- Collection:
- Southern Journey Oral History Collection
- Title:
- Georgia - Albany: Samuel B. Wells Interviewee
- Contributor to Resource:
- Dent, Thomas C.
- Date of Original:
- 1991-07-08
- Subject:
- African Americans
Civil rights demonstrations
Civil rights
Church buildings
Education
Military life
Indians of North America
Race relations
Drugs
Economics - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Dougherty County, Albany, 31.57851, -84.15574
- Medium:
- sound recordings
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Tom Dent interviews Samuel B. Well in Albany, Georgia. He was born in rural Lee County, Georgia. His father worked in saw mills, and he talks about the various moves the family made. He came to Albany from Florida with his parents in 1932, when he was sixteen. He talks about his family's history in the area and grandmother, who was Native American. He talks about his impressions as a teenager of the differences between Florida and Georgia, which was that Florida was freedom and Georgia was slavery. Wells was put to work in the saw mill when he was twelve because they thought he was too big to be playing with a White girl. He talks about the schools he attended. Ms. Mitchell was his teacher in Albany. His four children could not get jobs in Albany, so they moved to Atlanta for about twenty years before he returned to the city after the death of his wife. He was the pastor of Blue Spring Baptist Church in Worth County until 1989. He was drafted into the army in 1942 while he was working at a meat packing company in Albany. He served in the Pacific. He says the only time they were integrated was during the middle of a battle. Black and White soldiers got along well. The "first heartbreak" was when they were divided getting back onto the ship. He did want to return to Albany. The mayor of the city is powerless. The same bureaucracies exist in the federal and city governments. He talks about President Jimmy Carter as a figurehead. He thinks Carter was a good man who was given bad advice by the people around him. He discusses how Black leadership has let the community down in terms of education. Dent compares his thoughts to the debate between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington on the subject of education. Wells talks about the drug problem in the United States and locally, and the burden the low income community is saddled with through taxation.
- Metadata URL:
- https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:53896
- Contributing Institution:
- Amistad Research Center
- Rights:
-
