need the accountants to finance people. Look at all the positions Dr. Holtzclaw went through to get to where he was going and you know, I was glad when he read the book because he was down about the baby He said that book aroused him He threw it to the floor and he got up and he made up his mind That I'm going to Mississippi and when he came it wasn't easy No.

But he, he went to the Delta first. Yes. They were probably a little bit poorer than he wanted them to be. So then he came to Mississippi, Utica, Mississippi, and he went up there by St. Peter, and he taught there for a while. Which, you know, the school has a marker there, too. Recognize that. [00:15:00] 

And you, you have a deep connection to St. Peter, do you not? 

Yes, we do. And we have some Holtzclaw's family buried in our graveyard up there, although some are out here. At the school, at the school cemetery. That's true. And but anyway, I just think that was an awesome task. And I think that we, as the people from the community and the college, we need to uphold his legacy.

He fought to get what he had. You know, God didn't want him to go overseas. He needed him here to learn. And he was given that opportunity to go to Snow Hill. And he found out that there were good people in the world. They helped him. Helped him build a house. He started doing printing. People bought him the letters, the pad for the letters.

I mean, everything that he done, he was blessed in it. Except for with the baby. He was blessed with everything else. And it just prepared him for his journey to Mississippi and what he had to do. 

And that's right. That's right. You know when we think of [00:16:00] Sometimes we think that if we meet an obstacle We have a job or something we want to do.

We get the first obstacle and we're just through. We don't know what to do after that. You know, I hit a stumbling block. Then if you, if you're able to persevere a little bit and get past it to hit another one, oh, that's it. 

It's over. 

But he hit many. Yes. He hit many. I mean, who would be up in New York and don't even have money to come home?

Right. Back in those days. And you know he probably didn't have anywhere to sleep. That's right. Think about that. 

That's right. Because it, it, it was real different back during the early 1900s. During the early years of Jim Crow when there was, this is before the green book was done to show you what was a good place to stay or eat.

Yeah, you had to find your way. And then back then he walking all through the woods cause it wasn't [00:17:00] blacktop. That's right. On the concrete, he was walking pathways. That's right. Where horses. 

Through the cane break. 

Right. But yeah, this was a very interesting chapter in his life, the start of his marriage, the start of him realizing what the career was that he truly wanted to do after going through all the things that he went through, but what he didn't realize at that point that he was being prepared to come to Utica.

Start that school because it showed him that people would do things for you if you asked. It was just so many things that led to him getting prepared to come here and educate the students of not only just Utica, but surrounding areas. 

But then, you know, when you think about someone who's come from nothing, when in the earlier chapters he talks about his mother bringing food in and they fell on it like little piglets trying to eat it.

This prepared him to come to Mississippi and deal with people who didn't have anything. 

[00:18:00] Cause I can meet you where you are now. 

And then the other thing he can make them hopeful. Because he was a black man with some education. And then not to mention that Booker T. Washington being in history books. He had a mentor.

Right. That was going to come with him. That's right. And then not only that. George Carver Washington, we read about in the history books, he was a part of this school. I mean, if you don't talk about it in that chapter. But I'm just saying, this man made connections. And he developed an educational process that everybody wanted to emulate.

Piney Woods, that person, Mr. Lawrence, was here. That's right. So, you know, you think about this. And his children should have stayed and tried to help. Uphold this legacy. 

You know? And, and that, but that's something too, that's a lesson too for those 

of us who are older. 

The son did. One of the sons did. 

One of the sons did.

But you know, we can take a lesson and not be [00:19:00] discouraged when our own children don't follow Right. Exactly. In our footsteps. Or you see other folks leaving and, and that's one of the things I wanted to touch on too. We are trying to have a renaissance of thought for this campus.

We're trying to pull together those different threads that have frayed and gone away, that have decided that this is not the place that they want to be. So we need to try to emulate Mr. Holtzclaw in the fact that he came here saw discouragement, as we see saw where the dream was almost slipping through his fingers, but he still held on, and he still worked toward it.

So when we are here and we see that the, the dream of Holtzclaw is being minimized, let's [00:20:00] say, or being gently pushed to the back, we need to, Take a thought from, the book, Pushing to the front, pull it back to where it's in the forefront so that those of us who are still here like you, Ms.

Beverly, who remember the school when it was in its heyday. Right. And when we try to tell, have you noticed when we try to tell folks about what Utica used to be, it's hard for them to see it. They can't see it. Considering what Utica is now. But as we share what Holtzclaw did, and as we share what you experienced, because you went to the high school, and 

you did not go to the high school.

I just went to the college portion. I thought you My sisters, my two youngest sisters only went over there, I think. But you had some knowledge of the school. Oh, we had knowledge of the school dying to come. I mean, they offered things that they didn't offer at Utica High School. They had a band. [00:21:00] They had all types of clubs.

They would have a coordination ball. They just had so much more than we had. But we had a sick grandmother, and my mother wanted us close by. Because I was the only one that could drive. So we had to be close by. I wasn't 13, but okay. We had to be close by to take care of Madea. So it kind of hindered us from coming here.

But, you know, that was all good and fine. You know, we got an education, but as soon as we could break free, we came here and went to college. 

How, you know, folks think about distance differently than it was when we were growing up. 

It was hard to get home and I stayed six minutes up the road. 

This is what I wanted to, to get to.

I remember when I was talking to some students about going to town once a week, , they didn't understand that whole concept about going to 

town once a week. 

Town was what was happening on weekends. Yeah. And you can go to certain places and get the best burgers, drinks was 5 cents. They got to understand [00:22:00] Utica.

As other towns, small towns, were booming. Right. And the wrong people just had business because when they got old, their children didn't want it, they moved away. And this is what has happened to the entire community and the college. That's true. Because we had all the Hazlehurts, all the Edwards, all the Bolton, all of Crystal Springs, Terry, all of them had to come here if they wanted education.

That's right. And then the others went to Jackson State. But you know, they start here and move on up. I know people that was teaching, had to go back to Jackson State, they had been teaching for years, didn't even have a high school diploma. Huh. And, and they knew Dr. Holtzclaw, they're dead now, but they were the older people in the community.

That's just like our insurance person, my granddaddy's best friend. He was one of the first Jubilees, Norsell Stamps. Okay. Yeah, he used to come to our house every week. So you know, we were encouraged back then. 

That's right. That sense of community. 

As a [00:23:00] community. 

That's right. We were encouraged and people wanted to come down here.

We thought we was going somewhere when we came to Utica Institute or Utica Junior College. Right. I was here when they first began working on the dorms. And I left and went to USM. But I said when they get dorms they going to be tough because at that time people were actually staying in people's houses.

And you know, they had the bus system. Huh. Yeah, so we've come a long ways, but we need to rebuild. And we need to put some of our values back in. That's right. You gotta be genuinely interested in this school. 

Well, we gotta re educate. That's what we're trying to do with this book, with this podcast, with these interviews.

Is I don't know if you remember when I first came here. 

I remember when you first came. 

In 2000. I did not know Holtzclaw from handicap 

and were working on the campus, 

working on the [00:24:00] campus, had never heard of it, but it was folks 

Shirley Davis 

Ellestine Turner. Wyn Strong. Mm-Hmm. . Oh, the other folks who, Magnolia Hampton, who told me, Esther Owens, who told me.

Amanda Hubbard, who told me what Utica was. They made Utica live when they told me these stories. About what high school was like, what the community was like, what they did at the, at the college. They, this, this teacher was doing these things. That teacher was doing those things. They did this trip and whatever.

And I caught the love that they had for this area. And I started thinking, well, you know, this may be a good place to study. I read the book and listened to, like you said, Shirley Davis [00:25:00] and folks telling 

me 

Dr. Cooper. Well, yeah. Dr. Cooper people driving from near Madison to come to Utica every day.

Thankfully every 

day, 

every day. Debra Danner talking to me about, you know, working here on the campus and what it was like, and then even in the early 2000s when the high school was still in operation, seeing this campus as its own community, its 

own neighborhood. 

It really is its own campus, and when Dr.

Mays Jackson was here, she was actually trying to get it that way, but she just had to have that 1, 200. people on this campus. Right, right. And anyway, she worked on that part. She even worked to make it better where we'd have a turning lane so people could just go around and not stop the traffic.

Right. She did that because she don't want people getting ran over. Right. So it was a lot of things that people have tried to bring back. 

One thing, too, that when we talk about [00:26:00] Dr. Mays Jackson, she was instrumental And once she found out that Utica was historically black an HBCU, she made sure that that was put on every piece of publication that we did, that Utica campus an HBCU which helped us reignite our connection to the entire HBCU community.

I want to thank you so much for coming down and talking with me today about Chapter 4 in Black Man's Burden. And I want to thank you too for being one of the people that helped welcome me to this campus, because one of the first things I remember that was 

I was just a parent then. 

You were a parent then, because the first thing I remember is going to one of the Jubilee Lord, one of the Mahogany Dancer Practices.

Practices. And seeing a little girl roll on the floor, and I [00:27:00] asked, Whose child is that? 

It was mine, and that's another thing. Miss Owens was here with the history. For 35 years as a part of this campus and that made children come down here and then on Friday nights when the band would march the campus, our little girls would march with them and they would let them come, at first they would dance on the sidelines.

Yes. She'd bring them over here just for halftime. And parents would come to the game and the games would be just loaded. We, we need to get back to that. I wish all together we had our agricultural school back. It's unfortunate. , but because it was good for the community because you have to start the students off young.

And that's what he did. He built a system. He put people in positions that he knew they would progress in

Thank you again. Thank you for doing [00:28:00] that. And as always, tune in for our next session. 

Thank you for inviting me.