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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-0024, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Willie Snow Ethridge was born in Georgia at the turn of the twentieth century. By the early 1920s, she had become a successful writer and had married Mark Ethridge, also a writer and newspaper editor. Ethridge explains that she initially became a writer in order to learn more about the career of her husband-to-be. When he was in Europe during World War I, Ethridge studied journalism at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia. Shortly after graduating, Ethridge began to work as a reporter and continued to do freelance writing after getting married and starting her family in 1921. Ethridge spent most of the 1920s and early 1930s in Georgia, with brief sojourns in New York City and Washington, D.C. By the end of the 1930s, she and her husband had settled in Louisville, Kentucky (they later moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina). During those years, Ethridge began to write books, ranging from informal essays to fiction to travel guides. According to Ethridge, her husband was generally supportive, if not encouraging, of her career over the years. In addition to discussing her efforts to combine career and family, Ethridge also offers revealing commentary about race and gender. During the 1920s and 1930s, Ethridge was actively involved in the anti-lynching movement. Working primarily within the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, Ethridge both wrote and spoke about lynching and its implications for African Americans and poor whites. In addition, Ethridge explains how her mother hoped she would grow up to be a "good Baptist girl," and she discusses what it was like to court young men while coming of age in a strict religious family in the South. Of particular interest are her comments regarding the lack of sexual knowledge she had while growing up. Her discussion of attitudes towards sex leads her to ruminate about the feminist movement and the sexual revolution, both at their height at the time of the interview in 1975. Despite her advocacy of women's right to have both career and family, Ethridge concludes the interview by describing her general disapproval of the growing tendency of men and women to live together and have sex outside of marriage during those years.
Willie Snow Ethridge discusses her career as a writer in the South and her efforts to combine work with family and marriage. In addition, she describes growing up in Georgia, gender expectations in the South, and her work in the anti-lynching movement.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I think from looking at your books that you really have been happy, not only as a writer but as a wife and mother.
Yes, yes; it works out just fine. I didn't start writing, fortunately for
my peace of mind, until the first set of children (the first three
children) were born and were in school. I wrote columns for the paper,
but that just didn't take very much time—I mean everything, because otherwise
you get irritated if you're trying to write and they're around and under
your feet and asking you questions. You find that either the writing
suffers or the children suffer; you get abrupt and cross. So I've always
put away—I mean, I've continued to do this always. The minute the
children came home or the minute Mark came home I would really hide my writing.
You didn't do your housework first?
I didn't do my housework first. I could sit down in a bedroom with the
beds unmade and the clothes all over the floor and write without any,
you know, compunction or feeling the least bit guilty. Because in the
afternoon the children usually came home about 2:30 or 3:00 from school;
you have plenty of time to make up the beds then.
That was before Mark came home.
Oh he wouldn't come home until late. He's a newspaper man; he'd come home
6:00, 6:30, 7:00. And I'd have all afternoon. And you could do your
grocery shopping with the children; they could be a part of the cleaning
up of the house if they wanted to. Mine always didn't
Well now, I've read some things by other people who write, and frequently they say that, "I knew I wanted to write; and I always knew I wanted to write." But if you didn't start writing until after your children were at school, it's sort of like, you know, the legend of the birth of Venus—sort of springing full-blown.
No, no, no. I starting writing, you see, when I was only fifteen years
old. I met my husband, and he was a newspaper reporter—I think as I said
in this last book, Side By Each. I started wanting to
write. I never had thought about writing before that;
I had very little leaning towards it. But he was so excited over being a
reporter. And then
What college was this you're talking about?
Wesleyan, in Macon, Georgia. There's one in every state, you know
So it was really on account of Mark?
Absolutely and completely. And then the war came along and he went away
to the war that spring. And so I continued studying what little
journalism they had; they only had one or two years at Wesleyan. And
then I began working in the afternoons writing at the paper, because I
had gotten very much involved in journalism. So I used to go down to the
Macon Telegraph after college every afternoon and
do, usually, one feature (which I think I have told about) that I had to
think up myself, a human interest story——which was wonderful training.
How did you happen to get that job?
Well, because all the men had gone to war
Anyway, you say all the men had gone to war.
Yes. Well, they went very shortly after that. But the main thing is that
the Journalism Department at Wesleyan and the newspaper
Human interest stories are very interesting.
Yes. So it came very natural to me. And then I worked one year as a reporter before I got married, a full-time reporter.
Is this on the Telegraph?
Yes, I covered the Federal court beat.
No audio recorded on Tape 1, Side B.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
Let's see; you were telling me about when you were writing for the Telegram, your year as a reporter.
It's the Telegraph
Telegraph; excuse me.
Yes. And so then when I was married I gave up my regular job as a reporter on the paper, but I continued to, you know, submit feature stories and do free-lance work. I also did it for one of the papers in Atlanta.
Which was?
The Georgian; The Atlanta Georgian,
which was a Hearst paper. It's no longer in existence—
Well, what kinds of stories were you interested in doing then?
I did anything for the Georgian; I did, you know,
regular news stories that were breaking in Macon, and especially scandal
and murders, and people running away with other women's husbands, and
things like that—because the Hearst papers loved scandal.
Yellow journalism.
It really was. It was marvelous; really wonderful. And then I continued to do Sunday features. I continued to do a column every Sunday on where I had been and whom I had seen-a very intimate, cozy kind of a column.
But you weren't doing any real political writing?
No. I did articles at that time for magazines on neighborhood problems in
the South, and on lynching. But for The Georgian I
didn't; I just did all kind of free-lance writing at this time. And that
continued until I moved away from Macon. And it was not until I moved
away from Macon that I realized life in Macon was quite unusual.
When you moved, where did you move to?
We moved to Washington, D. C.
And this was in what year?
We moved in 1934. So I decided to put—it really was a compilation, in a
way, of the columns. They were rewritten; but it was a year of my life,
and the columns were a great help to me—what I had been doing in that
year, what I had been thinking, and whom I had been meeting, all those
personal things about what goes on in a small town. That was the first
thing I did, was a book that was called As I Live And
Breathe. And that was really rather successful. I wrote a novel
next.
I was going to ask you if you had written any fiction.
Yes. I wrote a novel which was also laid in middle Georgia, though I
didn't call it Macon. It was laid in Macon, but I gave it a fictitious
name. And it was a labor-capital novel; the heroine belonged to the
capitalist class, and the hero belonged to the laboring class, and very
muchly concerned with the cotton mills, the textile situation—which I
knew exceedingly well, because I used to cover the mills when I was a
reporter on the paper. And so all that was grist for
Was this novel ever published?
Oh yes; I never wrote anything that wasn't published
Oh
Oh, really, it's a very happy situation to be in.
What was the name of it?
It was called Mingled Yarn. And, as I said, it was all
about the textile mills in middle Georgia. And it happened to come out
the same week as Gone With The Wind, by the same
publishing house (Macmillan), so it was kind of lost. Macmillan couldn't
have cared less about it; they were so Gone With The Wind (and so was everybody else)
that few people ever heard about it. But I reread it every now and then,
and I get the feeling I couldn't do it as well now as I did then.
Well, you know, there are many of your books in the Chapel Hill libraries, but that's not one of them.
Well, this really is a very adequate picture of struggles in the South of the textile workers, when they were living in those villages, you know, and being paid by script and trading in, you know, the company store—all that business is in there.
What does the heroine end up doing?
Oh, you see, she married the hero—a poorly paid newspaper reporter and they had an awful struggle. But she became more and more liberated, more and more enlightened, because the man was so very, very smart and so sincere and earnest in it.
Did she join in herself?
No. A lot of people think that it was an autobiographical novel, which is
so often what writers do first. There was a lot of
personal experience in it in the love story, but I never did happen to
be the daughter of a cotton mill owner
Then I moved from Macon, Georgia—well, we'd already moved when I was
writing that book. We were living in Washington, or maybe As I Live and Breathe, to an agent she said nobody
would be interested in a year of my living in Macon, Georgia, when
nobody'd ever heard of me and nobody'd ever heard of my husband. You
have to be somebody of importance, she said, the wife of the president
of the United States, or a movie actress or a great stage star or a
novelist of some note to get that kind of book published. However, when
I got up to leave, determined to go home and write a novel, she said I
could leave my manuscript with her and she'd glance over it when she had
the time.
You were going to write a novel?
Yes, a novel. And I had got just about two or three chapters done when I got a letter from her saying she had sold the book. Of course, that was perfectly fine; but since I had started the novel I went on with it until I finished it. Then many years later I did a historical novel on the founding of Georgia; but I must say writing novels is not my forte. I have very little imagination.
Do you enjoy writing novels?
Well, not as much as I do writing the informal essay type book. So, as
soon as I finished Mingled Yarn I went back to writing
the informal essay. You see, by the time it was published, we were
living in Kentucky and I realized that life in Kentucky is as different
from life in Macon, Georgia,
Well, about how old were you; or about what year was this?
I was in my thirties when we moved. Well, my middle thirties, because
then I had another child. I'd just had the baby when I wrote the second
book of that kind, called I'll Sing One Song.
That one I've read. This was when you were in Louisville, though,
That's about the baby; yes, yes. And also about the whole of life in
Kentucky, which really is so romantic; I mean, I still feel that way
about it. It's so beautiful, and people live so well
Well, in your book everyone sounds so gracious; it's so kind of nineteenth century and chivalrous.
Yes, yes. And they all have, you know, servants; and they all have seated
dinners
Have you been beagling in a long time?
No
Your personal recollections?
Personal things. Then the third one I did was still of that kind, and
this was called This Little Pig Stayed Home, which was
about what went on in Louisville, Kentucky, during the Second World War.
And I suppose that's my favorite book.
Is it?
Yes. And it's in the same style as As I Live and
Breathe and I'll Sing One Song. I took a year of
living during the war. So many people have forgotten what went on in
that
So you would write every day and then…
Yes. Well, I would not always write every day, but I would, you know,
make notes or keep it in mind. Because sometimes you'd have to have
enough collections to make even one chapter. I mean, for instance, you
couldn't have a chapter on just struggling to make
desserts; that wouldn't make but about two or three paragraphs. You'd
have to have enough experiences for a whole chapter on the problems of
getting enough food on the table, you know, at that time; and then a
whole chapter on heating, the problems of heating, you know, and the gas
shortage. I didn't write every day, but I kept full… I didn't make notes
either, but I just kept remembering what I would write some day. Then
after the war, I began traveling a good bit. And so when I would travel
I would still try to write, you know, what happened to me in my travels. When I write a travel book I don't write about
the country; I write about me in that country.
You were saying that when you go to a foreign country you write about your experiences.
It's all personal; it's the people whom I meet, and the things that
happen to me on the streets, and the sights I see and all those things.
I keep it just as personal as I can be. There's just the change of
locale It's Greek to
Me, and the next one was on Israel and the Arab world—which is
more serious than any of them, because it's such a serious situation.
But it's lot in
some books.
Then I did one, you know, on Russia. Then I did another one on the whole East world: the Arab world, Iran Turkey and and Egypt—it covers much more ground than the Arab-Israel one.
Well now, there are two books on the Middle East: Going to
Jerusalem, and there's Yeast in the Middle
East.
Yes, and Going to Jerusalem is the one on the
Arab-Israel problem itself; very little about other countries in it,
though a good bit of the Arab world is in it (but not in great
detail).
But that is not an autobiographical…
Well, it's about what happened to me in Israel and what I
You usually succeed very well in the two of them.
Well, thank you very much; that's terribly kind. But it didn't work in
[laughter];Going to Jerusalem. I mean, there just was so much
seriousness in the Israel-Arab world. To be light about a situation you
have to know it anyway; I mean, you have to go into the background. When
I was in Greece I knew a lot about Greece and the takeover of the
country by the Communists, which they were trying to do. But I didn't go
into it in detail; it just seemed to me out of place in the type of book
I was writing. But I had to know it
Before you went to a different country did you study about it?
No. I don't study about it beforehand; I find that it comes so much more brilliantly to me (I mean brightly, clearly) if I don't know about it.
From experience.
It comes as such a, you know, surprise; it's not old hat. I'm afraid if I
read too much about it, I'd already know what to expect. I go as
ignorant as ignorant
That was Nila wasn't it?
Yes. And so Russia didn't seem as strange to me as it
How long were you in Russia?
We were given permission to stay only about four weeks, which had me terribly worried before we went for I was afraid not enough would happen to me in that brief time to provide material for a book. Writing my type book is not like writing the history of the country, which I could read up on, or writing about the leaders—Khrushchev was the head man then—or about the working of the Communist Party. The kind of book I was going to write was what happened to me and Nila on the trip. So to be sure of having enough material, Nila and I took a Polish ship out of Montreal. And sure enough, we had a lot of interesting experiences on ship board which were connected with Russia because on board were many Poles who had fled from Poland when Russia invaded their country and after all these years in the United States and Canada were going back, having been promised amnesty by the Communist Party.
Now this was what year, that you went to Russia?
Oh, my dear child …
Approximately
Yes. It was in the fifties—the late fifties. I remember when the book
came out it was 1959, at the very time that Khrushchev was in the United
States, banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations—you know,
damning everybody and everything American. He behaved so terribly and
made everybody so mad that in spite of Simon and Schuster having sent me
to do the book and paid all of my and Nila's expenses and the reviews
being marvelous—the editor of the Christian Science
Monitor wrote a rave review; he said it was the only fun book he
had ever read about Russia—the publishers just quietly let it drop. They
didn't give it one line of advertising or do anything else to promote
it. They said they didn't
But you had been commissioned to write it?
Yes.
I had the impression that it was only when Mark had assignments out of the country that you went.
That was true, except for this one time. This time I left him home. But
the final result was disappointing. I felt terribly unhappy about the
poor sale of the book. But, anyway, I do enjoy writing that type book. I
think, I've done … how many? I've done two on the Arab-Israeli
world—one's called There's Yeast in the Middle East,
as you said—then I did one on Turkey, Let's Talk
Turkey; one on Greece and the one on Russia, Russian
Duet. I believe that's all …
And since then you've done some more memoirs?
Yes, I did one about the grandchildren and foolish grandparents, which
was called I Just Happen to Have Some Pictures—the
editor of Vanguard asked me to write that one. Then the last book was
what you might call "memoirs"—Side by Each. But before
I did that I did a biography of John Wesley during his months in
Savannah.
Yes, this is Strange Fires.
Yes, Strange Fires.
How did you become interested in John Wesley?
Well, I first became interested in him when I was doing research for the
novel I planned to write on the founding of Georgia with General
Oglethorpe as the leading character (at the time he wasn't a general, of
course, but Mr. Oglethorpe.) And I kept running across
Which book was the Oglethorpe book?
It was called Summer Thunder; it's a novel, a
historical novel. When I finished the first draft, I realized that I'd
lost the theme of Mr. Oglethorpe founding and saving Georgia (which was
a very noble idea that he had, about founding Georgia) because John
Wesley was so much more interesting a character than Oglethorpe. And I
also realized that to explain really what happened to Wesley while he
was in Georgia would take a book by itself. So then I took him out of
the Oglethorpe book, except where he had impinged on events during the
time of the Oglethorpe regime and had affected the founding of the
colony.
So then I had all this tremendous amount of material on Wesley left, you see, and I went on and did more research trying to understand that man, who was the most complicated man. And then I did the book on him, the biography—which is straight biography. I mean, every word of it's true, though a lot of people can't believe it.
Yes, on Wesley.
I first did it as a historical novel. And then the publisher said, "If
it's true, as you say, why don't you write it as straight biography
instead of trying to do it as a historical novel, because nobody's going
to believe it unless you
Was it very demanding?
Yes, it was a very difficult book to do. It took me, I
would say, three or four years to write Strange Fires.
But that's how I happened to write it. And I'm not a Methodist, but I
had Methodist forebears and I went to Wesleyan. But it really came about
because of my interest in Georgia and the founding of Georgia, which I
thought was a very good story.
Well, during your writing career, has your husband been very supportive of what you tried to do?
Well, he doesn't interfere with it in any way
Does he read what you write?
After I've finished. And this is a true story. I'm always embarrassed for
him to see what I've written, and so often I don't even show it to him
at all. But after I'd written the novel on James Oglethorpe I was very
nervous about it, because it's not, as I said, it's not really what I
enjoy doing most is writing novels. And I do have a limited imagination;
this I recognize. But anyway I gave it to him to read one Sunday
morning; it was ready to go off to the publisher. And he sat downstairs
and read it in the library, and I locked myself upstairs in the bedroom.
I was completely unnerved and didn't come out all day long. And finally
I heard him about nine or ten o'clock that night coming upstairs, and I
just shook with apprehension over what he was going to say. And he
walked in and he said, "There's a page missing." And that's all he ever
did say! So you can see what he thought of it, I'm afraid.
You were telling me about Mark's approval or non-approval of your writing.
Oh, well that's the only thing I ever knew. He never reads anything I write until after I've finished it. I don't want him to, because if he disliked it it might stop me from going on; it would be really a block.
You figure by the time you've finished it it's too late
It's too late; it's too late. And he usually just says, you know, "It's
all right." And sometimes he'll say it's good
Well, if you don't write for a while does he ever say, "Willie, why don't you write something?"
No, no, no, no. He's perfectly happy if I don't write.
Did you have to be, do you have to be very supportive of what he does?
Oh, I always tried to be very supportive of what he did, and very
enthusiastic about what he did, yes. And he never seemed to mind my
writing except if things went wrong. Like one time he said to me when
the house got to getting darker and darker, he said, "Now if I were you
tomorrow," he said, "I would not write on my book. I would have ‘change
light bulbs day’."
He hasn't taken a special pride in it? It's just something you do?
Yes, it's just something I do, yes
Now have you ever had any problems getting something published?
Well, the first book, you know, I wrote, I thought I'd go from place to place selling it. And I took it to New York in my arms in a box (I was going to New York anyway), and was going to go from publisher to publisher with it when I met a friend of Mark's on the street who asked me what I was doing. And I told him. He said I shouldn't do that; the best thing to do was to get an agent. They would know what kind of material the publishers liked. And so he gave me the name of an agent, and that was a great help. I went directly to an agent; and I've always worked through an agent ever since.
So you haven't gotten your manuscripts back?
And I think that's very discouraging to writers. I never even want to
hear from my manuscripts when they've gone off. I've done very little
short stuff in my time—you know, articles—since I started writing books.
In fact, I don't believe I've ever written an article or a short story.
So I only have to be accepted as a book manuscript, and I've only done
that, you see, fifteen times
Well, did you decide to write books after you had the children, or was it in the back of your mind for a long time?
No, I never thought about writing a book until after I'd had
Oh, I did do some magazine writing, for Good
Housekeeping; I forgot about that. I did articles. Once we lived in
New York for about a year, when Mark was getting experience as a
reporter.
Was this when he was on the Sun, the New
York Sun?
Yes … and quite young. I just had one child. And I wrote about an article
every month for Good Housekeeping magazine.
Were they all domestic?
No. The first one I did I was still living in Macon, Georgia. And the
governor of Georgia appointed a woman as a senator, a Mrs. Felton. She
was the first woman senator. And so I went up to Cartersville, Georgia
where she lived and did a magazine sketch of her, a full-length sketch
of her life. I never had sent anything off before. I like to tell this
story, because so many people think you have to have a drag or you have
to know somebody, or somebody has to know you. And I sent it off to Good Housekeeping magazine. They'd never heard of me;
I'd never submitted anything before. And within a week I had a telegram
saying, "Please get photographs and pictures"—which I hadn't taken or
anything—"to go with the article." So if it's something a magazine wants
it doesn't make any difference if they ever heard of you or not. And
right shortly after that we moved to New York; this was early in our
lives.
It must have been around, what, 1925?
It was 1921 … no 1922. So when we moved to New York I went to see the
editor of the Good Housekeeping magazine. He was upset
as he
How long did you talk with Mrs. Felton? Was it just a brief kind of interview?
No, I was there…
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
Was it a short or a long interview?
No, it was all day. I spent all day, and had lunch and all afternoon after that.
Did she talk to you much about her views on the Negroes?
It's been so long ago, I cannot possibly remember, and I don't have a
copy of it either. I'm not the kind that keeps anything; isn't that
awful? I don't have the copy of any of my articles or any of my magazine
stories, newspaper columns or anything, and letters.
Nobody's ever going to be able to do your biography
Isn't it amazing that people save letters? I'm so amazed when I read Ann
Morrow's last two books; you know, just all letters, letters, letters.
Her letters to her mother, her mother kept; her mother's letters to her,
she kept; her sisters, friends… I never have kept a letter.
Well, when Miss Hall asked me to come up here and talk with you, one of
the things she wanted me to ask you about was some of your magazine The Nation. You probably might have a hard
time…
I used to do articles for The Nation and for a magazine
called The Outlook, and they were all to do with
lynching or Negro problems.
Now I know that you were part of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.
Yes.
How did you get involved in that? Where did you hear about it?
Well, I don't know how I got involved in it, except I was doing articles
all the time about it. The problems of the poor whites and the Negroes,
you know, striving for rungs on the same ladder, that's what caused all
that bitter feeling. I mean, you never found well-to-do people out
lynching. It was always people who were bitterly jealous of the Negro.
And I remember doing one on that subject in The
Outlook or The Nation. And you know, I was
awarded a whole year's fellowship in Germany for my interest in the
minority problem. They wanted me to study for a year just before Hitler
went into power, the minorities in Germany, because of my interest in
the Negro problem in the South. But I don't remember, there used to be a
magazine called Review of Reviews, I believe. This is
so long ago, my dear, and so much has happened to me since
Well, were you heavily active in the Association?
I used to go to the meetings, and I used to make speeches whenever I had a chance or audience to make a speech on this subject.
Did you know Jessie Daniel Ames?
Oh yes, of course, she was the president. Yes. I don't remember very much
about her, though. The meetings were always, it seems to me, in Atlanta,
and I used to have to go to Atlanta. And not so long ago a woman sent me
an article that I had written in the Macon Telegraph
about going to a meeting in Atlanta, to the Anti-Lynching meeting. It
was in my regular column that I used to write every Sunday. And I was so
surprised; I didn't remember having ever done that
I remember from one of your books your saying that you didn't have a camera; in fact, you didn't want to have a camera.
No, no.
Well, what was Jessie Daniel Ames like as a leader? Was she very autocratic?
As I said, it's such old, old history … this was in the twenties, you
know; that's fifty years ago. I can't remember what happened fifty days
ago, much less fifty years ago. No, I'd make a terrible witness.
Well I know this is probably a hard question to answer, because it's sometimes hard to remember what you felt so long ago, but what were your reasons to be against lynching? Was it because it was in violation of law and order?
Yes.
Or because it was an example of racism?
Well, I felt about it on both scores very, very strongly. Of course it's against all law and order. But also, the people who were being lynched weren't given a fair trial. And I never heard of a white person being lynched in our part of the world; it was always a black. And it always had something to do with … well, with just ill feeling, just jealousy or meanness of whites.
Yet in those days, you know, way back there, I'm shocked at myself when I
read As I Live And Breathe, how unconscious I was
about the injustice to the blacks. I wrote a lot about the blacks in As I Live And Breathe, but always just as if they
were, you know, neighbors and friends. I never thought about how sad and
tragic their lives were. I was completely unconscious socially
When did you become aware that things weren't all that fine and dandy?
Well I must have when I began working for Anti-Lynching. But I wasn't as
conscious as I could have been about the poverty of those people, and
the fact that the schools…
You don't remember any one incident sort of…
Setting me off?
Yes.
Well, I remember one terrible lynching that was near Macon which so horrified me, but whether that set me off or I had already been set off, I really don't know. It's awful to be so stupid. Things happen so gradually, I think, to you; you change in life, don't you think, usually?
You don't remember where you were emotionally before.
It certainly all had to happen in Georgia, because I never saw any of
those problems in Kentucky. But in Georgia I lived so close; the blacks
lived all up and down the alleys, you know, behind the houses. I don't
know whether you know how it is or not, but all the alleys behind the
houses are full of blacks, in the finest neighborhoods. So you just see
them all the time, and you think that's where they belong, you know. You
never think, "Well, why should they live there and I live on the front."
I remember when I read As I Live And Breathe kind of
wondering about that, because that seemed to be your attitude then.
Yes. I was perfectly unconscious of the unfairness of this. Isn't that
something? I wasn't ever mean to any of them; they were just copy,
really. Isn't that terrible? I feel awful about it
Is this your older daughter?
No, my third child, Georgia. And I've got such liberal sons, you know, and all that. I think they must get it from their father.
Well, were you ever a member of any other anti-lynching groups?
No, that's the only one I ever… I always belonged to the Urban League; I
was head of the Urban League, I mean belonged to the Urban League, in
Kentucky. And that was trying to make life more comfortable for Negroes,
and all that. But I don't believe I've ever belonged to any other
organizations.
You were telling me about when you were in the Urban League, that you were the head of the Urban League.
No, I wasn't the head of it. I said I was, but then I remembered I just belonged to the Urban League many years in Kentucky. I don't remember ever doing anything else. I always belonged to the League of Women Voters all my life. I've done very little, really; I've been very selfish. Writing makes you selfish, you know. You have to write, and writing takes so much time, as you must know. And it's a lonely thing to do; you do it by yourself. And when you're writing you pay no attention to anybody else or anything else. It's really a very selfish kind of a business, I think.
It's all you do.
Yes, it's all you do, you see. And until lately, until after Mark had his
stroke, I wrote all the time. I mean, I wrote every day, usually, unless
I was traveling or building a house. But if there wasn't something
really vitally important going on in my life, such as traveling or
giving birth unbelievably huge, a freight car! But anyway, during the war
that was different; I mean, you plunged in. I forgot about writing,
except getting those ideas for This Little Pig Stayed
Home. And I didn't do that until practically the war was over. So
I've done very little, really; I'm always embarrassed when I look at my
biography in Who's Who. There's no great cause.
Stay at home?
Yes.
Now I also was told that you belonged to the YWCA for many years.
I don't think so; I don't remember ever belonging to the YWCA. I suppose
I did at one time in Macon, Georgia; I belonged to everything in Macon,
Georgia, when I first married. But I don't remember. That's before I was
writing a book
After you starting writing you sort of…
I don't remember doing anything really for the YWCA. It's
As I was listening to a tape that Charles did with your husband, your
husband mentioned that he worked on the Columbus
Inquirer-Sun for a year. Did he or both of you happen to know
Julian and Julia Harris?
I knew them both. But, you see, that was before I was married that he worked on the Columbus papers. I just knew them at Georgia conventions, newspaper conventions, not a bit well.
You didn't know her well?
No.
Do you have any impressions?
No, not at all. I remember her very, very vaguely.
I wanted to ask you some questions about your own background. That's something you don't talk about much in your books, is your parents and your siblings, and what kind of a family you came from.
My mother was one of twelve children.
And your mother's name?
Was Georgia Cubbedge, C-u-b-b-e-d-g-e, Cubbedge; it's a very difficult name. And I knew her for a long, long time; she lived to be a hundred and three months old.
Oh, for heaven's sakes.
Yes. So I knew her quite, quite well, and was devoted to her. And she was
a very, very strong character; and she came from south
What kind of jobs was he involved in?
Well, at one time he owned a drugstore; and then somebody stole him
blind, somebody working in the store, I think. And then he was a country
editor in a little town near Savannah, Georgia. And then for some years
he was a salesman—a traveling salesman. But anyway, I somehow wasn't … I
suppose he was so busy making a living that I wasn't very close to him.
After he died … he left enough for us all to be educated and to be
clothed
A hobby.
A hobby; no, there was another word I used.
Avocation?
Avocation, and that I'd never heard of this gentleman, and I
Well, I don't think that's…
How I happened to find out that I had done this awful thing, a first
cousin called me
You must be …
Yes, I'm sure. He had two brothers and three sisters. But anyway, the
cousin called up and said she could never look anybody in the face
again. She couldn't go out her front door, she was so humiliated at my
ignorance. They were unveiling a monument or a tablet to my grandfather;
he was a great Methodist preacher, evidently, and they were unveiling
this historic marker. That's why they wanted me to write the
biography—to read at the unveiling. And so she said she couldn't go out
again. They invited me to come to the unveiling, but I wouldn't go;
Well, not to go quite so far in the immediate past, then: what kind of a person was your mother, and what hopes did she have for you? You were her only daughter, right?
Yes, I was the only daughter. She was a very strong,
very strong character, and a very strict person. I don't believe she was
particularly ambitious for me to ever become anybody special like a
writer or evangelist or great singer or anything. She just hoped I would
be, you know, a good Baptist girl
And did your mother go too?
Oh, my mother, of course she went all the time. She was a great, great
Baptist, pillar of the church. But she never was able to whip me into
it. I finally joined the church, 'cause I had a beautiful black beaver
hat—it really was beaver, and had white plumes on it. And I thought I'd
never look better than I did that Sunday
I think some people just don't.
No. She was determined that all of us would go to college.
You included?
Oh yes. She never had any idea of my not going to college. None of us
went away to college, because my brothers went to Mercer University (in
Macon) and I went right across the street. We lived facing the Wesleyan
campus, so I didn't get very far.
And I was never allowed to spend the night out with anybody in my life
when I was young
Was she as cautious with your brothers?
No, not that I know of; I don't remember her being cautious with them. I
had my hands full
Well, did you ever date anyone other than Mark?
Oh yes, I dated a lot of people, because Mark went away to the war. He was gone almost three years—no, he was gone two full years. We weren't engaged officially; I was just sixteen when he went away to the war, so it was just…
Did you already have your heart set?
Oh yes, I was very much in love with him, and we pretty well had an
understanding about it. But, you know, anything can happen at that age,
and especially if he's gone to war—and to France, of all places
You weren't too wild about that?
No. But he was gone until I was ending up my junior year in college, so I dated a lot of people in that time.
And no one ever gave him any competition really?
Well, I liked some people very well, but not seriously. No, no; he was it, he really was. And we've been married now fifty-four years.
You know, you've only been married four years longer than my parents.
Really? It's a long time, you know. But you see now, I knew
What was it that attracted you to him?
Well, he was terribly attractive-looking. You wouldn't know it now,
because, you know, when you get to be in your seventies, late seventies,
you don't have that… He had the brightest and liveliest blue eyes I ever
saw and, you know, the most intellectual face, and clean and upright.
And, you know, I don't think the young understand it now, but when we
were growing up I never had any problem about a date drinking in my
life; we never thought about anybody taking a drink. Isn't it amazing,
that now everybody I know drinks the minute they're able to hold a glass
Except he wouldn't dance.
Oh.
As a Baptist?
As the daughter of my Momma; I don't know whether it was because she was
a Baptist or not. But anyway, she made me promise when I was quite young
(I must have been eight or nine or ten old years)… All my friends were
going to dancing class and learning to, you know, bow and skip and
things, and I was crazy to go to dancing class. And she said I could go
if I promised I'd never dance with a boy. And so I promised, like a
jackass, and I lived up to it until after I had three children. And all
my friends were dancing, of course; all of them were allowed to go— Side By
Each?—and she said it wasn't up to her then; it was up to my
husband. And so I asked Mark if he minded if I danced with a man, and he
said (like a damn fool) he didn't mind
Well, I remember in the book it says that you don't sing in his choruses and he doesn't dance in stag lines.
Well now, when you were going to Wesleyan what were your brothers doing? They're all younger than you?
Yes. Well, one brother is just thirteen months younger, and he was in
Mercer. And I suppose my other brothers were still in high school or
going to Mercer too. Then my brother was graduated quite young from
Mercer because he studied very hard, and he wanted to be a lawyer before
he was eligible to be a lawyer, before he was twenty-one. And he wanted
me to move up my age so he could be twenty-one; and I said, "No, I will
drop down and let you go ahead of me
How do they think about you?
Oh, they're very alive. My brother's very happy and very successful, the one who's a lawyer in Macon, Georgia. And his son last year was president of the Georgia Bar Association, which they were thrilled about. And they do a great deal of traveling and all that. But they just accept me just like I am and…
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
When you were growing up, how did you think of yourself as a female creature, rather than…?
I didn't think about myself. I was a very (well, I don't mean this to be
bragging), I was always a very outgoing, you know, person, crazy about
playing. In fact, my nickname when I was a child was "Let's play." When
I lived in Georgia, the minute I would arrive at my friends' houses, I
would say "Let's play," and they would say, "Here comes ‘Let's play.’ "
Did you feel any limitations because you were a girl?
No; it never crossed my mind one way or the other. I really have done
very little thinking
Missed opportunities.
… and all the missed opportunities I've had, and the wrong things I've said. I'm a great one for saying the wrong things. Oh, I do. When I mean to be pleasant I say some things that are not pleasant. I think things are amusing sometimes, and I tell people about themselves or something that they've said that I've thought was amusing, and could see, you know, it wasn't amusing to them at all.
Wrong thing to say!
Man, they're horrified that I remembered it or it had caught my attention. So, no, I'm not introspective, I never gave a thought about myself when I was growing up.
In view of the year that you were born, did you vote in the first election?
Yes, I voted. I wrote an article, you see, when I was twenty-one; Macon Telegraph
about it, about my experience in voting, you know—what it felt like.
Did you work for suffrage at all?
No, I couldn't have; I didn't work with suffrage. I was rather young; it came in a long time ago. I was old enough to vote, I mean, but I hadn't cared about it one way or the other. And my mother certainly didn't care about it one way or the other.
Did she ever vote?
Yes, oh she voted; that was part of her Christian duty
Did you ever have servants in your home when you were growing up?
Yes. Well, not after my father died; I don't remember ever having… My
mother did all the housework. We had a nice home, but I don't remember
ever having any help except, you know, to do the washing—which we just
took out in the alley to somebody in the alley who did the washing. No,
we didn't have servants. But I very fortunately, from the time I was
married and had babies and I was writing and doing columns and things, I
had always had somebody—as you know from As I Live And
Breathe. And I've always had help, practically, except just now
and then for a week or two—one horrible week
Well now, I know you say you're not introspective, but what was
No, I never thought about them at all; as I said, I was just perfectly unconscious of the fact that… I suppose I felt like my mother did and Mark's mother, both of them, felt. They felt they were made black by God, you know, as a punishment long ago, and they were supposed to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, you know, like they say in the Bible, and that they were supposed to be, you know…
And you didn't find any difficulty with these ideas?
Not when I was young. I never thought about it one way or the other.
What did you think about educational opportunities for blacks?
As I tell you, you're trying to give me credit for things I never thought
about
Was your mother an easy person to talk with?
Oh yes, she was very … you mean, for me to talk with? No, as far as
talking to me about … anything to do with sex, that was never breathed
in our life; never knew the word, I never heard the word. I
Now what did your mother tell you before you got married?
She didn't tell me anything. She said when I got married I must be very
careful every morning, and get up and dress and be as neat about the
house as if I was going to work at the Macon
Telegraph.
That was it?
As far as I remember, that was it. No, and she certainly never took me aside and discussed anything about sex. When I was growing up she always, of course, told me I must, you know, not let a man touch me in any way or hold my hand or kiss me, or anything like that; I thought that was the height of indecency. And that was as far as she got.
When you started to mature physically and hit puberty, was it a shock?
Yes, it came as a great shock to me. And I remember (my ignorance was so
apalling), I was in the sixth grade of grammar school when they were
discussing (we must have been studying some kind of biology of some
sort—in the sixth grade it must have been very light biology), and
people were getting up telling about people with handicaps or something,
or deformed. And I got up and told about seeing this woman with her
stomach poking out. And everybody in the sixth grade just laughed and
laughed, and no idea babies came from inside people, twelve
years old. And on the way home from school one of my friends told me
what I had done, that babies were born inside of you. And you can see
how ignorant I was.
You didn't grow up on a farm, then, at all?
No, no, I grew up in Macon, Georgia. I was born in Savannah, as you know, but then I moved to Macon when I was about seven or eight years old. My mother never discussed anything, and I never knew it. I can't imagine how stupid I could be.
Well, I've heard stories from my own mother.
Well, isn't it amazing? I didn't know anything. And I'm
so shocked, of course, at the morals today that I just can't understand
it, I really can't. The young, the fact that they're living together,
you know, not only having that word intercourse (which is so new to me
Well, do you mean that they just weren't virgins, or that they were pregnant.
Yes, they were pregnant. Nobody would have known otherwise; that was something you would have hidden so carefully.
What happened to the girls afterwards?
One of them's still living in Macon, Georgia, but her father
Attitudes have really changed.
And men, I don't think, tried to take advantage of women like they do now. I mean, I never had a beau who tried to take advantage of me in any way. I think maybe they were more … conscious of their obligation to be gentlemen.
That could be. After you got married, did you ever want to have an outside career of your own, before you really started writing? Did you ever want to go out and do what Mark was doing?
No, no. You see, I still wrote all the time, even right after I was
married. We were married in October, and he gave me a typewriter for
Christmas. Who's Who has always had the baby born that
very November we were married. But you can't get anything corrected in
Who's Who; that's something impossible, so I never bothered about it.
Good Housekeeping, an article called "Pride Cometh
After A Baby," when she was just born—which is the first chapter in As I Live and Breathe; but it came out in Good Housekeeping first.
This is Shug?
Yes, Shug. And she now lives in Sanford. So I never had a chance to think about doing anything else. I never did want to do anything else, either.
How big a shock was it, to be a parent?
I was crazy about it; I just enjoyed it. I never had anything of… It just
felt part of life
How do you do?
Hello, Mr. Ethridge, how are you?
Fine,
Fine. Glad to meet you.
Darling, you had a good nap, didn't you?
Yes, fine.
Mark sleeps every day from 2:30 'til about 4:30, and then he wakes up and
goes straight to the kitchen and gets ice cream
That's not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
I'm going right now. Would you have some?
I think I would love some.
Good!
Good. She's had a terrible tickling in her throat; it might help her throat.
I love ice cream; it's my favorite.
Oh good! Mark's too; he just adores ice cream.
So it wasn't then … changing diapers and getting up in the middle of the night wasn't a burden?
No, no, no. I did all that, of course, but it didn't worry me.
And I never heard, of course, of taking any care about having a baby. I
mean, I didn't know anything about that. No, I knew nothing about those
things, so
And how did you happen to come to a stop after three?
I don't know; it was just complete luck
This is your youngest?
Yes.
What does he do?
Well, he's done lots of things. You know, he at one time ran for the
board of alderman in Chapel Hill. He was mayor pro tem, and made really
a great record. The paper in Chapel Hill wrote an editorial that said
Chapel Hill would never be the same when he went away. He did a lot of
reforms; he was full of reforms. Recently, for the last few years, he's
had a public relations job—not public relations, consulting. He set up a
firm, a consulting firm in Denver, Colorado; he's been doing that for
two or three years. But right at this moment he's come back to work in
Terry Sanford's campaign, right at this moment. He's crazy about
politics, but he doesn't have the money to be in politics. You just have
to have some money to run
So he's working for Terry Sanford rather than for Jimmy Carter?
Yes, for Terry Sanford. He has done a lot of work for Terry Sanford
before, when he lived in Chapel Hill. And he did a great deal of the
research, for the book on education that Terry Sanford got out. So he's
very much interested in all kinds of reform in education. And, as I
said, he's very social-minded. For some time now he has wanted to move
back to North Carolina. But he wants a job that means something. He was
offered a big public relations job with a huge company, and lots of
money, but he said it didn't have any meaning for him. He really wants
to do something to change the world around. As I said, I have two
children who are very socially bent, just determined to make the world
better.
Are these your two sons?
No, there's one son and my daughter, Georgia, who teaches sociology in the University of Pittsburgh and writes textbooks.
So how many of your children are writers?
Mark, Jr., of course, is in the newspaper business. And Georgia writes,
as I said, textbooks and teaches sociology, and also goes out into the
hospitals and welfare institutions around Pittsburgh for the state
university and gives lectures on how to get along with your patients and
so forth and so on. But my oldest daughter doesn't write—though she was
associate editor of Harper's Bazaar when she was
young, but she quit and
So they live close by?
Yes.
I wanted to ask your opinion about some things, in view of the fact that you've been such a successful wife and mother, and there are a lot of changes among young women now. What do you think of the current rebellion among young women against marriage?
Oh, I think it's the most foolish thing, because I don't see why women
want to be liberated. The nicest thing that can ever happen to you is to
have a man kind of looking out for you, or caring about what happens to
you, and being deferential. It's the best thing we have going for us
[laughter].
You really see marriage as an institution that works for women?
Yes, I certainly do; don't you?
Well, I do, in a lot of ways.
Well, I don't see how women can gain anything by trial marriage, for instance. I just think this is unbelievable.
Don't you think that sexual relations between caring but unmarried young people can be of value?
Well, I think the woman has everything to lose, and I don't see how she
can have anything to gain, myself. I think that trial marriage or sexual
relations before marriage, the man, I'm sure, takes it rather casually
(or he might at the time be completely devoted to the idea and sin-
[to Mark Ethridge] Darling, I can see the best linen and the best china
[laughter].
No, that's really fine.
You gave her the biggest spoon there is.
If it were anything other than ice cream it would be too big; for ice
cream it's just right.
Now Mark's much more conscious of those problems.
You with the journalism department from school?
No, I'm working with the Southern Oral History Project.
Oh.
A friend of ours came out and interviewed you last May, Charles Eagles.
Yes.
Well, as your wife was telling you, I was asking her questions about her awareness of social problems among the Negroes. When did you first become aware that everything wasn't as it should be?
I suppose when I was seven or eight years old.
What happened that made you aware?
My father was aware. He ran across a good deal in defending them.
He defended them?
Yes. He was a lawyer.
There you all are, just eating away on your ice cream. You don't have to worry about your figures either. I get fat every time I eat a saucer of ice cream. I get fat anyway, but I get fatter, is the point.
END OF INTERVIEW