Oral history interview with Lois Edinger, 1990 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Lois Edinger
INTERVIEWER: Linda Danford
DATE: September 11, 1990
[Begin Side A]
LD: Okay, Dr. Edinger. You came to UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro],
as I understand, in 1962. And I would be interested in knowing what the university was like
in those days?
LE: Well, in 1962 we were an all-female institution still, but only for about two more years,
because I think it was in 1964 that the university decided that we would be coeducational.
But in 1962 it was all females. We taught only girls on the campus, and women filled all the
offices and all of the positions. And I liked that because I had come from—I was a graduate
of Meredith College [Raleigh, North Carolina] before I did my doctoral work at [The
University of North Carolina at] Chapel Hill, so I knew something about an all-girl school.
And I was delighted to be teaching at an all-girl school. But I was not reluctant to go
coeducational, as some people on campus really were—there were—
LD: I was going to ask you that. What did the faculty think about that?
LE: Oh, there were some people who were concerned about it. And felt that we would really
destroy our heritage because Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina] was one
of the outstanding schools for women in the country—certainly in the Southeast. And I
would really say in the country. I don't mean it was as well-known as some of the more
northeastern, prestigious women’s colleges, but it really had a good name and a good
reputation as a women's college. So, there was a fear that we’d be losing that and that we
could never compete with the coeducational—the other campuses that were coeducational.
And those were natural kinds of fears and concerns, I think. And there was a great deal of
discussion about it, you know. Should we? Or should we not? And various opinions were
discussed, but of course we did. [laugh]
And some of our fears were immediately realized almost—well not immediately
because it took a couple of years before we had undergraduate males in any—and even then
not in any large numbers, but in some number. But it was interesting how quickly after
coeducation came men began to take the positions of leadership. And I think you're aware
that, even today, our student government president is often a male, even though we still have
more females on campus than males. And that has been a concern in recent years, so as
we’ve moved through those years—let's see, that was 1962, and I retired in 1988—we've
had—I think we've begun to try to bring back something of what we had when it was an all-
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women's college without giving up coeducation.
LD: Mm-hmm.
LE: There's been an attempt to do that, and I applaud that. I think that's a good idea because I am
very much in favor of women taking leadership roles while they’re on campus. It's very
important for them. I think later—for later in their lives. For even if they’re going to be as
some people say right off the bat, "I just want to be; I don't want to have a large career. I
know that I'm going to be—I'll have a career of some sort. But I'll get married, and then I
may give all of that up." But even then, there are all kinds of opportunities for volunteer
work. And so, as the years came along and we began to see that kind of a movement, we
began to say, “We need something for women. We need, once again, to focus on something
that's just for women.” And so, oh, I think it was in the seventies, we began to put forth—I
was involved in it—we put forth a proposal for a grant, which we received I think from the
humanities, my mind right now is blank. Where we even got it—and I wrote the proposal.
But at any rate, we did get a grant, and we did establish a women's center on campus.
And we were working with women who wanted to come back to school, who wanted to pick
up their education, and so on. And that lasted for a while, and Dr. Jean Eason [EdD 1974,
assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs] became involved with that, and then you
know, of course, that we have moved on to now where we now have the women's studies
[program], and we do have a very visible kind of thing. But, you know, we didn't need that in
1962 because we were an all-women's college. So when I came that's the way it was.
Also when I came—since my field is education and I came here in social studies
education and history—and so I began to work immediately in that area. And when I came—
this was in '62—there was a great need for teachers. So we had the largest number of any
graduates on campus, I suppose, with teacher education. I was working at the secondary
level. I would have twenty-five, twenty-seven students in social studies education each
semester. So that we were preparing and placing for student teaching, and then they were
finding jobs, as many as fifty young women who went out to teach in the public schools. So
that changed because as we moved on into the seventies, we began to find that we were
having difficulty placing all of the teachers. The climate changed. We were educating so
many teachers you couldn't place them all, so that, you know, scaled back, so we've seen that
happen over the years too.
Another thing that I've seen happen in education—if we had to say what was the
"high water mark," I guess, certainly in my lifetime in education, it would have to have been
in the sixties. The mid-sixties and into the early seventies when there was lots of money
available for experimentation in education from the federal government and from
foundations, from various sources. And the social studies—for example, we had the
expanded NDEA [National Defense Education] Act in 1964, which meant that colleges and
universities, public schools could get money. We were able to get more money for public
education, which meant that we profited from it at the college level—university level—
because we were preparing teachers, and they needed more teachers and they could handle
more teachers, so that helped us. So that was really a sort of a "golden age" for us.
We also had a lot of experimentation going on during that period. I'd say from about
'65, let's say, you know, once you get your money in, from about '65 to about maybe '77, '78,
somewhere in that general area, when the money started drying up a little bit. But UNCG,
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during those years was—we already had a very fine name in education, training teachers,
preparing teachers. We had—our elementary program and early childhood program was, I
suspect, the best known in the state at that time—when I came here in the sixties. And our
secondary program was a strong program, but we didn't have, perhaps we didn't have quite
the visibility—although if you were to ask the public school people around they would say,
"If we can hire a UNCG—or a Woman's College graduate," is what they said then, and later
a UNCG graduate, "we'll hire them, because they're well prepared at the secondary level and
at the elementary primary level." So we did have a good name for that.
We also had a very good record in administration—preparing administrators. And
during the sixties we had—well, Dr. Ken Howe was the dean of education when I came here
in '62, and he left us in about '66, I think,—'65 or sixty—. I was the president of the NEA
[National Education Association] '64 to '65, so he was not here that year, but I think that he
left the year after I came back. Maybe he was here one year, and then he left and then he
went into some other things. Our new dean was Robert O'Cain, who was a Harvard [Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts] graduate, had done his administration work at
Harvard, who knew a lot of people, and who began to build, as some people said, "a little
Harvard" faculty here at UNCG in the School of Education. Some people were not too
pleased with that, of course, you know, thinking that we were just a Harvard faculty. But we
did bring to the campus some outstanding people—some people who served us well, who
had—and remember this is sort of the golden age in education. So things were working for
us.
LD: Do you mean that there was a real emphasis on research?
LE: Yes. Research and also national visibility because of their work in curriculum and in
teaching. For example, it was during that time that we brought James [B.] MacDonald
[distinguished professor of education] to the campus. And he was known internationally in
education. And then—and others whose names are listed, of course, in the records. But it
was—we had a lot of exciting things going on. And there was an excitement, I think, about
it. Out of that came a project that we developed that was one of the finest projects in
education, and they're just now getting around to, you know, talking about doing some of
these things on a larger scale, which simply says to you that there's really very little new.
[laugh] We just do something and then we forget it and then we come back and we call it
something else and we do something else. But that's okay too; I guess we have to do that sort
of thing.
But we established a program with our students in education, in elementary
education, at Camp Lejeune [United States Marine Corps base in Onslow County, North
Carolina] because that was a federal school, and they had a little more flexibility. They could
manage their affairs better than a state-supported school. You can understand how that
would be. So we worked—and then too, we had a number of people from there in our
doctoral program here and in administration and in curriculum teaching. So we had that kind
of a contact, but we established a school there which was designed to see if we could
suspend the bureaucracy and let teachers and sort of an instructional leader make all the
decisions in the school. Stay within, of course, legal boundaries; you can't go outside of legal
boundaries, which the state has established. There's a lot of flexibility in there, if you just
don't have so much red tape on you. And we were very successful with that.
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The school—it was a project, you know, it was not designed to be—but it was a
project. And it was very, very successful. And out of that came—we had, I should say, we
had our student teachers who went for a year. They did their curriculum and methods courses
on site. You see, what we were doing was also experimenting with teacher education. Is this
a good way to educate teachers? And again we found the school systems that hired the
teachers—our student teachers from that program—saying things like, "It’s as if I've gotten
an experienced teacher. This just doesn't seem like a first-year teacher at all,"
because that person had been there for an entire year and working with the other teachers. So
that was sort of a change that came in teacher education during those years, and I was part of
that—[Dr.] Shirley [Lambert] Haworth [MEd 1970, EdD 1979, assistant dean for
undergraduate teacher education] and I and the School of Education—well, the School of
Education through the administration department on the campus in our School of
Education—had really established it. It started with the administration area, working with the
administrators at Camp Lejeune, and then we got our student teachers involved and they
were called “interns.” And they were paid because they were there for an entire year. So that
was very, very important, I think, for UNCG because it gave us visibility in education, and
we went various places—[phone rings]
LD: So, you were talking about this visibility that you had got from this particular [unclear]?
LE: Yes, because we went to national conferences and we presented—we took some of the
teachers and interns, and so on, and we presented programs about this. And then North
Carolina decided to try something called Teacher Education Consortium, which was that the
teachers in the schools would become a partner in the teacher education program with the
university. And the—out of this thing, sort of—because the state wanted the Teacher
Education Consortium, UNCG got involved in that. Our School of Education did, and the
whole university because you know education—teacher education—is sort of a campus
program. It has to be a campus program. But we became involved in the Teacher Education
Consortium, building on what we had already done down there.
LD: What year would this consortium have been?
LE: Let's see, we did the TTT Project at Camp Lejeune from '73 to about '76, and then Teacher
Education Consortium ran from about '76 until about '78, '79. The reason it never really got
very far, see the [North Carolina] State Department [of Education] wanted this, but
somehow, you know we're all bound by old ways, and even if you get a new idea you try to
put it in the old wine bottles, you know. It won't work. So what happened with the Teacher
Education Consortium was that the State Department of Public Instruction, Teacher
Education Division, had given no thought to how you could accredit that kind of program.
You know how they have to accredit teacher education programs. They were trying to use
the old standards. But they just don't work with a new program where you’re involving the
teachers in the school directly in selecting the student teachers in working with them and
then in being a part of the recommendation for certification process—a very direct part.
So they just didn't have any way of evaluating it, and so when it came time for us to
be accredited, they came down and tried to evaluate it and the State Board of Education said,
"Well, you know this doesn't work,” and so forth. “We'll get a new set of standards." Well,
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by that time you know, we had these young people who had gone through it. They were
certified; there was no problem with that, but nobody wanted to jump in and do another one
because they didn't have this thing on line. So that sort of fizzled for a while. But
now the State Department of Public Instruction still does have on the books that sort of an
arrangement, and in a couple of years Charlotte and Chapel Hill; the University [of North
Carolina] at Chapel Hill and the Charlotte School System, public school system, developed a
program, and maybe The University [of North Carolina] at Charlotte was also involved in
this a little bit. I wasn't involved, but they developed a program which did pick up on the
consortium at the graduate level, I think, primarily not at the undergraduate level.
But—I've rambled a little bit—but those were some of the things that happened over
the years. And then, I think, you know, we've had to start a new course in teacher education
as we have in various departments in the university because of a dwindling pool of potential
college students. We've been told that we were going to have that because of money not
being as readily available. So I think all of the university departments, and certainly the
School of Education, has felt that kind of thing.
So we haven't had—I think, my thinking is that in recent years—I'd say from the
early '80s until the present—we have not had quite as much flexibility. I think that's
changing a little bit again now. And I really do hope that's going to happen because we're
getting a little more flexibility in the public schools. We're beginning to talk in the public
schools about doing what we were doing in 1973 in the Camp Lejeune School, which was to
let teachers make decisions in the school about what ought to be going on in the school,
working with their principals or an instructional leader, and with parents, and with students
and making decisions about that school and what should be happening, so that it doesn't
necessarily have to look like all of the other schools.
LD: And it’s a wonderful idea.
LE: Yes, in a [North Carolina] senate bill too. So that's going to help us, I think a little bit. Now
let's see; what else could we talk about?
LD: Could you tell me something about the Curry School [laboratory school on UNCG campus]?
Was that operating? That must have been when you were first here. And the reason that I ask
is because I went to a school in New Jersey at Montclair State [University] that was, I think,
similar to Curry. It was a demonstration school on a teacher’s college campus. It was just
[grades] seven through twelve, and I understand Curry was all the way through.
LE: Yes, kindergarten through twelve. It—I don't recall exactly when it was started because it
was—but it has a long history. It came at about the time that all other colleges and
universities were establishing what they called "practice schools," or "demonstration
schools," as it came to be called a little bit later on. I would say just—I don't know exactly
when this one—I used to know, but I don't have it in my mind, but that’s easily—your
historians can find out very easily. But it had been in operation—and a great number of the
leaders of Greensboro attended Curry School. It was, of course considered to be an elite
school simply because it was connected with the university, and the parents felt that their
students would get a very good education. It was a small school, so it was selective.
Everybody couldn't come, and that was another reason, I think, that people were very much
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interested in it. In the late fifties when we went through all of the activity about integrating
schools, and there was a lot of discussion about schools, and the clientele schools were
serving, and whether or not you were going to have integrated schools, and how you were
going to integrate them.
Well Curry remained out of that for a while, but since Curry School was supported
by state funds—see, it was not a tuition school; it was supported by state funds—there began
to be some concern that we might be facing some problems—that the university and the
school might be facing some problems. The first thing people began to talk about phasing
out was the high school—not the elementary school, but the high school. And this was when
Ken Howe was our dean, and Chancellor Otis Singletary was on campus.
LD: This would have been 1963, or '64?
LE: Well, you know, I would say I came in '62. The discussion was going on when I came about
that. And so the high school was phased out, and there was great concern and the people in
the community were upset about it.
Then when Dr. [Robert] O'Kane came as dean, he wanted to make the elementary—
the primary elementary school a real demonstration school. You know, he really wanted to
move it into a research—you know a place where you could do things, and test them out and
that sort of thing. And there were some people who weren't too happy with that and others
who were happy with it. But you know you always get differences of opinions. And so for a
while the school ran in an open classroom kind of atmosphere.
And the man who was the principal of the school or the head of the school brought
with him some good ideas, some interesting ideas, and we had good teachers. They were
very good teachers, of course, in the—our secondary teachers were working some at the
college level. They taught the methods classes for the secondary level, you know, Dr. [Jane
Tucker] Mitchell and Dr. [Elisabeth] Bowles [Class of 1950] and some of the others.
So—but, we had—and finally though that became enough of a problem that people
began to talk about, "How much longer can we maintain this?", and say to the community
that, "We just don't open our doors to anybody." Because how are you going to say, “This
school is off bounds” to anybody in the community, that “we select the people who come
in.” You might say “first come, first serve.” I suppose you could say or something of that
sort. So—and other questions too. I'm sure there might have been financial questions that I
didn't know about because I wasn't in the chancellor's chair or in the dean's chair. But there
was a lot of discussion pro and con about it, a lot of feeling about it. Nobody—a lot of
people were concerned that we were about to close it, and there was again, a great deal of
community concern.
However, it was not during those days and those years, many colleges and
universities had long since given up the demonstration schools. They were small; they were
elite. They gave students a very fine education, but you could not—I don't think you could
argue that they were representative of the larger community. Whether you wanted it to be
there, I don't know. But I don't think that you could argue that.
LD: How were students screened?
LE: I don't know that. When I say they were selected, you put your name—I know I've heard
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some people say, "I've had my child's name on the list, you know, even before the child was
born." But there was such a waiting list. And I think that—and again I had nothing to do
with selecting or making that decision. Somebody else will have to tell you that. Mr. Vaughn
is probably still around. He ought to be interviewed, maybe, about Curry School.
LD: What is his name?
LE: He was the principal at Curry School. Herbert Vaughn. And he could perhaps tell you
something about it.
LD: I will try to look that up. We would—I'd like to—
LE: You know, I don't know how they actually made it, but I do know that people were always
telling me, "I've had my name on the waiting list for a long time, and I haven't been able to
get my child in." So the people who got their children in were very happy. The people who
didn't ever get their children in were not all that happy. I mean they would like to have had—
but I think even those who couldn't get their children in probably didn't want to see Curry—
there was just something about it that was traditional, and people really, really liked. But
there again, changes do occur. Just—we became coeducational. The demonstration
schools—the purpose for the—maybe it was gone. We couldn't place all of the student
teachers there.
You see, it used to be that you could place all of your student teachers in your
demonstration school, if you didn't have large numbers of people. There was no way when I
came here in '62 that you could place fifty social studies teachers during a year in a high
school that had only a few social studies teachers. And I don't recall the exact number of
students that we had, but it was not a large high school. So that purpose no longer existed.
That reason for having a demonstration school no longer existed. We had good relationships
with the public schools. We could put our students there, and that worked out very well. So
the Curry issue was one of the big issues during that time. I'm trying to think if any other
things that occurred—
LD: I was going to ask you about integration, about both at the college level and in the public
schools. What that was like? When exactly it started?
LE: Well, '57 I think in Greensboro we had our first blacks to go to Grimsley [High School]. And
that was the first—because you see then we didn't have Page [High School], and we didn't
have Smith [High School]. So we had Dudley [High School], and we had Grimsley;
Greensboro Senior High is really what it was then—Dudley and Greensboro Senior High.
And both of the schools had good reputations because there had been strong teachers at
Dudley as well as strong teachers, obviously, at Grimsley. We, you know, would assume
we'd have good teachers in those high schools because they were the two high schools here
in the city. But then the integration process—let's see, we didn't place student teachers—.
First what we did was to—we had—we put our students—we still continued to place our
students in predominantly white schools even after integration began to take place. And then
as integration in the public schools became more stable—I guess that's a good word to say—
when it became more systematized, it was obvious that this is what was happening, and it
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was there.
Then the A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University] students
had been going to Dudley, and UNCG students had been going to the white schools. Well—
and here again my memory fails me as to the exact year—and I'm not sure that there was one
year that I can say that this just suddenly happened. I think, again, it was a matter of phasing
it in. I think that we started maybe placing a few of our white students in our predominantly
black schools and placing a few of our black students from A&T. And then as UNCG got
black students in teacher education programs—that was another thing too, we—when we
had black students on the campus at UNCG, you could not really justify placing them in a
school, either an all-white or an all-black school, I mean it became hard to justify that
because they were coming to school with us, and where the rest of our student teachers were
placed we should be able to place freely, you know. So I think that sort of also moved us in
that direction.
I remember the first students in social studies because I was working with our social
studies student teachers. I remember our first students when they first went to Dudley, and
there was a—. I think there was a concern on the part of the black students going into an all-white
school, of a white student going into an all-black school because remember the student
teachers we're talking about had not come through an integrated school. Today you don't
have that because most of our people have been in integrated schools. So they've already had
interactions, black and white. So it’s—I don't think it’s that big a deal. But in those days it
was when we first started. And I would say it was about, probably early seventies, when we
began to do that—maybe—
LD: So the staffs of the schools were either all black or either all white?
LE: Yes, before integration. Yes. You didn't have—in the public schools, yes. Black teachers in
the black schools, black administrators, and white—all white in the predominantly white
schools, would say predominantly white, they were white people. But then we said
predominantly white, predominantly black, because there were a few, you know back and
forth.
So—but the students that we had, and remember that even though we were
beginning to get men on campus, we didn't have in the late sixties, we didn't have that many
men coming into, let's say, social studies or English. You might have some men who were
going into science to teach, but getting men into the field came a little bit later when we
began to get more and more men coming to UNCG. So that was a change, too, when we
began to get more men into teacher education, which I think’s a fine thing. Because you
know we need strong men teachers in—even in the elementary primary grades, I think. And
then we began to get them in elementary primary grades. But also we began to get some
black students who came into teacher education as well. So when we put—and these would
be predominantly, primarily—we were talking about young women in the early days, so
we're talking about putting a young woman into Dudley or some other school, Lincoln
[Junior High School] or, you know, some other school—or Bluford, which was an
elementary school.
But our students—we worked with our students, and we worked with the teachers in
the—in both the predominantly-white and predominantly-black schools, so that student
teachers—you know you didn't want them to have a bad experience in either setting. So we
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really were—we tried to prepare our students. We tried to work with the staffs in both of
those areas. And to my knowledge, we had only a very few minor incidents where a student
teacher was not readily accepted in either locale, white or black. For the most part, I would
say, it worked far better than most people thought it would. And our student teachers were
determined. I think our student teachers were determined that they were going to do a good
job in whatever setting. And that was important. Even though they might have been a little
fearful, when we said to one of our black student teachers, "You're going to an all-white
school," or to one our white students, "You're going to an all-black school." But it was a—
we just had an interesting time.
I worked at Dudley with—they had some marvelous history teachers over at Dudley,
when I was working here in the sixties. And I don't work with them that much now, but
while I was still working with it—but of course I'm not working with it at all now. But when
I was still working with it, they'd still had strong teachers in social studies. I can speak about
that because my people worked in the schools, and we had some just outstanding teachers
over at Dudley. Two of them were named Jenkins, and one was named Robinson. Mrs.
Robinson and Mrs. Jenkins—the two Mrs. Jenkins. And they were—I had worked with them
when I did in-school television, a public in-school television from 1957 to 1960, and the—I
taught US history on television, and it went all over the state. So each summer we had a
meeting with the social studies teachers who were in the project; this was a Ford Foundation
[created by Henry and Edsel Ford, American automobile pioneers] project, and we met with
all of the teachers and we had—those three teachers came from Dudley, so I already knew
them, you know before I ever came to UNCG. I already knew those teachers over at Dudley,
and I knew their caliber. So when I was placing student teachers over there, I didn't have any
qualms. So I went over and—Mrs. Robinson and I were working on our first assignment of a
white student teacher in that history department, and she said, "Now I have talked to the
students and I have told them that this is a student who’s coming, she has never been in
school with blacks, and she has not had much experience with them, any more than they
have had experience with whites. But she is a teacher, and I expect them to treat her exactly
as they would treat any teacher here, and I want to see them behave in this manner." And
she'd given them this little pep talk. And she said—so she said, I said to the students, because
you know that this was in the seventies, and we were still debating about whether we're
going to call—whether we were going to use black or we were going to call Negro. You
know we've been saying Negro, and then there were a number of them who were beginning
to say, “We want you to call us black," particularly young blacks. So we were sensitive to
that. So anyhow, Mrs. Robinson said I said them, "Now I want to get this straight before she
comes, so we can tell her. I want you to tell me what you—how you want her to address you,
as blacks or as Negro." Now that is sensitive on the part of a teacher, isn't it?
LD: Yes.
LE: And so when, and she said she told me, very laughingly, she said the students said, "Well,
she's come up in the society when everybody was using Negro, and it may be hard,”—now
these are high school students saying this; this is very thoughtful of them—“for her to use
black because she's never done it, so she can use Negro, but she had better make the 'ro 'ro in
Negro. [laugh] I thought that was delightful. But now that's the kind of spirit of cooperation,
so I think we moved our students into an integrated situation from UNCG very well from my
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perspective.
LD: It sounds like you were quite—had quite an influence on the way that integration took place
in public schools.
LE: Well I think—I think that the universities and teacher education programs had to work
within the system and that we had to make sure that our students—and, you know, we began
to also work with them—multicultural understandings. We began to know that that was
important. And so we began to use materials that were available during those days, and
teachers in the schools had workshops to understand both ways. Black teachers to
understand white children—how they operated all of the time and vice versa—so that you
didn't have people causing problems simply because unknowingly they said or did
something. It was simply a matter of, you know, just monitoring ourselves and making sure
that we were sensitive to the situation. And I think that we at UNCG did try in our teacher
education programs to help our students develop that kind of sensitivity.
I don't mean to say that it was perfect. Heaven knows it wasn't. I doubt that it’s even
perfect today. But at least we did try. And that was another thing that we had to deal with
then, integration and changing standards for teacher education. We've been through all of
that. That's a part of our history also. And those things are—you know you learn to—you
have to just live with that too. Because you think you're established, your program is going
this way and all of a sudden you get a mandate, "We're going to evaluate you on something
else." "You’re going to have to start teaching this way," or "You're going to have to put
something else in." So we've seen a lot of changes in teacher education—I have—from 1962
until 1988 while I have been working here at UNCG. But I still think that on our campus
the—I believe that our people wanted to have a student teacher who was well qualified, in
subject matter, in curriculum for public schools, in teaching procedures, in learning how
people learn and all of that. And I feel that we have tried to maintain a good balance in that.
And there again, we haven't always been as successful as we might have been. But I think
our intention has been to maintain that kind of balance.
LD: Let me ask you some general questions about the university. Before the coeducational
transition, in the northeast in particular, I went to a women's college and one of the things
that was always remarked about women’s colleges was that there were more women on
faculty. Were there more women on the faculty in those days than there—?
LE: You know, like people talk today they're color blind, I'm sex blind. I don't ever sit around
and count up how many—I know there was concern. And there is a concern; I think today
that there are more men than there are women on the faculty. I've never counted it. I have no
idea whether that's true or not. I've heard people say. When I came here, we had a number of
men on the faculty. Now as to the proportion, as I said, I really didn't take great note of that. I
know that we had—the administrators were predominantly men. The administrators on the
campus, you know, the deans and the department—not all of the departments—not all of the
deans were. Ethel Martus [dean of health and human performance] was here when I came.
She was in PE [physical education]. The School of Nursing [dean] was, and home
economics, usually. Those three I think had women deans.
11
LD: What about the academic dean?
LE: The academic dean when I came here was Mereb Mossman [sociology and anthropology
faculty, dean of Instruction, dean of the college, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for
academic affairs]. Mereb was academic dean, which we now call vice chancellor for
academic affairs. Mereb was the academic dean.
LD: Some of the statistics tend to suggest that women from women’s colleges are more likely to
pursue graduate study, which would put them in a position to be campus faculty, and I
wondered what your thoughts were.
LE: Well I think that—
LD: Or with your experience.
LE: Well I think that women were given an opportunity at the Woman's College, and, as you
look back over our history, you think about the strong women who were here on the campus
before my day. Before I came there was [Louise] Alexander [Greensboro’s first female
lawyer, political science faculty , and who was the other one—whose name is so—it's gone
out of my mind. Oh how can I do that? Elliott Center—Harriet Elliott [history and political
science faculty, dean of women], you know, and those were strong women on the campus.
And we had a lot of strong women on the campus, but there has never been a woman
president in the history of Woman's College, and we've never had a chancellor who was a
woman here. You know, just looking at your top people. And now—of course Mereb
Mossman was our dean, but then when Mereb retired we got a male.
LD: But there has been one other woman?
LE: Yes. Since then. But now we have another male. So we kind of alternate that, don't we?
LD: Yes.
LE: I guess. The—I guess you really would have, you should have more women on a—in a
women's college, I would think you would tend to, though I would think it would not be very
appropriate to have all women, just as I don't [want] to have in a coeducational school or in a
male school—. I'd bet that [they would] never let a woman go into teaching an all-male
school though, would they?
[recording paused]
LD: I don't know.
LE: They don't have any women at West Point [United States Military Academy, West Point,
NY]—maybe they do now.
12
LD: Yeah, West Point is not just men; it's also military.
LE: Yeah, now.
LD: Yeah, I think there have been women on the faculty. I'll have to ask my husband if there
were any women on the faculty at Dartmouth [College, Hanover, New Hampshire].
LE: Yeah. Well you know, I really don't know either, but I do think that we don't want to have all
males teaching at a women's college, nor would we want to have all women. I think there is a
place for a balanced faculty even. But I do think that sometimes women are denied an
opportunity. I think that some institutions will hire a man over the woman, even though the
woman may be more qualified. And I still think that happens in some places. I hope it doesn't
happen at UNCG. We have had—I do not believe that has happened when I've been on a
search committee, but—that men have been given undue consideration over women, though.
You know it’s interesting, when we were looking for a dean for the School of Education
after—well, when Ken Howe resigned—I don't believe there was a single woman candidate
for the dean that we looked at. And then when Dr. O'Kane resigned, there was not a woman
in the list. And there is no reasoning there shouldn't be a woman as the dean for the school of
education as well as the—. Well, in the College of Arts and Sciences we have had a dean,
you know, in recent years. So I think UNCG has been pretty balanced on the whole, though
you know, maybe just in recent years we've gotten more people in administrative—more
women in administrative. And we could use more.
LD: I've heard some conjectures that women’s' salaries are not commensurate on campus with
their male colleagues, of the same—
LE: —rank.
LD: Rank. And I imagine that's something that could be easily checked.
LE: That could be easily checked. Oh, I think so. Because, you know salaries are, after all—that's
public knowledge. All you have to do is go over to the library and you can find everybody’s
salary on campus. It has to be public knowledge because we’re paid by the state [of North
Carolina].
LD: But do they list your name as well as your salary, or just a—your—a description?
LE: I think so.
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
LE: I think it has to be, by state law. In other words, anybody who wanted to know what Lois
Edinger makes, since I am paid by the state, should have the right, according to state law, to
13
go to—now, it just isn't published out here in the public domain. But it is in the public
domain. And anybody who would go to wherever it’s housed can certainly find out what the
salary is.
The—I think one of interesting things occurred in this state, historically, in terms of
public schools was that North Carolina from the time the state began to pay the teachers—
well there was no distinction made in terms of base salary for men or women or blacks or
whites. That was not true in a lot of states—southern states, where there was a distinction if
black teachers got less, or—but North Carolina has pretty much stood for an equal salary
base. Now sometimes men were given additional duties in a public school, and were paid
more so their salaries were more. But in terms of state salary, North Carolina has fairly
traditionally historically been even handed in that. Now whether that applies all the way up
to the university—
LD: Well, the difference with the university level is that raises are—
LE: That's merit. And see, you also get merit.
LD: Oh, you also do also get merit? But in some departments that's to the discretion of the
department.
LE: Oh, yes. Yes, and so there could be some discrimination. Oh yes. There is room—I mean, it's
obvious.
LD: And then it could come entrenched with a percentage base of simply what is the gap between
the upper and lower echelons. But I think it would be interesting if somebody actually did—
I'll look that up since it is something that is mentioned unofficially from time to time.
LE: One of the—I think another thing that has historically—we look at our campus and
sometimes say that UNCG, well the Woman's College, was not—Louise Alexander told the
young women that they were to be politically minded and that they were to be involved in
politics. You remember all of that?
LD: Uh-huh.
LE: And I really applaud that because I feel that very keenly—and that they should, you know,
stir up controversy and activity in order to get things done. But typically we assume that on a
women's college campus you will not have much rebellion in terms of, you know, as we
have the demonstrations and things of that sort on coeducational campus where you have
men as well.
So when we became coeducational, people began to wonder if we would have more
activity since we'd be coeducational—more like Chapel Hill, I guess—[laugh] being
involved in all of these things. But that didn't seem to happen. We did not take as active a
role in demonstrations, for example, against Vietnam [War, 1963-75]. I mean as a campus—
on campus. There were people, individuals, who were involved in demonstrations in the
community and around. And the silent vigil, you know, for peace and things like that. I'm
sure we had people on our campus who were involved in that, both faculty and students.
14
But the only time I ever saw a sort of a what you might call a "demonstration on
campus" was when it had to do with the workers, some of the workers on campus. And it
had to do something with their salaries. But our students got involved in that, and they
actually did sort of have a little demonstration and joined with the workers in protesting. It
was the cafeteria workers—I've forgotten exactly what group it was now. So we have had
that kind of thing and then the students have protested in a more polite way than—well, I say
polite, that's not really what I mean. What is the word that I want? But they have protested
certain things and have—and I remember went to Chancellor [James] Ferguson, when he
was chancellor to make their point clear about something they wanted. And so I think that
there is that possibility on campus for our students to demonstrate.
I think that our students are not docile at UNCG. I've never thought that. And that
they—but that they don't just follow a lot of different maybe fads or just getting involved and
all of those things. But I've always felt our students had an interest and some people would
say, "Well it has been predominantly—it was a women’s school." And it’s still
predominantly maybe females, and you won't get that kind of thing. But my feeling is that
our students have felt deeply about things and have made some contributions to some of the
demonstrations, but not—. You know, if you are looking through our history, you won't find
us burning anything on campus, or you know the way that some schools got.
LD: No flagrant behavior?
LE: No, nothing like that I don't think. But when we had the—oh, there have been several things
on campus that have had to be dealt with, you know. And there have been a faculty/student
committee to deal with it. And usually we have been able to iron out those situations. And
one of the situations we faced was the Speaker Ban Law. You know back in the—was that—
in the seventies? Let me think. Jim Ferguson was our chancellor. And there was an effort to
impose a speaker ban upon all of the university campuses. And we had to come up with a
way in which we could screen speakers. Our campus was very much opposed to that kind of
thing. You know we didn't want to have to—well I guess other campuses too, but we did not
want to say to a speaker, "You can't come because you may be saying something." Maybe it
was the communist line, or maybe it was some other extreme view. And so they had to
appoint a committee. We had a committee of students and of faculty and administrators, and
we had to come up with a set of procedures to govern asking people to speak on campus.
And then, you know, what we would have to do when they came on campus and that was to
satisfy, not university officials, but to satisfy the general assembly and people in the larger
community who were—who didn't want students to be exposed to contrary ideas.
LD: And this was when? This was during the—?
LE: I think it was in the seventies, early seventies, I think.
LD: Was this a response to the [Vietnam] War? Or the war—
LE: Probably had something to do with Vietnam. I wouldn't be at all surprised. Maybe late
sixties, early seventies. But that was a time when students were upset and faculty—I mean
you know faculties get upset too. So we were all kind of upset that anybody would—. Well,
15
when I first came to teach at UNCG, there was a regulation that anybody who taught at a
state university had to take an oath of allegiance to the state and to the nation. Yes sir. I
opposed that vociferously. You know, I thought my feeling was, “Do doctors have to do
that? Do lawyers have to this? Why do professors have to do this?” [laugh] But that didn't
last long. I mean, that—many people realized that was probably illegal. So when a number
of people began to ask questions about it and we got some—I think we got some good
support from the community—the larger community all over the state. That was phased out.
So we've had some interesting times. But when we got young men on campus, I
remember, you know during the seventies, when we went through that period of the young
men wearing long hair?
LD: Yes.
LE: Well, the public schools would not take a student teacher with long hair—
LD: [laughs]
LE: No. But then, you see, they had the right to turn down. They didn't have to take our student
teachers. And we all knew that. So I had a young man, just a sweet- spirited young man as he
could be. I think the public schools did two things: One, they thought they must be radicals
or rebels or something if they wore their hair long. They were people that they just didn't
want the children to associate with. And the other was they were afraid that their own
students might begin to want to wear their hair—I don’t know. But whatever it was, they
said, "No, we will not take them." And I had this young man in social studies—and he was
such a fine young man—and so I would always say to them, if I had a young man in the
class with long hair, "I must tell you this because I may not be able to place you. It's not
because the university won't place you, but we have to have a place and the public schools
have to agree to take our students." Well, he understood that, and he said, "Well, if I get my
hair cut a little bit—?" And I said, "That would help."
LD: How long was his hair?
LE: Oh, it was down about to here, I guess—down to his shoulders. So he cut it, and it was still
longer than most people liked it.
LD: Long for North Carolina?
LE: Yeah. Well, long for the public schools in North Carolina. There were other people who
were wearing it like that. But it was down right on top of his shoulders, like that. But it was
clean—which I can't say all of them had clean hair. But his was clean, and so I took him to
the school. And the principal, you know interviewed—
LD: Was this in high school?
LE: Yes. High school. And he interviewed him. And then he said to me—no the principal said, "I
just think this is a fine young man." But he said, "Our rule is that we cannot put a student
16
teacher in here who has long hair. And his hair is long." So I said, "I don't want him to work
here anyhow, if that is your attitude."
LD: [laughs]
LE: So I took him to another school, and that school took him.
LD: This is not a city-wide policy, was this? It was the principal?
LE: No. This was a different system. This was the county. This was the county. And it was
countywide. It was not just the principal, it was countywide.
LD: So the county refused him?
LE: For long hair. Well, this was a particular—we took him to a school, but it was the county
policy. And that was their policy. And they had a right to make it. I didn't argue with it, but I
just said—so we took him somewhere else. And then I had a young man who was in my
class whose hair was really long. It was down to almost his waist. And he tied it back. And
he was on the soccer team, I think it was—yes, soccer. And so he one day in class said, "Will
I have to cut my hair to do student teaching?" And I said, "The University does not require
you to cut your hair to do student teaching, but I may not be able to find a place for you to do
student teaching because the public schools will not take people with long hair sometimes."
And he said, "So you think you won't be able to place me?" And I said, "I'll try, but we may
not." He said, "Well, I just wanted to find that out because the coach told me I had to cut my
hair to play soccer." And he said, "I wasn't going to do it." But he said, "If I have to cut it for
student teaching, then I’ll cut it. And it will be for soccer and for student teaching." And so
he did. So—but you know those were things that with young women, I mean, length of the
hair didn't bother. So we did have some things that we had to be concerned with—who we
had, young men, coming in to student teaching.
LD: Were there dress codes on campus in the early sixties?
LE: When I came here the women were—well, I mean they dressed nicely, yes; they didn't wear
shorts to classes—short shorts. But then, you know they started wearing blue jeans and that
kind of thing. Now we did not encourage; in fact, we did not allow the student teacher, the
women student teachers, to wear blue jeans to student teach in. And when the skirts got
short, we reminded the girls that they would be bending over in class, and that if they wanted
to maintain any kind of order, they might take that into consideration. Because they would
probably not have much discipline and order in a classroom, when the young men saw them
bending over in the class. So that's about all that we had to say to them. It didn't mean they
had to do away with all of their short skirts, but some of them were long enough so that, if
they—you know, if you bend over to work with somebody at a desk. So it—we encouraged
them to follow the dress code in the public school. And I think that's reasonable because you
don't want to stand out and look different, if you're a first-year teacher or if you're there as a
student teacher. You want to blend in as much as possible, so you can be successful. I mean
just in terms of your dress. So, we didn't have—I never did have to do very much about that,
17
just a gentle reminder. And I think that was true typically on the campus.
Another thing we did that certainly is a part of our history was when I came back
from being the president of NEA—I had a leave of absence—and I was in Washington [DC].
Of course, I had a great many contacts with the educators all over the country, but in
Washington, DC, as well, because that's where the National Education Association
headquarters were. So when I came back, we were concerned at that time—this was '65
when I came back, '66—'67, somewhere along in there. We began to talk about the fact that
our students really had no inner-city experiences because we are pretty much, you know here
in Greensboro all around. And we began to think maybe our students could profit from
that—some of our students who might want to go into a large system after they've left here.
So, I worked with my friends in Washington, and we identified two schools in
Washington—two high schools in Washington—and we sent student teachers to those two
high schools to do their student teaching. I had several in social studies. Dr. Bowles had a
couple in English. We had some in physical education who went. I believe those were the
three areas that we had student teachers to go. And we would go up and observe. We
couldn't go very often because that was a right good trip. And when I went, I would observe
all of the student teachers, and when Dr. Bowles went, she would. So it worked out. It was a
wonderful experience for those youngsters. And they came back and shared their
experiences ’cause you know they always came back toward the end, and we would have a
little while to have them back in class for a little bit. So they came back and shared some of
the experiences that they had had in an inner-city school. Which those experiences were eye
openers for—because these students had not been in a school like that, many of them. Well,
any of them, at that time. But we had some students who, because of that, went into a large
city system. They felt comfortable, and they were interested in working in such a situation.
So that was another thing we did.
So, you know as I look back on our years and my own work here, I had an
opportunity to do so many wonderful things—exciting things. I took people on—I took some
public school teachers under the Fulbright [United States government-sponsored program
named for US Senator J. William Fulbright to foster bilateral relationships with other
countries]—the group projects abroad. I took a group to Pakistan for a summer. I took
another group to Japan for a summer. And this was working with teachers in service because
you know that in the school of education we work with teachers in service as well as
preservice. And we're consultants to the schools in that sense. We try to help them as we can.
And that was when, you know, we changed the curriculum, and we began to teach about
Asia and Africa and the Pacific Islands much more than we'd ever done before. So our
teachers weren’t prepared. So we were working to help get them prepared and UNCG, our
history and anthropology people, had courses that teachers could come and could take so that
they could feel more comfortable teaching about Africa and Asia and the Pacific Islands. I'm
very happy to have been a part of UNCG because I really think that—certainly while I was
there—we had an opportunity to do some things that were different, that were innovative,
that I think enhanced teacher education, and I think it enhanced public education. And I'm
very pleased that UNCG had—that I had a part in it and that UNCG had a part in it. I think
that we've had a pretty good history, at least from—oh, it’s not everything I would want it to
be. I'm not [unclear] that there were things that I was displeased with every now and then.
Surely, a person ever has everything exactly like you want it. But from 1962 to 1988, I think
that I can safely say that I'm happy to be a part of that history.
18
LD: Well thank you very much. I think that's a good note on which we can end. And I thank you
again for being able to interview.
[End of Interview]