Oral history interview with Jackie B. Sparkman, 2013 [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Jackie B. Sparkman
INTERVIEWER: Hermann Trojanowski
DATE: April 13, 2013
HT: Well, today is Saturday, April 13, 2013 and my name is Hermann Trojanowski. I‟m in Jackson Library with Jackie Sparkman, Class of 1967. Good morning, Jackie, and welcome.
JS: Good morning, thank you.
HT: We‟re here to conduct an oral history interview for African American Institutional Memory Project, which is part of the UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] Institutional Memory Collection. Jackie, if we could get the interview started by my asking you some basic information about your early life; some biographical information such as where and when you were born and where you lived and grew up and that sort of thing.
JS: Okay. I grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. That‟s in the eastern part of the state, and when I came to Greensboro, it was probably my first time in the western part of the state. My parents were Dorsey and Daizel Sparkman.
HT: Could you spell that?
JS: Dorsey, D-O-R-S-E-Y, Daizel, D-A-I-Z-E-L. And my father worked for the Pepsi Cola Company. He drove a forklift at the Pepsi Company. My mother was first a domestic, and she also worked in the restaurant business for Wilbur Hardee. You know, you‟ve heard of the Hardee restaurant chain. Before there was a Hardee chain, there was a Hardee restaurant; so before he franchised, my mother worked for him in that restaurant. He told her he would be a rich man one day and he was. Well, now by that time I think she had already moved on to the Imperial Tobacco Company. They had a factory. There were a lot of tobacco factories in Greenville at that time so she worked at the tobacco factory. I had three brothers and one sister. One older brother (I‟m the second oldest), two younger brothers, and a sister. I went to C.M. Eppes High—Fleming Street Elementary School and from Fleming Street Elementary School to C.M. Eppes High School. Eppes was the only black high school in Greenville, and the schools then, of course, were still segregated.
Let‟s see, one of my favorite courses, I suppose, was band. I loved the band, and I played saxophone. Back in those days we had a wonderful marching band. I was teasing 2
classmate Suezette Brown Roney [Class of 1967], with whom I drove down here yesterday, that she lived in Farmville, the next town over. Greenville now has grown so that it is almost touching Farmville. But we used to play Farmville in football, and I teased her yesterday that our band used to go over there and show them what a real band looked like [laughter] at halftime when we took the field. [And] Greenville is where I developed a life-long love of popcorn since I worked at the movies. [laughter] That was my favorite job when I was in Greenville as a high school student.
HT: Were you an usher?
JS: No, I worked at the concession stand.
HT: That can be deadly, can‟t it?
JS: Back in those days you know the popcorn didn‟t come in those great big bags already popped; we popped it there in the big kettles and so we‟d pop a kettleful for the patrons and a kettleful for us. [laughter] I‟ve loved popcorn ever since.
HT: What was your favorite academic class in high school?
JS: I liked all my classes. Let‟s see: I loved English; I loved algebra—all the math courses. I had very good math teachers. And civics; I liked all my courses, I think. Band was probably my absolutely non-academic favorite.
HT: And when did you graduate from high school?
JS: In 1963.
HT: And what made you decide to come to UNCG?
JS: I had gone to—The National Science Foundation (if it still exists, I don‟t know) sponsored programs for high school students in the summers back in those days, and I had applied for and had been accepted to a National Science Foundation summer program at North Carolina Central [University] in Durham, and I think chemistry was what I majored in there in the summer program. And I met there, by the way, two other girls who wound up being in my class—here at UNCG: Ruth Rainey [Class of 1967] and Sara Bryan [Class of 1967] were also in that National Science program at NCC. During the course of the program, we went over to Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina] for something and Duke‟s chemistry department, by far, was so much better than North Carolina Central‟s was, and I thought, Wow, what a school this is. Duke was very impressive back then; it‟s probably impressive now, but it was very impressive then, too. And I thought, “I think I‟ll come to Duke.” And of course when I went home and checked things out, I learned that I could not afford to go to Duke; no way, no how. And so I thought, “Okay, I‟ll go to UNC [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill].” I probably applied to some other schools, too; some smaller—maybe Shaw [University, Raleigh, North Carolina] and, no doubt, North Carolina Central, but I‟m not positive. But 3
I do know that the only school I really followed through with was—I applied to UNC-Chapel Hill because that‟s all I knew about, and I got a letter back that said: “Dear Jackie, There are so many girls named Jackie nowadays, we thought we‟d write to tell you that in case you are a girl, we at Chapel Hill don‟t accept girls until the junior year. You might want to apply to WC [Woman‟s College of the University of North Carolina].” That‟s how I came to apply to WC.
HT: That was about the time they were changing all that because it became a university at that time and so, yes.
JS: Yes. And so as it developed, after graduation WC was the only college I had truly done everything in terms of applying for and July rolled around. I had applied for student aid because my parents were poor. We were a poor family. We didn‟t have any money. I mean [my mother] had no contribution for me to go to college. [My father died during my senior year of high school.] I had a $250 scholarship from, I think, United Negro College Fund, which was encouraging blacks at the time to apply to integrate schools, so they gave me a $250 scholarship. And I might have had a $100 local scholarship from somebody else. I can‟t remember. And they said that tuition, room, and board were just under a thousand dollars so I was a little short. [laughter] And by July, with school scheduled to start in September, I didn‟t have all the money yet, and I hadn‟t heard anything from WC. At the time Terry Sanford was the governor and he had run on [an] education platform: how we need to improve education in North Carolina. He was going to be very supportive of education so I wrote the governor and told him that I had applied and been accepted at WC and had applied for financial aid but I hadn‟t heard anything from them yet and I couldn‟t go to school without some money. And I think within a week of writing that letter, I got a letter back from the governor‟s office [that] they had sent my letter to the secretary of education and within a week or ten days of that, I heard from the secretary of education saying that they had been in contact with WC, and a few days after that I heard from WC that I had my loan. [laughter]
HT: That is amazing.
JS: And I thought, “Okay.” And so I arrived with the loan—they weren‟t called Pell Grants in those days, I don‟t think—whatever the federal loan was. I had enough to get me—to pay everything for freshman year. And I had a job; I got a job in the cafeteria because as you heard one woman say yesterday [at the Alumni Reunion‟s Interactive Session Between African American Alumni and Students], the cafeteria [jobs] were the best paying jobs. And I worked in the cafeteria at least three years; I‟m not sure—I might have worked there all four; at least three years.
HT: Do you, by any chance, recall what the wage was at that time?
JS: I don‟t really.
HT: I bet you it was maybe a dollar fifty or maybe two dollars. I mean it was—
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JS: Well, the minimum wage was very low.
HT: Oh, it was very low. Oh, yes. But you could still buy a lot with it.
JS: Right, you could take care of things like movies and any other things that girls did. I didn‟t go off-campus very much because I didn‟t have the money to go off-campus, but I had enough to participate in the social life.
HT: But when you were working in the cafeteria, did you work just one meal a day or how did that work?
JS: No. Well, whatever you wanted. You could work fulltime or part-time, and I worked whatever fulltime was. I probably worked all three meals. And I definitely remember getting up early in the morning to work the breakfast. But even working in the cafeteria wasn‟t enough money so I also—by second semester—I think I had—Was it second semester? I‟m not really sure whether it was second semester, freshman year or whether I started that sophomore year, but I also delivered the local Greensboro newspaper so that had me up early in the morning. And the thing is, as I mentioned yesterday, since I got paid extra for the longer the subscription was, I only sold long subscriptions [laughter] And there was an off-campus dry cleaners. I worked for the dry cleaners, going around to the dorms and seeing if kids had clothes they wanted dry cleaned. And I‟d pick up their clothes and deliver them to the dry cleaner‟s and bring them back. So I had lots of little jobs. [laughter] So other than just being generally a gregarious person and running around and meeting people and hanging out because of my work, I met lots of people anyway, which was probably helpful when I did do things like run for office. I knew a lot of people, and a lot of people knew me from being around and all over.
HT: Well, what do you recall about your first day on campus? That would be in the fall of 1963.
JS: The fall of 1963. My [mother] had borrowed a car (because we didn‟t own a car) from a friend of my father‟s. [My mother and my father‟s friend] brought me up but you know I‟m still—I think that‟s true. They had to have had because I would have had suitcases but you know I‟ve gotten to thinking about that. Let me say I‟m not positive that‟s true. I got to thinking that way because I had first read Suezette‟s [oral history interview] and she said her parents drove up in a car and I thought well, [I] must have come up in a car, too, but I‟m not positive I didn‟t come up on a bus. My parents didn‟t own a car, [my mother didn‟t drive], and I only had two suitcases so I might have come on the bus. But [my mother] might have brought me, but I just don‟t remember. And of course [she‟s] not here for me to ask anymore. But I‟m thinking [she] did borrow a car and bring me up because my mother was on campus just once, so that must have been the time. [Again, my father died the spring of my senior year.] And I don‟t remember a lot about it; I remember being excited. I didn‟t know that Sara and Ruth would be here until we got here and saw each other again.
HT: But you had not been on campus prior to that. 5
JS: No.
HT: So this was all brand-new to you.
JS: All brand-new and I‟m a little girl from a small town so this was all just new and exciting, and it‟s fall, so the campus was beautiful and green and a bustle of activity with people running about. I remember meeting, of course, my assigned roommate, Carolyn Black, and going to our room. Ours was the first class of blacks that were housed on each side of the first floor of Coit [Residence Hall]. Prior to that, all blacks had been on one side of the lobby of Coit.
HT: So do you recall how many black students were in that class in ‟63?
JS: Suezette and I were talking about this yesterday. I thought we were ten; she says we were twelve so we have to go through the yearbook and count the pictures. I always thought of us as ten of a thousand total enrollment of that freshman class. So the first day was just full of excitement, of moving in and meeting people. Our side, we were issued—going into Coit, the dorm mother was on—Her quarters were, I think, to the left of the entrance and our room was on that side and most of the black students were on the other side of the hall, but the whites [were] on each side. But ours had more. And everybody was just—I recall everybody happy, greeting each other and everybody on our side was friendly.
HT: And just two to a room?
JS: Yes.
HT: Two students.
JS: Yes. There was only one room, I think, that had three students in it: Suezette‟s room.
HT: Do you recall who your housemother was at that time?
JS: Frances Falk.
HT: I‟ve heard that name several times.
JS: I don‟t really remember too much about the first weeks or months of being there other than just studying, hanging out. Like I said, after we would study in the evening, frequently somebody would put on some music and we would go out in the hall and dance. [laughter] Because you know at night, lights-out was at, I think, ten o‟clock or ten-thirty.
HT: It was fairly early [unclear].
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JS: That doesn‟t mean, of course, that we went to sleep, but people would slip out of one room and go into another room to talk; you know, that kind of thing.
HT: And I‟ve heard people say they used flashlights under cover to continue studying and that sort of thing.
JS: To continue reading, yes; that kind of thing. We would play cards together and just hang out talking.
HT: If we could backtrack for just a minute to working in the cafeteria: What was that like? What type of work did you do?
JS: I was on the line.
HT: The serving line.
JS: Right. The food was prepared in the kitchen and there was a serving line and long lines of students would come through with their trays and we would give them what they wanted of hot food.
HT: I think I asked you earlier how many hours you worked a day or something like that. You worked all three meals and that was like a two-hour shift around each meal‟s time or something like that.
JS: Probably. I‟m not sure. And I don‟t know if I worked all three meals every day. It probably depended on my class schedule. But I know I worked all breakfasts and most dinners, if not all dinners. I remember a few—I thought the food was fine. As a matter of fact, I gained twenty-five pounds my freshman year, [laughter] primarily from the brownies.
But we did have a couple of food protests my freshman year. Some people, particularly the upperclassmen complained about the food a lot, and there were a couple of food protests where the kids came through, got their trays full of food, took it to the tables and refused to eat it. It was just they banged on the tables with their forks and knives and left all the food there on the trays and walked out. So we on the serving line had to go out and clean up all the mess they‟d left and bring it all back. Working in the cafeteria, I would bring back brownies and cookies for people in the dorm, so we all got fat. [unclear] I gained twenty-five pounds. My mother was appalled when she saw me. I used to have that picture with the class officers and I‟m standing there in the front and I thought, “Jeez, I‟m huge.” [laughter]
HT: Oh, my goodness. Do you recall what your favorite subject was when you were in college?
JS: Well, I didn‟t hit my favorite subjects until I got to be a junior, and they were economics. And if I had known anything about the subject of economics, I would have majored in that as a freshman. But of course having come from a small, poorly-funded high school, 7
we didn‟t have any subjects like economics. The only economics we knew about was home economics. I started out as a math major but math—The highest level of math in my high school was algebra two. I hadn‟t had trigonometry or calculus or anything like that and so I thought once I got here and I thought, “I don‟t think I‟m going to make it as a math major.” So my sophomore year I think I had switched to history and political science. So I enjoyed the political science courses; I enjoyed French [literature, though the language] I wasn‟t that good at, but I had had French in high school. I enjoyed the English courses and the political science courses but economics turned out to be my—Once I had discovered economics, I took, any time I had remaining, every course I could fit in.
HT: And so your major turned out to be—
JS: History and political science.
HT: What do you recall about the professors in history and political science? Do you have any memories of—?
JS: I remember one woman but I don‟t remember her name; I can see her face but I can‟t remember her name right now. I think that‟s more a function—I used to remember her name but now I‟m getting older and that stuff just goes. And I thought she was fine up until—I don‟t know what the discussion was about, but at some point I recall her making a remark to the effect that we can‟t legislate morality. We might have had some discussions around the civil rights commotion that was going on in the country and she said, “Well, we can‟t legislate morality.” And the way she meant it was that we can‟t force people to like each other or to be together or accept each other, and I‟m thinking, “Okay, I know she can only take me so far in terms of my intellectual development because to me, we legislate morality every time you put up a stoplight.” We tell people you can‟t just drive willy-nilly. There are so many ways you legislate morality so I thought, “Okay, but whatever—” Like I said, I don‟t remember the specific incident at all.
And I remember a teacher in another class, a male who was tall and thin and wore horn-rimmed glasses. I don‟t remember his name. He didn‟t—He‟d called on me for something. I probably had volunteered and he called on me for something and I used—In my response I said something about—I‟m trying to remember what the word was. It wasn‟t “obviate” but it was some silly word like that. He said, “What?” And I repeated the word and I thought: “My goodness. He almost sounded like he was surprised I knew words that had three syllables.” [laughter]
HT: What was that word you used?
JS: I said “obfuscate” but I don‟t think that was the word. [It was “obviate.”] I‟m trying to think. It will come to me at some point during the conversation. So I kept talking and continued to answer and at some point later in class, I was talking to two [classmates] (because I was the only black person in that particular class and I think that he seemed a little surprised that the [white] students and I were interacting just like regular normal 8
people; that there was no—We were just talking, you know, and I thought he would maybe—I don‟t know whether in previous years there had been less interaction but I didn‟t really have any difficulty with him. And my economics professor, whose name I don‟t remember, actually I heard him saying to someone, “I think she‟s pretty smart.” [laughter] I remember taking a test in one of my economics courses. I think maybe it had four questions and [I got] to writing and sometimes [when you‟re nailing a question] you write too long. [I was] running out of time and I think when we had ten minutes left, I had two questions left to cover and I remember writing two paragraphs on question number three, and on question number four, I maybe had two minutes left. I thought, “How would I approach this question?” I decided to write what would be the first sentence. I would break down my answer into three paragraphs and I would write what would be the first sentence of each paragraph. It was all I had time to do. And I got an A on that test; an A over B on the last part, because—I thought well evidently those were the points he wanted me to hit. So I really enjoyed economics; I enjoyed my professors in economics; they liked me; and I really wish I had discovered that subject earlier.
HT: Well, getting back to history for just a second: Did you ever have Richard Bardolph?
JS: No.
HT: But you‟ve heard the name, I‟m sure.
JS: Yes, he was head of the [history] department.
HT: The head of the department at that time, right.
JS: But you know, one of the things the sophomores [did]—Paulette [Jones Robinson, Class of 1966] who was at the meeting yesterday. The sophomores came to us freshmen and said, “If you have to take „such and such,‟ do not take „so and so.‟” And we had been given guidelines along the way on whom to avoid and I don‟t know if that‟s the reason I didn‟t take anything from Bardolph, but it might have been.
HT: I think so because it might have been Paulette who sat in his class or one of the other [black] students and he would not call on her.
JS: Right and I don‟t recall being ignored by any of my professors anytime I raised my hand. But so we had been told whom to avoid, if at all possible.
HT: So that was good networking.
JS: Yes.
HT: Well, it sounds like you enjoyed school.
JS: I loved the first two and a half years but I‟ve been thinking about it since I got your questionnaire, perhaps because I was just naïve and clueless. There were certain things I 9
just wasn‟t looking for or prepared to see. I hadn‟t had any personal experience with personal rather than group-aimed discrimination before coming here. I mean, certainly having grown up in segregated Greenville, I knew that if when you were in the grocery store line or something and a white person wanted to come through, they got to get in front of you. But you know, you didn‟t—I hadn‟t—I was a kid so of course I didn‟t take it—You noticed it but you didn‟t really—It just—That was life and so, you know, nobody had ever cursed me, you know, or called me any names or anything.
I do remember getting fired from my job working on a tobacco farm because I talked too much. Like I said, I was a teenager. I wasn‟t working fast enough. I was talking to the other workers, so I let it be known that this was not going to be my life because I was going to college so the white owner of the farm didn‟t want me around, disturbing his good workers who were going to be content with their lot. [laughter] So I came to school not really expecting anyone to be mean to me and was all over the place, like I said, my first year or two. My best friends, even as a freshman, were sophomores and maybe a junior or so. By the time I hit mid-junior year, I was starting to get lonely because my best friends had graduated and gone on and so that‟s when I actually started thinking about the outside world more and our place in it.
HT: Did you ever think about transferring to Chapel Hill?
JS: I didn‟t because, again, Chapel Hill was more expensive and I didn‟t really have money. And I had lost touch with Poinsettia Galloway Peterson [Class of 1966] who did transfer, and probably had I really thought about it—I was always a person who thought if you could think, there must be a way, but I did not think about it and I started concentrating more on my studies in my last two years because my first two years I spent so much time playing bridge that I didn‟t have the best grades. So I spent the last two years being more of a student.
HT: And were you—In your junior and senior year, were you still working in the cafeteria, delivering the newspapers, and all the other jobs that you had?
JS: I didn‟t deliver newspapers all four years. I worked in the cafeteria at least three and probably four, but I had various other jobs. I had one: I worked as assistant to the lab assistant in the chemistry department one of those years, but I think that was freshman year. I had a lot of jobs my freshman year. As assistant to the lab assistant, my job was to wash the bottles and that‟s where I was, washing bottles—beakers—in the chem [chemistry] lab when I heard that [President John F.] Kennedy had been shot. So I had various jobs throughout college and loans throughout college because—and was very, very well acquainted—and embarrassed that I don‟t remember her name [Editor‟s note: her name was Kathleen P. Hawkins]—with the woman in the financial aid office because I was frequently there looking for money. And as a matter of fact at one point I was there my sophomore year because I didn‟t have enough money to finish the year and she was telling me they didn‟t have any money. I insisted. I said, “That can‟t possibly be right. Are you kidding me, with all these nice brick buildings around here and all this, you don‟t have any money? I‟m going to sit right here in this chair until you find me some 10
money.” I sat until she came back later in the afternoon and said, “Okay, there‟s another loan we can get.”
HT: Were any of these scholarships or were they all loans?
JS: They were loans, [I think].
HT: Just loans.
JS: Yes. But see, again, school was much cheaper in those days and so I [didn‟t have] the longest time [to pay them off]. I think my last payment on one of those loans, like $350.00 or something, I have it with a nice “paid in full” stamp on that. That might have been a National Science Foundation loan. Who knows, but anyway, some federal loan; whatever it was called back in those days.
HT: We‟re going to transition now to campus life. You‟ve already mentioned some of the things you did for fun, like playing bridge. What about other things that you got involved with on campus, extracurricular activities and that sort of thing?
JS: I was on—
HT: Or did you have time?
JS: [laughter] Oh, yes. There was always time for something. I was on the fencing team one year. Yes, I fenced. We went to the state championships that year. I don‟t think that many schools had fencing teams so it wasn‟t a huge thing, but I did fence sophomore year. And—or was that junior year. One of those years I was fencing. We had a bowling alley; I took bowling. I was a horrible bowler though so I didn‟t do that very long. I took golf, which I enjoyed. I did not have golf clubs but one of my white—well, she was a classmate or a year behind me. Her name was Penny. Penny loaned me her golf clubs and I played golf. I enjoyed that. We had a golf course on campus, a nine-hole course on campus then. There were pick-up volley ball games so I think that was about it athletically. And the ever-present all-night bridge game. [laughter] [Joan and Jenny, white students in the sophomore class, taught me bridge during my freshman year.]
HT: Oh, goodness. And you already talked a little bit about this, but what about—Can you tell me a little bit more about your roommates? What were they like and how you got along with them and that sort of thing?
JS: My first roommate was Carolyn Black. She was a music major. She was very nice; much more sophisticated than I. And I suppose I was out of the room so often and elsewhere so often that we probably—I know we did. We drifted apart. We weren‟t as close by the end of freshman year. She announced to me that she would not be my roommate sophomore year so sophomore year I roomed with my best friend—turned out to be my best friend at college—a [junior]. She was two years ahead of me. Wait, let‟s think about it: She was the Class of ‟65 so she was two years ahead of me. Susan Kessler. We met in the dining 11
room because she worked there, too. She was a white student from Burgaw, a little town I had never heard of in North Carolina. But we roomed [my] sophomore year. I have been thinking about [that]: that were we actually roommates or did I just stay over in her rooms so often that I felt like we were roommates? But I did know she lived in Mary Foust [Residence Hall] and I moved to Mary Foust my sophomore year and, like I said, I remember spending most of my time at Susan Kessler‟s so we might have been roommates. I remember when I first met her she had a roommate named Pam, but that might have been before. Then from Mary Foust, I think I might have lived in Guilford [Residence Hall], which was attached. Whatever dorm I lived in my junior year, I probably was in my senior year [also]. I don‟t remember living in any of the other dorms. I had a—One of my jobs—Was that after, probably after junior year—I had a job on campus at Reynolds [Residence Hall], which was one of the newer dorms at the time, one of the high rises, I was the resident—what do they call them? RAs, resident—
HT: Assistant.
JS: Resident Assistant that [summer]. The dorm was only open for—there was—The only overt discriminatory action I remember, came not from on-campus people, but from off-campus people. One of them occurred that summer. I had a job as—That dorm was open to house some high school golfers who had come here to participate in either classes or workshops or a tournament or all of that, and they were boys, high school boys. I was in charge. I stayed in the same quarters that the dorm mother would have been in and I had the keys to the place and I had to register these boys and assign them rooms. During the course of registering one of these boys—High school students away from home so they were acting grownup and, I‟m sure, smoking. I remember one of them standing over the desk and he would blow smoke down in my face as I was trying to register them. So I said, “You blow that smoke down here one more time, I‟m going to slap your face.” And his friends fell out laughing at him. He didn‟t do it again. I thought, “To [him], he might have understood it as a matter of race; I understood it as a matter of position. I‟m a junior, going to be a senior, a rising senior, in college. I‟m not going to take guff from a high schooler of any race.” So to me, you know, RHIP [Rank Has Its Privileges], you were going to do what I say. And he behaved himself from then on.
HT: So were you in charge of the boys the entire time during this camp or whatever it was?
JS: Yes, of the housing. When they were out, of course, it was somebody else‟s responsibility, but as long as they were in Reynolds.
HT: I bet they were a rowdy bunch.
JS: They were a rowdy bunch. [laughter]
HT: So you had summer jobs as well as jobs during the winter-time.
JS: Oh, yes. My parents had no money to send me to school.
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HT: So you probably didn‟t get a chance to get home too often.
JS: No, and my freshman year I think I only went home—I went home more my—That‟s how I remember the bus because I remember riding the bus. I went home maybe just twice my freshman year, less than the other girls did, but not because I was always working. Sometimes I was visiting the homes of other students. You know, you are invited home with somebody. I remember going to New York over the holidays, Christmas, to visit my uncle there and I went home with some classmate once or twice, but then I was working. But I did go home for the summer after my freshman year, and the summer after my—maybe my sophomore year was how that worked. But the summer after my junior year I was working here and the summer after my senior year I [worked here in Greensboro at a burger place called the Hot Shoppes]. The placement office was very helpful [with job leads]. I got a job. When I didn‟t get—Was it you I was talking to about the job at the bank or was that Suezette?
HT: It must have been Suezette.
JS: The job I didn‟t get at the bank. I was looking for a summer job and went to the placement office the summer after my senior year. Right, I think. I‟m sorry I don‟t remember exactly but I‟m fairly sure it was the senior year. The placement office sent me to a bank downtown because they had gotten notice that the bank wanted a teller. I got to the bank and I think they were surprised to see me, so they gave me a test. I don‟t remember the name of it but it was one of those standard, one of those IQ tests that used to be standard back in the day that didn‟t really measure anything, but [was used to deny jobs to blacks.] And there were a hundred questions on the test; I finished 98 of them in the time allotted and got 97 of them right, which surprised them. But they said, “Sorry, they didn‟t have job. I was just the kind of person they wanted because I obviously was smart, but they didn‟t have a job.” I was thinking as I left there, “I came here to the bank as a twenty-year-old because I finished college at twenty. College graduate from UNCG. Why are you surprised that I passed the test? They don‟t graduate dumb people, you know what I mean. They certainly didn‟t accept any dumb black people and they didn‟t graduate any dumb black people.” And I think a lot of the questions on the test to me were logic and I had just had logic; a philosophy course in logic. [unclear] I did very well on that test, but I thought, “Why would white people think that black people who finish “their” schools would not know stuff?” But anyway so I wound up working at the Hot Shoppes that summer before [going off to my first full-time, professional job.] The placement office had given me the lead to what turned out to be my first professional job after college.
I had managed to go through school without getting a teacher‟s certificate (sort of expected of women back then). One, I didn‟t want to be a teacher so why get a teacher‟s certificate? But at the same time, you finish in four years and you don‟t have a teacher‟s certificate and not a clue about what you‟re going to do? You go, “Oh my goodness.” So the placement office got me an interview with HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC, and to this day I don‟t know—I don‟t remember who paid for the plane ticket, it was my first plane trip. I flew from Greensboro to Washington, DC. Now who paid for the ticket. I don‟t know. Maybe it was me; I don‟t 13
know. So I had an interview with HUD in Washington, DC. They told me all their openings in Washington, DC had been filled but they had an opening in Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania]. Would I mind going to Philadelphia? No, I‟ve never been to Philadelphia before so I went up to Philadelphia to interview and that‟s where I got the job and started to work for HUD after college. I think I said that was through the placement office here.
HT: What type of work did you do when you first started out.
JS: I worked for the Housing Assistance Administration. I was one of two people assigned to work with the seven largest housing—local housing—[authorities] in the Atlantic region, so we worked with housing authorities in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, etcetera. Did we come to DC? Maybe DC, Baltimore, Newark, New Jersey. Not New York City but Newark, New Jersey I know was one of mine. So my first job I had a hot pink Samsonite briefcase. [laughter] And I traveled a lot through airports with my nice hot pink briefcase going to visit these various housing authorities, you know, to work with them on the aspects of their housing programs (budgets, tenant policies, program administration, etcetera that the fed [federal government] was overseeing because we funded these public housing authorities. That was great. I flew a lot that first few years. I enjoyed that job but I didn‟t know anyone when I went to Philadelphia. I had no relatives there; I didn‟t know anyone there. I‟d never been there before. I think the first week in Philadelphia—The fact is that before going there I worked at the Hot Shoppe the first part of the summer to get money to start me off, and I remember telling my mother, “I didn‟t want to go because I didn‟t know anybody.” She said, “Well, you don‟t have to go.” I said, “But I have no [other] job. I have no choice; I have to go.”
I did hop the bus and got on up there and lived in the Y because I had learned that the Y rented rooms. But then I got to the YWCA in Philadelphia and they said, “We have no more rooms, but I think they still have some at the YMCA.” I said, “That could be a problem.” She said, “No, they have two wings. They have one wing and they put—One part of it they rent to women.” So I stayed in the Y for a week. It cost $50.00—I recall that—which ate into the maybe $125.00 I arrived there with so I quickly made friends with some other new employees, one in particular, at HUD and went to her apartment and slept on her couch because I recall that they withheld the first two weeks of pay and then you got paid at the end of the month for two weeks. That first two weeks, you got paid at the end or something because I would not have had enough money to last for a whole month and at the Y living there, so I made friends and moved to the couch until we got paid and that gave me a chance to find somewhere to stay. I was resourceful.
HT: It sounds like you were very resourceful. That‟s just amazing. If we can backtrack to UNCG for just a few minutes, were there any particular social or academic events that stand out in your mind during the time that you were here in the mid-60s?
JS: I remember enjoying the teas. We had teas.
HT: Were they formal? They were formal teas.
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JS: They were formal teas and were very dainty affairs. They were nice, you know, very nice. I took the tour of Aycock Auditorium yesterday and I enjoyed that. We [saw] wonderful plays and dance [performances there]. We saw the Russian Ballet artist Rudolph Nureyev there. I remember lectures. Hannah Arendt, the German economic philosopher, came. There were poets. There were lots of activities at Aycock and at Elliott Hall, musical performances that I enjoyed, which stood me in good stead.
As an aside, after I had been in Philadelphia for a year. This is an aside. Like I said, I didn‟t know anyone except the people I worked with, and I decided and—Most of the people I worked with were older people and this was, of course, at the height of the Vietnam War so you look around and say, Where is everybody. Where are the young people? Well, let‟s see: they‟re not at work. They must be—If they‟re not at war they must be in school to avoid the war and so I applied to graduate school and Ah! Young people—[there they were!] So I applied to Temple Law School [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania]. I had taken the LSAT [Law School Admission Test] and made a high enough grade to get admitted and got a call from somebody I thought was a young man because he had a high-pitched voice but it did turn out to be a professor there who said they were very interested in me coming to Temple. I was interested in going to night school; Temple was the only school in Philadelphia, I think, that had a night school, a night law school, because I couldn‟t afford to stop working. And he said to me: “We‟re very interested in having you come here. You did well on the LSAT and we‟re recruiting black students.” He said, “We have a scholarship for the culturally deprived.” And I quickly said to him, “I‟m not culturally deprived. I mean, I have seen opera, I‟ve been to UNCG. I have been exposed to ballet and concerts and plays. I‟ve read Shakespeare. I‟m not culturally deprived.” But then I thought, “My mama didn‟t raise no fool. If you‟re stupid enough to give me a scholarship, a full scholarship, just because you think by being black I‟m culturally deprived, I will take the scholarship because my mama didn‟t raise no fool.” [laughter]
HT: So were you able to quit regular work and—
JS: Oh, no. I worked all four years. Law school is three years during the day, four years at night so I continued to work and my work continued to require travel so I missed some classes but—And I remember riding the Broad Street subway sometimes [when] I was so tired I would sleep between downtown and the campus, would wake up right at my stop in time to get to class. And I loved law school. I love being a student so I loved law school. I just like studying, not studying, but I love school; being around the academic environment. But to get back to the social activities on campus, I thought that did prepare me for later on to say, “I‟m not culturally deprived.”
HT: That‟s a cute story. Well, men came in the fall of ‟64, which would have been your sophomore year.
JS: Yes, sophomore year. I remember one in particular.
HT: Well, there weren‟t that many on campus, but I was going to say, do you have any recollection of any of them? 15
JS: Larry McAdoo [Class of 1968], whom we called “Mac will do” because he was so cute. [laughter] I remember [Anthony Thompson] Reginald [Class of ‟67], too. He was tall.
HT: What was Reginald‟s last name? Can you recall?
JS: No. Moore, Morris, I don‟t recall really but I remember there was a tall guy named Reginald.
HT: There were not many men, period. How many black men came in the fall?
JS: Those were the only two [that I remember].
HT: Just those two.
JS: Those two I remember. I didn‟t really know any of the white men.
HT: Now Charles Cole [Class of 1969] was on campus; he played basketball. Do you have any recollection of him? He might have—
JS: I don‟t know if we had basketball then.
HT: Let me see, I think he graduated in ‟69 so he may have come in about the time you were leaving. So, yes, but I read his interview that he did for the [UNCG] Centennial Celebration about twenty years ago and he said he actually lived off campus.
JS: Right, as I recall. I don‟t recall men being on campus. They were here but they were commuters.
HT: Probably day students, that sort of thing.
JS: There wouldn‟t have been any place—Well, unless they carved out a—
HT: I think they did convert a dorm. It took about a year because the school became coeducational in ‟63 but it took a year to convert one of the dorms so that‟s why they [unclear]
JS: Right, because we were still calling it WC for awhile.
HT: Oh, right. I‟m sure. Some people still do. [laughter]
JS: As I said, the only instances of “discrimination” or looking askance came from off-campus things. I remember freshman year, churches used to send cars to pick up students to deliver them to—And Sherrill White [Class of 1967] and I were Catholic and so a car came to take us to the Catholic church, and it couldn‟t have been the one that‟s really close to campus because we would have been able to walk there.
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HT: Well, St. Benedict‟s [Catholic Church] is downtown.
JS: Okay, it might have been.
HT: Our Lady of Grace [Catholic Church] is over here.
JS: So it couldn‟t have been Grace because Grace was too close. We would have been able to walk there but a car delivered us to this church and I remember getting an absolutely hateful look from a parishioner who turned around and saw us sitting a few pews behind her. And I thought, “My goodness; well, this is her church. She obviously does not want us here and if this church can create or foster or tolerate this person, there‟s no room for me here.” So I didn‟t go back. Sherrill continued to go but I did not go back to that church. I don‟t know if I went to any churches after that but by that—You know, most of my friends who were sophomores and juniors were the avant-garde of their time. You know, they were the drama majors and the literary people and they didn‟t do church. [laughter] And so I was hanging out with them, you know; being cool.
HT: Oh, my goodness. Oh, goodness gracious. Well, I read in your senior yearbook that you were the chief jester at Rat Day.
JS: I know; you sent me that and I thought, what is that? I couldn‟t—And so I spent some time thinking about whatever could that have been and looking through the yearbook, it must have been some kind of—The sophomores, you know, got to harass in a friendly kind of way, you know, freshmen.
HT: The hazing kind of thing.
JS: The hazing kind of thing but not physical stuff. But they could make you do things like stand at a corner and bark, or bow down before them. And you definitely had to greet them with all reverence due. [laughter] And maybe—I‟m thinking maybe it was my—If they had asked one of my classmates to do something onerous, the only way to get my classmate maybe out of that chore would be for me to amuse the potential tormenter [by doing] something. I‟m thinking that might have been something along that line.
HT: That sort of makes sense, yes.
JS: Well, I really—I thought, I was a chief jester. Well, what were my duties?
HT: I don‟t know. [laughter]
JS: So I‟m thinking that might—There was something like that I had to do. Of course that might not get the person off, but at least I had to do something to keep them amused.
HT: Yes, that‟s a good explanation. And another thing was that you were a class cheerleader during your sophomore year. What did that entail? Being a cheerleader, does that mean keeping everybody‟s spirits— 17
JS: The spirit, right, those spirit things, yes. We led the sing-alongs and cheers and things.
HT: And then you were Junior [Class] Show chairperson, chairman, I guess.
JS: Yes, yes.
HT: What did that involve? A lot of time, I bet.
JS: Yes, during the summer between sophomore and junior year, I wrote the play that the class would put on. I‟m trying—Did we do that as a fund-raiser? I don‟t know, but whatever, all juniors had a Junior Class Show and so I wrote the play. Had I ever written a play before? Never, but I had seen several plays. And it was a musical. And looking back on it, [I‟m thinking why wasn‟t the music rock ‟n roll?] Of course, you know why: because nobody had ever done that before so of course it had never occurred to me to write a rock musical [though] that was the music of our time, but nobody had ever—I think The Who, who came along after—You know, from the English group, The Who wrote the first rock musical, So of course I was thinking that musicals are things like South Pacific and Show Boat. The Rogers and Hammerstein kind of thing, so I thought, “Okay.” Anyway I wrote a play and came back in the fall and we had auditions and one of my classmates, Janet, I know, was a good musician so she became the musical director. We had other—Kids volunteered for things they were good at. I remember Giselle, maybe, or somebody like Jeanine, somebody who as good at makeup so she was our makeup artist. And so we did the play and it turned out to be fairly successful. We filled—pretty much filled the first floor anyway of Aycock Auditorium that night. I remember Miss Falk; I had a caricature of Miss Falk in my play. She enjoyed it but she came to me afterwards said, “Now, Jackie, I wasn‟t that bad.” You know. [laughter] But, yes, that was an enjoyable experience.
HT: Well, after we finish this, maybe we can go back and look and see if we—because we have something called the Class of 1967, what do you call it, folder. Maybe we can find that play in there. Hopefully we will.
JS: Well, it was not [memorable]. Someone came to me yesterday and said, “I would love to read that play because it must have been funny.” Talking to people yesterday. I said, “I wrote the play; I did not say the play was a good play. All I know is, we put on a show. It was a one-time event so there were no chances to correct anything. It wasn‟t a good play; it was just a play. It was called „A Girl‟s Dream.‟” [laughter]
[End of CD 1—Begin CD 2]
HT: You were also involved in the student legislature. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
JS: Yes, [sometime during the] first three years; yes, student government. I had been [involved] in student government activities in high school so I ran for student government 18
here, too. I can‟t tell [you] any particular issue we worked on; whatever teenagers were interested [in] at the time, I imagine. Being more liberal on clothing allowances because we couldn‟t—Could we wear pants the first year? I don‟t think so. So we might have wanted to do things like wear pants. We had mandatory—We had eight o‟clock classes and we had—You could only miss three classes before you were on attendance probation. I know this because I was on attendance probation at one point having missed my three classes and I remember going—waking up late one—I had a Saturday morning eight o‟clock class; I don‟t remember which one it was—having already missed not three of that particular—Was it three of any particular class or was it three classes period. I forget, but anyway I couldn‟t miss anymore and I woke up around eight-thirty for this eight o‟clock class, threw some water on my face, rolled up my pajamas, put on a raincoat, dashed across campus to the class, got there, I think maybe, five minutes before the class was over so of course it was way too late and the doors were closed. So I sat—There was a chair out in the hall which I sat in. I sat beside the door and continued to sit there as all the students filed out and the professor came out—The teacher came out and he said, “Have you been here the whole—Oh, you could have come in.” I said, “Oh I didn‟t want to disturb class.” So he thought I had been there for most of it, so he didn‟t mark me as absent, but he could [have]. I‟d just gotten there five minutes before. So I skated that one. So then we might have worked on things like, you know, being more tolerant on attendance.
HT: Right. And you were also involved in, was it the Service League? Do you have any recollection of that?
JS: Not really. I don‟t remember what Service League was.
HT: I know during World War II, they started something called the War Service League which lasted until the sixties, or maybe early seventies. They just had service projects, and that‟s probably what that was all about. And then, let me see, you were also a member of the Young Democrats Club.
JS: Yes, I remember that.
HT: Okay, do you have any particular recollections about that particular thing?
JS: I remember writing the constitution for our organization. Looking back, I‟m wondering why wasn‟t I an English major? I enjoyed writing. But, no, we still couldn‟t vote then. I didn‟t think you could vote before [age] twenty-one, but we were interested in the issues of the day [and] we talked about the issues of the day from a democratic perspective. I don‟t recall helping with any registration drives before I was older or something. I don‟t remember a lot about it other than just getting up and talking about various social issues. I remember I was only in student government three years. I remember being defeated when I ran for the fourth year by Nan Hammond [Class of 1968] because I wasn‟t attentive enough to my constituents in terms of asking their opinions on the various issues that student government would—I assumed that they would want to do what I wanted to 19
do. And Nan assured me that I was wrong. And she was right; as a politician, you really should check in with your constituents on a regular basis.
HT: Well, the sixties were such a turbulent time here in the United States, you know. Were you ever involved politically while you were on campus? Protests, or anything like that.
JS: I was not, and to this day I don‟t know why, and I thought with so much going on, why wasn‟t I involved. I remember Paulette and some of the older students talking to us, and trying to get us involved in things but I know they were more—Like I say, we knew them. They were sophomores when we were freshmen and we were just more involved with getting ourselves together on campus. The campus [unclear] was very isolated, too. If you didn‟t go off-campus, you didn‟t know about stuff that was going on except if you saw stuff on TV, and there was only one—
HT: You were busy.
JS: I was very busy; I worked constantly so between work and school, I probably didn‟t—But I don‟t recall even having a consciousness, you see, to go participate in a—Were the sit-ins—I don‟t think the sit-ins were still going on.
HT: No, the [Greensboro] Sit-ins were in 1960 and then there were some demonstrations on Tate Street to try to integrate Tate Street in ‟63 and then, of course, you graduated in ‟67. There was the ARA strike, the cafeteria workers strike [against the ARA food service company] here on campus in ‟69.
JS: I was gone then.
HT: So you sort of fell in between where there really wasn‟t as much going on as there was a little bit later and a little bit earlier. Yes.
JS: Exactly, I recall thinking when I was in law school and participating then in organizing low-income tenants and leading them on demonstrations in Philadelphia. I recall, then, being ashamed that I didn‟t have any scars to show from those earlier battles because we were sort of in the middle. And that I didn‟t have an arrest record. I thought, “Jeez, I want an arrest record.” [laughter] So no, we were in the center there and I remember going—
The movies must have been integrated maybe by ‟64 or something because I definitely went to the movies down on the corner at some point and—[pause] Was there any—There was a restaurant called the Rathskeller. Maybe it wasn‟t open to blacks my first year but I know it was certainly open my second year because I remember having maybe my second beer in life there.
HT: I think it was downstairs, wasn‟t it, on Tate Street.
JS: Yes, right. I think we could go to the Rathskeller at some point. Of course, we didn‟t go that often because one of the things that surprised us all when we got here. We didn‟t drink; white girls drank. There were these trash chutes. On Monday morning you‟d hear 20
glass clanking down that because bottles would be put down the trash chutes and people had brought, you know, the remains of the liquor bottles back with them. I thought—We were like, My goodness, we didn‟t know young girls did this. We (black students) are definitely some sheltered people. [laughter]
HT: We‟ve touched on this just a little bit, but did you ever feel discriminated against while you were at UNCG, other than that time that young fellow blew smoke in your face?
JS: No, other than the guy, him, and, like I said, the church woman was off-campus. I recall maybe some car of white students—male students—driving through. But I don‟t think they were students; they were just people who drove through yelling out the window if they saw anybody walking along. But I don‟t recall anything from any of the teachers or any of the administrators.
HT: Well, speaking of administrators. Did you ever have any interactions with any of the administrators: chancellor, dean or women, dean of students, or anything like that?
JS: No, I recall maybe speaking, maybe to Dean Hawkins at some of the teas maybe, but that was just, you know, pleasant tea conversations.
HT: What about Dean of Women Katherine Taylor?
JS: I‟m sorry. That‟s what I [meant to say:] Dean Taylor, Katherine Taylor. I‟m trying to think; was the financial person [Kathleen P.] Hawkins?
HT: It could be; I‟m not sure.
JS: It might have been Hawkins, so she would have been the administrative person I had the most contact with, and she got used to me. [laughter]
HT: What about any of the vice chancellors like Mereb Mossman or I think the chancellor at that time was—
JS: [Otis] Singletary.
HT: Singletary.
JS: Handsome man, but no.
HT: And I think [Chancellor] James Ferguson might have been a little bit later.
JS: Now I remember Dean Ferguson more. He was very friendly; he was a really nice man but I don‟t remember any prolonged contact with him, but I do remember meeting him and having some brief conversation with him; maybe on more than one occasion but usually, probably, at some general event campus-wide event.
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HT: And we touched on this a little bit, but did any of the professors make a good impression upon you or a lasting impression?
JS: Yes, like I said, my economics professors, none of whose names I remember so that‟s not fair. I‟m sure I had one of them for more than one course, but I liked them very much.
HT: Is there anything else you‟d like to add about UNCG before we go on to what you‟ve done after you left here?
JS: I really regret that I don‟t remember what got me into almost a funk state second semester, junior year, because that is the first time I truly started thinking about race and class and that kind of thing, and I don‟t really remember what triggered it. [pause] I just don‟t.
HT: Well, what impact do you think UNCG has had on your life?
JS: Oh, I think I had a very fine education here so it had a very formative effect on my life. It launched me into a professional career. And by enabling—Like I said, I came here with no money and by doing everything to allow me to continue here and to graduate here, [UNCG] was critical to my life.
HT: Well, tell me a little bit about what you did after you graduated. I know you went on to law school, so did you become a lawyer?
JS: Yes.
HT: Okay, and in what specialty?
JS: Did I have one? Let‟s see, well I only practiced civilly so I don‟t know if I had—When I finished law school, I went to work for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [EEOC] because one of my favorite law school subjects had been labor law, and I worked for EEOC for three years. EEOC was a new agency then. And that was great fun.
HT: Was that in Washington? Or—
JS: Philadelphia.
HT: Philadelphia, okay.
JS: My boss at EEOC eventually left to take a job as a litigator for Bell Telephone Company. “Ma Bell” still existed then. Bell of Pennsylvania was a major corporation and I think after he‟d been there about a year, he called me and asked me if I was interested in working for Bell. I interviewed with the general counsel at Bell and went over there as their first black lawyer. So I worked for Bell of Pennsylvania for thirteen years; first in the corporate law section doing rates and regulatory work, which was sort of—The rate lawyers, because their job was to go before the public utility commissions to convince the public utility commissions that the telephone company needed higher rates [laughter] 22
which I thought was kind of bizarre because at my level of management—It was a managerial job; I was third-level management. I was not only the first black lawyer; I was, at twenty-nine that summer, I was the highest ranking black in the company at the time. [laughter] At our level and above, our telephone service was free, so I thought, “Here we were arguing to raise poor people‟s rates and we‟re making plenty of money and we don‟t pay for service.”
HT: There‟s something wrong there.
JS: There‟s something wrong with this picture. But anyway, but I did rate work for a year or two and then decided it was a little stuffy, and against the advice of other people I knew who said, “But Jackie, you‟re the only black rate attorney in the state. You could be—” I was young. I wanted to something more exciting, so I moved to labor law because I always liked labor law and it was more exciting to me. And I did labor law there for a few years and finally did litigation. And I loved litigation, too, a lot. I traveled all over—We each covered Pennsylvania and Delaware for Bell, trying their cases there. After about thirteen years, I decided—You know, the grass always looks greener somewhere else and so I thought private practice is what I should do. So I went to work for a law firm in Philadelphia and I think a year, year and a half after I started with that law firm dissolved but my group moved into a larger law firm that was starting out so I worked in private practice for several years. Then I left there and decided on public service again and went to work for the Philadelphia School District where I worked for twelve years before moving to Washington. And—
HT: So are you in private practice now?
JS: Yes. Well, no. Yes and no in that I call myself semi-retired so that I‟m working now for a private law firm, but as a contract attorney, just doing projects. But I left the Philadelphia school district as general counsel. I did rise there to become general counsel.
HT: Well Jackie, I don‟t have any more formal questions. Is there anything you want to add about how UNCG has impacted your life or has made a difference or anything about UNCG that we haven‟t already covered in our discussions this morning.
JS: I don‟t think so. I definitely loved my first two and a half years. I probably loved all around and probably enjoyed the experience overall because I did get to my favorite subjects and so while I was in the funk in terms of social thinking in those last two years, academically they were my best two years because I had found economics by that time. And I made very good friends here. The black students, of course: we‟ve kept in touch over the years. I kept in touch with some of the white students for several years afterwards. Susan [Kessler] became an airline stewardess so I remember I visited her in New York and again, when she left the airlines, she lived in Charlotte [North Carolina] so I visited her there, so we kept in touch for awhile.
Interestingly enough, when I came back to this reunion, I saw a member of Class of ‟63—you know they had been gone by the time when we got here—who [is] a member 23
of my current church, so that‟s a white member of the Class of ‟63 and I go to the same church now in DC. So we just met again, so okay, hi. I didn‟t know that.
HT: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate this.
JS: You‟re welcome.
HT: It‟s just been great listening to your stories this morning.
JS: Thank you. Thank you very much for tolerating me and my wandering. [laughter] And I‟m sorry my memory isn‟t sharper but if I ever do remember anything else, I will be sure to e-mail you.
HT: Okay.
[End of Interview]