Oral history interview with Carol Bryden Passmore, 1991 [text/print transcript]

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UNCG CENTENNIAL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Carol Bryden Passmore
INTERVIEWER: Cheryl Junk
DATE: February 2, 1991
[Begin Side A]
CJ: And I'm in the home of Carol Bryden Passmore, Woman's College class of 1965. Carol, I think the best way to start would be for you to say the years that you were at Woman's College [of the University of North Carolina], what your course of study was and why you chose Woman's College.
CP: I was there from 1961 to 1965, and I went to Woman's College because my father wanted me to go to Duke [University, Durham, North Carolina], and I didn't want to. And I wanted to go to Swarthmore [College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania] and didn't get in, and Woman's College was the [both laugh] alternate choice.
CJ: And what was your course of study there?
CP: Sociology. I went, initially not knowing a major and being pre-med until I started doing terrible in science and then switched, eventually, to sociology.
CJ: When I looked at the dates that you were at Woman's College, I was impressed that you were there at the time of the greatest transition the college has ever experienced. In 1961, blacks had only been at the school since 1955 [Editor’s note: black students were first admitted in the fall of 1956], and men were admitted in 1963. Tell me how it felt to be a student on the campus in those years with those changes going on.
CP: Well, in regard to the black students, I had been involved in the desegregation of High Point [North Carolina] High School, so I sort of gravitated toward the black students. Don't remember knowing any black students my freshman year, I don't think there were any in Jamison [Residence Hall], that I recall. But my sophomore year, there were a number of black students and—the number—twenty, maybe total, out of the student body. And I knew them all, I guess. In fact, my mother—my parents lived in High Point—and my mother came to campus to find me one day, and I wasn't in my room. And she went to the library and found a black student, and said, "Do you know where Carol is?" And the student said, "Oh, yes. She's—"
So I'm not aware of a lot of tension around the black students. My—was it my sophomore or junior year that we participated in some of the demonstrations in Greensboro? It must have been '63. I think that's the year that there was a revival of 2
student protest in Greensboro. And we were permitted to go downtown to the demonstrations if we did not wear our class jackets, which had WC [Woman’s College] on the pocket or our class ring which also identified us as Woman's College students. I don't recall men on campus until '64 or '65. And I remember the year before that, which I—if my memory's right would have been my junior year—there was a lot of discussion about whether we should have men on campus or whether we shouldn't have men on campus. And as I recall, we divided up fairly evenly into the pro-men group and the against-men group. I was part of that group.
CJ: Which one?
CP: The against-men. I thought that being a women's college had some advantages that we might as well keep. And as I recall, somebody had some statistics of our academic ranking among women's colleges and where it would plummet to when we were ranked among all colleges as just another coed university. [both chuckle] But my—it must have been my senior year; I had two or three men in my classes. One man who was in several of my philosophy classes and I became fairly good friends. He was an older guy, married, returning to school in Greensboro, which he could now do since he could be admitted to Woman's College. But we'd go to the coffee shop, whatever it was called, and sit and talk between classes. I was living off-campus that year, my senior year. I think that the first thing men learned was not to open the door for a woman because when they did, they had to stand there while hundreds of women went through the door. [both laugh]
CJ: You're the second person who told me that. The first person was a man who had done it. [both chuckle]
CP: Right.
CJ: And had been late for class because he did. You were fairly close to some of the black students you mentioned. What was their feeling of how they were received on campus? Often the perceptions of whites and blacks differ about this kind of thing, and how did they feel about being on the campus, if you can say?
CP: I don't know that my perceptions would be the same as theirs. I was not aware of a lot of tension or of people—the way there had been in my high school—there were a lot of people who were impolite, unkind to black students, and I don't recall noticing that. I do recall also that they had white friends as well as black friends, which was also not the case in my high school. There were some CORE meetings held on campus, and—
CJ: Congress of Racial Equality?
CP: Yes, and attended by a number of white students as well as black students, so I think that, though they probably had fewer friends and less social life than they would have had at a black school, that they didn't have an uncomfortable situation.
CJ: You mentioned a couple of traditions—the class jackets and the class rings—that have 3
come up in other interviews. What other traditions still existed on the campus, and what parietal rules still existed when you were there?
CP: What? What kind of rules?
CJ: Parietal rules, like hours and things like that, and if there was a change from '61 to '65, Talk about that also.
CP: There were a lot of rules. [both laugh]
CJ: Okay.
CP: We had to have—freshman year, at least, we had to have lights out by eleven [pm], I think, something like that. And we had to be in the dorm by—I don't remember—ten or ten thirty [pm]. There wasn't really much place to go except the library anyway. Freshman year you weren't allowed to leave campus on weekends without written permission from your parents. So you really were—did feel you were kind of a prisoner on campus. But I remember persuading Miss [Lillian] Cunningham to talk to my parents on the phone and give me permission to come over to Camp New Hope, actually, to—I think it was a Presbyterian religious group. I was very ecumenical my freshman year. [CJ chuckles] In fact that's one of the things I was remembering this morning was that a lot of churches in Greensboro sent a bus, if they were a big church, or a private car if they were a smaller church. And they all lined up outside the dorms every Sunday morning. And so I just went down the row—
CJ: Oh, to pick up the students?
CP: To pick up students. I went down the row, and I went to the Moravian Church and the Episcopal Church and the—one of the Presbyterian churches had coffee and doughnuts and orange juice, [laughter] so if you missed breakfast and you were hungry; you went to the Presbyterian Church. So I did a lot of church, and my entire freshman year I went to different churches the entire year, which—having been raised a Southern Baptist, was a very enlightening experience.
CJ: So you had to have permission to go to different churches?
CP: No. No. You just had to have permission if you wanted to leave campus for the weekend.
CJ: Oh, okay.
CP: I don't recall you had to sign out to go to church. I don't know if we—
CJ: Did you have to sign out to go to places on campus?
CP: I don't think so. I don't remember that.
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CJ: Could you leave at all in the first six weeks as a freshman?
CP: I don't remember that either.
CJ: All right. And what about the traditions? What was there when you were there?
CP: Well, I wasn't quite done with the rules yet. I think—
CJ: Oh, I'm sorry.
CP: I think we still had to wear a dress to the dining hall.
CJ: Okay.
CP: I think you couldn't wear slacks, and there was a big thing—if you had your gym suit on and your raincoat, you just didn't take your raincoat off. You could sneak by as having a dress on.
CJ: That was popular in the '40s too.
CP: I don't remember a lot of traditions because I wasn't a real social person. I wasn't real involved in the social life on campus.
CJ: Did they have sister classes? Freshman-junior, sophomore-senior sister classes?
CP: If they did, I don't remember it.
CJ: Okay. Did they still have the Daisy Chain?
CP: Yes.
CJ: Okay.
CP: Yes. They did have the Daisy Chain.
CJ: Were you on the Daisy Chain when you were a sophomore?
CP: No.
CJ: No. Okay. And when you graduated, did they still do it?
CP: I don't remember—I was just trying to remember graduation. I didn't want to go.
CJ: Okay.
CP: I went under protest. The speaker was a news personality, a TV commentator I think, but 5
I cannot remember who he was.
CJ: Why didn't you want to go?
CP: I didn't want to go to my high school graduation either. I just didn't like that kind of ceremony particularly, and the UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro] one—as I recall, there were so many of us, they just kind of waved their hands and said, "Okay, you're graduated," [both chuckle] instead of having some individual ceremony. That may be wrong, but that's how I recall it.
CJ: You did have class jackets and class colors and class rings.
CP: Yes, and dorm songs. Jamison had a song.
CJ: Oh.
CP: I don't remember the Jamison song. I don't sing well anyway. But freshman year in the dorm, there was a lot of dorm spirit and dorm activity. Miss Cunningham—one of things we had was a late evening speaker. Like ten or ten thirty [pm] at night, we would have someone come in, and I was on the committee to arrange that, and poor Miss Cunningham was all upset that the first thing we wanted was Dr. [Warren] Ashby [director of the Residential College] to come and talk about sex. [both laugh] Which he did wonderfully at, but I think Miss Cunningham was in the corner blushing the entire time.
CJ: He did come?
CP: He did come. He was a philosophy professor, who died fairly recently, I think, and was very well liked by the students and very able to communicate with them and very good at talking about sex back in those days when we didn't talk about sex too much with grownups.
CJ: Right. What were the rules about smoking and drinking and dating? If you remember.
CP: Well, they handed out little four-packs of cigarettes at the cafeteria door on occasion—not the college, but they allowed cigarette companies to hand out sample packs of cigarettes. I did not smoke, so I don't remember what the rules were about smoking. Well, I had a roommate that smoked. So there mustn’t have been a rule against smoking. We had in our dorm once a month, we had a little “our end of the hall” party, and we all smoked a cigarette, and we read a book called, Love Without Fear, which was all about sex, of course, as we seemed to spend a lot of time thinking about sex. [both laugh] Drinking you weren't supposed to do.
CJ: Was it a shipping offense?
CP: I don't know. I don't recall anyone that I knew getting in trouble doing it. My roommate 6
my freshman year was elected the beauty queen for the whole UNC [University of North Carolina] system. She came over to Chapel Hill and won this election, which was apparently unheard-of for a freshman to do, apparently. And she had a lot of dates, but she was also a very prim and proper, well-behaved young lady, so I don't think that she got into any—
CJ: Were men allowed to visit the dorms?
CP: In the dorms? No way. I mean—in the parlor, yes. No farther.
CJ: No farther. Right. Were there things like room inspections?
CP: I think there were.
CJ: Do you remember having to take a test on the handbook?
CP: No. Did I? Did I have to? Do you know?
CJ: Did you have to?
CP: I don't know.
CJ: I think you had to. [both laugh]
CP: I may have. I don't remember it.
CJ: I'm not sure. Well, let's talk a little about some of the intangibles—as Dr. [Charles Duncan] McIver [founding president of the institution] said, "The atmosphere of the place." Every university is a sort of contract relationship between the students and itself, and the university has expectations of the students, and the students come with expectations of the university. What were your and your friends' relationships with administrators, and how did you think of them?
CP: I can't think of the chancellor's name, but we liked him. And the only time I really remember seeing him was on Founders Day when we all had to dress up once again and go to—what's the auditorium called? McIver?
CJ: Dana?
CP: No. Not Dana. That's Guilford. Anyway—
CJ: I'll think of it in a second.
CP: And he spoke then.
CJ: Aycock [Auditorium]. 7
CP: Aycock. Yes. Which also—there were also lovely performances there. I remember going to Annie, Get Your Gun and to different dances and a number of drama—
CJ: Was that part of a series for students or part of an artists' series for the public?
CP: It seemed to me that it was—there were a lot of students there. But there were also public there, but I recall it being fairly much for students and fairly inexpensive for students. There were also the ten cent movies in the student union, whatever it was called, for entertainment.
CJ: Was the—you were talking about the chancellor. Was that Dr. [Walter Clinton] Jackson?
CP: No. I can't remember his name. I became—
CJ: Dr. [James] Ferguson?
CP: I'm not going to remember, Cheryl.
CJ: Okay.
CP: I became quite well acquainted with the dean, Mereb Mossman [faculty in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, first as dean of instruction, dean of the College, dean of faculty, vice chancellor for academic affairs] who was dean of—I don't know what she was dean of. Students, maybe. I—I—
CJ: She taught sociology at first, and then she was dean, I think, of students.
CP: I had her for social work, and she and I liked each other, and maybe she liked all students, but I certainly felt a very close relationship with her and visited her several times after we moved back to the area.
CJ: What would you say the general attitude toward the administration was on the part of students?
CP: I'd say, as much as we thought about it which wasn't a whole lot, it was probably fairly good. I don't recall there being any particular issue or concern. And toward the faculty? Some of them we liked a lot, and some of them we thought were pretty strange. [laughs] My freshman chemistry teacher, which I think she was twenty-one and had a doctorate and was quite incapable of comprehending the fact that we couldn't understand what she was talking about, so it was not a really successful relationship, for me at least. Also my freshman English teacher, whose name I don't remember, every time he leaned over his pens fell out of his pocket, which was a cause for great amusement in the class.
CJ: Yes. [pause] What—was the honor code active then, and were there things like hall boards and judicial boards? And if so, who ran them, and how seriously did the students take it and so forth? 8
CP: It was not something I was involved with, but there was a student court, and I don't recall quite what it was called. I never took part in it nor got called up before it for breaking any rules. There was an honor code, as I recall. I don't think students I knew had any problem with it.
CJ: Was it something that was at the front of students’ minds? Or where was it for the student body—something conscious or something in the background.
CP: For me obviously, it was in the background, and I really can't speak for other students.
CJ: To your best knowledge, who ran the campus judicial system?
CP: I understood it was run by students.
CJ: Okay. The school motto was and still is "Service."
CP: Service. You don't want the slogan, "Educate a—[laughter]
CJ: Oh, yes. I love the slogan, " Educate a—
CP: —a woman, and you educate a family.”
CJ: Right. That's Dr. McIver's famous motto—"Educate a woman…" But no, the school motto was "Service." When you all came and when you left, how conscious were you of the motto? How much did it mean to you?
CP: I don't recall being conscious of the motto at all. I do recall getting involved in one service project, which would have been my junior or senior year, which was collecting books to send to—textbooks and other books—to send to underdeveloped countries. I got—I also was involved in a student summer project totally unrelated to the university. I went on Operation Crossroads Africa to Africa in the summer of '63.
CJ: Say again the name of it?
CP: Operation Crossroads Africa.
CJ: Okay.
CP: [It] was a student service project which, obviously, I heard about at UNCG, but I don't think that it had any relation to the campus except they allowed them to recruit there.
CJ: Was it for credit?
CP: No.
CJ: And what did you do there? 9
CP: We—the object of Crossroads Africa at that point was to have African students see that manual labor was an okay thing, and so a group of American students went and worked with a group of African students doing some kind of building or other work project. I was in Botswana, and we built a building that was going to be used as a library and community center for the community it was in.
CJ: Wow. That's impressive.
CP: Well, it was a—it was great fun. And as I debating whether to let Heather go camping last weekend when it was obviously going to be 15 [degrees] at night or something. But my mother let me go to Africa when I was—you know. [laughs] So how can I keep this kid home from a weekend camping trip. How did I get myself into this box?
CJ: Kind of skews the perspective, doesn't it?
CP: Right.
CJ: Why did most of the people that you knew go to college?
CP: There was—at UNCG—at Woman's College, then, which—one of the things I think we kind of felt was that it was a state school that had to let anybody in, which I don't know how true that was, but that was the way we felt about it. And the campus was fairly well divided up into about eighty percent girls who wore their matching cardigans and skirts and knee socks and wore their little pin and were going to either get married immediately or be a school teacher until they did get married. And then there were the other twenty percent of us oddballs, [laughter] who refused to wear our matching cardigan and skirt and wore whatever we felt like and were slightly odd and were not planning to get married immediately. Nor were we planning to be school teachers. [laughs] I don't know if UNCG, or Woman's College, really provided that many school teachers, but that was my general perception. That's where everyone was going—back to their various counties to be a school teacher.
CJ: So the teaching mission was still very much there when you were there?
CP: Yes.
CJ: Tell me about—a little more about dorm life. What kinds of amenities could you have in the rooms, and what kinds of activities did you do with each other and in the dorms? I mean, were there things like pillow fights and playing bridge and things like that?
CP: Discussing sex every night. [laughs]
CJ: Yes. Right. Well, you can do that while you—
CP: Right. My freshman year, the dorms were very crowded. I was in a—initially, in a dorm room with three girls instead of two. And I actually had the top bunk, and the night that 10
Miss North Carolina won the Miss America pageant, which was my freshman year, I fell out of bed landing on one of those jaggedy [sic] rails.
CJ: You fell out of bed because of the pageant?
CP: I don't know why. I had never fallen out of bed before or have I since, but it was that night, whether it had anything to do with that or not.
CJ: This was in Jamison?
CP: This was in Jamison. One of my roommates had a coffee pot. One of my roommates got up at five am to do her face, and etcetera. I got up at six thirty [am] and hit the dining room at six forty-five [am] when the eggs were still hot and breakfast was fresh, and it wasn't crowded. But needless to say, I didn't relate to these two roommates real well because I didn't do my face and didn't dress myself to a "T" just to go off to my classes. Then sophomore and junior year one could, hopefully, choose one's roommate. And then I—
CJ: So you could not choose a roommate in your freshman year?
CP: You didn't know anybody.
CJ: Right.
CP: I mean, you just were put in with the—in fact, I don't recall doing—Loren did it. My son who's a freshman this year, did a little survey—these are my interests, and I couldn't possibly stand to live somebody who did so and so, and I would love to have my roommate like so and so. I don't recall even that. I just arrived and found roommates.
CJ: Did you change roommates?
CP: Yes. My sophomore year I roomed with someone else I had met freshman year and then met the person who became my roommate, I guess, middle of sophomore year. And then we roomed together junior year and would have roomed together senior year if I hadn't lived at home.
CJ: You lived at home your senior year? That was Jamestown [North Carolina]?
CP: High Point [North Carolina].
CJ: High Point. Okay.
CP: My father was teaching at Guilford [College], so we just commuted together.
CJ: Oh, yes. Yes. What kinds of things did you do after hours in the dorm together? And was there a cohesiveness, or were you all just fairly individuals? 11
CP: Well, I was one of the individuals, so I don't really know what the others did. I read a lot, spent a lot of time at the library. Didn't date—I guess I didn't really date very much at all. I used to sit—we did think about men even if we weren't dating. And Randall Jarrell [associate professor of English, American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, novelist, and the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that now bears the title Poet Laureate] played tennis outside my window every afternoon, and it was just—
CJ: Oh, the poet?
CP: Yes. The poet, so it was just really great, you know—
CJ: Oh.
CP: —to sit on the window sill and watch Randall Jarrell play tennis. I never had him for a class because I was—
CJ: Did he teach there?
CP: He taught there. I was afraid to take a class from him, actually. Besides, I'm not a poet. It wouldn't have been appropriate anyway, but he was one of the neat people on campus.
CJ: Oh, yes. That's why his portrait is hanging in the library, I guess. I didn't realize he taught there.
CP: Yes.
CJ: Wow. Did you have a required chapel when you were there?
CP: No.
CJ: No. I don't know when that went out. But it apparently did. You said that the campus was fairly evenly divided between those who did want men and those who did not. Those of you who did not want men, were your fears realized in the two years that men were on the campus, and what were your fears?
CP: I guess we were arguing the argument that if there men in class, then we would be less likely to speak out, and so on. I had so little contact with men that I don't know that at that point my fears were realized. When I look at the Alumni News [university magazine] now, I see a fair balance of women still holding offices and so on, but I also see a lot of men holding offices. I don't know what the ratio is now.
CJ: What—did you know any of the men well enough to know how it felt to them? Did you hear any conversations?
CP: The only men I knew were older than college age and had their own life in Greensboro 12
and were not looking for—to become a part of the campus life. So I really—they were just very glad to be able to complete their education at a convenient location instead of commuting to [UNC] Chapel Hill or going somewhere else.
CJ: What was the ratio, roughly, of commuter students to dorm students?
CP: There were almost no commuter students. You could not live off-campus. I don't know when you could live off-campus. You certainly couldn't freshman year. I don't think you could—I don't think I ever knew anybody who lived off-campus.
CJ: Except those older men?
CP: Except those older men. Well, that's not true. I had one friend my junior or senior—well, I lived off-campus my senior year. I lived at home, so obviously you could. But it was not—there were certainly not a lot of students living in apartments around the university. Most students still lived in the dorm. It was just the accepted place to live.
CJ: Yes. How important were intercollegiate athletics to the women, and did the women have teams?
CP: Did we have teams?
CJ: Did you have teams?
CP: [laughs] Did we? I don't know.
CJ: Okay.
CP: I was on the swimming team—synchronized swimming.
CJ: Oh, yes.
CP: And that was a lot of fun. We gave a performance each year, and I remember a couple of trips. We went to [North Carolina] State [University, Raleigh, North Carolina] and gave a performance for some reason. And that was fun. But other than that, I didn't want to take any of the PE [physical education] classes, and I liked swimming so that's how I kind of—I took advanced life saving and then water safety instructor and then I got into the water ballet class. And then I had to take a PE class, and I got into gymnastics with a lady from one of the Scandinavian countries, who did not make you wear your gym suit. [laughter]
CJ: When what?
CP: Which was one of the virtues of getting a class with this particular lady was you did not have to wear this silly little white gym suit thing. [laughs]
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CJ: What did the gym suit look like?
CP: Well, it was just was a blouse with a short white skirt. And I guess it had some kind of bloomers that went under it, I don't remember.
CJ: Like a little tennis skirt?
CP: Yes, but not nearly as attractive as nice tennis skirts. [pause] The other thing that happened when—our starting point on the change was that [John F.] Kennedy [35th president of the United States] was killed my junior year?
CJ: 1963.
CP: 1963 would have been the fall of my junior year.
CJ: November 22, 1963.
CP: Yes. I really remember that. Well, I also remember the Bay of Pigs [unsuccessful military invasion of Cuba undertaken by a United States Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored paramilitary group on April 1961]
CJ: Okay.
CP: That happened—the Bay of Pigs happened, and I don't think I was—that was my sophomore year. I wasn't that keenly aware of what was going on. I wasn't watching the news or reading the newspaper and following world events. But in the room next to mine was a student from Panama—
CJ: Oh, my.
CP: —who was very upset. I don't know if she was an international affairs major or something like that, but she at least knew what was going on. And she stayed up that night dancing and using castanets in her room. I remember this little click, click, click coming through the wall.
CJ: Was she happy?
CP: No. I don't think so. I think she thought we would all die before morning.
CJ: Yes.
CP: And—
CJ: Was that the general feeling?
CP: That was the general feeling. As I say, I really wasn't clued in to how—why this was 14
happening or what was going on.
CJ: Was that something only you knew about, or did everyone know?
CP: Everyone knew. I don't recall now how I found out, but everyone knew and was fairly upset. Kennedy's death—that year I had a—I didn't have a class at eleven o'clock [am], and I was in the habit of going back to my dorm room and turning on the radio and being there for a while until it was time to go to lunch. So I heard the news that Kennedy was shot, and there was no one else in the dorm. I went rushing out, and there was no one there to talk to. That was really upsetting. I went—I then went—I knew where my roommate was in class, and I went and waited outside the door for her. And they—I don't think—I can't remember if they dismissed classes. They didn't immediately because I went that afternoon to German class. I think it was up to the teacher's discretion, and this elderly German guy I had for third-year German could not understand why we were all so upset. So we went on and had German class. And then I remember Dr. Allen, my sociology teacher, crying in front of the class, crying in front of a class of thirty women, which—
CJ: Donald Allen?
CP: Yes. We already liked him. Then we just—then we adored him. At last someone here understood how upset we were.
CJ: Oh, my. And he just broke down in front of the class?
CP: Yes. Yes. We were trying to discuss the matter, and he did break down and—so then we all cried.
CJ: Were there televisions on campus, and did you see the funeral?
CP: Yes. There was a television in the lobby—the parlor. I guess that's what it was called still, the parlor, which stayed on pretty much after that happened.
CJ: Were there any local memorial services for him in the town?
CP: Well, it was very close to Thanksgiving that year—
CJ: Yes.
CP: —and so we went home.
CJ: Okay.
CP: I remember my roommate and I—it was drizzling, typical November, rainy drizzle, and we walked and walked in the dark off campus. [chuckles] But we must have—I mean, we used to walk downtown at night. It must have still been safe. 15
CJ: So you and your roommate just walked and walked the day he was shot. In the evening?
CP: It was—yes. Must have been a Tuesday?
CJ: It was either a Thursday or a Friday.
CP: Okay, so it was the next week we went home for Thanksgiving.
CJ: It was the next week. It was a Thursday because the funeral—I saw the first TV coverage on a Friday. Our school—I remember that very clearly. So I think it was a Thursday. It was. It was the week before Thanksgiving. That's right. Do you recall any other national events that shook the campus or affected the campus?
CP: Those are the two that come immediately to my mind. Well, plus the civil rights struggle in Greensboro, of course, didn't shake the campus, but it was something that we were aware of.
CJ: Tell me about that. What were the issues, and what were the activities, and who was involved? Was A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina] involved also?
CP: I knew a number of A&T students. I was—by that time involved with the American Friends Service Committee. And Dick Ramsey, who was in the High Point office of the Service Committee, was the college secretary and was offering support to students who were participating in the efforts to desegregate various facilities in Greensboro.
CJ: Yes.
CP: So I went frequently to meetings that he sponsored. I met Jesse Jackson [American civil rights activist and Baptist minister, candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, shadow United States Senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997].
CJ: Say again?
CP: I met Jesse Jackson.
CJ: Oh, my. Oh, my.
CP: Well, at that time he was just another one of the guys. There were about four guys that sort of hung around together. He was one of these four who were friends with Dick, and so I would see them occasionally.
CJ: Was he president of the student body at A&T yet?
CP: Well, I don't recall that. I think he was there pretty much the same years I was. 16
CJ: Was this before the sit-ins or after the sit-ins?
CP: It was after. I mean, the sit-ins were started—didn't they—it's amazing how blurry dates get. They started when I was still in high school, and then there was a lull, and then there was this increased student activism.
CJ: I should know this. I thought the first one was 1960, but I'm not sure.
CP: I think that's right. That would have been my junior or senior year in high school, and I knew—besides the one black student at my school—some other black students and how excited they were about that happening.
CJ: So did you attend that sit-in?
CP: The first one? No. No. We did a little bit of local demonstrating in High Point, but not very much.
CJ: What did you—what activities did you take part in in Greensboro, then?
CP: I went to just a few of the marches. Marches? I don't know if they were marches or not.
CJ: Demonstrations?
CP: Yes, demonstrations. And then I also went on a couple of the weekend work camps. I came to one in Durham. In fact, we went and had a series of four out at Bahama [North Carolina]. We were digging a basement for a church, and one of the things we did was come into town and picket an ice cream store, which I think is not still here. [laughter] I don't remember what ice cream store it was. I've since met the lady whose husband was the pastor of the church since we came back to Durham.
CJ: Oh, my.
CP: And talked to her about it.
CJ: When you think back on your years at Woman's College/UNCG—the name changed in 1963—but what effect did those years and did UNCG have on your life?
CP: Well, it was probably the wrong school for me to be at. I was graduated, what, seventh in a high school of four hundred, and UNC—or Woman's College—was very happy to have me, and I did dismally my first couple of years. I remember being called to the Administration Building to talk to some lady, who wanted to know what was wrong, why I wasn't fulfilling my potential—
CJ: Oh, dear.
CP: —and, of course, I didn't know why I wasn't fulfilling my potential. But I think it wasn't 17
until, I think, my senior year I made all As, but before that I had quite a checkered academic career. It was not [unclear]
CJ: Let me stop this while you tend the fire.
[recording paused]
CJ: Okay. You were talking about UNCG maybe being the wrong place.
CP: Yes. I would probably have been better off at a smaller school. My advisor and I didn't get along real well. She was sure I should join the military or, if not the military, at least go work for the Red Cross [humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education]. [both laugh] And I guess my junior and senior were much better when I began taking sociology and anthropology courses. Anthropology was particularly interesting after I had come back from Africa—
CJ: Oh, yes.
CP: —plus, the anthropology teacher thought it was great that she had a student that had been off to Africa for the summer. So I pretty much enjoyed my classes my junior and senior year, though my freshman and sophomore year I didn't. And biology—my father was chairman of the biology department at Guilford, and I sat next to a gal whose father was the chairman of the biology department at Davidson [College, Davidson, North Carolina], and we were both doing awful, and so we just sat and comforted each other. [laughter] And it wasn't—it was just the memorizing—the—just a whole lot of new names of something else to memorize, and I just didn't do it. Chemistry I didn't understand with this lady who was so smart. But biology it was just—
CJ: Was that—you're talking about taking biology in the first two years. Was there a core course that everybody had to take their first two years, and then the major—you could begin your major, or how did that work?
CP: Well, considering I didn't really know what my major was, anyway, I'm not sure.
CJ: Oh. Okay.
CP: But I somehow got labeled pre-med. I'm not sure why, and so that's why I was in biology and chemistry. And I did not take the second semester of chemistry.
CJ: Were there courses everyone had to take?
CP: I think so. You had to take PE, and you had to take English. The freshman and sophomore English were fairly standard. I didn't take any math. I don't recall what exempted me from it because I remember other people struggling with math. 18
CJ: Was there such a thing as Western Civilization then?
CP: Yes.
CJ: Was it required?
CP: I think it was. I had a very nice—a good teacher for that. She would read it to us out of 1066 and all that on occasion to amuse us, but, again, it was a lot of memorizing. You know, I remember going to the final exams going, "[Sandro] Botticelli [Italian painter of the early Renaissance] painted pear shaped nudes, and that's all I can remember about the entire history of the world." [laughs]
CJ: The old sex theme again, I guess.
CP: Right. We were big on that. And then Dr. Parker was one of the really neat teachers in history. I didn't have him for that beginning history class, but then I had him later and liked him a lot.
CJ: Dr. Parker?
CP: Dr. Parker.
CJ: Franklin Parker?
CP: I think so. I also remember taking an introductory psychology course from a person who was writing his own textbook and had it—dittos, I guess, mimeographed pages for us which we had to sign with our life that we would bring these back so that no one would steal his work. He threatened to flunk us, not only his course, but any other course he could flunk us in if we lost any of the pages. That kind of put me off psychology.
CJ: So you used the manuscript for your textbook?
CP: Yes. Yes, we did.
CJ: Ooh. That is risky, isn't it?
CP: The psychology department was a little strange then. There was one of the—not this guy whose name I've forgotten, but another guy had a picture of his wife breastfeeding his baby on his desk, which in the—I grew up to be a La Leche League leader and pushed breastfeeding, but at that time, it was a little strange.
CJ: Yes. [laughs] Yes.
CP: And what's the other history teacher's name who—Dr. [Walter] Luczynski? Was that his name? He always wore a red necktie. He was going to give a pop quiz if he had on his red necktie, you could rest assured, and he always carried his umbrella and would walk along 19
tapping himself on top of the head with it. [both laugh] We had strange people there and also very nice people.
CJ: Back to—go ahead.
CP: Well, my freshman and sophomore year I spent a lot of time contemplating changing majors. I wanted to be a recreation major for a while, and I wanted to—and I spent a lot of time contemplating changing schools. I think New College [Sarasota, Florida]—no, St. John's [New York, NewYork], where they do the great books curriculum. I thought that would be neat, and I should switch to St. John's, which I didn't do. But my freshman and sophomore year were fairly wasted. I'm probably one of those people who should have waited—taken a year off before I went to school.
CJ: What made you stay?
CP: Well, parental expectations and lack of money to send me somewhere else, and it wasn't that bad. It was okay by the time—
CJ: Yes. We were talking earlier about the atmosphere of the place and—. What were some of the unspoken expectations that the university had of students?
CP: We needed to be ladylike. That's—I think that that was—when we went off-campus we should be good representatives of the campus.
CJ: What did ladylike mean then?
CP: Behaving yourself and—. I don't know how far you'd go at labeling that—not getting drunk in public and being improper with boys in public and not doing anything that you shouldn't do.
CJ: Was that connected to not wearing your class rings and your class jackets at civil rights demonstrations?
CP: I don't remember the rationale for that because I—my sense was that they just didn't want anyone to know that any Woman's College students would take part in that, which some of the black students thought was pretty awful.
CJ: Yes. So they felt—how did they feel about that?
CP: That was one—the one time I remember them feeling really negative about the university. It wouldn't—they thought all the students of the university should go down and support this, and instead the university was saying, "Look, if you're going, don't tell anybody you came from here." At least, that was the way they saw it.
CJ: The university didn't want to take credit for it?
20
CP: No.
CJ: Yes. What were some other unspoken expectations that you can think of?
CP: That's really the main one that comes to mind.
CJ: When the men came in, obviously the ratio was such that men could get a date no matter what, but did you notice a change in attitude of the women? I mean, were they scrambling to get dates with the guys or were they business as usual, or were these guys—how were they treated?
CP: Well, if any—I was an upperclassman by then, so if any freshman men came in who just wanted to be part of the freshman class, I was not aware of them. As I say, the men I knew were all—had a separate life in the community and were not your typical college freshmen. My sense is that it was several years before there were many entering freshman men.
CJ: I think that's right. I believe that's right. Well, before we quit, are there any other amusing anecdotes or fond memories of things that you want to be certain to say that you will kick yourself if you haven't said?
CP: I was just remembering sunbathing.
CJ: Oh, tell me about sunbathing.
CP: Sunbathing—well, there were certain tennis courts, I guess they were, set off for sunbathing, and they were nicely screened so that they had the green netting around the court so that you wouldn't be seen from outside. Though there were small planes known to fly over these tennis courts with a fairly great frequency. [chuckling] I did not sunbathe. The only day I decided I needed a tan—
[End Side A—Begin Side B]
CP: —I skipped lunch and a lot of people that ate lunch got food poisoning this one day from the chicken a la king, so I felt kind of—well, the one day I pick to sunbathe it was a good day to do it.
CJ: Well, you got me interested now. What was the sunbathing? Was it a la mode, in the buff or—?
CP: Well, theoretically you had your swimming suit on, but people got pretty—
CJ: I see.
21
CP: —pretty naked.
CJ: I see. [both laugh]
CP: And a lot of girls did that every day, I mean—
CJ: To get an even tan, you mean?
CP: Yes. Yes. Well, you know. Having a tan was a good thing in those days, and so a lot of girls spent their free time out—I also remember—I don't know if the little shopping area down off the edge of campus is still there.
CJ: Oh, yes. Tate Street?
CP: Tate Street. Right. And we would go down there and buy bouillon cubes and soda crackers and go on a diet. You know, that was a big thing to do was to skip lunch and have a cup of bouillon and a few soda crackers. The theater down there—that was before microwaves, so we used to go down and not go to the movie, but buy popcorn.
CJ: You could do that?
CP: You could do it. They let us do it. They thought it was a little strange. And then they—one year, they had breakfast-time movies.
CJ: Oh, my. At that theater?
CP: At that theater. You'd come—you came at six-thirty [am] or something, and they had coffee and rolls and showed a movie. I saw Breakfast at Tiffany's.
CJ: During the week?
CP: During the week. But it was so overwhelmingly popular that I think they gave it up. I don't know how long it lasted.
CJ: What time of day was it?
CP: Oh, six-thirty in the morning.
CJ: Oh, my.
CP: And they knew you'd be free, ready to go to your nine o'clock [am] class.
CJ: Oh, how nice.
CP: Yes. It was a neat idea.
CJ: And movies were how much? 22
CP: That I don't remember.
CJ: Yes.
[recording paused]
CJ: Okay, go ahead. You were talking about Tate Street?
CP: That's the main place we went was to Tate Street, though occasionally one friend and I would go downtown, which we could walk, and eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant down there. And I remember a couple of times going to a movie downtown, but not real often.
CJ: Where did people go when they wanted to shop for clothes and things like that?
CP: Well, I didn't shop much for clothes. I didn't ever have any money. So I don't know where people went. There were some little shops down on Tate Street, but not—
CJ: Tate Street?
CP: Yes. But that was before malls, I guess.
CJ: Yes. I want to be sure I heard you correctly earlier. You were talking about smoking regulations, and you said that sometimes the cigarette companies would pass out free cigarettes at the dining hall, and they were allowed to come on campus and do that?
CP: At the dining hall. They certainly were.
CJ: Did they come anywhere else on campus and do that?
CP: That's the only place I remember seeing them. I mean, everyone came to the dining hall, and they just would stand in the door and hand out little samples—little four-packs. And the smokers, of course, would gather up everyone's who didn't want theirs.
CJ: Yes. Was there pressure to smoke—peer pressure to smoke?
CP: I don't think our little parties, our little once-a-month get together and smoke a cigarette parties, were pressure to smoke. They were just kind of, "Here's an experience. Let's have it," sort of thing, though one of my two roommates freshman year, her first cigarette and she was hooked. She just smoked constantly, and in about two or three weeks she became very ill with—I don't know—some sort of lung infection, and the second they let her out of the infirmary, she was headed for a pack of cigarettes again and kept right on smoking.
CJ: Were those of you who didn't smoke made to feel strange?
23
CP: No. No. Well, [laughs] I was not the sort of person who let people make me feel strange.
But no, I don't think so. I don't have the sense that a lot of people smoked, though some certainly did. And the infirmary is something else we didn't mention.
CJ: Oh, okay.
CP: It actually—it's—I was only in the infirmary once, though I had more contact—of course, the standard joke was you could walk in with blood gushing from your artery, and they'd still take your temperature before they did anything.
CJ: [both laugh] Yes. Some things have not changed.
CP: Right. As I recall, it was all women doctors, and they seemed to me to be fairly good role models at this women's school. My main contact—well, the summer I went to Africa, I had to get all sorts of inoculations against all sorts of strange diseases and went over there frequently. That was really the only time I went over there very often. It seemed like they offered fairly reasonable care.
CJ: You've brought up a wonderful subject, just there, about role models. In your life—for your life, did most of your role models come from campus, and if not, where did they come from?
CP: There were a lot of women professors, I think, compared to what you would have found at a coed school, and some of them were quite good. Some of them were lesbian.
CJ: Acknowledged? Or just—I mean—
CP: Well, Cheryl, you always—when two women could live together and that was acceptable, whereas two men couldn't live together, but the two I'm thinking of—I mean, it was obvious. Everyone knew it and yet, I don't think it was ever spoken. I very much—well, these were two professors I had frequently and liked them very much.
CJ: Yes. And they were good role models?
CP: They were both professional women, and they were very much professional women. There's a lady I think of in the phys ed department who was very much a professional woman. She was a good counselor, a person that students could talk to.
CJ: Dr. [Ethel] Martus [Lawther], maybe?
CP: That was not her name. I can't think of her name right now.
CJ: Dr. Laughlin?
CP: I can see her, but I can't think of her name.
24
CJ: Okay. Sorry.
CP: I didn't ever have any—I didn't ever have any home ec[onomics] classes. I think that department was largely female as were some of the business classes.
CJ: Was the nursing school there yet?
CP: I don't know. I was not aware of it. It probably was not.
CJ: You raised the issue of lesbians among the faculty, and now on campus, of course, there are gay and lesbian rights organizations. Among the students was there any support for women who chose that lifestyle, and was it talked about?
CP: It was rarely talked about. I can only remember one student who was fairly actively and openly lesbian, and other than that—I mean, it seemed to me that virtually everybody had their little fraternity pin on and was waiting to get married the second they could get permission to do it, graduate and marry. So it wasn't—it was not a burning concern that I knew of, at least.
CJ: You mentioned fraternity pins. Obviously, those were from other schools. Were there sororities yet on campus?
CP: I don't think so.
CJ: Were there social clubs?
CP: Well, I wouldn't have joined if there were.
CJ: Right.
CP: So I would say, not to my memory, but that could be wrong because it would not have been something I would have been paying attention to.
CJ: Were the literary societies active?
CP: I don't know.
CJ: Okay. Okay. Not in your experience, anyway?
CP: Right. Right.
CJ: Okay. Any other memories that pop to your head?
CP: I do remember the honor—some honor students who had honors classes and so on. But because I was doing so dismally, I was not part of—though some of my friends were.
CJ: Did you have marshals—university marshals? 25
CP: I don't know.
CJ: Okay.
CP: What do marshals do? [laughs]
CJ: Well, that changed a lot. In the—in the '20s, '30s and '40s the marshals was [sic]—even though not so stated in that handbook, the marshals really were the most popular, most beautiful girls. And they ushered in Aycock. Now the marshals are honorary, and they do still usher, but they are totally honorary. And so there was a—there's been a big transition, and I was trying to get a handle on when that might have occurred.
CP: That's not something I was aware of. Somebody ushered, but I don't know who did it.
CJ: Okay. Well, I've about covered my territory. Anything else you have?
CP: Not that I think of. In a way, it was a good four years. And in other ways, it was not so good.
[recording paused]
CJ: We're back on the tape, and I wanted to pick up those two things you were talking about after I turned the tape off. [laughs] You were talking about your roommate being a history major.
CP: Right. The history department was very strong. She had some professors that really were good. I didn't take much history, though I did take international events with—I forget his name now—Dr. Parker—which was a very good class. Jeannette was very tuned into world events, and I remember—it would have been my junior year—she came charging into the dorm from some sort of meeting at ten o'clock at night just absolutely livid. And when I calmed her down enough to find out what was wrong, she had learned that US troops were involved in Vietnam and had been for some time and that the public was not really being told this. This was my first hint of things to come in terms of the Vietnam War [1956-75 conflict between North and South Vietnam with support for South Vietnam from the United States to supposedly stop communist takeover of the country]. Little did I know how long that would [unclear] in our history.
CJ: So she was aware of that.
CP: She was. That was her first awareness of it, and I don't remember who she learned it from, but she had been to some student organization meeting that night. The other thing that we mentioned when we were off the tape was the various religious organizations that had organizations—had centers just off the edge of campus. As I recall, they were not actually on campus.
26
CJ: Campus ministries?
CP: Campus ministries. And I spent—I guess my freshman and sophomore year, they served as a good transition for me. Though I had given up going to the Baptist Church, the man who ran the Baptist student center was very tuned into students and into dealing with their issues and angers and concerns and very supportive. So I spent a good deal of time over there talking to him and participating in some of the activities. So I, at that point, had quit going to the Baptist Church and was church hopping, as it were. In fact, after my freshman year of going to all the different churches, my sophomore year I was fairly involved with the local Baha’i group, who recruited on campus and had wonderful pot luck meals, where they fed us all. And my junior year, I went to the Unitarian Universalists with about two other students, and we were picked up by a guy with a wonderful sports car. [both laugh] It was worth the trip to church just to get to ride in this little—silver, I think it was—sports car.
CJ: One of the perks of faith, huh? Are those the two things you had in mind?
CP: Those are the two things that I had thought of after we turned off the tape.
CJ: Okay. Well, thank you. We'll sign off now. Thank you very much.
CP: Okay.
[End of Interview]