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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-0029-2, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Guion Griffis Johnson was born and raised in Texas. She graduated in 1923 from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism before moving to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her husband, Guy Johnson. Johnson studied sociology at the University of North Carolina, graduating with her Ph.D. in 1927. While at UNC, both Johnson and her husband worked with the Institute for Research in Social Science. Johnson began to establish her career by studying poor and disadvantaged people in the South and race relations. In this interview, Johnson focuses primarily on her involvement with the women's movement and her efforts to balance work and family. Growing up in a family that had progressive beliefs about race and gender, Johnson was immersed in the women's suffrage movement. Encouraged by her mother to become economically independent, Johnson married a man whom she describes as supportive of her desire to have a career. The Johnsons began their family in the late 1920s; Johnson describes the challenges of balancing family and career during those years. In so doing, she emphasizes the importance of having outside help for childcare and housekeeping and the support of her husband and employers. In addition, Johnson discusses the changing role of women in American society during the twentieth century, focusing on such topics as her involvement in women's voluntary organizations; the impact of advances in birth control and abortion; and the evolving nature of marriage, divorce, and family.
Guion Griffis Johnson, a southern sociologist who received her Ph.D. in sociology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1927, discusses the challenges she faced as she balanced career and family as a woman. Johnson describes women's changing roles in American society, and addresses her involvement in voluntary organizations, advances in birth control and abortion, and the evolving nature of marriage, divorce, and family.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
I don't believe that she's heard from the grant yet.
I had a very good letter, not saying positively, but indicating that the grant would be forthcoming.
Wonderful. Well, I think that's something that really needs to be done.
Yes, yes. This is what he said. And I think that he was trying to tell me without saying in so many words, that the grant would be forthcoming. Now, Jackie will know soon, won't she?
He said that he would let her know within, I thought . . .
By the first of June?
. . . in the next few weeks.
By the first of June, or the first of July. So many foundations have the year June to July, you see.
Right, it might start from the first of July. That would be wonderful to find out that soon.
Wouldn't it?
Well, she's ready to go ahead.
This doesn't in any way . . .
No, there's a microphone in there, but there's one in here, so . . .
Oh, I see, so we are all right.
Will this pick up your question?
I think that this will pick up.
I think so, because it picked up our . . .
When there were three of us.
Yes, when there were three here.
Right. One thing, the interview that I referred to that I didn't get to record, but that I did have, was with Eleanor Easely.
Oh yes, yes, I know.
And it was really, really very interesting. I thought she would have been in a particularly good situation to observe women over the last 40 years.
Indeed. And she herself is a very able woman. With insight.
Right. Well, I walked in and she said, again, "You want to know about women? Well, I tell you, I think that women have missed their century." She said that she thought that women were likeda little boy that wanted to be a chariot driver, or they were like the leghorn chicken that was killed because it couldn't produce eggs or the male calf that they kill for veal. And she said that she was very worried, because as sex typing became more and more possible, they had done a survey and two-thirds of the people they had surveyed wanted to have male children. And it was very pessimistic. She said that women had missed their roles, their role is to bear children and child-bearing is no longer important, so women are out of it.
This was her concept? A woman's role is to bear children?
And up until this century, child-bearing was . . .
Oh yes, in any culture in the world, a mother would be proud to say that she had two or three sons. This would give her status. In any culture in the world.
Including our own.
Yes. And sons you see, not daughters, but sons. Now, in some African
In a matriarchial society . . .
Because of dowery, you see. A daughter is a means for a father to become wealthy. If she's a comely, likely girl, his bride price will be higher. The dowery is higher if . . . and the father gets to keep the money. The dowery doesn't go to the husband, but comes to him, you see, the father. If she has some education, the dowery is higher than if she spoke only the tribal language.
But what about her view? In your articles, I find a totally different tone, I don't find a pessmistic tone at all?
I'm not pessimistic.
I see you viewing it as almost a steady progression.
Well, of course, I do not believe in progress per se, that it's automatic.
As time goes, so goes progress.
Yes. I don't . . . you see, this has been a false concept, I think, of western scholars for the last hundred years. That progress is automatic. It isn't automatic. We can have regressions and go back to almost the dark ages.
And in American history during the last century, we have periods of . . .
Yes, yes. Indeed.
. . . of regression.
I remember coming back from the Myrda study. We had been going through
the data on racial ideology and had been getting more and more the idea
that both whites and blacks, black scholars and white scholars, thought
that just given a number of years, maybe a hundred, then the blacks
would be equal to the whites and that this was an inevitable law. That
nothing could hold this back. That there would be no retrogression. At a
party at the Spruil's, Corydon and Julia Spruil, we were . . . people
were saying, "Well, what are you doing on the Myrda
He picked right up on that?
I've always liked Cordon Spruil. He's such a gentle person. And a
thoughtful person. I've always liked him, but then I began to respect
him as a scholar.
Well, had you found up until the Myrdal study and your looking into racial ideologies, that this was engrained in your own upbringing?
Yes.
In your own historical training?
Oh, yes. Yes. In all the courses that I had had, except in the field of history, where professors didn't delve much in philosophy, or in concepts, this was a part of the teaching. Sociology, psychology, courses in the government.
The longer we've had, the better we've been.
Yes. But I do believe that the doors are opening now to women, so that, more than ever before . . . of course, this is not to say that there wasn't a great deal of freedom for women in colonial American and pioneer America; because men and women were obliged to be equal, especially in work.
Well, work was centered in the home, and women were in the home, and
men
Well, the women were in the field.
Right. Or, I was thinking in terms of craftsmen, where they had a shop right off the house.
Oh yes. Yes. The craft was in the home. No one . . .
No one went away . . .
No.
Well, have we just been saddled with the nineteenth century and what happened in the nineteenth century.
I think so.
With the industrial revolution and that?
Yes, yes indeed.
A couple things that I wanted to talk about, one was the woman's suffrage movement in the early twenties or in the teens, the early twentieth century, as compared to the women's movement now and the relation both times to abolitionism and civil rights. Don't you see the women's movement now as sort of an outgrowth of the concern of civil rights in the '60s.
Yes.
Whereas before, it was very closely related. And yet, before, in the South, I think, didn't it twist and people who were ploying to get the vote as a way to fight with the Negro, as a way to . . .
To keep the Negro down?
To make the South more solid.
Yes, to keep the Negro in his place. I remember being a speaker at the
Southeastern meeting of the American Association of University Women at
Myrtle Beach, in, oh, maybe it was 1948, and I was asked to speak on the
role of the southern woman. It was a panel. I made a statement to the
affect that . . . you see, I had already participated in the Myrdal
study and had already written
You were speaking almost one hundred years later?
Yes, yes. And people were still shocked.
How did the meeting resolve?
There was just this panel and Dr. Boyd, Rosamond Boyd, went on with the
panel after throwing out the idea of "let's discuss this point." And
there were a few scattering remarks and then we adjourned for luncheon
and I was practically shunned. Just my very good friends from North
Carolina who hovered around me, knowing that I really was not that bad,
to sort of protect me, and
Well, in the early suffragist movement, there was very little connection between black women and white women.
Oh none whatsoever. I'm quite sure. Now, I was growing up in Texas at that time, and there were not very many Negros in Texas. I think that my grandparents had perhaps the only couple, Negro couple, living in their back yard, when I was a little girl in Wolfe City, Texas, where I was born. And in Greenville, we were living there at the time of the movement for votes for women. My father had a black janitor who was almost white. And I think that there were not very many Negro families in Greenville, which was a little town of about ten thousand. And not thirty miles away, in a little town called Josephine, Negros were not allowed to live.
In the town at all.
No, not at all.
Well, perhaps in the population of the county, you might find blacks living in the county.
You might, but there were not very many working on the farms. Now, my grandfather had three farms and his tenants were all white. His laborers were entirely white. There were very few Negros, even thought this was the so-called old plantation section of Texas, the part of Texas that was very closely allied with the concepts of the South.
So, you were in a very different dsituation from say southern Georgia . . .
Or say Mississippi. My grandfather had left Mississippi when he was just, right after the Civil War, 1875, something like that. Because he wanted to get away from the horrors of Reconstruction. And he was so aghast at the way that the blacks were being treated, shot down in the streets for nothing, no offense. He said that he did not want to bring his children up in such an atmosphere and he moved to Texas, Northeast Texas, in the blackland area.
So, he was able to get out of it then.
Yes.
But your mother was very active in the suffragist movement.
Mother was in a very quiet way, because after all, she had four children,
five children at that time, and domestic help only once a week. She had
someone to come in and do the laundry and the ironing and perhaps clean
the house once a week, so she was very busy with her children. But she
encouraged her three daughters, she had three girls in a row, and we
were in our early teens and later teens, and she encouraged us to do
everything that we could to attend the meetings, listen to what was
being said, talk to women . . . uh, men who could vote . . .
How were they reacting? Were they supportive?
Yes, yes they were. Both of them were supportive. They had daughters of their own and intelligent wives and, yes, they were in favor of it.
Well, there wasn't a lot of opposition to a respectable woman like your mother being involved in this sort of thing, sending her daughters out to campaign.
No, no. No opposition whatsoever; that is, none that I was aware of. There might have been some, which never reached our ears. But Mother was thoroughly in favor of the amendment. In fact, I think that she was one of the original feminists. And had a great ambition for her daughters. She had four daughters and one son . . . very ambitious for her daughters to receive as much education as possible and to go into a profession and to be self-supporting economically. This was her great ambition.
This was reflected in your early article that came out in '24, '25 . . .
I have not read that article since it was published and Anne Scott told
me when we were on the Status Commission. She said, "I'm sure that you
do
Well, you were stressing very much that women should be economically independent.
Was I? Well, it was right out of my mother's mouth.
And then you raised a lot of questions and, of course, there weren't answers and still aren't answers for most of them. As far as how women are going to become economically independent and how women are going to combine child bearing and a career and the problem also of laboring class women, as opposed to professional women. This is a problem that you must have wondered about a lot, as far as you relate any kind of uplifting for women. Because for women in the laboring class to be able to stay home is very good, whereas middle class women now are trying to get out of the home. So, do you see any more resolutions? In your 1965 article, you go further.
Did you read the '65 article?
Yes.
I think that the day care movement has, will be the answer. It's the way that Sweden has solved the problem for the laboring class woman. The woman who goes out and must spend eight hours a day and, say, she has a six week old baby. She has no choice but to go back to her job. I think in Sweden you get three months off after the birth of a child . . .
And then you can put it in a center.
Yes. But I went back to work after my second child was born, in six weeks. And felt quite competent to go back to work. This was not true when my first child was born, I needed at least three months to recover from the birth of a first child, especially a very large child. But doesn't Russia allow three?
Russia I think, allows something like three months.
China not so much, but of course, the Chinese peasant woman would work in the field until two minutes before birth, then go inside and have the baby and come on back and pick up her work in the field. You'll find in some African tribes that this is just about what happens, especially in the very primitive areas of Africa.
And then other women in the area care for the child.
Yes, yes.
Older women.
Yes. Older women.
In Israel . . .
Except in Africa, you know, the African mother takes the baby with her on her back when it is just about two weeks old.
There would have to be some immediate care right after it was born.
Yes. Yes, the older women, usually they or the girls. Depending upon whether it's a matriarchial or a patriarchial society, the mother or the mother-in-law would take charge of the new born infant.
Well, how did you work caring for your children and having such an active career.
Someone asked me soon after our first son was born, first child was born, how it was that I managed to work and take care of the baby. I said, "He's a very good child, a very well child. I could not afford to have a sick baby."
He had to be strong.
And this statement was received with shock. "What would you do if your
baby was sick. What a horrible statement!" Especially "for an educated
woman like you to make, that you ‘can't afford to have a sick child.’" I
said, "Well, you have no sense of humor, do you?" I had competent black
maids whom I chose carefully and I insisted upon, I was working only
half time, although the job
So, you were in the Institute the whole time that your children were small?
Yes, when both children were born.
And then when you went to New York, you took them with you?
When we went to New York, I took my cook-maid with me and we had an
apartment. The Carnegie Foundation found us an apartment with a room and
bath for a live-in maid. She was there. When Edward, who was then six,
developed a streptococcic infection at Christmastime, and there were no
antibotics at that time, he became quite ill, I didn't want to go away
and leave him, because I knew that Rheumatic fever was often the
aftermath of streptococcic infection and I wanted to be sure that he was
kept in bed and quiet. And so, I and he would not obey our long time
cook and maid. In fact, he commanded her, rather than her commanding
him. And so, I got a white friend from North Carolina to come to be my
general manager. She and Edward got along beautifully. She nursed him
through this illness without any bad effects whatsoever. Later on, he
developed Scarlet fever and she, fortunately, was there so that I could
keep on
Now, what kind of person was she? Was she a widow, or . . .
Yes, she was a widow, with grown married children and grandchildren.
So, she was free to come.
Yes, actually she was Mrs. J.A. Warren's aunt. Mrs. Warren's husband was treasurer of the University and we were very close to the Warren family, and Mrs. Warren's father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. J. S. Spurgeon of Hillsborough, who was a dentist, and they were our adopted grandparents when we were in North Carolina. So, she came more out of loyalty to the family. She was on vacation in Florida at the time. The snow was on the ground in New York.
So, she left the sunshine.
Yes, left the sunshine in Florida to come up and help me.
Well, this was one of Dr. Easley's main objections to the possibility of women combining careers and child rearing.
They could not give the nuturing of the child.
Right. And she said that it takes 15% of a woman's life to raise children, and if a woman takes 15% of active career time, then she's very far behind. Somewhere, you made the statement, it was in your early article, that if the professional woman is to suceed, her efficiency and intellectual ability will necessarily have to exceed that of the men with whom she is competing, to offset the disadvantages that childbirth brings. So, I thought that was real interesting, because the attitude as far as that goes has changed. Definitely. In that women who are equally qualified should be given positions and short of the pain of childbirth, you cope with childbirth as . . .
As an incident. Right. Rather than as a major . . .
A major biological handicap is what it amounted to. What about the role
of the husband in all of this? How are men fitting into the changing
role of
You mean now, or back in 1924 and '25?
Well, both.
I think that before Guy and I were married, we talked this out. I said that I insisted that I continue in my profession and that he must understand this. He was perfectly willing to accept the idea. He said that he approved. We both agreed that we would want two children at least, maybe even more, and that we would meet that problem when it arose. I insisted that I must have a doctor's degree before we had any children; he agreed to that too. After Benny was born, we had a very good maid-cook-nurse, whom we had employed, and she herself had a baby. And we were confronted with the necessity of getting someone else. This was a little traumatic for Benny, who was then about a year old. And he did not adjust well to the new maid-nurse. She, I think, did not really like children, although she had insisted at the time, and the recommendations were good. But it became very obvious to us that Benny was unhappy. When we would come home at hoon, he would not eat, but would throw his plate on the floor, which was his way of demanding attention. But in the beginning, both Guy and I were confused as to why he was so unhappy, and as to why he would refuse to eat when we came home. He would cling to me when I would leave for the office, and scream. And this is characteristic of many children, even when their mothers are at home all day.
And go to the grocery store.
And go to the grocery store. They will scream and want to go along. So, this is what I thought it was for awhile. But in one episode, when Benny had thrown his food on the floor and had cried and screamed and refused to eat, Guy had said, "You must stay at home. This is your role. The baby needs you and you must stay at home." And I said nothing. I made no response, because I knew that I was going to keep on with my research and that I would stay at home for a few days and find out exactly what the difficulty was and then make an adjustment. This I did and got a new maid, who was very. Immediately Benny loved her and she had a son of her own about his age and was quite understanding and sympathetic. Then we lived in the Warren's backyard. We had not been able to find a house to rent after we received our doctorates and Ben Warren, the treasurer of the University, stopped me on the street one day and said, "Where are you going to live?" I said, "I don't know, Ben, Where can we live? We can't find a place in Chapel Hill." "I'll build you one,"said he. And he did, overlooking this lovely brook and spring and hillside, which is now a showplace, because he has planted thousands of azaleas and wildflowers there. And his wife,Patty, did not work. She had a daughter just a year older than Benny. So Patty, on her own,more or less assumed a mothering role, too. And was able to help out,when we needed a new servant, by taking Benny home. And I in turn mothered Caroline, I felt that Caroline was my child, too.
Well, what kept you steadfast in being so determined to . . .
To go on with my work? And knowing that I could solve the problem?
I mean, to have your child crying and clinging to you and to have your husband saying, "This is your role," even though that was probably his own way of reacting to the problem.
Yes, exactly.
What made you not give in?
Well, I think that there were perhaps two motivations, which I had. The
first was my mother's teaching, I said that I learned from my mother
that women are competent and should be self-supporting and should be
recognized as intellectual human beings comparable to their husband in
every way. That, perhaps, was probably the most profound influence which
I had. And the second was that my family was opposed to my marrying
because Guy was not very well. He had had a streptococcic infection and
this terrible flu in the 1917-1918 epidemic. And almost died as a result
and so he was still thin and frail and my parents felt that he would not
live very long, and they investigated — sent my uncle to his doctor in
Caddo Mills, a little town not far away, to find out just what the
status of his health was, and his doctor had said that he would not live
ten years. And, of course, they didn't want me to marry someone who
would be dead in ten years. And they told me, as a way of trying to
persuade me. So, I did not tell Guy. I did not want Guy to know that he
was supposed to die in ten years.
And then if you had to support the children, you wouldn't be able to.
That's right.
And you had to be able to.
I had to be able to support the children and give them an education, which I wanted them to have.
That was a pretty fierce reason for continuing, that was . . .
Yes it was.
So, it was all related to economic status.
Yes, indeed.
That's very interesting. So much of this has been going through my mind this past weekend when I was at home visiting my mother, who I think, is a southern lady for whom I think most of the myths came true. But you can see her, in my breaking away from what she told me as a child, and it's very hard on women, who I think, have been caught and have had children and have given their life to their children and to their husband and then say, "All right, what now?" And it's just very, very difficult.
It is. You can understand why so many women in their late forties and fifties become disoriented, extremely unhappy, and need psychiatric help or at least counseling. Because it's traumatic to be needed desperately when the children are small and give perhaps three-fourths of their time to the children, chauffering the children, taking the children to music, to dance lessons, etc. and at the same time, the husband is growing professionally and growing away from the wife. Then, when the children are gone, what is there for the wife? Because she's far from understanding her husband's drives and motivations or even participating in his work or in his goals. So, there are two entities in the family situation which are separate and often conflicting.
Well, so many marriages break up at that point.
Oh, yes.
There's no way back.
That's true, it's quite understandable, because they've grown so far apart that it's almost, well, it is in many instances impossible, to find a way back to understanding and companionship.
One of the interesting things, or really tragic things, I think, now, is
as roles for women are opening more and more, is the economic situation
and we are in a real cut-back period. We are no longer having the growth
of the sixties. And you find, "Well, all right, we'll hire a woman, but
we don't have any places to
Yes.
Both World War I and World War II.
It opened up jobs to women which had heretofore been closed.
One thing I wanted you to comment on was, during World War II, when so many women went into the work force, and then after World War II, when so many women . . .
Dropped out.
. . . left the work force, but many women stayed, but then the whole growth of the feminism is halted and all the time during the fifties when . . . but this is when you were very, very active.
Yes.
And was there a lot of pressure against professional women and did you feel this?
The government mounted a campaign, beginning in '47, perhaps in '46, the last of '46 and '47. I remember the stories that would come over the radio about how terrible it was for a mother to continue to work. She was needed during the war, and it was patriotic . . .
Whereas five years before, they had been saying that it was patriotic to work.
Yes. That's true. It was patriotic for her to work, but now the war is
over, our men are coming back and we need to give them employment and
it's patriotic now for a woman to leave her job and turn it over to our
war veterans. This was a concerted campaign launched by the government
and supported by many state agencies. And I remember so well when I came
back from my office one day in early 1947, Edward had the radio on and
here was this gory story being related about the mother who had worked
during the war and refused to give up her job, because she was now
having some pocket change for once in her life and she wanted this money
to buy extra things for the house. She really didn't need the money, but
she selfishly wanted a new carpet for her living room and was staying on
to work. And she suddenly had a telephone call, which said, "Your son
has been killed. He has been run over by an automobile." And she rushed
out and saw the mangled body of her dear child, and she said, "Oh, why
didn't I stay at home and take care of my baby? Why did I, why was I so
thoughtless and selfish? I want all mothers in the United States to hear
my tragic story and give up their jobs."
Well, were you acquainted with anyone who was . . . you were in Atlanta?
Yes, I was in Atlanta at the time?
And were any of the state agencies there supporting it?
Not that I know of. I was not aware of it if they were. I was working very closely with all the social welfare agencies and I would have know about it if they had. No, this was a federally sponsored program. But the radio stations were carrying these gory tales. This was the emotional pressure that was being placed upon women.
Very strong emotional pressure.
Oh yes.
I mean, it worked.
It was not long after that that this thing happened to me. I was talking on the telephone, talking to Albany, Georgia. We were setting up the machinery for getting a juvenile court in operation, when the operator interrupted me and said, "Go home at once, your son has been killed, he has been run over by an automobile." I hung up the telephone and it rang again and it was Guy, saying that he had had the same call and said, "What shall we do?" I said, "I'll call the doctor and get him to the hospital and find out which hospital. Probably Wesley Long" . . . Was it Wesley Long?
Crawford Long.
Welsey Long in Greensboro. "Crawford Long hospital, he'll probably be there." It was closest to where we lived. So, Dr. Boynton was our doctor, and he said, "You come to the emergency room and we'll meet you." Well, of course, he was not dead by any means, but he did have a serious injury. But, we coped again.
But so many women yielded to the pressure and I think that pressure that was so unfair, because women were used during the war, and then to turn around and do an aboutface and say, "Go home."
Yes.
And then the thing that I think is so tragic, and that you again pointed out, was that it has always been said that women worked for nothing and worked for extras.
For the frills, which are not important.
And this went for women who were heads of households, as well as those who had husbands. This happened to you during the Depression, you said.
Oh, it happened . . .
They told you to go home, because married women couldn't work.
That's true. That's when Julia Spruill and I were relieved of our research jobs in the Institute. I think I told you about that in the first interview.
Yes. Well, what about professional work being something that is very creative, that you can you do. It's very, very time consuming, but you can do it at home; you can do it actively, you can be nearby. Isn't that . . . that doesn't answer the problems of day laborers at all.
No, well I think that the only problem of the day laborer is the nursing care, the nursery schools, and the day care centers. And I'm glad to see this movement getting underway in this country. We lag far behind such countries as Sweden and England, even England, although England has by no means filled the need.
No, but they are . . .
But they are moving ahead. We are falling very much behind.
Yes, we're behind.
Yes, in the United States, we're falling very much behind in many areas of social welfare.
Well, we spent all the fifties telling people to stay home, that it was wrong to work.
Yes.'
So, I don't know, I feel . . . I'm glad that you feel more optimistic. I was really very concerned after I talked to Eleanor Easely, because it was sort of, you know, maybe we should all give up and . . .
Oh no, this is ridiculous.
Well, it's not a matter of really giving up, she ended by saying, "Well,
I'm glad that I'm not young now. I'm glad that younger people are going
to have to
Well, very frequently a professional woman is accused of rearing maladjusted children who are unhappy and actually hate their mothers, but this is certainly not true of our two sons. Both of them have PhD's, both of them married professional women, who have PhD's, both of their wives are working . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
. . . the older son has two children, both well adjusted, his older
child is a freshman at Pomona College and is a superior student. A
National Merit Scholar and his daughter is a gifted artist, we think.
The grandparents may be prejudiced, but she is extremely able. Benny
himself was good in artwork, but chose to take a doctorate in sociology
and our younger son, who is here, has a wife, a very able, gifted wife,
with a doctorate who is in the child development program here, and they
have three children who are very well adjusted. All three-of course, the
grandmother says proudly-are superior children, on the honor rolls. Look
in the newspaper two or three days ago, and you'll see.
So, it's all worked out well.
Yes, and it can. But of course, I think that the impossible situation
arises when the husband does not approve of his wife's professional work
and constantly makes her feel guilty for continuing her work or nags
her, saying, "This wouldn't happen if . . . " There are always little
crises in a family situation, whether you have children or not, but when
there are children, there are more minor crises, and if the husband is
supportive, instead of saying, "This wouldn't have happened if you had
been at home. If you had not been at the office, this wouldn't have
happened." You see, when Edward was struck by an automobile in Altanta,
Guy never once said, "This would never have happened, if you had only
been at home." He was very supportive and did not point an accusing
finger at me, not once. In fact, the only time that he did was when I
first, when our first
That's frightening anyway, just with the first child, then coming home and what happens, whether you are there or not. A very bad situation. Or a very changing kind of situation.
When you were talking about science and technology and how it has reshaped domestic life, one thing that you mentioned was birth control and the changing sex roles, and the sex roles are really in flux at the moment. That was in '65. Do you have, have you seen any difference in the past ten years? Certainly there has been some change.
There has been a tremendous change in woman's attitude toward her role as a housekeeper and mother and sex partner and in the amount of freedom of time which she has to pursue her own interests. Tremendously. I know that my mother, who had five children, was in constant dread that she might have a sixth or a seventh or an eighth. And this was a fear that she carried with her as long as she was in child-bearing age. And it concerned my father, too. He'd say, "I cannot feed another mouth." And you could see what this fear of childbirth, of having a large family, and what it did to a couple. It was not only true of my parents, but everybody that I knew in my small community of Greenville. And I do know that there were a great many abortions performed and that I would hear darkly hinted . . . "You know, Mary Smith went to Dallas and stayed three or four days, and she's all right now." This was saying to me that she went to Dallas to have an abortion. She had three or four children and didn't want any more.
These were married women who had this.
Yes, married women.
Most of the families were large?
Yes, most of them were large. A few had only two or three, but most fo the families had five, six, seven or eight children.
So, women were very tied down and could never get out.
Yes, yes they were.
And pregnancy was so dangerous.
Yes. Oh yes. This is true. I remember when my youngest sister was born, I was fourteen and Mother said before the baby was to come, "Now, if anything should happen to me, I want you to do so and so, and your sister to do this and that, because you will have to take over my responsibility." She was facing death and making plans for what would happen if she did not come through the ordeal.
Things have changed so much.
Yes, with antibiotics and the knowledge of more skillful child delivery, there is almost no problem. And yet look at the report of the State Department of Health and see that there are still a great many childbirth deaths, but they are blacks, women who die in childbirth. Occasionally there will be rural white women, but for the most part, it's black.
When tremendous probelms with pre-natal care are there, I think. At Duke, my husband is a med student, and so many people who come in to have their child never have any pre-natal care; they've never seen anyone.
And it's amazing that they would come to the hospital for childbirth.
Or how many don't, that's the question. Well, you cited the changing sexual roles and the changing family roles as the most traumatic problem that we would have to deal with in the next generation, and it's still there.
Yes, it's still there.
What do you think will happen to the family as a unit?
Oh, I am very confident that the family as a unit will be maintained
despite all the Cassandras who say that the family is disintegrating. I
remember going, in 1924-we went to Chicago for the meeting of the
American Sociological Association and we attended one of the sections on
the family and three or four
Well, certainly there have been changes, I think, directly related to
efficient methods of birth control, where perhaps people living together
before
Well, you see, trial marriage was being very much discussed in 1924, and I think this was one reason that the sociologists felt that this was the family of the future. And that the couple might not feel it important to marry. They might feel that it was important to have a flexible situation, whereby if you became bored with your partner, you would move on and find some other partner. And, of course, it probably is true-I'm sure that it is true-that we have more such situations now.
At least more openly being done.
Yes, that's true. It might have been done covertly.
Certainly on college campuses, you see this a lot.
Yes.
And I don't know, I tend to see it as a short lived thing that would go on into a permanent thing, or the persons involved would move on to find other commitments. But the divorce rate is so high, which is a problem. A lot of this is directly related to women perhaps.
Yes, very likely. Now that they feel that they have other options other than living with this man . . .
With this man who has been telling them that this is your role to stay home and take care of me.
Yes.
They are moving on, there is much more of a freedom to leave, I think.
I think that is to the good. I don't think that is a threat to the family.
That may sound contradictory, but I think that divorce should be . . .
I'm so glad that Italy finally rose up . . .
It's amazing now, I think, to see on the news the things that women have done, or a woman holding office and they invariably now ask her if this has anything to do with Women's Lib and she invariably says "No."
No.
Nothing. Which I think is very interesting, because many things that women do are divorced, are private, from any national movement. They want it that way.
That's true. I sat by Ellen Winston at luncheon several weeks ago and she
was voicing concern that fewer women are getting professional degrees
and she said, "What can we do to stimulate women to go on and prepare
themselves for professional work and take advantage of the doors that
are opening now for professional women, despite the fact that at the
moment there are too many PhD's trying to teach in colleges. I want
women to go into the professions that are unrelated to
Well, I think as far as women going into a different profession, as engineers, this is training that you need in high school, to have someone say, "Why don't you go into engineering." It's not in the traditional curriculum for women.
This is very true. We are just beginning now in North Carolina to
emphasize technical training in the schools. Heretofore, most of the
vocational work was for automobile mechanics and farmers. That trend and
then the next (other educational track) was the academic. You decided,
"Am I going to be a farmer, or an automobile mechanic, or do I want to
be trained for college work?" But now, since the Commission3 on the . . . let's see, it was
Governor Bob Scott's commission . . . I have forgotten, because I've
been on several comprehensive commissions, several public school
commissions, I forget the exact title of this study of schools in North
Carolina. Our task force stressed the importance of vocational training
in the high schools on a high level, on a level as high as the academic
level. And right now, you see in Chapel Hill, we are just now beginning
to erect a building for vocational training, and it will be not on the
automobile mechanic level, but on the engineering
And including women?
Oh yes, yes. All the courses will be open evenly to men and women.
Because while men were becoming automobile mechanics, women were becoming hairstylists . . .
Yes, yes. I think that very many were trained as hairstylists in the public schools of North Carolina, because they were prodded into Beauty Colleges, as they were called . . .
But yes, yes, that sort of thing is what I'm talking about.
Yes, but some schools did introduce this as a great step forward—"beauty culture in the schools."
Well, one other thing, and then I'll quit for now. But I wanted to ask you how all the work and the importance that you put on voluntary organizations for women and the strength of these organizations and especially when they are united . . .
Well, perhaps I should tell you a secret. The reason I went into
voluntary work? Now, I have always done a great deal of voluntary work.
From the time I was three or four years old, I had helped my mother in
Sunday School and from there I went on into other little chores, so it
seems to me like all my life, I've done voluntary work. But when I came
to Chapel Hill to do graduate work, Guy and I both promised each other
that we would concentrate on our studies and not be tempted to get
involved in volunteer activities. So, until 1937, I did nothing in
community work, stuck to my job of research and my children and my home.
But in 1937, I think that I already told you I was elected PTA
President. Well, then I did very little volunteer work until we came
back from Atlanta and I had had to resign from the history department to
go to Atlanta to join Guy. And I naturally wanted to pick up with my
work and went to Mr. Connor, who was head of the history department-had
been head of the history department and came back as a CraigAnte-Bellum North Carolina and had been very supportive. So, I
said, "Bob, I have an interesting job in Atlanta, but now I want to come
back to work here. Benny is at Harvard now". (He finished here at
eighteen and went on to do graduate work at Harvard.) and I said, "He
did not go on scholarship, and if we had not sold our house in Atlanta
at an advantage, we would not be able to send him this one year, but
I've got to be able to see him through his graduate work at Harvard. I
have to work." And he said, "No, honey" — again paternalistic — "you
know what happened in the spring when the board of trustees considered
the motion not to let Guy return to the University of North Carolina.
There is this small gang of men still on the board of trustees,4 who are determined to get rid of Guy,
and they are working every
So, they were really on your side.
Yes, I immediately established rapport with them and they would say to
me, "Now, you know that we do not approve". This I would not get in the
group, but, individually, a woman would say, "I do not approve of what
my husband is doing. I've met Guy and I like him and I know he's no
Communist. I know that you are no Communist and so I'm going to do
everything that I can to help you and let me tell you now that they have
employed a detective or." I did not have advance warning about his being
called before the Visiting Committee, which was in January orHistory
of Racial Ideologies. I've been so busy.
Afraid of being bombarded with letters . . .
Yes. And let a delegation of women go up on the crucial day and just sit in the balcony, and . . .
Isn't that amazing. That is power.
Yes, it is power. This became a fun thing for me to see how women could shape laws, change attitudes in their local communities, simply by working together.
And this was perfectly acceptable work for women to do.
Oh yes, volunteer work is woman's role.
And there was no opposition?
Oh no. No.
Encouragement.
Yes. I once talked to one of the men, the elder statesman in the
University who had been interested in getting a state library
established and an extension division of the University of North
Carolina set up and various other projects related to academic affairs
set up. And I said, "Tell me, what role did women play." "Oh, we made
them think that they were having a part in this, but it was
inconsequential. We were the ones who did all of this." And the women
don't feel that way at all. Now this was before my day, of course,
before I came to North Carolina, but I've talked to two women who were
involved in promoting
Well, as I was going through the things that you have written, I was really surprised, I came to your book on community service, and I was trying to relate that to the importance of economic independence and I fell flat on my face.
Yes, it's very contradictory, isn't it?
Well, it doesn't lead to economic independence.
No, not at all.
But to political power, social power, yes. Economic power, no. I understand much better now.
Of course, this assignment to write Volunteers was a
job, was an assignment, which I felt that I had to do for the women of
the state with whom I had worked, in order to justify their spending all
these hours that I had urged them to spend in behalf of community
service. And it was the first big project that the Council of Women's
Organizations had. We got a grant from the North Carolina Fund to do the
research and publish the book. It wasn't something that I was very
interested in doing, except as a justification for my asking them to
work and work hard. And I was able, through working in volunteer
organizations and giving my time as a volunteer, to be able to pick up
the telephone and call key women in the state, and, of course, I knew
this state much better than I had known it in writing Ante-Bellum North Carolina. I wish that I had had the
information thatAnte-Bellum North Carolina, because I could
have picked up on many items that I dropped as being
inconsequential.
Such as?
Well, I would have spent more time on folklore and superstition, for example, and . . .
Because it directly concerns the
Yes, and I would have perhaps written one chapter on leading women in the ante-bellum period, instead of just dismissing it. Because I would have gone into family records and traveled over the state and learned more about various women. It was a woman who was able to get the state to set up a hospital for the mentally ill, the Dorthea Dix Hospital. This occurred in the ante-bellum period and she, on her death-bed, urged her husband to vote for the measure and he arose, when the bill was about to go down the drain, and made this emotional appeal, "This is a promise that I made to my dying wife." You see how important this woman was, Dorthy Dix had convinced her of how important this was. Well, Dorthea Dix had come to North Carolina to promote the hospital and made many friends among the women of the state.
Well, really, as far as voluntary organizations are concerned, that is where you meet, that's one thing about this project, when Jackie Hall started talking about it, that they had done a project in California they had done a study of women in the suffragist movement. In the South, you really can't do women who were involved in the suffrage movement, because so few were actively involved. You don't get as many people and that's why she came up with Women After Suffrage.
I think it was not widespread, [the legislative worked] women in North
Carolina. Now, I think that Texas women, a great many Texas women were
involved, but in North Carolina, it was not the thing to do, and, have
heard a number of the older women who were
It was so new, they had no experience.
That's true. And heretofore, they had been acting as individuals, but for women to band together . . . I think that perhaps the Federation of Women's Clubs laid the groundwork, 1902 was when the Federation was formed. Read Sally Southall Cotton's book on the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs, a little thin book. There are several instances where she takes time to tell about the work that the Federation did in behalf of the amendment. This is interesting, I'm so sorry that Gertrude Weil has died, because she was one of the leaders.
Of the Federation of Women's Clubs?
And leaders in the fight for the amendment. She worked quietly perhaps
harder than almost any other woman for the legislation, which failed to
pass. But still, as Gertrude has said to me many times- (and I must say
that Gertrude has supported my efforts in behalf of mobilizing
woman-power in North Carolina, on behalf of legislation that would make
it possible for women and children to have better opportunities to
acheive self fulfillment within the state community). She has given
money for my efforts in the World Affairs Conference, and she gave money
for the Council of Women's Organizations. And I remember that I was
speaking
Now, did she do any writing?
No, she did not. One of her relatives is doing a biography of her. It has not been published, but if you are at all interesting in finding out about it, Elmer Gettinger in the Institute of Government would know about it, because he brought the girl around, who was a graduate student at Wellesley or Smith or someplace, to interview us as a part of her study. And we have not heard from her since. So, I don't know what the result has been.
Well, that's interesting, let's stop where we are now, if it's all right with you.
Yes.
END OF INTERVIEW