[Mr. Melvin comments on his first wife's death:]
Melvin:
…Getting back to Lane Company and, I’ll never forget -- it never passed my mind when my wife passed away, that I couldn’t believe some of the nice things that had happened to me at my home. I heard a knock at the door and there stood Mr. B. B. Lane and Mr. Hampton Powell and they came up there to give me their condolence. I was just stunned to know that they was there and I didn’t, you know - - I said these guys are rich and here I got this little small home here. Mr. B. B. came in, I said, “Well I got a recliner - - this my best chair you sit here” and Mr. Powell said, “It don’t make no difference and I’ll sit over here.” So they sit there and they talked to me about a half an hour. My wife was an employee also at Lane there and she had a brain tumor and passed. She died from that, but that is one part of my life at Lane that I will never forget.

[Mr. Melvin speaks about being the first black supervisor at the Lane Company]
Melvin:
…Lane was [a] wonderful, wonderful place to work for a lot of people, but I knew that by me working there, as the first black supervisor, I had to set a pattern, because we had other black supervisors that come after me. If I hadn’t did my job right, some of these guys would have never became supervisors, because I was a pattern for them. So I did my very best. I would talk to some of the other supervisors ‘cause some of them, after they got the rank of supervisor and they thought that, you know, this is the top of the world. I said man, you gotta keep yourself in line and do a good job, and I said you’ll stay a supervisor. But if not, you are going to be gone and not know which way you went.

[Mr. Melvin’s observations about blacks at Lane]
Melvin:
…As a whole, as things got better you see more black people begin to move into better positions at Lane. They went into office spots, and they was accepted there and did a great job. They went into production planning and they went into samples areas and worked with everyone. It just opened a brand new day at Lane to see a lot of black people that went into a lot of positions down there they had never went in. They was varied education and Lane took them on.

[Mr. Melvin speaks about getting the job done]
Melvin:
…In a situation as a black supervisor with some people they were a little leery of me. I think they was a little envy of me sometime and that really bothered me. But it was a thing that I had to fight it off I knew I had to have a job. I had children I had to take care of. It didn’t make no difference if, I had the position I had to hold, and I had to do a good job at it. And wasn’t no color to it as far as I am concerned. The color was getting the job done and that’s what I had to do. I knew I had to set that goal. Whatever had to be done had to be run through that area, I had to get it done somehow. I would work quite a few times, different people and a lot of white worked for me it weren’t no different - - we cracked jokes and went on about our business and got the job done.