Daily Featured Interview
Leslie Stiles
February 1987
Mrs. Stiles was born in Washington, DC and was 98 years old at the time of the interview. When her family moved to Hudson her father worked as a supervisor at the brickyard in Newton Hook. He was the boss and instructed some of the workers. If he told a worker to do something and they didn’t do it, he could fire them.
The family lived close by. Mrs. Stiles was the only girl in her family. As a child she worked, taking care of her brothers, both younger and older. She also did the housework and she notes that her mother did very little because the kids did it all after school. In listening to her reflect on housekeeping and childrearing as both chore and job for a young girl (learned sewing and cooking in school), one gets a glimpse into the societal norms of her childhood.
Her brothers were Harry, Joseph, George, and David. She speaks about her family’s move to Hudson while she was still of school age and shares how her religion played an important role in her happiness and social life in Hudson, attending Shiloh Baptist Church. The earliest thing Leslie remembers is school. Leslie got lessons in class, learning to sew to make a quilt. Mothers then didn’t let the kids out much. As kids, they played in the yard or worked in the house doing chores. If you broke something, even a toy you got as a gift from Santa Claus, you got a whipping.
The family would rest on Sundays. During sickness, her mother called the doctor. They had a garden in Hudson but in Washington D.C. they had a farm.
About the Project
This oral history project was a broad-based program undertaken by The Black Legacy Association of Columbia County (BLACC), which was formed in the late 1980s under the umbrella of the Columbia County RSVP (Retired Senior Volunteer Program) through Columbia Opportunities, Inc. The association’s subheading was “From Slavery to Freedom in a New York County.” The agencies which made up BLACC were RSVP, World Wide Mission for Jesus Team (formally called the Black Ministers Alliance), the County Museum, the county chapter of the NAACP, Columbia Preservation, Columbia-Greene Community College and the Minority Alliance at the college.
They wanted to show a "hidden legacy of Columbia County history" - the contributions made by the Black Community from slavery to present time. “While many later generations of Blacks migrated to the county there are still descendants of the original slaves living in this Hudson River Community…. [Black residents] helped to build it, [form] it, [fought] for it, [worked] in the whaling industry, at the iron mines in Ancram, in the many brickyards and prayed for it in their churches….The historical record of how the Blacks came here, what they did, how they lived, how they died, where they went to school, their social customs, their war efforts, their community involvement, their enclaves, their churches, their cemeteries have never been explored and researched in depth.” - from a NY Council for the Humanities grant application by the RSVP organization
They wanted to amass as much material as possible about African Americans in the area from slavery to the 1980s - including through oral history interviews - in order to create “respect for the contributions this group made in history.” All of these efforts led to the publication of a curriculum guide “Been Laborin’ Here All These Long Years AND Fruits of Our Labors, African American History and Culture in Columbia County, New York” based on interviews and research. The physical collection, including photos and documents, can be viewed at the Hudson Area Library History Room. For a representation of photographs and documents contained in the collection, click here, and for the curriculum guide, click here.
Thank you to our contributors
Columbia Opportunities, Incorporated (COI) donated the Black Legacy Association of Columbia County (BLACC) collection to the Hudson Area Library in 2018. All of the material in this collection was originally assembled by the Columbia County Retired & Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), sponsored by COI. RSVP volunteers, who formed BLACC included: Vivian Austin, Ella Barksdale, Jessie Cooper, Bernice Cross, Edward Cross, Helen Dago Barreiro, Phobe Eaton, Dandridge Harris, James Kerr, Gilbert Lewis, Ethel Loveless, Julia Minisee, Eloise Moore, Marie Parker, Annie Peden, Calvin Pitcher, Otelia Rainer, Grace Schwartzman, Leslie Stiles, Marion Van Ness, Selma Van Ness, William Van Ness, Annabel Waters, Bernard Weisberger, and Beulah Whitbeck. Marcella Beigel, the COI RSVP Director devoted much time and attention to the creation of this unique and inspirational project.
In 2019, the Hudson Area Library was awarded an Accelerating Promising Practices for Small Libraries grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for a collaborative project with Oral History Summer School (OHSS) to create interplay between this collection, the library’s oral history collection, and the 500+ life histories in the OHSS collection (Community Library of Voice & Sound). As part of this project, the library was able to digitize the video and audio recordings and archive the documents, photographs, and ephemera in the BLACC collection.
In addition to the individuals, partners and funder noted above, we wish to thank Brian Buckley for his work developing this website, Quintin Cross and Tiffany Garriga for their support of this collection finding a home at the library, library staff and several community members for helping write summaries for the oral histories, Marie O’Toole for her work archiving the collection and developing a finding aid, and to the team at WiLS and our Community Memory Cohort for the IMLS grant for their support and encouragement with this special project.
Help us preserve local history
The Hudson Area Library History Room depends upon the generosity of individual donors as well as grants and other public funding. Your donation can help us to fulfill our mission of preserving and making collections like the Black Legacy Association of Columbia County collection accessible to the public.
Get in Touch
Please send any questions, comments, or corrections to history@hudsonarealibrary.org or contact us by phone at 518-828-1792 x106.
