pIIU
A Footnote
By
Joan Newlin Poole
The evening of September 3, 1955 started out to be an ordinary
one. I had returned from work to our Greensboro home on Foxwood
Drive, and had our customary early dinner with my family. Most of my
consciousness was absorbed by recent and impending life changes.
I had graduated from college that summer and was to be married in
Minneapolis in less than three months. Perhaps this explains the fact
that my memory of the evening and the events preceding it is sketchy
at best.
I knew my parents, Algie and Eva Newlin, had signed the letter to
the Guilford School Committee, but I don't remember seeing the
newspaper headline that morning or hearing my parents speak of it.
I do remember my father calling my mother, my brother and me
around dusk and, in his customary calm and reasoned manner, saying
he thought it would be best if we went down to the basement. There
were cars outside and a group of a dozen or more men had gathered
in our front yard. I later found out that at least one of them had a
shotgun, a man who was prominent in the community, one my father
knew quite well. Dad feared that one of them might have a bomb of
some sort. I know he stayed upstairs, whether or not he went outside
Joan Newlin Poole, Summerfield, North Carolina, member of New
Garden Meeting.
16
pIIU
A Footnote
By
Joan Newlin Poole
The evening of September 3, 1955 started out to be an ordinary
one. I had returned from work to our Greensboro home on Foxwood
Drive, and had our customary early dinner with my family. Most of my
consciousness was absorbed by recent and impending life changes.
I had graduated from college that summer and was to be married in
Minneapolis in less than three months. Perhaps this explains the fact
that my memory of the evening and the events preceding it is sketchy
at best.
I knew my parents, Algie and Eva Newlin, had signed the letter to
the Guilford School Committee, but I don't remember seeing the
newspaper headline that morning or hearing my parents speak of it.
I do remember my father calling my mother, my brother and me
around dusk and, in his customary calm and reasoned manner, saying
he thought it would be best if we went down to the basement. There
were cars outside and a group of a dozen or more men had gathered
in our front yard. I later found out that at least one of them had a
shotgun, a man who was prominent in the community, one my father
knew quite well. Dad feared that one of them might have a bomb of
some sort. I know he stayed upstairs, whether or not he went outside
Joan Newlin Poole, Summerfield, North Carolina, member of New
Garden Meeting.
16
