Oral history interview with Irene Cooper Harrington, 2012 [text/print transcript]

              1
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Irene Cooper Harrington
INTERVIEWER: Sarah McNulty Turner
DATE: December 3, 2012
ST: Today is December 3, 2012. My name is Sarah Turner; I’m the oral history interviewer for the [UNCG Institutional Memory Collections’] African American Institutional Memory Project. I’m here today with—
IH: Irene Harrington.
ST: And she is here to talk about her experiences at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. I’d like to start, Ms. Harrington, by asking you to tell me about your background; things like where you were born and your birth date.
IH: I am from Henderson, North Carolina—that’s Vance County—and I was born February 22, 1945. I lived in Henderson until I came to the Woman’s College of the University of North Carolina in January, 1964, and I remained in Greensboro after graduation and have been here since.
ST: Okay. You started in January?
IH: Yes.
ST: Why is that?
IH: Because I needed to work to continue to earn some money so that I could come. I had scholarships, but they didn’t cover the full cost so I graduated from high school in 1963. What did I say?
ST: You started in January of ’64.
IH: That’s right. I graduated in ’63, and I worked the first semester. I was admitted for the fall of ’63, but I declined until January because I needed to work and earn some additional money.
ST: Did you stay at home or did you work here? 2
IH: No, I stayed in Henderson, and came to Greensboro in January.
ST: Okay. Can you tell me about your family and your home life?
IH: Well, I’m the oldest of seven; one deceased now, so I have five siblings still living. Three of them are here in Greensboro. My parents divorced when I was about twelve years old, and my mother continued to not only raise us but also inspire. I’m the only sibling who went on beyond high school. I was the first in my family to do so. Henderson, of course, is about an hour and a half from Greensboro and is a small town, very Southern town, still today. I went to a segregated high school; all of my early years were segregated. I didn’t know about integration until I came to Greensboro.
We had what was called Henderson Institute as our high school. One of the unique things about Henderson Institute was the fact that it had what they called a teacherage on campus. This was a residence for teachers and staff. They could live right on the campus. We had quite a few who did not live in Henderson. They only came to Henderson to teach during the week, and then on the weekends, they went back home. And some of them were from Greensboro. Our guidance counselor, in fact, lived in Greensboro, and she was the one who urged me to apply to UNCG because in the early sixties, as you may well know, UNCG was still the Woman’s College and did not have a lot of African American students. In fact, I think the first ones had come like ’59 or somewhere in there [Editor’s note: the first African American students came in the fall of 1956], so when I was graduating in ’63—Actually in the fall of ’62 when I started looking at schools, my guidance counselor said, “I know this school in Greensboro, and I know that they are eager right now to have some additional African American students.” So she urged me and my co-valedictorian to apply, and we were both accepted, and we both came. But she came in the fall of ’63, and I came in January.
ST: And what was her name?
IH: Yvonne Cheek [Class of 1967]. She was married at one time—Johnson. I’m not sure if she still carries the Johnson. She may be Yvonne Cheek.
ST: I think she’s just—Hermann [Trojanowski] has just interviewed her.
IH: I’m sorry.
ST: Hermann has interviewed her.
IH: Oh, is that right?
ST: He went up to Minnesota and interviewed her.
IH: Well, she was in Michigan the last I heard, so she’s in Minnesota now.
ST: Michigan or Minnesota. I may have confused it, but he went up and interviewed her, and I actually just read the interview. It was great. 3
IH: I’m sure it was.
ST: She’s very accomplished.
IH: Yes, and she’s very good at explaining her experiences and all that kind of thing. So that’s how I got here, through our guidance counselor. She was insistent that as co-valedictorians we would get in because we had, you know, very good GPAs [grade point average] and had been active in high school.
ST: Do you still stay in touch with Ms. Cheek.
IH: I’m sorry.
ST: Do you still stay in touch with Yvonne?
IH: No, we lost—She lived here in Greensboro for a while and we—In fact we were almost neighbors when she was here, but when she left for—I think it was Michigan—She left to go work on a PhD and everything.
ST: She went to graduate school there.
IH: We sort of lost touch. I’ve heard things about her since then, but I have not actually talked to her.
ST: Well, what did your parents do?
IH: My mother was a domestic so she worked for various families during the time that I was home. My father was a miner. He worked in a tungsten mine that was outside Henderson for most of my early childhood.
ST: What were your favorite things to study in school prior to coming to college?
IH: Fiction, anything that had to do with literature, I loved. When I was a very young person, I loved the Boxcar Children series. I just couldn’t get enough, and I would stand at the library until they came in. I just thought that was so uplifting, and so that was one of my favorite stories in childhood. But anything I could get my hands on. In fact, the reason I majored in English as an undergrad was because I wanted to teach literature. I loved Shakespeare; I loved Silas Marner when I was in, I think, the tenth grade. Even when I did my student teaching, I had a tenth grade class. I was just thrilled to death because, you know, we did Silas Marner, and Julius Caesar, and I was in heaven.
But when I graduated and was offered a job here in Greensboro, I just thought I had died and gone to heaven. This was what I wanted with the public schools, but at that time, you signed on with the public schools. You did not sign on for a specific assignment, and you didn’t get your assignment until close to the time for school to open. And my assignment turned out to be eighth grade language arts, which is why I don’t teach today. I gave it one year; can you believe that? 4
ST: Where did you teach?
IH: Allen Junior [High School, Greensboro, North Carolina]. It’s Allen Middle I think now, but it was Allen Junior High when I was there. One of the worst experiences of my life.
ST: [laughter] My mom taught there for many years.
IH: Is that right?
ST: Yes. She graduated from college in ’70, and so she would have been a year of two behind you, but she didn’t work at Allen until, I think, the mid-seventies. She was an eighth grade language arts teacher forever. [laughs] I know people say that you have to have a certain soul to teach middle schoolers.
IH: I don’t have it. [laughs] I will be quite honest with you; I do not have it.
ST: Well, you said that you chose to attend UNCG on the guidance counselor’s recommendation. Did you apply to any other schools?
IH: Yes, I believe they were all HBCUs [historically black colleges or universities], and they were all in North Carolina. When we went on college tours, that’s what we toured. We toured North Carolina Central [University, Durham, North Carolina], St. Aug [St. Augustine’s College, Raleigh, North Carolina], A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina], and I think something in Salisbury.
ST: Livingston?
IH: Livingstone [College, Salisbury, North Carolina]—yes—and Shaw [College, Raleigh, North Carolina]. I think those were the main ones; and of those, I was really only seriously—I wouldn’t even say seriously—I was halfway interested in A&T and North Carolina Central. And at the time, my primary interest in going to college was in education. I didn’t have any preconceived notions about finding a husband or, you know, some of the other artificial reasons for going to college. I really wanted to get to a good place where I could study literature. And on one of those tours—it may have been when we came to A&T—my guidance counselor mentioned the Woman’s College, and I was intrigued by the notion of a woman’s college more so than I was that it was integrating at the time. That had no real appeal to me, but that it was a woman’s college did, in fact, have some appeal because I knew that if you’re on a campus with all women, that you probably have fewer distractions, and that you can really deal with what you’re there for rather than—And women, and men, act differently in coed situations than they do in single-sex situations. You know, women are trying to appeal to the guys, and the guys—Who knows what they’re trying to do. [laughter] So that intrigued me and after I applied to UNCG, I didn’t do anything but wait for them to say, Yes, we’ll take you. I had lost interest in going anywhere else because it was close enough to home. I’d never really been away from home except to go to summer camp a couple of times. But I had not 5
traveled beyond Henderson for any extended period of time, so I really wanted to stay close to home, partly because I knew that if I were far away, I wouldn’t be able to afford to return home, probably even on holidays. So I needed to be close to home and have some means of public transportation or whatever to get back and forth. My mother did not drive, and at that time my mother and father were not together. My mother did not drive; there was not a car in the family, so I came to school on the bus.
ST: Wow. Was there a bus from Henderson, or did you have to catch it in another town?
IH: No, we had a bus station, and Greyhound [Bus] and Trailways [Bus] both ran through Henderson.
ST: And Henderson is located near what city? I feel like I know but—
IH: The closest is maybe Raleigh, Durham area.
ST: I was going to say Durham.
IH: It’s about an hour, maybe forty-five minutes from that area. It’s an hour and a half from Greensboro, but it would take the bus almost four hours.
ST: So you came to college with all your things on a bus. Did your mother or father come with you to move in, or did you—
IH: Nobody came with me. I got on the bus and came by myself.
ST: Wow. What a grown-up moment.
IH: And I got to the bus station here, and I got a cab to the Woman’s College, and that was the start of my college career.
ST: Wow, did you have just two suitcases that you could carry?
IH: Probably, I can tell you what I had because it had been a graduation gift. I had a huge Pullman-type suitcase and what at that time—I don’t even think they have them anymore—a train case. It’s a small—It’s like a carry-on thing now, but in those days it was what women of means kept with them as they got on the train or the bus or whatever. This was their cosmetics and all that kind of stuff. So I had that and the big Pullman; that’s what I came to college with.
ST: Do you remember anything you brought with you of significance? Like for instance, my mom always remembers that she felt like she was advanced because she brought a clock radio. It was one of the first clock radios.
IH: I had no frills. I had clothing, and I really didn’t have any mementos or anything of that sort that I needed. I brought clothing and books. I guess you could call books my 6
mementos because I started collecting books early. I wanted to own my own. It was okay to go to the library and get one, but I couldn’t wait to buy my own book.
ST: Did your mother ever come visit you here?
IH: Yes, she spent a full weekend with me once, and then she came for the day with friends several times. And two of my sisters—or maybe three—visited me while I was here in school.
ST: Did you say what number you were in your family?
IH: I am the oldest of seven.
ST: That’s right, okay. And what’s the age difference between all seven, oldest to youngest.
IH: There are two right behind me, so I have the sister who is deceased—She would be sixty-six right now—and then I have a brother who would be sixty-five—who is sixty-five, and then I think we skipped a couple of years and there’s a sister who was born in—I was born in ’45, a sister born in ’46, my brother born in ’47, and another sister born in ’49, and then the last two were, I don’t know, ’50-’51 or ’51-’52 or somewhere in there.
ST: So you’re very close together, pretty much, in age.
IH: Yes, and my deceased sister and I were born one year and one day apart, so my birthday is the twenty-second of February and hers was the twenty-third. So we used to fool around when we were in school and tell people we were twins and that, you know, she was born after midnight. and I was born just before midnight so that’s why we had the difference in dates. We didn’t tell them there was a whole year in between.
ST: You mother must have had her hands full.
IH: My mother dressed us alike for a good little while because there wasn’t another girl until ’49 and we were born in ’45 and ’46, so it was easy to sell the notion that we were twins.
ST: That’s funny. Well, you told me about how you got to campus. Can you tell me about your first day coming into the dorm; who your roommate was, things like that?
IH: I know who my roommates were, but I don’t remember much else. I lived in Coit [Residence Hall] my first year and, as I mentioned before, I came in January so one of the issues I had was that everybody else already knew each other because they came in August. So, you know, little groups had already formed and all that so I just felt like a fifth wheel coming in in January. I think the saving grace for me was Yvonne because she was here and well-entrenched, very well-known, and she happened to be one of my roommates. I’m sure that was probably deliberate, but there were only eleven African-American women here in my freshman class. There were, I think, thirty-something totally on the campus, but the class that came in in ’62—I mean in the fall of ’63—had eleven 7
African American women. So I, when I came, I was the third girl in a three-girl room, and Yvonne was one of my roommates. The other one was Suezette Brown [Class of 1967] from Farmville, North Carolina.
So Yvonne certainly helped to ease the transition and introduced me around and welcomed me, so it wasn’t as harsh as it could have been, you know, coming into a situation like that. But one of the interesting things about that time was the eleven of us had the full end of a hall to ourselves: our own bathroom because I guess they didn’t dare, you know, mix us, and certainly in that day and time, you couldn’t have a white person using the same bathroom. And the bus stations in Henderson still had black and white restrooms, so, you know, we considered ourselves privileged because everybody else was crowded into the other space, and we had this whole hall for eleven people. They didn’t put anybody else down there and that was—And you know eleven is not divisible by two in any even form, so that was one of the reasons we had to have a three-girl room. It was an extreme privilege for you to have a single room, and so certainly you can’t give a black woman a single room.
ST: Was your room big enough to have three people?
IH: It was. I think it probably was designed with that in mind. I never felt cramped, and there were three desks and all that. It was a big room at the end of the hall, so it may have been designed to accommodate three people, but that was my first—That’s the memory I have of my first few days here, was coming into that room and trying to get settled. All of the other ten girls turned out to be very nice and tried to school me on things that had gone on with them the first semester and all that.
ST: What kind of emotions did you have? Was there fear or anxiety or happiness?
IH: I didn’t have sense enough to be fearful.
ST: Just being by yourself, you know, the way you had to come to college: I mean, what kind of emotions did you feel?
IH: I felt primarily uncertainty. I wasn’t sure what I had signed up for. As I said before, I had really never been away from home for any extended period of time, so I kept wondering if I were ready to be away from my family. And the whole newness of the situation and being in a place that I knew nothing about, I think, and, you know, integration was really popping up then, and there was a lot of stuff going on around us. And of course you know that Greensboro was one of the centers. And my beloved JFK [President John F. Kennedy] had died the fall I was home. I should have been in school, but I was at home. And so, you know, you had all of those things swirling around. Doubt crept in: Had I made the right decision? Can I manage this? How am I, this country girl from Henderson, North Carolina, going to navigate this college? But after I got into the swing of things, there was no time for that kind of thinking because the work was so much different. I had never had to work that hard in classes before, but you learn and you adjust and so I did that. 8
I’m still not a very social person, and I was even less social in those days, so I didn’t go out looking to make friends. If friendships came my way, that was fine, but I was happy to be in my room with a book or be in the library with a book and I was okay. So I would say uncertainty and self-doubt were the primary emotions that I had when I first got here.
ST: And what did you do that semester you worked? What kind of work did you do?
IH: I was what they call a “ticket girl” in a tobacco plant. I was the one who had—I don’t know if you know anything about these things, but Henderson was a tobacco town, and they had this factory called J. P. Taylor Tobacco Factory. I worked there. I was the person who would go—They had assembly lines of people that would have these bales or these stacks of tobacco leaves, and the women and the men on the line had to do certain things to those leaves. When they first opened the bale, there was a ticket on it, and they had to take the ticket off and put it on a line—like hanging clothes out on a line—and I had to go around and gather those tickets and track them—where they came from, how many pounds that bale was, and so forth—and at the end of the day, prepare a report for that day. Then I had to do monthly cumulative reports, and then, of course, semi-annual, and annual reports. That was what I did.
ST: And you said you were the only person in your family to go to college. How did your parents feel about you going to college?
IH: I was not in touch with my father at the time that I went to college; my mother was thrilled. She had always wanted all of us to get a good education. She had an eight-grade education herself, but when I started school, I could write my name. I knew my ABCs and I could count because my mother taught me those things before I set foot in a school. My mother would play school with me because I always talked about being a teacher so she would let me be the teacher, and we’d get my sister’s dolls, and we’d line them up, and then she would—they would be our students. I had a lot of fun that way. But she was just absolutely—partly because there was never any doubt that my family could not afford to send me to college, and so when I got scholarships and grants and all of that, that made it affordable, she was just overwhelmed that I would still get to go to college—and in her lifetime. I think there was a lot of pride that I was going to the Woman’s College. Nobody in Henderson had even—had ever gone anywhere but to an HBCU and many of the folk who—I graduated in a class of somewhere around one hundred and twenty-five. We lost a couple of classmates during the school year, so I’m not sure. I think we started out with one twenty-five. We may have ended with one twenty-two or one twenty-three, but not even half of them went to college, so it was a big deal to go to college, and if you are a domestic sending a child off to college, you must be doing something right so I think she was, you know, very proud.
ST: Proud, yes. Well, what was college like for you academically?
IH: Somewhat different from what I had experienced up until that time. School had been fairly easy for me, not because I’m a genius by any means, but because I studied hard. 9
And, like I said, I wasn’t doing a lot of dating and all that kind of stuff so I spent a lot of time with “my head in a book” is how my siblings put it. “Where’s Irene?” “Somewhere with a book.” [laughter] So I did, I studied hard and my grades reflected that, but, to be honest with you, when I got here, a different kind of studying was required. I think I was a junior when I realized that. [laughter] So even though I didn’t have a huge social life, and even though I thought I was studying hard, my grades didn’t reflect that. So when I got my first grade report, I don’t recall what it said now, but I remember the emotion—and I’ll probably cry right now because I cried then. I said, “How am I going to show my mother this?” because my mother thought I was a genius. It took me a really long time to get over that, because I had never experienced anything but As my entire school years, I think. All twelve years, I might have gotten a B one time. And it was hard for me to discern whether it was all me. Had I not done my best, or did I have some things working against me?
If the college had integrated its faculty by then, it was not apparent to me. I did not experience anybody who looked like me in the classroom the entire time I was here. And all freshmen were required to take a health course, and in most of my classes I was the only African American student because, remember, there were only eleven freshmen so it would hardly be possible to have more than one in a class. But I remember going—I mentioned this health class in particular, because that was my worst experience with prejudice. The instructor or professor was an older woman who had no qualms about her prejudice. I can’t remember whether it was the first day or shortly after I got to the class, but she kept me after class and she said something to the effect that I might as well know upfront that the most I could get out of this class was a C, and that would be if I behaved and kept my mouth shut. I’m—I mean she wasn’t that blunt, but that was what she said, so, you know, I was devastated so I went to the academic dean and—
ST: Who was that at the time?
IH: I don’t even remember. It was a man. Anyway, I remember that he said to me, “Yes, we have some faculty who feel that way.” And that was the end of that.
ST: They wouldn’t switch you or—
IH: Well, she was it for health, [laughs] and health was required so what was I to do but go in there and keep my mouth closed and take my C. Every paper I got back had a C on it—I knew she hadn’t read it—and I got a C out of the class.
ST: Good for you for going to administration though. I mean a lot of students would have just cowered and go on their way. At least you took a stand.
IH: Well, no I—I had to let somebody know. Little did I know it didn’t make any difference because apparently that was fairly common in those days, and I didn’t realize that. But that was the most outlandish experience with prejudice that I had. There were students who avoided us; students who gave us looks like, why are you here kind of things, but for the most part, I was amused by what I chose to call their curiosity. I mean they would come up to you and say things like, “How do you get your hair to look like that,” and 10
how do you all do “x, y, and z.” I didn’t take any offense to that. I did take offense to—I think I was probably a sophomore by then, or a junior because I was living in Reynolds [Residence Hall], and I was in—I don’t know whether they call it a laundry room or utility room or there pressing some of my clothes and a white student came in—and I don’t remember her exact words, but something to the effect: “Oh yeah, I’ve got some clothes that need pressing. Let me go get them.” “What. You want to use the ironing board?” I think she mistook me for an employee and I was there to do the laundry or something, and I assured her I was not, but I did take offense at that. I didn’t see any reason for her to assume that I was an employee, and that I was going to do her laundry. But there were those kinds of incidents.
The other amusing thing was that some of the white students were from, you know, larger cities and places where integration was further along than it was in these parts, and so I guess they thought that Henderson was one of those places, but Henderson was one of the last big places to get on the bandwagon, so they would say, Do you know so-and-so; she’s from Henderson. And it would be a white student. “No, we didn’t run in the same circles. In fact, we ran in the opposite direction if we could.” But they were just amazed that we could come out of the same little small town and not know each other. But that was amusing, more so than offensive.
ST: Well, you said you lived in Reynolds [Residence Hall] and Coit [Residence Hall]. Did you live anywhere on campus?
IH: No, once I moved into Reynolds, I stayed there the rest of my tenure. On a break my senior year, when—I did go to summer school one summer, and I stayed in Mary Foust [Residence Hall]. And then when I was student teaching, my school schedule did not coincide with UNCG’s spring break, and I had to stay here. Everybody who was student teaching had to stay part of spring break because our schools were still in session, but they closed down most of the campus and I stayed in—What is that other dorm? Hawkins [Residence Hall]. It was Hawkins-something or something-Hawkins.
ST: I can’t remember.
IH: It’s close to Market Street. I can’t remember now. Anyway I stayed there during the break, but normal residence was in Coit and Reynolds.
ST: And where did you student teach?
IH: Northeast High School.
ST: So by that point, high schools had integrated.
IH: Yes.
ST: And did you room with Yvonne the whole time or did you have different roommates?
11
IH: No, I had different roommates. When I first went to Reynolds, my roommate was Alice Garrett Brown [Class of 1965]. I think she was a senior at that time. She was getting ready to graduate. I don’t know if she’s been contacted.
ST: Yes.
IH: But anyway Alice and I became—
ST: I interviewed her.
IH: Yes, you did. Good.
ST: She was very sweet.
IH: Well, she’s beyond that for me because when she graduated, she gave me a stuffed poodle, and it was the richest purple I’ve ever seen. Hence, it’s been my favorite color since then. She also introduced me to the person I’ve been married to for forty-three years.
ST: Really. How was that?
IH: Well, after she graduated from UNCG, she got married. I was in her wedding, and she and her husband remained here in Greensboro where he is a minister.
ST: I had lunch with them actually, after church one day.
IH: Okay. And during that spring break when I was student teaching and was living in Phillips-Hawkins Residence Hall, she invited me over for dinner because I can’t remember if the cafeteria—I don’t know how we were eating because most things on campus were closed for spring break. But anyway, she invited me over to dinner; she didn’t bother to tell me that her husband was bringing somebody, one of his co-workers, to dinner as well. And the rest, as they say, is a forty-three year history.
ST: And what did your husband do, or what does he do?
IH: Well, at that time, he was a counselor for what was called a mobility program, and Alice’s husband worked for the same program. They helped people to relocate; they found housing and helped them get jobs. My husband did a lot of job counseling and job placement and that kind of thing for them. He did that—When we met in ’68, I think he had been back from Vietnam for a few months because when he graduated from college, he went to Vietnam. He had been in ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps], and I think he was a lieutenant and all that and—
ST: And where did he go to college?
12
IH: North Carolina A&T, and I think part of your obligation from ROTC is to serve for two years minimum.
ST: Do you stay in touch with Alice?
IH: Occasionally we run into each other. When she was living here in Greensboro, we stayed in touch. In fact, we visited each other, and she had two children, and I, you know, I didn’t have children at the time. I babysat a couple of times for them, but then they moved as ministers do. Well, they moved to Asheboro, and we still stayed in touch. We would visit Asheboro, and they would come here. But then they moved somewhere toward the mountains, and we sort of lost—
ST: Yes, they live in Mocksville now.
IH: Yes, that’s where Alice is from.
[Hermann Trojanowski enters the room]
HT: Do you want me to put some money in the meter for you, just in case you run over?
ST: Probably.
IH: I’m not even thinking about the time.
HT: Well, I’ve got plenty of quarters. Is that what it takes?
IH: Yes.
HT: Now, where is your car? Is it on Forest [Street]?
IH: What is this that used to run in front of—
HT: It’s Forest.
IH: Okay. I’m the very first car in the very first spot on your right from here.
HT: On the right. And what kind of car is it?
IH: It’s a Honda CRV, gray.
HT: Gray Honda CRV, okay.
IH: Okay.
13
HT: I’ll put in several quarters.
IH: It has a Guilford College sticker on the back.
HT: Alright, okay. So don’t worry about the time.
IH: Thank you.
HT: You’re so welcome.
ST: I was worried about that.
IH: I don’t know why it had left me that I was even in a parking space.
ST: That’s okay. So she lives in Mocksville now.
IH: That’s where she’s from. I wondered if her mother had gotten ill or something, and that she had moved back there because I saw a letter to the editor, maybe last year that she had written. And it said that she was from Mocksville, but when we were still roommates, I went to Mocksville with her there so I knew that’s where she was from. But I haven’t—My husband and I saw her and Reverend Brown a few months ago maybe at a restaurant—K&W [Cafeteria] of all places. We were leaving and they were arriving. But anyway, so she’s a very special person in my life, and my husband and I say we blame them for all this misery we have suffered these long forty-three years. [laughter]
ST: And who did you live with your junior year, because Alice was your sophomore year, right?
IH: [pause] There was one semester that I did not have a roommate. I think the person I was scheduled to room with didn’t come, and they didn’t put anybody else in the room. And then for one semester I had Paulette—I don’t remember her last name. She was from Winston-Salem.
ST: Was it Paulette—I don’t know what her married name was. Robinson—Jones-Robinson [Class of 1966].
IH: Paulette Jones.
ST: I interviewed her, too.
IH: My word. Yes. Paulette was very social, so we didn’t have a long tenure together. I think we were just there for one semester. And then a student came in in January, like I did, and she was transferring from Springfield College, and her name at the time was Jackie Gravely—Jacqueline Gravely. We called her Jackie. Anyway she came to room with me, so she was my last roommate.
14
ST: I don’t recognize that name.
IH: But she left. She’s Jackie Jones now. Jacqueline Jones. She left after one year because she got married, and her husband was in Springfield, and so she went back to Springfield. But she was originally from Reidsville [North Carolina]. And her mother died while we were rooming together. But she’s back here in Greensboro now, living here, so we’ve been in touch since she got back.
ST: Well, can you tell me—I know you said that things you did for fun were read and go get books, but were there other things you did for fun that you can remember?
IH: I listened to music and—
ST: What were some of your favorite kinds of music?
IH: Sixties soul: the Temptations, the Four Tops, Smoky and the Miracles, that genre. I loved small gatherings with friends. I had, I’d say, a half dozen or so students to whom I felt very close and we visited each other’s rooms and we did things on campus together and sometimes we’d go downtown. We’d walk downtown and catch the bus back because we had some packages that we probably shouldn’t have had. At that time there was a Krispy Kreme [doughnut shop] on—I want to say Greene Street. It was almost on a corner. Anyway, we would have to pass it coming, and I can remember a couple of occasions of two or three of us had gone downtown, and we were going to stop at Krispy Kreme on the way back, and, you know, we had all kinds of people waiting for a doughnut and we would have no doughnuts when we got to the campus, because we would get in there and they would give them to us hot.
ST: I didn’t know there used to be a Krispy Kreme downtown.
IH: Yes. And they would just melt right in your mouth, and before we knew it, they had all melted. But I enjoyed those kinds of things and, believe it or not, I enjoyed the time I could go home because I could just relax and, you know, not worry about being discriminated against or any of that stuff. In Henderson, I was used to it, and it was no big deal. We stayed on our side of town, and everybody else stayed on their side of town, and we never really had—While I was in Henderson, there was no conflict because there was no mingling; there was no contact, so no conflict. As I said, the schools were segregated when I left Henderson, but two of my siblings graduated from an integrated high school.
ST: What kind of places would you go to downtown? Like, where would you shop or eat? You said Krispy Kreme, other places you would eat?
IH: Meyers [Department Store] is now Dillard’s. It’s morphed, several times. Belk, [pause] Belk downtown was a treat because at that time they had a bargain basement, and they had an upstairs cafeteria so you could go to Belk and do all your shopping in the bargain basement. You couldn’t shop on the regular floor because you couldn’t afford it, but you 15
could find some real deals. And then you could go upstairs and get lunch for $2.50 or something. It was a treat for a college student to be able to do all that. So those would probably be the two primary places, but there was also a record shop. I don’t remember the name of it; I know it was on a corner. And then there was another women’s apparel shop called Mangel’s.
ST: How do you spell that.
IH: M-A-N-G-E-L, apostrophe-S.
ST: I hadn’t heard about that one.
IH: And, of course, the infamous Woolworth’s. They also had a bargain basement.
ST: And would you go to Kress?
IH: Yes.
ST: Did you ever go to any of the movies?
IH: No. When I met the person who is now my husband, we went to them. The first movie we went to was in High Point [North Carolina]. He’s from High Point, and we went to see Gone with the Wind I think, at a theater in High Point. But we did go to some movies in Greensboro, but not before I met him, and I was getting ready to graduate when I met him. So as a student, I didn’t attend. I couldn’t afford it. I did—I was a student worker; I worked on campus all of my time here.
ST: Where did you work?
IH: In the placement office and, ironically, I’ve spent the last thirty years of my professional life in placement-type jobs.
ST: And what does that mean, “placement?”
IH: It’s career planning, but when I was here, it was like the University Placement Services or something, but at other place—like when I was at Guilford College—we were Career and Community Learning. At Bennett College, it was Career Services Department, so different schools have—depending on what else might be involved, but I was a student worker in that office my entire time here. So that took up some of my time with that.
[Hermann Trojanowski enters]
HT: You have a handicapped sticker on your car, right? There was a CRV out there, but it was on the right-hand side, but it was kind of a burgundy color. 16
IH: No.
HT: That’s not yours.
IH: Mine is gray; it’s silver, and it’s the first car.
HT: The first—and it wasn’t in a handicapped parking space, right?
IH: No.
HT: It was a metered space, wasn’t it?
IH: It was a metered space.
HT: Okay, alright. I’ll go back out there.
IH: Okay, now the street—I mean it used to be a long street by here.
HT: Right, and it dead-ends up here at Elliott University Center.
IH: Yes, it’s right down there, but it’s in the first space on your right as you’re facing Spring Garden.
HT: Okay, there was a CRV in the handicapped in the first space, closest to us, and I thought, I could have sworn she said it was gray, but maybe—“
IH: I’m sorry.
HT: That’s alright. I’ll go out again. This time I’m going to get it right.
IH: Well, this is a nice day for a walk.
HT: Yes, it’s lovely. Thank you.
[laughter]
ST: Hermann likes to walk, anyway so we’ve got this. So you worked at Bennett and at Guilford.
IH: Yes.
ST: Okay. Did you work—Is that the only two places you’ve worked, except for one year teaching?
17
IH: I did the one year teaching, and I did maybe a year or so at Wachovia Bank as a teller until we were robbed, and then I didn’t care for that kind of work anymore. Besides my mother died the day after we were robbed, so I always associated those two things together and neither of them was pleasant. So I left the bank, and I free-lanced awhile at GT—Well, it was Guilford Technical Institute then. It is now GTCC [Guilford Technical Community College, Greensboro, North Carolina], but I taught in their high school equivalency program, their GED [General Education Development] program. I taught English, and I also taught adult basic education and adult enrichment. I taught a Shakespeare course to a bunch of older women who didn’t have anything else to do with their Wednesday or Thursday mornings, or something, than to gather and discuss Shakespeare’s works. So I did that for—I did that until I was pregnant with my son, and, after he was born, I didn’t work for a year. I stayed home with him, and then when he was just about a year old, I got an offer from what, at that time, was Neighborhood Youth Corps, and Neighborhood Youth Corps was part of a trilogy of programs that eventually were part of the CETA. C-E-T-A. These are federal entitlement programs.
ST: Do you know what CETA stands for?
IH: Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. And the CETA programs were operated by the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina, so I did that for about nine years. I was hired as an education specialist, but my job duties required me to do a little bit of counseling, but I also supervised the counselors for the program and made arrangements for the students in our program to be a part of the GED program at GTCC [Guilford Technical Community College]. One of the things that recommended me to the job was my experience with GTCC already. So I did that for about nine years, and then I took a couple of years off to be a mom and get more involved in my son’s schooling. We just have the one child, and I wanted to be a school mom. I wanted to be a homeroom mom, and PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] involvement, so I did that for a couple of years. I didn’t work outside the home. I took my son to school; I picked my son up from school. I lived at the school. And then when I decided to go back to work, Bennett had an opening. At first it was with another entitlement program called Special Services Program, and that happened to be what my husband was doing here at UNCG.
ST: Oh, your husband worked here at UNCG.
IH: My husband worked at UNCG for a little over forty years. We just retired in 2010, and he started in ’70. Right after we got married, he started over here. So anyway I got the job as the Special Services Coordinator at Bennett, and at a small school like Bennett, often you wear several hats and so after I had been doing that for may be two years, the director of career services left, and my boss supervised both offices and so she said, “I think you should do that.” So for a while, I did both, and finally I said, “I can’t do both.” But I said I prefer the Career Services so they hired a new director for the Special Services Program, and I went to Career Services and stayed there until I left to go to Guilford College to do the same thing.
ST: And you were at Guilford College for— 18
IH: Nineteen years.
ST: Well, going back to your college experience: you told us about living in the dorm and you said, you know, you had that experience in the room when you were ironing. Are there any more instances that stick out in your mind about living in the dorm or experiences you had there?
IH: You know sometimes you had the feeling that you were an exhibit. You know, you’d look around and there would be people just staring at you like you were a novelty of some sort. Or, if you had company and you were in the parlor or you came downstairs to go to the parlor to meet some company, you know, you would see people—They wanted to see who was coming to see you or what they looked like or whatever. That was kind of strange. You just felt like you were always on display or something. But nothing else really stands out to me as unusual or—I think every college student thinks it’s a rite of passage to complain about the food.
ST: That was my next question. What do you remember about the dining hall?
IH: The food was awful, especially for a country girl. I didn’t know anything about canned vegetables until, you know. Oh, my word. And I never thought anybody could mess up a hamburger. I just thought there was one way you do hamburgers, and I didn’t know these frozen patties that were half-cooked or burned or something. It took some getting used to, and for a while I didn’t eat [at the] caf—I just couldn’t, my stomach wouldn’t take it, so I lived on peanut butter crackers because that was all I could afford. I couldn’t afford to go out and buy food. I’d already paid to eat in the dining hall. Until I discovered Yum-Yum’s [Better Hot Dogs and Ice Cream], and one of the first things I did when I got paid from my campus job was to hit Yum-Yum’s, and Yum-Yum’s was on the corner. It wasn’t where it is now; it was right on the corner. You could just—I was into Yum-Yum’s, and to this day. I mean my husband and I stopped there the other night. I can’t get over it; I have not eaten a hotdog anywhere else but at home since I discovered Yum-Yum’s. And then there was a place down on Tate Street—I think it was called Mel’s. It’s not there anymore, but they knew how to do a hamburger, and so my husband and I often had dates at Mel’s. And when my mom and sister came to visit one weekend, we took them to Mel’s because they were hamburger people, too. And now I rarely eat a hamburger at all. I’ll fix one at home, but I don’t eat them out. If I have to have one out, I’ll eat at Wendy’s.
ST : Wendy’s, okay. I like Wendy’s.
IH: Yes, because they are the closest thing to home-made. But that was Mel’s and Yum-Yum saved me from malnutrition because I tell you, I just could not—The best times in the cafeteria were when they would have sundae night, make your own sundae, so they would put out all this ice cream and toppings and all that. And then international dinner. They would have foods from different countries. I enjoyed that, but other than that, Oh, gosh.
19
ST: How was the dining hall set up? Was it a buffet line or was it serve-yourself.
IH: It was not serve-yourself; they served us. I mean you went through a line and they—You told them what you wanted and they put it on your plate and handed it to you. Sort of like K&W or any of those places. And we didn’t have options like they have now. You had the dining hall, the cafeteria. That was it. We didn’t have a Chick fil-A or anybody else in there. We didn’t have different dining areas. We had one dining space and then there was Spencer [Residence Hall]—I think Spencer had its own dining hall, and then there was a place for faculty and staff and that was it. But Spencer—if I’m getting that—I may get that confused with something else—was a dorm for graduate students at the time, and I think it had its own dining hall, but all the undergraduates ate in this one cafeteria. That was all we had.
ST: Would you—How would the seating arrangement be? Would all the black students sit together or would you sit—
IH: For the most part, especially when I first got here, but gradually there was some mixing at the tables. They had tables. Most of the tables had at least eight chairs, I guess, so sometimes people would pull tables together so that more than that could fit. My images of that time seemed to be that, for the most part, black students sat together, but certainly not exclusively. That was not the case.
ST: Can you tell me about any—I have a list of your extra-curricular activities from your yearbook that said things that you were involved in all four years. Can you tell me any memories you have of those activities?
IH: [sigh, followed by laughter]
ST: It says you were part of the Junior Show.
IH: I don’t even know what that was. I’d have to guess. I think every class had to put on a thing of some sort. I remember we had jackets according to our year.
ST: Do you remember what color your jacket was?
IH: I think it was red or burgundy because it was actually—because I was scheduled to come in in ’63, I think I was considered in that class, so it was—I think it was a dark red, maybe even a burgundy jacket, blazer but I don’t have it now. I haven’t seen it in ages, but I think that’s what it was, but I don’t even remember these.
ST: Dorm Committee, SNAE [Student National Education Association]
IH: Yes, I was—I don’t even know what SNEA stands for. But the dorm—I was on several dorm committees. Sometimes we would plan little holiday things.
20
[Hermann Trojanowski enters the room]
IH: Did you find it?
HT: I did. You have an hour and a half.
IH: Thank you.
HT: You’re welcome.
IH: You know, things to go on in the dorm: plan meetings and that kind of stuff. I remember doing those kind of things so I guess that’s what that is. But I don’t even—What does—I don’t know what SNEA is.
ST: Could it have been some kind of educator’s club?
IH: It could have been.
ST: Maybe. And what does the last one say?
IH: Debating Club. You would think I would remember that, but I was just talking to some people over the Thanksgiving holidays and realized that next year will be fifty years since I graduated from high school. I said, “What? I’m barely fifty years old. How could I possibly have graduated from high school fifty years ago?” So it’s been a long time since I was here.
ST: You said since you were considered the class of coming in, in ’63 but you graduated in ’68. You graduated in the spring or in the winter?
IH: In the spring of ’68, because I was out actually two semesters. I came in ’64, and I didn’t return until the January of ’65.
ST: Really.
IH: Yes, I came in January of ’64; I did not return in the fall of ’64.
ST: And why was that?
IH: I needed to get to work and make some more money. And then I came back in January of ’65, so I was actually out a whole year in the fall of ’63 and the fall of ’64. I was out that year, so my four years were spread over five years, and I graduated in May of ’68.
ST: How were you able, the other two years, to go straight and not have to come back home.
IH: Because, as I said, I was doing campus work. I was doing work-study. 21
ST: Did you not have those the first two years?
IH: Yes, but a good portion of what I was earning took care of my incidentals, and also I believe that I was sending money home to my mother the first couple of years. And also, by the time I was a junior, I had gotten an additional scholarship. And then there was the National Defense Student Loan I think it was called in those days. It’s probably PELL [grant money the United States federal government provides for students who need it to pay for college] or something like that now, but it was the National Defense Student Loan that I applied for and got my sophomore—end of my sophomore year, I think.
ST: And can you tell me about your—any kind of social or academic events that stand out in your mind; things that maybe happened on campus?
IH: No, not really because most of my socializing was off-campus. I would, you know, go over to A&T for games and stuff. I do remember a couple of times a busload of boys would come from Chapel Hill. I don’t think too many of them looked like me, but especially if there was a big dance or something, they would come. The bus would bring them and the bus would come and pick them up and take them back.
ST: And so you would hang out with students at A&T?
IH: Yes, some of my classmates—Some of my high school classmates had come to A&T, two or three of them—guys—I stayed in touch with and we would just go to games together or a party or two. But, as I said, I just wasn’t—That was not my bag.
ST: Did you take a bus over there or did you walk?
IH: No, they had cars. The people that I was associating with had cars, or they knew someone with a car or whatever. I rode over.
ST: Did you ever have any relationships with students at Bennett? Did any of your classmates go to Bennett?
IH: No, but my roommate here my first semester—I told you one of them was Suezette Brown—her sister was at Bennett at the time that we were here. I believe her sister was a senior when we were freshmen, and so we had some connection with Bennett through her. But at that time, Bennett was almost like a—what do you call them—finishing school. It was the kind of thing for young women, and when they left campus, they had on gloves and little hats, and you could always tell the Bennett Belles if they were—and you couldn’t leave campus alone. I think you had to go in some kind of group or something. So that was always interesting.
ST: And what was it like for you once you left campus and went into town. I mean, how was the interaction with the outside world? Still a segregated society?
22
IH: Yes, mostly when I went downtown, I usually went with a purpose and usually by myself. I would take the bus down or take the bus back. Sometimes I would walk if the weather was nice. But occasionally I would go with two or three other girls, and we just stayed together while we were there, and came back together. We didn’t do any socializing downtown, so no more than the normal stare. I didn’t have any incidents: not wanting to wait on me or anything like that. Some looked at you with disdain, but they didn’t refuse to serve you. I didn’t really run into any things that I would consider issues. Remember now, I am from Henderson, North Carolina where it was common for the two races not to have anything to do with each other, so I had no expectations of being accepted or being welcomed with open arms or any of that. I was here for one purpose and it didn’t involve them.
ST: How were you treated? You talked about your one—your health professor. Can you tell us a little bit more about your interaction with faculty? And staff, for that matter?
IH: I think for the most part, academics here were very challenging to me, but many of my professors were willing to work with me. I had meetings at their offices, especially when class material was not gelling for me, or if we had had a test or paper and I thought I had done a wonderful job and they didn’t think so. I would often try to figure out, with them, where I had gone wrong, or what their expectations were. And for the most part they were accommodating. Every now and then—Nobody was as bad as this health woman, but occasionally you would run into a person who would—You know, I was ignored in class on a fairly regular basis. Like I said, most of my classes did not have any other African Americans in them, so it was obvious when I was being ignored or not being called on or whatever. So that took some getting used to because I had not been in a situation like that before, an integrated situation—if you could call that integration, one person out of thirty. So I have no negative memories of teachers with the exception of this one professor who was in health.
ST: Do you remember any of your professors by name?
IH: No. I remember a history professor, Dr. [Frank] Melton. I remember him because his office was down on Tate Street somewhere. It was in an old house, and I enjoyed going down there. But also he was a young—that I thought—a young college professor and he taught with some passion. One of my French professors—I’m failing on his name—but his office was kind of off campus, too. Oh, what was his name. And he would frequently have students at his house, and I was one of them. At one time I considered French as a minor, but I can’t speak it. I can read it, but my tongue and teeth won’t cooperate with me to speak it. But that was one of the reasons I went to summer school was to take a French lit course that I couldn’t work into my regular class schedule. But I loved French. What was his name? It won’t come to me now.
ST: Do you remember any of your English professors?
IH: Yes, I see her face. Dr. [May] Bush taught me the Bible literature. Miss Bush; she was known as. And there was an older gentleman who was rather eccentric. He was a real 23
good friend of the director of the placement center and so I got to—I was very close to the director of the placement center, so I got to know him a little bit better through her—and his name is escaping me as well. But I remember he lived out in McLeansville or Brown Summit or one of those outlying areas, way back up in there. She took me up there one time. He died a few years ago. I remember seeing his obituary, but his name is gone. But I remember more from graduate school than I do from undergraduate school.
ST: So you went to graduate school?
IH: Yes, here.
ST: Okay, you went to graduate school here.
IH: Yes.
ST: And what did you study here?
IH: Educational administration.
ST: And when did you go to graduate school?
IH: Seventy-six. I graduated in ’79. I did it part-time in the evening. I graduated in ’79, I think.
ST: How was the university different a decade later?
IH: One thing, of course, it was a university and not the Woman’s College, and it was coed and all that. But I didn’t live on campus so it was a complete—You know, I came to class after having worked all day, so I came specifically to do that class and to get out of here because I also had a child by then. And so it was a completely different, totally different experience.
ST: Had things improved, at least academically with teachers and—
IH: Oh, yes, and my classes. I was no longer the only African American. There were at least two or three of us in most of my classes. The worst experience I had in graduate school—and I wouldn’t say it was bad, but compared to the rest of my time here—I had a class with a professor. He was international; his name was Sharma. I don’t remember exactly where he was from, but wherever he was from, women were disdained and should be at home with the children and doing the cooking and so forth. He was very clear about that. I can’t remember how many women were in the class, but I got an A in that class. I think I got all As in graduate school.
[End CD 1—Begin CD 2]
24
IH: Because I did what I came there to do; his views didn’t bother me. I wasn’t going to live with him, and as long as he didn’t show that on my work, I was alright.
ST: It’s an interesting perspective in an educational—You know, where there are probably more women than men in education programs.
IH: Yes, exactly. But all the other—I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed grad school, and I think it’s because you’re more focused on a specific avenue, and you’re not taking a bunch of courses that mean absolutely nothing to you, and all that. You know why you’re taking everything you take, and you’re more independent. You do a lot of independent study, and all that. I loved that. The thing I did not—The worst course I had was statistics. I did not like statistics.
ST: As a graduate student?
IH: Yes. I did not like statistics. I had a fabulous teacher. His name was [John] Busch, too, but his name was B-U-S-C-H and my Bible professor had been B-U-S-H. But Dr. Busch did the best job you can do teaching statistics.
ST: What were some subjects that were more challenging in undergraduate? You talked about things you love.
IH: History was the most challenging; European history was the most challenging course I had.
ST: How did you find taking science in college?
IH: The science was okay. I had excelled in science in high school, even took physics and all that stuff. And I took chemistry here as an undergrad, and I took what was then called lab psychology. There were two forms of psychology: you could take the regular psychology, or you could take the one with the lab where they do the experiments with the rats; you know, the Pavlovian stuff. So I took that one because at the time UNCG had a policy that if you take two lab sciences, you don’t have to take a math. “Say that again. Sign me up for the two lab classes.” Although I do very well on standardized math tests, I hate math. It’s not that I can’t do it; I don’t want to do it. And at that time the thing was the New Math; that’s all. To this day I have no idea what the New Math is, so don’t ask me how I got through undergrad and grad school without dealing with the New Math. Yes, so I took lab psychology and of course chemistry has a lab. Those were my two lab sciences.
ST: See, that’s more scary to me than math, although math is pretty scary. I’m a history person. I went to graduate school here for history, and I went to undergrad at Carolina. I took the minimum math science requirement in undergraduate, and—thank heavens—we did not have to take any math or science in graduate school. But I also took statistics and that was not easy.
25
IH: It was not at my—My husband had gone to grad school here prior to my time coming, so he helped me a lot with the statistics, and he has a math mind—he and my son. But that gels with them and it didn’t with me, so he helped me a lot with the stat.
ST: Well, what was your favorite experience or aspect of college?
IH: Well, of course I’m very fond of my time with Alice Brown for a couple of obvious reasons that I’ve made clear previously. I enjoyed student teaching immensely. I just thought I had died and gone to heaven when I got that tenth grade classroom, and she let me do Silas Marner and Julius Caesar. That was just nothing else you could do. You couldn’t talk to me; nothing, this was it. So I was ready; I just knew the rest of my life I’m going to teach tenth grade English. So that was by far a highlight of my time here. I enjoyed—this is going to sound strange—I enjoyed having nothing to do. I enjoyed weekends when I did not have a test on Monday; I did not have a paper due; and I could come to the library and just roam. Not come to the stacks, as we called them then, trying to do research for a paper. I’d just come to the library. I could go to—Elliott Center, at that time, had—I can’t remember what they called them, but they were like private rooms that you could reserve for an hour at a time, I think, and you could have music in there. I would come to Elliott Center, and get my room, get my music, and I would go off to Never-Never Land for whatever period of time they allowed you to do that. I just thoroughly enjoyed that. And I enjoyed the times when I would go home for the weekend with a friend from—Because it got me around North Carolina to places I had not heard of before, you know: Farmville and Kinston and Mocksville.
ST: The big cities. [laughter]
IH: Yes, all these big cities. I enjoyed that; I enjoyed getting to know people to the extent that they would want to take me home to meet their parents and see where they lived and everything. I thought that was a big part of college life, so I enjoyed that. I think that’s pretty much it, but one interesting experience I had when I was here that I’m not so fond of was: when I came to college, I could not type. I still can’t, and I was having to pay people to type my papers because I had some professors who didn’t accept longhand, and so I said , “No, this won’t work. I’ve got to learn to type.” So I signed up for a typing class and I’ll never forget—The class met over in Forney [Building], and it was a one-hour credit class. I spent more time on that course than I did on all my other courses put together. I have no dexterity and we would be in class [quick staccato sounds] and I would be [demonstrates slow typing] and they would be flipping the page and here I’m [demonstrates falling behind in typing].
ST: Like lose your place?
IH: I’m going, “Oh, no.” Oh, I would just be so embarrassed, so I would go back over to Forney in the evening and practice. I could not—I had to drop the course. Can you believe I had to drop a typing class, because it was taking up too much of my time. And it was only one-hour credit, and I had these other courses that were three hours, and I said, “I can’t flunk these other courses trying to learn how to type.” 26
ST: Well, how did you work in higher education for so long without being able to type?
IH: I don’t know.
ST: No one ever found out, I guess.
IH: I guess not, because then came computers.
ST: Can you type by computer?
IH: Oh, yes. I can do—but typewriter was just—it was—especially those old manual typewriters which is what they had at the time. My fingers just won’t cooperate, you know. But I know the keyboard now, I mean, for the computer and so, I, you know, I can do that okay. I’m still not eighty words a minute or anything, but I can get by with the little typing that I have to do on the computer. But that was just—You know, I was mortified most of the time I was sitting in there, and everybody was just zipping around me, and I’m sitting there trying to figure what finger needs to go where now.
ST: Did you continue to pay people to type your papers?
IH: Yes, for those professors who wouldn’t take longhand, yes. That was an interesting experience for me. See, I never took typing in high school. You would get on a track in high school. You may remember in your day; they may have still had tracks. So I was on the college track, and I had a choice of business education, which was the typing, or home economics, and I opted for home economics because I really thought that business education was for people who were going to be secretaries, and I had no intention of being a secretary. But in the sixties and before, black women aspired to be secretaries and schoolteachers and maybe nurses, and that was it. We knew we were probably not going to be hired as anything else, and I knew I wasn’t going to be a secretary. I was education all the way so I opted for home ec [economics] so I never touched a typewriter before I got to UNCG.
ST: And did you ever visit UNCG? I don’t know if we talked about that earlier. Before you came, did you?
IH: No, when I got off the bus in January, that was my first visit to UNCG. My guidance counselor, Mrs. Avent, I just now remembered her name—
ST: A-V-E-N-T.
IH: Yes. Had told me. As I said, she lived here in Greensboro, off of Lee Street, so she wasn’t that far from UNCG, so all I knew about UNCG was what she told me, and the brochures that they sent me.
ST: Wow, you were a brave girl.
27
IH: But it wasn’t—I wouldn’t say brave; I would say naïve. You know, a country girl, it wasn’t important to me. The important thing was that I was getting to go to college. That had always been my dream, and even though I had no inkling of an idea of how I was going to do it, but I knew I wanted to. So it just, you know, it never really occurred to me to look at the place critically in terms of whether this was a place where I could live for four or five years because I was independent. I felt that I was independent, and that I would do alright wherever I ended up so I was content with what Mrs. Avent told me and what I read about UNCG.
ST: Do you have any memories about Chancellor Otis Singletary or Chancellor James Ferguson?
IH: Dr. Singletary was a handsome man, and all the girls were in love with him. That’s what I remember about Dr. Singletary. He was—He seemed to be a very compassionate person, very much an educator. When we would go to programs in Aycock [Auditorium], and he would speak, we listened. He had a commanding presence, not just because he was handsome but because he made sense when he opened his mouth. And he seemed to be a very friendly person. If he walked across campus, he would speak and so forth. He was always having some gatherings, you know, at the Chancellor’s House, and if there were other things going on on campus, you saw him there. He would be at major events and that kind of thing. I remember that he was—I thought he was a very good chancellor. I don’t have as fond a memory of Dr. Ferguson. He must have come right at the end of my time here. I don’t remember.
ST: There was some back and forth naming differences between the two of them.
IH: I can see what he looked like in my mind’s eye, but I don’t really have a deep memory of him.
ST: Most people don’t. You probably didn’t want to interact with chancellors. If you did, something was wrong. What do you recall about the Dean of College, Mereb Mossman?
IH: She was a real good friend of my boss, Mrs. [Josephine] Schaeffer, in the career planning office, as well as Hawkins [Residence Hall]. She was the director of financial aid. I can’t remember her first name, but the three of them were, I think, sort of like the three musketeers. And Mrs. Schaeffer always spoke fondly of both of them, but I had no interaction.
ST: Did you ever have any interaction with Dean of Students Katherine Taylor?
IH: No.
ST: Or the Alumni Secretary Barbara Parrish?
28
IH: I remember that name, and my husband had more interaction with her as an employee when he was working here. And I think she remembered me, and probably if I saw her, I’d remember her, but I didn’t spend any time with her as a student.
ST: Did you have any other memories of any other administrators?
IH: There was somebody in the education department. She taught but she also—She may have been, like, chair of the department or something. Her name is not coming to me now. Tall, slim woman.
ST: That’s okay. Can you remember who your favorite teacher was? Did we talk about that? You told me who you could remember, but who was your favorite?
IH: I don’t know if I had a favorite in undergrad. [pause] Nobody stands out as a favorite. Some I’ve already mentioned, I enjoyed their classes and thought that they were fair. Dr. Melton in history and my French professor, but nobody set the world on fire for me.
ST: Well, what do you remember about the escalation of the Vietnam War? We also want to know, kind of, about the world going on around you; how it impacted campus.
IH: The Vietnam War is not a pleasant memory for me. I lost several relatives and a dear friend.
ST: I’m so sorry to hear that. And was this while you were in college?
IH: Yes. I was in the cafeteria. I checked my mail before I went to the cafeteria that particular day, and I had a letter from my mother in which she indicated that the guy I was dating had been killed in Vietnam. I had already lost two cousins, two first cousins, before I came to college and probably about three friends.
ST: All from Henderson?
IH: All from Henderson. Henderson had a pretty rough toll from the war, so all of my memories are negative for that time.
ST: Well as the Vietnam War mostly is.
IH: There was—The only positive thing to come out of it was my husband came back alive, but he was not in combat. He was mostly in communications while he was there, but other than that it’s not a period of time that I talk about a lot because it was just a bad period of time for my family and for me. I didn’t join in any protests or any of that kind of thing. That’s not me, but I did plenty of cursing, and had a lot of discussions with friends and family, but I didn’t take to the streets.
ST: What do you remember about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
29
IH: That may have been the most fearful I’ve been in my lifetime. I was a senior, and it was just very frightening because MLK represented hope for black people. Maybe the last hope for black people, so it was just very devastating that he was taken away, and then you—so much was going on; so many things were happening, and I remember just thinking: What’s next? Am I even going to get to use my degree? I mean, what’s going to happen? I just didn’t have a very positive outlook during that time, and you know, JFK [President John F. Kennedy] had already been assassinated five years before, and then Robert Kennedy came.
ST: That was my next one.
IH: And there was just a period of time when there was just so much negativity, and all of it seemed to be swimming around the fact that I was an African American. And why does being African American create all this disturbance? What’s going to happen? There was just so much uncertainty and you just felt—I felt that there was nothing I could do about it. It was just that I was just caught up in this particular time period, and I just had to go with the flow. And, you know, you spend time wondering if you could be involved. I remember thinking at the time that these people are a lot braver than I am. I had no thought of risking my life for the cause. And that may be a terrible thing to say because I was very much for the cause, but I just don’t know that I am made of whatever it takes to get in those protest lines and march with the risk of being put in jail or worse, being killed. I didn’t have it in me at that time, and so I was really fearful because I just didn’t know what was going to happen; who was going to be next? Is the world getting ready to come to an end? What is going on? Why are all these people being killed because of their beliefs? It’s not that they threaten anybody’s life; they just wanted justice and equality. Why is that so hard to accept?
ST: Do you remember where you were when you heard about Martin Luther King. Jr. being assassinated?
IH: I don’t, and that’s strange because I remember exactly where I was when JFK was assassinated. I don’t remember with Martin Luther King. I don’t remember how I heard it. I don’t.
ST: Well, some kind of things we want to move towards just at the end are kind of what you did after UNCG, which we’ve touched on a lot of that already. Have you been involved with UNCG after you graduated in any kind of capacity other than graduate school?
IH: Not really. Because my husband worked here for forty years, I was involved to that extent, and he and I did an interview with—I want to say the Alumni’s—director of alumni affairs or something many, many years ago; shortly after he came to work here. I’ve been on the campus many, many, many times since I graduated, but I have not gotten—I am not involved in Alumni Affairs or any of that stuff. I’ve not attended any reunions. No, I didn’t feel that connected in that way to the campus.
30
ST: That’s a common theme. Do you stay in touch with anyone, other than you see Alice every now and then?
IH: No, there’s no one with whom I’m in touch on a regular basis. Janet Gordon, who graduated—
ST: I interviewed her.
IH: Oh, really. I think she graduated with Alice, or close by. I probably see [her] more regularly than anybody else. We were in a book club together for a while.
ST: She lives in Greensboro.
IH: Yes. We used to be neighbors. She used to live right around the corner from me, and then she moved. But we were in a book club together a couple of years ago, so I’ve probably spent more time with her than anybody else since we graduated. Well, maybe Alice, since we graduated. Most of the folk—the eleven anyway—are not in Greensboro, not even close to Greensboro. I think I’ve seen Suezette once since we graduated. Jackie, I am in touch with. She didn’t graduate from UNCG; I think she graduated from Springfield, but we roomed together for a year. But she doesn’t live that far from me, and I’m still in touch with her and her family, and we have a mutual friend who is fighting breast cancer right now so we keep an e-mail thing going with her. So we’re still pretty close together. And that’s about it.
ST: Well, my last question is: What would you want future students and scholars to know about your experience at UNCG?
IH: Well, what I tell people is that UNCG is probably second or third on the list of most powerful influences in my life. My mother is number one, but the years that I spent here shaped the person today because I had to make major adjustments. To be honest with you, prior to coming to UNCG, I had never really thought about—in any serious way or even in a real positive way—white people as a race. I knew them as employers; I didn’t have any friends or acquaintances. I was from a totally segregated town, so when I came to UNCG, I had to change all the wheels around up here; start thinking about things in a new light, and adjusting to the fact that there can’t be that much difference because I’m here, and we’re having the same kinds of experiences. We’re going to the same cafeteria, we’re in the same classes being taught by the same professors.
But in small town Henderson, it was always understood that as an African American you are lucky if you’re second class. You may be third class if there are any other nationalities there. That was inferior. Never did you think of yourself on the same level as a white person, so I really had to adjust that thinking to be here, to manage here, and to navigate the waters here. I couldn’t think of myself as inferior or not belonging. I had to step up to the plate and claim my space. And so I did and over the time that I was here, I learned so much about myself that I didn’t know. I guess the most important thing I learned was that I’m a fighter, I don’t give up easily, and when I want something, I’m pretty well going after it. And if I fail, it will be because of something I did or didn’t do. 31
It won’t be because somebody held me back. And that has carried me, lo, these forty-five years that I’ve been away from UNCG, so it has had a serious impact on my life—not to mention the fact that in two days, I will celebrate a forty-third anniversary to a man I met when I was here, so that is pretty impactful.
ST: Well, I don’t have any more formal questions unless there’s anything else you want to add.
IH: No, I do want to emphasize that I do not regret one day of stepping on this campus; the good and the bad, as I said, shaped who I am now so I take the bad with the good, and I had some good experiences. I didn’t have any experiences that I would consider extremely negative or where I wanted to hurt somebody. I didn’t have any of those, but I did have plenty of experiences of discrimination. But, again, I was used to that. That was not a big deal to me. I didn’t expect it from professors, but again I was a little naïve when I stepped off the bus. But I didn’t have anything that you would write home about, and I think, for the most part, I would characterize my experience here as positive and life-changing, really. I had to do some real thinking about who I am and what I want to be. Of course I’m still working on who I want to be when I grow up, but since I don’t plan to grow up, that may be an exercise in futility. [laughter]
ST: Well, I guess we are done here. Thank you so much for—
[End of Interview]