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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview G-0008, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Civil rights activist and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) mentor Ella Josephine Baker outlines her family history, traces her growing radical tendencies, and explains the catalysts that pushed her into public activism. Baker opens the interview with her own family's history. She explains how important the church was to her family and to the life of her community, and she reflects on how that heritage affected her later social activism. She also describes how economic pressures led to a migration of rural southern black families—including her own—to large cities during the early twentieth century: to find work, Baker's father and several of his siblings moved from Warren County, North Carolina, to Norfolk, Virginia. Her father found a job on a steamer that ran from Norfolk to Washington, D.C. After a few years in Norfolk, Baker, her brother, and her mother moved back to North Carolina while her father remained in Virginia to work. Baker attended Shaw University for nine years, completing both her high school and college education at the same institution. While there, she took issue with some of the positions of the university's administration; meanwhile she felt that the professors prompted her to begin questioning her society. After graduating from Shaw, Baker moved to New York City and began working with the Workers' Education Project (WEP). After a few years with the WEP, she became involved in the Cooperative League (CL), an alliance of cooperative businesses. Through her contacts in the CL, Baker joined the NAACP in the early 1940s. She discusses the limitations placed on women in the organization and how she overcame them. Though Baker had enjoyed her work for the NAACP, she felt that the administrative leadership took advantage of her abilities without according her a similar level of recognition or respect. For this reason, she left her job after four and a half years. Soon thereafter, Baker married and assumed guardianship of her niece. In the 1950s, Baker became involved in education activism and, in 1958, she returned to the South, quickly joining the protests occurring in Montgomery. She was the only woman present at the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and she speaks briefly about the important leaders that emerged from that organization. While working for the SCLC, Baker helped organize SNCC and mentored its leaders as they separated from the SCLC.
Civil rights activist and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) mentor Ella Josephine Baker outlines her family history, traces her growing radical tendencies, and explains the catalysts that pushed her into public activism. In this interview she discusses her work not only with SNCC, but also with the Workers' Education Project, the Cooperative League, and the NAACP.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
This is an interview with Ella Baker April 19, 1977, with Sue Thrasher and Casey Hayden. Was this thirteen-month-old baby picture taken in Norfolk?
Sure. I was in Norfolk till about seven or eight years old.
You were born in Norfolk.
Yes. My parents were both from North Carolina, however, from Warren County, two different sections. And they met in school in an "academy" that had been established by a black New Englander who carried out the old New England tradition.
Was that academy a missionary or church school?
I think it was church-related in the sense that maybe the northern or New England Baptists may have set it up, or he may have come from that. I really don't know, but it was not church-related in the sense of some other schools that I know that were started in my day by local church groups, conventions and associations and the like.
Do you remember about what year it was that your mother and father met at that academy?
I can check it for you, but I don't know now. My mother died at the age of eighty-six, and my father was seventy-two. And I frankly am not too positive about the date of my mother's death. My father died, I think, in the year 1939. My mother lived longer.
What kind of family did your father come from? What did
Both of his parents were ex-slaves, and both of my mother's parents were
ex-slaves. However, his father must have had a great deal of Indian in
him. I have no specific indications as to what blood line as far as
Indian input came from. Both of his parents were light. At least his
mother was very light. And his father I did not know; he died before I
was knowledgeable. But I knew Grandma Margaret, his mother. And both of
my mother's parents were born on the same plantation, part of which is
still owned by part of our family.
What was your mother's family name?
Ross. Grandfather was Mitchell R. Ross; the "R" stands for what I don't
know. He was a tall, lean, black man. He prided himself on his being
black. My grandmother used to say she was named after two queens. They
called her "Bet," but I guess her name must have been… I know Josephine
was one of them, and I
And what about your father's family name?
That was Baker. His father was named Teema. Now how to spell it, don't ask me, because Grandfather Teema had passed when I came along. I think there are some records I can find. I have a cracked ankle. I had a sort of an eerie kind of an accident in 1974. I was going through Philadelphia to see a relative, a first cousin who was ill. And he had much more information about that side of our family than I did, because he was older. But I fell between two cars at the Pennsylvania Station, and so I didn't make the trip. And by the time I got through with the crutches, he had gone.
And how about your grandmother's name?
Margaret.
Did your mother and father both have a lot of brothers and sisters?
I think my mother's mother had twelve or thirteen children. I knew a
number of them as my aunts and uncles. My father's family must have been
at least eight, because by name I can count up to say six or seven. My
father apparently was the firstborn boy. There was a daughter, Aunt
Eliza, who was older than he, and who ended up by having eight sons and
one daughter. Those I know. But his family didn't live as long as the….
When did they start leaving Warren County? Did most of them stay in that county for a while?
My mother's family and my father's family, all the older people died in the county. And my mother's father was a minister, and on part of what is now still "our land," he is buried, and my grandmother. Several of the departed sons and daughters, my mother and my father and my brother are all buried there. And that's where I became "a church member" at the age of nine in good old Baptist tradition.
In my father's family, I knew my Aunt Eliza and her nine children much
more than I did some other members of the family. I think this is
basically because Aunt Eliza had a big farm with plenty of grapes and
apples and pears and things, and at the stage at which I came along she
had grown sons who were living away from home. They were living in
Philadelphia. My father's oldest brother settled in Philadelphia. And
incidentally, Rosetta Gardner knew him because she grew up there. And he
was very prominent in a given church there, and I think it's Cherry
Street Baptist Church. I don't know. But the persons who lived in North
Carolina from my father's side were the aunt who had the large family,
Aunt Eliza, and Aunt Mary, who
Did they mostly stay on the land and farm, or did they have other kinds of jobs?
I guess up to a given point they were all on the land and farmed. And as
the boys grew to manhood, which was the pattern which obtained even
during the period that I became grown, the boys would stay as a rule
until they were twenty-one without even questioning
My father and mother met in school, this little institute in Warrenton. And he went to Norfolk to make his "fortune," and my mother stayed in her home environs and taught school. And then they married.
What kind of school did she teach in?
It was, I guess, whatever there was of a combination of a public and a community school, because in all probability the parents, who were themselves recently out of slavery, were a party to the establishment of the school. My mother's father, being a minister, had several churches, and he gave the land for the school. And of course, the community, I'm sure, lent its labor to doing whatever was necessary to see that there was a schoolhouse.
Was your father the first one to leave home?
I doubt it. He probably may have been among the first.
And did he go to Norfolk because that was the closest big city?
I went to Nashville.
And the closest big city where you could find some kind of work.
It was about a hundred miles from home. And he went, and a sister came to live with my mother and father after they were married. And some of my mother's family had already gone. She had two brothers who were in Norfolk. One died long before I knew him, and the other had a dairy farm out in what was called Pampistella. Most people wouldn't know where that is at all, but it was the outskirts and Uncle Peter had this dairy farm when I was a child.
What kind of job did your father get when he went to Norfolk?
I don't know what he got first, but at the point at which I knew him he
was a waiter running from Norfolk to Washington on a steamer. That was
the mode of transportation between Norfolk and Washington even up until…
I guess I'd finished college, almost, before they built the bridge so
you could drive from… Norfolk is as nearly surrounded [by water] as New
York. And the Chesapeake Bay, I think there are five waters that come
together somewhere between Norfolk and Washington, because I would hear
the stories. This was a passenger ship, you see, and this was the mode
of transportation
Do you have any idea how long your father had been there before your mother came up and joined him? Did he come back to Warrenton and they married there and then went back to Norfolk?
Actually, the gentleman comes to the lady's home.
Was your mother impressed by that?
My mother was a very… To let her tell the story, she wasn't about to be
wooed to the extent of swooning, by no means.
Do you remember about what year it was that they went to Norfolk?
No, I couldn't recall that, but I bet I can clarify later. But that doesn't come to my mind, because I don't think at any point that they talked too much about the exact year. But I have a lot of papers around, a lot of records here and at home.
Were you the firstborn child?
Oh, no. I understand my mother gave birth to eight children, but there were only four that lived to the point of my knowledge. Whether they were born and lived a while or whether they were stillborn or just how many were in that state, I don't know. But there were four of us that I know of. There were three of us that lived to maturity, and there was one between me and my baby sister who died in infancy, I recall. This was the first death I knew of in the family. I remembered it in particular because my father was the only one who went to wherever the interment was taking place. And it was a carriage, and I was very eager to be in the carriage, but they didn't permit me to go.
Do you know how old you were at the time?
I probably was about three.
Small.
I was small at six.
Was the oldest child a boy or a girl?
The oldest child that lived to maturity was a boy. My brother
What was the year of your birth?
I was born in 1903. I'm seventy-three years old. And my brother was born December 23, 1901.
What's his name?
His name was B. Curtis Baker. He used a "B"; it was Blake Curtis. My father was named Blake Baker.
What was your mother's given name?
Georgiana Ross Baker. And if you would hear her say it… "My name is Georgiana Ross Baker." She was a very precise-spoken person.
Where did the Curtis…
Maybe the Curtis Publishing Company. I don't know.
And the third child, then, is the one that died very young. The child after you, the little girl.
No, the girl after me lived to maturity. It was the boy after me; that
was Prince. My mother's family had several Princes in
The next child was me, and after I came, if there were others I don't
know of any. She may have had a miscarriage; I don't know. But the
sister who survived and whom I know was about four years or more younger
than I, and her name was Margaret, named after my father's mother. In
fact, she was named Margaret, and then my brother thought she was so
precious, he called her "Margaret Precious Odessa
What was your life like here in Norfolk? Were you sort of middle class? Did your father make a good salary?
Everything is relative, you know. At that stage, a black man who was a
barber or a waiter in a given kind of setting was perhaps more middle
class than anything else. That meant you had all the things that people
bought. We got the old Singer sewing machine that was bought away back
then. When I came along knowledgeably, we lived in a six-room, two-story
house. And we had a dining room and dining room furniture and
Did your father own that house?
No, he was renting that house. And he had a couple of
So when we got there, we lived in my aunt's house. Her husband, who had been in business in Lillington, North Carolina, had decided to move to Philadelphia. She followed him, and my parents owned. The house was too small for my mother. She would kind of fuss six-room house which carried with it the business of living room (they called them "front rooms" then), kitchen, dining room; bedrooms upstairs. That kind of arrangement.
Did your mother ever consider teaching after she got married?
No, she didn't consider teaching in Norfolk. I don't know whether the
offspring may have begun to come, but, as I said, I heard her say there
were eight children or eight births. And it could well be also that my
father at that stage, in order to consider himself the keeper of the
home, like many people who were in the
Was she ever active in any clubs or anything?
What do you mean by clubs?
Did she have any sort of independent social activity outside of…
In Norfolk? My mother was a very positive and sort of aggressive person. My father and mother met there in this little academy. She was a very good student, and he was a very good student, it seems. She was particularly articulate, to the point that even when I graduated from college and I was rehearsing what had to be said, one of the professors who historically, I suppose, is well known—Benjamin Frawley—said to me, "Don't ever let anyone teach you public speaking." And I asked why. He said, "They might spoil you." And all that I had learned, as far as articulation (it wasn't so much oratory, because I didn't go in for that, but I had won a couple of medals speaking in contests, things like that), my mother was the one who taught us. She taught us to read before we went to school.
Is there any particular story that you remember about living in Norfolk when you were small and growing up?
Sure, several of them. I was the talker. The doctor who became our family
doctor, I must have run across him, swinging on the gate while he was
passing by. I'd speak to people. And so when I had typhoid fever, he
became the doctor. In fact, he became our family doctor to whom we went
back after we left Norfolk if we
Do you remember going to your grandfather's church and hearing him preach?
I didn't go to hear him preach; I went to sit in a chair with him. He called me "Grand Lady."
Up front you got to sit with him.
I think he did it; I didn't.
I don't know why he called me "Grand Lady," but that's what he called me.
And we would just talk. But when he'd go to church—which irritated my
mother; in retrospect I
Were you your grandfather's favorite?
I don't know that, but I do know that the short span of our existence…. We'd come up for the summer. He had had other grand children, because my mother had an older brother with a lot of children, but his children were in Norfolk. But at home there was the aunt who had fourteen children—I have some of them up there now—but I happened to have been the kind who liked to talk. I was a talker. And he liked it, I suppose. So I wouldn't know that I was his favorite, but I would ride around with him a lot.
How old were you when he died?
About six.
And this would be in the summers when you would come down from Norfolk.
My mother and the children would go from Norfolk to North Carolina say, in the beginning of June, because we weren't in school until later, and stay throughout the summer months, and come back maybe about September.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
How old were you then when you moved with your mother back to North Carolina?
About six. The first time I was in school was in Norfolk. My mother had a
friend, a classmate or something like that, who was in Norfolk also in
the same neighborhood and who had started something like a kind
ergarten, a school for the smaller children of friends. And so my
brother had started there. And because he seemingly was bright and
people said he couldn't possibly be as good as he seemed to have been,
and that he should be going to the little public school. Imagine that.
So my father, who was not much to bother about that… He didn't insist on
too many things, because after all he wasn't home except on every other
day. Every night he was on the water, except the few days he'd take for
a little holiday. So he apparently was impressed with this concern and
sent him to public school. And I was not, I don't guess, eligible to go,
but my brother was thin, tall, and not combative, whereas I was the
opposite as far as being
That was in Norfolk.
In Norfolk. I was then between six and seven, I suppose. But it didn't bother me. I reacted, you see. What size you were didn't interfere with my reacting if I thought you were imposing. And so it got to the point that we could come home in peace.
So there was a year there in Norfolk that you were in school before you went to North Carolina.
Yes, I think it must have been that.
So then when you moved back to North Carolina, was that when you lived at your aunt's house?
You mean when they moved back
Yes. They moved to Philadelphia, and you moved to their place.
Yes, that's correct.
And did you go then to a public school in North Carolina?
Yes.
I'm interested in the time between then and when you went to Shaw.
I went to the public school and the teacher across the street and Professor So-and-so. For all the time that I was in North Carolina, I went to a public school.
This was the town of Littleton?
Littleton. The Norfolk Journal and Guide was started
there. This is the claim to fame. And it was right across from where we
were, they say. It had left when we got there, though. However, its name
is very indicative of the size of the place.
It was really a very small place. Sort of a country settlement, or a little larger than that?
It was and still is a small town. You had blacks on East End. We were what are called East End Avenue; that just meant the eastern part of the town, the main road. And then you had a West End of blacks, and then on certain parts of it the white community. I don't guess the poorer whites lived right there in town, because it was dominated by a family, and they lived in the better part, and this was Littleton.
Was it built up around a farming community, or was there a mill there or anything?
It was largely farm. It was owned and controlled to a large extent by one
family, and the basic name of that family were the Johnsons. And then
the sisters, as they married, they were some of the dominant forces in
the economy of that little town, which didn't really change very much in
the sixty-odd years since we've been there. They just stayed right there
and tried to control things; that's all. But it was basically a farm
community. People would bring the cotton in to the gin or cotton in that
had been ginned. They'd bring it to Littleton to be sold. Things like
that. Buy whatever you bought. Those who lived around
Was your family unusual in that it owned land? Did a lot of people sharecrop or rent?
There were a number of people who sharecropped and rented, but there were also in certain pockets, like the little community Elums, where my mother grew up and where my grandfather, who had bargained or whatever else for a large tract of the old slave plantation which was broken up into plots of forty and fifty acres. And his relatives settled on it. This was to a large extent, by comparison, an independent community; they were independent farmers. But they also went in for the practice of cooperative… Helping each other. When I came along, for instance, I don't think there was but one threshing machine for threshing the wheat. And so today they might be on Grandpa's place, and all the people who had wheat who needed the thresher would be there, or at least some from those families. And then they would move around. There was a great deal of what might have been a cooperative type of relationship at that stage, which does not obtain now and did not last through my early adulthood. By the time I was in college, King Cotton reigned supreme, and you had black farmers who would raise fifty and sixty bales of cotton. And still they raised all of their meat. Some of them would have and kill, in addition to hogs (which was the common commodity), beef. And there was not too much refrigeration, so you killed it and ate it, or with the hogs there were certain parts which you'd cure like the hams and the lard and all of that.
Did the Johnsons own most of the land around there?
Yes, they did. They owned it and they controlled it. They owned most of it, especially in the town and out in the country. But that's a long while ago. It's been sixty or more years since we moved there.
But there was this section where we lived where the blacks, our neighbors, each had their own place. Next to us was the Reverend Mr. Hawkins, who, in addition to being a minister, was a bricklayer. And men were artisans like brick plastering and so forth. And somebody else was a carpenter. So you had at that time an intermixture. All of the heads of the families and their wives who lived in the section we called East End were at least literate. They had been to school somewhere, and many of them had been to what might have been considered college or an academy, because some of them had graduated from schools that are now like Shaw University. Shaw was one of the earlier schools in North Carolina established for blacks. So you had a high degree of literacy and effectiveness in terms of public relations: speechmaking, leadership qualities and the like.
How big was the public school that you went to in North Carolina?
We had two rooms. One was one big room. And I don't know how many classes were in there, because I'd listen to all of them.
One teacher?
We had three teachers. I think they had two for the lower classes,
because I guess they required a greater degree of retention. And that
had one room. The upper grades were in the
When you went to public school there, were you still a talker and fighting back?
Oh, yes, I was a talker, and also I would rather play baseball than to
eat.
Were the teachers male or female?
Both. Usually the principal was male. At this particular school, at the point when I was there, they had a principal and two female teachers. And it seems to me maybe one of the females knew a little music; I'm not sure.
Was your father still in Norfolk and coming down?
He was in Norfolk. He would come home, especially at Christmastime, and
spend a week or ten days. And sometimes he would come in for shorter
periods during the year. My mother would go down and spend time in
Norfolk. She would go down especially with myself and my sister; we'd go
down with her and spend time in Norfolk. And then when my brother
reached
Your grandmother was still living at this time.
My grandmother lived till ninety-six. But she was my escape valve, because she was very gay. She identified with young people. She played catch ball with us. I'm sure she must have been in her seventies. And she was something of a raconteur, I suppose, recounting what took place during her period of slavery. And she was very healthy. We did some farming, and if Grandma was around she would have rest periods. If you were chopping cotton or whatever else….
She was seldom there, though, at the time of chopping cotton. My mother couldn't stand stripping the corn for fodder for the cattle. She had, I guess, hay fever and asthma, and so she would start sneezing. So Grandma, even after we got some size, would come over, and we would go and pull the fodder. In one instance, there was a man who raised lovely watermelons. Grandma would go buy a watermelon, and she knew where to put it in the woods in the shade to keep it cool. Before maybe lunch even, she'd let us stop and eat something.
Do you remember any of the stories that she would tell about slavery?
Oh, yes, I remember the stories that were told about slavery, one in
particular about her birth. She was the offspring of the master, and her
mother apparently was a very attractive young woman. And she was born on
Christmas Day, the story goes, and the young mistress was jealous and
sent some food to her mother, who had been given calomel. That's what
they gave people when they got sick with colds or something. I ought to
look it up and find out what its composition is. You couldn't eat sour
things after you took this. And I think if you took it at night, then
the next morning they'd give you some castor oil or something ugly like
that. It was a
And she passed on this story to your grandmother.
Oh, yes, and a lot of other stories. And Grandma passed them on to us, you see.
What had your grandmother done on the plantation?
They put her in the house; she was the house person. But at the point at which she was of marriageable age, whoever was the mistress wanted to have her married to a man whom we knew as Uncle Carter. He was also light. And she didn't like Carter. And so when she refused to concur with the wishes of the mistress, the mistress ordered her whipped, but the master, who was still her father, refused to have her whipped. He was no doubt old then. But he did put her out on the farm, and she even had to plow. She remembered plowing. You don't know anything about "low ground;" that means land that's near the water. The Roanoke River runs through there, and it's still part of it now. And so she would be plowing and had to warm her hands by the horse's belly, she said. They'd start to plow and breaking up the land in February; during my period, people would start doing that. I've heard her say that she would plow all day and dance all night. She was defiant, you know.
Was this plantation that she was on in Warren County?
Oh, yes, that still hasn't left Warren County. It's still there. I've got to go pay the taxes on the part that we have charge of still. A little church which I joined and which was one of my grandfather's churches is still there, and that's adjacent to his land.
And you were nine years old when you joined the church?
Oh, yes. Nine years old. We hadn't quite planned it that particular year,
my brother and I hadn't. Our church was over about ten miles from us,
and we had to cross the river. In those days there was no bridge across
the river. You crossed by flatboat or canoe. And we hadn't gone over to
the revival, and we heard that Joseph and Bertha—I'll call them my two
cousins—had confessed and were therefore going to be baptized in
September. We had to do something about it.
So you weren't swept away in the heat of the moment. This was all
planned.
I guess we were about to be left out, so all of a sudden we went to
church a couple of nights.
And did you and your brother join the same night?
We went to church, and I don't know whether we both got "religion" the same night or not. We weren't very dramatic about it, but we were ready for baptism, and all four of us were baptized at the same time in the old mill pond. That's where you were baptized.
Not in the river?
No, thank goodness. That was big enough.
As you were growing up, did you take religion seriously?
Yes.
Did you believe?
I took the position that you were supposed to change. And I think the
manner in which I manifested was, I was to control my temper. I had a
high temper; I was very quick-tempered. And I'd strike back very
quickly. I didn't take teasing. I wasn't good at teasing, and I wouldn't
take it but so long. I'd say, "Stop," and if it didn't stop I'd hit, and
it didn't matter how large you were. And so this was my way of
demonstrating my change, by trying to control my temper. So we didn't
shout; we weren't a shouting family, for the most part. I've seen my
aunts and my mother, who were very religious, sitting on the usual front
seats, and the tears would roll down. But there was only one aunt who
occasionally would do a shouting bit, but my grandfather didn't care too
much for noise in church. Of course, he was dead by the time… But the
story goes that if they began to do a lot of shouting and throwing their
arms, he'd call them by name and tell them to sit down and keep quiet.
And if they didn't, then he had his sons, who were big, tall men, or
others who would go and take them up and sit them outside the church,
let them cool off. Or if you started shouting too much when he was
baptizing. In fact, as I understand it, the deacons had to accompany
him, because he wasn't going to try to hold them. If they wanted to
shout, he'd let them fall back in the water
Do you think that that period of being religious was important in terms of the basis of social action later?
It was important for the sense of the value of the human being. I look
upon it as having had a family who placed a very high value on people.
We were the kind of family that was not just my mother and her brood,
but if somebody came by who needed something, you got something; you got
food. One of the things my grandfather had was a large production of
food, and there was plenty of food. He had an orchard that was very
superior to the kind that people have now. There were different kinds of
fruits, and the rotation: you'd start off with the early peaches, and
then you'd have peaches all through the summer up until the fall. He had
enough cows to have, say, ten or twelve gallons of milk a day, so if you
came there was plenty to eat. They raised their own wheat; they ground
their own flour and their cornmeal; they had the hogs, and they had
plenty of chickens and plenty of eggs. He believed in that kind of
living, so going up there every summer, to me it was just like, how did
I know he wasn't rich? As far as I was concerned, there was plenty to
eat. In fact, there was no question; riches never entered into it. It
was the business of good living. And nobody ever got turned away. As I
understand it, he was certainly in terms of food. So this was the
pattern, and if somebody called and needed help. On many a night after
we moved from Norfolk, the three children and my
All during this time you were much closer to your mother's family than your father's family?
Yes.
Did you see very much of your father's family at all?
We'd go up to Grandma's and see them. But I never saw Grandpa Teema,
because that was about twenty-odd miles from us. But I saw Grandma
Margaret a lot. We'd go up to visit. They were no longer living on a big
farm. But the older daughter, Aunt Eliza—the one who had the eight sons
and one daughter—had a big farm, and as we grew up of some size we'd go
visit Aunt Eliza. So we visited all of them, but it was much easier to
visit the place where we literally
Was the church a key institution in the community? It was social life and religion and everything?
I guess so, but it depends on what you call "social life."
How many times a week would you go to church?
Just once, thank goodness.
To a Wednesday night prayer meeting.
No. I don't know whether they did or not, because that wasn't one of the requirements in my household. One reason was my mother had lots of bronchial trouble, and if it was cold she would close up. So I guess that protected us against going to church at night. Otherwise, she certainly would have had us there. Of course, it was the only center. And as time moved on, different people moving into the immediate neighborhood, the public school was the only place you had if you were having anything non-churchwise. It would be the schoolhouse. And then individuals would have lawn parties and things like that. My mother didn't believe in dancing, and so things like that we didn't get to do. And I went to a church-related school which did not believe [in] or countenance dancing at the time I went.
In fact, I was in boarding school about nine years.
This was Shaw.
Yes. And the reason for the nine years was that I was
At that stage, Shaw had what was called the Sub-B Class. I think it had
been preserved to provide practice teaching for the teachers, which, of
course, was basically what they were turning out, especially the women.
Those who went to school went to school so they could go back and make
somebody else go to school. And so that's why the nine years: four years
of high school, four years in college, and a year at
How old were you when you went away to Shaw?
I guess I was about fourteen. I was in my teens. And stayed there till I finished. Left there and came up this way.
Was almost the whole student body at that point boarding students?
The larger percentage were boarding students. There were students, though, from the city, because there was a black community there. But you had two colleges. You had the Baptist, which was the Shaw University, and then St. Augustine, which was Episcopalian. And they both are still there. Many of the city students divided according to their denominations.
What Baptist denomination was Shaw?
I guess it was Northern Baptist. It was founded by… Now you've got me a little bit.
There's American Baptist, and there are various Baptist sects kind of….
No, the school no doubt was established by the Northern Baptist so-and-so.
Was the faculty all black at that point?
No. When I first went there, the faculty was mixed with the President being white and a number of the teachers white. When I left there, the President, who was different from the one whom I found there, was still white, was glad to get rid of me, I understand.
Why was that?
I didn't break rules, but I challenged rules. And I didn't have sense enough not to do the speaking, even to groups that were older than I.
The story of the silk stockings?
It's in Mindy's
It's strange about that. My cousin who lives over in New Jersey, she and
her husband, just about four years ago, were down near Fort Bragg (I
think he has family down that way) and ran across the wife of a doctor
who is there who was in school there at the time. And she told her about
this story. I didn't have any silk stockings, but I felt it was their
right to wear their stockings if they wanted to. These women were not
only my seniors in terms of physical maturity, I suppose, but they were
about to finish college and the like. But they didn't dare do the
talking. And they tell me the Dean fainted,
Were there other incidents at the school where you sort of challenged the authority?
Little things. The President that I left there was the last of the whites, I believe. We raised questions about different kinds of things, and one thing in particular, I think, that irked him was that he would do the kind of thing that many students resented. When northern whites would come, they'd want you to sing spirituals. I had a strong voice. As far as music, I might slip and slide, but I had a strong voice, and I recall them asking me if I'd lead something. It couldn't have been "Go Down, Moses;" I don't know what it was. But I said, "No, Mr. President."
These were just visitors to the school?
Visited with him. We went to chapel every morning, every day. And then the girls went every night in the dormitory.
So you can understand why we were good Christians.
Was it set up by the white northern church to keep white schools from being integrated? It wasn't a missionary school.
No.
It was a black
It was one of the oldest of schools for blacks. Those
The English teacher whom I had through college was Benjamin Frawley. He was the one who said to me not to let anyone teach me public speaking because it might spoil me.
Who was the sociology teacher that you had at Shaw that influenced you so. That wasn't Frawley, was it?
No, that was Dean Turner. I don't know his first name. He was kind of
unusual in the sense that… Such things as hair. The question of "good
hair" has been frequently brought up, not only by blacks but about
blacks. Of course, now everybody that has the same kind of hair. They'll
go pay for it, I guess.
Let's talk some about the WPA. How did you come to go to work for them?
I didn't have anything else to do.
Everybody else was working for the WPA.
I finished Shaw in '27. I planned to go to the University of Chicago. I
didn't think very much of Columbia. Now why I had to make that decision,
I don't know. But there was someone—and I can't recall the name of the
sociology professor who was at Chicago University—whose name I had
gotten, no doubt, from this same Dean who had also, no doubt, been to
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
So you didn't get this job addressing envelopes.
The two were quite a distance apart, but it was just a part of the
period. And other things. I waited tables down at Judson House. That's
part of NYU, across from the Washington Square Park. I was living then
with my sister at 143rd Street. I'd take the el down, and I'd get there
and do breakfast. And then maybe between breakfast and lunch I'd run up
to the 42nd Street Library and then go back and do lunch. Maybe lunch
was a very light thing down there, because I think
And then I discovered the Schaumberg Library, which is around the corner
there. That's where I began to learn some things. And then there were
street corner speakers, and all kinds of discussions were taking place.
And so there was a rich cultural potential in
Then when the Depression really came hard and they started to have such
as the WPA, I don't know what I had been doing in between, but by that
time I knew a lot of people
So you'd been up here before.
Oh, I had been up here before. I had been to Indianapolis for something
that they'd sent me to. People tend to want you to go if you can talk.
At least they did then. Talking is a much more normal
What exactly was the Workers' Education Project? What did you do?
By that time I had gone through another thing, the cooperative concept,
and I had expertise
Do you remember the year?
No. That you can find. I'll look back and find some card. The woman who was the supervisor is living down in Florida; at least two years ago she was. She sent me a note. And I had thought I was going to do one more round, starting in Florida and working up, as I did with the NAACP, but I haven't gotten to it yet.
It was around that time that you set up your own housing scene, wasn't
it?
Yes.
It was interesting to me, the idea of you as a single woman setting up to live in New York. Was that the first time you had gotten out on your own and set up your own living arrangement?
Certainly the first time to set up my own living arrangement. But I was
always out for all those
You were never home much anyway.
I think it was more unusual, let's say, for black women
The independent state.
You were supposed to be teaching somewhere.
Boarding in and teaching were supposed to be good.
Sure. I had refused to teach all along. I had all the opportunities. And
I'm not sure it was wise, but it's done, at any rate. I think I was have to do. And everybody
thought it. And I think one of the reasons I developed an antipathy for
teaching was that there were issues that would come up in a school
community, and there were sides which would evidence positions. And I
noticed that some of those who had taken what I would have called good,
positive, or progressive positions prior to their going out to teach,
came back and they were no longer that type of person. It didn't maybe
necessarily follow that this would be inevitable for everyone, but I
think there was a great deal of truth in that. Because the schools were
being controlled to a large extent, public schools for blacks,
especially. There was a great deal of transition taking place where they
were breaking out of certain molds, and yet the school boards were
controlled by the local white politicians or white businessman. And Aunt
Sue's daughter would get appointed to the school, even though she
perhaps may not be adequate for taking care of her doing the job. And
anyone with spirit would be curbed. So I learned maybe what it was. When
they'd come back and they didn't have spirit, this certainly turned me
off as far as teaching. That was
What did your mother think about you coming to New York?
Let's don't go into that. She didn't mind the coming to New York, because
she had raised my Cousin Martha, who was my mother's first cousin's
daughter. Her mother knew she was going to die, and she asked my mother
to take and raise the daughter, especially. The daughter was then about
six, but her father didn't let her come to us until ten, and by that
time I was born. And she always considered me her baby, which meant that
even when I'd grown and we'd cross the street together, she would reach
out and take my hand.
So she didn't mind you living with Martha, but she wasn't especially
happy about you
I'm sure she wasn't, but I didn't ask her.
And she didn't interfere.
She couldn't. She was in North Carolina.
So I got a little three-room place at 133rd and St. Nicholas Avenue.
In between that time you were working with the Cooperative League.
Some, yes.
Did you ever work fulltime with them?