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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-0066, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Louise Young was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1892 and grew up there with her seven siblings. The Young family highly valued education, and Louise and her brothers and sisters were all expected to attend college—Vanderbilt University for the boys, Vassar College for the girls. Young, however, attended Vanderbilt with her brothers. Vanderbilt had become a coeducational institution, although men still constituted a disproportionate majority of the student body. While at Vanderbilt, Young studied to become a teacher, graduating at the age of sixteen. She spent the next three years working towards her graduate degrees while studying on fellowship at the University of Wisconsin and Bryn Mawr College. While living in the North, Young became increasingly cognizant of her own lack of knowledge of the nature of race relations in the South and became determined to better understand and combat racial injustice. Having grown up in a Methodist home with relatively progressive racial politics, Young explains that her upbringing had led her to believe in the basic equality of all people, although she acknowledges that others with similar backgrounds did not share her progressive views on race at that time.
In 1919, Young accepted a position teaching at Paine College, an African American institution of higher learning, in Augusta, Georgia. She taught there for several years and describes what it was like to work with a predominantly African American faculty. In 1922, Young resigned from her post at Paine College and was hired as the Dean of Women at the Hampton Institute in Virginia, where she continued her work in African American education. She suggests that racial dynamics at Hampton Institute were different from those at Paine College because of the role of white educators from the North. Three years later, in 1925, Young was appointed director of the Department of Home Missions at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee. Young explains that her position essentially was geared towards facilitating race relations between students at Scarritt College and Fisk University in Nashville. In particular, she worked with white students at Scarritt who were commissioned by the church to draw in African American membership and to work within the community to promote better relationships between the races. Young held this position for more than thirty years—she discusses in great detail the role of women's church groups (especially in relationship to men's groups), dynamics between students at Scarritt and at Fisk, and efforts of the Home Missions Department to advocate for integration in Nashville. In addition, Young describes her involvement with women's groups, such as the YWCA and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, and her support of labor activism during the 1930s and 1940s, specifically as espoused by the Highland Folk School in Tennessee. Throughout the interview, Young consistently emphasizes themes of social justice in relationship to race, gender, and class.
Louise Young was an educated woman from Tennessee who spent most of her adult life working to promote better race relations in the South. Young describes her years teaching at African American institutions of higher education—Paine College and the Hampton Institute—during the 1910s and 1920s; her job as the director of the Department of Home Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, where she trained students at Scarritt College in race relations; her support of women's organizations, particularly the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching; and labor activism, as exemplified by the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
When they first came to Memphis they had a real nice grant for it. I don't know if it's finished or not. And my sister has a . . . ten o'clock every other Thursday, something like that. And, lets see, I forget the name, Ray Hill.
Is he still running things?
He still runs it and I've gone once or twice with her, but it's very interesting and I've tried my best to get something like that going here. I haven't had any luck. That's a wonderful paperback bookstore down there.
Well tell me first, where did you grow up.
I grew up in Memphis and very near where you went to college.
[Southwestern at Memph. I grew up on a farm on the corner of what was
then Springdale Avenue and the Old Morley Road. It became Springdale
Ave. and I believe they call it Jackson now. And Springdale Church,
Springdale Methodist Church was then a little country white—frame church
that my father and my grandfather helped to build way back soon after
the Civil War. And our farm home was right across the road. And the key
to the church always hung in our back hall. And one of the men who
worked on our farm cleaned it up. And my father or somebody lighted the
lamps at night and opened the doors and shut the door. And I was right
there. We were a big family, and we went to school in Memphis. We had to
walk from there up to where the sort of thruway goes through the park.
It was built for the streetcars you know. That was about half a mile I
suppose. And my father, there were eight of us, on the average of five
of us, going to school at a time and we
Were you Episcopalian?
No, Methodist, but St. Mary's at the time was the best college preparatory, and we were supposed to go to Vassar. My oldest sister went to Vassar, but the girls were supposed to go to Vassar and the boys to Vanderbilt. My grandfather had quite a part in the founding of Vanderbilt. My Methodist preacher grandfather. But his name was there is a cute story about it too. His name was William Crockett (W. C.) Johnson and this is a little picture of him. My sister . . . Vanderbilt is to soon celebrate its 100th anniversary.
What a wonderful picture.
And my grandfather grew up in East Tennessee and wanted to be a lawyer,
but he decided he'd better be a peacher instead. He was Presbyterian, I
think, in background. Anyway he read the Bible, the story goes, he read
the Bible through on his knees trying to decide whether to be a
Methodist or Presbyterian preacher and he came out a Methodist preacher.
And he worked very hard for the founding of Vanderbilt as central
university for all the Methodist small colleges in the South. And wrote
the charter for it and the plans for it and so forth. And then when it
come to Vanderbilt being into big money he proposed that it be
Vanderbilt University instead of Central Univ.
I was asked to look after a lady who was supposed to be quite lonely here, German born and so on. So I asked her and her son to come and have dinner with me. And as they came through that door, it was after dinner, I turned on the light and this was the first thing she saw. And she said, oh, Lincoln. My grandfather would have been shocked. He was a good old fellow, but it was the style that's all. So she said, oh, Abraham Lincoln. This shocked me. I hadn't noticed it. It was just my grandfather.
Where are the records that your sister wrote, or . . . are they published somewhere?
No, they're at Vanderbilt in the alumni office there to try to be used perhaps in the celebration of Vanderbilt's centennial which I think is '75.
Was he involved in when the Methodist back in, I guess 1916 or 1919?
When they so-called lost the college. No he had died by then, but I was at Vanderbilt. And when the time came my brothers were at Vanderbilt and so on. So we decided to skip Vassar. I went to Vanderbilt instead of to Vassar.
Why did you decide to do that?
Well, I don't know. You know we were a very united family. That's really
true. Things, decisions were sort of made in the
So I recall writing my aunt in deep distress, your Vassar niece. I was gonna stand by the old guns you know. But by the time my time came somehow or other I had shifted. I was right in front of my brother who was here and this sister was still here you see, so there were three of us here. Then they graduated. My younger brother. And so I was here with my brother.
It was co-educational?
Yes, it was coed then and there were not more than forty of us in college, altogether.
All the girls?
All the girls. There were some hundred boys I should guess, and only
forty girls. And there are various stories you will hear about that,
that girls had an awful hard time, so on and so forth. And certainly
boys in general you know sort of like to have their own boys college in
those days. But there were always quite a few boys that sort of liked to
hang around the girls, including the coeds you
A very good social life?
A very good social life.
Had your parents gone to Vanderbilt?
No, you see my grandfather was really one of the founders, so they were too old. No, my parents grew up in . . . during the Civil War and the hard times afterwards. My father was born in '52, and my mother in '59 so that they were children through the war.
Did they remember the war?
Yes. They told a lot of stories about it and I was brought up on good Civil War stories. And not a word about how hateful the Yankees were.
Oh really.
Did they call it the Civil War?
Yes, they called it the Civil War.
And not the war between the states?
Not the war between the states. And we did not belong to the Daughters of the Confederacy. My father felt the war was over. And we didn't need to keep on fighting it. But most of our friends and relatives were and we never heard an ugly word about it.
Had their parents slaves?
Yes indeed. And my father had a very nice story about Yankees, and this
is my favorite Civil War story, Father was a little boy and had his
pony. They had refugeed from Memphis because their house had
The soldier had torn down the fence for him to ride and he said, now
won't you give three cheers for the Union? And father said, no sir, but
I'll give three cheers for you. Now you see that's really as good a
story, with as little of North and South in it. All the soldiers that
passed through, Northern and Southern of course would steal. Not all of
them, but I mean every group that went by. They would have some folks
who would pick up fruit, you know, vegetables
What part of the South was this in?
This was in West Tennessee, Fayette County, and Hayward County. They're
adjoining. And I think
Did they talk about Reconstruction?
Yes. About how hard times were. Everything was gone and my grandmother was going down to Alabama where her kin people were, right after the war I think or possibly in the midst, in a carriage and it overturned, or she couldn't get across. Anyway, as she was trying to get down to Alabama to her people to get help, and so she turned around and went back. And she wrote a letter about it to her brother and never sent it to him. And it was found by my sister in her things, and she said, it was just too sad to send. And my sister almost tore it up, but I think it's still there. I've never seen it. But it was just tragedy itself. Everything gone and you couldn't even get to your brother, you know, who was down there who might have been able to help.
Do you have family papers?
Yes I have some, a few. I have some from that and I have a filing case
that I was able to get into my little kitchen and I've got one drawer
that's full of family stuff that I've never sorted out. But that was my
father's picture and my grandfather, my mother's
But I was going to tell you about my father. Then his father died and he
had to look after, as a young teenager, a late teenager, he was to look
after his mother and his young brother and young sister with nothing to
go on. Everything had disappeared one way and another. And so an old
friend lent him enough money to rent a farm on the edge of Memphis. And
father and an old Negro man who helped with it and so forth, but father
would take things to the market, to the wholesale market in Memphis. And
he, at one time, cut timber. There was a lot of wood fire burning done
you see. And in the long days he was able to take two loads of wood to
Memphis in one day. And the short days he couldn't do that, but he could
take the first load and come back and load the second load and get it
part of the way in and then make three loads in two days. And that was
the difference, my father used to tell us, between getting ahead and not
getting ahead. He was a very good story teller. But he would tell about
going to market and how there were a great many Italian farm market
people there. He would tell us about them. And how some of the people at
the market, after market time, at six or seven o'clock and they hadn't
had any breakfast, they would spend 50¢ for their breakfast. And father
would get 5¢, some big thing, I don't remember what he called it, and it
seemed so sad to me that I began to weep. Poor father so hungry and just
couldn't have anything but this 5¢ thing you know. And he at once
realized he'd made it too vivid. So he said, "why child that was nothing
to that. I knew it wouldn't last." And you see that really is the key to
a man with security in his background and in his constitution. And a man
with that security
So by the time you were growing up . . .
Well, we all of us got to college, several of us to graduate school, and two brothers went to Yale for law and so forth. And my father bought more land you see. And farmed it. Father used his head, so he kept records as few farmers did on each of his plots of land. How much fertilizer was put in it. And when he planted it, what the return was. So the next year he would check on that you see. He and my uncle, his younger brother farmed together. And uncle Will operated the farm and my father did the business end of selling and so forth, and then my father was the county tax assessor for Shelby County, the county in which Memphis is, for two terms I believe. And the extra money was important to get us ready for college and through college. And then for a time he was chairman of the . . . county chairman for the Democratic Party, so he had great interest in politics and religion and the church and so did my mother but their chief interest as I was thinking it through today really, was their big enterprise of keeping heads above water for a family with eight children. And getting us all educated.
My father said that if he had to choose between sending his sons to college and his daughters to college he would send his daughters.
Why?
Because his sons would have contacts that would give them a broad view of life without college, but his daughters would have a very narrow life if they didn't have a good education. Which I think was . . .
That was good. That's really something.
That's really something. He really believed that. If he had
So you went to Vanderbilt?
So I went to Vanderbilt and maybe the most interesting thing I did, I
belonged to Kappa Alpha Beta, and we were the oldest national
fraternity. And you see there were just two, Tri Delta and Kappa Alpha
Beta. And we had our chapter house which was half of a servant's house
for one of the professors on the campus. And we became very ambitious
and decided that we should have our own chapter houses as the men had
for their fraternities, though it was to be just a lodge, not a place to
live. So a friend of mine wrote up the letters for the alumni to send us
five dollars or ten dollars or some such monies. We bought the lot and
back where the Vanderbilt Theatre is now, and then were told that if we
owned our lot, by this time I was president of the chapter, we could get
it built for us with a mortgage on the land. So I went back to Memphis
with everything all in mind for summer before I was a senior. And lo
here came a letter from the contractor folks that, though that was
usually done that the record of the Vanderbilt men was so poor, the
Vanderbilt fraternities, in paying all these mortgages that they
wouldn't risk a fraternity with that sort of proposition. And we'd have
to put up some cash. So I was distressed and I just asked my father if
he wouldn't lend us the money. And mother didn't think that was very
good. Your father likes to have his own investments under his own eyes
to lend money for something in Nashville. But father thought it was a
very good idea, so he did lend us the money. And we built the house and
had it all ready for the Fall. And we
So what did you study. What did you have in mind to be?
I was gonna be a teacher because I so loved and admired the Episcopal nun
that was the principal of our . . . of St. Mary's in Memphis. Sister
Mary Moore. She later became the Reverend Mother. She was an
Englishwoman. Just lovely. So I wanted to have a private school of my
own, preparatory school for girls as much like St. Mary's as anything
could be, because I liked it so well. And I had gone to college at 16.
So it was agreed that, I mean I had finished college at 16, that I was
due from the family another graduate year you see. So I went to the
University of Wisconsin expecting to major in English. We hadn't really
majored at Vanderbilt in those terms. All of us had to have Latin and
Greek. But when I got there I hadn't had enough English to qualify for a
Masters Degree in English but I had had enough philosophy. So I shifted
to a major in Philosophy with a minor in English. Had a lovely time
there and to my amazement that Spring my professor asked me to wait
after class. And I was afraid he was going to tell me that I wasn't
doing very well. And he asked me if I would be interested in a
fellowship to Bryn Mawr? And I said, what is a fellowship? And when he
told me I said, well could I write home about it? So actually this first
fellowship, I had forgotten was a fellowship for Wisconsin for a second
year there. So I wrote home explaining it and it was very generous cash
as well as tuition. I knew it wasn't quite enough and I wrote my parents
about it. And they wired back congratulations. And certainly,
And the next year this gentleman, Mr. McGilrey of the Philosophy Department asked me the same question about going to Bryn Mawr. So I went to Bryn Mawr the following year and was supposed to go on and get my doctor's degree in philosophy at Wisconsin. And I was learning "Th eories of Consciousness" and "Recent Realism" and I think of such things. But by now this was 1917 and my brothers were officer's training camp, all three of them, on their way to France. I was in Bryn Mawr when the war started, for '16 and '17. And that Summers I was at Wisconsin writing on my thesis. And three of the boys were in officer's training camp, the summer of '17 you see, ready to go to France that fall, and coming home for a little while. So I ditched what I was doing and came home to see my brother. And meanwhile was signed up to be a Dean of Women at Hamlin. University in St. Paul.
So I went on as the Dean of Women . . .
Is that a girl's school?
That's a coed school.
In Minnesota?
In St. Paul, Minnesota. And I was, the girls told me, the youngest dean in captivity. I was one of the youngest deans in captivity. And my job was to keep them from just dying of homesickness and lonliness for their sweethearts who were in France. My brothers were in France. So we consoled each other. And I was dean there for two years. And . . . now you stop me when I'm talking too much. You know you can get anybody to talk about themselves, especially an older woman.
That's the idea.
That's very nice. A very nice idea. Well, at that time there were almost no Negroes in St. Paul. This was 1917, 1919 that I was there and but one very light colored woman came and gave me a shampoo in my own quarters there. And she was from Mound Bayou, Mississippi and she was lonely for the South and she and I would discuss southern problems everytime she came to wash my hair. And I think she said there were only twenty Negro families in St. Paul at that time. I don't think she really knew but there were very few anyway. So she kept alive my interest in the South. And she and other people there would ask me things I couldn't answer. I was ashamed of myself and thought I should know. So I decided that the way to learn was to teach in a Negro school in Memphis. Was going back home and teach in a Negro school. And my mother assured me that the Negro teachers, I mean the Negro schools were all taught by Negro teachers. There were no white teachers for Negro schools in Memphis. But she said, we, the Southern Methodist Church it was at that time, did have a so-called college for Negroes in Augusta, Georgia. And my mother really said I might look into it. And I did. And applied for a place and they had never had an application from St. Paul let alone from a southern white woman who had graduated from Vanderbilt and so on and so forth to come down to teach. So I went down there and most of my friends and family just threw up their hands. This was in 1919, this was really a disgraceful thing to do. One young man told me he would rather see me in the penitentiary, he'd rather see me in prisoner's garb than to see me go down there. That's how deeply people felt about that.
Did your family feel the same way?
My family, my brothers felt that way and my family thought it was just too too bad. My father had died while the boys were in France. Mother was very much shaken by his death, but they were all completely loyal to me though they thought I was just making a serious mistake. And my mother tried to tell me something about lynchings, so on and so forth.
You mean rape?
Rape and so forth. Why people were lynched. And I said, no they shouldn't be lynched. I didn't need to know why to know that they shouldn't be.
Why had she suggested that you look into . . . ?
Well I wonder, because she apparently . . . you see it was a church
enterprise and we were very devoted church people, and I suppose it's
like being your home missionary and if you're going to do anything like
that you'd rather do it under church auspices than the public school.
But it really was strange. It was quite inconsistent because I recall
that she pleaded with me. I used to say I wanted to be a lawyer with my
brothers, but we would have Young, Young, and Young for our firm. And
she said, wouldn't I like to go to Yale to study law and practice with
my brothers instead of going down to Augusta . . .
Why were you so determined to do that in the face of so much opposition?
Well I think for two reasons. I really think the first reason was that I
was asked so many questions about Negroes in the South
And you hadn't really thought about those problems before you had gone on to . . . ?
No I hadn't thought about them because things went very happily with all the Negroes that I knew on our place. My father was very liberal and the men who worked for him were very good workers. He always called them the men on the place. I don't ever remember . . . he once heard me or my brother, we were together, use the word nigger and he said to us, that word is never used on this place. So he was really a different, and why he was different I don't know. He just was smart and thoughtful, good intelligent man. And since he would send, he had this little controversy with my mother which I heard the story of several times, when our washing as we called it, not laundry, our washing was taken to Maggie down the road in the spring-wagon and Maggie's money went in an envelope . . .
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
That's amazing.
What was the name, Mrs. Maggie Taylor.
Mrs. Maggie Taylor. That's what he would call her.
Your father was more . . . he was more liberal than you mother was?
Yes, and you see father had knocked up as a young man, with really
nothing.He himself was well-born and well-bred but he had been thrown
with new Italian immigrants and poor people and knocked around in that
wholesale farm market in Memphis. And he really had seen all kinds of
people. And he had respect for them all. And he just was an independent
sort of man and just used his own head and came out at a sensible place
I would say. But my mother was
What time do you have to go to dinner?
I don't have to go to dinner until six o'clock.
You felt that if you were a southerner you should know . . . ?
I should know something about it don't you see, and I knew only the servants on our place and the workers on our place, but at that time Bob Church, a Negro of mixed blood was a great Republican leader, Negro Republican leader. And I recall my father saying, I'd heard about him. I'd never seen him. That he didn't see how anybody could fail to respect Bob TAylor when he'd done so much for his people. That was all that I can remember of Negro leadership. I recall my father saying that one time.
But the other thing was that our little church, Sunday school, and our
home and St. Mary's where the sisters were all you might say biblical
Christians in the best sense, not concerned so much about the second
coming in that sense, but very should I say, sound Christians. And it
was just no doubt, if you read the Bible, that all men were brothers.
And this carrying on of Negroes being so different just plain doesn't
fit the Bible. So that I thought of this when somebody over television
introducing a sermon I suppose, and describing Jesus' childhood, and
what he heard at the Synagogue, and what he heard
Other people in your family didn't draw the same conclusion from the same teaching?
No, no they didn't. No they didn't, and I don't know how that was, but that I think explains mine. And when I got down there, to Paine, right at once. I spent the first night in a hotel in Augusta and the president met me I suppose and was taking me out the next day.
What was his name?
Dr. Betts, a South Carolina man, and quite a missionary family. A lot of his children and kin . . .
He was white?
White? Un huh. There was a white president and a white vice-president and
then I. There was just the three of us and about fifteen or sixteen
Negro teachers. And he was taking me out to the campus and to the first
teacher's meeting. I was seeing it all. It was a . . . the school was
founded about the time that Vanderbilt was. There were magnolia trees
and an old brick house on the campus. But it was very sort of shabby. We
went to his office and it was a very small room, not any bigger than
this, and one corner of it was the bookstore. And his black secretary
was sitting in the chair there. She was black, overly plump, and not
very much in character for a secretary of the president of a college.
And he said, he introduced me to Miss Richardson. And it was the first
time I had met, face to
And I'll tell you that one of my students. He's Charles Gomillion, and he
went on and got his doctor's degree at the University of Ohio in
sociology and taught at Tuskegee and was dean there for awhile I think
and has just recently retired. But his big claim to fame was that when
the town of Tuskegee undertook to disfranchise the few Negroes who were
registered within the town of Tuskegee they wanted to perpetuate a mayor
and his crowd there, and say four-hundred Negroes who were within the
town limits and had
Zig-zags.
Zig-zags, but yet I think all but seventeen of the Negroes were put out. So he took the case to the court and lost and took it to the next court and lost and took it to the next court and lost and won it with the Supreme Court.
How do you spell his name?
Gomillion, Gomillion and the story was told in the New
Yorker in a series of three. It was written up as a paperback.
And the title of the book and of the case is Lightfoot
vs. Gomillion or Gomillion vs. Lightfoot, I forget. He was the mayor. But you know,
when you have a student who comes out like that you know . . . I was
having an awfully good time teaching. But the other part of it is that
in three years I was there, aside from the home in which I had a room,
and I won't tell you that story, I was invited to only one home in those
three years. And my family and friends and my uncle and so on wrote
various people there of my presence in the city and told me who they
were so I'd know when they came to see me. Not a solitary one of them
responded.
Did you live in a home in a white community?
I lived in a white home. That was my salvation. But aside from that I was
literally living in a Negro world. And my realization of it was that
when I was on the street, I caught myself in this, I would just realize
that there were white people passing. But if it was a Negro I would look
at him because I might know him. So I was
How did you feel about that?
I just had a wonderful time, because I enjoyed my teaching and several of my colleagues were very congenial. Of course there was . . . in the social life . . . it was spelled with a capital "s", there was none. But . . .
I guess the black teachers were very isolated themselves in the sense that they were isolated from the rest of the county, from probably black people who lived in the town.
Well I imagine . . . there were a fair number of them, you see, much more than there was white people, but I think that they had status and probably had contacts with folks there in the town of their status as they saw it, and also they weren't far away from home most of them I imagine. I imagine there were . . . they were around there. It was quite a status for the Negroes and the, just a mark of the town, the city itself had no high school for Negroes. So though it was called Paine College, it was mostly high school.
How old would the students be?
Well they would just be average age. I think we didn't have any
elementary classes, but the high school classes were just like any high
school and we had college. And I . . . my teaching, I taught English and
philosophy in the college. But our principal you would be interested to
know was a black man, with a Master's Degree from Clark University and
just out of the Army. This was 1919. And he later became Assistant
Superintendent of Schools in Washington, D. C. The ranking Negro you
see. He was very able and was conducting various psychological tests at
the time and liked to test me because
So I had an awfully good time really. And then I had my summer vacations.
And friends would come down for Christmas. We didn't have any holiday to
speak of at Christmastime, but friends, I had a Minnesota friend who
came down. She had never been South to Chicago. She got as far South as
Augusta, Georgia and she was all excited just as though she was
travelling in Zanzibar. So she and I over the long New Years weekend
took a trip to Charleston. I remember the thrill of that. She . . . her
first look at the South was of interest to me. And a Saturday afternoon
I recall as the train was pulling through these little towns on the way
to Charleston, Negroes would be at the station. And they really would
frighten even me because I had known Negroes all my life but not deep
South plantation Negroes, sort of undisciplined and unorganized, you
see, hanging around the railroad station Saturday afternoon. And they
were just as different from our Paine College students who were neat and
courteous, ambitious, well disciplined. In
But I was there until my brother's death, the brother who was nearest to me in age. Then I all of a sudden found I was isolated. I hadn't known it until. But I couldn't pull myself out of that and . . .
You started feeling very lonely?
Yes, I just was not . . . there was a little incident that told me so. I was down in an office building going to a doctor, and I found that I went up and down the elevator without getting off at the proper place and I had never done such a thing. It just meant that I really was allowing myself to be disoriented. So at once I resigned from my place there and said I knew I should get somewhere where I'd be more with people, but I wanted to work with Negroes. So I was referred to Will Alexander at the Inter-racial Commission for help.
How old were you?
Then, let's see, I had taught two years before I went off to college, so I was born and I'm going to be 80 next month. I was born in '92, and this was 19 . . . I left there in '22. So when I left there I was 30. And this Will Alexander found two places for me. One was, and this is very amusing, . . .
Did you go to Atlanta to his office?
No, I just wrote to him, and he was interested so, and he was awfully nice. So one was Birmingham Steel Company. I forget the long name of it, but they have their big works at Bessemer.
U. S. Pipe and Foundry?
No it's called Steel I think. I forget. It's a huge steel thing around Birmingham. And they had villages, company towns and I was asked to . . . I was suggested for, to be director of all the welfare work in these Negro villages.
The steel company welfare work?
The steel company's welfare work. Of course that was quite the pattern at
that time, see, this was the early twenties. So I went there and took a
look at that on my way home to Memphis. And the other thing was a
position here in Nashville in charge of the student work at Bethlehem Center, which you may have known. And the third was
Dean of Women at Hampton Institute. And I took a look at all three of
them and chose Hampton Institute. So I was there for three years as Dean
of Women. I don't know whether you know Hampton Institute. It's in
Norfolk, [Va.] you know, at Old Fort Comfort in the town of Hampton.
What was your impression when you went to Birmingham? I mean, in terms of, did you think that was not a good thing for a company to do?
Well I thought that I really wasn't qualified for it. I think that's mostly what I thought because it wasn't teaching. And it really was social work and I had no training in social work. And also it was administrative and it just . . . I had a very interesting visit and I don't think that I disapproved of it. I rather just felt that I wasn't . . . it wasn't my dish of tea.
And the thing here at Bethlehem Center, they had none
up here, but I was interested and that was quite challenging. But I was
to be
How long had she been director of the center?
She'd just come. She was brand new. And I would have been new.
Was the main thing that the Bethleham Center tried to do work with black people?
No. You see, this was for the Methodist Church too and it was a Negro
community center. And they hadn't known that I was leaving Paine
College. You see, when I was at Paine College I was under their
direction, under the direction of the Methodist church. And they liked
what I had done there so they said, why not come here. And if they had
known it in time they would have made me director. If they had offered
me that I don't know whether I would have taken it or not. But since
they had already engaged this other woman, all they could do was put the
student in. They knew she wasn't . . . she didn't have a college
education and knew she couldn't work for the Fisk students as they felt
she should
Was it her attitude toward black people that made you think you wouldn't be able to work with her?
No, I just felt that I knew more about it than she did. And yet that she,
very naturally, she was in command as she was. So that
So I took the Hampton position, then I left there three years later to come back to Scarritt College where I taught for 32 years. A gentleman who thought I was doing very wrong said I didn't seem to understand the social prestige that went with teaching at Hampton Institute. And I was able to tell him that it had no social prestige in this part of the country, teaching at Hampton Institute, a Negro college and it wasn't social prestige in any sense that had drawn me there. But I tell you that story because it really did have great social prestige in the North. It was founded by Congregationist, Boston folk for the most part, and General Armstrong was a great character and so on. There really were delightful Northern people there. Very well educated, it was very well endowed and it was beautifully equipped.
Were most of the teachers and administrators white?
Yes. There were white Northern people. I would tell them it was not Hampton Institute Virginia, it was Hampton Institute Massachusetts. And it very much was. And I was the only . . .
Abolitionist . . .
That's right. And the only other southern white person . . . I want to
make sure of this . . . the only other southern white person on the
faculty was a Quaker who taught weaving. She was from North Carolina.
She said, I've been waiting for you for twenty years. But she and I were
the only southern white people on the faculty. And of
The students were very much from the upper middleclass?
Yes, the students were very much like our Paine College students I'd say.
They were poor a lot of them but they were ambitious. I think that in my
experience the ambitious, well brought up, well behaved poor people are,
especially from the South, they have just as good manners and, I mean
there's no breach there. It's been poor people are not ambitious and are
not well brought up, and are not courteous. And I really think if you
want to say one good thing about the South you would say that the rule
of courtesy goes . . . used to anyway . . . almost all the way down.
However poor people are, they tend to be gentle and courteous to each
other and it's partly the rural of it maybe, I don't know what it is. So
that the only really strange group at Hampton of Negroes were the gullah
But now if you talk about isolation, they were just as isolated
We had, well for instance in our student series, that everybody has now,
the Don Shawn dancers came down and we had performances brought to the
campus like that. I remember that one because the nearby Langley Field
folks and
Black soldiers?
No, white soldiers. And they would want a segregated seating and we
wouldn't give it to them. So we finally learned . . . the story was that
the men would come over for the tickets, especially for the Don Shawn
dancers, that was one of our special popular features, and when they
found out that they couldn't have reserve seats just for white folks
they would go home without the tickets. And their wives would send them
back, if they had to see the Don Shawn dancers even if they had to see
them mixed. So they would come back and Mr.
What were people afraid would happen?
Well they were afraid that . . . I think he was afraid of two things. He really . . . you see it was not without risk to show white dancers to 750 black men. You see our students were . . . we had about 750 men and about 250 girls. There were about a 1000 students there. And I think he would have felt that to have this white troupe of dancers showing to a big group of Negro, young Negro men, had its risks maybe. And then anything ugly that happened even in terms of applause or lack of or excitement or anything would especially reflect on the general community and would get us in sort of bad with the Langley Field people and so on. And he of course was very anxious. The Don Shawn dancers were, I presume, at the very height of the theme and it was unusual for them to come down from New York just to play for us there. So he was greatly concerned for it to go well.
Was that particularly because of the white people who were in the audience?
I had thought so at first, but if you ask me about it, it might have been for the other reason. I had thought that he was taking care of them and of course they would have been very critical of such a stage show for a big group of Negroes.
Did you ever feel any uncomparable incidents happened as a white woman teaching in a black school?
Not at all. Never once.
People were probably afraid of that.
I suppose they were but I never had the slightest feeling of
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[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
. . . I wasn't very much on dancing and was very much amused when I . . . the distinction I drew, when is it round dancing, when is it square dancing and so forth, but I was the arbiter of when it's round and when it's square. And I can see those little girls now, those young girls bringing their escorts up to meet me. And their manners were just as delightful and, by the way, the girls glee club was entertaining the boys glee club and they came to me to get their date approved. And the good old northern strict folks had warned me that this was quite a question as to whether the girls glee club should entertain the boys glee club. And it seemed to me a very nice idea so the girls came in to me to talk about it. And being duly warned I said, what sort of party had you planned Phyllis? And she hesitated and then she looked up to me just sweet as sweet . . . and said, "an uplifting party."
So it really was. I went to the party and I assure you it was an uplifting party, just a lovely party. But the good manners of those young people, of course, let me see now, what made that trouble? Oh yes, I'll tell you.
One conflict we had there, the only conflict we had during my years
there, the girls waited on tables in the big student dining room, took
turns at it and were paid for it you know. And it was the days when your
waistline was . . . coming down here the style was to have . . . I
forget what we call them, just a long waistline to your hips you see.
And the aprons that the girls wore were all regular waistlines. And so
this little girl waited on tables in the student's dining room, put her
apron on in this stylish way. And theLassiter, the President, I
thought the students were going to bring this up. Miss Young they
thought you were going to bring it up. So I said, well, lets call the
student council back together tomorrow and I will bring it up.
So I put it all before them and said, now Miss Clark has been here a long
time. I've talked with her and I've talked with the girl and would you
really like me to dismiss Miss Clark? Do you think she should be
dismissed? She said she was sorry, and everybody is sorry, what would
you like me to do about it? What do you think I should do? And I said,
now I think this . . . some people would say this is just a
teacher-student mess, but I said, I think it has racial overtones and
everybody that comes here to Hampton knows they're coming to a mixed
Do you think the fact that they did respond so much was because there were other incidents going on and this just happened to be one that was very clear? Or do you think it was a really unique situation?
I really think that . . . people say now don't they that a teacher should
not put their hands on a pupil. That it's always subject to
misinterpretation as to whether . . . and I'm sure that the teacher was
annoyed and that she pushed, you see. And of course I'm not saying that
these . . . I think in that day and time anyway there was obliged to
have been race consciousness between the teachers and the students.
Especially since the teachers were northern teachers, and they really
came down much in a attitude of superiority. I mean they came from New
England to help the poor Negroes. And it was accepted as grateful
And it is very likely to be, I think, across sex lines as well as race lines. For instance the trouble here at Fisk and some trouble at Hampton I know was not to be too strict in restrictions on boys and girls. For instance at Hampton, a little later I think, about, or possibly while I was there, we . . . the question arose as to whether when you went to a movie you should have the lights on, or how dim they should be, under what balcony and all that sort of thing. Well now the students thought of that as a lack of confidence in their relationships with the girls. And similarly whether you should . . . how far you might walk home with the girls from classes and all that sort of thing. It was those disciplinary matters that these good old New Englanders had conflicts with in the twenties. Over at Fisk I know and at Hampton too. They had been too New England strict in their rules about the boys and girls and it was at that point that the rebellion came, I think.
So then you were . . . how did you happen to go to . . . ?
Well, Scarritt was being moved. It was a Southern Methodist Church and it
was being moved from Kansas City here and being related to both Peabody
and Vanderbilt. And they asked me to come because I was the only
Southern Methodist woman they knew that had had this experience. And I
was to be head of the Dept. of Home Missions which
Is that right?
Yes, it did at that time. I worked at Bethlehem Center for instance and I worked with the Negroes. Anyway, that was a part of it that they wanted to emphasize. And so they asked me to come down there.
What was the idea behind home missions? Was the idea to save the souls of blacks or of bringing black people into the church, or was it a more social service idea, or were the two combined? I mean was it more on one side or on the other?
Well the general church, as some people would say, the men, but the general church was, it was church extension almost wholly, to build another congregation.
Numbers?
Numbers yes, but for instance, you would build this congregation very possibly in the slums, or very possibly in a distant rural place or build it of Spanish speaking people, or something or other. It wasn't . . .
But it would be a congregation of the colored Methodist church or would it be a congregation of black people within the . . . ?
It would be a combination of . . . it would be a congregation, this was
aside from the blacks now, this would be a church that was needed for a
group that weren't able to supply it for themselves. And it would start
out maybe with 50 members and they couldn't support a preacher. They
couldn't put up a building. But if you could help them with it through
church extension funds, why it would, and make something pretty good
there, they would win other people. And this
Why was there that difference do you think, between the women's department and the church as a whole? Why were the women more sensitive to those kinds of needs?
Well I think that it's quite a natural, a southern woman, middle-class, we used to not want to be middle-class. We thought we were upper-class. But the . . . she was very much protected and her contacts were personal relationships. So that she was naturally sensitive. And she saw life personally and was sensitive to personal needs. Now the man on the other hand had to bring in the money and so forth, so he was exposed to much rougher tougher world. And when I asked an older woman one time why it was southern men let their wives do these things that were so outrage ous you know, like various race relations things. They said, "Let them child, why they're so proud of them they don't know what to do." She said, they're so glad that they can do things, the women can do things their husbands couldn't get away with.
And in your experience do you think women could get away with things men couldn't?
Yes. Here's a lawyer for instance. Now if he's too liberal, I expect he, or a businessman, or a banker, he's not safe.
He'll lose his business.
Yes, but here's his wife whose husband is going to support her and she is
just a little odd maybe or something like that. And she
Can you remember when that . . . the periods when that happened?
It was in 1910 in the Southern Methodist Church at the General Conference of 1910 that the Woman's Missionary Council, the Woman's Missionary Society was brought under the general Board of Missions. Before that they had been quite independent. And they thought it was going to be terrible. And it might have been . . .
The women were upset?
The women were very much against it because they thought it would lessen
their freedom to do these different things. But after a little while,
and maybe right away I don't know how long, it became purely a nominal
thing. And the men never tried to stop them. The women would do all
their business and put down all their monies they wanted to use for this
and so on, and then bring it to the general board of missions and it was
always confirmed without a penny difference made so that it was just a
matter of form when I knew the church best. But I know there have been
these upsets and there is one now in the Methodist church in general.
The women's division has been counted too free and there has been a
tousle over that and Thelma Stevens could tell you
much more than I could. That's where it is now, I don't know.
Can you remember any time in the past when there were the conflicts between the women's division and the general conference?
Between the general . . .
Between the Board of Missions and the Women's Council?
Well I think you saw it on the foreign field a little bit. The women managed their money very well, were good at raising money. And the women never, in the days that I knew, never went into debt. They always had a reserve. And the men were not as . . . didn't, weren't careful, weren't as careful with their finances. For example, they would want to build a hospital in the Congo. And the men and women were to bring, were to build it together. And the men were to put up $50,000 and the women were to put up $50,000.00. Well the time would come and the women would have their $50,000.00 and the men wouldn't. So they wanted the women to put up the whole $100,000.00 when they had this money in the bank. So you'd have trouble like that. And also, the women always supplied their workers in the Congo with their, what they call their, I don't remember, their little expense fund.
Stipend.
No, their salaries, the money they would run the business with. Well, I
don't know, run their automobiles with. They furnished them cars for
instance, gas, and all those sort of incidental expenses. And the men
didn't have such things. And the men's wives wouldn't have anything to
go on like that don't you see? So, in the Congo anyway, and I knew that
very well because I had a friend who was secretary for that, it was a
matter of money and the greater freedom that the women missionaries had
over the missionary wives. And when the men came home on furlough, when
the women came home on furlough, why they did what seemed best. Studied
or talked and so on. The men
Thelma Stevens, of course, was a student at Scarritt in my early teaching years.
So you came to Scarritt as head of the Home Mission Dept.
The Home Mission Dept. and the teachers, the Missionary Teachers at home of course had Peabody to go to. You know that Scarritt is located there. They could get their education courses over there. And their biblical courses were supplied of course, and I was to help them really in their race relations because in their attitudes towards Negroes and to prepare them for working with Negroes.
And how did you try to do that?
Well I came down and I stopped in New York and did a little library research. And in my first classes down here I . . . my first course was the Negro in America because I said, you couldn't study race relations where you're gonna try to relate white people that you knew something about to Negroes that you