Oral history interview with Ernestine Davis Ledbetter, 2015 [text/print transcript]

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THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
INSTITUTIONAL MEMORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Ernestine Davis Ledbetter
INTERVIEWER: Lisa Withers
DATE: June 13, 2015
[Begin CD 1]
LW: My name is Lisa Withers and today is Saturday, June 13, 2015. I am in the home of Mrs. Ernestine Davis Ledbetter, Class of 1973, to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina] Institutional Memory Collection’s African American Institutional Memory Project. Thank you Mrs. Ledbetter for participating in this project and for sharing with me your experiences today.
EL: You're welcome.
LW: Thank you. I would like to start of the interview by asking about your childhood. If you wouldn't mind telling me when and where you were born.
EL: Okay. I was born in Nashville, North Carolina.
LW: Okay.
EL: And I was born October 24, 1950. I was raised on a farm and did everything that we usually do on a farm. We were more or less day laborers. My mother was a sharecropper for a little while until—.We were too small to help her. She was a sharecropper. We have two sets of children. My mother had an older set of children and when they got grown and start leaving—. I had two brothers who went to the service and a sister who left after she graduated from high school and went to New York. Then she couldn't—. She had two smaller children and she couldn't sharecrop anymore so then we became day laborers. And I've done a lot of things on the farm like pick cotton, pick cucumbers, what we call put in tobacco, and a number of things to make money to live on. So we lived in what I consider old houses. They weren't called—they were just old. They had tin roofs on them and a lot of times in the rain we had to put buckets down because they would leak. And then in the winter time they were very cold so we could only afford to heat like one room. And normally, it was normally the kitchen. Sometimes we would heat the living room if we knew—if we expected company but normally we had a fire in the stove all day long in the winter time and that's where most of our gatherings were, in the kitchen. 2
But, went to school. My mother was insistent that we all graduated from high school. So I went to school at Nash Central High School. Graduated in 1969 and was fairly good in school, very good in school. So I got a scholarship to go to UNCG and at that time I graduated there was just starting to be integration in the schools and I think in my area they started integrating in '68/'69 but my mother would not let me participate because the integration was not good. It was always one-sided. Black kids had to go to white schools and you lost your identity and you lost your schools. So my mother wouldn't let me go because at that time white people didn't want black people to go to, what they considered "their" schools. So my mother didn't want me to be involved in any kind of way where it could damage my self-esteem and my identity. So I didn't go. But, I think about a couple of years after that, everything was integrated. So integration meant that you lost—all the black kids lost their identity because they had to merge into an existing white school and so they lost their identity with the football and the basketball [teams] and they lost their identity with the leadership positions. They lost their identity with their friends. It took a while for adjustments to be made but that—I went to, when I graduated, UNCG offered me the best scholarships because, quite frankly, we couldn't afford college. So, that's why I went to UNCG and that's it. That's basically it.
LW: Alright, well there are some things you just said. I wanted to ask some follow up questions.
EL: Okay.
LW: Just to make sure, Nashville, North Carolina, that's on the eastern part of the state.
EL: Yes, near Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
LW: Rocky Mount.
EL: A lot of people know of Rocky Mount. But it's about ten miles west of Rocky Mount. Rocky Mount is east of Nashville.
LW: Okay.
EL: Which is just a small town. Usually when I tell people I'm from Nashville, the first thing they assume is Nashville, Tennessee.
LW: Tennessee. Yes, I've heard of it before but just making sure I had my geographical bearings correct. And when you said “put in” tobacco, is that just a part of the process?
EL: That is part of the process we called “putting in” tobacco. That means that we had people, what they call, they went out in the fields and cropped the leaves and they sent them to a shelter and then we looped the tobacco on sticks.
LW: Stringing it.
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EL: Yes. They call it stringing it. Then they would hang it in the barns and cure it. Then they would take it out and pack it away. And then we worked in grading it and tying it together and taking it to the market. We did it all at that time. Now it's a completely different process but a lot of it was labor intensive.
LW: Okay. So you were describing the desegregation process for the schools where you were. I know you already explained a little bit about losing your identity. Was it the fact that they—the white school would not accept the ways that black schools had done things or making it more equal with the administration having, you know, equal numbers of white versus African American administration and the fact that none—you said there was only one way?
EL: Yes, you had to blend in the best you could to what was existing.
LW: So, it was more like you had to assimilate?
EL: You had to assimilate.
LW: Okay.
EL: Or do what you can to assimilate.
LW: Okay.
EL: Because, yes, that's just the way it was.
LW: Okay, just wanted to sure I understood what you meant as far as by losing your identity.
EL: Yes, assimilation was what was expected.
LW: Okay, so how would you describe your experiences going to a black school growing up? You know, what were the teachers like? What was it like in the classrooms?
EL: We had excellent teachers, excellent teachers and caring teachers. Wanted to make sure that you got what you needed and I believe that we had a higher percentage of students graduating when I was there, especially black kids because we all came from similar environments so we understood each other and the teachers understood each other. And the thing that I liked was it a small school in a small town so everybody in the school in the town knew each other. And the teachers would meet your parents in the grocery store and talk to your parents about how you were doing in school, if you were acting up or anything like that. They did spank you in school and then when you went home if your parents found out you were spanked in school, you got another spanking when you got home. The people in the neighborhood watched out for you and my mother had to work so that meant—. We didn't know what “latch key” kids were but we that's what we were. We had to come home and there were people in the neighborhood that would watch over you and made sure that you, you know, you stayed at home and didn't run up and down 4
the street or anything. And if they saw you doing something, they would yell at you and then you don't know how your mother knew that you were acting up but when she got home, you know, you got a spanking because you were acting up and you knew there were eyes looking at you all over the neighborhood so you couldn't do anything wrong without, you know, somebody knowing it. And at that time, other people in the neighborhood had the opportunity if they saw you doing something really bad, they would spank you too. So, and they would spank you and send you home and then you got home and then you got another spanking. So everybody in the neighborhood watched out for you and made sure you did the right thing. And, it was, kind of considered a tight knit neighborhood. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it. You know, I thought it was great and I know we got a good education. The reason I know we got a good education is when I got to UNCG, I had no problems at all as far as being able to do the work or anything like that. In fact I stayed on the Dean's List the whole while I was there and graduated with a 4.0 [grade point average].
LW: Yes, that was going to be one of my questions we often ask. How was your transition, if you saw any differences in the academics and so for you it was a seamless transition?
EL: We were well prepared. The teachers well prepared us for the outside world and it's kind of interesting in that because—a lot of the white students [phone rings] were told that, you know, that black kids were stupid and we couldn't make it all that kind of stuff and when I got on the Dean's List, there were several white students who were very surprised. A lot of us were doing very well. And I had one student—I'm a math major and so when I was taking quizzes and tests in math, I was doing very well and I had a white young lady who would sit next to me and she was not doing well. She was, actually she was failing and so she came out of class one day and she was looking at me, she said, “How are you passing this? How are you passing this? I don't understand. I don't understand.” I said, “What are you talking about?” And she says, “Well, I was told black people couldn't do this work and you are making A's and I'm flunking and how can I tell my mother I'm flunking and I'm sitting beside a black person that's, that’s excelling.” And I said, “It nothing to do with you and it has nothing to do with me,” you know. And she said, “Well my mother's a math teacher and I have to—and that's why I'm math [major].” I said, “You have to change your major because you are not good at it.” I said, “Just because your mother is a math teacher doesn't mean you have to be.” But, you know, and she just had a hard time accepting the fact that me, as a black person, could be able, to do so well in school and especially in math and she couldn't. So eventually, you know, we talked and we became friends and she finally convinced her mother that she needed to change her major and she was much happier then but, you know, it was just one of the incidences that happened to me while I was there that showed that we both were fooled. Black people were fooled and white people were fooled. Black people were fooled into thinking that they were less than and white people were fooled into thinking that they were more than and actually there's no difference just because of the color of your skin which is, you know, which is one of the things we found out going to UNCG. I think it helped us all to realize that, you know. You can't base anything on the color of somebody's skin. That's ridiculous.
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LW: That's a really profound life lesson to learn in college [laughter].
EL: Yes.
LW: Well, I was going to ask—. You mentioned you were a math major. Was math also something you enjoyed when you were growing up and so it kind of carried over?
EL: Yes. When I was working in the fields, I found out that a lot of the older black people didn't have an education and white people were cheating them. So, my mother would always carry a little tablet around, she made me write down in the tablet what people— what the white man owed the people. So, what I would do was at the end of the week, I would add everything together, and when he came—when the white around to pay everybody, my mother said, “Bring your book out.” So she would— I would give her the book and she said, “This is how much you owe everybody.” And, the guy was incredible, he said—because he was cheating people. He was cheating them out of their money. And, one thing he was doing, you know, was—we would stop at the store because we would get up real early in the morning because we had to be in the fields like, you know real early in the morning. And he would stop at the store and everybody would get something on time because they didn't have any money. And my mother would never do that and she would tell the people, “Don't do that because then you don't know how much you owe at the end of the week. You always take you something and then eat it on the way,” or you know. So she would always fix our breakfast and our lunch so we would eat breakfast on the way to the fields and then we would eat lunch in the middle of the day. And so she started telling people to stop stopping at the store because you are being cheated that way too. And, so when most of them stopped doing that then they got their right pay at the end of the week because a lot of them—the guy would say, you know, you owe this at the store and that at the store. And he would take all of that out and just give them what he wanted to because they didn't know what they were getting. They were just getting everything on time. So he was in cahoots with the man at the store and they were just cheating people. So that's one of the reasons I went into math was because it was a way to keep track of what was owed and then I helped my mother with her budget and then I became, you know, real good at math. So that's why I decided to become a math major.
LW: A lot of real life experience.
EL: Yes.
LW: Okay. I know you mentioned you went to UNCG based on scholarship and they offered you the most.
EL: Yes.
LW: What were the other schools you were considering at the time?
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EL: Let me see. I was thinking about Central. Going to North Carolina Central [University, Durham, North Carolina]. UNCG. I think those were the only two I applied to. Actually, and my teacher actually helped me go to UNCG because I applied for the Katherine Smith Reynolds Scholarship and Mrs. Bailey was her name and she took me to the interview and I was the only black person to interview for that scholarship. They had my picture in the paper and all that kind of stuff. Of course, I didn't get it then. But UNCG offered me a good scholarship that's why I went. But, the next year, one of the girls that got it—you had to keep a 3.0 [grade point] average. You had to keep a 3.0 in order for you to keep that scholarship. And the first semester that I was there one of the girls lost her scholarship and they gave it to me and I kept it the whole while I was there, at UNCG. So I'm a Katherine Smith Reynolds scholar and graduate.
LW: Okay. So what was the name of the teacher who took you to the interview?
EL: Her name was Mrs. Alice Bailey. She was my homeroom teacher for four years while I was there. She is deceased now but she kept up with me all throughout college and throughout life because I kept up with her at the time, through marriage and everything. So, we became very good friends. But, she was always in my corner. Always, you know, pushing me to excel and do the best that I could and she always made sure that, you know, that she guided me. She was a good guider—guidance because we had guidance counselors but I wasn't close to any of those. I was more closer to her.
LW: So what was the reaction of your family and friends at your decision to attend UNCG especially over Central?
EL: Well, they didn't know I had—I didn't tell anybody I applied to Central. So, as far as they knew—the only school I applied to was UNCG. And, at first, a lot of them told me I wasn't going to get in. You know a few family and friends that found out that I had—they saw my picture in the paper for the Katherine Smith Reynolds and they said, “Well you're not going to get that scholarship and you're not going to get in.” But they didn't know me. They didn't know what I could do. They didn't know anything about me and my family and how good I was in school. So when I got the scholarship a lot of people were surprised.
LW: Okay, well, what do you recall about your first days on campus?
EL: To tell you the truth, I was awed because coming from where I come, the house I lived in, we had outside toilets. We never had running water in the house. And so going to a campus where we had running water. You could take a bath and a shower and, you know, and all that kind of stuff. They had people that come in and, at that time, to clean the building and some of them would clean your rooms if you asked them to. Yes, at the time I went. A lot of the white kids would ask the people to clean their room. I never did. Yes, they would. To come in, and you know, not necessarily make their beds but, you know, to do the floors and all that kind of stuff. Anyways, it was interesting to me because I come from a family where you do it yourself. So then I wouldn't ask them to clean my 7
room, you know, stuff like that. But that's the difference in your background because that was not my expectation but that was some people's expectation.
LW: Okay, so when you first got to campus, I know you said there was the adjustment of the living. So was your first day, when you moved in, the first time you stepped foot on campus?
EL: Yes.
LW: Did you visit before or—? Okay.
EL: I did—did I visit before? No, I didn't visit before because we didn't have transportation back and forth. My mother didn't have a car. So the first time I set foot on campus, was the first time that I actually went to campus was to go to school. So yes [cell phone rings]. Yes. Sorry about that.
LW: Oh no, that's okay. And keeping along, you know that same line. So what—do you remember the residence hall or the dorm you were staying in on campus?
EL: Yes, Cotton [Residence Hall].
LW: Cotton.
EL: I'm a Cotton girl, so pity me, there's not a man in the vicinity [chuckle].
LW: And so was that the dormitory song?
EL: Yes.
LW: Okay. So did every dormitory have their own song?
EL: I'm not sure. I know Cotton did. Cotton Hall.
LW: Cotton did?
EL: Yes.
LW: So did you stay at Cotton all four years?
EL: No. I can't remember that other dorm we moved to. We were only in Cotton Hall one year and then we moved to the dorm down the street. I forgot the name of it.
LW: Was it Phillips- Hawkins [Residence Hall]?
EL: I'm not sure. Because Phillips-Hawkins was, wasn't it that? Maybe it was. Is that the one on the end all the way down towards Friendly? 8
LW: It is on the end like where one half was Hawkins and the other was Phillips but they are kind of still conjoined together.
EL: I don't recall.
LW: Okay, that's fine. That tends to be a popular one that keeps popping up.
EL: Yes.
LW: And so I thought maybe that might be—. Okay. So would you mind sharing, do you remember your roommates or the other individuals who lived with you?
EL: Yes. Evelyn Rochelle [Class of 1973]. She's a Davis now. But Evelyn Rochelle was my roommate all four years. She's from Greensboro [North Carolina]. And Joyce Bass [Class of 1973], at the time. What was Joyce's last name? She's Bass now. She's been Bass so long that it's hard—Sanders. Joyce Sanders was the roommate, Joyce and Pat, Pat Haughton [Class of 1972] were roommates across the hall from us. And we became fast friends. So, when we left Cotton Hall, we all moved to the same dorm and we kind of like lived more or less together. They were in one room and we were in the other so we, kind of, were in the same dormitory.
LW: Okay. So was it just only you four African American women in the dorm? Or were there others?
EL: There were two others I believe that was in the dorm in Cotton Hall and when we moved to the other dorm, dog I can't think of the name of that one. And I was there three years. I remember Cotton. There were more. There were more.
LW: Okay. So what social activities did you and your classmates and roommates enjoy while you were on campus?
EL: Tell you the truth, we didn't participate in any social activities on campus except for the Neo-Black Society. Everything else we went to A&T State University [North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina] and we participated [in] more activities over there than we did at UNCG. Everything they had over at A&T, we were there.
LW: That was something I was going to ask. Could you tell me what were some of the events—I assume homecoming?
EL: Yes, we were always there for [A&T] homecoming. Then we were involved with some of the fraternities so we were at their parties a lot. Some of the—, we were at a lot of frat parties [laughter], a lot of them. So, that's mainly our activities. And we gave a few, few parties in our dorm a couple of times. But, other than the Neo-Black Society and that was about all I participated in at UNCG except for going to school. 9
LW: Yes, before I ask, go back to NBS [Neo-Black Society], I always also ask— Bennett [College, Greensboro, North Carolina] was the other college in Greensboro. I was wondering if you had any interaction with the students who went to Bennett?
EL: No, we didn't. The only time we saw them was when we met some of them at the frat parties.
LW: Okay.
EL: But other than that, we were actually, besides going to UNCG, we went to A&T too [laughter]. We went to that school too. We probably should have graduated from A&T as much as we were on that campus, that's the truth.
LW: Oh yes, I understand, I understand. You know, the Neo-Black Society, there's been quite a bit of talk about it. So I was wondering, you know, wanted to ask what are your memories about being a member of the organization? A little bit about what did that organization attempt to do, what it stood for on campus during your time? If you could share a little bit about the Neo-Black Society.
EL: The Neo-Black Society helped bring a lot of us [African American students] together on campus because we were fragmented otherwise. And I think that helped us because we all had similar experiences coming to a majority [white] campus where we were the minority. And when I say minority, we really were the minority. At the time I was there, we were one percent of the total campus population and so it was easy to get lost. In most of my classes, I was the only black student in the class. So the Neo-Black Society was a way to bring us together and make us feel comfortable in our own skin at the college. We did a lot of things. They brought in a lot of black culture to the school like dancers and singers and awareness of a black side that was missing in the school. Again at UNCG, we were expected to assimilate and to lose your identity and try to take on another identity which means you lost yourself. And so, in order for us not to lose ourselves we got together with the Neo-Black Society and I think that was one of the highlights of black people on that campus. I think it was a very positive group. We did very positive things and at the same time we felt comfortable with each other.
LW: So I know there was a major dispute that happened on campus with the Neo-Black Society over campus funding. I know—were you on campus during that time when it happened?
EL: Yes.
LW: Could you tell a little bit about what happened and that experience?
EL: Well, the only thing I know, now I wasn't an officer at the time, was that all the other organizations on campus got funding from the college and the college refused to fund our organization. And, I don't know whether it recognized it as a viable organization of the 10
college or whether it was an organization that may not have been wanted. So, yes, there was some friction there, because, anytime black people get together and try to do something and white people are not involved of it, they don't control it, they always think it's an aversive organization against somebody. It's unbelievable to me that you can't form an organization, a black organization where it has to be, it can't be positive. It always has to be viewed in the eyes of white people as a, you know, a subversive organization. And that's the way, you know, it was—some people was thinking it was coming across. But you know, we were not going to disband and we were not going to go away so they had to deal with us and the fact that we were going to become a viable organization on campus. Eventually that happened. We had a sit-in. We had to have a sit-in. Yes, we did.
LW: So, was this a sit-in to get funding?
EL: Well, it was a sit-in to get recognized as an organization.
LW: As a university sanctioned—?
EL: Yes, yes, right because a lot of the administration did not want to recognize the organization at all. They would have been very happy if we would have gone away. But the fact is that we were not going away because we did nothing wrong. We were just as good as any other organization on campus that they sanctioned. The only problem was that it was black and it was black led. All the other organizations were white led. You know, and so they were sanctioned. But anytime you have something that people don't understand and feel threatened by then you know, that is, you know, that is something that we had to overcome. And we had a lot of sessions, a lot of talks, a lot of emotional— we had a few emotional meetings about some of this, you know, some of these things. We had some people who were afraid to belong to the organization because they were afraid, you know, that they would be labeled and wouldn't be able to get jobs and all that kind of stuff. But at that time, from where we grew up at, that was a time of struggle and change. And so in order to—it meant change. You had to struggle. You had to struggle through it. You couldn't let it go. You couldn't say, you know, that this is right and let it go. It wasn't right.
LW: Yes, so I know in you talking about petitioning the administration to recognize the Neo-Black Society, it kind of ties into my next question. What do you recall the interaction between the African American students on campus with other white students, with professors, and with the administration at UNCG when you were there?
EL: Well, I didn't have much of a problem because I, when I first went to UNCG, I was mostly just trying to make it, just trying to find my way, just trying to do well in school because I didn't know what to expect. Being the first one in my family to go to college, you had no one to talk to nobody to tell you what college life was all about. So, my thing was to keep my grades up and to do the best that I could. So I didn't seem to have many problems with the professors and stuff because I just came in. I usually sat in the middle of the class or—you couldn't miss me because usually I was just the only one [African American student] in the class most of the time. But I—when I was in high school, I 11
always sat on the front but when I got to UNCG, I found myself lost in the middle and I think that was a way for me to try to blend in and not try to stand out. So, I found myself changing in that way except when I started—. Junior and senior year, I started sitting back in the front. Yes, yes, so I became more confident because I knew I could do it. And because I knew I could do it and normally I always sat in the front to keep away distractions. Because when you sat in the back or in the middle other people around you distract you. And, when you’re serious about what you're doing, you don't need the distraction. And that's what I was—I was serious about what I was doing. So I started sitting to the front again. But when I first went, I wasn't comfortable so I tried to blend somewhere in the middle even though I was the only chocolate spot in the room [laughter].
LW: Okay and so there really wasn't much interaction with chancellor, I think James Ferguson was the chancellor at the time or—.
EL: He had an invitational breakfast for the freshmen and I did go to that. I felt out of place and uncomfortable but I did go. I wanted to see what it was all about and he walked around the room and talked to people and I thought he was going to give a speech or something but that's not what he did. He walked around the room, he talked to people. He did speak to me. I didn't really, we didn't have much to say but he did speak to me. I think there were only two blacks in the room and the rest of them were all white students so after about a half—I stayed there for about twenty minutes then I left.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes.
LW: We did talk a little bit about, you know, the Neo-Black Society. I guess another big thing, not only was it integration but it was also becoming a co-educational institution.
EL: Yes.
LW: And so I just wanted to ask what do you recall about, you know, the men who were starting to come onto campus during that time, if there was any?
EL: Well since I was there when there were men on campus and there were not many men on campus because it was a woman's college at first, you didn't see that many guys. I saw more guys because of my major. Because I'm a math major so you know people in math and engineering they were mainly mostly guys. So I saw more guys than probably the average female at the school [laughter]. There weren't that many.
LW: There weren't that many. I guess it was just another everyday thing part of life that you were in class with all these guys and—.
EL: Yes. It didn't faze me because, you know, I worked all my life with mostly men. And actually when I was growing up, I was a tomboy because I had a brother that was older 12
than me so I've been around guys all my life and even in school, I had more guy friends than I had girlfriends. In fact, I identified more closely with guys than I do girls for the mere fact that, you know, guys, they don't gossip, they don't, they don't look at, you know stupid stuff. Like girls always looking at hair and nails and the way you dress and, you know, what kind of shoes you got on and make up and all that kind of stuff and that, to me, I couldn't afford anyway so, to me that was not important to me. I know my mother could not—we could only afford what we could. You know, she was a single mom and she could barely put food on the table and so trying to worry about hair and nails and all that kind of stuff was ridiculous. So, I identified more with guys that didn't care anything about that. And, when I graduated from college I started working for Bell Labs in Greensboro, North Carolina, and that was mostly programming and that was mostly guys. So I've been working most of my life basically with men. So, being in a classroom with men didn't faze me, didn't bother me.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes.
LW: Well, being that you know it was a woman's college before it became UNCG and there were so few men on campus, were there any campus traditions that you remember when you were at UNCG that kind of still were being carried over?
EL: [Laugher] I didn't participate in anything.
LW: Okay, but you didn't remember.
EL: Actually, the only thing I remember they had the Alumni Association. The alumni came on campus.
LW: Okay.
EL: I do remember that. I do remember they used to have a golf tournament and what other traditions? Oh, the panty raid.
LW: The what?
EL: [Laughter]
LW: Hold on, you have to tell me a little bit more about—. Are you saying—? Was it the panty raid?
EL: The panty raid.
LW: Okay.
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EL: The guys on campus would go to the girls’ dorms and they would collect panties. And, yes, and they would run through the dorms and the girls would dangle panties out in the, yes, and they would collect the panties. And it was called a panty raid. Yes, they did.
LW: And the administration was fine with that?
EL: I don't even know if the administration knew about it [laughter]. If they did, it was probably after the fact.
LW: Okay. It just, it just—.
EL: But it was a tradition.
LW: Okay, I guess, for me from another generation we hear talk about the curfews and having the dorm matrons—.
EL: I don't think we had the curfew when we did that.
LW: And all of that so hearing about so hearing about the panty raid is a direct contrast or contradiction to all of that.
EL: Yes.
LW: Okay, okay, so you had the panty raid. And you mentioned—. With the alumni, would you have a chance to meet any of them or interact?
EL: No. No.
LW: Okay. Do you know what the golf tournament? Was it just like a social event that happened or was it also like a fundraiser? Do you know anything about?
EL: No because I didn't participate in—.
LW: Just knew that it happened.
EL: I didn't even play golf. So, you know, all of that to me, was for the “hawty-tawty” people.
LW: Gotcha.
EL: And I wasn't a “hawty-tawty” people so I didn't participate.
LW: Okay.
EL: I figured that was for the rich white folks and that was for them to try to get money from the rich white folks.
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LW: Gotcha. Okay. So did you go to the dining hall?
EL: Yes.
LW: Okay, could you tell me what going to the dining hall was like?
EL: I worked in the dining hall.
LW: Okay, so what did you do?
EL: Well, I—some things I did was that I fixed the toast, put ice in glasses for drinks or, what else I did? I did whatever they asked me to do actually. You know sometimes I worked the line. But, I worked my first semester, work study, and I worked in the dining hall and mainly I took the morning shifts because I'm a morning person. Working on the farm we had to get up early in the morning and a lot of the people in work study didn’t want the morning shift so I took all the morning shifts. So, I had to be on, in the cafeteria at six am. So I had to get up at about five so I could get dressed and they had a little uniform that I had to wear and I had to be there by six am. So I was there. You had to clock in so I made sure I was there by six so I could clock in. And I was supposed to work fifteen hours a week and I ended up sometimes working twenty, twenty-five, sometimes thirty hours a week because people wouldn't come in and take their shifts so then they asked me to stay over. One time I worked so many hours that the lady in charge told me I had to stop working so much [laughter]. But to me I didn't mind it. It was easy work and everything after working in the fields and so forth and so long and working—that to me, it was a piece of cake. That was nothing. So, I did that the first semester and when I got the Katherine Smith Reynolds Scholarship I could, I could no longer work because that would put the scholarship in jeopardy.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes
LW: So I've heard a few other stories about a few of the African American students meeting to eat dinner in the dining hall.
EL: Yes.
LW: I didn't know if you also participated in that or—?
EL: Yes, we would set a time when we would meet in the dining hall and we all ate together.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes, we would all eat together. We were comfortable with each other and so we had what we called the black table [laughter].
15
LW: Could you tell me a little bit about that?
EL: Oh, we just, you know socialized together and we ate together.
LW: Okay, It was just the place where everyone sat together?
EL: Yes, yes. And it wasn't like any particular table in the cafeteria. Whenever the first person got there, that's who reserved the table and the rest of us—. And when I say reserved, nobody else would sit there anyway [laughter]. So, it became the black table.
LW: I gotcha. I gotcha. Okay, so well we're getting towards the end of my questions. A few general things—. And so, would you say there was a certain political atmosphere on campus during the sixties and seventies? Kind of, especially with everything that was happening, you know, with the Civil Rights Movement and you have Vietnam and—.
EL: Actually, no. No. If there were, there was probably a small group of students.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes, we had Vietnam but there nobody walking around singing Come by Here and you know stop the war or anything like that when I was on campus.
LW: There were not a lot of protests on campus.
EL: No, no, there were no protests at all on campus against the war or anything like that.
LW: Or anything else that may have been happening on national news or—?
EL: No, I think most students were there to try to get an education and try to have fun while they were in school and enjoy the experience and get a job. So I didn't see any of that consciousness on campus at all.
LW: Okay.
EL: You probably would have seen it more at A&T than you would have seen at UNCG.
LW: Oh, that's interesting.
EL: I believe. Yes.
LW: It makes sense. That's interesting. Okay, so I guess shifting—. You mentioned that you worked at Bell Labs.
EL: Yes.
16
LW: Was there anything else you would like to share about what you did after you graduated from UNCG?
EL: Yes. I started working at Bell Labs in Greensboro, North Carolina, and I worked there until I got married and moved to St. Louis, Missouri. That was interesting because when I first got there I think there was a—. We were hired as a result of the consent decree.
LW: What was that again?
EL: It was called a consent decree.
LW: Okay.
EL: And that was the federal government was making AT&T hire black people because they claimed that they could not find any qualified black people to work at AT&T. So they were not hiring black people. And because of the consent decree which the federal government went against AT&T and said, “If you do not hire black people we will sever our contracts with you.” Because they had federal contracts and so I came in in 1973 as a result of the consent decree. And so, they were more or less window dressing. When I say window dressing they would put black people by the window so people could walk around and see us to say we hired some black folks. And they only were going to keep us there so long as they thought they could prove that we couldn’t do the work. So, when we got, when I got hired and other black people got hired, we got together and we said we’re going to help each other because we’re going to prove that we can do the work and we’re not going anywhere. And so we did that. We started our own organization at AT&T. It was called ABLE. And, we decided, and I can't remember what ABLE stands for right now, but we decided that we would work together to help each other across different departments so that we could prove that we could stay there and that's what we did. And, we became productive and some got promoted and all that kind of stuff but we had to pave the way for other black people to come into AT&T.
LW: So I just want to make sure these are the same. Both Bell and AT&T are the modern day phone companies?
EL: They are the same thing. AT&T was the only phone company in town.
LW: Okay.
EL: The only one. They did not have any others.
LW: So Bell hadn't even made it out that far.
EL: Bell Laboratories was a part of AT&T.
LW: Oh.
17
EL: It was the research and development arm of AT&T.
LW: Okay.
EL: Yes.
LW: Okay. And so did you work as a programmer at both locations?
EL: AT&T—, Bell Labs was a part of AT&T so when you say AT&T, that's all of it.
LW: Okay.
EL: Bell Labs is AT&T.
LW: Okay, and so you were a programmer the whole time?
EL: I was a programmer there.
LW: Okay.
EL: I was a programmer, yes.
LW: Okay.
EL: I started out programming at AT&T, Bell Labs.
LW: Okay. So have you been involved with UNCG since you graduated?
EL: No.
LW: Okay.
EL: I go there. I've taken my grandchildren there. Actually I took my children there whenever I would come back and visit I would always take my children there because I would tell my daughter, we would always go by Yum-Yum's because that was the place where we would always get the ice cream and hot dogs and I would take my daughter by Yum-Yum's and tell her that was the meeting place off campus. Now Yum-Yum's looks like it’s part of campus but it wasn't that close when I was on campus. But we would always walk down to Yum-Yum's and get ice cream and stand outside and talk and everything. So that was one of our hangouts and so I would always take my son and daughter. We walk around campus and I’d show them the dorms and where I stayed and that sort of thing. It has really grown since I graduated.
LW: Oh yes.
EL: It's about to take over the neighborhood. 18
LW: Well they've crossed over Lee Street now.
EL: Oh my.
LW: So they've broken that boundary. And actually Lee Street is no longer Lee Street.
EL: Oh really.
LW: They renamed all of Lee and when it turns into High Point Road into Gate City Boulevard now.
EL: What, oh my.
LW: That was very recent. I think within a few weeks ago the signs—. I was surprised like, “Wow they actually did it,” because they have been talking about it for a while. But, yes, UNCG they finally broke that land lock barrier. There are several like apartments over there. They are building a rec [recreational] center in what was the Glenwood neighborhood.
EL: Wow.
LW: So yes, it is growing, it is growing.
EL: Yes, because at one time it was land locked. It was land locked and with the neighborhoods around it couldn't really grow.
LW: It couldn't grow. They found a way.
EL: Well good.
LW: So what do you want people, you know, as I mentioned in the beginning that we try to make the oral histories accessible, you know, to students and faculty so what would you like people to know about your time at UNCG overall? What is the takeaway—you want people to know?
EL: I got a good education from UNCG. I believe that. And I—I think that the experience was good for me because when I had to work, go to work, I had to learn how to maneuver and work in that environment so I had to learn how maneuver and go to school in that environment and I think it helped me to become comfortable in that environment so that I could maneuver and work in and be able to be productive. So it was a good experience for me although, you know, it was an interesting experience. Very interesting, but I'm glad I went. I'm glad I went to UNCG.
LW: Well, alright. Well, I don't have any more formal questions. Is there anything else you would like to add to the interview? 19
EL: No, I appreciate you doing this history. That's interesting. I'd like to know what other people have said. So, yes, I think it's great. I think it's great.
LW: Well, thank you for being a part of our, of the UNCG Archives project to record these memories and we hope that one day you can go online and you will hear yourself there.
EL: Yes. Okay, thank you much.
LW: Thank you.
[End of interview]