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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
L-0078, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
Ruth Dial Woods was born in Robeson County, North Carolina. She begins the interview by describing aspects of her childhood as a Lumbee Indian, focusing specifically on her education. Woods went to an Indian school in Robeson County until the late 1940s; she moved to east Tennessee when her mother was unable to complete her graduate degree in North Carolina because of discrimination against Native Americans in institutions of higher education. After her mother graduated, they returned to North Carolina, where Woods graduated from Pembroke High School. After one year at Catawba College, Woods transferred to Meredith College. She left Meredith in the mid-1950s to marry her first husband. The couple lived for several years in Detroit, Michigan, where they both worked for the Ford Motor Company. It was her time in Detroit, Woods explains, that opened her eyes to the segregation and discrimination against Native Americans in the South. When she returned to North Carolina at the end of the decade, Woods finished her bachelor's degree and became a teacher. During the 1960s, Woods became actively involved in the civil rights movement in North Carolina, which she describes as a "multiracial" effort. By the end of the 1960s, she shifted her attention to the women's liberation movement. Woods describes in detail some of her activities in both movements during the 1960s and 1970s, and speaks at length about her thoughts on Native American and other minority rights. In 1985, Woods was appointed to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, where she worked to promote equality for minority students. She explains her decision to seek this post, and describes how her activism evolved into her appointment to the Board.
Ruth Dial Woods describes growing up as a Lumbee Indian in Robeson County, North Carolina, in the 1930s and 1940s. During the 1960s, Woods participated in the civil rights and women's liberation movements. In 1985, she was appointed to the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, where she worked to promote equality for minority students.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
The following is an interview with Ruth Dial Woods, a member of the UNC Board of Governors. It is taking place on Friday, June 12, 1992 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The interviewers are Anne Mitchell Coe and Laura Moore and we'll be talking with Dr. Woods about her life and her relationship with the University as well as other activism that she's been involved in.
Well, if you'll begin, then, Dr. Woods, by telling us about the beginning.
Well, the earliest recollections I have as a child is on my grandmother's farm. My mother and father were both educators and I was reared by my grandmother while they taught during the week. And then on Friday evenings I remember walking across the fields of grass and waiting for Friday afternoon to come and I always took time to lie down in the grass fields and look up and watch the clouds move. I guess, the reason why that's so vivid to me is because there's been so many days in my life that I had to stop and question "Am I a dreamer or is it real or what is it?" and I guess from early on I must have been a dreamer and looked and saw that things should move and there was things to be understood and things to be explored and things to be discovered. As part of that natural growing up and that natural curiosity I guess I grew from there into exploring several different things throughout my life, but certainly I was grounded in my early childhood by my grandmother at whose apron strings I learned the difference between right and wrong and followed her to the farm to milk the cow. I never quite got the skills to go into a chicken coup and take the eggs from the chickens. I wasn't quite brave enough for that, but I remember the cold winters and falls when we killed hogs and she made lye soap and told me stories by the fireplace, and she was an uneducated woman and yet each Saturday evening she took her bath out of what was then called the foot tub and she read her Bible and got ready for her Sunday school. And, of course, while I took the back of an old calendar and scratched with a pencil that was trimmed with a kitchen knife. And while she was doing her chores, if I were not involved, I remember the Morton salt box cradle that she had carved out for me and the corn shuck dolls and the scraps from her quilting table as the toys that I played with. And time came that I could then move to live with my mother and father full time and follow them to school and I began first of all at a preschool sponsored by the Plymouth Brethren and held in a church called the Gospel Hall.
Where was that?
It was a preschool sponsored by the Plymouth Brethren was the denomination and the name of the church was Gospel Hall. I don't think we called it kindergarten, but that was my first schooling and from there I went to elementary school and of course all the classes were all Indian at the church and they were all Indian at the school. Because of the preschool experience at the church, I quickly moved from kindergarten through first grade, from first grade into third grade, and from third grade to fifth grade, and went through the sixth grade and moved from the sixth grade to the eighth grade. So, for some reason, I must have been a problem child that they were very anxious to get rid of.
So you skipped several grades.
I skipped grades. As soon as I finished the eighth grade, my mother decided that it was time for her to work on a Master's so I followed her to East Tennessee State College in Tennessee because at the time Indians were not allowed to pursue advanced degrees at state supported institutions in the state of North Carolina. Since I was in high school, I studied at the training school which, during that period of time, we had training schools on the campuses of colleges and universities. So I studied at the training school the summer that she was at East Tennessee.
What year was that?
I would have to count back. That had to be sometime in the late forties because I finished high school in '52 so it would have been '48, '49, thereabout. And, after the first summer in Tennessee, she then transferred to Appalachian State Teacher's College at that time and I also attended the training school at Appalachian. The most vivid experience I have of that time is that we were I through some time of vocational aptitude program. In discussing the results with me, the counselor told me that whatever I did in life I would do well working with my hands. I equated that to picking cotton and working in tobacco and I guess that was the first motivator that I had because I was determined that I would do something in life other than working with my hands. So, I attended Appalachian training school for two summers. Subsequently, I graduated from high school in three years. An unfortunate experience there is that I was refused the opportunity to be the class valedictorian because my mother taught in the high school and the excuse that they used, although my GPA was higher than the young man selected for valedictorian, they said because he had attended school years that he should receive valedictorian. So therefore I was denied either valedictorian or salutatorian of my high school graduating class.
Was this at Appalachian, the training school there?
No, my transfer credits went from Appalachian to Pembroke High School but, you see, I only attended Pembroke High School three years because I had three summers of study. So I was accepted to Catawba College in the Fall of 1952 and I fell hopelessly in love with a young man who was going to go to the divinity school at Wake Forest and we plotted our lives that he should go to Wake Forest and I should go to Meredith so at the last moment I chose to go to Meredith because I would be closer to Wake Forest. Well, as it happened, that didn't work out, but I stayed at Meredith for three years at which time I decided that I had found the love of my life and I dropped out of school and relocated first of all to Maryland and spent a summer with my aunt where I worked with the United States Commissioner with the state of Maryland as a secretary. My soon-to-be husband was in Detroit, Michigan as all good Indians from Robeson County during that period of time migrated either to Baltimore or to Detroit, Michigan so I left Maryland in the Fall and married in September and lived in Detroit, Michigan until 1958.
You graduated in the Fall of which year?
I didn't graduate from Meredith. I had three years and I left and went to Detroit. While I was in Detroit I worked first as a commercial biller. I worked with temporary services, temporary office services. And I finally worked with Ford Motor Company in the industrial engineering division of Ford Motor Company first in Highland Park where I lived and then followed the division out to Dibbert.
Was your husband working for Ford?
My husband also worked for Ford Motor Company. In 1958 in July we had an
automobile accident.
Why did you decide to go back into teaching?
To settle down. To remarry and to get my life back together and settle down. I went back to teaching and after about from '72 until '77 the call came again to go to the central office relative to federal grants management and I went there as a temporary consultant and I've been there sixteen years now.
And what, exactly, is your role there? What did you do?
Well, let me talk about that. In 1977, as I said, I went as a temporary
consultant planning to take the '77-'78 year off
because of the illness of my mother. She passed away in July, so I
stayed at the central office and I was Director of Indian Education
which is a federally funded project for supplemental and extended
educational opportunities for Indian students in public schools. I guess
it must have been about another six years later I decided that
I'd had enough of that and it was time to do something else,
so I stayed there, assumed additional duties for chapter one, which is
another federal compensatory education program, and became an assistant
superintendent. After about four years, I said, "Well,
I'm still not grown yet." It was time then to go
back to school so I did my doctoral work at South Carolina State
College, now South Carolina State University as of February of this
year, which was a Saturday program and a summer program which enabled me
to continue my responsibilities as an administrator as well as to pursue
my doctorate. I completed that in the Spring of '89. Saying,
"Well, what next?" and "Have I really gotten
it all together?" I proceeded then to say "Well,
I'll rest and start picking and choosing some things that I
want to do." But, I got involved with my work and got involved
with my children and after about two years it was time to take on
something else.
I wanted to talk about what it was like growing upߞnot just historical fiction, but a challenge, I guess, to the future generations to remember that there were folks that lived in different times and different places with different struggles, but to give them, I hope, a sense of responsibility. In Iroquois Indian culture and tradition it said that a woman is responsible for perpetuation of the culture for five generations and, as I talk with young peopleߞand of course that was a matriarchal cultureߞthey should stop and remember the traditions even now about family get-togethers and annual family meetings and they should realize that the purpose of those meetings for bringing the great grandmothers and the great grandfathers and the grandmothers and the grandfathers and the mothers and the fathers and the young people has a purpose, that they establish that sense of responsibility. I also like to quote Mary McLeod Bethune that said that service is the price that you pay for the space that you occupy and its been a very guiding force because I don't think there's any greater challenge than being involved in something that you can grow, that you can develop and that you can learn from and at the same time extend part of yourself and what it is you do that touches other people, whether you see it right now or whether it's long term. And I used to wonder when my grandmother kept saying that the Bible said that you were promised only four score or three score and ten and I got real upset when she was talking about how she didn't have much time left. And now I realize that sixty or seventy years is a short span of time to see change if you're really interested in seeing change. So I've reached the point where I cannot, never would be, never will be, and cannot be all things to all people, so the best thing I can do is put my message in writing and leave it and hope that someone will pick it up and say, "Well, you know, I do have a responsibility to make life better for my children and my grandchildren and for the children and the grandchildren that follow all of us." And I think that's not only true of Indians, but I think it's a sense of responsibility that I think all of us in more recent generations have lost. And some of us have never had the opportunity to really experience the rewards and the challenges of that kind of mantle of responsibility. And please note that I call it "mantle of responsibility" and not "mantle of leadership," because I perceive it as being a responsibility, as opposed to a, quote, leadership role, end quote. So, what created all these changes and all these things? I like to think of myself as we say about the turtle. You know, they say turtles are hard-shelled and stick their necks out and take risk and I collect turtles and I sort of keep them around me to remind me that you have to continue being hard-shelled and you have to continue taking risk if you are, indeed, committed to making a difference. I first got involved, and I call that my years of becoming, in the sixties and the civil rights movement. It was there, because of many mentors and because some folks took me by the hand and thought that I had the potential to grow and to develop and to serve and to be of purpose, not only to the movement to people and to my own people. With their nurturing and their support and their guidance I think I sort of said that "Well, maybe this is my niche."
So you see those years as a transitional point in your life.
I see those years a developmental thing where you start growing outside
of yourself and I usually refer to it as my years of becoming, finding
me, and becoming me, and setting my own goals and my own value system
and my own philosophy and my own beliefs. From there, after we finished
looking at the world in rose colored glasses and we didn't
change all the world, I then found my niche in the women's
movement, Equal Rights Amendment, women's groups,
women's affairs. And then after I saw that we were not going
to get full equity and we were not going to get comparable pay and we
didn't win that battle any
Do you think we could go back a little bit and talk a little more about, particularly, the '60s when you were saying this is the period of becoming? Sort of specifically, what happened during that period that was so important to you and move up through the things that you were active in the women's movement just to see a little more specifically how this developed?
Well, let's see if I can go back that far. I remember when I got married in 1955 coming out of Robeson County, Indians did not work in offices. You had two choices. You worked on the farm or you became a teacher and I didn't want either one. I didn't want to become a teacher, didn't want to work on a farm. So, I made my first application for employment in Detroit. Well, let me tell you this story that I'm not too proud to tell. When I went to Detroit to get married, we had to go down and get a marriage license and, since I had not traveled and had not been outside of Robeson County that much, although I had been at Meredith for three years back in '50, '51, '52ߞMeredith was quite different than it is today.
The Women's College?
Yes. It was sort of confined with a lot of rules and regulations and so, although I was in Raleigh, I didn't get that much exposure either. You have to remember I went to high school when I was fifteen, so it was probably one of the best things in the world that happened. I filled out applications for employment. . . No, I was talking about the marriage license. So my husband-to-be and I went down to file for a marriage license and I put "white" on my application for marriage license which is the only time in my life that I never put down my race as Indian but I was afraid that if we put "Indian" that Michigan would not allow us to get married in Michigan. I didn't know, because, you see, North Carolina at the time, he was not white, he was also Indian.
He was a Lumbee also?
Right, but North Carolina at the time did not allow Indians to marry
outside their own race. If you wanted to get married and marry someone
other than Indian you had to go outside the state of North Carolina to
get married. So, not knowing about any of this, I said "Well
maybe Michigan didn't let Indians get married." And
maybe that's the reason I ended up with a divorce, because I
lied on my marriage certificate. But, I'm not real proud of
What was your first husband's name?
Roberts. James R. Roberts. So, I wanted the folks at Ford Motor Company to know that I was Indian because things had happened in Robeson County that if folks went in and got employed and folks didn't know they were Indian, once they found out they were Indian they fired them. So, I knew that I was a long way from home and that I needed to work so I kept saying, "Well, you know I'm Indian." And I got very upset because I didn't get the kind of reaction from folks that I was supposed to get. You know, it was like "So what else is new?" You know, and I kept pressing this thing about "But I'm Indian and Indians don't do this and Indians don't do that." And they look at me like "So what?" You know. "Big deal." But here is my limited exposure, experience, and education about cultural pluralism and the different ethnic groups that live in cities. That knowledge came ten, fifteen years down the road.
So you were coming from a more segregated society and expecting this to be a big deal.
Right, expected it. And finally I said, "Well if it doesn't matter to them you drop it." Because pretty soon you realize that you're overplaying the record. So I guess it was sort of like some of the veterans say, that we went off and fought the war and came back and we were over there giving our lives and folks aren't giving us any respect or opening any doors for us. So I'd made it off the reservation and found out, hey, you know, people are okay. There is a better life. There is a better way. Yet, would never have been happy to have stayed in Detroit because there was always that thing about going back home to help my people. Going back home to show them the way, you know.
Were there other Lumbees in the area? So that was a place of migration there?
Right.
Were they doing the same kinds of work that you were?
Most of them worked in the manufacturing industries, General Motors, Ford Motor, because that was the only place they could do anything other than on the farm and teaching and everyone didn't want to become a teacher. So, because of the automobile accident I ended up back in North Carolina and then, I guess, having seen the bright lights of the city and then going back home seeing, from a different perspective, how really deprived folks were, then when civil rights came along that was my opportunity to right all the wrongs in the world, to be a woman Don Quixote. So, I don't know that I contributed that much to increased access, increased opportunities, diminished discrimination, except that it gave me an opportunity to become involved with a philosophy that was compatible to my own personal philosophy about the value and worth of human dignity of all people and to be accepted not because I was an Indian but because I was an Indian plus Ruth.
Were these civil rights activities mostly involving Indians?
No, we were multiracial. I remember when the custodial and service workers in Durham were marching for higher wages, I was six months pregnant wanting to march and they wouldn't let me march and I cried.
Were you involved in leadership roles in these things?
No, not really. It was just that wherever you were needed you got up and went. It was a time of hope. It was a time of hope, I think. Blacks, whites, poor whites, Indians, anyone who really had a mutual mission of equality, what it provided to us was hope. I regret to say that I don't sense that hope out there now at all.
Were there specific deprivations or discriminations regarding Indians that you noticed more when you came back from Michigan that you were particularly concerned about when you were involved in the civil rights movement?
I didn't have to go to Michigan to notice them. As I told you, I came up in all Indian schools. I came through the era when we had the separate restrooms for whites, blacks, and Indians in all the stores in Lumberton, when you had separate seating arrangements in the movie theaters for whites, blacks, and Indians, when you had the separate water fountains.
How would that work?
Oh you just had three of everything with a sign to it.
How would a theater be arranged? What would it look like?
Downstairs you would seat all the white customers. Upstairs you would have one section for blacks and one section for Indians. I guess I came back having seen that you can walk around freely and that there are other opportunities and advantages and when I came back and saw that people were still subjected to this kind of humiliation and indignity, I became more radical about trying to encourage and challenge the system and to become more vocal. I guess it was just a natural that the civil rights became my way to really put those things into motion and into action. As I said, when that started leveling off and we realized we hadn't saved the world, then it was time to move to something else and then there was the women's movement and, of course, after the women's movement we had the Decade of the Indian which was the 70's to the 80's and then the 80's to the 90's has been the Decade of the Hispanic and I've reached the point now that when I write that book I'll be able to do a lot of talking about political appeasement and about the level of commitment - that there is no commitment. It's only response to whatever is politically feasible at the moment in order to govern, to control, and to subject.
Does that relate to you saying that you don't see the same hope that you did in the sixties now?
Definitely. There was no intent ever to empower all people in this country or to work toward shared power or to even try to support shared power. It's real interesting how this country looks to Japan and talks about what happens in Japan, but the reason Japan has now surpassed the United States is because Japan builds upon its culture into all of its decisions whether it be education, whether it be the family, whether it be the work place, and that has been researched and written by a fellow by the name of Oucci who writes about how you consider the culture of the family and that work is related to family and folks bring their values of family into the work place and because it's that mutual culture and collaboration and that sharing which transcends from the regular culture. You see, this country is not interested in looking at any culture except the supreme closed culture that's not even a western civilization culture. It is a culture of control and power and greed, the same kind of greed that brought European immigrants here to seek their freedom and now it's a greed and a power that we will control and we will do anything that we have to in order to begin to control.
So then, when you look back on the civil rights movement and on the women's movement and all of these things, do you feel that it was a wasted effort? How do you view those now that you're the other side of them?
Certainly not a wasted effort because it made me who I am today and it
gave me the opportunity and the experiences to make the statements with
conviction that I just made because I've been there and
I've been around long enough to go through these different
movements and to be in different places at different times and at
different levels. I do not think
Could you talk a little more about your interest in women's issues? Did that come out of your involvement in the civil rights movement sort of logically? I know a lot of women felt that they'd awakened to discrimination against women while they were in the civil rights movement. How did you feel that you became a person that was interested in feminism?
You have to realize that people join movements just as they join clubs
and organizations for different reasons. I guess you have to go back and
examine my psyche which you couldn't examine if I
didn't care to share it with you. You have to grow up in an
isolated culture that on the one hand is supporting you and nurturing
you to feel good about yourself, to strive to achieve, to excel, to
accept responsibility, to meet the expectations that are held for you
and then, on the other hand, interact with another culture that says
that you don't look Indian, you don't act Indian
and always having to justify that you're Indian but
you're not federally recognized, that you've never
had a treaty with the federal government. You go through all these
explanations of having to justify your very being, your very birth
right. That creates a big void of self-confidence, a big void that
allows you to develop an ethnic pride to which you have a birth right.
So you grow up wanting to belong, wanting to be accepted, wanting to be
a part, and yet there's always some kind of hurdle you have
to overcome. If it isn't justifying why you're
Indian or having to explain that you are Indian or if it
isn't trying to excel so that you can access some
opportunity, just a whole series of hurdles. So, the civil rights
movement, that supportive climate, that nurturing climate of
"We are about the business of humanity." became that
place for me to find that acceptance, that sense of belonging, that
sense of freedom. As I said, toward the end of the civil rights movement
in the last few years, as you know, we started moving toward separatism.
We dealt with black separatism. The interestingߞquote
interestingߞphenomenon about the American Indian is that the
American Indians would not get involved with the civil rights movement
because they believed in separatism and until black separatism evolved
the Indians would not support the concept of civil rights. But then
that's a deeper psyche you'd have to deal with
because another friend says "He who questions the identity of
another is insecure within his or her own identity." So
I'll leave that and let it rest where it falls. This black
friend of mine, I remember we were in Washington at some meeting. I
don't remember which one now. We had worked together eight or
nine years and they called a black caucus and, of course, I just
proceeded to go walking into the black caucus and he looked at me and he
says, "Ruth," he says, "you can't
go in here." I said "Why?" He says
"It's a black caucus. I'm sorry. You
can't go in here." And I guess that's
what sort of shocked me into reality, to take off my rose-colored
glasses and turn the tint down a little and look at things a little bit
differently. It did not impair our relationship because we are thirty
years down the road now and still maintain a very close relationship,
but it got to the point where he had to say, "Ruth, I love you.
I love you like a sister, but I am about the business of black
people." and when you've been on the battle line
with people for seven, eight, ten years and you realize that
that's what happens. So, I tried my best to accept separatism
as a means to an end, but that's contradictory when you
believe in pluralism and then also foster separatism. So I found that
conflict. So, you see, when the women's movement came along,
we were not into ethnicity. We were into a common goal. We broke it down
and I really do think that the women's movement contributed
more to those who chose to understand
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Did your parents have an active role?
I think I had two excellent role models. My mother was my mother, but was the best of an educator.
Could you give us your parents' names? I'm sorry to interrupt.
Ruby Carter was my mother and all children were her children and her profession was very important to her. She saw teaching as the love of her life and commitment to profession was modeled for me. My father was a school principal, a teacher and school principal. He, too, was student-oriented, child-centered and perhaps I felt that. . .I guess a psychologist might tell you that that's the reason I never thought I wanted to be a teacher because I felt that they gave too much to others and not enough to me and I was an only child for sixteen years and cried when my brother came along. So, I guess I didn't want anything that required that much of me, probably. I was probably a very spoiled selfish young girl who really didn't want anything that would demand that much of me.
So they really devoted a lot of time to their careers.
Right, but they were not risk takers. You know, they were concerned but
they came in a different time when folks did things to you when you got
too far out of line. See, my father came from a tenant farming
situation. My mother came from a land owning situation, but at the same
time
How many children do you have?
Well, I have four and my husband has three so together we have seven. He has five grandchildren and I have one.
Do they live in Robeson County also?
No. My daughter decided to leave the reservation and marry a non-Indian
and she's in Charleston, South Carolina. They presented me
with my first grandson last October on Columbus Day which is
unforgivable for any Indian woman.
But they didn't. They didn't name him Columbus.
No. And then I have another daughter who is twenty-five and she's single and not married and lives in Pembroke. I have a son who is eighteen and just graduated as an honor student at Fork Union Military Academy and will be enrolling in North Carolina State in the fall. I have a fourteen year old son who has been at Fork Union for three years and will be returning there in the fall and that's it.
So you have quite a few people to be handing down this.
Yeah. My husband is a thirty year veteran in education. He is a school principal and in his first term as an elected county commissioner in Robeson County.
And what is his name?
Noah.
I guess I was wondering if you could talk specifically about some of the organizations you were involved in the women's movement? We have a sort of long list of things that you were involved with.
Oh my goodness. Let me see if I can remember. My first
women's meeting was on the campus of Duke University and I
have no idea who
What were your responsibilities in that position?
We all got to go to Washington, go to the White House and meet the
President.
Important times.
Yeah, and they didn't want me to fly but I wouldn't have missed the I.W.Y. for anything in the world. We had met and caucused and we knew exactly what we were going to vote for. We were going to be pro-state on the whole platform. That was the first time that I got to hear Congressman Barbara...who was the black Congresswoman who retired from Congress and is teaching at Texas A & M now? Oh my goodness. Oh I was just spellbound. Barbara what? What was her last name? [Interviewer's note: Barbara Jordan] Anyway, she was a black Congresswoman and she spoke at I.W.Y. I walked off the floor. I could get by with it because I was pregnant. But I walked off the floor to smoke a cigarette twice in order to be true to the state delegation and I could not bring myself to vote on abortion, pro-abortion, and I could not bring myself to vote for proߞwhat are we calling it nowߞsexual orientation.
So you just walked so you wouldn't have to...
I was grounded too much in Southern Baptist Belt mentality.
But you're in the Methodist Church now. Did you grow up Methodist or Baptist?
Grew up Baptist.
How did you become a Methodist?
Methodists accept divorcees. Baptists don't. Not the Southern Baptists anyway. Now, my father's family were Methodists and when they moved into Pembroke they were Methodist and when I went back from Michigan my father was attending that church and so I started attending it and then when I divorced and remarried, the church was still there in a supporting role. Basically, I was brought up a good brimfire Southern Baptist.
Which Methodist Church are you in?
They might not want to claim me now anyway.
The Southern Baptists wouldn't?
I'm still Baptist at heart.
You think you're still Baptist at heart.
Why do you say that?
Well, I guess there's some things I'm pretty
opinionated about that they were as a young girl. I just think the
Methodists are a little bit more flexible. There's nothing
wrong with being radical, except that I expect my church to be one thing
and let me go out and be the radical.
So you'd say that the Methodist Church, would you say that it's a little bit more liberal than the churches that you were used to, that your heart grew up in?
Yeah.
Which congregation are involved in?
Don't get me wrong. I don't have any problems with a good Catholic service from time to time, so if you don't believe in what I believe in...
You're kind of ecumenical.
See, I sent my girls to Catholic school because I did not want them in
all Indian schools. I did not want them to wait until they were
thirty-six to learn that life out there demanded that you respect all
people and that you compete with them and you learn to get along with
them. So my girls were in Catholic school and my boys were educated in
Catholic school prior to going to military school, so I'm
sitting on pins and needles. I've had my eighteen year old
sheltered all his life and I read a letter he wrote to a girl the other
day saying "I am looking forward to college. I have waited six
years for this freedom." But, you know, he's been in
a multinational community at Fork Union and I guess I'm
having to break that umbilical cord and say that I've given
him everything that I think he needs in order to make it. If he chooses
not to, then that's him, but I am confident that the
exposure... I hear my kids talk about "There's this
guy from Israel." or "There's this guy from
Sweden." or "John, he's from
so-and-so." When I came to Chapel Hill way back when one summer
after I taught for a year about '61 or '62, I did
some library work here, a couple of education courses, and if I had gone
to Chapel Hill directly out of high school, I wouldn't have
lasted a week. I'm sure when some of these kids see me on
campus now that I'm sitting there like this, like a dumb
jerk, not because I want to but because I learn a lot by observing
people, but I haven't learned not to leave my mouth hanging
open. And I'm sure they look at me and say "Well
what is Granny doing here?"
So you chose not to send your children to the Robeson County Public Schools which you work for?
Well, I sent them to Catholic schools in the early days. See, the girls are a whole decade ahead of the boys, but the purpose there was so that they would learn to compete with non-Indian people from day one. I chose to send the boys to Catholic school because I was busy working, it had worked for my girls, and that's what I wanted for my boys. I own land in Robeson County, I've never been hauled into court for not paying my taxes, and I feel like I am contributing to the public education fund in Robeson County, and as long as I am not depriving anybody in Robeson County of an education, what I choose for mine should be my personal choice. If I'm willing to make the sacrifices in order to do that, then it really shouldn't matter to anybody.
So, are those schools still somewhat segregated?
The schools where we live are 98% Indian.
And what's the other 2%?
Black and white.
In the particular district that you live in.
Right. 98%.
Could you talk a little bit about what your role is, what your job is, with the Robeson County Public Schools?
I'm one of four associate superintendents who reports directly to the superintendent. My responsibilities are fully for grants management for federal programs. I administer three major programs. We have the largest funded Indian education project in the country which creates a political spill-out from time to time. It's roughly 1.3 million. It was up to 1.4 million last year. We have roughly 10,500 Indian students certified in the school district; certified, again, according to government criteria. There are more Indian students, but you have to fill out this nice little form that says that you're Indian, have somebody sign it, stick a number on it, and draw it in blood that "I am Indian." I have a five and a half million dollar Chapter One program which is to provide supplementary remedial and support programs and services for reading and math to low income students in the school district. And then we have about a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar migrant education grant. So those are the three basic grants. There are other federal programs and funds in the school district, but I have responsibilities only for those three and have about a seven and a half million dollar budget.
So do you have much contact with the students themselves?
Only when I throw the pencil down and go crank up the car and go to the schools and I don't do that often enough. I have a staff of about thirty-six people, supervisors, directors, and project administrators.
You have your hands full with that.
And then your husband maybe has more contact with them? You say he's a principal.
Right, he's a principal.
Of what school, now?
Magnolia. That was a K-12 school up until this year and through consolidation he has pre-k through grade eight.
And where is that?
It's in Lumberton.
Lumberton. Okay.
It's a historically Indian school. I'm not real sure what his student enrollment is now, but I'm sure it's predominantly Indian. Not 98%, but I'm sure it's still predominantly Indian.
Are there special problems that you see the school system facing in Robeson County now that you're concerned with?
Read my book.
I'll be waiting for your book to come out.
Maybe that's the reason I'm going to wait and write it when I grow up, when I retire, so I won't even have to be inhibited in what I say.
Do you think that some of the situation of Robeson County Public Schools has to do with the rural area, or it just being a mainly Indian area makes it very different than other sort of rural North Carolina areas?
It has to do with institutional racism and all the spill-out from that.
So there are special disadvantages and things that are faced.
And class. Class discrimination.
You say that the program you administer is the largest funded Indian education program in the country, but that seems awfully ironic, and I'm sure it does to you, in light of the fact that the Lumbees are not federally recognized. Could you talk about that whole campaign?
Indians are state recognized. The Lumbee are state recognized and that gives them a special category. You have to remember in the 70's we were more astute and it was with the assistance of some folks that chose not to be racist who were drafting the legislation to include state recognized Indians because we're not the only state recognized Indians. But other than that, you would have no Indian tribes or groups east of the Mississippi other than the Choctaws, maybe, and the Seminoles in Florida who would be eligible for any government services. The Indian Education Project is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Therefore, it is not bound to federal recognition criteria as are those education programs out of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Department of Interior. I don't find it ironic. It just goes to show those kinds of things that take place in government to separate and to create division and to create confusion. The only reason that we never had a treaty with the government is because, I guess, our forefathers were silly enough to sit here and reach out their hands and welcome them. We're descendants of those folks that first met the first European immigrants. We can't help it if some of our folks did not follow the Cherokee west, did not go through removal. All the Cherokees didn't take the Trail of Tears either. The interesting thing is that they never said that we were not Indian, so then you say that the government makes it into an economic issue. Back in 1712, during some of the war in the colonies, there was a general down in South Carolina that wrote a statement that says that "We must assist these Indians in cutting one another's throats lest the nation will not be saved." and it appears to me that that must have set the precedent for government treaties and relationships because even the federally recognized tribes did not have tribal rolls until the Indian Reorganization Act in the 30's. But all of a sudden if you don't have a tribal organization and tribal roll, there's just no way in heavens that you can be Indian. And you say the government set up those rolls simply so they'd be able to - what's the term they use for it - not portion out but ration out government commodities to Indians. It had nothing to do with who was Indian and who wasn't. It was just a matter of how many people you've got here, because you've got tribal rolls that have non-Indian people on them. My father's family name is on the Delaware District of Cherokee rolls, but I'm not Cherokee, would not spend any time trying to do that, because I come out of a situation where my descendancy has been to Indians of Robeson County who by legislative act are now called Lumbee. So we're going to continue this battle because that's the way the government wants it. As long as you can keep a division between federal and non-federal, state and organization, east and west, then government does not have to get very serious about the, quote, Indian problem, end quote. And it can remain an Indian problem.
So, what is the relationship between the Indians of Robeson County and, say, the Eastern band of Cherokee Indians?
Well even the Eastern band of Cherokee won't say that we're not Indian. They just say that we ought to go through a process and if the Eastern band of Cherokee had to go through that process they couldn't make it either because the process was developed to perpetuate only those tribes that were already in and to keep everybody else out. They would say the same thing about the Humas in Louisiana, the Pamanqueys in Virginia or anybody else and not only would the Eastern band of Cherokee say that, but there's some western tribes that say the same thing. And yet, if they had to go through the process, they couldn't jump through the hoops.
Because they were already in.
And my point is this. I know who I am. I know where I was born. I know
the spirit in which I was encased and if I ever become federally
recognized and get a B.I.A. number stamped on my bottom, it's
not going to make me any different than Ruth Woods is today or any more
or any less
But do you think the Lumbees should continue to agitate for federal recognition?
I think we ought to file a federal government law suit. I think we ought to go into the courts with it.
Where does it stand now?
I think we've been kind enough for a hundred years and I think it's time now to just sue the federal government and take all this money that we spent on federal recognition and put it in law suits if nothing more than to document the ineffectiveness and the inefficiency and the unwillingness of the federal government to face up to its responsibilities. You see, early on in the 1800s the letters that came to the Indians in Robeson County were "We have other Indians who are not as civilized that need our scarce resources." So we're penalized because we greeted and befriended settlers and tried to help ourselves. We were penalized. If we'd been savages, I don't know. But that's exactly what they said, "We have other folks less civilized."
So where does the whole recognition thing stand now, just legally?
Well, there's some hope and some optimism about Congressional recognition which has been done before. There is a precedent for it, but there is just this adamant thing that nobody wants the Lumbees federally recognized. What it creates for our children is what I call a crisis of identity. I am neither white. I am neither black. I am not Indian. What am I? Who am I? So you see, my message is that you can't take the person's identity away from them. That's yours. Nobody can stamp approval on it and nobody can take it away. You've got to realize that you are what you think you are and what you believe you are and that's what's important. As long as you know it, it doesn't matter a tinker's damn if anybody else knows it or believes it or not.
Does any of this feeling on the part of Lumbee youth relate to the take-over at the Robesonian that occurred a couple years ago when Hatcher and Jacobs went in and held the hostages? Is that related to that at all or is that a separate issue?
Thoreau says that each of us listen to a different drummer and I think all people have their own drum and they have to do what they think they have to do in order to make a contribution. Timmy was in a dance group that our project sponsored several years ago and you always wonder. When you're in education, you're actually molding kids' lives. You're playing God with kids' lives. Eddie I did not know, but I think that Timmy and Eddie, while they had to pay the price for what they did, made a significant contribution to the Indian community in Robeson County. There will be many who will not agree with that, but I think they did.
In what ways?
They brought some issues to the forefront. They brought a constituency within the community together to recognize that folks were not committed to doing anything about the problem. It brought an increased recognition of what drug and drug trafficking is doing to the community and how some folks are being dealt with and other folks are not. Not in terms of race, but dealers versus users, peddlers, that kind of thing. I think it brought a different climate of acceptance of authority. I really do. I do not think that the community is as accepting of authority as it was in the past. It questions it. I'm not saying that it is ready to become a Los Angeles. That' not what I'm saying. But there's questioning. There's concern and there's folks committed to action.
That's interesting.
So it kind of galvanized people.
Yeah. And that will not go away. And hopefully it will not go away with the kids. We'll be able to continue that. Once you ever get past this thing of saying "Hey, I'm okay," then you can help people grow and develop to question, to ask without feeling inhibited or threatened or subjected to punishment or something. Forty or fifty years from now Eddie and Timmy will be heroes, but they will never be heroes in their own time.
Where are they now?
Eddie is still in prison. Timmy, I'm not sure. Timmy was out and in Charlotte and I believe he broke probation, so I don't know if he's still out or back in prison.
You mention the drug trafficking. Is that a serious problem that you see now?
Yes.
Among the youth?
Yes.
When did that start becoming such a problem?
Well, we moved from the bootlegging stills to alcohol by the drink in the houses to the beer spots and bootleggers to drug dealing. We don't sell that much liquor anymore because we can now go buy it in the ABC store, so we had to find something to keep the economy going. I go back to something my father taught me. He says folks want to control you. He always told me "Don't ever borrow any more money than you'll be able to pay back. Wait 'til you get the money to go buy something. Don't go in debt." Because, you see, coming up the child of a tenant farmer and coming up during the Depression he thought that he had really achieved everything when he was able to purchase his own land, to have his own farm, not to have to rent from somebody, not to have to listen to somebody else about this kind of thing and that was his value system. They always said, if they can't get to you they'll get to somebody close to you and there's always that fear that as hard as you work to keep yourself out of the clutches or out of the control, and particularly if you are raising your own children. Irregardless, when you rear children you just have to take it one day at the time and put them in the hands of the Lord and say "Help me with them because I can't handle it." And I don't mind telling you, from grades seven to nine is not my age level of children.
I don't remember that being the most pleasant time.
Of course I'm not so sure that any age is better. I love my children, but. . . I think some of that happens of "Let's do that." and that way, again, is a way of controlling people. If they don't have your bank account, they don't control your job, they can co-opt your child and humble you to your knees.
I was actually thinking about changing gears a little bit and asking you to talk a little bit more about how you got onto the Board of Governors here? You said you decided that's what you wanted to do. What was sort of the process?
Did I say that's what I decided to do?
I thought you did.
You said you sought the appointment.
Or would you like to correct the way I'm remembering that?
Do I really want to talk about that?
Well you certainly don't need to if you don't want.
There was a meeting at my house one Sunday afternoon. Not a meeting, but
I had some friends in. My husband's a staunch blood
thoroughbred Democrat. I'm an opportunist. I'm a
registered Democrat, but I'm an opportunist. Situational
politics is the name of my game. They were talking
I didn't know that.
And this guy says, "Well now you know I can pull it with you but, now, your husband over there is too ingrained in the Democratic politics for me to be able to help any. So is that really what you want?" I said "Yeah, that's what I want." So the next thing I know, "When are you going to get out and get up here? Time's running out and you've got to get up here and walk the halls." and I said, "What do you mean 'walk the halls'?" I thought all we had to do was throw a resume up there and they look at it. So I had to get out and come to Raleigh on a Monday and Sidney Lockes walked around introducing me to some people and at the end of the day he says, "Can you be up here tomorrow?" I said "Ruth, you need to be up here." So I come up tomorrow, which was Tuesday. I drove back and forth to Raleigh every day for four days and on Thursday is when you went in and you were introduced by your representative or whoever was nominating you and I looked and I saw all these key women that I had been in organizations with and I said, "Sidney, I'm out of my place. No way will I be able to get a nomination." He says, "Just sit tight." And I have friends there who were seeking the nomination. You know politics gets dirty. So I got up and did my spell and I came out and I says, "I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it." And I had to go back the next day, when they were going to take the vote, and I remember Representative Crawford. They left the floor to go back and count the votes and I was sitting up in whatever you call it.