Oral history interview with Betty Emarita, 2012 [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Betty Emarita
INTERVIEWER: Hermann Trojanowski
DATE: September 24, 2012
HT: Today is Monday, September 24, 2012. My name is Hermann Trojanowski, and I’m at the home of Miss Betty Emarita, Class of 1968 from UNCG [University of North Carolina at Greensboro], and we’re in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We’re here to conduct an oral history interview for the African American Institutional Memory Project. Betty, thank you so much for meeting with me on this wonderful fall afternoon. It’s just delightful to have met you finally. I’ve heard so much about the Cheek sisters.
BE: Oh, goodness. [laughter]
HT: Let’s get started by my asking you something about where you were born, your background, where you were born, when you were born and that sort of thing.
BE: Well, I was actually born in Philadelphia [Pennsylvania], but when I was three my parents moved back to North Carolina, which is where they both were from, and actually from the same county. We moved to this little village called Kittrell [North Carolina] and I just loved growing up in Kittrell. We lived there until I was about—I think I was twelve when we moved to our family land where my father had built our house.
HT: Right, and what did your parents do?
BE: My mother was a school teacher; my father taught school occasionally and also farmed. [He was multi-talented.] He did a lot of things. He would wire people’s houses and do carpentry stuff, repair things, and he managed—on his side of the family, he managed the family farmland.
HT: What did your mother teach?
BE: She taught in elementary school; fifth grade for a long time.
HT: And I assume that she had gone to college, then.
BE: Yes.
HT: So education was probably always very important in the family.
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BE: Oh, you know it’s really quite extraordinary. My mother went to Fayetteville State College [Fayetteville, North Carolina], during the [Great] Depression, actually, and my grandmother, my mother’s mother, graduated from Shaw University in the late 1800s. My father was one of twelve children, and he was almost twenty years older than my mother. He and his siblings came of age during the twenties, and they all went to boarding schools for high school, because there were no public education facilities for African Americans during that time. You went to boarding school somewhere or you just didn’t go; you weren’t educated. My grandfather was a minister and, of his twelve children, all who wanted to go, went to college. They went to boarding high schools and then seven went to college.
HT: That’s truly amazing, isn’t it, when you think about it. And how many siblings do you have?
BE: Two, both sisters.
HT: And where did you go to high school?
BE: Henderson Institute which was one of the boarding schools until it became a public school. It had a teacherage from when the teachers used to live on campus. So it had a very long history.
HT: So did you actually board there or did you commute back and forth?
BE: Oh, no. At that point, you know, it had become a public high school. In fact, it was the only high school for African American children in Vance County at that time. This was during apartheid.
HT: This is in Henderson, North Carolina, I guess. Right above Raleigh, in that area.
BE: Yes.
HT: I think Kerr Lake is near there because we used to go sailing there.
BE: Yes, yes. It was in Henderson.
HT: Right, do you recall what your favorite subject or subjects were?
BE: In high school?
HT: Yes.
BE: Oh, goodness. [laughter] Well, you have to understand that in North Carolina—well, everywhere that apartheid existed in this country—the education of African American children was just not a priority, and so there [was a lot of latitude in many schools regarding methods and practices—which worked in my favor.] 3
Some of my teachers were really wonderful; and some were not so great, but I think the thing that I loved most is that my teachers, for the most part, gave me total freedom to study what I wanted to, and so I read all the time. They had very high expectations of me, and they encouraged me. I read voraciously, read all sorts of things that had nothing to do with what we were studying in class, and that was okay. I mean, people just kind of let me do that.
HT: When did you graduate from high school?
BE: Sixty-four [1964].
HT: Sixty-four, right. And you decided to go to UNCG. How did that come about?
BE: My sister went [laughter], and my first cousin. So my first cousin was the first in our family to go—and this was just as the colleges, as schools were integrating. My sister and I were very close, and so when Yvonne [Cheek, Class of 1967] decided she was going to go to UNCG, there was just no other option for me. I just, you know, wasn’t ready not to be her little sister. So that’s where I went.
HT: Well, tell me about your first days on campus. What was that like in the fall of ’64?
BE: Oh, goodness. Well, I was very glad to leave home. I was very glad to be starting a new phase in my life, and I felt that it was a chance for me to be totally authentic in myself. When I was in high school—well, actually growing up—we—my sister and I—were very visible in the sense that our family had very high expectations of us, and so did the community that we were in, and so it was like living in a fishbowl. [And we were also high achievers, because of those expectations. We were in the newspapers, and we were on radio. I won many awards in oratorical contests, won 4-H competitions in the region and the state, was elected to state 4-H offices, and performed with my sister in lots of talent shows—I sang and she played piano. I wrote a speech on the emancipation proclamation that received a lot of attention statewide. And I remember doing this radio program—it was a lot, you know, and it required that I often time behaved in ways that I wouldn’t have wanted to; just because that was what I was expected to do. I acted and spoke in ways that just weren’t authentic, but that the situation required. And I’m actually an introvert by nature.] So when I got to UNCG, I was like, thank God! I remember making a clear decision that I will never do that again. I will not say anything unless it’s so. And I’m not going to allow other people to define me. I’m going to define myself.
HT: Did you feel like you were under the shadow of your older sister?
BE: Oh, no. We were very close, and so that was never an issue. It was more the pressure of other people’s expectations, you know. “Did you get all As this time?” You know, that kind of thing.
HT: Was it the family or the community?
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BE: Both, yes. So I was very happy to be at UNCG and to be—Well, I was going to say invisible, and it’s true in a weird kind of way. In some ways, as one of a handful of black students there, of course, I was highly visible, but it was a different kind of visibility. And there were no—Oh, my, I hadn’t thought about this! [I knew] I would not experience any social penalties for being totally authentic, because I had no obligations to white society in that way, so—
HT: And that would have been quite different if you had gone to Bennett [College, Greensboro, North Carolina] or A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, Greensboro, North Carolina] or Shaw [University, Raleigh, North Carolina].
BE: Very different, very different. So it was just a [laughter]
HT: It sounds like it was liberating almost.
BE: It was; it absolutely was liberating to me.
HT: Interesting.
BE: Yes. [both laugh]
HT: Well, when you first got there, what were the reactions of your fellow white students, because this was fairly early in integration.
BE: That’s true, [it was at the dawn of integration. And I really didn’t care what they thought. So I don’t know that I can even tell you about their reactions, because I really, truly didn’t care. And it was wonderful.] I remember making the decision that I was going to take one meal a week by myself, just so I could sit and reflect and just “be.” And so I would go to the cafeteria, and someone—[possibly thinking they were being very charitable]—would come over to me and say, “Oh, I’ll join you.” I would say, “No, thank you. I’m taking this meal alone.” And you could imagine; that was—
HT: That takes a lot of guts. [both laugh]
BE: I’m sure people must have thought, “What is wrong with this girl?” [That] was my first semester. I made the Dean’s List my first semester. Not long after grades were posted, I was with] a group of girls taking a cab together to a performance somewhere in the city. We were all wedged in this taxi, and someone said, “Oh, Betty, I see you’re on the Dean’s List. That’s really [good]! What were your grades?” And I said, “I never discuss my grades.” There was dead silence. [laughter] It was never with any hostility. I wasn’t hostile; it was just that I had these boundaries. I wasn’t ever going to get into a situation where people were like, “What are your grades this time?” So I probably disturbed a lot of people and was viewed, I’m sure, as quite odd.
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I spent a lot of time in the library which I loved, and I remember this one girl told me that she would watch me from her window and set her watch by my schedule. I would go every day after dinner and come back to the dorm when the library closed, and I loved it.
HT: What was the dorm situation like when you were there?
BE : Well, all of the—Let me just remember how this went. Okay, my class was the first class in which the black students were distributed in different dorms freshman year. I was in Gray [Residence] Hall, and I had a roommate who was [from Ayden, North Carolina]. Anyway, we didn’t know each other; and we did not have a natural affinity. Since I was being my authentic self, I probably wouldn’t have had a natural affinity for many people at all, or they for me, but—
HT: So was your roommate white or African American?
BE: Oh, no. We all had African American roommates. So, it was really interesting. After the year, and watching friendships blossom and collapse, and seeing which different cliques of people formed, we both decided that that was [pretty dicey]. We trusted and respected each other, and so we roomed together the next year. That was really funny.
HT: Do you mind telling me who your roommate was?
BE: Melverlene Suggs. [We became good friends.]
HT: And what was your favorite subject in college and in your major?
BE: There were several of them. I loved art. You know I majored in art, and so doing that creative thing was really wonderful, but I also really loved literature and history—well, Eastern history—so I remember Dr. [Lenoir] Wright. I took two courses in far Eastern history—near Eastern history—from Dr. Wright. [And English from William Tucker whom I just loved. Warren Ashby in the philosophy department. Elaine Burgess who taught sociology.]
I think the person who really made such a huge difference to me in my entire life—well, several people did, but Gilbert Carpenter who was head of the art department, taught me how to see—and it was incredible! It was like someone opened a door for me—[many doors,] and I was like, “Oh, my God.” I mean, it had such a profound impact on the way I make art, the way I think of myself, the way I look at the world; it was amazing to me that he could do this. And he was the oddest looking man. He was wonderful to look at; nothing quite fit. It looked like he had just kind of been put together somehow. His wife was from Hawaii and was—
HT: I have met her.
BE: Oh! And she was decidedly brown which I am sure—although I didn’t think about this at the time—but I’m sure that it must have been quite something for her to experience Greensboro as a faculty wife at that time. He would do these wonderful, huge paintings—6
very abstract—of her. I used to babysit for them, and he would invite me to his office just to talk—He said anytime I would just want to talk or anything, just come by. And so I did, and he was such a support to me. I remember one day I went to talk to him. I was very upset about something—I can’t remember what I was that upset about—but I was just disgusted [and frustrated]. So I started talking about this thing that somebody had said or done. He said, “Do you respect this person?” I said, [“No!”] And he said, “Well, why do you care about the opinions of people you don’t respect?” And I was like, “Whoa”, because my entire life up to my freshman year, had been totally defined by other people’s expectations, regardless of what I thought of them, you know. And that’s quite different from having generic respect for all human beings—Of course, at that time I wasn’t thinking like that. I was just, you know, trying to get through the day. But when he said that, I just—I was like, wow. So I don’t have to carry [that kind of] weight [anymore]!
HT: Yes. Now what type of art did you pursue? Was it studio art or—
BE: Studio art. I majored in painting which, when I look back on it, I was like, oh my God, what was I thinking. But it was wonderful. My mother thought I had lost my mind. “You are majoring in painting?” She said, “Well, at least get an education degree with it.” I was like, “Oh, no. I just want to paint.” [laughter]
HT: What made you decide to major in studio art? Had you had a background in high school in art?
BE: None whatsoever—in fact I should tell you the horror story—I always was able to draw and loved drawing. My sister and I had this little business when we were growing up. We made posters for teachers, because none of the black teachers had any allowance for supplies. They had to buy their own, including posters, so we made lots of money—for children, at least. We were charging seventy-five cents a poster. I would do the drawing, and my sister would do the printing, you know, so we did very well. So I just thought, oh, okay. So I’ll major in art. Now I have to tell you, I had never had an art course of any type. I had seen a piece of charcoal one time, and that was because Mr. Davis—who taught band but could also draw—showed me a piece of charcoal and said, “You know, maybe you could try drawing with this.” I had never been to an art gallery. I had never been to a museum.
You know, everything was segregated at that time and even so, [the nearest museums and galleries were in Raleigh or Durham, and our parents would never, on point of principle, drive a hundred miles round trip to take us to a segregated facility that their tax dollars were paying for.] After I was accepted at UNCG—Miss Avent, the high school guidance counselor, said, “Oh, they have an art scholarship here, so I think you should apply for it.” [I don’t know what she was thinking.] She didn’t know anything about art; and I didn’t know anything about art. [Apartheid was still in practice,] and Henderson Institute [didn’t offer any art classes. There was an interview process and all that, and I didn’t even have a concept of what this was about. To prepare, Miss Avent gave me a black and white slide brochure that people could order from.] It wasn’t even in color. That’s when I saw the names of these people who had made these paintings—7
these little squares of black and white photographs that I was seeing for the first time. I had no idea of how to pronounce any of those names, you know, so it was “Day gus” [Edgar Degas], and “Ray nore” [Pierre Auguste Renoir] and I’m trying to think what some of the others. It was like I just—oh, “Season” [Paul Cezanne]. Cezanne, Renoir, and Degas. I mean I just didn’t know anything. And these were just the ones I sort of gravitated toward because I thought they were pretty.
[They told me there was going to be an interview, and I had] to bring examples of my work. So I just took some of my drawings and—I’m not even sure what I put them in. I think I had maybe a paper bag, a large paper bag, and I went to UNCG to interview for the most prestigious art scholarships on the campus. [The Spencer Love Scholarship] was a full ride—everything paid for. When I got there, they told us to go into the gallery. [It was] the first gallery I’d ever been in.
HT: Was this the Weatherspoon?
BE: The Weatherspoon. [They told us—all the applicants—] to look at the paintings and analyze [some of them]. Analyze a painting? What is that? I had no idea of what analyzing a painting was. I saw these other girls, and they had their things in these black kind of folder things. I didn’t even know what a portfolio was. I had never heard the word—and they were going around looking at the pieces in the gallery and I thought, “Oh my God.” So I tried to stand near so I could hear what somebody was saying, and one girl said to another, “Look at the figures in this painting. Some of them are retreating and some are advancing.” I’m like, “Retreating and advancing:” what does that mean? [laughs]
When it was my turn to be interviewed, oh, my Lord. I remember the faculty was sitting around the table, and I brought in my [big] paper bag and took my drawings out. I had never heard of matting. I didn’t know what a mat was. And I spread them out on the table, and the one painting that I brought, was a painting that I had done when I was eight years old. When I knew that I had this interview coming, I thought, oh, well I’ll just kind of doctor it up. So I did, but my signature said, Betty Cheek, eight years old. I had tried to paint over the “eight years old” but you could still see it. [laughter]
HT: Now this is before you were accepted, right?
BE: No, I had already been accepted, but I’d been—My guidance counselor suggested that I apply for this scholarship, and since I was very obedient, I said, “Well, okay.” And so here I am in this interview with girls from New York [and all these other places]. [laughs] I remember the total silence around the table as they looked at these pieces just strewn [around]—and they were like, [sigh] and then they thought of just a few questions to ask me, out of pure charity, and I just—I mean, it was just so awful, I didn’t even understand how awful. I knew that it was awful, but I still didn’t know how much I didn’t know. I just knew that I didn’t know anything that those other girls knew, but I didn’t know that it was even much, much worse than that.
My freshman year, I took my first studio courses and all the other [required courses], and I was in the Honors Program. I loved the studio work. Oh my God, I was in heaven, and I loved all my courses. It was just the right thing for me, and I was quite 8
good. And for the student exhibit in the Weatherspoon Gallery at the end of the year, [which was a really big deal,] I had more pieces in the exhibit than any other student, and I was just a freshman. They made up an award to give me because it was so [amazing]—I mean the contrast from where I was when I interviewed for the scholarship, and where I was at the end of the year—so they made up this award to give me, which was really very sweet.
Then Patty Eskold, who was from New York and who had [gotten] the Spencer Love Scholarship, and had been to all kinds of art schools and had studied art forever, told me she just hated UNCG. She said, “I just didn’t know what kind of school it was.” Because she was like “New York” and UNCG was very, very laid back. It was like a finishing school for the future wives of guys at Carolina [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] who were very ambitious, and so she was very dissatisfied. That was not how she viewed her life.
I remember one time we had some kind of art assignment to think about what environment we wanted to build around ourselves. And so I’m describing mine, [the colors and textures and the romance of it,] and I said, “Patty, what would yours be?” She said, “It would all be made of plastic.” I was like, “What?” She said, “Yes, I can’t stand housework or any of that stuff. I just want something I can hose down.” [laughing] And so Patty, as the year was coming to an end, told me, “You know what, I am not coming back here. I am just so glad the year is over. I am leaving!” And she said, “I bet you’re going to get that scholarship.” I didn’t even [pay her any attention—it just didn’t register, it was so unreal to me]. And lo and behold, when she left, they awarded the Spencer Love [scholarship] to me.”
HT: I’ve heard the name “Spencer Love” before. Was he connected with Burlington Industries, or something like that?
BE: You know, I cannot remember; I cannot remember.
HT: And did the Spencer Love Scholarship pay for everything?
BE: Everything.
HT: That was wonderful.
BE: It was absolutely wonderful.
HT: Was it a one-year scholarship or—?
BE: Four years, yes.
HT: So it paid for your sophomore, junior, and senior year.
BE: Everything.
HT: Wow, that’s wonderful. 9
BE: It was; it was. I think that people have no concept of what apartheid education was like, and what that meant for students, black students, who then went into white institutions. It was really a double-edged sword—It played out in many different ways, because during apartheid, there were only a few professions that African Americans could be part of. You could be a teacher, a minister; or an undertaker, but those were pretty much the professions. You could be a physician or a nurse if you were extremely fortunate. Those were pretty much the professions that were open to you. What that meant was all that talent, creativity, and ambition pretty much went into teaching. In some cities, you had folks with PhDs who were teaching high school, like in Dudley High School in Greensboro. Dudley was a fabulous high school. [And Hillside in Durham.] Fabulous high school, because you had the best teachers possible in those schools. Those kids were just outstanding. And then you had other places [where that wasn’t the case].
HT: And I’m sure the opportunities in a small village or town like Henderson or Kittrell are just very, very limited.
BE: Right, that’s true. And see, in Greensboro you had historically black colleges—in Greensboro and in Durham—so you had a wonderful community of resources and scholars. I mean, fabulous!
HT: So did you enjoy water color, oil, gouache or—What was your medium?
BE: Gosh, I loved it all, but I loved drawing especially. I took a traditional Chinese brush painting [course]—there was visiting artist, Mrs. [Sun Toze] Chu from Taiwan—and that was wonderful. So I was in heaven.
HT: How do you spell Mrs. Chu’s name, do you recall?
BE: Mrs. Sun Toze Chu, so S-U-N T-O-Z—seems like there was an e somewhere. C-H-U was the last name. Maybe it was T-O-Z-E, Toze.
HT: Maybe I’ll be able to Google it.
BE: She was amazing, fantastic.
HT: And she was a visiting scholar.
BE: Yes, a visiting artist; I think my junior year. Or it may have been my senior year.
HT: Did you ever have Helen Thrush as a teacher?
BE: I did, and I had Miss [Susan Elizabeth] Barksdale; Miss Barksdale and—oh, this is terrible. Let me see; what did I have Helen Thrush for. It’s awful; I can’t remember what courses I had with her. Norma Harding was there. She was less fun, but her assignments were very interesting. [I still have the silk painting of hers that I bought from the faculty show in my senior year.] 10
You know, years later, maybe 1973 or ’74, when I was living in Washington [DC] and exhibiting a lot, I was invited to be part of a two-person show in Elliott Hall. That was very special to me. It sort of completed the circle.
HT: And what was your minor?
BE: Oh, I had no minor.
HT: You had no minor. [laughing]
BE: I know; can you imagine. I majored in painting; what was I thinking? It wasn’t until my senior year when I noticed—well, actually it was the end of my junior year—and I noticed that the white girls had a particular life pattern: like, okay, you scope the guys freshman and sophomore years; you decide who you were going to gravitate toward your junior year; you got engaged at the beginning of your senior year, and you married when you graduated. I mean, that was the pattern. And that was so far from anything I had in mind. That wasn’t something I wanted for myself or even had thought about really. You know, I just hadn’t thought about it, and I remember realizing my junior year that I need to meet some men.
I realized that if I stayed [at UNCG, I wasn’t going to meet a lot of guys because—Listen, the guys at A&T had to get past Bennett before they would actually come over to UNCG. This is what made me know I was in a crisis that I had to think about: These girls from Howard [University came on campus to visit somebody,] and one of them ended up in our room. She was just there—dashed in to say hello to somebody. She opened the window, and called down to some guys in a car [who were waiting for her]. And I thought, just her sense of herself and how easy her relationship was with the guys she was talking to in the car—I was like, I don’t have that. I want that and I will never have that if I’m here. We dated on weekends, but you can’t really get to know somebody if they’re coming all the way from Chapel Hill just on the weekend. So I thought okay. So my senior year I looked for the largest concentration of black men in the US outside of the army and it was Howard University, so I decided I was going to go to graduate school at Howard and I was going to have a totally different attitude [both laughing], because I had been such a nerd.
HT: It sounds like there was not that much of a social scene at UNCG for most African American students because, as you just mentioned, the boys—the black boys were from A&T and had to get through the Bennett girls and—
BE: Well, I had a very good [dating life]—but it was still inadequate in the sense that it was a weekend situation. I always had, you know, guys that I dated at Carolina [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] and—
HT: Did you take the bus down to Carolina?
BE: [Sometimes. Mostly] they would take the bus to UNCG and also some guys from Duke, so it was—You know, there was no problem. But I understood when I saw that girl and 11
her interaction with those guys, that what I had was not that. Because I had really—I was such a nerd. I really had divided my life into two neat spheres: there was the intellectual pursuit—you know, total freedom of thought; and then there was the weekend; and that was it.
HT: Of course, you were quite tied down with studio work, I’m sure.
BE: Well, not that tied down. I mean, you know, I got it done—it was interesting: I preferred the life of the mind. I really did. I didn’t want to be bothered until like Friday, you know, because it would just interfere with what I was interested in doing.
HT: Did you work at all while you were at UNCG—in the library or as a work-study student somewhere?
BE: I was the most awful employee you ever wanted to see. I did, my freshman year, get a work-study job, and then I just didn’t do it. It was too boring. I was supposed to catalog the slides. I didn’t like to do it, and so I just didn’t do it. It was terrible.
HT: Of course, you did have the scholarship which was nice.
BE: Well, after my freshman year. My freshman year I didn’t, so after that I didn’t have to work. But I was a horrible employee. [laughter]
HT: Well, we sort of hit on this a little bit. Now what did you do for fun. You said that you were a complete nerd during the week and then on the weekend—
BE: See, I thought being a nerd was fun. I’m telling you, I had—oh, God. See when you are in the fishbowl—no, let me make this personal to me. When I was in the fishbowl, I could think my own thoughts, but I couldn’t tell anybody. I could—There were maybe like a few people that I could tell some things—some ideas—but not a whole lot and still be in the fishbowl in good standing. And so to come to UNCG where there were all these—and especially in the art department—people [who] were much more fluid thinkers and willing to experiment, and it was just fun. And so I was totally intrigued with all of that. It felt like I had just gotten out of a cage. I was just—Oh, I can breathe.
HT: The bird has been set free.
BE: Yes, yes.
HT: Now did you live in—I think it was Mary Foust [Residence Hall] maybe?
BE: I lived in Mary Foust.
HT: Which was, I think, noted as to where most of the art majors lived. Is that correct?
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BE: Yes, it was the disreputable dorm so I knew that was the one I wanted to be in, because that way, there were no expectations.
HT: So how many years did you live in Mary Foust?
BE: The entire time. But, well, I lived in an apartment in my senior year, which was really fun. I shared it with another UNCG student who was like a year behind me, and we met at the National Student Association, which totally—Now talk about a nerd being completely turned upside down—that was it, because I was so in love with the whole concept of intellectual honesty. It was just such a joy to me that you could think anything, say anything, do anything. That if it had integrity, there were no limits. You could really pursue whatever.
HT: And this was at the National Student—
BE: Oh, no. This was like me at UNCG, you know, my freshman, sophomore, and junior years. And to have that in my mind as how I’m living my life and, you know, the folks who were my friends—All of my friends tended to be older; some [were returning to school;] and they were all people who had outrageous senses of humor, and they were all in Mary Foust which, in itself, was [decidedly unconventional]. [laughter] So you know it was just a total joy to me.
The summer of my junior year—and I don’t remember how this happened—someone suggested that I apply to go to the National Student Association Conference at the University of Maryland the summer of 1967. First of all, I had never heard of the National Student Association. I was not a student activist; I was an artist. [For me,] it was just something to do. Well, lo and behold, I was introduced to students from all over the country who were politically active, [smart, thoughtful, and acting on their knowledge].
So there was the Vietnam War and there was Civil Rights—I mean all of this stuff that I had never really thought about, because I’m like reading poetry and doing art and going to theater, and so when I met these students—especially these guys from California and Chicago, who had read everything; [had life experience,] and whose analysis of what was going on in the world [was amazing]—I was like “Oh!” I mean some stuff I had noticed, like, yes, there is apartheid, and UNCG was barely integrated, so I understood that. And I had an uncle—Uncle Leroy—who called the registrars into Warren County so that black people in a majority black county could [finally] actually vote. And so I knew about that. I wasn’t naïve in that sense.
[But I had never understood apartheid in a global or economic context, and I certainly had not connected it to the life of the mind that I so enjoyed and intellectual integrity that I discovered at UNCG.] So when I made this discovery, I thought, “Wow, all the people that I know and love hanging with, and my beloved professors—obviously they don’t know this stuff, because if they did, then there wouldn’t be a problem.” I was that naïve. So I thought, well, obviously what we have to do is just let people know. [So] we’ll just have a conference, a black power conference at UNCG and [everything] will be just fine. [Yes, Bambi was about to leave the forest.]
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So I came back to school in the fall—this person who had been [this oddity] for all these years. Like I’m the person who takes one meal by myself, and I’m not going to just say things just because they please you. I’m going to be an authentic person. So this person comes back to UNCG in the fall with the idea that we should have a black power conference. And everybody should know about this. So I talked to these girls—other African American girls—with whom I had only a tenuous relationship, because I was just in my own little world. So I told them about this [NSA] conference and they were like, “Yeah, we could have a conference.” It could be a really big thing, and we could have A&T and Central [North Carolina Central University, Durham, North Carolina] involved. We could invite students from all over the state to come.” I was like, “Yeah, that would be great.” And then, in my mind, everything would just be fine. [laughter] Oh, my God, Hermann. Well, it was spectacular. You would not even have known that UNCG was a white college for a week. [The conference was for a week!]
HT: So was this the first black power conference in North Carolina.
BE: You know it could have been. [It probably was,] because I don’t think the black schools were in a position to have a black power conference. Really, the only school that could have hosted such a conference was a white school, and for it to be UNCG—formerly Woman’s College—is a real hoot, right? It was the perfect moment in time. And we had incredible speakers. Janice Brewer was from Durham and her father taught at Central, so he was advising. He was saying, “Look at this speaker and look at that speaker. You know, we can get—” It was quite an organizing [feat,] and I have to say the girls came together in an incredible way because, while I was an odd person, they had these years where they had been supporting each other. [I, on the other hand, had been living in Mary Foust and was the only black student from my class in the Honors Program. And I was majoring in art. So all of my classes and most of my professors were different. So really—It was just kind of amazing. I knew people, but we were not close-close.] I was close to my roommate but that was [it].
HT: Well, how did you go about inviting people to attend the Black Power Conference, or Forum?
BE: Well everybody—
HT: Was it conference, because I’ve heard it called the Black Power Forum.
BE: Oh, Black Power Forum.
HT: Is that the same thing? Okay.
BE: Well, I think really it was the expertise [of the black students, and the people in their families and networks—especially at the black colleges and universities—who supported them]. I can’t take any credit for that. Well, I started the Neo-Black Society as the vehicle. In fact, that was the first thing—starting the Neo-Black Society—and I was very 14
disappointed it was called the Neo-Black Society because that just sounded too pretentious to me.
HT: Well, I was going to ask you: how did that come about? Was that because of the conference you attended in Maryland?
BE: Yes, after that [NSA] conference, I was like, “Oh my God, we need to have [a black student organization].” You can’t have a coherent life without having this understanding of self, society, and history as part of a coherent life. And so, since my whole purpose, in terms of educating myself, was to have an expansive and coherent life—And I had met all of these people that I loved, and they had taught me about having a coherent life and being intellectually honest so, of course, this would just make everything better for everybody.
HT: So the Black Power Forum was in the fall of 1967 because you went to Maryland in the summer of ’67. And the conference in Maryland, was that a couple of weeks or was it all summer long?
BE: No, I think it was for two weeks.
HT: Two weeks, right. And so how did the Neo-Black Society come out of the Black Power Forum? How did that happen?
BE: Well, it predated it. When I first came back I was talking to some of the other girls, [saying] that we needed a black student union, but they wanted another name, and Neo-Black Society was the one that prevailed. Then it became what the Neo-Black Society wanted to do [as a first project]. It was, “Let’s have a conference!”
HT: So the Neo-Black Society actually sponsored the forum.
BE: Yes, yes.
HT: And how did Ada Fisher fit into all this? Do you recall?
BE: She was a couple of years behind me.
HT: Right, she was Class of ’70.
BE: Right, so the bottom line was when we decided to do that conference, there was such a need for it and such a desire for it—[I mean] all of the black students pitched in together. The guys—we had just a handful—I mean everybody just came together to do it. What was really interesting to me in retrospect [is that] in a lot of ways my experience at UNCG, I think, was somewhat atypical at that time. Because I was in the art department and because I was in the Honors Program, there were a lot of [narrow minded and bigoted] people I didn’t have to deal with. I had one racist professor, and that was Dr. Owen Connelly who taught history. He later moved to the University of Georgia, thank 15
God, actually, I shouldn’t say that; that’s mean-spirited toward the students in Georgia. But he did leave UNCG, and I was glad to hear that. I will never forget; I was in his class my freshman year, and he said—he was talking about England and its class stratification. He said, “The position of the serf in England was similar to the nigger in the South” and I was just—I didn’t hear anything else he said after that. It was just like, oh my God. I mean, who was I going to talk to? Who was I going to tell? I felt like I had just been dropped in a well somewhere, and there was no way out, and I was just going to have to endure this man for the rest of that year.
HT: Were you the only black student in the class?
BE: Yes, and I think other students—I know my roommate had a horrible time. She left midway at her junior year. It was just too much. She was majoring in political science, and the head of the department was just impossible; was very racist and would put her down at every opportunity, so I know that many of the other students had very different experiences from the experience that I had. I think that that’s also why people wanted to come together and to do something. So while I was thinking that this was going to be a Kumbaya moment— [laughter]
I was so disappointed when hardly any of the professors showed up. [I was really quite shocked, because I was thinking that people would be there every day, going to all the sessions and asking questions because all this was new information. Unfortunately, some of my professors came to the keynote which turned out to be the worst speech of the entire conference. [laughter] The speaker had a speech impediment, and it was hard to understand him. And they just didn’t come back.]
HT: Who were some of the speakers at the conference?
BE: Oh God, I can’t remember.
HT: I can look some of them up.
BE: And they were wonderful. Nathan Hare [who wrote, Black Faces, White Masks]. There was a wonderful guy out of Chicago, absolutely brilliant, and I cannot think of his name now.
HT: And how did you go about inviting these people? Did you just write them letters and they accepted?
BE: Yes. There was a whole machine. I would say the girls from Durham [played a pivotal role, because of their black college connections]. But I don’t want to single them out. Everybody really pitched in. There was Kathy Hargrove—I mean everybody just really, really pitched in to make sure that this happened, and it went off without a hitch, and it was like perfect. I mean, this was an incredible organizing feat! When I think about young college students organizing something like this, inviting black students from all over the state, and having speakers from all over the country come to UNCG—The organization of it—it was fantastic. We even had book sellers. I mean it was incredible! 16
The direction, the advice—I mean several people had family members who taught at historically black colleges; other people were just great organizers. We had an intergenerational pool of resources to draw on.
HT: And how long did the forum last? Do you recall; two or three days?
BE: Yes, I think it was a week.
HT: A week.
BE: I think it was a week, yes. [Well, five or six days.] I mean it was fabulous; it was really fabulous. And I remember when I finally accepted the fact that no white faculty or white students were going to come to this forum at all—
HT: And it was well-advertised, I assume.
BE: Oh, how could you miss this in 1967? So I remember going to one of the sessions, and there were two white girls sitting in the session, and they were the only white people in the whole room. [They looked so lost.] I remember going over to these girls because I wanted to make them comfortable, and it struck me how ironic that was, because that was usually the position I was in. Then someone would come over to me to me to try to make me feel comfortable. I thought, “Wow.”
HT: Do you recall where the sessions were held? Was it Elliott [Hall]?
BE: It was Elliott Hall. Wait a minute, is Elliott the student union?
HT: Yes.
BE: Yes, Elliott Hall. It was fantastic, and it really spurred a lot of things in the city of Greensboro, because students from—black students—from UNCG, Bennett College, and A&T began to coordinate and plan things together. It was really quite remarkable.
HT: Now, if we can get back to the Neo-Black Society. [Can you tell me]—do you recall exactly how that came about, the naming of the organization and that sort of thing, and how—was there a president chosen or officers or that kind of stuff? How did that all happen?
BE: It was really very artfully done. We just met in each other’s rooms [or at the student union] to say why don’t we do this.
HT: So this was very informal.
BE: Very informal, and so the decision was made that, yes, we should do this. Now what shall we call ourselves? There was a vote. People voted that they liked Neo-Black Society. We were organized in committees. This is how that happened, because, see, I was such 17
an odd person. I had brought the issue to the table, and so I was elected president, but it was organized by committee. We had a committee structure so that people could be engaged in tutoring, if they wanted to, or voter registration. There were a number of committees that you could be part of, and the chair people of those committees were the ones who really organized activities. I think it was a very good structure, and it was perfect in terms of accommodating different talents and interests. There was no way that I had the interest to organize a tutoring program, but there were girls who really did have that interest and wanted to do that.
[At the time,] I was dating Nelson Johnson, who is brilliant. He was one of the student leaders at A&T and involved up to his eyelids in community organizing and voter registration. My phones were tapped for years for participating in voter registration drives, but this is what apartheid was. And it puzzles me now—[No,] it doesn’t puzzle me, it irritates me that we do not call it what it was. I mean, why do we say “Jim Crow” when we are referring to apartheid? What is that? It’s sort of like saying “wee-wee” or “poo-poo” when we mean “urine” or “feces.” [laughter] It was US apartheid. [That’s understood globally.] And I think we have to have a global language to talk about this, otherwise we diminish our own history, and we don’t understand the nature of who we are or where we’ve come from or where we need to go. I mean it’s really absurd.
HT: Did the Neo-Black Society have to have approval from student government to exist and funding and that sort of thing.
EB: Yes, it’s so funny. I cannot remember the funding piece of it, but obviously there was a budget. And we had to have an adviser. We had to get permission to do it. Yes. Yvonne [Cheek was our advisor]. She was in graduate school—[UNCG Music Department.]
HT: Right. She said she was the—like an advisor. You had to have a faculty advisor.
BE: Yes, we had to have a faculty advisor, right. [laughter] Details, details.
HT: The reason I’m asking so many questions is because there is actually going to be a celebration next year to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Neo-Black Society. [Editor’s note: the forty-fifth anniversary will be celebrated in 2013 and the fiftieth anniversary will be celebrated in 2018] But it sounds like it was actually founded in 1967, as opposed to 1968. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because if the Black Power Forum was in the fall of ’67, and the Neo-Black Society existed—maybe not officially—to help sponsor this forum.
BE: Right, I’m trying to think. It may have [been formally created in 1968].
HT: Right. [To write a constitution.]
BE: So I think that what happened is that we probably did it just in stages. You know just as, “Oh, we need to [do x, so we’re going to have y in place]. Yes, we should organize the black students, and if we organize, shouldn’t we have a name? What are we going to do?” So it wasn’t like there was this master plan set out; it evolved, but it evolved very 18
quickly. I think that’s because of the nature of the issue and of the times. I also think the Southern white female culture of UNCG made it possible for that forum to be there. It couldn’t have happened at Carolina; it would never have happened at [North Carolina] State [University]. It wouldn’t have happened at any coed, white institution. I think UNCG was the only place that could have hosted such a conference. And that’s incredible when you think about it, isn’t it. It’s amazing.
HT: Were you pleased with the results of the forum, as far as you can remember?
BE: Very, very pleased, although I was devastated by the overwhelming lack of curiosity about the content of the forum from the university. You have to understand: this was little nerd me, you know, believing in intellectual honesty and intellectual integrity here at the university. [It was incomprehensible to me that no one at the university had any interest in something that was so profoundly impacting all of us.] That the professors wouldn’t have been in front of the line saying, “Well, we really want to understand this because I’m teaching history—I’m teaching sociology—Because I’m teaching—” It was unbelievable to me. I felt so betrayed. Now that just speaks to my naiveté—but I felt that I had been led down the garden path by people who only showed me a [fragment] of who they were, and I, [in my delusion,] thought that I knew them. And I thought that they knew me, but they were not interested in seeing all of me either. They just wanted to see a fragment of me, and that—I was devastated.
HT: Do you think it could have been the fear factor there because of the name “Black Power,” because this was about the national Black Power Movement about the same time, which was—
BE: I thought about that, and I thought that’s no excuse. Here is a conference of scholars. We’re talking about assembling some of the best minds in the country—scholars—to talk about this [critical, foundational] issue. Scholars! And that there could be no curiosity about this [was inexplicable to me]. In my Kumbaya fantasyland, I was thinking, “Well, surely students would be assigned to come to this and— [laughter]
HT: And report back.
BE: Report back, right. [But there was] no curiosity at all.
HT: And what about the administration of the college (or the university, by that time). Was it supportive, as far as you know, or was it—
BE: Well, they didn’t try to stop it, which at that time would have been measured as support. And I don’t know why they didn’t try to stop it. Maybe they just thought, Oh, this isn’t going to happen. Well, now that I think about it, there were some very good strategists who were helping us with this. I will bet you that the administration probably did not understand the scope of what we were doing; that all of those other students were going to be coming in from all of these other schools [across the state]. I think that the 19
administration didn’t have a sense of that. They probably thought, Okay, a little conference. [laughter]
HT: That’s very interesting.
BE: Because I never even thought about the chancellor. I mean it wasn’t even a—
HT: So none of the administration spoke or—at the conference or welcomed people or—
BE: This is so funny; somebody must have welcomed, but I—
HT: That’s what usually happens.
BE: But I cannot—you know, I cannot remember. I would love to—boy, if there were a program of that event.
HT: I’m almost sure we have one.
BE: Oh, my God.
HT: In the archives. Do you want me to see if I can find one and send it to you? Or make a photocopy?
BE: I would love to have that and you know, somebody from the Neo-Black Society—I travel a lot—was trying to get in touch with me, and I was up to my eyelids in work, and I did not get back in touch with that person and now—Because I do want to be on their mailing list so I can find out about what’s going on.
HT: Okay, I do want to mention that the Neo-Black Society contacted our university archivist last week, and she went over and picked up four boxes of records from their office.
BE: Oh my God.
HT: Record center boxes. Each record center box is about twelve by twelve by fourteen; maybe something like that. But I think that we do have one box going back to the very early days of their records, but now we have the eighties and nineties and the early two thousands as well.
BE: Oh, that is so fabulous.
HT: You know the forty-fifth anniversary is coming up, and the fiftieth is coming up in a few years so they’re gearing up, thinking about their history.
BE: That is really wonderful. You know, it’s so wonderful to know that that organization has sustained itself over all those years. That’s really wonderful.
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HT: And I’m sure they’re going to invite you to come and speak or something [both laughing] as a pioneer who helped found it.
BE: Oh, my gosh. There’s lot of other people who should be speaking.
HT: I don’t know about that. Well, you came in the fall of ’64, and that’s the time when the first men were on campus, as well. The school became coeducational in ’63, but it took a year for the men to come. Do you have any recollection of men on campus?
BE: I do.
HT: There weren’t many, of course.
BE: There were not many, and you know, it was so interesting. They functioned as shadows sometimes; just kind of on the fringes just because it was so heavily female.
HT: And the tradition of Woman’s College was still there, of course.
BE: Yes, and it really did encourage us to have a sense of ourselves as women and to take ourselves quite seriously in the world. And so, there were the SGA [Student Government Association] people, and there were, you know, the girls who were into the sports. People took themselves seriously in their femaleness.
HT: Well, do you think that UNCG lost something by becoming coeducational, because you were right there at the beginning of that.
BE: Of course, and what I’ve noticed over the years [through] women I’ve met out in the world—is that women who had an experience of an all-female education at some point in their lives, especially if they’re older, have a different sense, a different way of defining ourselves as individuals. I mean, clearly you have relationships with men, the raging hormones and all of that, you love men and so forth, but men don’t occupy the center of yourself in the same way as when you don’t have that experience; when you’ve never had the opportunity to define yourself as you are; who you are, on your own terms. So, yes, it makes a difference; it certainly makes a difference, I think.
HT: I think I read somewhere that you were involved with Coraddi, which is the literary magazine on campus. Can you tell me about that?
BE: I was on the Coraddi staff, and then I was editor of the Coraddi my senior year, and it was a little frustrating because the magazine was always driven by the literary side. So even though the artwork was all produced by students and the art editor’s responsibility was to pull together a committee to select the work, the look [of the magazine] was driven by the literary side. That did not change while I was there. I think maybe it changed the following year or the year after that.
HT: Were you the editor of the entire magazine or the art editor? 21
BE: The art editor. But I think the following year the art editor took on the literary editor. They duked it out [over who was going to be in charge of the overall design of the magazine,] and I think the art editor won. But I loved [working on the Coraddi]. It was really very interesting.
HT: Did you have time to be involved in any other extracurricular activities, such as sports or that sort of thing.
BE: I just enjoyed my friends, hanging out with my friends, and in my senior year when I became politically active and my boyfriend was Nelson, I did a lot more extracurricular activities having to do with voter registration [and social and economic inequities]. It was really interesting how my life became separate from the university at that point, because I was living off campus, and that allowed me to have a different stance in the world; to be in the world in a different way.
Holly Daughtry asked me if I would share an apartment with her and I said, yes. The apartment was on Spring Garden Street across from the administration building. Then about three weeks after I took the apartment with Holly, [her] mother decided that Holly had just lost her mind completely. I don’t know whether it was because she was sharing an apartment [with me, an African American girl]—
[End CD 1—Begin CD 2]
BE: —or whether there was other evidence that had nothing to do with me. Anyway her mother just came, packed her up, and took her home. So that left me with the apartment, and I dared not see the landlord, even to pay rent, because I didn’t know if he would just put me out, because, you know, apartheid was still heavy, heavy-handed in Greensboro.
HT: I assume this was in a house that they had converted.
BE: Yes, and so I got Betty Bailey to share the apartment with me. We met through one of the campus ministries. And so that’s my senior year.
You asked me about the Golden Chain. I was inducted into Golden Chain [Honor Society] my senior year. When the Golden Chain inducts you, they come with candles. Well, I didn’t know any of this; all I knew was that I’d been helping a lot with voter registration and hanging out with Nelson who was being followed by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] and the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and all our phones were tapped. And so when I saw these people with fire surrounding the house, I was like, “Oh my God, it’s the Klan” [Klu Klux Klan]. I didn’t know who it was; I was in a panic, and it turned out it was Golden Chain.
HT: So they actually came to your house with lighted candles.
BE: Yes.
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HT: Because we had that in high school, but we were in the auditorium, and they would go around with the candles.
BE: That’s what I remember.
HT: That’s interesting. I think they have reactivated the Golden Chain fairly recently on campus.
BE: Oh, really.
HT: I believe that’s correct.
BE: Oh, that’s nice. Well, I remember feeling very—I just didn’t know what to do with this. There was a reception or dinner [at the alumni house for Golden Chain and the new inductees]. I was the only black person there except for the black women who were serving the food. They were totally invisible to everyone there except me. These were women who were my elders, whom I would have been serving. I would never have had those women to serve me; I would have been serving those women, and I remember being so offended by that whole set-up, and so offended at how oblivious people were to it, and how impossible that whole situation made me feel. You know, I think all of that made me decide how important it is to be in control of your own [mind]—to be able to see things. Not just to be blind because it’s convenient for someone. A price has to be paid for that kind of blindness. Somebody always pays, and usually the person who’s blind pays. Although the things that they do because they’re blind sometimes cause everybody to pay. [pause - sigh] Anyway.
HT: Well, I think you’ve talked about this a little bit, but what was the political atmosphere like in the mid- to late-sixties on campus? Do you have any recollection of that? This was at the time when there were so many assassinations in this country. President [John F.] Kennedy had been assassinated, Martin Luther King [Jr.], Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy. Do you have any thoughts about that aspect of the 1960s?
BE: Southern white female culture has a very distinctive quality in the sense that I think the girls were raised always to be polite, always to be gracious; to carry the moral imperative that their fathers, husbands, and sons were not required nor expected to have. So I think that created an atmosphere on campus that, on the one hand, made it possible to have the Black Power Forum there; but on the other hand, made it impossible to have that kind of discourse in classes or even just socially.
HT: It’s something that “polite society” doesn’t do.
BE: [White] women in [white] polite society don’t do. [pause] [Other] requirements [were] to speak kindly and to be absolutely loyal to the men in their lives who behaved very differently; [and who were doing hideous things to maintain the injustices of apartheid].
HT: To sort of turn a blind eye to some of those things. 23
BE: Absolutely.
HT: What was your reaction when Dr. King was assassinated? Do you have any recollection of that?
BE: Well, you know this was during the time when I had discovered that—
HT: This was right before you graduated.
BE: Yes—I had been disillusioned and so it did not surprise me. It was very sad to me, but it also made me know that I needed to be among people who brought their whole selves to the table; that didn’t have an intellectual life here and a moral life somewhere else. I don’t mean that to sound harsh. In societies where some people are set up to take on an identity of the superior one, the oppressive one, the one who sets all of the rules, you don’t get to stay there unless you behave in certain ways. You have to decide that being unfair, as a way of life, is okay, and you have to decide that your moral, your ethical framework does not extend to many people. It is only for your group, so I knew that I needed to be some place healthier than that.
[I had experienced such relief when I left the black community to be part of a white community that produced incredibly beautiful concepts, only to discover that those concepts floated atop a cesspool of horrors. And that few people were interested in acknowledging the cesspool—let alone talking about it or draining it. So I wanted to go back home; I wanted to go back and understand the African Diaspora in a different way. It’s not like I thought that society was perfect, I just wanted to be where a critical mass of people really wrestled with those existential questions.]
You know, this has driven me [much of my life]. It’s figuring out how to have all the information—or as much as possible—and still love. Because, see, it’s easy to love if you close your eyes. But when you don’t close your eyes [and you look at what is,] when you don’t turn your head away, and you can still figure out how to love—to me, that’s the essential human mission.
HT: So that’s one of the reasons you went to Howard after UNCG, correct? And you went there to work on your master’s, I assume. Is that correct?
BE: Well, I went there for three reasons: I had been introduced to mysticism through the study of Eastern history with Dr. Wright, and I was astounded that there was a whole—I mean there were like countries in the world, whole cultures, where seeing and hearing beyond what is considered the “normal” range was normal. This is how I experience life, and I had never had a vocabulary for it because that vocabulary didn’t exist [where I grew up]. And then I find these people who have thousands of years of history with this [dimension of experience,] and a whole vocabulary around it. [Wow!] Dr. Wright had encouraged me to apply to the University of Hawaii to work on my master’s there, because I was so intrigued with all of this and had just dived in with all fours. He said, “Yes, and I’ll write you a recommendation. I’m sure you’ll get in.”
Well, after the Black Power Forum, I began to think: So here’s this part of the world where people have this whole vocabulary and are giving voice to this whole level 24
of experience that is very natural to me, but [that] I’ve never had any vocabulary for. Where else in the world does that exist? I’ll bet you it exists in Africa, but I’ve never heard of it. So where would I hear about it? Where can I find out about this? So, that’s Howard, African studies department. So I thought: Okay, I could go to the University of Hawaii, but if I do, I will never know the source of it from my lineage.
And then there were all those gorgeous men, so that was the second reason. And I did want to get a master’s because what are you going to do with painting, right? [That was the third reason.] [laughter]
HT: Well, had you thought about becoming a professional artist at one time?
BE: You know, truth be told—I never decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. That is true to this day, because I think there are so many fabulous things out there in the world to learn and explore, how could you possibly choose just one? So I didn’t ever really consider just being a painter; I just wanted to get out there and just learn stuff and discover stuff and have fun while I did it. You know, when you’re studying art you can always study “the art of ___(blank)___.” Just attach a word, and you can follow it wherever it leads. So I went to Howard. I wanted to understand traditional African thought, philosophy, mysticism. I was able to pursue all of that—and have a fabulous time—it was absolutely wonderful.
HT: And what was the master’s in?
HT: Was that a two-year program?
BE: Yes, yes.
HT: And after Howard, what was your next endeavor?
BE: Well, I started doing some radio plays while I was at Howard. Or no, I think I had left Howard—I had finished my master’s. Oh, so I started teaching at the University of District of Columbia, and I taught art. It was a new school so there was a lot of flexibility so I got to teach things like art history as well as studio art, which I loved. And I exhibited a lot during that time. My whole world was artists. I met my ex-husband at Howard. He was teaching in the philosophy department, and it was really a wonderful time. He had just come back from Oxford [University] on a Fulbright [Program]. There was a whole cadre of people—African Americans, Afro-Carribeans, folks from the continent, many different countries, and there was such a fluidity. It was one of the most intellectually fertile places. We just had such a good time! There would be parties on the weekend, and food at all the parties, and music. And these were all people—when I was in graduate school—who were going back home to do something. They were going to be part of their government. One of my classmates, Mariam Ukadigbo, was married to Chuba, who also taught at UDC. He went home and became head of the Senate of Nigeria. He died while he was running for president. There were just so many people who were going to go back home and do fabulous things. So the conversations weren’t 25
abstract; they were about what people actually thought, and what were they doing, and how were they doing it, so it was absolutely wonderful.
HT: It sounds like a very interesting time.
BE: It was.
HT: This was early seventies, I guess. Yes.
BE: Early to mid-seventies.
HT: Did you ever think about moving to New York.
BE: You know, I have to have a certain amount of green around me—to have trees and to see the sky. I can’t see the sky in New York. It’s a great place to visit, [but I preferred] Washington, DC. My ex-husband was finishing up his dissertation at that time in philosophy of science [and he was also jazz musician]. So it was a perfect time for me to combine the art and the life of the mind—especially science and mysticism. And all of the people that I hung out with were all engaged in that in some way.
There was a wonderful visiting professor at Howard, Dr. Fela Sowande. He was a musicologist, and he was quite renowned. He performed all over the world, including for the queen of England. He also was deeply knowledgeable about traditional African music, religion, philosophy, and mysticism, and you really can’t understand the arts of Africa unless you understand mysticism. So I took courses with him, and studied with him informally too. He was an incredible man—older and very wise. I also got to study with a priest of Ogun for several years when I lived in D.C., so I just could not have asked for a better learning environment.
HT: Now you said “priest.”
BE: Priest, traditional priest of Ogun.
HT: How do you spell that?
BE: O-G-U-N.
HT: Okay, thank you.
HT: Now you have a consulting firm; how did that come about? After teaching for a number of years, I assume.
BE: So when my marriage started fracturing, I decided that I wanted to be back in North Carolina because I had two children, little children, and I wanted their body rhythms to be set in a rural area, not an urban one. And I wanted them to know that the earth, SOIL, was not dirty. And I wanted them to be around their extended family—I wanted them to know what that was about, so I came back home. 26
I went home in April for Easter, and ran into a couple of friends who had started a public radio station in Warrenton [North Carolina], and this was an independent 50,000 watt jazz and blues station not tied to any college or university—the first of its kind in the country. They weren’t yet on the air, but they were going to be on the air in August. Valeria Lee [was station manager]. So I mentioned to Val that I had been doing some radio plays in Washington, and she said, “Oh, well why don’t you come and do a children’s program for the station when we go on the air.” [I was shocked, because I had never really thought about doing anything like that. So I thought about it for five minutes and said, “Okay.”]
And so in August, I moved down to North Carolina [with my children] to do this daily radio children’s program, [that I named “Tickle-me-Think”] on WVSP [radio station in Warrenton, North Carolina. I produced that show for a while until the station ran out of money.] The thing about working for WVSP was we could do whatever we wanted. We had a little press; we could produce shows, and the people who came through the station to work or volunteer were so incredible. I mean, they were brilliant, out-of-the box thinkers. And they were from different places in the state and country. So it was really wonderful!
[Then I had to do something else to earn money. That’s when I started consulting, and I didn’t even know it was “consulting.” I was just trying to find gigs—anything, you know, to bring in money.]
[Fortunately my expenses were low. I was living in a log cabin that my grandfather had built. It was right across the road from my mother’s house, and it was on our family land. It had been one of those little old country stores, you know, where the store shop was in front and the living quarters were in the back and upstairs. So I renovated this little cabin, and I became earth mother. I had a garden and the children. They could play outside and be totally safe. Grandma, her truck, and her pink Cadillac were right across the road, and there was a pond, grape vines, and peach, apple, and pear trees. [laughter] And so, that’s how I lived for about five years.]
[And then one winter day I realized that I’d rather freeze to death than make another fire in that stove. I did not want to ever see an ash again; I did not want to put a stick of wood on anybody’s picturesque hearth. I noticed that I had become willing to drive to Durham—a hundred miles, round-trip—to get a decent piece of carrot cake. I said, “I need to move NOW!”, so I went to Raleigh.]
I got a job at the North Carolina Museum of History as editor of a magazine they published for junior high children, and that was fun.
HT: So how long did you stay in Raleigh at the North Carolina Museum of History?
BE: [That job was the first job I had ever had that required my body to be in a particular place for a specified length of time every day. [sighs] And it was the first time I had worked in that kind of bureaucracy. That was a major adjustment. But it was fun to transform the magazine. I loved working with original sources. The museum shared a building with the state archives, and I had access to it all. I was able to do many wonderful subversive things. [laughter] I did that for two years, and then I just couldn’t bear it any more.]
[A friend who headed the Hayti Development Corporation in Durham said to me, “You should work for us.” Since I didn’t want to work for a nonprofit, he convinced me 27
that I should consider working for a developer who was doing a project with them who had offices in Durham and Washington, DC, and in two California cities, and Texas.]
[So I left the museum to take that position, and then I crashed and burned after less than six months, because it was too much travel, and his wife wasn’t happy that he had a female assistant, and so it all did not end well. But it was a great learning experience for me! After I crashed and burned on that job, my friend called me up again and said, “Would you like to work for us now?”] [laughter]
[So I became director of marketing for Hayti Development Corporation. These were all wonderful gigs because I basically got to do a lot of different things. We were doing housing and commercial development and whatever made sense, I could pursue it.]
[I also was trying to understand energy. Now this was a result of studying with the priest of Ogun and understanding the world in a totally different way. What is reality; what is not reality, all of that. So there were these different themes that I would pursue in my life for certain periods of time. At that time, I wanted to understand how big energy operated, and, in this culture, big energy is money. It’s one of the most powerful forces in society, and so I wanted to understand how big energy—money—operated. Working with Hayti Development Corporation gave me a chance to see that, to do that. Although, especially by today’s standards, these development projects were quite modest.]
[One of the things about working with big money is that you get to see people at their best and at their worst. I mean, the way commerce is done in this country is a form of warfare: who’s got what, and who can take what from whom and under what conditions. After I got to see that up close and personal for a while, I realized that I really didn’t want my life to be about that. I understood enough about how big energy moved in that particular way, and I wanted to do something different. I wanted to understand big energy but I didn’t want adversarial relationships to be a central theme in my life. I wanted to figure out how to build constructively with those energies. I wanted to create beauty, basically, and so—]
HT: So that goes back to your art.
BE: [Yes, which has really served me well in all of my consulting. I’m an ideation and strategic change consultant. I do a lot of work with foundations, public agencies, institutions. I’m usually invited to be part of a high functioning team. I help people—teams of people—to discover their best thinking and to create things that have impact on policy, to launch new initiatives or to reposition existing ones. And I work across sectors. It really is creating beauty.]
HT: Do you still paint? Are you involved in art these days or do you have time?
BE: You know, I do more writing now than painting, and I do a lot of theater. No, let me explain. You know, meetings, all kinds of meetings—are basically drama; it’s theater—especially because I bring people from very different worlds together, and I have to make these different worlds understandable to each other in a coherent way. That is sheer theater! So it has served me well; I’m glad I majored in art.
HT: Well, what kind of impact do you think that having attended UNCG has had on your life? 28
BE: Well, it’s that love piece, you know—really understanding how to [look at someone, to look at people, see what I see, and love anyway]. It is a constant exercise. This is not something that is ever going to be a done deal.
HT: It sound like you had a positive experience at UNCG, for the most part.
BE: [sighs] Yes, except that I’m uncomfortable in putting it in that singular box, because I think it’s both the good stuff and the devastating stuff that really shaped my life profoundly, and that I wouldn’t trade for anything. But I find it hard to put it that one box labeled, “positive experience.” But there are wonderful people and friendships. You know, [years later, like twenty years after I graduated, I called all those people who taught me so much to thank them. Because—]
HT: And what was their response?
BE: Surprise.
HT: Because I’m sure that doesn’t happen; it probably doesn’t happen very often.
BE: Oh, maybe not. It was wonderful. I was so glad to be able to do that.
HT: Well, I don’t have any more formal questions. Have you been involved with UNCG at all since you graduated? Have you been back to any reunions or anything like that?
BE: I haven’t, but I do try to keep up with things. I get these solicitations, and I always ask, “Well, how many faculty—black faculty—do you have, and how many are tenured?” And the answer is always a dismal one. It always hits me hard, because I got to see UNCG transform from a woman’s college to a coed institution. I know how magnificently they can make demographic changes, inclusions, and accommodations, because I saw how effectively and quickly it was done for men.
And I do hear wonderful things; like I hear that African American female students have among the highest averages there. That is a really good thing! And I wonder what helped those young women figure out what to do that’s making such a difference. In my class, if we had been able to figure that out, it would have made such a difference to a lot of girls. I wonder if the university understands how they’re doing this.
HT: Probably not. I’m just guessing that, but I do know that there is a real problem of retaining men of color and even white men, because there just seems to be a real disconnect there. Women seem to be—Well, they are retained at university much more readily, and they’re going to college much more so than the men are, and so I think that’s going to be a real problem in the future, if it’s not already a problem; that somehow we need to fix that because—Well, at UNCG I think the ratio between male and female, I think it’s about sixty-five percent female and thirty-five [percent] male.
BE: Interesting. Well, I didn’t know it was that drastic. Wow. And what about on the faculty?
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HT: I don’t have those figures in front of me, but I think it may be close to half and half.
BE: Oh, that’s interesting.
HT: Well, I’m talking about men—as compared to women. Well, now faculty of color is quite different; it’s still fairly low, you know, in comparison.
BE: A lot of my work is national and international, and I think that we are very close to a time when people will look back at this past three- to four-hundred- year period as an aberration in the history of humans—and will say, “What were we thinking?” That there could be one relatively small group of people that has [pause] hegemonic influence on resources, including what is considered to be knowledge. We will look at this period as a kind of dysfunctional cul-de-sac that we were trapped in. Think about all of the knowledge that has been generated on this planet. And yet we are depriving ourselves of it—unless it has been vetted by a tiny sliver of the human family. It’s insane—I just—I’m still looking for that Kumbaya moment. [laughter]
HT: Oh, my goodness. Maybe it will happen—soon. Well, do you have anything you would like to add to the interview that we haven’t covered, because we’ve covered so much this afternoon.
BE: Oh, my gosh. You know, I just want to thank you for giving me this opportunity—
HT: Well, you are so welcome.
BE: —to reflect on this. I so appreciate all of the people who shaped my life in all of our messy human way—in all of our imperfect ways. I’m very grateful.
HT: Well, again, thank you so much for inviting me to your house this afternoon and telling me all about your life. It’s been wonderful hearing that. [both laughing]
[End of Interview]