Vado The Unspoken History; Unspoken History: Vado, New Mexico Promo

The history of blacks settling in Vato dates back to 1848. In 1846, during the Mexican-American War, where Henry Boyer, a resident of Georgia, was working for the Army delivering supplies. He was enchanted by New Mexico. He dreamed of creating a life where blacks could own land, raise families, and live in peace. When Henry Boyer returned to Georgia, he spread the word about Southern New Mexico, where he believed blacks could live the American dream. His youngest son, Francis Boyer, would later fulfill that prophecy. In 1886, the town of Vato was known as Heron after an Anglo-Settler named Samuel Heron.

From 1888 to 1911, the name changed to Earlham, named by a family of Quakers from Earlham, Indiana. In 1911, the name Vato was given to the town only to be changed two years later to Central Valley because of its location. But in 1927, Los Cruces Attorney, W.A. Sutherland, renamed the town Vato, and named it as kept ever since. What does Vato mean? It means a... it means Ford. This is a place where they used to cross the river, Rio Grande River going west. And it was a shallow part of the river, so it means a Ford. I never did... somebody else asked me the same question, where that name come from, and I couldn't clarify that. Crossing the river, I think.

Yeah, I think it's crossing the river, something like that. That's the only place they could cross the river, go to the other side. Well, when he was going to Messiah Park, so he used to... that's what no cruises in. It was Messiah Park, so he crossed the river here, and go up 28 to Omecia, and then going on to California from there. I've depended on whether or not your dad was a farmer. If your dad was a farmer, you got up early in the morning, you went home, you went to bed late at night. Because you were out there working the farm. But we still had areas of pleasure as a youngster, because we did a lot of swimming in the canals, and we did a lot of ball-playing around here, and stuff like that. This was like the only spot really where black people, or black young people, could come and have a little entertainment.

On Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon, all the GIs from all the bases all around, we had like Fort Bliss, and we had Biggs, and we had Holliman, and there was also a little place they call Radar Site, and White Sands, and all of these various bases, all the young men, would come to Vato, because they knew that when they got to Vato, they would get chance to meet some young black women, and then they could get chance to dance and have a good time on the weekend. So this was like a major meeting place, and at one of the two cafes that we used to have, she had a place where you could dance, and all the latest records in the 50s, and so forth, on the jukebox, and everybody would dance.

But when it came six o'clock, when it got to six o'clock at night, on Sunday afternoon, we'd tell all the GIs, bye guys, because we'd head for the church. We'd have to go to church, and we'd go to, this was Vato, go back to church, and we'd end up going to BTU for our Sunday night worship. Sometimes some of the guys would stay around, and go with us also, and some of them would go back to the bases. It was real nice, it was pretty good, it was real good. We had enough black children in the community sun to, I used to enjoy playing ball all my time, all the while, and we had enough shoes up to ten, we just played with that over there at the community center, which is used to be a Dunbar school, and we've had a lot of fun, and we'd go down to the canal and go to the swimming pool, it was good coming up. I was growing up, it was pretty good. We had to work like a slave, having cotton and peaking cotton, holding hay and stuff like that.

That's the only thing with here, with no white sand, with no burger king, with no McDonalds, windows, none of that crap. All you had to do was pick cotton or chop cotton, maybe one or two restrooms. That's about it. Oh, it was good. I didn't pay too much, but we lived good, pretty good, and then I had some hard times too. When I had my kids, I had hard times. Because at that time, when you have kids, like you have kids, they hadn't even before they'd done the paying rent, and feed the kids. They hadn't eaten nothing in them days, and we used to slip out and pick cotton, we was on welfare, and we used to slip out and pick cotton and chop cotton. We had too. Back then, what you said now is sad, you know? It was good.

We had a lot of people. Churches were crowded, and schools were crowded with children, or racists, and they moved. They hired one to move together, and that's when it changed. That was good, too. So I went to Muske, and so I went to Anthony, to school. But there was a lot of them left here. For fun, for fun, we would go after working all day in the fields, we would go swimming in the canal or in the river. And then after that, if there still had some sunlight, we'd do a pick-up softball or a baseball game. And basically, from that, we also did a lot of hunting around here. Almost everybody, all the kids own 22s and some shotguns. We'd go out rabbit hunting. And although it was illegal, we'd go rabbit hunting at night,

and use a big flashlight to spot rabbits, because they wouldn't run, and so we'd kill a lot of rabbits. And we also did a lot of fishing, and we had, for the Boy Scouts, we'd have fish fries on Saturday night, and sell sandwiches for, like, you could get a carp sandwich for a dime, and if you want to catch fish, it costs 15 cents. So that's how we had a lot of fun in doing that kind of thing. We used to do, and a lot of black people didn't even know about this, never heard of it. We used to have June 19th. Now, they celebrate June 19th. Now, they take on a Saturday. But in those days, everybody stopped the forming. If you had another kind of job, if you had a business, whatever you had, everybody closed up on that day. Everybody met over at the community center, which is no longer standing. We had a community center, and we used to go to the community center, and we'd bring potlucks, and the guys would barbecue all night long,

smoke that meat, and it would be delicious. And then we'd have a big barrel of that sweet lucy, as they call it, that red kool-aid. And you could drink all the sweet lucy you want. They'd always throw some lemons in it, and a big chunk of ice. And we would have baseball games, and we'd have horseshoe games. We'd have you name it. And we would be there all day from lunch until, well, before lunch, until the sun would go down. And that was our best entertainment. And everybody in the community participated in the valley, participated. I can't think of anybody who didn't participate in the Juneteenth. Well, well, nothing but the work, man. You come from school and even, you see the way these guys get out in, play basketball. When you get out, you get a hole, and go to a field and chop cotton. Clean ditch. And if you're in clean ditch, it wasn't under that,

wasn't under that cheeky heels, I can go watch TV. You go out and all this grass, you see all this grass right there, you don't see that thing there. You keep it clean. Right now, there's, in fact, still the same two churches. And when I was growing up, there was Battle Grove Baptist Church and New Hope Baptist Church. Now, at one time, we did have a Pentecostal church. And then we had a Spanish church down in there. And what we called, at that time, we called it Mexican town, because most of the Hispanics lived in that area. Well, let's see, it was Battle Grove Baptist Church and New Hope Baptist Church. It was always a conflict amongst the blacks about. Well, I guess the preacher mostly. Some of them got along with preachers, some of them, and so on. But most of the biggest congregation was at Battle Grove.

But this year, New Hope has been here for a long, long time. But they never did have the same following it. But they did have their own message and everything. But Battle Grove was basically the biggest one. That was the biggest, that was the biggest role of, you know, for the people that lived around the community. The church was the central meeting place for everybody. You didn't have to worry whenever you had something as a church you would see everybody. Of course, there were a few people who didn't go to church, but there weren't that many who didn't. So if you didn't see your neighbors or somebody doing the week, you knew that when you got to church on Sunday, you were going to see everybody. That played pretty good. We used to have songs. We used to have prayer meetings. We used to have Sunday school. We used to meet all through the week.

Oh, it was good. It was kind of Christian life. For the visiting the whole... Yeah, for everybody. And we'd go church three and four times a week at night. And we'd have good prayer meetings and everything. All kinds of meetings and things. We'd have picnics and everything. Law enforcement was handled by a fellow by a name of Braddie. And he was what we call a constable. He did the law enforcement around here. Everybody respected him, especially the young folks, because he didn't take a lot of back talk. And when he suggested that you do something, it was like an order. So Mr. Braddie was our law enforcer,

and he took care of all the business around as far as that was concerned. I had one run in with him when I was a youngster and decided I didn't want any more. The law enforcement in Vito now is handled by the county sheriff. And it seems to me that it's a little more lax because there are a lot of kids getting rid of a lot of things nowadays that we didn't get away with when I was growing up. Because it just appears that when Sheriff is off and some other part of the county, he's not concerned about the families. Whereas Mr. Braddie knew every family. And he could not only go take you, but he could go to your dad, your mom, and whatever. And it was just like now, the sheriff doesn't care. All they want to do is make an arrest quarter and then they slap the kids on the hands and let them go. So it seems to me a lot of law enforcement now is a lot more lax than it was at that time.

Well, what you call a consul below? Well, he got along good with everybody. But he had to do what he had to do. If he messed up, he'd take you to jail. Mr. Lester B. Braddie, he was a little old town marshal. Well, yeah, I guess they call him a deputy, whatever you want to call him. Mr. Braddie. He's a pretty good man. Very good man. Very good man. Well, I don't have much trouble with the law, but I see a lot of more, a lot of more. What I'm trying to say, son, I see a lot of more. Well, the county's grown a lot, son, so they got quite a few more people here on the course now. Is there a lot of crime out here? Oh, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. Now everybody knew you should about it. I tell you how it was. What's your name? Thomas. I tell you how it was. And I'm not lying to you. You could leave home and go on for too much, too much,

too much a year. Nobody went in your house. Everybody looked out for each other. That's where it was. Everybody was United. Very well. Well, I'd say it's not the same. Definitely not the same. It's not the same, son. Because, like I say, it's a lot outside of it. A lot of people that you don't know. And, like I say, mostly now, it's just a small scatter under the blacks. All that ain't died is left and, you know, and most of them are real old, you know. So, it ain't whole lot of blacks here, like it used to be. Like I say, years ago, son. The whole community base was black. Like I said, down here, back there, where you used to call Mexican town. There were a few Spanish people, but we all got along real well. We had a chef here in town with... He was pretty good, pretty good ombre. And he kind of took care of things around here, but it wasn't over. He didn't have no... The chef come every day and somebody stole something and something. He never had nothing like that.

Maybe when we say it at night, he might cut up somebody or something like that. Or the word is that. That's about it. Well, my husband was a policeman about four years, over some years. He'd kept it kind of quiet around here. They didn't do much. They had a... I had to pay off close to Ray Road. They did have a... I think it's a few kinds of clansmen, I think. It was here one town. But they ran away. They didn't cut the civil one town. So many... So many people... Yeah. There were a lot of people here. They run them off. They didn't do nothing. They just came to do something but they didn't get to do it with whatever work that wasn't scary. Well, in battle proper, there was no racism in battle proper

because the battle was basically all black. But there were whites around vital who had problems with blacks. But out and out the racism, it wasn't shown in that fashion. Because when they came in the battle, they had to adhere to our rules and our regulations. We had the NAACP. We had the adult branch and we had the youth branch. My husband had an uncle, Mr. Hobart Boyen. He would go around and he would tell everybody in the valley. We have an NAACP meeting at the church at three o'clock, say, like, second Sunday and it was a known thing that at the second Sunday of every month, you had NAACP meeting. And we had a youth group. We also had a youth group. And as a matter of fact, our youth group, they had a city in the Walgreens drugstore in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

And I can't remember if they served them or if they asked them to leave. But I know that they did have a city in here. Cruces was a little crazy. It's not as much of their past, but you still... I came out of the Army in 1953. I went to a restaurant in Cruz, and they told me they wouldn't know black and go in there. And I never would forget that. The thing is still in Cruz. A lot of places like that was, you know, it wasn't a... I don't know what an owner like that was. Some of the waitress or some like that. You know, he wouldn't wait on you. It's pretty good now. You can go in the way you want to. Long you got money. Integrated.

It's always been integrated. We had no problems with integration here. Here in Vato, that we had our own black school and up to the eighth grade for many years. Prior to that, we had a high school here. And it was in the latter years that the high school closed. And we began to go either to Gaston or to Las Cruces. Like I said, the black kids are until they integrated. Everybody here would go to school. I think it was the... maybe the seventh eighth grade. And the eighth grade was... You'd graduate from there and then they had a little bus. Some that would take you into Cruz to the Book of T. Washington until they integrated here. Well, basically all black. The population was, we see, we had one white family on the south end of town.

We had one white family in the middle of town. And one white family on the north side of town. And that was it. The rest of us were all black. And then later on, the Spanish began to come into town and purchase property around. All the business here, everybody lives in here. But back there, we used to call Mexican town. It was a few Mexican lives there. But basically, all the blacks were very heavy property. Like I said, it must have been... it's not a Haiti count. And make an exaggerated budget. I'd say me... I'd say... it must have been... 15, 20 families and nothing but blacks and all of them had children. And then... Land... and this part of the country at that time was very cheap because this was most... most bosky. It was not a farmable land. But the railroad company was selling it land

for like 60 cents an acre. And wanting, asking questions about, what do you plan on growing here? And I know my grandfather made a statement, we're gonna grow cotton. And they said, well, you can't grow cotton here as well. It took a couple of years or so and then they found out that cotton did grow pretty well here. And so at that point, land went from 60 cents an acre to $60 an acre. So it became very expensive for it to become a farmer. So you'd either share crop or rip from someone else. But it got to where it was prohibitive in buying land from the railroad company at that time. See, my dad was telling me now... They had a... a brazito... brazito land grant. He didn't sign all papers. You just shook hands on it and you worked, worked, working and whenever you got it all... all the tarnia and mesquite grubbed out of it. And you come back today and you made no payments

in the last three or four years so they took it. Now if you want to... if you want to make a contract, we'll sign a contract. After you didn't work eight or nine years to get it cleared. But I don't think they do nothing like that anymore, but they used to. The drought came in the 50s and people began to sell the land and move to California in Arizona thinking that there was milk and honey in that area. And they started selling land rather cheaply and getting out of here because of the water situation. Well, then I noticed the time began to change. Well, after everybody started moving out and going to another place because the time's got tough, son. Time's got real tough. Was it cut to the drought? Yeah, well drought didn't... It was a lot of...

I might say everybody would make a living for them. Right? Well, if you didn't make a good crop, then you go back to the Monkey Barlow moment, and if the next year was bad, then pretty soon, the bank would reposition. Thank you for taking the land. Jesus had to have a bumper crop, be able to pay off the bank, and that's what kept people in business. And it got real tough, son. It got real tough. It probably didn't. 25 or 30 years ago it started changing whenever. When all of them black folks left for me, that's probably when they started to change. And everybody lost the land and couldn't borrow no money to farm, so they just left it. When all the California were working the shipyard during the war. It's a slower life, and you get to know your neighbors. And if you had lived here when you were young, so you probably know everybody that's still here,

that's still alive anyway, except for maybe some of the Hispanic families that have moved in since. Listen, my home, that's why I came back. They drafted me. I was in Ohio when they drafted me. And I was young. I was only... My dad sent me with me when I was about 16 to 17 years old. And I went to stay with my uncle, and then when I'd come out to Army, he'd already passed, so I'd come back and down here to stay. And I'd been there every single day. On October 1st, 2003, the day after my last interview with Andrew Fuller, he passed away. His funeral was held at Valley Grove Baptist Church, in Vado, New Mexico, where he was born and raised in the very same church he attended all throughout his life. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. In many ways,

the history of Vado, New Mexico reflects the history of many southern New Mexico settlements, what began in 1846 as a black man's dream for a life of freedom, land ownership, and peace in southern New Mexico ultimately became his son's mission. This all-black settlement prospered along the Rio Grande, survived the Great Depression, and the upheaval of the 1950s. Don't miss this simple and quiet story. Vado, New Mexico, the unspoken history. Thank you.