[TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
PAMELA GRUNDY:
This is Pamela Grundy, and I'm here in Charlotte, North Carolina. I'm
interviewing Mr. Leroy Miller, and it is the eighth of June, 1998.
LEROY MILLER:
My name is Leroy Miller, but my friends and students call me Pop. I came
to Charlotte November 19, 1945, after spending four years in the
service. I started out as an industrial art teacher at West Charlotte
High School under the administration of C. L. Blake. I was an industrial
art teacher from 1945 until 1963. Prior to that time I had had the
opportunity to become a principal, but I refused it because it was going
to take me away from the kids. I continued to stay at West Charlotte and
in '63 blacks were determined to have assistant principals in all of the
black schools like they had in the white schools, but at that time Mr.
Blake wasn't particularly interested in an assistant principal. That's
what he said. He had had about fifteen or twenty people that Craig
Phillips had sent to him. Craig Phillips at that time was superintendent
of schools. I think it was Labor Day, 1963, we always had a teacher's
meeting on Labor Day and started school the day after. Dr. Phillips'
secretary called and said that Dr. Phillips would like to see me the
following morning in his office. So I went down to Dr. Phillips' office,
and when I went in there Dr. Self and Dr. Hanes and the other Dr. [John]
Phillips were all there. So when I walked in I said, "What did I do?" A
black man walking into an office with four white men. I said, "What did
I do?" They said, "You didn't do anything." Dr. Phillips said to me,
"Mr. Miller, I had lunch with Dr. Garinger one day last week, and he
said I've sent at least fifteen or twenty people out to Blake to
interview as assistant principal. He's turned all of them down. In
talking to Dr. Garinger, Dr. Garinger said to me," to
him, Dr. Phillips, "that the only person that Blake would be satisfied
with as assistant principal would be you." He said, "You know the city
and the NAACP, and all the blacks want an assistant out there, and we
want you as an assistant." I said to him, I wasn't surprised, but I
asked him, "Are you going to tell Mr. Blake that you appointed me
assistant principal?" Dr. Self said to Dr. Phillips, "No, Bob Hanes is
secondary superintendent. Let Bob call." I said, "No, don't you call
him. You wait and let me get back out there." So I came on back out to
the school. We were in teacher's meeting, orientation for the teachers.
I guess I got in there and sat down and the secretary said that Dr.
Hanes would like to talk him. I knew what it was. So he went in and
spoke to him and he came back out. He said, "I'd like to introduce you
to your new assistant principal." That's the way I got in
administration, but I got in administration because I was an industrial
art teacher. Being an industrial art teacher we worked ten months a
year. We worked two weeks before school and two weeks afterward. Mr.
Blake didn't have an assistant principal, but I would do all of my work,
and when he had to go to a meeting, he'd always say, "Look after
so-and-so." I'd look after it. When he'd start scheduling for the
opening of school and he had to go to a meeting, I'd mess around there
doing stuff working with him. That's the way I got into administration.
After getting into administration I worked with Mr. Blake. I was just as
happy as I could be with him.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
What were your duties as assistant principal?
LEROY MILLER:
You looked after the busses. You did all the dirty work, more or less.
Disciplined kids. Kept up with the teachers. In fact, working with Mr.
Blake you had lots of exposure to the different things that were taking
place. I did that until he retired. He retired, and then they had Dr.
Spencer Durant. He was named principal. I worked with
him for three years. I enjoyed working as assistant principal. Then Dr.
Durant left to become superintendent. When he left they sent another
person out there, and I worked with him for one year. Working with him
for one year I knew there had to be something better than working with
him. That was the first year of integration, and Ed Sanders was
associate superintendent. He was assigned to West Charlotte. He would
come out to the school to work with the principal, but the principal
assigned me to work with Ed Sanders, and we go to know each other. One
day we were downtown. He said to Dr. Self, "Bill, you've got a man here
that should be principal." About that time Dr. Hanes came in, so Bill
said, "Tell that to Dr. Hanes." He told Dr. Hanes the same thing. Dr.
Hanes said to him, he called the principal by name, "What's he going to
do if he moves up?" Ed Sanders said to him, "He's going to get off his
butt and do some work." It was like that. We had a meeting downtown all
of the assistant principals and principals one Saturday morning. I guess
it was in April. That was the year when they decided that if you had a
black principal they wanted a white assistant principal. When I walked
in down there Dr. Hanes was chairing the meeting. He said, "The two most
popular people we have in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are Pop Miller
and Charles McCullough." He proceeded to say then, "Pop, Harold wants
you at South. Bill wants you at North. T. C. wants you at West." He
said, "You don't have to give me an answer now. You can give me one
before you leave after the meeting's over." When the meeting was over I
started out. I was going toward the car. He said, "Pop, you didn't give
me an answer. Where do you want to go?" I said, "I ain't going no damn
where." I had made up my mind that I did not want to be an assistant.
I'm not prejudice, but I felt that I was just as competent as any of
those white principals were. I had to go to Penn State to get my
advanced degrees, and I felt that I was just as
competent as anybody they had in the system at that time.
But feeling that way, I had right at thirty years, I knew that I still
had three years of credit that I could get from the Army. I wasn't
worried. I kept walking. I guess about a week later I got a notice
saying that I'd been assigned as administrator for the displaced kids at
Harding High School for the summer. They had the regular summer school
at Garinger and Myers Park. They had about twelve hundred students that
had had problems during the school year. They had to provide summer
school for them, and they did that at Harding High School. Mr. Sanders
was in charge of the three administrators for the summer programs. So we
met with him, and he said he'd had another meeting that next Tuesday or
Thursday morning, and he would like us to bring a list of our
expectations and just how we proposed to run the summer school. That
following week I presented mine to him. He looked at it, he said, "
[unclear]
do you think you can do it?" I said, "I certainly do." When
summer school opened I had about twelve hundred students that were
supposed to be there. I think I had about a thousand and sixty that
showed up. We collected the money from them and deposited it into the
NCNB Bank. We would turn our deposit slips in to the education center on
Thursdays to Miss Betty Cunningham. He was Mr. Sanders' secretary. When
we would go down there and meet with him she would check everything out,
and she would tell Mr. Sanders whether or not everything was okay. We
went to the meeting and he said to me it was okay. I always felt that
students and teachers should be in class on time. I had a policy there
at Harding that if a student was late for class he had to pay five
dollars for being late and spend an hour after class. I'd sign the duty
roster for the different teachers to keep those students. I guess that
first week I had quite a few of them that were late. But they found out
that they were going to have to pay the five dollars.
When they paid the five dollars, Bessie Gleaves was the secretary, and I
turned it in just like I did the rest of the money. Ed Sanders said to
me, "If you're going to keep a teacher an hour after I think you should
pay that teacher." I guess after the second week I didn't have nobody
that was tardy. I think it was sometime during the third week the PTSA
board had been meeting out at Harding High School. They'd asked to have
a conference with me. I met with them. They'd been out there several
times and they were amazed at the way the school was being run. A lady
said to me, "You're the only person here." I said, "Yes." She said, "You
don't have an assistant?" I said, "No, I don't have an assistant." She
said, "Well, Dr. England and Mr. Lingerfelt say they don't have they
don't have any more than that during the regular school year. We've been
impressed." She wanted to know if she had permission to go down and ask
Dr. Hanes that I be principal of Harding High School. I said, "Yeah, you
have my permission." I thought it was a joke. She went down. A week or
so later Dr. Hanes' secretary called and said that he'd like to have
lunch. So I went down to his office on the day that I'd been invited to
have lunch. When I got there Joe Hunt was there. I said to him, "I'm the
only administrator out there. I don't ever like to leave school when
students are there." I said, "I'd like to take a rain check on this
lunch and get back to school before the students are dismissed because
the beginning of school and dismissal of school are the two most
vulnerable times of day for kids." He said, "Okay, well let's get to the
point. This is Joe Hunt. We're having problems over at Cochrane. He went
out and finished the year for Joe Davis," or somebody. He said, "I
promised him the first high school that came open. I said that I would
give it to him. The people down there have asked for you, and I'd like
for you to go to Cochrane." I looked at him, and I said to him, "Listen,
I haven't been around junior high school kids since
1954. I'm not too familiar with the curriculum. If you're going to send
me to a junior high school it seems to me you'd give me a smaller one,
and give a more experienced principal Cochrane." That year Cochrane was
the largest junior high school in the state. I knew that because I was
at West Charlotte and Cochrane was feeding into West Charlotte. Cochrane
at that time was all white, and the type of student we had from Cochrane
were some healthy students. I said, "I didn't say I didn't want to be
principal. I said I want to be a successful principal." I left and came
on back to school. His secretary called that Friday morning asking me
how did Carmel and Randolph sound. I said, "Either one of them would be
fine with me." That following Saturday I got a letter saying that I'd
been assigned to Carmel Junior High School. I didn't know where Carmel
was until that Sunday after church. My wife and I decided to drive out
and see where Carmel was. We went out there. That was the first year the
school had been open. Harold Deal had planned the school and had opened
the school. I went out there that Monday and Harold was out there. I
knew Harold. He was a fine young fellow. He was quite innovative. He
introduced me to the secretaries that were there. They had a secretary
and another lady there, then he left. He told me that he had set up a
meeting for me to meet the school committee and the PTSA board. I think
that was the following day sometime. He would introduce me to them.
After being introduced to the PTSA board, I'm trying to think of the
fellow. He was an editor of the Charlotte News, Darrel Sifford and his
wife. After he introduced me to the PTSA board and the school committee,
I think there was one black lady there, they began to quiz me about what
my philosophy was. They would ask a question, and I would answer it. I
didn't pay very much attention to it. I think that Friday afternoon
Darrrel called me. I said, "Yes, sir Mr. Sifford." He
said, "Call me Darrell." I said, "I'm not accustomed to that, but if
you're going to call me Pop I don't mind that." He said, "I'm going to
send my photographer out to make pictures of you because I want the kids
to know what their new principal looks like." But I had no idea that
during that meeting with the PTSA board and the school committee that
the questions that they asked me, they had the questions listed in the
paper and the answers that I'd given. I remember that Saturday I was out
working in the yard. When the paper came my wife came out there. She
said, "Miller, Miller." She always called me Miller. She said, "They've
got your picture on the front page of the second section. They've got
two pictures of you in the paper and the answers." That was the Saturday
before Labor Day. I guess I must have given some pretty good answers
because the teachers came in that Labor Day for orientation. I had
orientation in the library for the teachers. It looked like every other
one of them had a copy of that paper. I'd stated my philosophy. I think
that any success I had was due to that. I had one teacher, in fact she's
counselor out at Butler High School, and she said, "Mr. Miller this is
my third year as a teacher. My first year I had Mr. Byers at Ransom. My
second year I had Mr. Deal here. This year I have you. Am I going to
have a principal every year." I said, "No, you're not going to have one
every year." When the teachers came in I had a list of duties that I
wanted them to perform the first day, the second day. I'd listed the
things for the first ten days of school that I wanted to take place. My
philosophy has always been expectations are your seeds of success.
You're not going to get any more out of life than you expect. I remember
the first day a teacher said to me, "How do you think we can have an
assembly with over fourteen hundred students when last year we couldn't
have one with seven hundred students?" I explained to
them why. By the same token when I was at Carmel the previous year they
only had around six hundred students. That's the reason I didn't want to
go to Cochrane, and I'd selected Carmel. When I first went out there
August 1st there wasn't but about six hundred students. And I'd
scheduled all of them. My wife and I left and went on our vacation.
While I was on my vacation I got a call saying come back and come to the
Ed Center. Bill Anderson and Bo Davis were going to help me. I had to
select thirty-eight more teachers.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Wow. Good grief.
LEROY MILLER:
I came back and selected those teachers. They sent out thirty some
trailers at Carmel. I scheduled them.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Did you meet with all of them, with every student?
LEROY MILLER:
Yeah. I scheduled them. They wanted to know how are we going to have an
assembly with fourteen hundred student. So I told them. I recall the
first year of integration at West Charlotte. Prior to integration we'd
have a pep rally in the afternoon the last period of the day. When we
were all black, I'd say to the students, "Let's move quickly and quietly
to the gym," and then follow them down there because I was an assistant
principal. You never get to old to learn. That first pep rally we had
down at the gym was a learning experience for me.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
When you had the integrated school?
LEROY MILLER:
Yes. That was the first year of integration. I told them to move quickly
and quietly to the gym, when I got down there all the white students
were on one side of the gym and all of the black students were on the
other side. The white cheerleaders were over with the white students,
and the black cheerleaders were over with the black students. I suffered through that thirty to forty-five minutes, but
that didn't happen ever any more. From that time on I met with the
teachers and I'd say, "Now, we're going to have a pep rally, but I've
assigned places for each one of the classes." And I demanded that the
teachers would go down there and take those seats. In that way you had
true integration. I followed that same procedure up until I retired. Of
course, out at East Mecklenburg I got to the point where I didn't have
to worry about that because the kids knew what my feelings were, and I
had a good student congress. At Carmel I'd call the ninth graders to go
to the gym first. They sat on the top bleachers, then the eighth
graders, and then the seventh graders. Tom Harris and Mr. Porter and
Jane Scott, and I forget the other fellow's name on the school board,
they were out there for orientation. I had my minister out there to
pray, give the invocation. When we met down there in the gym, one old
boy lived over in Myers Park. He was a big old white boy, a ninth
grader. He was going to show off. He was in Mel Brown's class. He was in
ninth grade. We hadn't even gotten started. I said, "Mr. Brown, I
believe that's coming from your class." He said, "It is, Mr. Miller." I
said, "Identify him for me." I left the speaker's stand and started
down. He said, "He's up there." Mel asked him to come down. He wouldn't
come down.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
What had he been doing? Was he yelling?
LEROY MILLER:
He was going to heckle. I told Mel, "You need to heed him then." Mel got
up there and kind of gave him a shove. When he gave him a shove he was
coming down the bleachers and he fell right in my arms. When he fell in
my arms I just pushed him on out the door. I kind of talked to him out
there, and sent him to the office. I went back to the stage to start
over. About that time here come a black boy. I guess they were friends.
We did the same thing to him. I said, "Listen,
we're going to have this assembly, period." I said, "If you want the
same fate those two fellows got, you can get it because I'm not backing
up, period." About that time you could hear a pin drop on cotton. We had
a nice orientation program for the students. Miss Porter was president
of PTSA. I recall that after the program was over and I was dismissing
the kids, I walked up behind her and she was saying to Mr. Harris, a
member of the school board, "Thank God. You all sent us a man out here
this year." I didn't have any problems with the kids. I've got a gold
whistle back there that the PTSA gave me. I had a whistle. When I blew
my whistle the kids would get quiet. Kids learn to run before they learn
to walk. That's the same with a bunch of junior high school kids. When
the day was over they'd take off just running to the busses in the
afternoon. Just before the bell would ring for dismissal in the
afternoon, I said, "Listen. Nobody passes me going to the bus lot.
Nobody. If you pass me I'm going to sock it to you." So I'd just take my
time and walk out there, and they'd walk out behind me. The parents
thought it was the funniest thing. I said, "No, I don't allow them to
run." I think it was that October. Evelyn Crutchfield came out there. We
were supposed to be carrying on a self study. In fact, Harold was
supposed to start it the previous year. We had until that April to
conduct that self study and get the school accredited. I worked my fanny
off. I had some nice, young teachers. We all worked. The accreditation
team came in there. It just so happened that Jay Robinson was on that
team. He was superintendent in Concord, and there was another
superintendent from High Point. Then you had Dr. Durant. They came out
there. I think the funniest thing about it, the hostesses for the people
were students that were being punished. There are so many tools that you
can use in working with kids. That was during the time when kids were wearing jeans with patches in the wrong
places. There was a little girl, and I said, "You can come to school
tomorrow, but you'd better have a dress on, period." I'd have
conferences with their parents, and I'd tell their parents, "Yes, she
can come back tomorrow, but she must have a dress on." They had dresses
on and they reported to the office this morning. When they reported to
the office I assigned them to members of the committee. We were having a
general meeting and the superintendent of schools from High Point, North
Carolina, said to me, "Mr. Miller, in talking to my young lady here, my
escort, she tells me that she's being punished." The rest of them began
to ask theirs. They were amused that the kids were being punished. He
said, "You mean to tell me you'd take a chance and assign someone as a
punishment to be a guide? And they're still saying nice things about
you." I said, "Expectations are your seeds of success." I've never had a
kid to tell a lie on me. I always believe in kids. If I sent a kid home
for something, when the kid would come back, I'd say, "You say it to
your parents while they are here." And they would do that. We had a lot
of things that at West Charlotte that I don't think we got the credit
for.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
What were some of those things?
LEROY MILLER:
We had academic courses. When I got to East Mecklenburg we did the same
thing that I'd been doing over there. I'd say to the kids how many
Morehead scholars we needed, how many Angier B. Duke scholars we needed.
I'd say to them just what my expectations were during orientation of the
sophomore class. I think I was at East ten years, and after ten years
I'm sure we had a Morehead scholar just about every year that I was
there. I remember one year because they just dedicated a building over
there. I remember Billie Branner and Elizabeth Coby. I think it was the
class of '78. That was the year I was thinking very
heavily about retiring. That's the year I had two Morehead scholars.
We'd won the state championship in football. We'd run up in soccer. It
was a good year. I said "I'm going to quit now while I'm ahead." But I
said, "Stay another year." I stayed out there ten years. I regret that I
didn't leave early because we had eleven good years of retirement prior
to my wife's passing. I think about it now. In fact, last night I was
talking to my son. He was saying to me, "Daddy, when are you going to
move out here?" I'm going back out there in July, but all of my friends
and things are here.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Where's your son?
LEROY MILLER:
He's in Kansas City, Missouri. I've got two fine grandsons there. In
fact the oldest one was saying to me last night when I was talking to
him, "Guess what? I went to work with daddy Friday. Daddy's co-worker
called me little Will. And guess what? My daddy said that's the same
thing that your mamma used to call him." Those are pictures of them.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
You were starting to tell me about Barbara Ledford.
LEROY MILLER:
I didn't ask to go to East Mecklenburg. I'd been assigned to Carmel
Junior High School, and that year-and-a-half I was out there I enjoyed
it. Darrell Sifford and his wife were president of PTSA. On Thursdays
and Fridays, one Thursday it would be a riot at South Mecklenburg, and
the next one it was a riot to Myers Park. I called Darrell. I said, "Mr.
Sifford, this is Pop Miller. When I met with PTSA board I said to you I
was going to give you 110 percent. I'm giving you more than 110 percent.
It pisses me off. Every time you have a riot at Myers Park the parents
come here picking up the sisters and brothers of those kids that are in
attendance at those schools, and it's disrupting my whole academic program." He said, "Cool it, Pop. Cool it. I'll see
what we can do. I've got a scanner." That following Thursday there was a
riot at Myers Park. I never will forget that. I was out in the trailers.
When I came out I came around the side, and I guess I saw about fifteen
or twenty whites out there. It was Darrel and his wife. As the people
were coming up he was stopping them. He said, "Now, education is taking
place. Let's don't disturb these kids." He said that to the parents. As
the parents would come up he had them out there stopping other parents.
And they stopped that. They said, "The man is trying to do a good job."
He had his photographer come out, and take pictures of the students at
Carmel, and take pictures of the riots that were being held at the other
schools. From that time on they found out
[unclear]
they had good order and education at Carmel Junior High School.
They were having problems at East Mecklenburg. I think Brumit Delaine
came out and said, "Pop, I was told to tell you to apply for East
Mecklenburg." I wouldn't apply for nothing. Waddell and John Phillips
came out and said, "Did you apply for superintendent?" I said, "You can
do anything you want. When I was in high school I wasn't getting enough.
I'm out here, and I'm satisfied. I ain't going no where." Then they had
a committee, I think it was Gwenn Cunningham, Harold Deal, Sam Haywood
and myself. We were supposed to be interviewing people for the
principalship of East Mecklenburg. That afternoon we met in Dr. Jones'
office, in his conference room. He sat beside me. He grabbed me by the
knee. He said, "Pop, so-and-so said you said so-and-so." Well, he was
telling the truth because I said they could go to hell. I wasn't
interested in going to East Mecklenburg. He said, "Did you say all those
things?" And so I looked at him. I was being corny, and I said, "Did you
hear me say those things?" He said, "The second item on the agenda, who
do you recommend for your replacement at Carmel?" I
said, "I'm not going anywhere." He said, "Nobody is larger than the
system. It's the belief that you're the only one that can save East
Mecklenburg. It's as simple as that." So I said to him, "I'm not going
any place until I talk to my wife." So he sent for my wife, and she came
down to the office. We were in the conference room, but when she came to
the office we went into his office and sat down. We talked for almost
forty-five minutes or an hour. I guess it was in November. She said,
"The people at Carmel have been real nice to you." And they were. We'd
been to Houston to receive the accreditation. The school board sent me,
but the PTSA sent my wife along with me. And she thought—.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
LEROY MILLER:
[unclear]
semester. I say I owe it to the parents and students. I can't
leave them in the middle of a semester. They accepted it. I said I don't
want it announced. Please don't announce it, because I'll lose control
of the students. They agreed, so over the Thanksgiving holidays and the
Christmas holidays, when the semester was over they announced it, during
the time of class examinations, that I was the new principal at East
Mecklenburg. I went out there. They wouldn't let me take my secretary.
Back then they wouldn't let you take nothing. You had to start from
scratch. It's not like it is now. I had a curriculum coordinator when I
was at Carmel. I started the curriculum coordinator position. It didn't
exist. That was my request. I think they still have them in all of the
secondary schools now. When I went there I said I'll take mine. They
said, "No, we aren't going to let you take her." Ann Wilson was my
curriculum coordinator. I wanted to take Ann. They said no, I had to
select one from the staff. I had ten days to select that person, and when you've got 160 teachers and about 2,600
students at a place it's a job. I went around. I was watching them. Of
course, being black, I wanted a white. I was looking that all the way. I
didn't ever look black, because being black I wasn't being prejudice,
but I wasn't going to get no black curriculum coordinator. Not back
then. I narrowed it down. I had two people in mind. I didn't know either
one of them. I didn't know Barbara Ledford and I didn't know Diana
Bagwell, but I'd narrowed it down to those two. After narrowing it down
I told John Smith. He sat down and got the personnel files for both of
them. Diana Bagwell, that was about her second or third year, but
Barbara Ledford had more experience, she was just a model of energy. I'd
been watching her, and I called her in. I told her what I was thinking.
I grew up in Salisbury. As a boy my mother always said, "It's bad luck
to look at a white woman." That was instilled in me as a child. Back
then they were lynching black men. I said to Barbara, "I know you must
think I'm a dirty old black man, but I'm looking for a curriculum
coordinator, and I've decided that that person is you." She said, "What
are the duties?" I said, "Before I say anything to you, I'd like for you
to talk to Ann Wilson. Miss Wilson was my curriculum coordinator at
Carmel. She did one hell of a job. I'm going to have a sub come in your
place and let you go talk to Miss Wilson." So she talked to Ann
Wilson.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Is she white, too, Ann Wilson?
LEROY MILLER:
Yes. Back then you couldn't take secretaries and curriculum coordinators
and things like they're allowing them to do now. Barbara talked to Ann,
and then she came back. I gave her all the exposure that I knew how. She
came through with flying colors because she'd come in and say something,
and I'd say, "You can't do that. What about
so-and-so." I threw her to the wolves, and I threw her there gradually.
I didn't throw her there all at once. She'd always come out shining at
whatever task I gave her. I needed an assistant principal. I said to
John Phillips and them, "Listen, I've got one male assistant principal.
I need a female assistant principal that can go into the girl's bathroom
like me and the other one can go into the boy's bathroom." I knew as far
as curriculum was concerned Barbara was tops. But now that I needed an
assistant principal I needed somebody to go into those girl's bathrooms
besides the maids. Maids would go in there but they had no authority.
Barbara accepted the job as assistant principal. We'd get to school at
the same time and go in there and inspect the bathrooms. We'd get there
about six o'clock and go in the girl's bathroom and the boys. Barbara
would say, "Oh." She got on the intercom and said, "In inspecting the
plant this morning ladies, if I can call you ladies, when I go in the
boy's bathroom they are so nice and clean. No writing, no nothing. But
when I go into so-and-so, she gave a
[unclear]
." She said, "We're going to be ladies. We're not going to let
the men do so-and-so." She did a heck of a job. Of course Barbara could
have been principal that next year, but I could never get Barbara to
leave. She stayed there. I know Dr. Carlin. I'd say, "She's just as
ready as
[unclear]
." She'd say, "I'm not going to leave until you leave." I said to
Barbara, "Miss Ledford, I've worked under three principals. The first
two were nice. I would have been satisfied to retire under either one of
those, but that last one, I didn't enjoy working for him." I left there
in '83 and I think in '84 she was the principal, because I recall she
came over here one day about one o'clock. School wasn't out. She was so
upset. She said, "You know what we did for ten years? This so-and-so
says we can't do so-and-so." I see all of these guns and all of this
crap that they're having in schools. Once you get kids involved in
disciplining themselves, I think that's the answer.
When I went to East Mecklenburg we had a committee of students, a
student congress, and the president of the student congress came in and
said to me, "Mr. Miller we're talking now. The student congress says
we'd like to have a break during the morning." And I said to him, "Yeah.
I'll give you a break if you'll govern yourself, but I'm not going to
ask the teachers to govern you twice a day. I've got teachers that are
on duty during the lunch period at twelve o'clock. I'll give you a
fifteen minute break after the second period class in the morning if
that's what you want, but you're going to have to do it yourself. I'll
see Miss Feeney in the library, and she'll provide snacks for you at
that time." They agreed. I remember one day at the break I called the
president of the student body in and I said, "You go in the cafeteria.
If you're going to leave it like that you're not accepting your
responsibility." He said, "Can I use your intercom" I said, "Yeah, you
have my permission to use it." He got on the intercom, and he said, "If
the cafeteria is left like it was left this morning again, I'm asking
Mr. Miller to take the break away from us." I think he spoke to them
maybe once or twice during the year. Students can govern themselves if
they want something. And the same thing with pep rallies. We were having
a pep rally. I was down at the gym. When I looked up half the downtown
office had come down to the gym, because they'd called up school and
wanted to speak to me, and Miss Litaker told them, "Mr. Miller is down
at the gym having a pep rally." They were scared. They thought the kids
were going to riot. When they came out there they were standing around
the wall looking, and I was standing in the door. They came to me, and I
said, "Everything is all right." They stood there and watched. I guess
it was about ten minutes to eleven, I'd said to the president of the
student body, "You're responsible for everything up until such-and-such
a time. At that time, you give it back to me."
He watched the time very religiously. He said, "At this time I'm going
to turn it over to Pop. Let's give Pop a hand." And the kids yelled. I
told them, "You leave here." I told them where to go. I gave them
instructions, and they left. We had football games, and after every home
game they wanted to have a dance. We'd have a dance. I'd say to the
parents, "Listen, we'll have a dance after the game, but everything will
be over at twelve o'clock. Nothing will go beyond twelve o'clock." I
think we had one incident. We had a couple of kids from one of the
private schools. They started some stuff. The two assistant principals
were inside. I'd always leave them inside the building along with a
policeman, and I'd stay on the outside with a policeman because when you
allow kids to come and park on the campus, and sit out in cars, and
drink beer and do stuff like that, you're asking for trouble. I'd always
take a policeman and patrol the campus. I had my spotlight. I've still
got it out there. If I'd catch them in the car and they had something to
drink, I'd pull it out and send them home. I remember that night a boy
from Country Day was there. He started some stuff. Before the police
could get to him the kids had him and carried him in the office. I went
in the office and called his parents. I told them, "You can come and get
him, but the next time I'm going to put him in jail. We don't tolerate
that foolishness." My high school days were the happiest days of my
life.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Was this in Salisbury?
LEROY MILLER:
Yeah. I had a mother. I had a father. I was happy. I didn't have a care
in the world. I always wanted the same thing for all of the students.
High school is the time when you start looking at girls. You start
dancing and doing the things that you enjoy out of
life. I think you prepare for life. I think every youngster should have
that experience. I really enjoyed it.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
What else did you like about high school?
LEROY MILLER:
Oh, there's never a dull moment. Kids keep you on your toes all the
time. I got the surprise of my life. I think it was the 26th of April
when they invited me over to East Mecklenburg High School. You didn't
know this.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Wow, look at that.
LEROY MILLER:
This really surprised me.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Look at that.
LEROY MILLER:
This little fellow right here, he spoke. That's George Miller. When he
came to East Mecklenburg as a tenth grader I made him take the SAT after
his first semester as a sophomore. I think he did about a thousand and
sixty or a thousand and something. I said, "You want to know what? I
don't want you going through high school waiting until you're a senior,"
like it was when I first got there. You had a man who was waiting until
his senior year to take the SAT. I said, "You can take the SAT as
sophomores." When he spoke at that dedication I told him when I die, I
want him to speak at my funeral. They said so many nice things. It was
real nice.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
You're talked quite a bit about there being riots, which I gather that
there was a period of time at the beginning of integration where there
were a lot of disturbances at different high schools.
LEROY MILLER:
Yeah.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Why did that happen do you think? What caused those?
LEROY MILLER:
When they first integrated schools you had Dr. Garinger. E. H. Garinger
laid the foundation for the school system as we know it now. Had it not
been for Dr. Garinger, we'd be in the same predicament that they're in
in Virginia now. Before integration we had consolidation. We had a city
system and a county system. Had we not had consolidation you'd have a
city system that would be 99 percent black right now and a county system
that would be 99 percent white. But you had people like Dr. Garinger. He
saw it coming. Dr. Garinger had a group of blacks. Had they listened to
Dr. Garinger we never would have had a lot of that stuff. You had a
group that were picking blacks to go to white schools, freedom of
choice. The kids that went to Central, those that went to Harding, and
those that went to AD, the blacks, they'd been selected. The principal
of Harding High School, old man Hawkins, I don't know whether he was a
racist or what, but when the little black girl went there he didn't come
out and meet her or take her in school or do anything. He let the kids
spit on her and do all that stuff. But when Gus went to Central and the
whites attempted to turn him back, Ed Sanders went out and met him, and
told them he wasn't going to have none of that hanky-panky. But the same
wasn't true down there. When they spit on her and did all those things
to her down there, then you had radical whites and you had some radical
blacks. That's when the blacks took over. They said we weren't going to
stand for that. They'd go to places. That's where a lot of that stuff
started. Of course when I went to East Mecklenburg they'd been rioting.
When I got out there I found out it wasn't racial, though. When I went
to East they'd been rioting, and coming downtown and doing all of that
stuff. I remember one morning I got down there by the soccer field, I
guess it was about thirty-five or forty whites and eight or ten blacks.
They were fixing to start something, and I said to them, "I'm going to give you thirty seconds to get in class. If
you're not in class I'm going to have you put in jail." I called for
security, and all of them went to class except about six whites and two
blacks. I carried them in the office. I was going to put them in jail.
The superintendent came out. We sat down in the office. I guess that was
about 7:30 and that was about 1:00 or 2:00 that day, and I found out it
wasn't a racial thing. You had some whites that were bringing drugs to
the campus
[unclear]
. You had these black boys that were smart enough to know that
they could rip them off and nothing was going to be done about it. They
were not only taking the drugs but they were taking the money.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Good heavens.
LEROY MILLER:
They were being ripped off. Once that stopped I didn't have any
problems.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
So things had been blamed on racial things that weren't necessarily
related to them.
LEROY MILLER:
Yeah, at least that. They were blaming it on racial things. It's just
like it is now. Those people that are involved in drugs, you've got some
that know they can go in there and rip them off and nothing is going to
be said about it. Of course now those that are being ripped off, they'll
come back and shoot you.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Violence, yeah. Do you think at that time there were principals who were
afraid to discipline in schools?
LEROY MILLER:
Well, the thing about it, if you're a black person you had to know how
to get along with a white person. Blacks have always had to get along
with whites since slavery. But it wasn't true of whites. The only blacks
that some of the white principals had ever associated with were maybe
their gardener or cook or somebody like that. They'd never had to
associate with any blacks. I can recall when Dr. Garinger was the superintendent. We attempted to integrate the
faculties when you had the freedom of choice. When I first came to
Charlotte the superintendents used to meet with the blacks on one
Saturday morning and the whites on another Saturday morning. Then they
started having one meeting, and instead of having a black English group
and a white one it was all English teachers and all industrial arts
teachers. You'd be surprised. That was something that was hard to come
by.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
The white teachers didn't want to meet with the black teachers?
LEROY MILLER:
No. They were resentful. I think it was just both of them. They were
just resentful. You had some that didn't matter. I know the first two
white teachers we had at West Charlotte, had one in Social Studies by
the name of Ann Fiber and another white teacher in English Anna Wiles,
that was the freedom of choice. Ann Fiber she finished the University of
Mississippi, and she came to West Charlotte when they said you had to
integrate schools and sixty percent of your teachers had to be white and
forty percent had to be black. I think it hurt Ann worse than anybody
else. It was funny. When she was there by herself she was a little white
princess, so to speak. But when other whites came there it sort of stole
her thunder. I learned, now this is the God's truth. One was a blond and
the other one was a brunette. I remember I used to hand deliver the
checks to the teachers on pay day. I'd go to Ann Fiber and I'd give her
Miss Wiles' check. She said, "Oh, this is Ann Fiber." Until that time
I'd never looked at a white woman, period. I guess about the second or
third month Miss Fiber stopped me. She said, "Mr. Miller, if I can take
the time to know that there's a difference between blacks, seemingly you
can do likewise. Look, I'm a blond. Anna Wiles is a brunette. Her hair
is almost as black as your hair." I said, "Thank you," and I moved on
out. I started looking at hair then. I said you can
tell them by the hair. You can tell them by the eyes, but I'd never paid
that much attention to white, period.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Really.
LEROY MILLER:
No. I can recall Miss Ledford, she was my curriculum coordinator. Back
when they had the gas shortage we had a curriculum meeting over at
Garinger High School. I went out to get in my car and she was out there.
I said, "No, you aren't going to ride with me." She said, "I don't have
any gas. I don't have gas enough to get home." I didn't want a rider,
not in my car. I didn't want to ride no white. When I was at West
Charlotte I used to police the campus, to look, because kids would sneak
off from school. The same thing was true when I went to Carmel. I
remember that first year down at Carmel I had some girls and boys that
had sneaked off the campus. They were going down Carmel Road. I went
down there chasing them. These cars that were coming up from South
Carolina, I was chasing little white girls running, them cars slowing
down. I happened to think, "Man, some of these fools out here there's no
telling what they'd do." So I came back to the campus and I got Mayor
Brown and Sue. I said, "Listen, let's go get them." I made sure that I
was going to protect myself. I remember Barbara. She said, "Mr. Miller,
everybody knows that you're the principal and I'm the curriculum
coordinator. So she got in. I had a little old Mustang. She got in the
car and we went over to Garinger High School from East Mecklenburg. On
the way back I said, "Miss Ledford, I wish you would sit up straight in
your seat." She was turned sideways, and she was talking. I said, "Just
sit straight." There was one of those BFI trucks behind us. I saw the
fellow when he passed us. As he passed us he was white and he decided he
was going to slow down and see what that white woman was doing in that
car with that black man. So he let us pass him.
Then he got right behind us. When we go to Independence and Hawthorne
there was an ambulance going down Hawthorne Lane. The red light was on,
and I was in front of that BFI truck. I had to stop even though I had
the light. It was on green, and when I stopped that BFI truck ran right
into the back of me. It knocked me over on the corner. I got on the
corner, and the ambulance stopped to see if we were hurt, and then
proceeded. The police came. That old fellow that was driving the
ambulance told the police, "That nigger had that white woman over
there." I'd gone over on the corner. I heard him. He said, "That nigger
over there he had that little white woman over there." The policeman sat
there. He said, "That's Mr. Miller. He's principal at East Mecklenburg."
It just so happened that the officers that came out there had been one
that worked at some of our games. He came over. I said, "I stopped for
the ambulance. He ran into the back of me and knocked me over there."
The driver was over there telling George Powell. George was in charge of
PE for the school system. He had been at the same meeting we had been
at. He was telling George, "That man over there had that white woman."
George said, "We've got to take care of that pink half-wit." Made a joke
out of it. I said to Barbara after, "I told you. My mamma always told me
white women were bad luck." She was the first one that ever rode in a
car with me. She was a nice young lady. I knew her mother and her
husband, Buster. They were nice. She was just like a daughter of mine.
Smart young lady.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
You said you grew up in this world where you didn't have much contact
with whites, and especially not with women. What did you think about the
idea of integration when the Brown decision first came out and when they
started doing it.
LEROY MILLER:
I went to North Carolina A & T. From North Carolina A &
T I went in the service during World War II. I went in the service in
'42. You had all black outfits and all white outfits. It was like that.
I was black, and we started off at Fort
[unclear]
, Virginia, in an anti-aircraft outfit. Then from there we went
down to Hampstead, Georgia in an artillery outfit. Then the sent us
overseas. I guess we were a group of black bastards so to speak. They
didn't know what they wanted to do with us. We were an all black outfit.
The battalion commander and the company commander were white. We had two
black officers. We went overseas in the
[unclear]
area where they made us a tucking outfit called the Red Ball
Express. We drove those trucks from the Cherbourg Peninsula all the way
to the North Sea, all over France and Germany and Holland. Kept the
troops supplied. I learned. Up until B. O. Davis and Eisenhower, they
were the ones. The came over there and they integrated the outfits. But
even after integration, Old Hickory Division out of North Carolina,
Tennessee, and South Carolina. I remember when Paris fell. We went to
Fontainebleu. On the way back they let us come through Paris because it
had fallen. I wanted to see the Arch d'Triumph and the Eiffel Tower, and
the Rue Royale, and all those places. We stopped. They were celebrating.
They were having a good time. I think I had thirty-two trucks there. I
had a buck sergeant. Sergeant Thorn. He was from Philadelphia. He came
back to us. He was crying. Some of the fellows from that Old Hickory
Division had him buck dancing, some of the white soldiers. He was real
upset about it. At times we had to fight them just like we did the
Germans. I learned to get along with them.
[unclear]
to the 320th Field Artillery, B Battery, 82nd, during the Battle
of the Bulge. We had about thirty trucks. We carried the 82nd up to
relieve the 101st flank. I'm trying to think of the name of the place.
I've forgotten it. We flanked the Germans because
they had surrounded the 101st. I found out then going around to white
soldiers and black soldiers. There was a distinct difference. We had all
white officers. You could put up artillery with
[unclear]
. That was frightening to the white soldiers, but it didn't
bother blacks. But a sniper would demoralize a group of blacks, and it
didn't bother the whites. We had white soldiers, but we had been trained
to seek and destroy. Once we got with those white soldiers, I guess they
had been trained to seek and destroy, but they destroyed. They didn't
seek nothing. If we'd come into
[unclear]
, if there was a sniper here, we'd destroy everything in sight or
hearing. That was the only difference I saw. When you associated with
them you did the same things they did. Let me, I'm cooking.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Oh, sure. [Recorder is turned off and then back
on]
PAMELA GRUNDY:
In 1954 when the Supreme Court had their decision, Brown v. Board of
Education, did you think the schools should be integrated? Did you think
that that was an important thing?
LEROY MILLER:
Yeah. I thought it was important. Prior to then, blacks, I couldn't go
to Carolina. I couldn't go to Duke. I couldn't go to Wake Forest. But I
came out of service in 1945, and I started work then. I could go to NYU,
Columbia, Penn State, Minnesota. Those were some of the schools that I
could attend. I went to Penn State. I'd go there in the summer. When you
go to Penn State and when you come back, well up there they had book
fairs, they had everything. At West Charlotte we knew that it didn't
take no scientist to tell you that those books that we had were old. In
fact, the names of some of them, you'd see Harding High School and
Central High School. If you'd gone to summer school we had mimeograph
machines and we used to mimeograph most of the stuff for the kids in order that they would be current. Most of the
black teachers, if they didn't have a master's they were working on it.
I couldn't go to any of the schools in North Carolina, but the state
would pay my tuition to go to any school that I wanted to. They would
reimburse you. Being reimbursed, you'd get up off your duff and just go
to school. That's why we stayed current with most of the things. We
weren't satisfied. You knew what was taking place at good schools. At
Penn State we'd go out to the high school and see all the nice things
that those kids had. They were all white. I remember in 1950 when East
Mecklenburg was built. I was at West Charlotte, but West Charlotte at
that time was down there where Northwest is. It was just a little place.
They built East Mecklenburg. It was the first consolidated high school
in North Carolina.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
LEROY MILLER:
Myers Park was supposed to have been the answer to East Mecklenburg,
because at that time you had the city and the county system. Then in '54
they built West Charlotte, and West Charlotte was the answer to those
two schools for the blacks. It was an award winning school. This guy
from the news, Rand Norton. I guess Rand is about ninety years old now.
He was a good old Kiwanian. He came out and did a story on this fine
high school for blacks, so to speak. We had J. D. Morgan. He was
assistant superintendent for the county. Dr. Garinger, and I can't think
of the associate superintendent we had for the city school system, but
J. D. Morgan had gotten this black reading specialist for the county.
Her name was Miss White, and Dr. Garinger had gotten this Miss Stiles as
a specialist for the blacks in the city to correspond to what they had
in the white schools. Prior to integration there was maybe a year's
difference in the blacks and the whites, but then
after integration things went the other way. A good example, prior to
integration we didn't have a smoking place for blacks. We didn't provide
that in the black schools. We knew that we had some kids that smoked,
and we had some teachers that smoked. There was a rule. When we were
down where Northwest is, if you smoked we'd come out on the street and
smoke. But then when they integrated the school at West Charlotte, and
we had to designate a smoking area, you'd see all of them little white
kids. They had been smoking. You'd see them little black kids come out
there and try to smoke like the white kids. They didn't even know how to
hold a cigarette, half of them. That was the thing that concerned me. If
you pick up the good things from each other it would be nice, but it
looked like they didn't do that. They pick up the frivolous things. It's
just one of those things. I used to observe the students. You go to any
school you see cluster grouping. It can be all white or all black or
integrated. It doesn't make any difference. You're going to see that
cluster grouping. When you observe those clusters I think it's an
educational experience for you or anybody else. When I was at Carmel
we'd have orientation. I'd always take the activity bus and take the
white teachers out and let them see their attendance areas. And I'd stop
in those at different places. I'd let the teachers see where the kids
were coming from. I think it's important. They don't do it now, but I
think they're missing the boat when they don't provide that opportunity.
The thing I used to do, each teacher had a home room. Back then home
room would have anywhere from twenty-eight to thirty-two students.
During that orientation period I would say to the teachers, "We don't
have enough phones in school for each teacher to have an individual
phone, but Miss So-and-So, you don't have to come to school tomorrow,
but I want you to contact as many as those thirty-two people as you possibly can and let them know that you're
their teacher." I still think that's important. To know the parents and
the parents to know you and how to contact you. When you do those things
I think you may have a successful year.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
Did that get harder during integration because students and teachers
were coming from further away?
LEROY MILLER:
I still used it at East Mecklenburg. I know I used it. When we were all
black there wasn't a problem. When I came to Charlotte I went to several
churches. I went to Seventh Street Presbyterian Church. I went to First
Baptist Church West. I went to several of them. I went to Greenville.
When I went over to Greenville that Sunday I was teaching industrial
arts. When the kids would come to class you talked to them and asked
them what church they belonged to. I wanted to go to the church where my
students were coming from. I wanted to meet their parents. I ended up
going to Greenville. A lot of the teachers would go to Grace, and they'd
go to First Baptist West, and Friendship, but I selected the church of
my students. I wanted to meet their parents, and I did. I see the
parents, and I'd say, "Miss So-and-So." I see them in church now, former
students. They thank you for what you did for them. If a kid didn't do,
especially a girl, I'd call their parents, and the parents appreciated
it. I couldn't see any difference. The white parents were just as
appreciative as black. Black parents are just as appreciative knowing
about their kids as all parents. They were the same way. I remember that
Billy Branner. He had a lot in common. I was determined that he was
going to be a Morehead Scholar. I wanted to make sure that he was able
to talk to that male white between thirty and forty years old. I called
Dr.
[unclear]
at Central Piedmont, and I called Judge Spencer Tenews and Jim
Babb out at WBTV. I said, "Jim, I've got a student I like you to take out for lunch." Spencer would do the same thing.
Dr. Durant. I'd call them and tell them to take those kids out. You take
a young white student, they've talked to their daddy and maybe one or
two friends, but they need to talk to some intellectuals. Dr.
[unclear]
at Central Piedmont, I'd call him. That's the reason I had
Morehead Scholars. I wanted to give those students that exposure. You
take a little black kid, you throw him to the wolves. He hasn't talked.
And the white kid, there's no difference between them. There's certain
experiences that they need. I think it's up to you as an educator to
provide those experiences for them, and not the parents. I've always
been a conservative person. I was there at East and even at West
Charlotte. Back then in the late '60s and early '70s, that when you had
all these so-called freaks where anything goes. They'd wear shorts, and
they'd have jeans. They'd cut them off and have them frayed. Then they'd
have patches in the wrong places, and all that stuff. I got a group of
students together. I started off with the seniors. I said, "You're
seniors in high school. I truly believe that once you get to be a senior
there should be certain privileges for you." And they agreed. I said, "I
need your help in securing these privileges." So they would list the
things, and those things that they listed I agreed with. But I said, "I
can't do it by myself." I left and I went to the juniors. I said,
"You're juniors this year, but next year you're going to be a senior.
This is what the seniors think that they should have." I did the same
thing for the sophomores. They would ask questions, but they would end
up agreeing. For ten years at East Mecklenburg, at least the last nine
years I was there, the only people that could wear shorts would be
seniors. It was a senior privilege. It was something that the students
agreed on. It had to be announced a week in advance that the seniors
would be wearing shorts on such-and-such a date. They would wear those
shorts. I had one or two parents they wanted to
know why. I said, "No, I don't let them wear shorts. This is why, and
I'd show them." Because you would have some of them that would take
things to the extreme. I didn't believe in that. We had personal issues
and driver's ed. I would always pick out those kids that would turn
sixteen in September and October, and I'd start them off in driver's ed,
personal issues. They'd be in personal issues and driver's ed for nine
weeks, and the tenth week they'd have their drivers license. The
eleventh week they'd have a car and one or two of them were dead. So I
went to Jim Babb, Stewart Spenser, the PTSA board. I told them, I said,
"Listen, every thirteen or fourteen days after the first nine weeks of
school I am losing a student. It's always a white male. Now and then
it's a white female. Sophomores don't have any business driving." With
the help of them plus the PTSA board I presented it to them, I said,
"Every thirteen or fourteen days I take Miss Ledford and we go to a
funeral. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's a white one. We don't
go to two black funerals a year for accidents." So we came up with a
policy there at East Mecklenburg. We didn't allow sophomores to drive
cars, period. The only time they could drive was if it was an emergency.
They had to bring a statement from home or their doctor, and it had to
be checked on by Nick Miller. He was a lawyer out of Matthews. That's
the only way they could drive. And old Fountain Odum, he's a state
senator now. He had kids out at Olympic. He and Jim started something
out there. He said something to me. I said, "Listen, my first loyalty is
to the students and the parents of East Mecklenburg. What you do or what
you don't do at Olympic doesn't matter to me, but at East Mecklenburg I
don't want any kids that's just turned sixteen to drive anything to
school, period because they're getting killed." I had a little boy that
came to me one Friday afternoon and that Saturday morning Jim
Whittington called me and said, "Pop, we picked up
a kid." When I went over to the funeral home the man was back there, he
had his head. His head had been severed from his body. He had his head
under one of them little sprinklers cleaning the blood and the stuff out
of it. I had to go tell his parents. I remember the night we presented
it to PTSA. They accepted it. If you're worth your salt you're going to
get to know your students. I said, "I get to know them" He came to me
that Friday afternoon, and he said, "Pop, I'm not going to ever give you
any more trouble. You're a nice person." That next day I'm identifying
his body. It's things like that. I can fool you, but you can't fool a
kid. Kids, white or black, they know whether or not you're sincere. They
look straight through you when they find out you're not. I said, "No,
you can't do that. I don't want you to do that. It's not healthy."
PAMELA GRUNDY:
I know I could talk to you for hours more. I've gotten just bits of all
of your experience. I appreciate your doing this. I did have one more
question, if it's okay. I was wondering when you became principal at
these different schools, I know you were concerned about being a good
principal and concerned about the students. Were you also thinking about
being one of the first black principals at some of these schools.
LEROY MILLER:
No. I resent that, first black. That's come up any number of times, but
to me I've always wanted to be a good person. When I go out and cut my
grass, I want my yard to look better than any yard in this neighborhood.
Anything that I do I want it to be the best, period. Nobody had a
prettier wife than I had. She was a beautiful lady, and I tried to
provide for her. I tried to provide her with all of the conveniences
that any other person had, any other lady had. I did my best to do that.
And I think the same thing is true. I'd say to the kids I wanted them to
be the best in the state of North Carolina, and I wanted to be the best
principal in the state. I didn't want to be second to nobody. I didn't
hide it, either. I always wanted to be the
best. I was watching the game last night with some friends, the Bulls
and the Jazz. I said, "Listen, Michael Jordan could play anywhere. He's
a winner, and he don't want nobody around him that's not winners." I've
always felt the same way. I don't want no losers around me. I want to
surround myself with the smartest people I could find, people like
Barbara Ledford. I can name all those good teachers I had. They were
smart people, and they had a contribution to make. They followed through
with it. You don't go around with a bunch of losers. I don't like that.
I don't even want to be associated with people like that. In fact, I was
over at our church. We're in the process of putting down some new
carpeting there. We moved all the seats, half of them. I've got to go
back over there this afternoon. That's the reason I said from one to
four. We're going to remove the others and put the carpeting down in the
church. I'm one generation away from slavery. My grandfathers on my
mother's side and father's side were slaves. My grandfather had several
brothers and they had the same mamma and the same daddy, but they had
different names because as one of the daughters would get married they'd
be given to the daughters. They would take that name. My father finished
about the fourth or fifth grade. My mother went back to high school. I
came from a family of ten. All ten of us finished high school. All ten
of us finished college. There's about three or four with PhDs and all
the rest of them have got masters, and it was all because of where we
lived. Our property was right here and Livingstone College's farm was
right there. My daddy was a blacksmith
[unclear]
railroad track. We had about twenty-five acres and it was right
next to Livingstone Farm. In the afternoons my daddy would come home and
he would come straight out to the field, especially this time of year
we'd be hoeing cotton. President Tripp would be coming down to the farm because he had one of those little surreys,
and he had a walking horse. He'd be bringing the horse back up, and he'd
always stop. He'd say to my daddy, "You're teaching them how to work."
When he'd leave my daddy used to say to all of us, there were four boys,
and we'd be out there. He'd say, "You see there, when you get an
education you can wear Sunday clothes every day. You don't have to wear
these overalls. You see there what an education will do for you."
Picking that cotton and hoeing that cotton, I had enough of that. When I
got to the point where I could go to school, I wanted to go to school.
Now we've still got the home place, and I've got one of the prettiest
gardens you've ever seen up there. I've got two tillers up there, and
I've got a riding lawn mower. I do all that stuff. In '87 and '88 we
restored the home place. Then I had an aneurysm, and I was out in '89.
By the time we got to the point where we were really enjoying ourselves
my wife passed. I still get despondent. I look around and I wonder. God
knows best though. He knows how much you can bear, but in the last four
years I lost a wife, two sisters and a brother. I'm seventy-eight years
old, and I'm still here. I guess it's God's will. He left me here for
something. I don't know. It's just one of those things. Any more
questions?
PAMELA GRUNDY:
I think that that will about do it. Is there anything else that you feel
that you'd like to say.
LEROY MILLER:
No, mam. If there's anything I can do that's going be useful to you or
young people, that's what God left me here for.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
That seems like a pretty good reason to me. It seems like you have much
to say. Well, I hope that this project will do that.
LEROY MILLER:
The racists can get along. They can get along. I look at India and
Pakistan, and sometimes I wonder. I hope and pray to God that we never
get like that in this country. It bothers me when they want to do
certain things around here. But to me I always thought we were serving
the same God. People do some funny things.
PAMELA GRUNDY:
It seems like maybe lately that things don't look as bright as maybe
they did at one time.
LEROY MILLER:
No. I don't know. It's just one of those things. In fact there's an
article in this morning's paper talking about the different presidents,
how promiscuous they've been. I think we should accentuate the positive
and not the negative. If God made anything nicer than a lady, he kept it
for himself. They're nice people. I can understand young men. When you
get my age father time and mother nature has ways of taking care of you.
Can I get you something to drink now?
END OF INTERVIEW