J.W. Carter was the football and basketball coach at Bradford school in Rusk for 20 years, from the 1950's to the 1970's.

When were you born?

February 28, 1924

Were you born in Cherokee County?

Yes.

Were you born at home or in a hospital?

I was born at home.

How many brothers and sisters were in your family?

14.

Are you the youngest or the oldest child?

Next to the oldest. The oldest male.

Were your parents born in Cherokee County?

Yes.

Were your grandparents born in Cherokee County?

No.  My grandfather on my mother’s side was born in Alabama. My grandfather on my father’s side was born in Texas.

What is your earliest memory?

Earliest memory about what?

Just about anything, if you could go back and think of the things that happened to you, what would be your earliest memory?

I guess the earliest memory that I have was when my grandfather used to pass the store. When I wanted him to stop and buy me some candy he would, but my father wouldn’t.

Where did you go to school?

I went to school the first eight years at Delmar, a school close to Oakland. The last four years I went to Rusk Colored High School.

How did you get to school?

The first two years I walked or caught a ride.

What kind of school supplies were you required to bring?

Just your book, pencil and paper.

What did you wear to school?

Most of the time I wore jeans and khakis.

What did the classrooms look like?

That’s a big question. What did the classrooms look like?
We had a classroom with seats in it, where two people sat in the [same] seats.

Did the school have air-conditioning? How was it heated in the winter?

No air-conditioning. In the winter we--in high school--we had coal. When I was in elementary school we had a wood heater.

What did the students do for lunch?

We had a lunchroom in high school, but we carried our lunch when I was going to school from the first to the eighth grade.

When you carried your lunches to school did you put them in the cafeteria or did you put them in a desk. Where did you put them?

When you carried your lunch usually you kept it around your desk. You had to secure it because you had some people that would steal your lunch.

What games did you play at recess?

Well, during the noon recess we pitched washers, for the most part. We played some basketball.

What was your favorite sport, football or basketball?

In high school, basketball.

Where did you live as a child?

About four miles west of Rusk, over in Woodal, which many people do not know about. It was about four miles west of Rusk toward Mount Hope.

When you went to school what classes did you have?

Well, I had English, math, biology, and history.We had general science classes, we didn’t have any chemistry. Then typing and bookkeeping and things like that. But we had the three R’s: reading,writing and arithmetic, mainly.

Out of all of the classes which one was your favorite?

I think biology

If you lived in the country, what were the roads like?

Oh, dirt roads. There were dirt roads until in the forties. Then they paved the roads, like what is there now.

What did the first house you remember look like?

Well, it was a box house, and it was pretty well put together. Of course later we built a house of our own which was comfortable.

How many rooms did it have?

Five.
 

(photo:  the Carter home outside Rusk)

Did you have electricity?

No.

Did y’all just get the water from wells?

Yes.

Okay. Did you have chores?

Yes.

What did you have to do?

Well, feed the hogs, cows, horses and milk cows every morning before school time.  I milked about eight, and my brother milked eight. We had sixteen cows to milk every morning before we went to school.

When you weren’t milking cows where did you go to shop for groceries and clothes?

Over in Rusk. Rusk Dry Goods and Grocery. There were several grocery stores in Rusk during that time, but it was the main dry goods store in Rusk.

What is the earliest type of car that you remember?

T-Model Ford or Model-T Ford, whatever you want to call it.

What was your favorite thing to do as a child?

Chores?

Just anything, but your favorite.

My favorite thing was going fishing and hunting.

Did you have television as a child?

No.

Where did you like to fish? Was there a certain lake or pond that you liked to go to all of the time?

Well we fished on Bean Creek most of the time. A guy named Hudnall had a pond that we went fishing on occasionally.

What did you do during the summer?

Summer? Worked, chopped cotton, plowed cotton, picked tomatoes, picked peas, and hauled hay. Just the necessary things need to do on a farm that would make a farm operate.

What was your first job and if you got paid, how much?

Well when I finished high school I worked on a pipeline. Then they were paying from a dollar to a dollar twenty-five an hour.

Did you go to the movies?

Yes, we went to the flick.

How much did it cost to go?

I don’t remember correctly. I think about twenty-five cents.

What movies were popular, and which one did you like the most?

Well, most of them were cowboy movies.

Did you like them or did you just go because everyone else went?

Well, the movies were okay. And we went because we could be together occasionally and kinda be free and socialize with each other.

Did you have a favorite movie star?

Not really. What we went to mostly what they had were people like Minnie Pearl. I remember distinctively Roy Rogers. There were just older guys like that.

What was your favorite television or radio show, when you got to be around a TV or radio?

Well, there was the Art Linkletter and one guy I can’t think of now. But really we didn’t look at television that much.

Did people tell you ghost stories or scary stories when you were younger?

Yes, my grandfather used to.

Do you remember a particular story or one that you liked?

Well I don’t know whether I liked it, but it was exciting. He would tell us of a place where ghosts were and you would pass there at night and hear funny noises, etc.

What story do you remember your grandparents telling the most?

One story was that they used to go to church in wagons. And when they passed a certain place kind of like a churchyard--especially at night--the mules would get to a certain place and they had trouble making them pass by that area.

What type of music did you listen to as a teenager?

Probably just country or country and western. Roy Rogers singing, Minnie Pearl and their group. Of course we had others guys later on like Arthur Prysock and other singers.

So during your teenage years, what did you usually do; just go to the movies or fish?

We went to the movies, fished, and played a little baseball.

When did you first start dating?

I don’t know. It’s according to your definition of dating.

I mean like going out and walking, being together.

What age?

Yes sir.

About 18 or 19.
 

(photo: J.W. and Billie Carter at a school dance)

Who was your first date?

Well I don’t know whether you would call it a date or not. There was just a bunch of friends getting together

Where did you usually go on dates?

To church (ha-ha). Now I remember, Erma Jean Bradley was my first date.

Was that the first person that you ever kissed?

I don’t know. It might have been.

What do you remember about the Great Depression?

I remember about the Great Depression that people didn’t have very much and money was scarce. I used to stay with my grandmother, and of course she had a little money hid out in a potato bank, if you know what a potato bank is.

No, I don’t know what a potato bank is.

It was a place where you kept your fruit and vegetables during the wintertime to keep them from freezing. We always had plenty to eat, although it was not a variety of things.

Did the Great Depression really affect Cherokee County?

Yes, I think it did because they had what you call the WPA, which a lot of people participated in.  That was brought through by Franklin D. Roosevelt, which he called the New Deal.
 

(photo:  left to right:  Billie Carter, Geneva Taylor, J. W. Carter)

What do you remember about World War II when you were younger?

World War II; I remember being examined for it. I never did go. Although I had a brother to go, and I had friends who wrote me letters concerning what was happening in World War II. It was kind of a tough time. A lot of guys went to the service and left their families at home. It was kind of sad in a way, especially during Christmas time.

How did you feel about your brother being gone?

Being gone to the service?

Yes.

Oh, he enjoyed it.

Did he fight or did he work in the office?

He didn’t fight. He was just there in the transportation department.

How did you feel when you heard about Pearl Harbor?

Well just to hear the news, the news was not like it is now, where you could see pictures of it--you just picture a serious situation. Of course, I guess the most touching part was all of the foreign people around and how they were interviewing them and some of the Japanese people. They put them in camps, labor camps.

Do you remember war rations?

Rations, oh yeah, shoes, sugar, etc.

How did they go about doing it?
 

The government would give you stamps. They rationed gasoline with stamps. Of course we had a big family and we had more stamps than we used.

What do you remember most about the fifties?

During the fifties I guess the biggest thing I remember was when I bought a new '51 Ford. I got married in '53 and in the fifties I had a good football and basketball team.

Where did you coach in the fifties?

At Bradford.

And you had a basketball and a football team?

Yes, we had basketball, football, track, and tennis.

Out of basketball and football which one did you enjoy coaching the most?

I think football was the most. Football.

How many years did you coach at Bradford?

20 years.

If you remember anything about the Cold War at all, what do you remember?

The only thing that I can remember about the Cold War was that there was always some disturbance between certain countries. You didn’t know when they might have a world war or serious disaster.

Were there bomb shelters in Cherokee County?

Yes.

What did they look like?

Many people’s so-called bomb shelters were places under the ground where you could go. It was built up to be a lot, but people didn’t do a lot about it, like building cement houses under the ground for protection from the atomic bomb.

What do you remember of the building of the Berlin Wall?

All I know is that they separated the country and a lot of people got killed trying to escape from the communist region.

Do you remember what you were doing when you heard that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated?

Yes. I was in school, and I was having a class at that time.

Did that have a great impact on you when he was killed?

Yes , but I felt like something was going to happen to him. I was kind of prepared for it, because people were very disturbed about the Civil Rights Movement, because they had it imbedded in their hearts that segregation was supposed to be, and it was hard for them to separate from those ideas.

Did segregation harm you and your family? Was it a big deal in Rusk at that time?

Well, not really. Most of the people in Rusk, the older people, were concerned about it. I talked to some that came to me and told me that if there was anything that they could do to keep down any disturbance that might happen, to let them know. And I believe that the largest percent of those were female white women and some white men also. It affected me in a way but mostly around here we had to deal with a lot of different white people, working on the farm in the tomato shed and in business, working over in town. We got along pretty good and we ate at the same table with a lot of whites during and before they had integration, but of course the cafes and things like that were still not integrated.

Did your father have a huge impact on your life when you were younger?

Yes, because he was strict with what he said and he really meant it. Of course my mother, education-wise, was the one that encouraged us the most.

All through the years that you went through if you were down and out, did you always have a brother or sister who would comfort you?

Well, not really, since me being the oldest. My oldest sister was very instrumental to me when I was in college. She was there to help me as far as to get my lessons and things like that. She was kinda like my, I guess she took my mother’s place. And of course a lot of people in the community had some input that has stayed with me until today.

What has been your favorite job out of all the jobs you've held?

Oh well I enjoyed teaching school, but I really enjoyed working with the Adult Basic Education Program. This program deals with adults trying to better their lives and to help their children to better their lives. You came in contact with the real world. When I was working with the Adult Basic Education program and going from night class to night class it really helped me.

During the years that you coached high school basketball and high school football, what were some inspirational moments you remember?

I remember one year we won district. Of course we were in the southern part of the district, and it was like we were the stepchildren. It was like we were either the southern part or the northern part. While other schools thought that they should win, they felt like we shouldn’t win. I do not know if that was because the state hospital was in Rusk or not. During that time we had a good basketball team, and one year we won three tournaments and we went to bi-district. We didn’t go to a lot of places. Although it was a good thrill playing those games, it also made good sports out of some of the boys. I think that is part of sports, to make a good sport out of you and teach you how to get along with people.

The basketball and football teams, were they predominately black or white?

They were predominantly black.

If you could give me one piece of advice before I leave high school what would it be?

Well, one thing is, the more you study in high school and the more that you learn, the better you will adjust in college. Also, you have to learn to get along with people, learn to observe where you are, pick the company that you are with, and the people that you deal with. Because when you go off to college you are going to meet people from other places, and all of them are not angels.  If you do your studies now, and start off keeping up with your lessons as a freshman or sophomore, when you get to be a junior or a senior it will not be as hard to function in class. Because then you have a background which you can depend on, and this can help you because many people have troubles with a lot of small things when they are a junior or a senior. You will already be able to overcome that, because you will know how to study.

I would like to thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to allow me to interview you.

Thank you, it was a pleasure.