Sarah O’Kelley Darris
05 Mar 1894 - 04 Mar 1978
Interview, 1975
Audio recording presented to Loyce Huston from her cousin Mildred Darris (Sarah’s daughter).
Loyce shared this recording with the rest of the family at the 1989 O’Kelley Family Reunion in Memphis, Tennessee. Dinner banquet was served at the Sheraton Hotel Ballroom on September 3, 1989, 6:00 pm.
1989 Reunion Hostesses were Mamie O'Kelley-Gammon and Ruthe Gammon
Transcription by Nikki W. Sebastian
Loyce Huston: Ok now Will’s [O’Kelley] children; Ida, Elvee, Willie B., Charles Herman, will you all stand? And Mayme and will all of their children and grandchildren stand? [Applause]
So you see we’ve got a lot going for us here. Now I have something that I would like to share with you and if you will bear with me. Johnny would you put in this tape and play the A side?
This tape I received today from my cousin Mildred and its aunt Sarah. Play the A side please. This was recorded I think in 1975 and how old was aunt Sarah at that time? (Voice): I think she was 75. So she’s going back to 1894 on this tape:
Sarah O’Kelley Darris: Hello children and my grandchildren. I was born 1894 in Adams County in Mississippi. One daughter of six to Dan and Anna O’Kelley, on the farm. When I was about six years old, my father literally pleaded to one of his brothers to come to the Delta where the land was fertile and farming was good. [Inaudible]..We were farmers. There was ten children of us. Six girls and four boys. My father had a brother who lived in the fertile land of the Delta and knew about its farming qualities. So we began to beg him to move up to the Delta. Which after some persuasion he did. He chartered a boat named the John K. Speed and set sail for the Delta and settled in and around the part called now Greenville, Mississippi on a farm of about 175 acres which lay about half way between two cities Leland and Greenville. This boat, mother and eight kids including his mother [Ellen], all of his livestock, furniture, farming implements sailed up the Mississippi river I would say. It was about the year of 1900 as near as I can remember. The last two children of the ten were born in the Delta.
With our help and the help of hired day workers and sharecroppers, Papa was very much blessed of the Lord. We had to walk two miles either way to get to school which was very hard on us, with bad roads especially in winter. Those were the only months school was open so we could work on the farm. In fact all children, when the weather was good. So by Papa’s continued efforts he got the Board of Education to establish a school very close to us. The teacher would come out Sundays and stay the entire week. Papa boarded her for $5 a week. She would go home on Friday. She lived in the city of Greenville. She lived with her parents. My older sisters were going to school in Greenville by this time. Through my father’s persistent efforts he was made head of the school he set up, by the school Board of Trustees to this new established school. And he was given permission to select two others to serve with him. He lived so far from Natchez. He operated a small country store. All of his non-perishable stock he brought with him to the Delta and opened a small store there on his rented farm. We later heard that the boat we came up on ran into a sand barge and was lost I think somewhere near and around Vicksburg, Mississippi.
In the hilly land in and around Natchez they had good well water. My mother’s father [John Hillery] was a well digger. Papa tried hard to get him to come up and bore us a well. He never came until he was near the end of this life and was physically unable to bore one. He died with us. Also our grandmother his wife, of whom I am named for, Sarah. I found out one day my father was taking me to Greenville to register in the city schools. It was early fall, just to register only. I had to come back home and pick cotton until we got most of it or until the weather got too bad to pick. It was then as we passed my older sister in the field picking cotton when she said to me, “Sarah bring my promotion card.” She was engaged to get married. Papa said to me, “What does she want with a promotion card?” I said I don’t now. He said, “I always hoped one of my girls would teach.” So I made up in my mind that I would do just that. I think I finished about the 7th grade in the city school. Then Papa sent me and my brother James to Oakwood in Huntsville, Alabama. Completing the 8th grade, I completed short term schooling in Natchez, Mississippi and took the exams. I passed and taught for about two years at the school Papa set up.
When time came for my third exam, the colored man who headed in charge, as the head white man was so old he was unable to carry on. So he put this colored man, Mr. Hall, in his place. He wrote me a card that I failed in spelling. I knew better. Spelling was one of my best subjects. The card was brought to me by my younger sister in the field where we were digging potatoes or peanuts or maybe oats. Our dad was our overseer. He'd tell us what to do then he'd go get dressed up and get on his best riding horse and leave and just as he rode up I had the card in my hand was crying. He asked, “What’s wrong with her?” The others replied she just received the card from Mr. Hall saying that she failed in spelling. Papa was in and out of town often. He knew exactly what was going on. He knew this colored man Hall and had heard or been told of his tactics. He said to me, “I don’t want to see nor hear of you being seen with Hall. You were living with me long before there ever was a Hall. And then he asked what do you want to do? I said, “Go to Natchez college where my brother Charles is. So in due time he took me there.
I completed 8th grade. I guess what is now called high school. That old white superintendent died soon putting Hall out of commission and the next year I took the exam again and passed and taught in that same school until I married the man Inman Page Darris. We have been married 54 years and we have seven children and twenty-two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. That’s all.
[End of Sarah O’Kelley Darris 1978 Interview]
[Comments from Loyce Huston after tape was played. (1989 Memphis Reunion).]
Loyce Huston: …a piece of our loved ones there. It’s a heritage to be proud of. It’s no need to be sad about it because I don’t know what I would do or how I would feel if I had never known a beautiful person like my mother. And aunt Sarah and aunt Evelena and Allyne, I didn’t know Allyne. I knew aunt Rachel and I remember my mother’s aunt Theresa who even helped me with some of my children, who at one time had been a slave and was freed. So the only thing I can say to you is we are free and we cannot let the prejudices of the world and other people with narrow minds and short visions hinder us in what we endeavor. We must move up, and move out, and move in to what’s happening and keep the boat rocking and let’s roll right along with these punches. Because if aunt Sarah and momma and all them can pick cotton, walk two miles two and ‘fro and we can’t even get them up to the bus that’s picking them up on the corner!
You know so whatever my shortcomings are I cannot blame my parents and I hope that my children don’t blame me because I don’t blame anybody cause they motivated us and told us what was out there, the good the bad and the indifferent and the choices in life are yours to make. Now if you make a mistake you just have to deal with it. Some mistakes you can erase. Some mistakes keep you from doing a whole lot of other things too. Make you a better person. So we must profit from whatever we endeavor and I guess I can go. But we are going to get together hopefully before we leave and get some strategies and plans together so people like Nelson [Minter] and Joe O’Kelley. Nelson always talked about when I was a kid about getting some organization because this reunion today should be a tax write-off for all of us. But we have to get together and formulate and do those kinds of things. So the kids are getting smarter, so let us see it. So don’t tell me what I didn’t do. Let me see what you’re going to do. Thank you.
[End of Loyce’s comments]
[Joyce Coffey introduces her sister Wannetta Price who sings a refrain of the song Farther Along by W. B. Stevens;
Refrain:
Farther along we’ll know more about it.
Farther along we’ll understand why.
You better cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
and we’ll understand it all by and by.
[Entire Song]:
Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder
Why it should be thus all the day long;
While there are others living about us,
Never molested, though in the wrong.
Refrain:
Farther along we’ll know more about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
Sometimes I wonder why I must suffer,
Go in the rain, the cold, and the snow,
When there are many living in comfort,
Giving no heed to all I can do.
Tempted and tried, how often we question
Why we must suffer year after year,
Being accused by those of our loved ones,
E’en though we’ve walked in God’s holy fear.
Often when death has taken our loved ones,
Leaving our home so lone and so drear,
Then do we wonder why others prosper,
Living so wicked year after year.
“Faithful till death,” saith our loving Master;
Short is our time to labor and wait;
Then will our toiling seem to be nothing,
When we shall pass the heavenly gate.
Soon we will see our dear, loving Savior,
Hear the last trumpet sound through the sky;
Then we will meet those gone on before us,
Then we shall know and understand why.
