Oral history interview with Janet Harper Gordon, 2011 [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Janet H. Gordon
INTERVIEWER: Sarah McNulty
DATE: February 4, 2011
SM: Today is February 24, 2011. I am Sarah McNulty, oral history interviewer for the African
American [Institutional Memory] Project, [which is part of The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro Institutional Memory Collection]. Today I am interviewing Mrs.
Janet Harper Gordon, class of 1964, at her home in Greensboro. Thank you, Mrs.
Gordon, for letting me come over today. I’d like to start by just talking about your family
history, specifically maybe start from your birthday. If you would tell us your birthday
and go on from there.
JG: All right. I was born in Lenoir, North Carolina November 17, 1942. I was born in a
satellite rural place called Harpertown. [This was a little rural area. The city was Lenoir,
North Carolina].
SM: Can you spell that?
JG: H-A-R-P-E-R, my last name.
SM: Oh, Harpertown. Okay.
JG: Harpertown. It wouldn’t be found on any map on any part of the world. But it was home.
And I was born there, and grew there, and thrived there. I’m the oldest of eight children,
six sisters and one brother. We constitute a family of eight. And we didn’t have Head
Start, or Kindergarten, or that type thing when I was a little girl. So, my dad, who had
two years of education at [North Carolina] A&T State University, [taught me early
skills]. My mom only finished high school. She was the first of her family to finish high
school. And he was the first of his family to finish high school, or attend college at all.
So, they both had high hopes for us. [They] pushed education to us. I think he started
with me when I was about three. He left me—he was the teacher and my mother did all
the work: [cooking, washing, and taking care of us].
And he would leave A, B, Cs for me to copy, practice writing. He would—then it
went from practice writing to saying them because we didn’t have a lot of visuals and
other stimulus to give to me when I was a little girl like they do today. But he was intent
on me being smart. I was told I was so pretty and so smart. You know, my self-esteem
was pretty powerful until I went to the Harpertown School. [It was a] two-room school.
And there I stood out because I was very, very bright. And my father had no problems in
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accentuating that to the teacher and to the other teachers. I think my first-year teacher
[taught] grades one through three. And I think—I went there when I was five, because,
my aunt was [the elementary teacher, and] my daddy’s sister-in-law.
I knew to be smart because I didn’t want to hear any negatives. A negative
reinforcement came as frequently as positive where my dad was concerned. They both—
[my mother and father preached to us]: “You’ve got to have a good education, and you
are going to learn. You are going to make good grades, and you will have a good life.” [I
described Lenoir as being the foot of the Appalachian Mountains]. We had no railroad,
no intimate action with hardly any other culture other than what was there, the whites, the
blacks, and Indians. So, we had no exposure to another side of the world until I was ten.
And that’s when dad bought us a TV. We had a TV. We were the first people in that
area to get a TV. And my mother really hated the idea that he bought that TV, and all the
other little neighbors [wanted] to come see TV.
I went to Harpertown Elementary School for seven years. In the eighth grade I
was supposed to go to the city [high] school for black people. And it was in a little
satellite called Freedman in the city limits. I mean the City of Lenoir. Okay.
SM: And what was the school? Was it called?
JG: Freedman High School.
SM: Freedman High School.
JG: Freedman High School.
SM: Okay.
JG: I don’t know exactly what year this was; I was born in ’42. So, must have been—I was
about twelve. But in that year I—my class could not go to Freedman, because it was too
full. And we would have to come [that] next year. So, what we did—what they did for us
[was to convert] a room at the church [to a classroom]. The church was] Harpertown
United Methodist Church. So, my eighth grade was spent there [in a make shift
classroom]. It was a very, very momentous year for me, because I found that there were
men [teachers]. I had never seen a male teacher. Mr. Vester Corpening [was my eight
grade teacher].
SM: Oh, my goodness. I’m going to have to ask you how to spell that.
JG: V-E-S-T-E-R C-O-R-P-E-N-I-N-G.
SM: And his first name was Vester?
JG: Vester.
SM: Okay. So, Vester, and Corpening is his last name. Okay.
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JG: He was a good teacher. And he taught all the courses that we took [in] the eighth [grade].
And there, again, I was pegged as being one of the smarter ones in the class.
SM: Do you know how many people were in your class?
JG: In that class, I guess, it might have been about thirteen. And we had peer teaching. I mean
like my aunt would say, “Jan, I want you to sit over here and teach Billy. Go over Billy’s
reading.” Billy was slow. No problem. We did that. We elevated each other. It was
nothing like [anybody] felt they were any better.
SM: And you said your father was a factory worker?
JG: Yes.
SM: What did he do in the factory? Can you tell me about that?
JG: He worked at Bernhardt Furniture Factory. He mixed stains like mahogany, cherry, the
different kinds of stains. They made furniture. And it was made in this little wooded area.
There was another big one, Broyhill [Furniture Company] [which is] probably the most
[recognized]. Broyhill was a good company, too. He made little things like lamps [to
sell]. [My dad] was constantly working.
SM: And did your mother work?
JG: My mother started working when I was ten. She worked as a domestic to several families
in Lenoir—but her first job was at the hospital. I’m trying to think of the name of the
hospital. She was a nurse’s aide. Blackwelders Hospital, I think was the name of it.
SM: Blackwelders?
JG: Yes.
SM: B-L-A-C-K—
JG: B-L-A-C-K-W-E-L-D-E-R-S.
SM: Okay. I’m trying to get [the correct spelling] for all the proper nouns [so] we have [so]
the right spelling.
JG: All right. Fine.
SM: So, she was a nurse’s aide, and then she was a mom.
JG: Yes, and she—[anyone who] met my mother at that hospital saw how conscientious she
was. She was really a nice person, a friendly person, a warm person. It took me to going
to adulthood to realize that work [was probably therapy for her]. [We] were like stair
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steps. My brother is next to me, and he was very bright, too. But both of them worked,
worked, worked. [My mother had a time with us. We would try her, knowing full well
that a beating was imminent].
SM: And did your mother work as a domestic worker in white houses or black houses?
JM: White houses. Hand me that picture right there on that edge.
SM: The picture?
JM: Yes.
SM: This?
JM: Yeah, I’ll tell you a little story about—this is my dad. And this little bitty frame that I’ve
had, a little bitty frame. My mother looked like a white woman. Her whole family does.
Most of my mother’s sisters married darker men. I heard my mother’s baby sister say one
time—my daughter did an oral interview—my granddaughter. She was at Appalachian.
She did a study on my mother. I will let you read that. Not today, because we don’t have
enough time. But my aunt said they married brown men, darker men, because in school
they would be called little green-eyed, half whites. And that kind of made them painful.
That color thing did not—while we were coming up, I didn’t know that my daddy had a
sister. My mother was from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, not Caldwell County where my
dad was from. And he would say growing up that he was going to marry a white woman.
And he had about, I understand about nine or ten cats with him as pets all the time. So, he
might have been a little eccentric. But after he married my mother I think he didn’t go to
college when he should, because he didn’t have all that much help. His oldest brother
whose aunt taught me—I mean whose wife taught me, my aunt. He, you know, he was a
little indecisive about the money. He didn’t take a lot of money. But the other things he
needed like, you know, he didn’t have a car or anything like that. It was just like unless
you did have a dedicated person, usually your mom or your dad, sometimes your siblings
would cooperate I understood. But back to my dad and his color thing, when he took
mom to Harpertown, most of the people in Harpertown were chocolate, brown-skinned
people, dark. He might have been—he was darker than me, but he wasn’t this dark. So,
when they saw my mother, my mother had beautiful hair, auburn-like hair, you know, on
her shoulders. And they had never seen that a black man that he was just really shocked.
They knew she was a black woman, but they hadn’t fully understood that in the black
race you have all degrees of hues. But my aunt would tell my mother, she said, “Now,
you up here with us now. And you need to do something to that little stringy hair you got.
You need to plait it up, or do something to it.” And, so, my mother had to endure a lot of,
you know, snides like that.
SM: Were both of her parents black? I mean do—where did she get her light skin from?
JG: I’ll tell you. She got it from my grandpa’s—I mean my grandfather’s mother had a white
dad.
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SM: So, it goes back generations?
JG: Two generations.
SM: Two generations?
JG: Yes.
SM: Wow.
JG: And most of them married people that looked [like] them down in Wilkes County.
Ahoskie, North Carolina had a lot of people that would be considered mixed by today’s
standard. Although, we were considered black, a Negro, not black. Now, during this—
along this same line, when my dad was drafted into the army, I think my mother says I
was little. I was like an infant, maybe not even a half a year old.
SM: This was for World War II?
JG: Yes, World War II. And, so, he went down to Charlotte [North Carolina] to get his
physical. But he didn’t get accepted, because at that time he had blood pressure problem.
But during that same time the furniture factories in Lenoir were advertising for women.
They would hire women to work at the factories. So, my mother—I think at the time
there was me, my brother, and Linda. At the time—no, maybe it was just my brother and
me. Yeah, just my brother and me.
And she applied and got the job. But mom said the job she got was very nice
compared to some of the other [women who] lived in Harpertown. One day my aunt’s
husband, who worked there saw my mother, and he said, “Hey, Eunice, how you doing?”
And mom said, “I’m doing okay.” And she did not know that the foreman saw the
interaction. He was a white man. So, after that interaction, the foreman asked my mother,
“Now, are you white, or are you colored?”
SM: Because it wouldn’t have been acceptable for a black man to talk to a white woman at the
factory?
JG: Right. And so mama told him she was colored. So, the next day she went to work, and
she was put over where the black people were in fact working, black women. And mama
said the work was so hard and nasty—she decided that day. She said, “I didn’t like the
way the woman was taking care of Junior [Edward DeLane Harper, Jr.], my brother. No
way.” And I came home.
SM: Your brother’s name is June?
JG: His name is Edward, Jr., Edward, Jr., and my father, Edward, Sr., Edward DeLane
Harper, Sr., Edward DeLane Harper, Jr.
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SM: And is it D-E-L-A-N-E?
JG: A-N-E.
SM: Oh okay, I like that. And did any of your brothers and sisters go to college?
JG: Yes.
SM: Did all of them, or some of them?
JG: Now, me, my brother, Linda [Harper], now, the middle children like Tysie [Harper] had a
full scholarship to North Carolina Central. Now about how we went to school in—[with]
that many children in a family, these furniture factories in Lenoir would award
scholarships to people who applied, and whose children qualified. And at the time I went
to Woman’s College if my memory serves me right it was about $740 a year. We could
borrow $500. So, that—and I worked in Blowing Rock, [North Carolina] in the summers
as domestic for this lady. [She] was a Mrs. Zimmerman out of Louisiana—not New
Orleans, but Alexandria, [Louisiana]. And that’s how we were able to get—all my
siblings had opportunity—has had—they have had some college.
My sister that went to Central, she liked to party, and she had to come home, sit
out a semester. And when she went back she had fallen in love, and the boy that she
married was up at Howard [University]. He dropped out of school and they had this child
before they married. And they dropped out of school and started working. And my sister
did, too. But she got a traditionally all-white job in the business department of Broyhill,
the office department. So, she was first. And my sister, Linda, got one of those jobs, also.
They were good at typing and math and skills like that. I wasn’t that good at typing, and I
didn’t have that kind of agility about my fingers. My father was rejected from active
military service because his blood pressure was very, very high. And at that time they
didn’t have as much research on how to control it or give them advice about the things
they know will help. And with all the hard work, and his flaws sometimes with his
drinking, things he did, his lifestyle, always wanted to get ahead, his blood pressure never
really got under control. So, he died of a massive stroke.
He had that massive stroke, and [went] to rehabilitation. By that time I was
teaching in Charlotte. He came to rehabilitation center in Charlotte. And he got some use
of his body back. He was able to walk with a cane. But the very next year he died of a
massive stroke. At that time I was in Texas, because I married an army officer. And I
wasn’t at home, but I came home.
SM: And how old was your father?
JG: Forty-six.
SM: Oh, goodness.
JG: So, he carried on the same kind of regime with the first three or four of us.
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SM: And how many kids were still at home when he died? What’s the age difference between
you and the youngest sibling?
JG: Ten years.
SM: Ten years. So—
JG: She was fourteen.
SM: Fourteen.
JG: And I wasn’t home then. My brother, as a matter of fact, he was graduating from
Livingston College that same year. And he said on the day—either on the day my dad
died in that time frame, he had been accepted to take the test to be not an airline pilot but
a comptroller. It’s something about you have to have lots of math skills. He was a math
major. [But], he didn’t take the test. I [asked], “Why didn’t you take the test?” He said,
“Because mama needed my help.” So, he graduated and stayed in Lenoir. He taught at
Hibriten High.
SM: Hibriten?
JG: H-I-B-R-I-T-E-N.
SM: Okay.
JG: He taught as a math teacher, high school math teacher for—I want to say three or four
years before he got married.
SM: And did any of your siblings go to Woman’s College or UNCG, or [were you] the only
one?
JG: I was the only one.
SM: Okay. Well, before you went to college, you said your dad instilled in you education, and
that it was important to go to get as much education. What were you interested in, like
subject wise, what was—
JG: Medical. I was going to go into [medical technology]. My daddy told me early on that I
was smart enough that I could be a doctor. They were very limited in what they could
teach you at Freedman High School as far as science and—seems like there was one
[course] I hated very badly—physics, I hated. And, you know, I hated it, but I got in a
small setting like that, I got good grades. But I think as early as tenth grade that it was
dawning upon me that as many siblings as I had— medical technology, and that’s what I
settled upon.
The reason why I chose UNCG—well, there was another girl that had left
Freedman High School, not from our little satellite, but she lived in the city. Her name
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was Margaret Ann Patterson Horton. I admired her. And I had an inquisitive mind at that
time, and I heard of A&T from my daddy. I had heard of Bennett College. I got a
scholarship to Bennett College. But that never really interested me. And I told my daddy,
well, I said, “I want to be a medical technician, and A&T doesn’t offer a degree in that,
and Bennett doesn’t either, and UNCG does. So, I want to take the test to see if I can go
to UNCG.” So, he said, “Well, fill out for the test.” I think he meant to fill it out in
school. I don’t know where we filled it out. But, anyway, we had to go to Asheville,
North Carolina. From Lenoir to Asheville for me to take this test. I guess it was the SAT.
SM: SAT, yes.
JG: And it snowed every Wednesday in that month. It was February, I think, too. And that
was one year that every Wednesday we didn’t meet. We went to school Monday and
Tuesday. And then we didn’t go back [until Monday], because the buses didn’t run.
When the scores came back, my dad said, “Jan, what’s the name of that school
you want to go to?” I said, “Woman’s College.” So, he said—when I got my scores I
didn’t, we hadn’t—I hadn’t heard from UNCG or anything. I don’t even know if I had—I
guess I had applied. But he told me, “Well, you’re going to go to that school, because
some white man’s daughter applied, and didn’t get accepted. So, I was going to that
school, you know? So, that settled that. I didn’t have to negotiate with him anymore. And
as I say, he pretty much figured up the money thing. And it was assumed as we graduated
we would help the other one under—the one under me would be Junior, my brother. And,
then, Junior would help Linda. But, see, Linda and Tysie, both of them, Linda went to
A&T. Both of them had really sharp, good accounting minds. Junior was math, and I was
something of an offshoot, way out.
Then, when I did major in history my dad was disappointed. And I explained to
him that once I got to UNCG, I think it was Mrs. Caldwell, she was not—I don’t think
she was a doctor. Well, she taught freshman biology. I was in her class. And for me and
another black girl, my roommate as a matter of fact—she was so kind. She knew we
didn’t know hardly anything, nothing. Hardly had [ever] seen a microscope, you know,
on a one-to-one basis. So, she drew the parts of the microscope out for us to look at it and
practice, and we’d come over to the lab and you know, learn more about it. Sort of like
on your own because there were no special programs for us.
SM: No preparation or anything?
JG: Not at college. Not at college like they do now. I think they give some credits to some of
those kids may need extra help. I knew that I was taking biology and chemistry. I’d never
seen an F in my life, never. I began to see them. We had teachers there who told it like it
was. I remember Dr. Eugene Pfaff. [He said], “History was like a cleansing course, to
clean out the ones that need to go back home.” And he said—I think we took finals in
January at that time instead of before Christmas. And he said one day, “Ladies, now, we
are going to have final examinations. And after we finish with our finals and get our
grades, and so forth. Some of you will not be coming back. Some of you will be back at
home in neighborhood schools, technical schools, community schools. Some of you
didn’t need to come down here anyway. Some of you will go home and get married.” He
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would rattle off. He also let me know what macho sort of attitude. I didn’t take it [as]
racist, but I know it was kind of like anti-woman.
Because when I went to get my master’s at UNCG, I had a paper that was due.
And I lived with my sister for—I took my girls [and lived with my sister]. And we lived
in her house over in Woodmere Park. I lived with her for half a—for a semester. Because
that did not work out. I told her it wouldn’t work out. And took my girls to the Palms
[Apartments] on Lawndale Drive. And that’s where I decided that I would have to make
my own life centered around on schooling, needing babysitting, and that type thing. But
my girls—one of my girls is sickly. My youngest daughter. And, so, you know, it was flu
season, and I think I was late. I mean I couldn’t get to the library. I didn’t let folks sit
them at night. I had to on the weekend, I’d get a sitter on Saturday or Sunday. But I took
my paper in to Dr. Pfaff telling him what had happened, the reason why I was late. And
he looked me straight in the eye and he said, still calling me Miss Harper, even though at
that time I was Mrs. Gordon. He said, “I can sympathize with what you’re going through,
but it is my firm belief that a woman cannot be a good scholar and a good mother at the
same time.” And he [said I made a C].
SM: And when did you go back to grad school?
JG: ’71.
SM: ’71. So, you graduated high school in ’60, correct?
JG: Yes.
SM: And you graduated Woman’s College in ’64?
JG: Yes.
SM: And you became a teacher?
JG: Yes.
SM: And, then, when you went to graduate school, were you still teaching, or did you go full-time
to school?
JG: My husband had passed—been killed.
SM: Oh.
JG: He was a military officer during the Vietnam era. And I found that I could use the G.I.
bill. They were going to let widows of Vietnam veterans use the G.I. bill. And when I
went—John died in ’68, March of ’68. So, I taught in Morganton for two years. Must
have been—they wanted me to go back to work, because I was so depressed. My mother
and my aunt wanted me to go back to work. So, I’m trying to get the chronology. Let me
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see. I don’t have my glasses on. See what year I graduated, and I can tell you what year I
started.
SM: Oh, ’73.
JG: Okay.
SM: May ’73.
JG: So, I must have started—I [went to] Lenoir in March. I think I started teaching in August.
My mother helped me with the children. And I made up my mind up I would leave there
when Joanie was four. Put her in school. So, I must have started in ’71-’72, grad school.
And when I started school my oldest girl was in, I think, Kindergarten. And my baby was
four. And I had her in a little program over on Lee Street. And, so, every morning when I
got my book bag together and got Joan ready, it was just like she knew she might be
going to be exterminated. What in the world is going on in that stupid school? And it
began to worry me. And, then, one day I was walking, and I saw [the UNCG nursery
school] component. They had a little school up there for preschoolers and early childhood
development.
SM: This is at UNCG preschool?
JG: Yes. And I just happened to randomly walk in there, and I told them I had a little four-year-
old that I wanted her to come to that school if she could. So, it was a waiting list
maybe for a few months. And when Joan started that school it was like day and night.
Book bag and everything. She was just ready. So, at that time I knew that there were
differences in what was going on in the school. My child was where we could be happy.
And, so, I—when I graduated in ’73 I did not get a job until—I didn’t get a job that year.
I got a job the year [President Richard] Nixon left office. That was ’74. I was friends with
the girl whose husband was, I believe school board chairman. And we were in social
gatherings. So, I told him I was having a little trouble. So, he said he would look into it,
and see what was available, and let [me know when a job became available at] Lincoln
Junior High. And I taught there fourteen years. And when Lincoln became a magnet
school for science and technology, a component of that school was a magnet school, then
they didn’t need as many social studies and that type thing. So, I was transferred to
Jackson [Junior High School], and my friend was transferred to Dudley [Senior High
School]. I mean to Lincoln.
At that time I knew I wished I had gone into something else other than middle
school teaching. [But], I was—the longer I stayed in it, the better I felt, you know? There
were so many hats you had to cover with those middle school children. My first job was
at a senior high school. So, the kids were a little more sophisticated. And in Charlotte you
didn’t have to do all your discipline, because everybody knew they were bad.
Everybody, no matter where they came from knew that Second Ward and West Charlotte,
but West Charlotte was a little bit better than Second Ward. Second Ward was
hoodlumville.
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SM: That’s so funny.
JG: Did you get in contact with a lady named Linner Ward Griffin?
SM: I don’t think so. Not yet at least. We haven’t gotten to that name yet.
JG: She’s supposed to be down in East Carolina, Dean of Sociology Department.
SM: What’s her name?
JG: Linner Ward. She was from Charlotte. Linner Ward Griffin.
SM: Okay.
JG: She was my roommate for two years.
SM: At UNCG?
JG: Yes.
SM: And is it Linner like—
JG: L-I-N-N-E-R.
SM: Oh, okay. And she’s at East Carolina?
JG: She was in Greeneville. She should be on your roster.
SM: She might be. I was actually going to ask you about—we can go back to this, speaking of
your roommate, can you tell me about like your first day on campus?
JG: It was very, very new. I was excited. I was happy. My daddy and mother brought me
down. My daddy bought me a chain because I had a habit of being careless with things.
And we didn’t have keys and that kind of things in our house in Lenoir. They had keys,
we didn’t. And he wanted me to keep my key on my chain. And just as a matter of fact,
when they left my roommate said, “What you wearing that chain around your neck for?”
I said, “I lose things quite frequently, and my dad wants me to—” and she said, “Take
that off.” So, I knew that it was—Coit Hall was where lived.
SM: Coit?
JG: Yes. And it was seven black girls in my class. We had one whole section of Coit Hall.
Nobody was on there but black girls. There was a girl that came from Danville [Virginia]
who is Jewish, I think second semester. She came over there with us. So, we were highly
segregated on that campus, you know, living wise. They could control that.
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SM: Right.
JG: But in the classes once I got my schedule and took those pretests and facing the fact that
this was a new day for me, a really new day. I did not find anyone amongst the girls, no
one to my knowledge that appeared to be racist. I didn’t find any of my teachers that took
that on as a hobby to see if they could be racist, you know? Although, I may have been
too naïve to know what racism was all about. Because as I told you, I was well-cushioned
with whom I was as a young child. And, then, in the area that I grew up in, you know, I
maintained all my own scholastic, whatever I was taught, I usually could learn. If I didn’t
get it taught to me, I didn’t know it, you know? And a lot of things in that scientific world
of chemistry and biology I found—and I did like genetics when we went into that part of
biology. That really—even as early as that was, I found that to be fascinating.
SM: So, you were more inclined when you first got to campus with science stuff. How did you
change over to history? What changed—
JG: Because I liked history.
SM: You told me you didn’t want to be a doctor, but you just took a history class, and that
kind—
JG: No, history was a requirement.
SM: A requirement.
JG: Two years. We had to take it. It wasn’t any—we took Western Civ [Civilization] the first
year, and maybe we had a choice the second year. I don’t know. But everybody took
Western Civ that was a freshman. And I like things I never heard about, you know? It
fascinated me. I didn’t know about the Greeks. I didn’t know about the Romans. I may
have been taught that, but it wasn’t—it didn’t stick into me. It’s great in high school,
probably would have gotten a smathering. But the way it was integrated into life with me
at that time, fascinated me.
SM: When we go back to about your living situation and people treating you a certain way,
did you befriend white students? I mean did they come and try to get to know you, or did
it take a while to get acquainted with them?
JG: No, there was no coming to try to befriend me. I don’t think any of the—I don’t think—
in my situation it appeared to me that the black—we were in a hall of our own. That was
a degree of segregation right then and there. And we played cards, Bidwiz [card game],
and we played after supper. We would pick one of [our] rooms and go in and play cards.
Sometimes a couple of them, we’d just study. That’s how I learned how to do cards,
smoke cigarettes. My roommate’s mother was an employee of P. Lorillard. And when I
got there she had a—she pulled out like a basketful of cigarettes, Kent cigarettes. And she
said, “Do you smoke?” I said, “No.” She threw in, if you get started the cigarettes are free
here, because my mother gives me them. I said, “Okay thank you.” We were in school
13
there. We weren’t penetrating the core of the university to see what would happen. Now,
in these marches, I wasn’t here in February 1, 1960. I never participated in any marches
per se. I think at Coit Hall we might have had a car come by there one Saturday night and
shoot off a firecracker, something that resembled a little bomb. It was—and we were told
not to go to certain places. They maintained a certain caution about us, we understood
that. I think it was a good experience for me in that I learned to accept the reality of the
situation and live with it, especially after I had become widowed so young. Then the
reality of that situation was that I had two young daughters to raise. And I stayed in
depression a long, long time.
And, then, I started exploring the new kind of life I would be living when I came
to grad school here. Brought the girls. And my mother was still in Lenoir, and it was
close enough for us to go there any time we felt like it. So, I bought a station wagon just
for that purpose. And in the summer of ’81 or ’80 I went—I received a grant to study at
ODU [Old Dominion University] from Aramco [Oil Company], associated with the big
oil. And they paid us a nice little stipend to study the Middle East.
And I took the kids up to Lenoir to stay with my mother, well for most of the
summer. And after about a week of that—well, by that time my oldest girl was fourteen.
And I think she had a little boyfriend or something going on here. But, you know, that
was beside the point. So, my mother had them canning and she knew I had a liking for
Helen—who’s the girl that writes those beautiful—Steiner Rice, Helen Steiner Rice, I
think. Maybe just Helen Steiner.
So, she brought me this nice card about me being her mother and how she just
wouldn’t be doing [any more] sassing, and if I could just get home and come to Lenoir
and pick them up and get back home. So, I called her and I said, “I’ve got to finish up this
stipend, and I’ll be home for y’all real soon. But learn all you can learn from mama.” I
knew they would learn nothing, because they were rebelling. I took their bicycles in the
station wagon. And Mama said they would—we still lived back in the satellite area. And
mama said they would get on those bicycles and travel by themselves like they thought
they knew how to get to the mall, what little mall it was! [It was an adjustment].
SM: An adjustment?
JG: Yeah, for all of us. And because it was the first sign that there would come a time when
we would have to break that—umbilical cord, you know, we would go in separate
directions, they had to grow up too.
But UNCG put a slant of realism in my mind. I didn’t go around thinking that I
could make A’s and B’s in everything that I took. I mean that was unrealistic at that time.
[Woman’s College] still sent progress reports homes to parents. And my grades were
pretty dismal. It seems like that’s when I admit—my daddy [wanted me to transfer to
Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina].
I’d watch the white girls—cars would come up. Coming up about this time of day
on Friday. They would be packed to go [to] various colleges, going back to hometown.
Boyfriends would be driving the cars. Some of the girls had cars on campus, too. But,
you know, that didn’t affect my life, because no one I knew there had a car. But this
particular time, this girl from Charlotte had a boyfriend, and on this particular night he
14
brought a friend over, and we were playing cards upstairs in—by that time we were
Mendenhall. We moved from Coit to Mendenhall.
SM: And were you still—
JG: We were in the guest—the guest quarters.
SM: So, you were still segregated?
JG: Oh, yes, from mainstream. So, I met him. His name was John, John Gordon. And he was
tall, and he was handsome. You know, and I hadn’t seen too many boys since I’d been in
Greensboro [walking out of voice range]. And he knew about Hickory and Lenoir, and he
was from Rockingham, [North Carolina]. I said, “How do you know so many people up
here, because most people don’t know anything about Lenoir?” He said, “Well, my sister
teaches in Lenoir,” and she had gone to Winston-Salem State. And she taught at the
Freedman Elementary School, and that’s where that hookup was.
SM: Okay. And was he a student at the time, or was he—
JG: He was at A&T.
SM: But oh, he was originally from Charlotte?
JG: Originally from Rockingham.
SM: From Rockingham. Where did the Charlotte—you said, had a boy from Charlotte brought
him?
JG: Well, I didn’t mean Charlotte. A boy who dated a girl from Charlotte.
SM: Oh, okay. And, so, you moved from Coit to Mendenhall, and you didn’t mainstream, you
didn’t put into the regular population of students there. You still remain separated. That
was all four years? Things never improved and—
JG: I don’t think so. I don’t remember being anywhere but in that hall.
SM: Okay, did you guys at the dining halls, were you separated then? Did you—
JG: It was by choice.
SM: By choice.
JG: But usually we went with someone, you know? I went to the dining hall with another
black girl. Or if I went alone, you know, I sat there at a table that I chose. I mean, you
know? It wasn’t—as programed nowhere else except in the living quarters.
15
SM: So, you said for fun you guys played cards a lot. Did you ever go downtown?
JG: Downtown?
SM: Yes.
JG: Yeah, I’m sure—caught the bus downtown. Yeah.
SM: Greensboro was starting to integrate. Woolworth’s had integrated. The Mayfair Cafeteria
eventually integrated in ’63. So, some places had begun to integrate. But, obviously, a lot
of places still resisted. So, was it hard going from UNCG, which you didn’t necessarily
felt segregated except for living quarters, going into the Jim Crow downtown? Did you
have any problems there? Or did you just stay away from places where you—
JG: I don’t think that was [pausing]—
SM: Because some people say, “We just stayed away from places where we couldn’t eat,” or
“We just didn’t go downtown.” I didn’t know if everyone avoided downtown.
JG: I don’t think we went downtown.
SM: Really?
JG: If we had gone, it would have been on the weekend.
SM: Would you ever go to the Carolina Theater to see a movie?
JG: No.
SM: No?
JG: We had movies on campus. We didn’t have televisions in our rooms, but they had
televisions in the lobbies.
SM: And I know that you were involved in some extracurricular activities on campus. I
actually have a copy of your senior yearbook. And it says you were in History Club?
JG: Yes.
SM: And you did something called “Commission,” do you remember what that was? It said
you did “Commission,” and—do you remember any of those activities?
JG: I need to find my glasses.
SM: It says you were a section leader.
16
JG: Section leader. I probably was.
SM: Do you know what that means?
JG: Well, at the time I think we had, you know, a residence counselor and from time to time
we would have meetings.
SM: Oh, what kind of—I’ll wait till you come back that way we can—
JG: Like if it was a problem, and we needed to tackle it. The dorm council would announce a
meeting usually after hours, after the dorm was closed. And we—if we had any gripes or
anything [pausing]—
SM: She stepped out of the room.
JG: Okay. Sarah.
SM: That’s okay. I can read it if you want me to.
JG: Okay, go ahead.
SM: It says, “Section leader.” You did that your first year, which was kind of like a conflict
resolution type of thing if there was a problem in the dorms?
JG: Right.
SM: Okay, and, then, it says you were in Elliott Hall Social Committee, your third year.
JG: That would be my junior year, right?
SM: Yes.
JG: Doesn’t stand out.
SM: Okay. And, then, you were in History Club your junior and senior year.
JG: Yes.
SM: Do you remember anything with that?
JG: No.
SM: And, then, it says your senior year you were on the legislature.
JG: Legislature? It sounds like those things must belong to someone else.
17
SM: And, then, the fourth year you were on “Commission.”
JG: That I don’t know what it is. I was pretty much not active in any extracurricular activities
at all. You know?
SM: Why was that?
JG: Why was that? I guess experience, the overall experience, was so new. And, then, I might
not have understood quite what each of those things involved, you know? And I think
mostly my main impetus was passing. Because daddy had told me I was going to
Livingston [College] if things didn’t shape up. And I met John my sophomore year. In
my junior year it was a-okay. At the end of my junior year I went down to Chapel Hill for
a summer school session, and I took—I wanted to make sure my GPA [grade point
average] was on target for me to leave in ’64. And I went down there and took a course in
marriage, I believe. And took another course that was more in line with my major. I got
good grades down there. By that time I had felt a certain accountability. I enjoyed that
experience. It was short-lived. And my friend, Marian [Thornhill McClure], I think was
down there the same time. And an attorney who is in Greensboro now is a friend of mine.
He was in law school there at that time, I think.
SM: And do you have any kind of events that stand out in your mind at your time at Woman’s
College? Social events, or—
JG: That first gathering at Elliott Hall was a dance. It might have been a warm up. And I
remember that. We might have had maybe two or three black boys there. There was not
like it is today, you know? Of course, that was forty—how many years ago are we talking
about, fifty?
SM: Well, it would be ’61 would be fifty. So, in ’64 when you graduated, I guess if you went
there the first year would have been fifty-one years since you started, if you started in the
fall of ’60.
JG: Okay.
SM: You just hit fifty years since you started.
JG: I thought they were going to have a fifty-year reunion for our class.
SM: Maybe it will be when you graduated, from your graduation date. That will be in 2014.
JG: But—
SM: That first dance? Where did the boys come from?
JG: I think they came from A&T. I don’t know who—somebody might have invited them, or
the girls who were in the city may have invited them. There was no coordinating effort to
18
place young women at UNC—I mean at Woman’s College who were of the minority
race, black minority race. I mean that part of your life was up to you. And my
granddaughter was telling me, she’s sixteen on Tuesday, and she wants to have a cake
cutting here. And she’s invited about twenty-five friends. So, we were having, I took her
to Red Lobster, just to sort of feel her out on things. So, she told me about a boyfriend. I
mean, no, about a friend of hers who has been calling her. And she said, “Grandma, he’s
not my boyfriend.” I said, “Oh, you don’t have to call him boyfriend. Friends to start out.
Boyfriend later on, whatever you want to call him down the road,” you know? She said,
“Grandma, he’s Asian.” I said, “Well, it’s a multicultural world. You can be Asian, or
Mexican, or African, or white. You know. That’s not my major impetus.” And, then, I
thought, my, my, you don’t even have to get excited about ethnicity—about race or the
ethnic thing. Not now. I mean, you know, maybe in your heart think that it’s a big deal.
But really it isn’t.
SM: Right. So, obviously, you met John at A&T or he went to A&T.
JG: Yes.
SM: Did you mingle a lot with A&T students? I mean did you—
JG: No.
SM: You didn’t have—
JG: I’m telling you, though, it’s no time. We had to survive.
SM: Well, you obviously dated him.
JG: Well, he didn’t have a car on campus that particular time. I think his daddy got sick, and
his mama wanted him home on the weekends. So, he had the family car. But that was
short-lived.
SM: So, how did you court?
JG: Well, sometimes you would be with another person [who] would bring him over, or he
would maybe borrow somebody’s car, you know?
SM: Because you got married right after you graduated?
JG: Yes, but he was older than me.
SM: Okay.
JG: A little bit older than me. I should have waited a few years at least. But, you know, I’m a
believer in—I’m not a fatalist, but what has to be will be. And it was time for me to get
married. It was. Have these two children. So, be it. Because he didn’t live very long, so.
19
SM: Did you ever—I mean there wasn’t time to go to A&T. There probably wasn’t time to go
to Bennett either? You didn’t mix with the girls at Bennett?
JG: I think we saw them sometimes, a few of them. See, Marian and Sandra [Tatum] were
from Greensboro. Diane [Oliver] and Linner from Charlotte. I don’t believe with any of
the programs that they had at Bennett—of course, the public service announcements
about what was going on, and I don’t think we had become so sophisticated as to check
the newspapers. And maybe they didn’t even feature that, you know?
SM: Right.
JG: There was a lot of things going on that were available. But I think we—and speaking
only for myself, when I went back to graduate school I had a friend who was a white boy.
But that was some years—well—
SM: About ten years later?
JG: Yes. So, you know, what I was saying [it] was such a rare thing. But my experience was
totally—I look at that experience, I think mainstream white Southerners thought that
black people were innately inferior, could not learn, you know? Color had its self—other
habits that would not want to be around too long, that type of thing. But I think our
contribution was that we showed that we could learn, that we were teachable. We did
have a brain. And that was known before I went to UNCG by people. But I think we
knew that. But we had institutions that had to be cracked open. And, basically, that’s
what I was there doing. Little to my knowledge did I think about what I was doing, you
know?
SM: Well, what would you say was your favorite experience or aspect when you were in
college?
JG: You know what sounds—this might sound—we would stay, there was a girl, a Creole
girl, and we were study partners for—we had those take-home exams. And we would stay
up all night long cramming into the wee hours of the morning for a test that was coming
up. And it might have been—it wasn’t a take home. We just knew what was going to be
on it. That stands out to me as one of the major features. I can’t really remember a
speaker that came to that campus. I might have been—[trailing off]. I remember my
graduation, and I think somebody at the time, Kennedy’s Administration came to speak
for us. It might have been the one that died, Sargent Shriver. It might have been.
SM: Really?
JG: Yes.
SM: That was one thing I was going to ask you about. Can you tell me about what it was like?
We are trying to put you in the place of history about things that were happening in the
20
world that were also newsworthy events. So, obviously, the assassination of John F.
Kennedy was a big event, and while you were in college. Do you have any kind of like
where you were moment?
JG: Yeah, I was over at Dudley. I was teaching, student teaching that November day. And it
seemed like it came over the intercom that the president had been shot. And, then, it came
back on that the president had died. It was in the afternoon. Oh, it really made you stop
and think, “What is really going to happen here?” You know? He was a good president.
And he, you know, you watch the TV. You become mesmerized by all the people, all the
attention. And, you know, yourself are still just nineteen-twenty years old? And not as
adapt to knowing what’s going on in the world as kids are today. But I think just about—
it was very, very quiet on that campus that weekend, from everybody I think. But I was
on campus on Dudley. I walked to the bus stand. And I think I just began to cry, you
know, that people would just get shot down like dogs, you know?
SM: And your student teaching the schools, the public schools, were still segregated?
JG: Yes.
SM: During that time. So, was Dudley or Lincoln your only option for student teaching? You
were not allowed to go to any other schools?
JG: They told us where to go.
SM: Told you where to go. But they specifically picked black schools?
JG: I guess. [laughing] I didn’t worry about—Lois Eddinger was the head of the education
department. I often thought that if she were still alive. I hadn’t read about her deceasing.
SM: I don’t know.
JG: I don’t remember seeing Dr. [Walter] Luczynski, who taught me a history course in grad
school. And I saw he was deceased. I enjoyed Robert Watson’s English class. I enjoyed
him. I enjoyed the beauty of that campus. I liked that campus setting quite a bit. Life still
had not graduated up. It was still like Yum-Yum hotdog. No alcohol. Did try to learn how
to smoke cigarettes. So, I would look like I was growing. But Sandra, my girlfriend, who
made that statement to me, she stopped smoking, and she said, “And you never learned
how to inhale.” I said, “How did you know I didn’t”—[trailing off].
SM: What was Tate Street like in the 1960s? Was it still kind of the center of social—
JG: Yes. More so, I would think for the students then than today.
SM: Right. Do you remember any kind of things that were on Tate Street?
21
JG: Well, that little shop, The Corner. It seems like we went down there and ate something
one day. It may have been a pizza parlor down there.
SM: And you said Yum-Yum was around, then.
JG: Yes.
SM: Did you ever go eat there? Was it an establishment that was integrated?
JG: I don’t know if we went there and got our hotdogs and ice cream and went back. It wasn’t
across the street where it is now. It was more up here on the corner.
SM: They built the [Mossman] Building there. I didn’t—I never knew that until I was reading
a book one day about UNCG and saw that I had been there.
JG: Yes.
SM: Do you remember—so, during when you were there, typically chancellors are there for a
very long time and don’t switch very often. But when you were there they had three
chancellors.
JG: Yes.
SM: Dr. Gordon Blackwell, Dr. W.W. Pierson, Jr., and Dr. Otis Singletary.
JG: Singletary.
SM: Do you remember anything about these people?
JG: He taught me a class.
SM: Really?
JG: I was in one of his classes, Civil War.
SM: Oh, so Singletary was a history professor?
JG: Yes.
SM: Okay. And do you remember what he was like?
JG: Nice, articulate, caring. One of my favorite people there was also Dr. Richard Bardolph.
He was head of the—
SM: You said Richie or Richard?
JG: Richard.
22
SM: Richard Bardolph? And that was a history professor?
JG: Yes. He was chairman of the history department.
SM: Oh.
JG: And when I got that C from Dr. Pfaff, and I had been on consultation about my duration,
he told me to get ready to get a job and get back to the raising of my children. I think the
C evaporated.
SM: And do you remember there’re a couple of other names that were kind of prominent in
the ’60s. The Dean of College was Mereb Mossman.
JG: Yes, I remember Dean Mossman.
SM: Did any of these people ever interact with black students, or did they have any part in
personally knowing you or trying to help you get acclimated?
JG: They might have if you were a social person. You know, I did departmental things. Like
how I got involved with Dr. Bardolph would be because I was a history major. And I was
on his list of people to counsel.
SM: Did you ever interact with Dean of Students Katherine Taylor?
JG: No.
SM: And, then, the Alumni Secretary Barbara Parrish.
JG: That name stands out.
SM: Apparently, she was there for a very long time, thirty years or something, forty years.
After you graduated, you didn’t interact with her as the alumni secretary?
JG: No.
SM: No? And who would you say—would you say Dr. Bardolph was your favorite professor?
JG: Well, Dr. Bardolph was good. I liked Robert Watson in English. I liked Dr. Pfaff. I didn’t
care about his philosophy. I liked him. He taught me a lot. There was some man—I can’t
remember his name.
SM: That’s okay. So, your senior year was the last year of Woman’s College?
JG: Yes.
23
SM: Men were admitted the next fall. So, do you remember hearing anything about it
becoming a coeducational—was that a big issue on campus?
JG: Not when we were there. Heard about it more when I got out.
SM: But there wasn’t any talk about, “Boys are coming next year”?
JG: No.
SM: And, so, did your diploma, though, would still say Woman’s College?
JG: Yes.
SM: Because that was the last year you were there?
JG: Yes.
SM: Okay. And, so, I mentioned earlier that there was civil rights—you said you never
marched or protested or anything while you were there. You, obviously, missed February
1, 1960, because you were still in high school. But there was a big protest led by Jesse
Jackson when he was president—when he was student body president at A&T your, I
guess, probably your junior year. They sat down at the corner of—what did they call it?
Jefferson Square, right where Lincoln Financial building is downtown. Do you remember
anything about that? They were putting lots of black students in the jails. They were
filling up the jails.
JG: I remember that.
SM: You remember that? Did any UNCG students participate?
JG: I think we were told—there was a mandate from the chancellor about not getting
ourselves involved in anything that would land us up in jail. I think there might have been
a—I don’t think—some of those upper classmen probably did go. We—Well, I would’ve
have been a freshman. What year did you say?
SM: ’63. So, it was either fall of—I don’t remember if it was fall or spring. But it was fall of
your senior year, spring of your junior year.
JG: No, I didn’t get involved in it.
SM: And did the campus react to civil rights issues? Did they stay kind of out of it, separate?
Because I know in 1960 they had some of the girls, white girls, and black girls,
participated in the [Woolworth] Sit-ins wearing their class jackets. And that was a big
issue at the time as they were kind of representing UNCG.
JG: Really?
24
SM: Yes. So, I didn’t know if—obviously, the class jackets were a big identity thing with
UNCG if that was any kind of an issue later on.
JG: I think that’s where the chancellor began to make some dictates. They were responsible
for us. And, you know, some of these people that are passionate about the causes they
believe in might just have a gun, somebody might get killed. So, I don’t think they—I
think they may have gotten that point over to us, you know?
SM: Right. Have you been involved at UNCG since you graduated from undergrad or
graduate school?
JG: My two grandchildren went to the day school over there and got an excellent, excellent
start.
SM: In the preschool? Okay.
JG: They have a very, very good preschool. I go over to Elliott Hall when there has been a
speaker here that I was interested in hearing.
SM: Now, is Elliott Hall, I didn’t go to undergrad at UNCG. So, I am not as familiar. I know
my buildings that I go to. Is that still around? Because I know the [student] union now is
the Elliott University Center.
JG: Well, that’s it.
SM: Okay. So, was the Elliott University Center the same thing as Elliott Hall, or did the
Elliott University Center replace Elliott Hall?
JG: I think it replaced it.
SM: Oh, okay.
JG: It was Elliott Hall when I was there.
SM: And that’s the same building right next to the library?
JG: Right.
SM: Oh, okay. So, it was a regular building, then, and now has changed into the [student]
union?
JG: Right.
SM: Was it kind of like Elliott Hall, was that kind of the [student] union at the time where you
would go and have social things and—
25
JG: Yes.
SM: Okay. It wasn’t like a classroom building or anything?
JG: No. It had a bookstore in there. And you might could buy—
SM: Some kind of food?
JG: Yes.
SM: Study spaces probably?
JG: Yes. Neither one of my girls went to Woman’s College. One finished at Campbell
[University], and one finished at Appalachian State [University].
SM: I was going to ask. So, you were from the mountains. Was Appalachian State still a
teacher’s college, then?
JG: You know what? I was up there, but I had never been to Appalachian State.
SM: There was no—
JG: I sort of mapped my land out to my daddy. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to
take this test. If I don’t pass it, I’m going to take that scholarship from Bennett. I don’t
want to go to A&T. I’m certainly not going to—even though A&T is a great school, I
don’t know why I was so closed-minded and so conservative. I do know my mother and
daddy—when they would go to town or had something to do, we had to stay alone. You
know, I was to be the third adult. And I didn’t like to fight. And, so, I would keep notes,
who needed beatings. [laughing] And that sounds ugly, but that’s the exact—well, they
used belts and switches. This time out stuff didn’t work then. And I think that might have
inhibited me from looking too far out.
SM: And you mentioned one classmate that you still stay in touch with.
JG: Marian.
SM: Are there others you stay in touch with still?
JG: Well, I’ve seen Linner. I heard from my friend David that she had—was getting high-ranked.
She’s still working, you know? I’m 68. She might be 69.
SM: And was Marian your roommate all four years?
JG: Linner was my roommate.
SM: Linner, was she your roommate all four years, or did you switch roommates?
26
JG: Switched roommates. When we left Coit Hall, Sandra was my roommate. But when we
got to Ragsdale [Hall].
SM: Oh, you lived in Ragsdale too.
JG: Ragsdale.
SM: You went just from Coit to Ragsdale.
JG: Coit to Ragsdale, right. I don’t think we ever moved to Mendenhall.
SM: Oh, so, you didn’t live in Mendenhall, just Ragsdale? Okay.
JG: I’m sure that’s about the right chronology of it all.
SM: And those are the ones you stay in the touch with the most, though, Linner and Marian?
JG: Yeah, I’ve seen them. Sandra, who was my first-year roommate, and she went her second
year at UNCG, but she didn’t—we weren’t roommates then. And she transferred up to
Virginia Union [University], because she became a nurse. I see her quite frequently.
SM: What was her name?
JG: Sandra Tatum, T-A-T-U-M.
SM: And I know we would have a larger list of African American students, but a lot of them
didn’t graduate or switched schools. Were there other girls who couldn’t make it, or it
was too much for them socially or academically that they would leave?
JG: Yes.
SM: Was there ever a moment you wanted to leave, or was it too much for you, or did you?
JG: No, I was determined it was a challenge to me.
SM: Okay.
JG: I’ll tell you a girl that I just thought about. She was never a roommate. But there is a girl
that—her name is Myrna [Colley] Lee. She had a sister named—what’s the sister’s
name? I think is deceased. But she was married to the actor [Morgan Freeman]. He
recently was involved in a divorce and some guy—what’s his name? Tall, dark-skinned
man.
SM: I don’t know. Steve Harvey?
27
JG: No. This man would be about seventy, in his seventies.
SM: I don’t know, then.
JG: I saw him on—he’s played in some movies. He played in Driving Miss Daisy.
SM: Oh, okay.
JG: You remember that movie?
SM: Yes.
JG: That might be before your time, too. I can’t think of his name.
SM: That’s okay.
JG: But you know, I was saying they were married. Myrna and this man [Morgan Freeman].
But they got a divorce just in the last four or five years. But she was an artist. She was
nice.
SM: And she started out at UNCG, or at Woman’s College?
JG: I believe she might have been a day student. She may have started somewhere else and
transferred to UNCG as a day student. I’m not really certain.
SM: Well, what would you want—obviously, this is going to go in the library, and people can
eventually—we’re going to, hopefully, get it online so people can access it anywhere in
the world essentially. What would you want future students or scholars to know about
your experience at Woman’s College as one of the first wave of black students?
JG: That Woman’s College offered a multitude of experiences. You could explore your life as
young as you were. You could explore potentials in careers. The one thing about UNCG
was that you didn’t get a lot of one-on-one guidance. And I don’t think they—I think that
was deliberate. They wanted your choices to be, indeed, your choices. You could
blossom out of eighteen-year-old, go from nineteen, twenty, and make that transition over
into adulthood. And I think that that school offered, during this tumultuous period in the
country’s history, that school offered a unique way for girls to find their way, feel useful,
and not be put down, and they had some foreign students over there, too. I didn’t know
them too well. But they lived in that new dorm. A girl from Panama. I believe she was
from Panama. We hadn’t started the whole wave of immigrants in 1960 when I came
here. Well, mostly black, white, Creoles, and American Indian. I don’t think I ever met
an African one way or another, you know? It was a nurturing place to be sent that you
had your meals. You had medical attention if you needed it. I don’t know what I would
have done had I run into a real psychological problem. I don’t know what facilities would
have been available. Well, since I didn’t have to do that, I guess I would not have known.
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SM: Right.
JG: But I think that’s important in today’s world that students have access to whether or not
they’re getting depressed, feeling sad, eating too much, or just not coping in general.
Because this society is so vulnerable now. But all in all, I had a good experience, a very
good experience. And even though it didn’t give a lot of partying, sororities, you know,
some of my friends, even my youngest daughter’s is Delta [Sigma Theta Sorority]. And,
you know, when I think about I don’t care about those kinds of things. I really don’t. I
mean I don’t like forced meetings, forced going out asking for money, pretends to be
queens, that sort of thing. No, no.
SM: Right.
JG: And you got a cute little car. What is your car?
SM: It’s a Jetta.
JG: It’s a Jetta. A new Jetta?
SM: No, it’s an old Jetta.
JG: Is it? I like that little Jetta.
SM: But you were saying, it’s a good experience, but it didn’t offer—you didn’t have a lot of
things that people have today, sororities, and things like that.
JG: Not black people didn’t have them on the campus, because and that’s understandably so.
Because the idea of black students going there, black girls, was very new.
SM: Did you know the first students who—I guess they graduated when you were there, the
first two black students?
JG: I knew Zelma [Amey Holmes]. Zelma was a short girl. And I knew Margaret Ann
[Patterson Horton]. I think they were in the second class.
SM: Yes. I think Bettye—JoAnne Smart and Bettye Tillman were the first two.
JG: Are they still living?
SM: One of them is. One of them, actually, I don’t remember if it’s—I think it’s [Bettye
Tillman ], she died shortly after graduation. She died like thirty, relatively young.
JG: What was wrong?
SM: I have not found out. No one knows so far, so.
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JG: Okay.
SM: Yeah, but we’re trying to get the people—you, obviously, graduated in ’64. We’re trying
to get the first wave of people who went to UNCG first to interview, because a couple
people have died that we have—we missed the opportunity.
JG: Diane Oliver?
SM: We have a couple—even some that graduated late in the ’60s.
JG: She graduated in ’64, and she died in—when was Sharon born? ’66. She died in ’66. She
was a talented, talented writer. She had publications in Mademoiselle, Black Voices. She
had gone to Iowa to go to that famous writing school there. She went right after we
graduated. I liked the array of people, you know, just being in the midst of different kinds
of people gave you an upshot on the world. You know? No longer was it just a little, tiny
satellite on the edge of nowhere. This was the world that we were going to live in.
And there’s a girl in Greensboro who is highly—I am getting senior moments.
That is no joke. She is highly involved in philanthropy I would say. It seems like it was
her cousin or her—one of her close relatives who was with Edward Kennedy the day they
had that party, and the girl was killed at Chappaquiddick.
SM: Chappaquiddick.
JG: One of those girls had ties in Greensboro. I can’t think of her name.
SM: Well, I was going to ask you. I don’t have any more questions, but is there anything else
you wanted to add, or that you want to be part of the interview?
JG: No, but I’ve got your number if I think of anything that you need to really plug in, I’ll
just call you.
SM: Yes, I’ll go ahead and turn—well, obviously, I’m going to Marian’s house next week. If
you have any other people that you know that—I don’t have my list with me of people
we’re trying to interview. But if—
JG: Call me and tell me who they are.
SM: Do you have an e-mail address?
JG: No.
SM: No? Okay.
JG: Joan moved in July. She has a computer. I did not become computer literate. I know this
is—I went to my fiftieth high school reunion. I have never owned a cell phone, and I
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don’t need one. One of my friends say, “Yes you do, just to be on the highway” and that
sort of thing.
[End of Interview]