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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-0032, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Cornelia Spencer Love, granddaughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (the "woman who rang the bell" to signal the reopening of the University of North Carolina after Reconstruction) talks about her family, life at the University in the "old days," and her relations with Chapel Hill's black community. Born in 1892, raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Radcliffe, Love came to Chapel Hill as a young woman in 1917 to work in the UNC library, where she remained for the rest of her years. She talks in this interview about attending dances at UNC as a teenager, recollects early encounters with UNC's Kemp Battle and Frank Porter Graham, and speaks about her grandmother's attitudes towards women and education. She also talks extensively about her brother, J. Spencer Love, founder of Burlington Industries. Her relationship with African American educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown and her philanthropy toward Chapel Hill's African American community are also discussed.
Cornelia Spencer Love, granddaughter of Cornelia Phillips Spencer and sister of Burlington Industries founder J. Spencer Love, discusses her long relationship with the University of North Carolina, the town of Chapel Hill, and its black community.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
When I first came South to live, in 1917,
O.K., Miss Love, you mentioned that you were born and raised in New England. When did you come to North Carolina for the first time? Did you come to visit?
Well, I came three or four times, I really couldn't tell you how many. I came twice to Gastonia with my family to visit my Grandpa and Grandma Love and in 1909, I had a wonderful trip to Chapel Hill. My father graduated from the University in '84 and came to his twenty-fifth reunion. Dr. Battle and his wife were still living in the old Battle home, they were good friends of my family. We were not only invited to stay at their house, but Dr. Battle's grandson, Kemp Davis Battle, was in the class of 1909 with Frank Graham and other since very prominent graduates. And he invited me to attend . . . do you want to hear all of this?
I have heard mostly about your grandmother and I know a good deal about Kemp Battle. Is there anything that you want to . . . .
I think that this is historically interesting, because in those days, the
commencement balls were very important, they were great social events
and here was I, a little Yankee girl, just seventeen, knowing how to
dance and
Oh, was it not allowed?
Listen, my dear, you don't know anything!
It's sort of like Jesse Helms and his talk about Chapel Hill now.
The Presbyterians were just as bad. My mother was a Presbyterian. She thoroughly approved of my dancing and so forth and so on. My brother and I went to dancing school, but she never danced a step in her life and she felt that she was too old to learn. So, yes, it was greatly disapproved in the state. But it went on in spite of it. The University was criticized. Oh . . . you wanted to know about my coming down. I don't think that I came between 1909 and 1917. I was at the New York State Library School for a two year's course. Library schools were very popular, young women didn't seem to know about going to get special training for the profession and they don't seem to know now. Anybody who went to a school, particularly that one in Albany, which was the best in the country, it was founded by John Dewey of the Dewey Decimal Classification System fame . . . they were known to be the best librarians in the country. L.R. Wilson, who is still living . . . .
Is he? I didn't know that.
Yes, very forward and advanced, he wrote up to the New York Library School asking for a cataloger. And the head of my school knew that I had southern affiliations and so he offered it to me. And my mother thought that it was wonderful for me to go back to Chapel Hill, otherwise, she wouldn't have wanted me to go so far off. So, I came down in the fall of 1917.
But you did not pursue a job in any other location?
No. I had two or three other offers. I might have gone to the Hispanic Society in New York City, which sounded very interesting, because I had had two years of Spanish. They offered me a job.
Now, your grandmother, Cornelia Phillips Spencer, she lived in your household for many years, did she not?
She came up in 1893 or '94.
So, you must have been just a baby at the time?
Yes, but she died in 1908 and I was sixteen. I have many, many associations with her.
You were very close to her?
Oh, a great, great deal.
One thing that I was really interested in, I've read some of her papers and she was very determined that women should have an education. What sort of an influence did she have on your ideas of what you wanted to become? Did she encourage you to pursue a career?
My dear, I never had any trouble at all. I lived there in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was no question that I would not go to Radcliffe College. No question that I couldn't do anything I wanted to do. There were no difficulties. In all this talk about women's lib . . . for me, no.
It was always assumed that you would have some kind of training that would be of a professional [nature] . . . .
Well, I would go to college. That's one reason that my parents stayed
there in Cambridge, because my father had the offer of the presidency of
Tulane when I was younger. They turned it down because they knew that
the
Did you attend public schools?
Oh, yes.
Did you have any outside schooling, any tutoring in any special areas?
I was taught by my mother and grandmother at home to read and write, geography, and figures, until I was seven. Then I went to the Peabody Grammar School and then to the Cambridge Latin School. In those days, my dear, we had these New England Normal School graduates, New England spinsters. There was no such thing as a married woman teaching. Women did not work after they were married. If they were engaged, they waited and stayed engaged for two or three or four years until their husbands had enough money to set up house keeping. But women married did not work. These New England spinsters were some of the best teachers I ever had in my life. They were thorough. We learned Latin, we learned the French idioms. We didn't learn a thing about the pronunciation, they hadn't been to France and there was just no attempt to teach you how to pronounce it, but you got the fundamentals. With no trouble. I don't remember any discipline trouble. Of course, we had . . . .
Were you in an all girls classroom?
No, they were public schools. There were Irish boys and two or three blacks. I remember one time, Francis Hazel and I skipped the eighth grade in grammar school and Francis Hazel was a rather dignified black boy, I can remember what he looked like right now.
I would like to hear more about what your grandmother did with you. Did she spend many hours a day with you? Was she the one who taught you how to read?
I couldn't tell you that. Either she or my mother taught me how to read, but you know, I was four or five or six years old. I'll just tell you what I do remember. The things that I remember were the greatest delight, were these sessions where she read aloud to me. She started with Cooper, all of Scott, All of Dickens and some other things and we just took them in turn. I never sat there doing nothing, she taught me how to sew, to embroider and insisted that I be employed while she was reading.
I know that she was a great seamstress herself.
Oh, yes. She did very delicate, beautiful work. She made all my summer clothes, little calico and gingham dresses, with little guimpes, and ruching, and I don't know what all. And of course, as she worked with me, she might explain if necessary.
Well, was she also close to your brother? How many years younger was he than you?
Four years. Well, in a sense, of course. My mother would go out and leave Grandma to take charge of this little boy, although we always had this good Irish maid in the house, in the kitchen. He didn't attend those sessions. You know, four years is a big gap. Especially when I was seven, eight, nine or ten. He didn't have nearly as much of that sort of contact with her.
Well, then, his activities were mostly outside the home?
Oh, yes.
Did he also attend public school?
Surely, yes. He and I agreed, not so very many years before his death,
that the best teacher we had ever had, and he had been through college,
was a Miss Jenny Spring in the Cambridge Latin School, who taught us
Latin. She was so vivacious and witty and just full of life. But all
those teachers were good. They knew how to control a classroom with a
look or a glance. If any big boys should be obstreperous — and frankly,
I just can't remember any incidence — she would send him to the
principal. That was the worst punishment that he could have.
Now, you mentioned that you both went to dancing school.
Yes.
Did you also both take music lessons?
When I was ten, my mother wanted me to start piano lessons, so she wrote
to my Grandpa love and told him of that and that we didn't have a piano.
And he wrote back and said that he would give me a piano if I would
learn to make biscuits and sew a button on my brother's trousers. So, I
had to send him a symbolic button sewed on and he gave my mother carte
blanche to get any piano she wanted. She got a nice one, but she didn't
get a Steinway. My brother was very, very gifted in a musical way. He
had true pitch. You could strike any note and he could tell you what it
was. If he heard a tune, he could play it with accompaniment. And the
only lessons that he ever had were given to him by me. Now what I could
teach him was to read music. We had lessons, one or two a week and got
our pocket money in that way. He got ten cents a lesson and I got
twenty-five cents. Sometimes, they were free for alls,
Yes.
But my mother would intercede and the lessons proceeded. And from me, he
did learn to read music, but then he went on and his playing was always
a delight to us. He would sit down at the piano after dinner, you know,
and play. He loved things like the "Desert Song," and Sigmund Romberg
and the Showboat, the popular things, that sort of
music. He knew it all, he bought it all, he could play it.
Well, were you somewhat of a tomboy, did you have a lot of outside activities that . . . .
No, you wouldn't call me a tomboy. But, we had an awfully good time. I
have been made so infuriated by this book, which I wouldn't think of
reading, but you have seen it advertised, it has just come out, The Good Old Days, They were Dreadful.
. . . "they were terrible."
They Were Terrible. My dear, they were not. We did not
have a lot of the discoveries, the cars and so forth and so on. We had
great open spaces where you could play. There were vacant lots right
near my house. Two of my best friends, we would get together in a little
group after school and play "prisoner's base" or "hide-and-seek" or that
sort of thing. We all had bicycles. You could ride anywhere you wanted
with no fear of anybody running over you. Of course, there were cars,
but there weren't an enormous number of them. In winter we had snow,
sleds and skates.
Did your parents ever try to keep you from doing something because it wasn't "ladylike?"
No.
I believe that I've seen a game similar to that.
You spoke about a tomboy. Well, I was no tomboy, but next to this Peabody Grammar School, there was a great big vacant lot and a Miss McCarthy rented it and had a playground there and charged a small amount to any children that wanted to come and play there after school was out. I learned to play tennis and volleyball. She had swings and other things for smaller children. And then, when I was nineteen and twenty, I was sub-counselor at this camp in Maine where I had a chance to play more tennis and ride horses.
What kind of a camp was it?
Well, it was one of a series of very, very fine camps which I suppose
they still have in Maine. This Cobb family owned four camps on this
Moosehead Lake, it's just over the line from New Hampshire. There were
two boys camps and two girls camps. They weren't even by each other. You
had to get in your boat or get in a wagon to go from one to the other,
but they owned them all. And I was at the younger girls camp. I was in
the tent with the head of the camp, a Miss Barbour, who was a school
teacher and she was just a very, very able fine person. She knew how to
carry it on. And I just helped her and filled in. And we had boating and
swimming and camping, hiking . . . I don't know where to branch off, you
know. My brother went to the boys camp,
And the girls looked up to me because I was Spencer Love's sister.
So, you have always been Spencer Love's sister?
No, oh no. This was from the little girls.
When your grandmother was living with you, did she tell you a lot of stories about Chapel Hill?
Yes. Well, she and my mother. You see, my mother lived there from the time that she was four years old. Her father died of spinal meningitis when she was just a little girl, at the outbreak of the Civil War. And her mother, who was beginning to be deaf, and later on was very deaf, picked up her little daughter and brought her back to her father, James Phillips, in Chapel Hill. And life just seemed almost over, here was the war and all the sadness and my grandmother and James Monroe Spencer, it was a very devoted marriage. She was rather late in life getting married.
She was close to thirty, was she not?
I think she was. She was a little older, he was a student that came up
from Alabama. And from all I can gather, he was a very, very fine
person. His nickname was Magnus and she was just desolated. If you have
ever read . . . I think that it's in Mrs. Chamberlin's Old
Days in Chapel Hill, from my
She seemed very devoted to him.
She was just . . . life was over. I don't mean that she ever said anything like that, but imagine coming back with the Civil War breaking out and the University closing.
I know that she always remembered the anniversary of their marriage.
Yes. I ought to elaborate on . . . since I brought in women's lib and
this may surprise you, she was so keen for women's education and she did
a great deal to bring it about. Otherwise, that dormitory wouldn't have
been named for her at Greensboro and the one at Chapel Hill. She knew
the leaders, the McIvers, Vances, the Venables and so on, Well, Venable,
he was later. But she knew those men that started the women's education.
She wrote letters. That was her power, the power of her pen. And she
would to this and that person and she would write in the newspapers. She
had this column in the Presbyterian Standard for young
girls. So, in that way, she did wield a lot of power. But she did not
believe that women should have the vote. Of course, nowdays, I guess
that she would accept it. Well, I guess that her reasons have been
justified.
What were her reasons?
That women would vote more or less as their husbands did, that they
wouldn't strike out on any new paths, they would just double their
husband's vote. She felt that they had their mission in life, that they
had lots of influence but that they did not exert it by the vote. I have
been terribly disappointed myself. Look at the women who have gone into
public life, they are
Well, you don't think that women have significantly changed the course of American politics?
Well, do you? You study history. No, I think that if they all band together, the best women with the best ideas, they could do a great deal. Now you have got me off on another tangent about women. Women don't like each other very much, they don't stick up for each other. I once said to my sister-in-law, Martha, Ayers, "Do you like Barbara Walters?" "No, I don't." We don't like each other, we're critical. We've got devoted friends, but on the whole would prefer a man boss to a woman.
Well, let's get back to your attitude toward women a little later. I do want to ask you some more questions about when you first came to Chapel Hill and slightly before. When did you decide to become a librarian? Why that and not something else?
Well, that's quite a story. I've always loved books. I was soaked in
them. My mother and grandmother had a great many and my grandmother was
devoted to English literature and history. So, you might say that I was
soaked in it and I loved books. I read all the time. I didn't know that
there was such a profession as being a librarian, so I was going to be a
secretary. I took a summer course in shorthand and stenography between
my junior and senior years, preparing to be a secretary. Then, I asked
for some work at the Radcliffe office, they had jobs just as colleges do
nowdays. And I had free Saturdays and so forth, so they assigned me to
work at this Episcopal Theological Seminary Library there in Cambridge,
which is right across from Radcliffe and our church. I suppose that it
is the most outstanding Episcopal school in
What was her name?
Now, you may think that I am down on women, but I have known some of the finest women in the world. Edith Fuller. She was a niece of Margaret Fuller. You've heard of Margaret Fuller?
Yes.
There are so many people who are bywords to me that the younger generation knows nothing about.
Well, I'm sort of half ignorant. Some names I know and some I don't.
Well, Margaret Fuller, of course, was a blue-stocking, a writer and
famous in her time. This Edith Fuller was a homely little woman with a
screw of grey hair here at the back of her neck. She wasn't in the least
good looking. She had the sweetest smile, and she was a very, very kind
person. She trained me to come in there at that time, taught me how to
catalog books. I did know how to type, I had gotten that at Simmons, the
touch system. If I had stayed working with her for some years, I
wouldn't have needed to go to library school, you know you can really
learn more from somebody telling you. And at the end of my college
course, her assistant librarian was retiring, she was an old lady. And
so, she offered me the job of being assistant librarian. There were the
two of us and I would sit in the outer office and not only catalog
books, but file cards and do a lot of
And that's how you decided to go there?
. . . . which was such a good one. It was in this great big building in Albany, right across from the capitol with an education building built especially for the school. Great big rooms, wonderful accommodations. So then, I said, "I'm going to save up my money and go to the New York State Library School after this one year." That's how I heard about it.
So, you put yourself through library school?
Yes. Oh, yes.
Now, when you were at the New York State Library School and when you heard about the job at Chapel Hill, were you very excited?
Well, I suppose I was.
Had it been in your mind to return to Chapel Hill?
No, oh, no.
That was not something that you had thought of?
It was something that just happened to come up because Dr. Wilson wrote
for [a librarian] . . . you didn't apply for jobs. They wrote into that
school. There weren't enough graduates to fill all the positions. They
were clamoring for them. I think that they still are for men. Men don't
seem to realize it. Well, say in my class, there were perhaps forty and
maybe twelve of them were men. They all got excellent jobs. They wanted
men and women in the library
When you came to Chapel Hill, where did you stay?
Well, my mother still knew people living in Chapel Hill, of course. And she wrote to Miss Mary Manning, Louise Venable's aunt, knowing that she took lodgers. So, I stayed with her for a year. But then, I heard about Mrs. Kluttz, Mrs. A.A. Kluttz, who lived and owned the big house where Mrs. Coenen lives now. It's right across from the president's house.
You know, the little stone office . . . .
Oh, yes.
That was my Great Uncle Sam's office.
Sam Phillips' office?
Yes, Sam Phillips. Well, this is of course, is just coincidence, that the Kluttz's owned that house. I could really write a chapter about the Kluttzes, because they were characters, both of them. He was always called "Doctor", although he just took one year at the medical school. His wife always called him "Doc." I don't want to get off on that, I could tell you lots of cute anecdotes and stories about him, but . . . .
Well, maybe we'll have time.
It would be getting away from the . . . .
So, when you were a teenager then, you didn't have a career in mind for yourself, you just knew that you were going to college?
No, I just knew that I was going to college.
Also, when you were a young woman, did you hope to get married sometime?
No. Listen, the young girls of that period . . . I don't know how to put it . . . you didn't go with boys the way the girls do now. Now, when I was a little girl, I played with Gilbert Francke and Hugo Francke, Joe Winlock, little kids. But when they struck the age of about eleven, they had the boys, that whole college set, they had nothing to do with girls until they were about fourteen or fifteen. High school. And that was all right with me. The social life was so completely different.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Short pants?
Well, knickers.
Buckled at the knees?
Yes. The little pants that they wore when they were little boys. And why on earth they had to put these long pants on these little kids in America, I just don't know. Why can't they have the short pants which they have in Europe?
I just always figured that a child's legs would get cold.
Well, look at the girls. They are naked all the way up to the little tight things they wear around the middle. Well, as I say, the boys came to dancing school because their parents made them and we danced together then. But that didn't extend . . . well, I would say that all of that was before puberty. We were still kids.
When Spencer was a teenager, was he an ambitious, a go-getter? Did he have a lot of after-school jobs?
Well, I wouldn't say that at all. There wasn't anything apprarent to me
as he was growing up that he was anything more than a bright little boy.
Now, my mother taught him, as she had taught me, when he was little and
she once said that he was the brightest little boy that she had ever
taught except for one of the Winstons. She had had a little school when
she was living in Chapel Hill, when she was about eighteen or nineteen.
Well, of course, you could just discount that as parental . . .
What kinds of things would Spencer do when . . . .
Oh, you are trying to find out about his brain. He was just a
Was he successful in school?
Well, he skipped grades.
How many grades were there?
Well, there were nine grades in the grammar school. There were five in the high school. You didn't skip grades in high school. The Cambridge Latin School had five grades and you had Latin every year. And I don't begrudge one minute of that Latin, it stood me in good stead. He entered Harvard and would have graduated in the class of 1917, when he would have been . . . oh, he was kept out a year between high school and college because he would have been sixteen and so young. They sent him to manual training school, he went there for a year.
What was he trained in when he was there?
Well, I know that he could print beautifully. You know, there's a lot that I don't know about him during those years, because I had my set of friends and he had his. I know that he went up to Squam Lake in Maine one summer and had some practical outdoor work, but just what he had besides that printing, I don't know.
But he would have entered college at sixteen, then?
Yes. But as it was, he entered in 1913, when he was seventeen. But on his own initiative . . . I didn't really realize that he was doing it, you see, I was in college, too. I graduated in '14, but we overlapped a couple of years, but he took extra courses so that he had enough credits to graduate in 1916.2
And that would have been in three years?
Three years.
What did he major in as an undergraduate?
He didn't. We didn't have to major then.
What kinds of things did he take?
I just don't know. I think the usual things. I wish I did know what he had in college. But he wanted to graduate with his class and so, that fourth year, the Harvard Business School had just opened up and he took one year in that, which he didn't quite finish, because the war came along. So, he went to Camp Dix and then went overseas.
Did he still show an interest in music?
Oh, I'll tell you how I first realized that he was something unusual. He
had finished at Camp Dix and was a 1st Lieutenant and was waiting to be
sent overseas. . . now, this is a very rough story, because I don't know
details at all . . . but a friend of his, who had to be away for awhile
asked him to do the work that he had been doing, just temporarily, for a
few weeks. The work that he asked him to do was in the Quartermaster's
Department, the planning and administration, that sort of thing. Well,
my brother proved to be so good at that, he was kept in that and was
sent overseas, was made a
So, he was always an administrator?
Then, I realized that he must have some extraordinary talent and ability for the Army to have recognized that and kept him doing this and that and the other thing.
Now, you came to Chapel Hill in 1917?
I did.
This must have been around the time of the suffrage movement. Were you involved in that?
No, I was tainted by my grandmother's thinking. The people who were in it at all . . . of course, there were the great leaders, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and two or three more and Mrs. Pankhurst. They sort of made themselves ridiculous.
Well, were you interested in politics at all?
No. There wasn't any special politics to see. I mean, people didn't involve themselves whole-heartedly.
Well, now when you came to Chapel Hill, I know that you mentioned in your letter that you met Hope Summerell Chamberlain. Did you meet her as soon as you came here?
No, she was living in Raleigh and due to the family friendship between
the Mitchells and the Phillipses, she knew about my being in Chapel Hill
and invited me over to her home. She had a beautiful home on New Bern
Avenue in Raleigh. It's the one that goes by State College. So, I went
Silent Spring. I
would read them to her or then, sometimes, we would just talk. You know,
you can't picture these days talk among women that isn't trash and
foolishness, can you? Maybe some of your friends . . . .
Now, she didn't write the book about your grandmother's life until when, 1926?
'26, yes.
Did she come to you for help on that? Did you work with her at all?
What I did was to tell her about this little trunk full of my
grandmother's papers. When my mother died in 1920, my father closed up
our home, disposed of all our possessions and put my grandmother's
diaries and things in a little old tiny trunk, which was stored at my
brother's. They lived then at Gastonia, they had just started building .
. . it was up in his attic. And he sent that little trunk to Mrs.
Chamberlain and there she
Well, were you anxious for her to write about your grandmother?
Well, I was very much pleased. I think that she did a beautiful job. I made the index for that volume. Indexing was one of the smaller courses that we had at the library school. Do you know how to make an index?
No.
Well, you can learn it in two or three weeks. I mean, there were lots of little things like that. I wish that more girls would go to library school. I've got a niece, I think that she would enjoy it thoroughly. But you can't interest them.
Which niece is this?
Cornelia Love.
Is this the one that is named for you?
Yes. About Mrs. Chamberlain, she was an artist, too, you know. She
illustrated. And then she wrote that book about . . . This
Was Home, about Salisbury.
I'm not familiar with that at all. That's another . . . .
Yes, that's another book she wrote.
When did you meet Charlotte Hawkins Brown?
Well, my father knew her and my brother knew her and they helped, you know, she was a remarkably dynamic woman. She made friends and in that way was able to start that school. She would go up to New England, around Boston, every year and come back these gifts for the school. I don't know what you know about the school.
Very little, just that . . . .
It has gone out of business, to my great, great sorrow. But she started it with Alice . . . do you know who Alice Freeman Palmer was?
No, you'll have to tell me more.
Well, she later became the president of Wellesley, a brilliant dynamic, outgoing, sweet woman. Herbert Palmer later married her, this professor of English and an outstanding, wonderful person at Harvard. Alice Freeman Palmer. She used to say that one time she had to cross the Common, that of course, would be in Boston, she had to cross it everyday and she would notice this black woman who was pushing a baby carriage, a white baby carriage and also studying in a book. And one day, she stopped her and it was a Latin book and it was Charlotte Hawkins Brown.
That's how they met, then.
That's how they met.
Well, you met Mrs. Brown then, because your father knew her?
I guess that I just went over to the school.3 There isn't any one dynamic meeting of any sort, I just got to
know her and then they asked me to be a trustee. And Mr. Wharton, who
was the head of the trustees, the father of the Charles Wharton who is
now a lawyer in Greensboro. His father was a much more . . . I hate to
keep using the word, "dynamic", but by that, I mean people who get
things done. They have got their inspiration and they know how to go
about doing it. And I think that because the son was not dynamic, they
came along there in those early sixties with the school failing, because
it never had anything like enough endowment. They lived
They must have been really short on funds.
They still own, so far as I know, this very valuable land at Sedalia, just right before you get to Greensboro, but in Charlotte Hawkins Brown's day, when I came to know her. . . I guess that it was in the 50's, and I would go over there and visit and it was the only private school for blacks in the United States. And it was a very good one. She believed in teaching those children manners as well as intellectual subjects. I would get my car, park and one or two of the young folks, they were high school age, would come up and help me up the steps and speak to me sweetly and I would have dinner with them. Good food, simple and plain but good. I would meet some of the teachers. I was especially interested in the library and tried to help them in that, because they didn't have nearly enough books.
Did you try to get books for them?
Yes, I did. They didn't know how to advertise, how to promote
Now, you were associated with the Palmer Institute for . . . .
I was a trustee.
For how long?
Well, I couldn't tell you. At least ten years, maybe longer. After
Charlotte Hawkins Brown's death, Wilhelmina Crossin, whom she had
selected, she was a black woman from the North, she came down at
Charlotte Hawkins Brown's invitation and took over the school and really
ran it very well for four or five years. And then she gave it up. I
guess that she felt that she was a little too old. She was given the job
of writing a life of Charlotte Hawkins Brown after she had retired. She
was living in Greensboro, and she appealed to me for some help. She
didn't know how to start a thing like that. Well, I said, "You come over
and have lunch with me and I'll get Phillips Russell, my cousin." So, I
had the two of them to lunch. You know, I could smile at myself, because
how some of those southerners could be shocked at my getting the
luncheon for this black woman. Well, you know, I thought nothing of it.
And Phillips Russell did talk to her and tried to help her, but she
never
Were you involved in any other enterprises to help black people before your association with Sedalia?
Well, I've always been very, very fond of them. I've known some charmers. And I still do, with Adolphus Clark, who looks after my house when I'm not there. He was on the library staff for many years. He is now eighty-five years old. But he is driving his Buick and when I would go off on trips, I would write him to meet me at the airport and there would be faithful Clark, as we called him. Dr. Wilson said, "We'll call you Clark." He was there in 1923 and he worked on the staff from then on. He was in the First World War in France and could tell you all about his experiences there. He was an uneducated man, he could read and write and all that, but . . . .
What did he do in the library?
A person of the greatest character. Well, he was janitor for a good many years and then they put him in charge of the mail room and made him a member of the staff, which meant that he had privileges, retirement and all that sort of thing. Just a man of sterling character, a pillar of his church, taught Sunday School and was interested in collecting money for a home for black teachers out in the country.
Was he part of the Roberson Street Church?
Well, he knew about it . . .but no, it was a church in the country. It
wasn't one of the Chapel Hill ones. Well, when I came back
I was thirteen.
Yes, well. I have passed through so many phases in our country during the
last fifty or sixty or seventy years. Each one had its character, but at
this time, the blacks were beginning to show a little muscle and this
white man had been made mad by something they did and so, he had
withdrawn his offer of the pool. Well, it made me mad, too. Please don't
. . . I'm not telling you this in any spirit of bragging, I'm showing my
interest in the blacks. Now, I have never been a person of wealth, but I
had a certain number of stocks and I could sell them and live on what I
had left. Well, I said, "Clark, I'm going to give you the swimming
pool." It was to be the first one in town, they didn't have a white one
then. Well, I guess that if the two of us had realized what it entailed,
we might not have done it. Because, there were so many rules and laws
and regulations, you know. You can't just go out and dig a hole and put
water in it, you've got to conform. But we had lots of help. I've
forgotten his name [cornwall] . . . over at Chapel Hill. He's died . . .
well, you wouldn't know him, anyway. Some man high up in the Athletic
Department helped him a lot with advice and rules and told him what to
do. And I sold stock and eventually we had a pool. It took
What was her name?
Well, Mrs. Clark . . . Ethel. Ethel Clark. She taught a school out in the country and she took just such an interest in those young children. She came to me once about this family. They would have a child after child, one every year. They didn't even have enough shoes to go around. Well, to make one story short, I paid for Ethel to have Mrs. . . . I've forgotten her name, to have her fitted with a diaphragm. If you know what I'm talking about . . .
Yes.
She was that sort of a person. Now, she wasn't terribly well educated. She would write me a letter with nice writing, but maybe mis-spell some letters, that's what they meant in those days when they said that the blacks did not have as good an education as the whites. They just didn't. She was a thoroughly good woman. She organized some of the black women and they planted around the pool with shrubs and flowers and it was a community project. Clark would open up a little booth in the building we had there. Well, of course, it is still there, the dressing rooms and there was a little place for refreshments and he would sell cold drinks and crackers. He didn't want to make a cent out of it, it was all for the children.
It was just for . . . .
He had retired by that time, he was in his seventies.
Well, I looked on the vita that you sent me and I brought this by the way, and. . . .
So, I have always taken an interest in the Roberson Street Center. Now,
this Lucille Caldwell was the head of it. You wouldn't know her, because
when the war came along, she was sent overseas in the YMCA and . . .
[discussion follows about returned vita]
Yes, I know where it is.
Well, something that I'd written or said made D.D. Carroll . . . now, you wouldn't know who he was, because he is dead now. He was the first head of the Business School. One of the buildings is named for him.
Carroll Hall.
Yes, Dudley Carroll. And he was a Quaker, for whom I have the greatest respect. Well, he came to see me. I've forgotten what made him think that he ought to tell me, and I was delighted that he did. He said, "Well, the town owns that land . . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . going back to the early days of people and places. I wish that you could have seen Chapel Hill then, it was a pretty little village. And during the last ten years, I would have had time to write some of it down, but it gave me pause. It would have taken a lot of time and trouble. Who is going to read it, who is going to publish it, who is going to do anything with it? How very few people care anything about it. I put in a lot of time and trouble.
Miss Love, you mentioned D.D. Carroll.
Oh, yes. I wanted to finish that. The Quakers had bought land and given it to the blacks so that they could have their own playground and center. The land had been right behind that place where Franklin Street divides.
That would be near the Church?
Well, anyway, they had realized that that wasn't a good place, and the Quakers had sold that. And they had bought the land that they now have had at Robeson Street and then gave it to the town. And so, the town had never made any effort to have any place for them, but now, I think that they do support it. Do you know Hank Anderson, he runs the Recreation Dept.
No, I don't. It's a familiar name, though. In your vita, you mentioned that you were part of the American Association of University Women. How long were you in that organization?
Well, from the beginning. Mrs. Chase, the wife of Presedent Harry
Woodburn Chase, started it, did whatever writing was necessary to have a
chapter in Chapel Hill. Now, that would have been . . . well, sometime
Well, what were some of the aims of the Association at that time? Was it more or less social work or . . . .
You belong to it, don't you, or you know about it?
No, because I'm not really a faculty member.
No, AAUW, the American Association of University Women is . . . . for * (below
Does that include students, did it at the time?
Any woman who has graduated from a college that is accepted can belong.
I didn't realize that.
Of course, it has to be an accepted college, have certain standards. But it is all over the United States and is a very powerful organization. You have meetings, you can have any sort of programs that the chapter wants to have. You can have a bridge-playing group, you can have play reading, you can meet to discuss books. We had to give so much, well, let's say that the dues were three dollars a year . . . as they were way back there . . . well, we would send one dollar to the headquarters in Washington and keep the other two. And we also contributed to scholarship funds, we gave scholarships to women and we would do different things to raise money for that. When I was there, the second year, we had Gertrude Stein . . . now that's another story.
When you were president? She came to speak? Was that your idea?
No.
How did the organization decide to . . . .
Well, that's another story. You want me to go off on a tangent?
Well, please tell me.
We were terribly hard up in the 30's. Nobody had any money, everybody's salary had been cut way back and we didn't know how werwere going to raise our share to contribute. Agatha Adams, a brilliant and charming woman of the many I have known who was wife of a Spanish professor . . . one of the faculty members. She told me that she had heard from a friend in Virginia that Gertude Stein would be in Virginia . . . I've forgotten what city . . . giving a talk at a certain time. And she suggested that we get in touch and see if we couldn't get her to come on to Chapel Hill and give us a talk. And to make a long story short, that's what we did. And she and Alice B. Toklas came and stayed in the Inn and had two rooms and . . . there are several little anecdotes that I could tell about that. But that would branch off. But Susan Akers, the treasurer, and I went to call on them. It came to my lot to talk to Alice B. Toklas and not Gertrude Stein. Gertrude was rather short and rather squat. She didn't look fat, just squat and wore a rather pretty embroidered jacket, a sweater jacket and a plain dark skirt. And there were various stipulations. She wouldn't talk before an audience of more than . . . I've forgotten whether it was two hundred or three hundred. So, we had it in Gerrard. And although that was the Depression, we could have sold any number of tickets. People from Duke, you know, and all around came, but we were limited to the amount.
How much did you charge?
Oh, I've forgotten. Two dollars may be perhaps less. That's the sort of
thing you don't remember. We made enough that was more than enough to
give our share to the scholarship fund.
Was that one of the other stipulations?
No. She just chose to do that. Although we hung on every word, I couldn't tell you one thing that she said. But I do know this, she hadn't been talking much more than half an hour, certainly no more than three-quarters, if that much and . . . do you know Gerrard Hall?
Yes, it's . . . .
It's got this gallery that goes around. And some one person in one of the galleries got up and went out. Miss Stein looked up, And very shortly after that, she brought her talk to an end. But then they adjourned to Graham Memorial and sat on the floor, the way that students still do and asked her questions. I didn't go over there, to the student thing, but I'm sure that she enjoyed that.
Well, I have a question about Frank Graham myself, and it's kind of long
and involved and this is one of the reasons that I was excited
No. Ruffin . . . I've heard about them, but that's all. I don't know anything about them.
O.K. Well, she was born and raised in Hillsborough and she died in 1881, she left a great deal of land to the University.
Now, what's her full name?
Mary Ruffin Smith. She never married.
Well, you know, there were two Smith Halls. One was left by a woman, it may have been here.
Well, there was another Mary Smith, it's not the same one.
Not the same one. Well, you know the Smith building?
Yes. Well, this is kind of tied in with that. In 1938, I believe it was, there was a young black woman named Pauli Murray who applied to the University of North Carolina. She wanted to come to law school. And the thing is, she was the great-grandchild of Mary Ruffin Smith's brother and she was kin to the white families in the area and in essence, it was her family's heritage that was left to the University. And she was not admitted. Do you remember hearing anything about that?
No, I'm sorry. I don't remember. I think that probably it happened before I . . . .
No, it happened in 1938 and the reason that I was curious was because she
wrote to the Tar Heel.
I'm sorry, I don't.
I am too. Now, did you work with Louis Round Wilson for many years?
Well, I was under him, of course, he was the head librarian. When I went there, what is now the music building was the Carnegie Library, which Dr. Wilson . . . well, it was through his efforts that the building was built. We stayed in there until '29, when the present library was built. Of course, I couldn't say that I saw a lot of him. I didn't. A Miss Nan Strudwick was my immediate boss in the library. I don't necessarily see that I should go into all that. I went there as a cataloger and before too long, he asked me, but he really told me, to take the order department. When I went there, there were very few on the staff. Miss Strudwick and Alma Stone in charge of periodicals and student assistants, boys, that was it. He was enlarging the staff and so, he gave me the order department and got more catalogers. So, he started me off on that. He didn't ever interfer in anything. You would go to him for something very important, perhaps, but he was a very busy man. He organized so many things besides the library. And then, in '36, I guess it was, he was called to Chicago to head that brand new graduate school and he couldn't afford to turn it down. They offered him not only a good salary, but a good retirement and he had a daughter who was mentally off, you know, and so he was glad to have that chance. And then he came back and lived in Chapel Hill, but he had no more administration of the library.
I know that I am skipping around a bit and I think that I am probably tiring you out, so let me just ask you a couple of more questions.
No, you go right ahead, it diverts me and is very interesting.
Now, when did Miss Berry . . . Martha Berry . . . .