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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-0013, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Miriam Bonner Camp was born in Bonnerton, North Carolina, in 1896. In this interview, she describes growing up in Washington, North Carolina, and her family's historical roots in that area. Camp's mother, who stressed the importance of education and community involvement, was an especially influential figure in her life. In addition, Camp describes opportunities for women, the nature of race relations and social hierarchies, and the role of religion and education in Washington, North Carolina, during the early twentieth century. In 1909, Camp moved with her family to Azusa, California, where she had to endure the stereotypical assumptions people made about her as a southerner. As a high school student in California, Camp excelled academically in pursuit of her goal of attending Berkeley, which she attended from 1915 to 1920. While a student there, Camp became increasingly interested in social issues and was inspired by Progressive era thinkers like Jacob Riis and Jane Addams. She describes her life as a student at this coeducational institution, where she earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in English education. Following her tenure at Berkeley, Camp spent a year pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University in New York City before returning to North Carolina to teach at the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro, where she remained from 1921 until 1926. Camp describes work, life, and the close friendships she formed with other faculty members at this all-women's institution of higher education. In 1926, Camp left her post at the North Carolina College for Women to travel through Europe for a year. She returned to Europe again in 1930 after a brief sojourn teaching at the Long Beach California Junior College. During her second trip to Europe, Camp observed the intensifying labor movement and the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. While there, she studied the workers education movement and the political diversity of labor activism. This followed her involvement with the Southern Summer School during several summers in the late 1920s. She describes the latter as a cooperative community geared towards group action for women workers. Camp offers insight into the role of female leadership at the Southern Summer School and discusses the kinds of problems women workers faced. In addition, she compares her experiences with the Southern Summer School to her briefer tenure at the Vineyard Shores Workers' School in 1931 and the Bryn Mawr College Summer School for Women Workers in 1932. In 1936, Camp was married. She concludes the interview by discussing her family life and her continued involvement in community activities.
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
Miriam Bonner Camp describes growing up in Washington, North Carolina, in the early twentieth century, focusing specifically on her mother's strong influence, opportunities for women in the community, and race relations. She moved to California in 1909, and received degrees in English education from Berkeley. She describes coeducational life in college, her experiences teaching at North Carolina College for Women in the 1920s, and her involvement in the women worker education programs in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
NOTE: Audio for this interview is not available.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
You said in your letter that you were born in 1896 in Bonnerton, North Carolina.
Yes, I was.
On the plantation of your great-grandfather. I wondered who was living on the plantation at the time you were born.
My great-grandfather.
He was still living then?
Yes. And my great-aunt who reared my mother, because her mother had died.
I see. Why were your parents there?
Well, my father wasn't, I guess
I see.
I was her first child, so she went there for me, and then two years later for my brother. But I guess by that time my great-grandfather had probably died, because after that all the children were born in Washington, except the one that was born in Azusa, California.
That's interesting. Why do you think she wanted to have them born on the plantation?
Well, I don't know. It was her home. And her great-aunt who had reared
her,
I see. Was her father there as well?
Her father? No. Her mother had died when my mother was about two years old, I think; I think she died in childbirth. And my great-aunt, my mother's aunt (her mother's sister) said she would take my mother and rear her if my grandfather would never take her away even if he married, that my mother would be left with her. And so he did that, and he did remarry; had three little girls by that woman. But though my mother was friendly with them, would go to visit them, her home was with her great-grandfather and her aunt. They reared her.
I see. Do you remember your great-grandfather then?
I used to rather distinctly, but not much anymore. I was probably about three the last time I saw him.
I see. You said that when you were very small then your mother took you back to her parents-in-law in Washington.
Back to my father's parents, yes, where they lived. And then after my brother was born, two years later they had a house of their own, and moved about two blocks from my grandparents.
I see. Do you remember your father's parents, your paternal grandparents?
Oh, very well, very well. I was about eleven, I guess, when my grandmother died and twelve when my grandfather died.
I see. What were they doing in Washington, North Carolina?
Well, we belonged to the very first white settlers of Bath, the first settlement in North Carolina. Our family lived in Beaufort County, and most of them moved to Washington. [first white settlers in Washington] It was founded by one of my mother's ancestors, Colonel James Bonner.
Bonner was your. . . .
Was my maiden name.
Was your maiden name.
I was Miriam Young Bonner.
That was your mother's . . . ?
I see. I was confused about the name
Very distantly.
I see, OK. What had most of your relatives in Beaufort County done? Had they been farmers? Did they have land?
Originally, of course, they all had land. But after the war, the Civil War, many of them moved to Washington. Oh, one of my uncles by marriage was a judge of the Supreme Court of North Carolina.1 Another one, was a superior, court judge of the First Judicial District.
I think he was judge of the Supreme Court too. Others were lawyers, some
were doctors. My grandfather, oh wholesale groceries he bought for one
of his relatives that had a store, I guess, or something. I really don't
know too much about what he did. His letters, by the way, my
grandfather's letters written to my grandmother during the Civil War,
are in the Southern Historical Collection. And I had a very interesting
experience. I didn't want to trust the letters, somehow, to the mail,
and I took them myself to Chapel Hill. And the man who was in charge of
the Southern Historical Collection met me and took me down to the
archives
This was your grandfather Bonner?
Macon Bonner, my father's father.
Had he fought in the war?
Yes, he was a very youn lieutenant stationed at Fort Fisher near Wilmington. And these are the letters he wrote to my grandmother.
What happened to him after the war? Was he able to come back and sort of pick up where he left off?
Oh yes, yes. My father was born during the war; he was the oldest of
eleven children. But subsequently my grandmother and grandfather had ten
more, so he certainly
Well, he came back. I mean, I think he was considered the richest young
man in that area. And I guess most of what he had was in
So that's when they moved to Washington, moved into town?
Well yes, from what we called out in the country.
Right, OK. What about your father's life? Do you remember him
Yes. It was very hard. He was born during the war, when they were refugees. I think he was born in Washington, but they went to Wilson and I don't know how many other places. The town of Washington was burned, I think it was twice. So when he came back they who were well-to-do became poor. And he was the oldest of, I told you, of eventually there were eleven children. And Washington's on a river called the Pamlico River, and he always loved the water. So as soon as he could he went out on the boats. I remember he was going to take out a big boat, and there was nobody to take out this boat. So he wasn't yet twenty-one, but they gave him his pilot's license. So he was always really very fond of the water. But when my mother had these two children she didn't want him away so much. So he bought interest in the ice factory there in Washington and became the general manager and part-owner.
I see. You said that he was a marine engineer at the time that you were born.
Yes he was.
And he traveled without his . . . ? What exactly did he do?
Well, I think it was on what they called. . . . I've so often wished I'd gone into detail about this with him. I had a million chances, and he would have loved it, but it just never occurred to me. But I think it was what they called the Old Dominion Line, and I think they went from Norfolk to Baltimore or something.
So it was the Merchant Marine, right?
No, it had nothing to do with the government; I mean it was a private line apparently.
Right, that's what I mean.
Old Dominion Line was the name of it.
So he never went to college then?
No he didn't.
And started working really when he was very young?
Yes, very young.
What about those children who were younger than him? Did he help send them on to school?
No, no, because he really couldn't, I guess. My family were
Episcopalians, and most of the women went to St. Mary's. But my
grandmother (his mother) was an unusual student and wrote beautifully. I
remember the book club (and I am sure there were others!); she was
always a literary person. And she not only had gone to St. Mary's, but
she had also gone to Salem. And I guess two of her sisters had been at
Salem too, because I had the delightful experience once of meeting a
very old lady that somebody told me about. She'd been teaching there
when they were there. We went over for the service that the Moravians
have, the Easter service, and we went up to see this old lady. Somebody
took me when they heard that my grandmother had been there. And she said
she remembered the Ellison girls
This would have been right before the Civil War then?
Oh, that was before the war.
It would have been.
And my grandfather, her husband (the one that wrote these letters, Macon Bonner) went to what later became Princeton. At that time it was kind of an academy, and later became Princeton College.
Where did they meet? Were they from the same general area?
Oh yes! They grew up together in the same town, in Washington. Everybody
there grew up together for generations and generations
Well, I think it was literature and history; she was always very much interested in those. Even I can remember that.
Did you have close contact with her when you were small? Did she maybe teach you to read?
Oh no, no, she didn't teach me to read. I can't remember when I learned
to read, because I was always, it seemed to me, reading. But what help I
had probably came from my mother's aunt, the one who reared her, and my
mother. My mother was educated to be a teacher, but when she came out
here she became a librarian. I'll have to show you her beautiful scroll.
You ought to see somebody who really contributed a
lot. This was presented to her on her ninetieth birthday.
"Mary Y. Bonner, whose service to the people of Azusa and the public library spent a longer period of time than that of any other librarian. January 25, 1964." Oh, that's beautiful.
Let's see what it says there. "Whose labors bore fruit in pleasure and learning still manifest among the people of our community, and whose gracious personality is still remembered with affection by thousands of men, women and children. We gratefully offer our warm regards and felicitations on her ninetieth birthday." I am very proud of that. She was a marvelous person.
She started working when you came out here?
No, she didn't start the library that soon. She had another child after she came out here. Of course there were seven of us: I was the oldest. But I think I was in Berkeley in 1915 when she started the library.
So she actually started the public library?
Oh no, no, no. The library was there; it was a Carnegie library.
She became the librarian?
She became the librarian, yes.
How long did she work for them: thirty or forty years?
Oh, it must have been over thirty.
Oh, that's wonderful.
She went in first as an assistant, and then when they had trouble with
the head librarian they made her head librarian.
Back to your father for just a minute, since he came from such a long line or prominent North Carolinians. . . .
So did my mother. My mother was the one descended from Colonel James, but they were both descended from, I guess, Colonel James's grandfather.
Was he at all interested in going into North Carolina politics?
Who, my grandfather?
Your father?
My father? No, my father
Let me ask you a few things about your mother's life when she was small. You said that she was reared on her grandfather's plantation. Was she born there on that plantation, or nearby?
She probably was.
Did she talk about what her life was like when she was small and when she was a child?
Yes, sometimes.
She was the only child on that plantation, wasn't she?
Yes. There were black children, and she played with them. And then of course, as you know the families in those days were very close, and they'd go visiting a lot. There'd be a lot of anunts and uncles and cousins that would come. I guess it wasn't too lonely. But I think she was tutored by a very able cousin of hers. He was quite a gene alogist and historian. Then she did go off to I guess what they called the normal school in Washington to study to be a teacher, an elementary teacher.
In Washington in Beaufort County?
Yes, in Beaufort County?
So she was trained to be a teacher there, and then finished her formal schooling there? Or did she go on?
Yes.
Did she ever teach? Did she ever work as a teacher?
I doubt it. I mean, I don't really remember. She married when I guess she must have been about twenty-one or something like that.
Do you remember ever hearing how she met your father?
Well, my father used to tell me about going down to her grandfather's
plantation when my mother was five years old, and seeing my mother then
But when your mother was five your father would have been twenty, right?
Something like that.
I don't think he waited: I think he had other girlfriends
He was quite old to be married for the first time.
Yes he was. And that's why in a way he always seemed . . . sort of more like a grandfather, I guess, to us than a father.
I see. You said that your mother was active in the Women's Club groups. I wondered if she ever was active at all or interested in politics, or how educated she was in it?
Oh yes. She was one of the first to vote for—as I remember, seems to me
it was Woodrow Wilson. But I can remember when they got the
Oh, she was a quiet type that didn't really get out the way I have gotten
out
Was she active in North Carolina before you left there?
No, no.
She was tied down at that time with really small children.
Yes, yes. I guess she didn't belong to the Addisco Book Club, which was a
sort of intellectual club of the town. But when my aunt Mary MacDonald
would go up to Baltimore (she did quite often in the winter), then my
mother would go to the Addisco Book Club
This is the aunt who had raised your mother?
No, no, no, this was my father's aunt. My aunt who reared her died when I was a little girl; I don't remember her.
Do you think that in Washington there were avenues for women? There were clubs and things?
Yes.
Were there opportunities for women to become involved?
Probably not for all women. These were very exclusive little groups in
the book clubs. The Addisco was the old one and "the" club, but younger
women coming along formed their own clubs. And they had some
Most of my family were on both sides Episcopalian. Way back there were a
number of Quakers that came from England to Rhode Island. One of them
was an Anthony that Susan Anthony is descended from. Several others were
French Huguenots. But the Episcopalians absorbed them all. And when you
read the story back you can understand why, because the Quakers were
denied the right to be citizens, because you had to take an oath of
allegiance to the king and to the queen. And if you didn't do that you
couldn't hold property or couldn't vote and so on. So maybe it was just
true love, but anyway
What effect do you think it had on your mother that her own mother had died so young? Do you think that had something to do with her concern for women or concern for women's rights in some way?
No. I think that my mother, she was a very quiet, gentle but remarkable woman. And I think she would have been that in any circumstance. But there was certainly much more opportunity for her, I think, in Azusa than there would have been in Washington. That's why I say the move for her was good; but it was not a good move for my father because he was too old, really, to adjust and to get into anything at that stage.
I see. I wanted to talk in a minute about your move to California, which I find really fascinating. But I wanted to ask first what you remember about the years you spent in North Carolina as a child. You were thirteen, I believe you said, when you moved.
Oh, I remember all about it
Did you always live in Washington in all of that time?
Yes, yes.
Which house do you remember most growing up in? Did you live in one house?
We lived in one house. It was remodeled. It was a smaller house, and as
more children came
And you were very close, you said, to your father's parents who lived not very far away?
Yes I was, and to all my. . . .See, I had great-aunts scattered all over
the town, cousins all over the town. I'd walk from one end to the other
and
Was it a very small town at that time?
Yes, it was small.
Did your family have servants working in the house?
Yes, we always had. We had a cook and usually a nurse when the children
were small—sometimes even an
Phaeton?
It was a little two-seated buggy. And every afternoon that was pretty my
mother used to take us out into the woods; in those days it was safe,
and Washington was surrounded by pine woods. And we'd go out into
You said that when your mother grew up on this plantation she had played with the children of the black people on the plantation.
Yes, I'm sure she must have, because those were the children that were there.
Did you have the same sorts of relationships with black children in Washington?
No.
Did you ever have any contact with children of the . . .
No.
. . . people who worked in your house?
No.
Do you remember any very close relationships with blacks?
Oh yes, but it was not with black children.
But with adults?
But with the adults, because these great-aunts of mine had these marvelous cooks that they'd had for ages. We'd call them Aunt: Aunt Julia, Aunt Lettuce. But those were the old ones. The younger ones, like the cook we had, we just called them Molly. We had a good relationship, but it was a servant. . . .It was no feeling then of any kind of equality.
Do you think that that situation has shaped any of your later feelings about race in the South, or about race relations?
Well, of course it was very difficult for me, because also the Civil War
and the South. When I came out here, I remember the first time,
Did the whole process of breaking down those prejudices . . . ?
It was very painful for a child.
Did it go on for a long period of time?
Well yes, in a way, because I didn't really have too much contact there. There were only these two boys, as I remember, that were in school, so there was really very little contact. Then when I went up to Berkeley there really wasn't much contact. It was really, I guess, after I came back from Bryn Mawr and the last time when I began to have more association as I went into different groups and joined in things. I had been very active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, which was founded by Jane Addams in 1915. But I went out in these different areas and met black people on an equal plane and of course came to know them as people, why there was no problem then. It just simply melted away; it didn't mean anything.
What about your parents? Did they have the same sort of, go through
No. I don't think it ever completely broke down with them. Not with my
father; but with my mother, she was such a warm, human person that to
her a person was a person
Certainly. Did you ever notice anything different about your parents' attitude toward servants or toward even poorer white people in the town of Washington when you were little than other townspeople?
Oh yes. It was quite a hierarchy. There were the aristocrats (those of us
who went back for generations in the area) and what they used to
call—let me see, what did they call them?—plain but nice people, or
something like that, or the common people or something. And then, of
course, at the bottom of the lot were the blacks. There was quite a
hierarchy when
What about a hierarchy within different kinds of churches? You said that your family belonged to the Episcopal church. How did you view Methodists or Baptists?3
Yes, there was. Oh yes, that too. The only other one that really rated equal, I think, to the Episcopal church was the Presbyterian, and I had some relatives in the Presbyterian too. But yes, they tended to think that they were very nice people but rather ordinary.
Did your mother ever break out of that or try to deal with that in a different way?
No, no. She was more occupied really with her family and really didn't.
What about your companions when you were a child? You said that there were cousins and all sorts of relatives around. What about all these brothers and sisters? Were you close to them?
Not very. I was older, and I was very active. They sort of stayed home, the little ones, with my mother and the nurses, and I was covering the waterfront, the town.
Did you do that by yourself?
Oh no, oh no, I had cousins who wandered with me, and the rector's
daughter, when it was very proper. She never went into some of these
excursions
Did all of your brothers and sisters stay in California when your family moved out here, or have they scattered across the country?
You mean are they all here now?
Right.
Yes, they're all here now. I was, again, the only wanderer.
The only one who ever went back east?
Yes, and lived and stayed back there for a long time.
I was going to ask you if you were closer to one parent than the other.
You were obviously much
Much closer to my mother, oh yes.
Did she really serve as a model for your behavior to you? Did you want to be like her?
No, because I was much more like my father in temperament, I'm sure, than
my mother. I was much more the adventurer and the wanderer. In his early
days when he wandered, when he went off in the boats, that was really
what he liked. That was the mistake he made, marrying and getting tied
down
I was going to say, did he always kind of seem to have that wanderlust after that?
Well, I think it was taken out of him.
He had too many responsibilities
Yes, I think it was taken out of him. And, by then—don't forget, he was
fifteen years older than my mother, and by then he was getting kind of
old anyway. But he had such a zest for life and insatiable curiosity and
interest in people and so on, that I have really much more than my
mother. My mother is a much more balanced, sane, reasonable type of
person
Did you have contact with your father? I mean, did he read to you or did he tell you stories?
My main contact that I remember was going down and getting money
You didn't appreciate it because you were afraid?
Oh yes. Then my father also used to take us when they used to have things like the old fiddlers' convention; I can remember that. And he loved music, so we always were taken (my brother and I, just the two older ones) to the old fiddlers' convention. And I loved music too. And then whenever the circus came to town (he loved the circus and so did we) he'd always take us up to the circus.
What was the fiddlers' convention like in Washington, N.C.?
Well, there were these men that came from all kinds of surrounding places, I guess, and played the violin. That's all I remember vaguely, you know, about all this.
Would there be a crowd of people who would come?
Oh yes, I'm sure. But my father, as I said, was the one that would always
take us out to anything that was exciting
You said that the pine woods were safe back then.
Yes. I don't remember ever being afraid.
I wondered if you ever heard anything about trouble between blacks and whites, any kind of rumors of lynching or rumors of . . . ?
Well no. There's something in my mind, but I don't know how correct it
is, how true it is. But it seems to me that once there was something
about one of the doctors, white doctor who had his driver that I think
Do you have any idea how old you might have been at that time?
Oh, probably maybe six or seven.
What about other things that were sort of that children were not supposed to be aware of or to know about? What about being told about sex or being told about . . . ?
Oh, very strict, and my mother too. She never talked about that. She gave
me when I was getting to the point that I should "What Every Girl Should
Know" or some such thing as that to read
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
So my mother told me yes, she was going to have another baby. And then
she showed
But sex was taboo, yes. But every now and then you'd hear something, the children would hear something and then they'd talk with each other. Not so much brothers and sisters—I don't remember ever talking to them about any of this—but with others your own age.
But always sort of in complete ignorance and always curious.
Oh yes. And always the feeling that there was something really shameful
about it. I remember there was a case of a girl that I knew and cared a
great deal about whose mother had become pregnant before she was
married. Then later she had married the man, but people would still talk
about things, you know, in sort of whispers. And somebody said one day
about "that baby," "It was a good thing that baby
died." I remember asking, "How would that baby be different from any of
the other
Do you think that the fact that people were so close to the church had a lot to do with that? Or was the church an important part of your life?
Oh, the church was a very important part of the life.
When you went into Lent, like now, you had a little mite box. You saved
money for
What about within your own family? Did you have family prayers? Was your father a religious man?
No, he wasn't unless he got sick; then he'd suddenly become quite
religious. Then he'd forgive people that he hadn't
Very seldom. But he insisted on our going, of course.
And your mother went?
Not too often because of the children, the babies.
Was that acceptable, for parents to stay home and to just send your children?
Well, in our case my grandparents were pillars of the church and their families had been pillars of the church since it was founded (in fact they were among the founders), so we were certainly accepted.
Was your father sort of different from the rest of his family? Did he stand out as being unusual?
Oh yes, yes, yes he did.
How did they regard him?
As a character, I think
Friendly toleration?
Very, very friendly character. In fact, my father was a very good mimic.
In the course of his travels seeing so many people, he could
Oh, well. . . . [Interruption]
No, not at school. It was the infant class. From the time I could toddle I was sent into the infant class and so on. But that of course was religious education.
Oh, it wasn't a school?
No, no, that was the religious education. But that was very important in
our lives. Also the fact that I think every Saturday afternoon we had to
go into the room that was the vestry room. I'd sit on this bunk that
held the vestments, and we had to
Did you ever meet any of the orphans you were covering up?
Oh no, no, they were out in Thomasville or someplace, you know. We never
saw them. If we'd known them or anything about them we would have felt
differently. But it wasn't like a person; we never saw. We just had to
sew all these little pieces
But that was very much a part of our life. And my father had an idea that
no child should be confined in a school, have to go to a school until he
was eight years old. So I didn't go until I was eight, and then I went
Oh my goodness!
Miss Betty Robinson. And it was held in the Masonic Hall, so that was always very interesting. We always wanted to see if we couldn't find the goat and all these other things we'd heard about with the Masons. (We never did.) Oh yes, it was a small. . . .
Was your father a Mason?
No, but my grandfather was. My father didn't like to join anything;/as I
think about it, I don't know of his joining anything.
Interesting.
He was a strong individualist.
Did you ever go to any public schools in North Carolina?
Yes, after this private school. And there was a young woman there who
taught the young children the reading, I remember. Miss Betty used to
have a spelling bee, I think it was every Friday afternoon or something.
And all the children in the school stood up to spell, including the big
ones. My aunt who was six years older than I was in the big one, and she
still laughs about it, because I used to be the champion speller. I'd
spell them all down
Anyway, then I went, I insisted on going to the public school, because I thought it would be more interesting: so many more people there, bigger, more exciting. And I think it was probably in the sixth grade that I went into the public school.
Did a lot of your friends in town go to the public school?
Yes, quite a number of them, yes.
Did your parents have any feeling about not sending you there, or did they readily agree to send you?
No. I don't think it was that so much as the fact that Papa had gone to
Miss Betty, Mary my aunt went to Miss Betty, everybody went to Miss
Betty in my little set. So I just went to Miss Betty
I see. Was the public school bigger and more exciting and more interesting?
Oh yes, yes, of course. It not only had the small group of children that
I was used to, but it had all these I'd never heard of
Did all of the children in Washington go to one public school—all the white children anyway?
Yes.
So you met children who were not as well off as your parents?
Oh, I met children from all the different gradations of the hierachy. Of course they wouldn't like to hear it called a hierarchy, but in a way it was.
What about the teachers? Where did they come from? Do you remember any of them?
No. One of them, I remember, she married somebody, I think, in the town,
one of the old families. But the others were people I really don't know.
I remember one of them, her name was Betty too; I don't remember her
last name. That was the first one I had. I met her on the street after I
had gone back sometime. Oh Lewis, I think her name was Betty Lewis.
It was 1909.
. . . your family decided to move to California. I wondered how that decision was made and why your father decided (or your mother and father decided) to go.
Well, I think one reason was that I had an uncle, my father's brother that was out here. And he was always writing these glowing accounts.
Do you have any of those letters that he wrote?
No. And then we had been having a lot of sickness. In those days they didn't know, I guess, what caused malaria. Anyway, we had a lot of malaria. I can't remember just how old I was, but at one stage I had typhoid fever, and the doctor thought I was going to die. They sent to Norfolk for a trained nurse, and I had curls and he told her not to cut off—told her no, to leave the curls on, because he wanted my mother to remember me that way. So my mother chopped them off, you know. I was very, very ill, almost dying. And my sister Virginia almost died of dyptheria, and a number of these sisters and brothers that my father had had died. So he sort of felt, "Well, if it's so beautiful out there and so wonderful and everybody's so healthy we'll move out." So he just. . . .
Had his parents died by that time?
Yes, both parents had died.
So it was easier to go.
Yes, it was easier to go.
Did he go with any specific job in mind, or did he go saying he'd find work?
My uncle, my father had sent him the money for an orange grove. And we
had this orange grove that was just across from the sign that said
"Azusa City Limits,"
Then what did he do after that?
Well, he had various jobs in engineering. He was really a marine engineer, but he was a fine mechanic.
Did he ever go back to working on the ships?
No, no.
When you moved, how did you get out here?
Took a train, the train.
You remember the trip?
Oh yes!
Did it take a long, long time?
I remember the first time I saw a mountain. I was looking out of the
window in my berth and I saw something coming up so close to the window,
you know. I looked up and here was this great big mountain. I didn't
realize I was going to be climbing mountains so much
Did your parents move a lot of furniture? Did they put it on the train?
Yes, and most of it was wrecked. They trusted somebody (my father always trusted everybody) and trusted this man who said, you know, he'd pack it and everything would be fine. We got out here, a lot of it was broken.
How did all of these aunts and uncles and cousins and everyone feel about your going?
Oh, I think they were very . . . sick about it, very unhappy.
Did they sort of . . . I don't know, did they try to keep your dad from going?
No, no, no.
How did your mother feel about moving?
Well, I think she thought it would be. . . . See, my uncle wrote these
glowing letters, so they just thought. . . . Well, as a matter of fact
we have been on the whole very healthy out here
What was Los Angeles like when you were out here, Los Angeles County?
Oh, it was beautiful: no smog, no smog. Azusa was the
area where people came (Monrovia and Duarte,
It just seems to me that that was so early. It must have been very exciting, like being a pioneer.
Oh, it was so beautiful. I was with two people—well, in fact, they have
in Azusa what they call Pioneer Days or something like that once a year.
And my mother was always considered one of them and invited to
Were there many families like you coming out, or did mainly single men come out?
No, no families came.
That just seems very unusual to me.
There were some families that came, and mostly for health reasons. Most of the people I can think of came for their health.
Did people think you were strange because you were from the South?
Yes. In fact, (and I really don't know that this is true) it was not easy
for me because, as you can imagine, I was suddenly thrust from an
environment of such security, such security: knowing everybody, and my
world was, you know, so secure. And then out on the ranch there was a
school on one corner of the ranch, but they didn't have the seventh and
eighth grades. Now I really could have gone in high school at that
point, because I had been having algebra and Latin, as I remember. But I
was a
But then gradually I made friends and made my place. Then the eighth
grade,
How did the schools in general compare to the schools you'd been to in North Carolina?
Well, I really don't remember that. I mean, to me a lesson was a lesson.
I really preferred it, I guess, in North Carolina because I knew people
and it was more fun. But as I got adjusted out here it was all right.
And then when I went to high school I had four years in the same high
school. I had a very dear friend there that was really, I think of all
the friends I've had (and I've had so many) was the closest to me. Then
a lot of other friends too, and the life there was rich. I didn't
remember that I'd ever sung in a glee club, but one of my friends showed
me
What about teachers who particularly influenced you in high school?
Well, I always had this affinity for the English teacher, for some
reason. I remember I had quite a crush on the freshman English teacher.
But that was nothing like the crush on the junior high school, the
teacher in my junior year. She had this pale gold hair and she looked
like, I always felt, Elaine in Tennyson's "Idylls" very kind. And she used to invite me over to her house
for tea,
But did she sort of . . . ?
Only strengthened my resolve. Then in the senior year they started a
junior college, and my class would be the first for the junior college.
So of course they wanted us with the basis for the junior college. No, I
was going to Berkeley. I didn't know why; it was the university. I was
going to Berkeley, and nothing they would say. . . . But practically all
of my friends stayed, just all of them, and went to the junior college.
And I went off to Berkeley by myself
How did your parents feel about that? Were they supportive?
Well my father, I think, always thought, you know. . . . He never demurred about anything that I know of; I never heard him object to anything. And my mother was always a strong support; if there was something I wanted she'd do everything she could to help me get it.
Why do you think you wanted to go to Berkeley?
I don't know.
Had you heard about it?
It was just the state university, I guess. Of course in those days
Berkeley didn't mean what it's meant lately the state
university. As far as I know I can't remember knowing anybody who even
went there. Well, there was one girl, but I didn't like her anyway; I
hardly knew her.
But none of your teachers had been trained there?
Not those that I knew well. The one that was my idol in my junior year
went to USC
Was there ever any question at all about there not being enough money to send you to college?
Well no. I was going to work my way if necessary, and I did some of that in my freshman year. Then, I guess by my sophomore year, I was a reader in logic when I was taking logic, and I was a tutor in Latin, and I was a reader in English. When I graduated I taught English, taught freshman English.
What did the readers do?
They correct the papers and grade them.
I see,
When I was in high school I was very much interested in social service; thought I'd go into social work. And I read all the books of Jacob Riis about New York. Now I'd never been to New York and I didn't know anything about that type of life, but I just gobbled it up: everything Jacob Riis wrote, everything Jane Addams wrote. And when I graduated from high school and I was one of the speakers at the commencement, my subject was "Jane Addams and Hull House."
That's very interesting.
And I thought then, until then I came into touch with Ben Lindsay,
Who first introduced you to social work? Who in Azusa was reading Jacob Riis and Jane Addams?
I don't think anybody else, but the books were in the library and I was gobbling them up.
So you just found them?
I was gobbling them up. I was all for reforming the world. And I don't know why I didn't. . . . I remember going over and talking to somebody about the juvenile court law and going to work with Ben Lindsay. But then I decided, I think, that that was too long and too expensive, and I think I gave it up for that reason as being not one of the feasible things to do.
Did you sort of rationalize teaching as being a way to reform?
No, I don't think so. I think that was just because I loved the
You entered Berkeley in 1915.
Yes.
What was it like then? How many students were there?
I have no idea, but it was certainly relatively small. And it was the
only state university, you see; all these others were started later. In
fact, when I had graduated (in fact I had my masters, I guess) was when
they started UCLA down here. And several of the people I knew in the
English department and some of the other professors were very
influential, and they suggested that I come and teach there. Well, that
would have been a very practical thing to do. I would have been on the
ground floor of UCLA and just simply worked my way up there. But nothing
that practical, I guess, ever really held me very long
To go back to Berkeley for just a minute, who were the teachers who influenced you most? Did you study under any people in particular?
Well, I think probably the man in the English department did influence me most, the man named Benjamin Kurtz, K-u-r-t-z. Oh, there were others: Arthur Brodeur of the English department; Lucy Ward Stebbins, who was the Dean of Women and also teacher of economics.
How many women were at Berkeley then?
Well not very many. That's another thing: when I was talking about going into university teaching I remember one of my professors (I don't remember now which one it was) said, "It'll be a long, hard struggle." He said, "They'll take a third-rate man anytime to a first-rate woman." And that was true at that stage; there weren't many women. Miss Stebbins was the Dean of Women and professor of economics. And Jessica Peixotto (I could work with her too) taught in economics. I was trying to think. I can't seem to remember anybody in English except those of us who had like teaching assistant jobs. I taught regular freshman English the year I got my masters, but I wouldn't have done that if it hadn't been, I think, a war situation.
So they asked you to stay on because they needed teachers?
No, I was getting my masters, so they asked me to take this freshman English class. But I can't remember women in the department, now that I think about it.
What about the students? Were there many women students like in the undergraduate. . . .?
Yes, many. I remember when a friend of mine wrote to me about women coming to Chapel Hill. She said (Madge/Kennette), "You're so used to co-education. How do you work out these problems with the women and so on?" And I said, "Well, I don't know, because it was already worked out when I got here." It was all co-educational.
It was co-educational from the very beginning, wasn't it?
As far as I know.
Did you live in a dorm with lots of other women?
The first year I lived in a private home. But in my second and
How many people lived there?
And we parcelled out the jobs and rotated things. It's funny, I don't know, but I think there must have been about twenty of us living in the house and probably about fifteen who belonged that lived on the campus—I mean, lived in other places.
It was sort of like a . . . ?
Well, it was a club. We called the the Mekatina Club.
Meccatina Club?
Mekatina. Then they went national, and I can't remember now what it was.
And they asked all of us to join the national sorority. But by then I
was in that part of my life that that was done
Other than the Mekatina Club, what were the main student activities at Berkeley then? Were you involved in many?
Not much, not much. I really had to earn part of my way.
How did you do that?
Well, I tutored, and I told you I read papers.
Right.
In logic and English, and tutored in Latin. Taught in English, in the English department. So I was really much too busy for much that was extra. What extra I did usually was in connection with the house and the activities of the house.
Were there big debates about social or political issues? It was
Well, California got it very early, you see, and I think we already had it, as I can remember. I think we got it in 1916.4
So that would be right after you started to Berkeley.
Yes, so that that again was no problem.
What about other political issues? About World War I?
Not much. There may have been, but I wasn't in contact with it. I knew people who went, I knew students who went into World War I.
Was there any move to oppose the war that you remember?
But I don't remember any, don't remember.
What about your political views?
It's funny. The wife of one of the professors asked me once to go to (and
this is the first contact I ever had with any labor group) a meeting of
the, I guess it was the Central Labor Council in San Francisco. It was
some trade union group or labor group. That was not long after the
Mooney and Billings bombing. There was an argument, I can remember:
somebody got so angry there and went out of the room (wouldn't even stay
any longer). And I often wonder what that was all about. I mean, I
really didn't know anything about any of the labor movement
I was teaching English, as you know, at the North Carolina College for
Women, and Lois MacDonald was a YWCA secretary there. So when they
needed somebody to teach English that summer she had recommended me, so
they offered me the job. Now, I must have . . . I can't quite remember,
because the YWCA
When you were in college?
No, when I was teaching. After I left North Carolina, see, I left and
went to Europe for a year. When I came back, when I was teaching at the
Long Beach Junior College there was a YWCA secretary there who wanted me
to do something that summer with some industrial workers' project here
in California. And I got this letter asking me to come back to the
Southern Summer School; and I felt that would be interesting and then
back to North Carolina would be interesting, so I accepted that job. In
looking through some of this I came across her letter
So you never had any contact with the YWCA when you were at Berkeley?
No. Did I or didn't I? Not much, not really actively.
They did have some sort of group on campus?
Oh yes, they had a YWCA there, and I knew people who were active in it. But I myself was not active in it. I belonged to the Episcopal church that was near the campus—I've even forgotten the name of that—at Berkeley.
I was going to ask if you continued being active in the church to a degree.
Well yes, but not as much. You see what happened, when I came out here there was no Episcopal church in Azusa so I went to the Presbyterian church. So in a way I had broken the pattern, you see.
That strong tie that your family has had?
Yes, very strong family tie. I hadn't broken it, it was broken for me; there was no Episcopal church in Azusa.
When you left Berkeley in it must have been 1920. . . .
Yes, I had my masters by then. I went to Columbia; I had a fellowship from Berkeley.
Who did you study with at Columbia?
Oh goodness, that's so long ago I can't even remember.
No one in particular that you went to study with?
No, no. The one that really was the most interesting, I think, was Carl Van Doren in his American literature class, because I had never. . . . I had studied American history, but I had never studied American literature per se. Of course I'd always read a great deal, but I don't think I'd ever taken a course in it. And I took it with him. Then I'd really have to think hard: there was a number of them, but I can't. . . . There was a man named Wright who taught the course in romanticism, and Kraft, I think, taught philology. And the man who was head of the department, goodness, he even wrote a textbook that we studied in high school; I can't remember. [Thorndike]
Did you think seriously at that time of going on for a PhD?
Yes, I did.
What made you decide not to?
I went to teach down in North Carolina.
How did you get that job? Who contacted you about that?
I can't remember exactly, but I think somebody told me that Dr. Foust was there recruiting teachers. I made an appointment with him; I guess I must have.
Did you decide at that time that you'd really like to go back to North Carolina?
Yes, I guess I did. I think all my decisions have just never been
I lived on the campus of Columbia in the graduate women's hall, Fernald Hall. Do you know it, Fernald Hall? I did have some very good friends there. One very good friend that I had known all the way through the University of California was there, a Jewish girl that I was very fond of, a brilliant girl. Then I met some others in the hall where I lived. But I really was very busy with my courses. Though I went out a lot to opera, concerts, the theater; and we used to go roaming around New York all the time when we had a holiday or like a Saturday. And we did go down into the ghetto area, and took a trip over to Ellis Island and all that sort of thing. The Henry Street Settlement, we used to go there.
Just to visit?
Just to visit.
Did you ever meet any of the people who were involved in settlement work then? Your old interest in Lindsay and Jacob Riis, was that revived at all?
No, no. Well, it was always there; it was always dormant anyway. But at that time I was so busy with these courses that I really was quite immersed in the library with the courses. And then when I wasn't, then it was more or less the theater. . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE BA]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . contact with any of the people who were in the YWCA in New York at that time?
No.
Then for the next five years, from 1921 to '26. . . .
I taught in North Carolina.
In North Carolina. What was the atmosphere at North Carolina College for Women in the early twenties? It seems that it would be quite a contrast from the experience you had had at Berkeley.
Well, it probably was, but I don't know. I really went there thinking I'd stay at the most two years, and I was so happy there I stayed five. And I never would have broken loose if I hadn't just up and, again, up and did it, because I would have done like practically everybody else I knew, stayed on there and retired and lived there the rest of my life.
Right. What did you like about it so much? What was so attractive?
Well, it's hard to say. I liked the students—very interesting contacts. And there was a freedom about it; now perhaps there wouldn't have been freedom if we'd gone into any controversial thing, but I wasn't interested in the controversial things at that point espectially. We didn't have so much to teach that you couldn't teach. You had time to read, to study, to prepare, to have your class leisurely in an atmosphere without pressure; conferences with the students, individual conferences that you came to know them and came to be very fond of most of them, almost as if they were your family. And some of the teachers I cared a great deal about.
Who were your closest friends on the faculty?
A woman named Mildred Gould—funny, she was a Georgian educated at Columbia.
Did you meet her at Columbia?
No, no, I met her at NCCW. Ann Ketchin, who was a South Carolinian, educated at Columbia; Louise Irby, who was from Tennessee. It's so funny, often I think of that, the gravitation sort of towards the southern people. Elva Barrow, who was a Virginian: really, my closest friends there were southerners.
Were there a lot of people there who weren't southerners?
Oh yes; and I knew them, and a few of them were really, you know, friends from the middle West. But my closest friends were these southern women, when I stop to think about it.
Were there many men on the faculty there?
A few, not very many.
Were you close to any of them?
No, not really. There were some marriages. There was a man there—funny I
can't remember his name—who was in the history department. He married
Carolina Hazen, who was in the history department. And there was a man
there named Frederick Morrison; I think he was in education. Oh, there
were men. Most of them were married, but there were a few single men.
But for the most part the single women didn't go out with the single men
Just sort of this nice group of people around on the campus?
Yes. Almost like a nunnery life in a way. And it was very
Were most of the students satisfied and happy with it?
I really don't know. I made a few friends. There was one student that I still correspond with, and several others that I correspond with occasionally. But this one I correspond with regularly. And most of the women that I cared about, my friends, have died; in fact all of them are dead, I think.
The student you still correspond with, is she still in North Carolina?
No, she lives in Washington, D.C. She was a journalist. I guess her husband was a journalist, though I never met him. He's been dead too for some time. And there are several other students that write to me occasionally, and maybe I'll write them back once. But I just don't have time. And I have such a large correspondence—I have a large family—that I just don't have time for a lot of them.
That's exciting, though, that they still write to you after such a long time.
Well it is, it's marvelous; it is marvelous.
Most of the students who were there, what were they interested in? What did they want to do?
Well, at that time really there wasn't too much for women except teaching.
Right. Were most of them planning to be teachers?
I suppose a lot of them were. Some of them weren't planning, as far as I
know, to be anything
Was it easy to get married coming to a women's school like that? I mean, was there an active social life?
No, I don't think there was too much, not on the campus. They would have it when they went home, I suppose.
What were the most important organizations for students?
They had two societies, and you sort of automatically fell into one or the other. I can't remember which one I fell into. And they had an initiation ceremony or something like that; they really didn't mean very much.
Was the YWCA active?
Yes, there was an active YWCA on the campus.
What kinds of things did they do?
Oh, you'd have to ask Lois that
Did you have any contact with the "Y"? I mean, were you involved or an advisor at all?
No, no.
How did you meet Lois MacDonald then? Were you very close friends?
No, no, but we knew each other—everybody knew each other
What was her particular position?
Oh, she was secretary of the YWCA on the campus.
I mean, did you know anything about the work she was doing?
Not much.
How did you finally leave? In 1926 you left?
Again, it was just a case of resigning and going to Europe.
Oh, there was one other person I wanted to ask you about. Did you know Harriet Elliott?
Oh yes, I knew Aunt Hit.
Aunt Hit?
That's what, I guess, her nephews called her; they used to call her Aunt Hit.
What was she like? I've heard her name so many times.
Always busy and bubbling, always busy. She'd come in and she'd ask you about something; then she'd look at her watch and, "Oh, well I have to go." Off she'd jump, off she'd go. She wasn't the restful type that you could have a conversation with.
Yes, yes, with a lot of the students. And then she was active more in the political life. She was quite good friends, I think, of Laura Cone of the Cone mills. And there was a very prominent Jewish woman who was one of the leaders in the political life there, and she was very good friends with them. She used to play golf with them.
What were her politics?
Well, I guess Democratic; I think it was in Roosevelt's administration she got some very prominent job such as no woman had ever had before.
Yes. But she was always very much within the proper lines of political activity for women. I mean, she was interested in reform or in improving industrial conditions?
Yes. No, she didn't go into the labor angle, I think, at all. She had come from Illinois, I think a mining town—Carbondale, it seems to me—but I don't think there was any of the interest. I never saw any. In fact, I can't think of anybody there that showed any interest in the working class or the labor movement.
What about interracial work?
Can't remember anybody ever knowing there was such a thing.
Oh really? Even in the YWCA you never heard of that?
Well, you see, I wasn't. . . .
Yes, but I just wondered if you ever heard about anything that they were doing.
No. I mean, Lois would have to tell you that, because I really don't know. I don't know. I was almost wholly interested, I think, in my students and the work with them. And it was a confining sort of thing; I mean, you were on the campus. You were free to go to town and so on, but I never took any part in any of the activities.
Were students free to sort of come and go as they pleased?
As far as I know. I think in the dormitories they had a certain hour that they were supposed to be in.
But it was pretty open? It wasn't terribly restricted?
No, I don't think it was.
When you left in 1926, how did you plan to go to Europe? How did that trip come up? Were you offered a fellowship?
No, no. I had to take all the money I had to go on it.
Did you go with someone else?
No, I went alone. But a friend of mine and her husband were in England;
in fact, they met me at Plymouth. And they had rented a car, and I went
with them all through Cornwall and Devonshire and Oxfordshire and
Worcestershire and Cambridgeshire. And then we took the car and went
over to Normandy and Brittany. This friend I had known in California. I
didn't really know her too well. She was a character too, and she was
older than I much more. And she was fairly wealthy. And I had met
her up in Berkeley, where she had a brief period between husbands. Then
later when she had married the second or third and went to her home in
Catalina in the summer, I went over and spent a week with her. Then I
guess I had done that for another summer, probably spent a week with
her.
What was her name?
Goodness, which of her names?
Oh, she married
Anyway, she loved to walk, and she was really quite literary. And she liked me because I liked to walk and I would talk with her about literature or anything that came up that was interesting. And by then she had married, I guess it was the third husband, and he was lame. So she really had, I think. . . .
That was a mistake if she wanted to walk
. . . Wanted me to come because I'd walk with her. So we left him
usually around the hotel or boarding house or wherever we were, and she
and I would walk all over the whole countryside, all over the territory.
We walked all over, I guess, Cornwall, Land's End, and then later all
over everything, just the two of us. And we had a marvelous time. Then I
went with them all through Brittany and Normandy, and then we went into
Paris together. But in Paris I had a very good friend, (I had several
friends, but one very close friend) who was studying the violin there.
And her younger sister had been my closest friend all through high
school, and then she had died of tuberculosis. So I suppose in a way it
was because May was going and because Edith was there and so on. I spent
the winter in Paris, but as soon as it began to get a little towards
spring I went on all by myself
How did you travel? By train most of the time?
Most of the time train; occasionally boat, but most of the time train.
Was it common for a young woman to take off by herself?
No, I don't think it was; it wasn't so common. I still remember these two
middle-aged English women in Rome in the little pension where I was
staying. I was going down to Naples, and one woman said, "Oh, I think
you're so brave to go to Naples all by yourself and travel alone as you
do." And the other one said, "Hmm, you can call her brave, but I call it
foolhardiness."
No, not really; not really. I mean, whatever I had I always got out of
Oh, I bet it was an incredible experience.
Oh, it was, marvelous.
Did you study at any schools?
No, except in Paris I was studying French down at the Alliance Francaise.
Then when you came back home you decided to come back to California.
Yes.
You were gone for a year; this was in 1927?
Yes. And then I taught English at the Long Beach Junior College,
Right. How did you get that job?
Through the University of California. And that was a time when there were
so few jobs and the Depression was coming on; I think if I had really
known about the Depression
That was in 1930, three years later.
That was '29 and '30. So we went to Europe. And I learned, that's where I really began learning things, because I was in Vienna and I was in Germany. And I saw the coming of the Fascist movement, really, in Germany. And I was scared as hell.
Had you gone to Germany before, when you'd been there before? Did you travel in Germany?
No, no, no.
What was it like? Why were you so . . . ?
Well, there was a lot of unemployment, a lot of poverty and a lot of. . .
. I was in touch, see I was studying by then the worker schools, the
labor movement, and I was in touch with some people who really saw the
Fascists were coming. I think World War I had been a terrific. . . . It
had a terrific impact on me, because though I didn't really lose anybody
in it, if I had been a man I would have been in that war, you know. And
my fear of war, and I think almost obsession with war, goes back to my
childhood, to the Civil War. From the time I was born all I heard about
was the terrible things that the war had done. And so this idea of . . .
this Fascism and
When you went into Germany in 1929 and '30 things were still open, weren't they? I mean, Hitler was just, just beginning to come to power.
Just beginning, just beginning. But I was there at the time that Bruning had what he called, as I remember, the Republik Schutz Gesetz, this law for the defense of the republic, which really was giving dictatorial powers to the government. And dictatorial powers were not going to solve the problems of the unemployment and the hunger that we saw.
When you were in Vienna. . . .
The Socialists were in power.
Right. I read an article that you wrote about that.
Where did you get that?
It was in the little News, the News
that the Southern Summer School published.
Oh really?
Yes.
Oh, I don't even have that. Hmm.
It seemed very optimistic about the Social Democrats, about the programs they were doing but not optimistic about them being able to stay in power.
That's right, and I was right. And I was right. We used to take a bus—I
mean a train, I guess, or a subway. Holly and I were staying in a
You went with Hollace Ransdell, and she had, I guess, made the original plans for the trip herself?
Yes. She was going with Louise.
Why had she planned to go?
Well, her main interest, I think, then was Vienna; she wanted to see what was going on in Vienna. And she'd never been to Europe; she wanted to go to Europe. I'm sure she hadn't been to Europe at that time.
Why couldn't Louise go at the last minute?
I've forgotten; I've forgotten why. Maybe it was because she was going to marry Mac or something. Anyway she didn't go; she couldn't go.
And just like that I decided I'd go with her.
Did Holly go— one thing I was interested in — to study specific workers' education programs?
Well, we both did. We both studied the workers' education movement.
But that was definitely part of the plan, to see how workers'
Oh yes, yes, yes, right.
What was Hollace Ransdell like?
Oh, she was a charming person, very bright—very bright. That was a long time ago.
I got the feeling from talking to her that at one time she was very optimistic about politics in this country changing dramatically. She was really sort of interested in basic social change, in a major social change more, perhaps, than a lot of the women who were involved in the school. Was that true?
Perhaps. I really, you know, had never known her before she came to Southern Summer School. And I think she was probably more conscious of the basic roots than the rest of us were. She lived in New York, and I think perhaps in New York she had contacts with maybe more sophisticated people than some of us had had.
What did you find when you compared different workers' education programs. You were not only in Vienna but in England.
Well, we started out in London, yes. Well, really what we found, I think, basically, were that they were really (most of them) tied up with political movements very definitely. In England the workers' education—I don't remember the different names even anymore, but there was one group that was supported more or less by the trade union and by the Labor party, I guess. And that was an attempt to really make the workers articulate and conscious of their needs and their need to organize in trade unions, political groups, cooperatives and so on. And that was a group that was primarily, I would say, perhaps more like the Liberal party is now and the trade unions.
Had they set up the London Labor College then?
I guess so.
That was a college that was closed in '28, right before you got there, which had been operating.
I don't remember these details. But then there was another group, and that group was much smaller and more radical. They were really to the left of this group. That group was more like the Social Democratic group; the other were a little more like the left Socialists. And then of course there was the Communist group. We didn't really see or hear of or have any contact with any of the Communist groups.
How did those groups talk about each other?
Well,
You wrote about the difference between the Christian Socialists and the
Social Democrats in Vienna, and the sort of struggle between those
groups, and I think mentioned at one time that they set up different
schools.
Well, they probably did. I've forgotten. I mean, the basic thing there
was the power of the Social Democrats. But there were these undoubted
opposition groups. It was just that, as far as I can remember, I didn't
have contact with them. But then when I got to Germany Holly and I went
out to a school in Leipzig; it was not in Leipzig, it was out of
Leipzig. And it was in kind of an old mansion. But these were workers,
and mostly, I guess, people unemployed who didn't seem to have much. And
it was cold; I don't think they had any heat. And as I remember when we
ate it was like one great big dish of soup
Then when we got to Berlin, there again, as I say, there was this
Republik Schutz Gesetz. And there were workers that would come out
demonstrating in the Potsdamerplatz. They would just be moved on. These
policemen on horseback, they'd come and they'd just, you know,
Were you actually frightened there? Were you frightened?
Well, I was once, in a demonstration. I happened to be at a certain place
But they had classes there in the workers group. They were fighting for
control of the workers' minds, of course. There were some classes that
were conducted by these Nazis, evening classes, classes for workers. And
the Communists had their classes. And there were very interesting things
going on in the theater
Did you travel in Denmark as well?
Yes. I went up to Copenhagen, and we went to a labor school that
Elsinore?
At the castle at Elsinore
Did you visit any of the folk schools in Denmark?
No.
Any of the folk cooperatives?
No, no. I visited one of these Social Democratic schools in Copenhagen.
And I can remember the man who was the director of it said they took a
few Communists because they were the yeast in the dough.
No, but I read whatever I could get my hands on. You know, whatever I saw I read, but I don't remember particularly any more.
Did you meet many workers? Were you actually in contact with many of them?
Only through these classes. And there they would talk to you; in fact, they were eager to talk. They liked to have people come, and were very eager to talk.
Well, how did you translate this experience to what was going on and what
you'd been involved with to some extent in this country? Did you see the
same sorts of things beginning to go on? Were people fighting for
political power through workers' education programs, or were they that
I think there was a beginning of it before the World War.
World War I?
Yes. They were springing up all around. I'd hear about one, I think, in Madison, Wisconsin and one somewhere else. San Francisco had a very fine labor school up there. I imagine they were springing up all over.
And what happened? When you were working in the Southern Summer School in '29 and earlier ('28 and '29 and '30), did you feel you were part of a movement? Was it a workers' education movement?
Yes, we felt that way when we were at Burnsville particularly, because of the Marion strike, I think. And we did march, as I remember, in a demonstration. And when the workers were on trial we went to some of the trials. I think that gave you a sense of being part of it: mostly the Marion, and then of course the girls talking. And you heard so much about these different places that they did give you some idea of a feeling that you were a part of it.
Did you see the set-up in Europe, with the different political parties
having their own schools, an advantage or a disadvantage? I mean, if you
translated that to this country would you have gone with a system where,
say, the Socialist party (which at that time was viable
Well, they have had their schools.
Right. But, I mean, did you think that that was the way to proceed? Were you interested in pursuing that kind of thing yourself, becoming involved politically to further the workers' education movement? Or did it ever go that far?
Well yes, to a certain extent.
I mean, were the people who were at the Southern Summer School. . . . As I understand from what I've read there was a real hesitation to become aligned with any labor group, for that matter, but any political group either.
We did join, some of us, I joined the teachers' union at Breekwood. Brookwood was the outstanding labor college with A.J. Muste; and that was the one that everybody looked up to, was Brookwood and Muste.
I see.
I came across when I was hunting through this stuff my union card
So there was an attempt to try to join some group nationally.
Well, I joined that teachers' union, I remember; that was the Brookwood Local.
I see.
A.J. Muste, I've always wanted to get around and follow his career. He
became a very outstanding pacifist, you know, a leader of the pacifist
movement. And I think the Fellowship of Reconciliation owes a lot to
him. [Interruption]
I wanted to ask you what you remember most vividly about the Southern Summer School, about the faculty and the students and the interaction between them. What was the atmosphere like in the school?
Very friendly, very cooperative.
I've read in many places where Louise MacLaren would describe that it was a cooperative community. There wasn't a hierarchy.
No, there wasn't. They called us, I remember, by our first names, and we
called them by their first names, and it was really just like one big
If you described the students, could you describe them as a group? I mean, were most of them shy or were they . . . ?
No, they were very different, very much individuals. Some were strong and outspoken, some were shy (you had to encourage them to get anything out of them at all, sort of draw it out and make them realize that you were a friend, interested in them. Then they'd talk.)
Did most of them seem very young?
No, there were older ones and younger ones. It was quite a mixed group.
And what about married women vs. single women?
There were some married women too.
Were you ever involved in the recruiting process?
No, never. I think Louise did that: raising the funds, getting students.
If you had to say (in all of the discussion and debates that have gone on about whether working class people in the South have any kind of class consciousness), were these people class conscious, for lack of a better term?
To a certain extent. They were conscious of the fact that they had to work for a living and that the conditions of their work were not very pleasing to most of them. And of course that was a period when there was a lot of what they called the "stretch-out" system, when they had to work a number of machines and it was really too difficult for them. And some of the strikes, I think, really had as a basis that so-called technology, or what the workers called the "stretch-out" system.
Right. Were they angry?
Yes, some of them were very angry. And a strange thing too—not strange, I guess—when they came together the girls from like Elizabethten seemed to think it was because the bosses were German. But then when the girls from Marion spoke they weren't German. And the Enka mills, we got very few from there, but that was a Dutch-owned. And then some of them, like speaking of the Cone mills, Jewish; and at Danville there was a man, again Nordic type like themselves; and southern, I think. So they came to realize it wasn't a matter of nationality, nor was it a matter of whether the man came from North or South, but that it was a profit motive of the factory to get as much out of them as possible and pay as little as possible.
Do you think the school gave them any way or any ideas about ways that they could channel their anger?
Well, the school did point to the fact that if they would stick together, if they would organize, cooperate with each other that they'd have much more bargaining power than if they were just individuals striking out in anger. Yes, in that sense.
Was there any idea of people, of these women going back and starting workers' education classes, or trying to feed into the organized labor movement?
Well, I think there was a hope that they might participate. The United Textile Workers was organizing down there; and our group had nothing really to do with the Communist group, which also was organizing, the National Textile Workers' Union. So I think there was definitely the feeling that, you know, if they'd cooperate with the United Textile Workers Union that that was. . . .
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
. . . were not employed by any union. It was only to get them to see that if they could cooperate and organize themselves they'd get some sort of bargaining power, that then they would have more strength when it came to their conditions of labor and their wages and hours and so on.
What about the YWCA as an organizing group? Was there any feeling that that was at all effective? A lot of these women came from the YWCA.
Yes, they had come from the YWCA, and I guess in their communities the industrial branch of the YWCA had been quite effective in trying to get the women in their classes to see that they had something in common with the other workers.
There were some faculty people I wanted to ask you about. Louise McLaren, from the things I've read it seems to me that . . . would it be misleading to say that the school would never have kept running as long as it did without her?
Oh, I think that's very true. She was the one that raised the funds; she was the organizer, the administrator, getting the students, making the contacts.
Why do you think she was so committed to this work? From reading her correspondence it is a committment, it's an incredible dedication.
Definitely a committment. I really don't know. But she was a Vassar graduate, and went into the industrial YWCA. And I guess she felt that this was something so important, that these workers have a chance. The conditions of their lives probably appealed to her; she thought it was terrible that they should have to live under such conditions.
Do you have any clue as to why she was so dedicated to workers in
No, she was not a southern worker. But she did work, I think, or have contact with some of the YWCA people who were working in the South, because I had a very good friend here in Los Angeles. Her name was Elizabeth Hughes, who had worked for the YWCA in the South, I think in Texas (I've forgotten where). And she knew Louise and admired her very much. So it may be. . . .
She worked for the school later, Elizabeth Hughes.
No, not Elizabeth Hughes. Amy Hewes worked at Bryn Mawr.
Oh, this is Elizabeth H-e-w-e-s?
No, Elizabeth H-u-g-h-e-s.
She did, in around '43; she was a field worker for a summer or something like that under Louise.
Really? She never told me that.
Is she still here in Los Angeles?
She died of cancer about five years ago. She was another very dedicated person.
So maybe Louise just thought it was worse in the South.
I was wondering if she maybe felt that in the South, because of the movement or the concentration of the textiles from the northeast to the South that there was sort of a new field, and really crucial to. . . .
I think she did.
. . . to the national organization.
I think she did.
What about her interest in organizing women workers in particular? What do you think that came out of?
Oh, probably she had worked more with women: at Vassar, it was a women's school, and in the YW she was with women. I think she had just more or less been associated with women; I mean, that seemed to be the field of interest in which she found herself.
She seemed to at times want or push certain AFL officials she knew to try to start organizing drives among women, and received usually a pretty negative response. A few people were interested in organizing women at the time.
Very few, any more than the women workers were interested in the black workers.
I wanted to ask you about Lois MacDonald, and I was trying to get some sense of the way she interacted with students. Did they like her a lot?
Very much, very much.
Was she very effective the way she worked with them.
Oh yes, oh yes, yes. She was laughing and jolly, had a marvelous sense of humor. They did like her very much. Everybody liked Lois.
How closely did Louise and Lois work together in sort of setting up the school in the beginning? Did you get some sense of that at all?
Yes. They were very close friends, very close friends.
I was interested in Hollace Ransdell's work with labor drama
They enjoyed them; they were very enthusiastic.
Was she easy to work with?
Well, I think she had certain standards, and was rather demanding, but I
think they appreciated that because they got good results. She was a
Do you know anything about her later work with the CIO . . .
No, I really don't.
. . . as editor of the CIO news?
Were the faculty members the four years you were there good friends, would you say?
Yes, very good friends, very good friends.
What about differences in committment to the whole thing? Was everyone sort of in the whole project to the same degree?
I think so. Probably Louise the most, because she was the backbone of it and held us together. But I think all of us were dedicated, loved it, felt that it was worthwhile.
Did you ever work with anyone on the faculty who didn't think it was worthwhile, who thought it was a waste of time?
No.
Did anyone like that ever show up
No, no. I never saw anybody show up like that.
What about long-range sorts of goals that people had? Did people like Louise McLaren and Hollace Ransdell really see workers' education as a way to bring about some great change?
I really don't know.
What I'm thinking of is perhaps a way of changing things more effectively than, say, going with organized labor all the way. I mean, in many ways they were oftentimes very critical of organized labor.
I really don't know; I couldn't answer that.
What about your own feeling on that, as far as you were concerned?
Well, I don't think any of us really knew what the future would bring. All we knew was that this was important for the time. And what happened, I don't think we were too concerned about it really.
The avenues that you had come down until 1928 or '29 sort of lead you into workers' education. There would be no way for you to get involved in organized labor really, would there have been?
No, no—except, as I said
Right, right.
The American Federation of Teachers.
Did you ever contemplate, for instance, trying to work as an organizer or something like that for the United Textile Workers?
Maybe in some of my wild moments.
Do you think that they ever would have asked any of you to go into towns and organize?
Oh, I think they probably would have been glad enough to get any help they could get.
Really?
I imagine; I really don't know.
Were there any political differences among people on the faculty when you were there? Were any faculty members more committed to one political philosophy than another?
Well, not much when I was there. I mean, we all pretty much . . . I guess
we really didn't quite know where we were going, but we just hoped
But few people had any kind of program set out that they were . . . ?
No, I don't think so, not when I was there.
What about later? Was there any? I sort of got drifts of. . . . Well, it
was a time of incredible faction
I was there only four summers, and those four summers were more or less united, I think, in what we were doing.
Was there ever any discussion of bringing men into the school when you were there?
I can't remember that; I don't remember.
During the four summers that you were there, could you think of any ways in which the school changed, over that period from '28 to '31?
Well, I think the most active and intense period was the period at Burnsville during the Marion textile strike, when we had the workers going back and forth from Marion to the school. And we'd go to Marion and go to the court, as I said, when they were being tried. I think that was the most exciting one, where you felt you were really part of something.
Were you in close contact with the organizers: Alfred Hoffman, was it?
No, really it was more the students in the school and through maybe their husbands or people that they knew rather than with the organizers, as I remember it.
I see. Did their husbands ever come to the school during then?
I can't remember: maybe to a social event or something of that kind, but I don't remember.
Did you go into the town and meet a lot of the people who were on strike?
In Marion?
Right.
Yes, we did in Marion, because you see at Burnsville we weren't too far from Marion.
Right. That was really the first time, or only time, that that happened, that you went right into a community.
Yes, and that was the most exciting of them all, and I think probably the most vital.
How did you feel about, or how did the women at the school or the faculty feel about their role in the strike? Was there anything they could do, or was it something that was sort of being played out that would turn out?
No, I think it was being played out. The only thing we could do was to
show our sympathy with the strikers through our students. And I remember
once we did march
Do you remember hearing later about the second strike in October, when the six workers were killed? Do you remember hearing? Did you follow Marion and what was going on?
I did probably in a way, but I was . . . was I in Europe then or someplace?
Yes. You left for Europe, you must have left right after the school that year, right?
I guess so.
In '29.
After all, we were going and looking at things day and night, you know, and busy. You hear about things, but it's something far off and you're no longer part of it really.
Did you ever want to go back to Marion and see what had happened?
Yes. And I always wanted to know what happened to the girls, the women at the school. But again, I don't know, I guess when I close one chapter and go into another I just don't have much time.
What was the relationship, as you saw it, between the school and organized labor?
Well, I really can't tell you that either, because I don't know too much about it. I know that Mary Barker (was that her name?), she was tied up with the teachers' union.
American Federation of Teachers.
And she was very much a union person. And she came to visit the school and was interested. But I can't remember, really, that any of the labor people took especially active part in anything. If they did it would have been more in conversations with Louise or maybe giving something, a scholarship for somebody or something of that kind.
Do you remember ever discussing with students problems that they had had
becoming members of unions? Every southern worker at that time was
having trouble
No, I don't.
Did you get any sense from the autobiographies and from talking
No, no.
Was that reflected in the sense that they had of themselves as being . . . workers who had responsibilities and who were needed by other people, and who had a place in the community?
Yes, definitely they felt. . . . I mean, they worked hard, and there wasn't much extra time. And so many of them would have dependents, either children, husbands, mothers, fathers, some older relative. And I think there was very little time for anything except just work.
We talked a few minutes ago about the school as a vacation experience for some of these women. What about it as a. . . . Do you think it served as sort of a space where they could come and maybe for the first time have time to contemplate what had happened to them?
Yes, I do, definitely: the first time that they'd had a chance to rest, to relax, to re-create, to "rap" as they say now with other women, and to read some—some of them did read; we had a library there. And they talked a lot among themselves, talked with us. It was a wonderful experience of freedom and security: three meals a day, a place to sleep and nothing to do except just go to classes.
What do you think most of them, or some of them, got out of their contact with the faculty, with you and with other faculty members?
I don't know. I guess they felt we were much luckier than they were.
Do you think there was a feeling that possibly they could either stem the tide against the stretch-out, or that they could do something by going on strike or speaking out in some way to improve conditions and improve wages? Was there any optimism about being able to do that?
Well, I think there was in the beginning. These strikes, I think, were spontaneous really. There was no planning. The conditions just got bad and they called a strike; it was a spontaneous sort of thing. And then, of course, they learned so much that they were black-listed, some of them never probably rehired again. And in a town where you have probably the mill as the only way you can earn a living it's pretty tough to be black-listed, especially if you have others dependent on you. And so many of these girls did. So they learned. They'd be arrested; they'd be jailed; there were all kinds of things happening to them. And how much they gained I really don't know.
You sort of described the summer of 1929 as the peak year, as the year when hopes were highest, maybe, for something being done. What about the years after that?
The years at Arden, the two years at Arden that I was there?
Right.
Well, it seems to me that the Danville strike came in there too, didn't it?
Yes.
We had a girl from Danville, but we weren't so involved because we
weren't so close. Somebody like Louise, I think she went to Danville and
Was there sort of a let-down of some kind in '31, '30 and '31 maybe. I mean, by that time the strikes in Marion, Gastonia and Elizabethton had failed.
Well maybe, but somehow you just go ahead. I mean, here are your students, here's a summer school, and you go ahead and do what you can.
I don't think any students came from Gastonia.
No, that was a Communist-led union; it was the National Textile Workers' Union. We didn't have any students. But the trials were in Charlotte, as I remember, and Louise—I think it was Louise, or somebody—and I went to some of the trials just because we were interested.
Do you remember those trials very well?
I may have something in here; I don't know. Well, I remember vividly some
of these stories they told about the terror that was used against them.
I guess they were evicted and had a tent city. They were scared to death
and all. And then of course these people were arrested on a murder
charge, as I remember. Here you look at them all lined up, you know, as
murderers. And as far as I can remember so many were outside organizers;
they'd come down from New York. But I think there were some from
Gastonia who were in it too. They probably didn't know what had hit them
Was there a feeling of that being a spontaneous strike very much like Marion and Elizabethton?
I really don't know; I don't know enough. Mary Heaton Vorse has
Well, in Tom Tippett's book he has a section on Gastonia.
It seemed to me that the man who was in it, Fred Beale . . .
Fred Beale, a proletarian.
. . . didn't he write? And now then there's this autobiography of Vera Bush, which I would like to read but haven't.
I just wondered if the next couple of years, in '30 and '31, if there was a feeling that that strike, because the organizers who went there had been from a Communist union, was sort of somehow put into a different kind of perspective?
Oh, I think so.
I mean, as far as any movement of widespread labor organization in the South was concerned.
Yes, I think so.
Could you tell among the students the next two years that it had been sort of damaging that that had happened?
No. But I think there was, you know, an antagonism to the Communists, to the National Textile Workers' Union.
Was it an antagonism, or were they opposed to Communists because . . . ?
Well, they had all the fears of their being traitors and everything else.
What I'm saying is that it seemed to me from reading a lot of the course
outlines from the school that in many ways what Lois MacDonald was
advocating. . . .I mean, she would describe the capitalist system and
she would describe the Socialist system or the Communist system, not
necessarily labeling things. But through talking to students and
discussing motives of
Desirable?
Desirable.
I doubt if they took it too seriously
I read one essay that a student wrote, I think it was in '32. Hazel Dawson, do you remember her?
Who?
Hazel Dawson, from High Point.
I don't remember.
She was writing, she wrote: "Aren't we fooling ourselves, you know. As
women we say we'll go into the mills, we'll work for a short time, we'll
get married and we'll get out. As workers we say we'll get in, maybe
we'll get enough money saved up to buy some land or buy a place and run
it ourselves—that is, we'll be capitalists, you know. But how many women
don't have to go
Yes, it was true, and she was thinking realistically, because most women weren't going to get out of the mill.
Right. But I just wondered how many of them were thinking along those lines and sort of articulated it that way?
Probably not too many. Maybe in most of them there was a hope of escape, that something would happen.
What about the school as an organization for women? Was there a feeling of mutual concern for each other as women?
I think so. And don't forget that was a period in which coeducation, maybe especially in the South, was not so common (North Carolina College for Women, and St. Mary's women's and so on) and women tended to go to women's colleges.
Well, nationally too.
Nationally Vassar, Smith, Bryn Mawr and so on, really up until perhaps
your generation when things began, everything became coeducational all
of a sudden, almost everything coeducational opening up. Of course I
didn't have that, because as I said, in the first place I was brought up
with three brothers and three sisters, a mother and a father. I always
went to coeducational schools: the University of California was
coeducational. At Columbia there were very few men, as I remember, in
the graduate department of English.
Well, do you think that perhaps in the custom, within the custom, women gained some kind of, I don't know, sense of security or strength or something?
I think so. I think there was almost a nunnery feeling about it. You get so. . . . I was so happy with these women. When I was at NCCW I remember a number of the women lived together; they kept house together, had apartments together. When I first went there I lived in a boarding house;5 the woman had lost her husband. And Louise Irby in the history department had a room there and I had a room there, and we ate in the college dining room. And then two years I was in college dormitories as a house mother, saving money that I later used in Europe. And my last year (or maybe it was my last two years) I lived in a house in which Harriet Elliott had the lower floor except for the living room. And upstairs there were (let me see, one, two, three), I think four bedrooms, and different teachers lived in these rooms. One of my very closest friends lived in the bedroom next to me, Elva Barrow in the chemistry department. Well, it was a wonderful arrangement; these were marvelous women; I enjoyed them thoroughly, and you just get used to that kind of life, I guess. In fact, I thought it was really . . . I suppose it was very comfortable.
Very little.
I mean, did a lot of these women have . . . ?
Very little, very little, very little. Ann Ketchin, her father I think it was was related—no, not her father, but there was some sort of intermarriage thing with one of Lois's relatives. And Ann later married and had a son. I later married and had a son, but most of those women never married. And practically all of them stayed on there until they retired, and then lived near the campus after they retired.
I sort of get the feeling from what you're saying that it was not at all like a feeling of isolation or a feeling of having been rejected or a feeling of just. . . .
Oh no, I think we enjoyed it. They have a very beautiful park around part
of the campus, with lovely trees in there, and there was a stream. It
was a beautiful retreat for those who loved nature. And we used to go in
there some when we had a little time, and I played tennis and I swam
down at the YWCA. And actually we were busy. It was the first time in my
life, I guess, that I really had the feeling of no pressure. And you'd
get interested in something, you'd go in the library and read it. You
had time to prepare your classes, you had time to have individual
conferences with each of your students. It was an ideal situation. You
had your own office, you had your own classrooms. Well, maybe others
used the classrooms too, but at least you had your office, and privacy,
and few enough classes so that you had ample time to prepare and to give
to your students. It was really an ideal situation. Now when I went into
the Long Beach Junior College it was more like a factory. It was mass
education, and I couldn't get used to it. I couldn't fit into it. I
didn't have time to prepare the way I wanted to prepare; I couldn't
really correct the papers the way I wanted to. I couldn't have the
conferences I wanted to; I couldn't have the relationships.
No, most of them had had some schooling.
I mean, but not to women's colleges.
Oh no.
But had been in coeducational. . . .
The students?
Right. . . . coeducational public schools.
Yes, they had gone maybe up until they were about fourteen or something like that.
Do you think that they had a . . . sense of women's role or women's work, or what they should do as women, the same way that you described so many of the faculty people sort of coming out of this tradition?
Of course they were there for six weeks, so they came from a life with
men to go back and to work in the factory with men. So I think for them
it was just, as I say, like a brief vacation for six weeks
Well I was going to tell you (I got off the subject), I remember when The
Well of Loneliness became popular and for about the first time people
That's interesting.
Yes, it was strange, I mean, when I look back upon that. But it was very peaceful. My husband is an engineer, civil engineer, and like a lot of engineers he's very demanding, and everything has to be just so and so on. I'm no longer my own person the way I was then. I probably wouldn't have been my own person if I'd gotten out and gone into controversial things in the community; I probably wouldn't have lasted very long.
In fact, I remember—what was his name, the man who later became the editor of the New Republic—Eduard Lindeman. When I first went there I was told that Lindeman had let his Negro servant, I think, have a party in the basement or something like that, and that people were up in arms about it and thought it was so terrible. Then people began telling me things about Lindeman, and he seemed to be kind of an object of something not to do and not to be, you know: don't get yourself involved with a person like that. But he had a very good friend who had a lot of money who was staking the New Republic, I think, and she got him a job. And of course he was a very able, very capable man. I remember now; that takes me way back, Eduard Lindeman.
Well, he had done some early work in adult education, hadn't he? I think he has a book on it.
I don't remember. Anyway, in the New Republic he became a very outstanding person, figure. But he was a liberal, and I guess stood out in the area. Anyway, as I think about it, if one had gotten into controversial subjects I doubt if you would have been your own person. But if you stayed within the accepted groove, why, as I say, you could be very comfortable and very happy. And the girls were interesting, and I enjoyed those girls too. I think maybe the women in industry were more interesting, because they brought a background of work and experience so much more than the girls who had just gone through high school and had had more comfortable lives.
Right. I'm very much aware of sort of a gap between the middle class women and the working class women at the school, and yet I see people within both groups looking at the school as a place for women, as an organization that was especially designed and created because of women and for women. And I just wondered how that gap showed up. I mean, it seems to me as I imagine it, that it would have showed in sort of . . . very basic sorts of ways, like with almost knowledge of foods or books or theater or past experience, or even in customs and habits like relationships with men or children perhaps. I don't know, in some of the things that I've read about working class women in the South, it seems that a lot of the women had relationships with men at a fairly early age, that would maybe be a marriage but maybe not be, and marriages tended in some ways to be very unstable. A lot of them went through one that didn't last very long, children often being raised by grandparents: that sort of thing, just a completely different sort of experience from what the middle class women had been through. Were you aware of that, of that gap?
Of course there was a cultural gap; there's bound to be. And I
I mean, were you there sort of learning about each other's lives, but it was still within the context of all having mutual concerns?
I think so. Right, definitely.
I was curious about what other people in the communities around where you
were staying at Burnsville and other places thought of you
Oh, I'd like to know too. I don't know too much. But I do remember
somebody saying that those costumes that we wore, they were showing your
legs. That was the time you didn't show your legs, you didn't dress like
that. And when somebody said that we were called "hussies"
Would the whole school go there?
No, no, just maybe Louise and I went there, or Louise, Lois and I; I
can't remember—Holly maybe. But actually when you met them they were
very friendly and would talk, and they were curious about us, I guess
I just wondered if you ever got any feedback about it, because certainly
it was an unusual group
Sometimes when we'd maybe meet somebody or run into somebody and
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
. . . returned from Europe you spent that next year teaching at the Vineyard Shore School?
Yes.
And I was wondering how you were contacted for this. Was it sort of through Louise McLaren?
No, they knew that I'd been at the Southern Summer School, and they
needed somebody at Vineyard Shore. The year before (funny, I can't even
think of her name), there was a woman who taught at Vassar that came
over and taught English at Vineyard Shore. But she felt that she
couldn't give that much time, another year, and they felt that it wasn't
enough time anyway. They wanted somebody who was in residence there. So
I came back out of a job and out of money, and when I was offered this
job I gladly took it
Was Hilda Smith running Vineyard Shore at that time?
Oh yes, yes.
Could you sort of compare Vineyard Shore to the Southern Summer School? And what was the set-up at Vineyard Shore? Was it year-round?
It was the first year that I was there.
It tried to be a year-round program
It meant to be. But the next year it couldn't raise the money, so we had
short sessions: I think about four months, five months, something like
that. Well, there was a very different composition of girls, of course.
Many of the girls at Vineyard Shore (many: there weren't so many there,
I
Did they come and live there?
They lived there. And I had my room in what had been Miss Smith's home; it was a beautiful home facing the Hudson. And then the other building that we had, I don't know whether they rented it or leased it or bought it—I've forgotten. Anyway, that looked like a southern white mansion, one of those white beautiful places. And Ernestine Friedman lived there. Now Ernestine Friedman was the director of the Barnard School for Women Workers in Industry, and she taught the economics there. And I taught the English.7 And it was pretty much the same sort of set-up: they had these two classes in the morning, and then in the afternoon they were more or less free. But living with them and there all the time, especially when you had a long period, you can see. . . . When you get that autobiography of Lura Ketchie, for instance, you'll see what she did in the six weeks in the summer school and what she did in the long term at Vineyard Shore. But these girls were different. We had a few girls from the Southern Summer School. A number of the girls had either been to Barnard or they had been to Bryn Mawr, and, as I say, maybe two or three from the Southern Summer School. And we had a girl from Denmark, two girls from England that had been quite active in the labor union in England and the cooperative movement, and really had had experience like in the Labor Party. One of them had been especially active; she was really interesting, Millie.
Didn't she come to the Southern Summer School?
Then she came to the Southern Summer School. She was in one of those pictures. She was really a character, and everybody loved Millie.
There were a number of Jewish girls from the garment workers' industry; and we had these girls that made Hattie Carnegie dresses (for instance, I remember an Italian girl who did), and millinery workers from New York; and girls who had come from Russia, from Poland, Jewish girls. It was an entirely different set-up. These were girls that were much more sophisticated and experienced. I didn't find it any more interesting, but it was different.
Were they much more aware of where they were going and what they were . . . ? I mean, a lot of them were members of unions, were they not?
Yes, definitely, yes.
The problem that I mentioned in the South of people coming out of their communities and going through this experience, then going back and not having anything to plug what they'd learned into. . . .
No.
They could go back in. . . .
And work in different. . . .
Networks.
A number: it was not true of all of them, but some of them. I remember a
girl there who was very active in the Amalgamated Garment Workers'
Union, another one in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union,
and so on. They had a place to go back to. Of course it was the
Depression, and work was slack for them. They were glad enough to have a
place where they could stay, a beautiful place, and get their three
meals a day
Right. What about the same thing we were just talking about, about the
feeling of a space where the people could sort of think about,
Yes, that, I think, was the big advantage, of pressures, all pressures removed really.
What about the relationship between all these women from so many different areas and so many different countries? Did the same feeling of the women's organization hold?
Yes, the same feeling of sympathy for women's organizations, for women's advancement, and also for labor's advancement: very definitely conscious of it. And they did represent different points of view, and sometimes they would argue very heatedly for their different points of view.
Did that ever happen at the Southern Summer School?
I can't remember its ever happening, except maybe when we got into a
discussion, like, of the blacks or something of that kind. Then you'd
get feelings running rather high, perhaps. But never anything like the
different points of view that would be expressed in Vineyard Shore
Right. Did you ever get any feeling from the women at Vineyard Shore who were active in the unions that even in the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' they had trouble as women sort of getting into the union and having a place and being active?
No. Of course the leadership, I think, was largely male, but I guess they
found their place. And they seemed to feel that they belonged to the
union
OK, that's what I was wondering.
But I think the leadership was pretty. . . . Now of course there was a woman in charge of the Women's Trade Union League, Rose Schneiderman. And they did respect the women who were leaders in the labor movement of any kind, I mean people like Rose Schneiderman, head of the Women's Trade Union League (I think it was called). But they were very loyal, of course, in their own unions, like their families. And the fact that mostly it was headed by men (almost entirely, I guess) didn't seem to bother them.
Did you get any feeling about a tension, sort of, between these women with being exposed to an organization like the Vineyard Shore School or the Bryn Mawr Summer School or the Women's Trade Union League groups that were run primarily by middle class women, and then going from that—or in the case of the Women's Trade Union League, I guess, really being asked to have allegiance to that group over time (I mean, the Women's Trade Union League had organizers and stuff like unions)—a tension between dealing with a group run by middle class women and a union which was run by working class?
I think so, I think there was some of that. I think there were others
that appreciated any interest and any help, no matter where it came
from. But I think some of the others felt that it was better handled by
those who actually were in the industry, and that we were probably more
theoretical than practical
No, no, not at that time. The feminist movement was strong in England, of course, and we had had our suffrage movement. But the consciousness of women that we have now I don't think existed then.
Even in a way that was, perhaps, not discussed but nevertheless there?
To a large extent it was there, but not to the intensity or the clarity that it is now.
OK. So if someone was struggling between those two things, allegiance to a group of women, middle class and working class, or allegiance to a working class organization, it was a struggle that wasn't . . . articulated.
I think actually, though, the basic loyalty would be to their union.
OK. Did you get any feeling in hearing them talk about the unions and the different unions of some being more open to the organization of women workers in particular than others?
No.
Was the reason the Vineyard School—I know all the schools ran on pretty
tight little budgets
I think so, I think so.
What was Hilda Smith like?
Well, it's hard really to tell; it's hard for me to tell what anybody's
like. Hilda Smith was a very, like Louise, a very able administrator,
She's with the Office of Economic Opportunity.
Yes. She's a marvelous person. She's ill now, and she can't walk. She
fell and broke her hip, and she's having a lot of difficulty. And her
eyes are failing—very sad. Now the interesting thing is that student
that I told you about that I keep in touch with
Oh that's nice.
They were both women of the highest kind of principles and integrity and
committment to this work that they did. They're just wholly
committed—until Louise married, and then I suppose she shared her . . .
Did it? Were you aware of it?
Yes. She gave him time, and depended on him and was pretty fond of him. I
think they had a pretty satisfactory relationship. And poor Jane is left
alone now. Her brother died, her sister died; she has some
I think basically they were alike. They didn't look anything alike, but
basically they really were alike: very able administrators, able to get
the money (except for the Depression
Well, during the Depression Hilda Smith was working for the Federal
Education Relief Administration, sort of went into New Deal type of
work, whereas
No, she never worked for the government. She did go to work for the Affiliated Schools, though, in New York, and worked with Eleanor there.
Right. I always thought she had a little more test of her committment, maybe, because she was always struggling to get money.
Yes.
And Hilda Smith, after she started working for the government, was at least secure in that respect. But did you ever get the feeling that that led to some kind of difference in philosophy or something between the two of them?
I think that Louise had a philosophy without really being too definite
about it; I don't quite know what it was. But I think she perhaps was a
little more committed maybe to a feeling that the world might be a much
better place if it were better organized, differently organized. And
Hilda,
Well too, the whole idea of dealing with the New Deal later, but even earlier with the Bryn Mawr School, whereas Louise had been, by this Mrs. Odie8 I was talking about, sort of encouraged to have Sweetbriar adopt the Southern Summer School as a project. And she pushed away from that, you know, and wanted it . . .
More independent.
Wanted it more independent, and wanted it run in a camp instead of in a private girls' school. I sort of felt she was fighting that sort of. . . .
That sort of luxury, upper class connotation.
Right.
Maybe philanthropy.
More of a creation of a network of working class women: her whole traveling during the winter and setting up workers' education programs in local communities was to that end, I think.
That's right; I think so too.
But it was all very self-contained, sort of independent, I think.
Now Jane has written or is writing a book, and she sent to me the section
on the Bryn Mawr School. They honored her at Bryn Mawr several years
ago, made quite a lot over her in connection with the school, which
pleased
You taught at the Bryn Mawr Summer School in 1932.
Yes, one summer.
How would you compare it to the Southern Summer School and also to the program at Vineyard Shore?
Well, of course it was a much bigger school: I think we had about a hundred students there, as I remember. And we had more men on the faculty. And girls came from different countries, as well as different parts of the United States. It was much more cosmopolitan.
How did they raise the money for women to come?
Well, I think those girls that came from Europe (I was thinking of the
one from Denmark and then these two from England—and later they came to
Vineyard Shore, and then later Millie went down to the Southern Summer
School), I think there were scholarships provided of some kind.
Was the program basically the same?
It was basically the same, but it was, I would say, a more sophisticated
type of thing because these girls, so many of them had not rural
backgrounds or small town backgrounds but city backgrounds, and city
experiences, and in industries that were . . . well, like the ILGWU and
the Amalgamated, you know, highly sophisticated groups. So in a way it
was harder, because you had to make sure you had the subject matter that
would not only interest them but make it seem worth their while, because
I'm sure a number of them were very frank.
Did you have any problem not being in an industrial union talking about unions? Were they into sort of offering training in union techniques and parliamentary law?
Yes, some. But what I gave them more was like Robert's Rules of Order, just regular parliamentary rules, and mostly to get them up on their feet and get them talking and get them to express themselves, and develop confidence in themselves. It was that more than . . . certainly with the southern girls.
Why did you decide to stop this chapter after 1932 and go back to California permanently?
Oh, I don't know. Again, as I've told you before, I just suddenly do things.
Come back to California, yes. I came back to California.
And did you stay with your family at all?
Most of the time I had an apartment with a friend here in Los Angeles. I saw a lot of my family; of course I hadn't seen much of them, too much, and all these little sisters and brothers growing up.
How did you meet your husband?
Well, he was working on the dam in Azusa where my mother was librarian.
And he'd go to the library to get books, and she'd recommend things to
him. And about that time, I think the only time the University of
California ever asked me to do anything
'36.
And then you had a son?
In '38.
You said that after your son was born you worked very closely with the organizations around the schools that he was in?
Yes, the Parent Teachers', and various cooperative nursery schools, and during the war the day care center and nursery school. Then I did substitute teaching in a high school, and then they asked me to take a permanent . . . I mean to stay there, not to just substitute. So I did; but it was some distance away and I didn't drive, and a transportation problem. And mostly, the child got sick. I decided nothing was worth it to have him sick, that he needed me; so I stopped.
You mentioned the Community Coordinating Council you were on?
Yes, I was active in that too.
What was that group trying to do?
Well, to get all the different agencies within this community to know each other and to send delegates to a monthly meeting, monthly luncheon, and bring out their problems. And we tried to correlate our work and see where we could help each other and so on.
And you also said you were active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom?
Yes, I'm still active in that. I've been their legislative secretary for
about twenty years, I guess
What was the first contact that you had with that group?
Oh, my friend Matilda Robbins, who's on that list you saw about the Wayne
University. I knew about them. The funny thing is, the woman I knew in
the PTA (her son was in school with mine) was my first contact, and now
she's the president of our group
Oh, anything to do with civil liberties or in the realm of freedom, you
know, and then of course the peace activities. This was formed by Jane
Addams in 1915 in World War I. And Jane Addams got the Nobel Peace
Prize; Emily Balch [co-founder of W.I.L.P.F. with Jane Addams in 1915],
another one of our members, got the Nobel Peace Prize. Let's see, who
else got it? Oh, Pearl Buck for literature—she was one of our members. I
know we've had really a number of famous people
Were you involved with them when World War II was on?
Oh yes, yes.9
And what was their position during, or what were you involved in particularly, during that time?
Well, we were working all we could to try to bring about a peace,
peaceful settlements. We worked quite closely with the Quakers, with the
Friends' Committee on Legislation. Again I go back: some of my ancestors
were Quakers, and I find myself working closely with Quakers
How did you feel about the change from, say, World War II to the Korean War or the Vietnamese War? Did your own views about war change during that period, or did the wars themselves change in nature?
Yes, definitely, for me they did. I felt that World War II was really a necessary war against Fascism. But I don't really know; a lot of the people wouldn't take that view in the WIL, I think. But after my experiences in Germany I felt it was a justified war, but I was opposed to the war in Asia.
What did you think of the groups, student groups and other groups around the country who were . . . ?
We were sympathetic with them.
You were working with them?
We were sympathetic.
I wondered if you had been active, if you ever got active in the church again?
Yes. I joined the Unitarian church; I belong to the Unitarian church.
And have you been working with them through?
Well, I haven't done much with them, but I belong to what they call the Fellowship for Social Justice, the Unitarian Fellowship for Social Justice. And I worked with Elizabeth Hughes years ago when she chaired the labor committee; and she was busy with cancer plus a job to earn a living, so I did a lot of the leg-work: the telephoning, contact work and so on, in regard to the condition of the agricultural workers in the Imperial Valley.
I see. Have you been involved in any of the farm workers' things of late?
No. We support the boycott, and we give money when we can and that kind
of thing; take food occasionally (they'll have donations at the
What about political work? Have you ever . . . ?
No, I'm not doing very much. I do belong to the group started by Senator Cranston that's sort of the liberal wing of the California Democratic party; it's called (what do they call themselves?) the Democratic Council. . . . Anyway, it was CDC; I can't even remember the name of it. It's kind of the liberal wing of the Democratic party, and I belong to that.
Did you ever contemplate going back to teaching or becoming involved in . . . ?
No. I'll be eighty in September.
Oh, I know
Yes, it was satisfying, plus the fact that I did all my own work here. And, as I told you before, I have a very active, strenuous, demanding type of husband, and I just didn't have the energy to do too much else.
But all the community work that you were involved with did provide some kind of avenue for you.
And I think without that I wouldn't have been very happy; but that gave me an outlet.
Well, I appreciate it; it's been a help to me.
Well my dear, I hope I've helped you. I don't know what all these personal things have to do with anything.
END OF INTERVIEW