Serena Rhodie: How did your family come to live in Durham? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: My father worked for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, and he was the district manager at Savannah, Georgia. And the company moved him to Durham in 1925, and my mother and my brother from Savannah, Georgia. And the next year I was born. 

Serena Rhodie: Okay. Okay, when were you born? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: October the twenty-ninth, 1926. 

Serena Rhodie: Okay. And where were you born? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: 1003 Federal Street. 

Serena Rhodie: Okay. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: And now they call it Old Federal, where I was born. 

Serena Rhodie: What's your educational background? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I went to elementary school. In fact, all of my education was right in Durham, North Carolina. College for Negroes. And I graduated, North Carolina College at Durham. And I got a master's degree in education in 1964. That was my latest, last degree. 

Serena Rhodie: What was your focus of study? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: My major in college was home economics and I taught five years in home economics. And then I changed to elementary education in 1950—well, 1953, I began teaching elementary education and I taught that second and third grade for twenty-four years in Durham. 

Serena Rhodie: What made you decide to change, study that? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, when I was in home economics, there were very few home economic teachers and I figured that none of them would be retiring soon. So I had better change my major so I could get a job because I was not going to leave Durham. I had made up my mind to that, and that's why I changed to elementary ed. And I like the children much better. Where I taught home economics was in the country and the children would love me, but in Durham and high school, they were not the same as the children in the rural area where I was teaching. And I did not want to cope with that age group. And I enjoyed my experience with the little children, much better. I changed. 

Serena Rhodie: Were you active singing in any groups in high school? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: In high school, I worked with the school newspaper for—we didn't have but a little one, but I worked with that. And the chorals, I sang in the chorals. 

Serena Rhodie: Were you active in groups in college? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, the YWCA and the Sunday school on campus, and the home economics club. 

Serena Rhodie: What did you do at Sunday school? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well now, the Sunday school, we had an instructor who lived in the city, math instructor who had Sunday school. And I started going to that, although I went to my own church, but I started going on campus and enjoyed the fellowship, I think with the other students campus. There was—and then the home economics group, I don't remember much of anything they did except meet. Really, they discussed problems that we might encounter in working when we graduated. And the YWCA, I guess, was more or less a service oriented group there on campus. And I wasn't that active because I lived in the city and there was quite a difference made of students on campus and the city students, we had more privileges because we lived at home. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: At that time, the kids had to be on the campus at six o'clock in the evening, they couldn't stay out and go anywhere. And lots of places were off limits to them. And very few of them took to the city schools because we had more privileges and then the dean made quite a difference in restricting us to certain areas, when we had no child, had go to a certain room and it brought about quite a bit of friction to us city students, compared to ones campus. So I guess that's one reason I wasn't too involved in a whole lot on campus. 

Serena Rhodie: What were some of the female groups that were at your college? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Female groups? Well, they had sororities. Deltas. The AKAs. I guess they had—let's say this, I'm not sure. And mostly Deltas and AKAs is all I heard of. And of course the physical ed, the cheerleaders and all those things. It's normal college activities. I wasn't active in any of those, I've never been a physical person. 

Serena Rhodie: What were some of their purposes or goals? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, the cheerleaders of course, for to cheer the teams on. And I try—we might have had—I can't even remember too much of a band in our college days. One thing it was during the war, and the fellows had gone to war. We didn't have many guys on campus, that could have been attributed to the fact that we didn't have much of a band, if we had a band. I went to college in '43, graduated in '47, of course before then—but we didn't have a yearbook for the first few years we were there—would have been '46 or '47. 

Serena Rhodie: Do you know, did they do community service? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: No, not then, nothing like that then. 

Serena Rhodie: Were they involved in politics at all? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: No. No, they really weren't. 

Serena Rhodie: What was your first job? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: My first job was cleaning a man's apartment. My brother had a job when he finished college. He left home to go to work and I got the job and I think I got two dollars and fifty cents for cleaning his—it was a two bedroom—two room, apartment, bedroom room, and a living room area. This man didn't even have a kitchen in his apartment, but he was the man who was a friend of the family. And my mother and father knew him well trusted him and they would—that's why they let me take the job. But two dollars and fifty cents, every two weeks was a whole lot of money to me then. 

Serena Rhodie: How old were you? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Let's see. My brother is six years old, or six years older than me. And he was four years ahead of me in school, no he was six years ahead of me in school. Oh, so I must have been about fourteen, maybe fourteen and I could buy my own silk. I bought my own fresh pair silk stockings. And at that time, they were knee highs and I was so proud that I could buy my own things with my little two dollars and fifty cents. 

Serena Rhodie: How long did you keep that job? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I kept it until I graduated from college. It was every two weeks and this man loved Life magazine, and he had everyone from the first issue in his apartment. And you couldn't touch any of those magazines. You may dust around them, but don't move one. And when he died, he still had all those Life magazines and he willed them to someone in his family. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: My next job was working in a cut-rate grocery store, which was right on the corner from my house. And I did that for a little while on the weekends, mostly when they would need me maybe. But after I graduated from college, I started working with a Junior Mother's Club with a play school. We were the first play school in the state of North Carolina and in the Eastern part of the United States. Three hours a day, I would walk, pick up the children on the way to [indistinct 00:10:56] recreation center and we would play and do activities. But that was in the summer of '47 when I graduated in June. And then in the last of July, I got my job teaching home economics and I gave it up. That was, the children were paying fifty cents a week, their parents were paying fifty cents, and I had about ten children. And one of the mothers, little boy that had a big red wagon, his mother would get somebody to pull him down the street in the red wagon and then we'd stop. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: They'd stop along the way and pick up some of the others. Then when I left that job, the lady that took over, drove around and picked up children, and that play school lasted up until this lady retired, and that was in the seventies. But it was—we did—and as I became a mother, I became a member of that same mother's club. And we are still Junior mothers. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I thought you'd laugh at that. Yeah. Everybody said, yo, change your name. I said, well, we were formed from our mothers that were in the club as Junior mothers. So we still the junior mothers to them. And we still meet, we don't do community work like we used to—well, we had a man to build the first zoo mobile, when we first got a museum in Durham and we had this mobile unit built and someone would go bring an animal or two or three animals on that zoo mobile, to the recreation center. And they would carry them around to the different recreation centers so that children could see the animals first hand, and play with them if they were tame and so forth. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: And we sponsored forums for the youth so that they could discuss problems with each other and we honored our mothers. And we honored another lady who had been quite instrumental in helping teenagers into adulthood, teaching us the social graces and manners and so forth. And we honored her with a program called This is Your Night. And we had Althea Gibson who was a great tennis player and had been Durham, Arthur Ashe— 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: So this—Althea Gibson or Arthur Ashe, and there were quite a few people that came from around the country because they had been helped by Mrs. Whitted in some way, because she sponsored tennis tours, helped sponsor tennis tour events and their activities throughout. She did quite a bit for Durham. So that was—then that was my first little job, the play schools, then I went on to teaching and didn't stop till I retired in 1977. 

Serena Rhodie: Where did you teach? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I taught here at Burton school for fifteen years when—and R.N. Harris opened was right around the corner, I taught there two years and then I retired from Y.E. Smith school, I taught there seven years. And the reason I moved from R.N. Harris to Y.E. Smith was because of integration. And they transferred all the Black teachers from—some of the Black teachers from R.N. Harris over to Y.E. Smith and moved White teachers over here. And that was how the integration was done in 1970. 

Serena Rhodie: I guess, which job did you like the most? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Which school? 

Serena Rhodie: Mm-hmm. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I guess I would say R.N. Harris just two years I was there, but the principal was new and he did so many things to help us and to encourage us as teachers making it home. And then I was near home. I could walk over there and I'd go over there on Sunday evening, sometimes on Saturday, because my room had an outside door and I could go in my room directly and work, fix my bulletin board and make things. And whenever I got with it, I could really go over there. And I think that's why I enjoyed it so much, being close to home and being able to go in and out. Now I couldn't do it because burglar alarms and all these things. And it was small. We had about six or eight teachers, first through sixth grade. 

Serena Rhodie: How was the average size of a class? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Oh, thirty-two. Very seldom, less than thirty-two. And every year Ms. Lincoln said, "We're going to cut down on the size." It would end up—it would be right back where it was, just like the salaries. I had taught twenty-nine years you know, and my salary when I retired was like ten-thousand eighty dollars, something like that. So you can see teachers did not make any money. And even with a master's degree. 

Serena Rhodie: How did you feel when you were transferred to that different school? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, we were apprehensive. I was apprehensive at first, but that principal was White. He went out of his way to make it happy for us, the Black teachers. In fact, he was so overly nice to us until some of the White teachers resented it and retired that year, that same year. And I saw him not too long ago in the grocery store and I thanked him for making it so pleasant for us. Anything we wanted almost, we could get. Well, we weren't used to that because everything was limited when it was well Black school. We couldn't get so many books, and it was just poor funding even. And then we got used books, used this, everything we got was from what the White people had already had, and got rid of. But the opportunity to mingle with other people, I did not mind at all. In fact, I made some very lasting friendships. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I had known and interacted with White people before. As a child, I played with a little White girl, whose father ran the store in my community. And her daddy would bring her to work, and he would let my daddy bring her around to our house and play with me. And so she was just another child. And so the integration and all, and the children were nice. We found that our children, were just children. 

Serena Rhodie: How was it with the parents who were there? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: The parents, some of them were very nice, some of them, 

Speaker 3: Okay, I'll see you. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Okay. Have a good day. Some of them we're—well, I think they were apprehensive about what we would do for their children at first, but when they got to know us, they found out we were no different and very cooperative. Of course, some of our children, we had to be very careful in handling them with kid gloves, so that they would not feel inferior or that we were treating the Whites different from them. 

Serena Rhodie: Yeah. I guess, are kind of up to date with what's going on with the busing going on now? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, not a whole lot, but only thing I can see that they're doing a whole lot of excess busing. And the children are having to leave home so early because they got so far to travel. This is the main thing that I've been hearing, which to me, well, I don't see where it's doing any good. I really think schools were just as good when they were separated. If not better, because I think the Black teacher had more interest and dedicated to the Black children. We had children who were poor, who very poor, and they would come to school dirty. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: We would get a bucket from the cafeteria. The dress they came in, wash it out, heat the water and take them in the bathroom and give them a little wash out. We didn't get sued or cursed out by the parents. I know we would now, we couldn't do that now, but they were very appreciative. We carried clothes, we would carry clothes and give to the children. And when we would wash them off at school, we would put on clean clothes and they of course they'd go home with these clothes. And we have even given soap powder to families. And at that time we had to visit the homes. We can't do—we were required to do it. And we had to make a report before schools started, what homes you visited and any other comments about that family maybe. For example, if little Susie had a record of being absent a lot, we would try to talk to those parents before school started, to try to keep them in school and make them attend regularly. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: But, I don't think a lot of White teachers knew how to deal with Black children and did not try to encourage the little things like cleanliness that we did. They had to be taught, the parents didn't know any better. I remember a little family that we had in McDougald Terrace when it first started. Low income people from this section of town, East Durham, thought it was awful. All these people going move in that project. And when those children came, they were just as clean and new, and nice as they could be. And the children they were already in East Durham, were the dirty ones and the houses were dirty and poor, not kept up well. And the McDougald Terrace to me, helped the community and it helped those other children from East Durham to improve themselves. Because the parents, I think, saw the difference in their children, and what was coming from all over Durham to move in. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: As they said that low income housing project, it helped quite a bit. And some of the nicest children we had were from the low income. But I started to say about this family, I'll never forget. This lady had four little girls. And the smallest one was just the—I mean, she was so little, she was in the first grade and her mama said, "All of them work. All of them are taught how to take care of everything." I said, "You mean that one right there in the first grade?" She said, "Yeah. I got a stool. She stands on that stool and learn how to wash dishes and dry them, and make up her bed." 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: She said, "They are counting on [indistinct 00:25:02], they need to learn." And I learned from her, whatever the age or size, they still need to learn how to care for themselves, because you never know when you're going to have to—and I often—and this family migrated to the North somewhere. And I often wondered what has happened to those girls because the parents were so aggressive and progressive in training the children. Their last name was People and I wondered what has happened to those girls, they were very nice. You wonder a lot of times what happens to the children you teach. I saw a young man in the store. I would say he's in his forties. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: And I'm looking at him. I said, "What was your third grade—"I said, "Hello, how are you?" "Fine," I said, "What was your third grade teacher's name?" "Miss Boyd, that you? That's you that's you." I said, "I just wondered if you remember." I said, "Now I can't call your name, but I know I taught you. I can, I remember the face." And he was glad to see me. And his wife said, "I knew it was somebody that knew me, because the way you spoke, when you spoke to me, you sound like you knew me." I said, "Sure. I remember you." And I said, "Because see, I knew your daddy, and we were in school along at the same time." It was quite an experience, but I don't think I could do it now. 

Serena Rhodie: Why not? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Not the way things are. We didn't have guns and knives in the school. I don't think I could deal with that. I couldn't work with that, I don't think at all. You might have children cursing. And my last years, I had a little girl that brought a marijuana cigarette to school and I didn't even know what it was. And the chair told me what it was. "Ms. Boyd, she got a marijuana cigarette." "Let me see it." But nowadays uh-uh, I couldn't wouldn't want to risk my life around guns and knives. 

Serena Rhodie: Do you know what precautions the schools are taking for that? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Some of them I understand have metal detectors. I don't know about all of them. Do you? 

Serena Rhodie: Well, I went to school in New York. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Yeah. What'd you do? 

Serena Rhodie: They had ID cards. You had to push them into the machine and make sure you belong in the building. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Oh, to get in. 

Serena Rhodie: And then we have—now it's even worse. They have walk-through metal detectors by high school now and they have scanning, you put your bag through some machine. Got to get used to that. Did you get married? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Yes. I met my husband when we were in college and we courted for six years and we married. After six years, we worked two years after we graduated. And he stayed on his job. He was in South Carolina and I was here in North Carolina. He stayed on his job and until our son was about three, and then he came home. 1949. 

Serena Rhodie: How did courting or dating take place? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Well, the way we met, we were in a place called a College Inn, for lunch. And he was a campus student. He stayed—yeah, he stayed on campus then, but he was up there and just hanging around and he said something to me and I ignored him. But then the next time he saw me, he said something else. And so then I think he told a girl that he liked me and she came back and told me he wants to talk to you. So, that's how we got started. And then I was invited to a dance on campus and it was the Scroller Club. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I think it was a Scroller Club for the Kappas. And he was going to escort me, but he was a trainer for the basketball team. So, he couldn't be there to take me to the dance, but he could come later. So he got a friend of his to take me to the dance. And then he told him, he'd bring me back home. And we would meet at this place, College Inn, everybody's in there eating lunch and that's where we courted for a long time, just sitting there at lunch time. And then he finally started coming to my house. And my daddy, "That boy ain't got no shoes. He's got on tennis shoes as cold as it is." When I then wear the kind of tennis shoes they wearing now, that I was with then tennis shoes. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: And my daddy thought it was over. "That boy ain't got no shoe." I said, "Well, I like him. He's nice." And he let him come to see me on Sunday evening. And of course he kept coming until when we graduated. Of course he would come home some weekends when he could. He was a football coach and basketball coach in the other state. And of course he couldn't come home as often. He finally decided, he'd asked me to marry him. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: And I went to the basketball games when we were in college and I would always wait until he got through with the team to walk me home. And I'd be the last one out of the gym with him. His team of course, be downstairs, getting dressed. But have you heard of the game that Duke and North Carolina central played in 1944? Well, they had a secret game. Some of the Duke players played North Carolina Central in the woman's—they call it the woman's gym. It's an old gym now. And it was kept a secret until this year, 50 years, it was a secret. My husband never told me about it. And we were courting at that time. It was more or less a challenge that one of the students had made. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: North Carolina College can beat you all. And so the coach McLendon, who had trained under the basketball originator Naismith, he arranged to have these teams meet at Central and play on Sunday morning while everybody's going to church. And he knew that if it got back to Dr. Sheppard, the president at Central, that the money might be cut off from the state that we were getting at college. So that's why he never told him. They locked the doors of the gym and nobody was in there, but the two teams. This guy Scott Ellsworth, was working on his doctorate at Duke, and somebody mentioned it and he went into the archives and found this information. And one other guy—and he couldn't remember when the game was played. And one of the guys named Hubble had a letter from his mother or— 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: He had written his mother about this game, and that's the only way we found out the date that this game was played. And it was fifty years ago. Duke, of course the coach was there, and it seemingly they decided they would play it at Central because it would be less obvious for the Duke team to come on Central's campus, than it would be for Central to go over there. It would be quite obvious for Blacks to be on Duke's campus those days. But it has made history. And the Duke magazine. Have you seen the Duke magazine on campus? 

Serena Rhodie: I think— 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Okay. There's the one that was put out September, October issue this year, has them featured in it, one of the articles on them. And it has a picture of the one player from Central that was here in February, and my husband and coach McLendon, and two of the Duke players, Hubble was one of them staying— But the five of them met at the old gym where they played that game this year. And New York Times magazine came and made pictures and did the story in the magazine section in March. But the Duke magazine guy sent him a copy that last week. 

Serena Rhodie: And who won it? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Central won it. Yeah, and seemingly I've forgotten the score now, but they really beat them. And the guys just after they finished playing that game, they continued to just play and just to see what would happen. And they just said that they found out that they were just playing—they were just boys like they were. There was no difference. But one of the guys—there are only two of the players on Central's team living. And the other guy we finally got in touch with him, he's in Los Angeles, California, and I'd been trying to get his address for this guy and couldn't. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: We finally found him, but it was after they had made the picture here, and now they want to do a get together again, just—well they're too old to play. Guess some of them are, but this guy in California, he talks like he's not too old, but he sent his picture. I said, "He too fat now," but that was the integration that was kept a secret. 

Serena Rhodie: Where did your husband's coach in South Carolina? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: He was at Florence, South Carolina at Wilson High School. I believe the name was Wilson High School. And he was there three years. Then he coached at Plymouth, North Carolina, three years. And he was at Burlington at Jordan Sellars High School for two years. And he gave up the coaching to come to Durham and take a job with the recreation department, and at quite a reduction in salary. But he needed to be here with his family. So he took the cut and it ended up when he retired, he was the assistant director. He was the acting director for the city of Durham recreation department. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: He had become assistance manager for the recreation department and the guy that was manager decided to try something else. And he went into another field just to try, and they asked my husband to serve as acting and he did. And he decided that it was time for him to come home. He had been there twenty-nine years and he had a year's sick leave, so that gave him enough to retire. They wanted him to stay on, but knew he wasn't going to stay. He didn't. And the guy who had been the director went back to the job and finished it out until he retired. 

Serena Rhodie: Do you have any children? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I have one son he's fourty-four years old, and I don't even—oh, there's a picture of him with his two little children, when they were little. This is his son now, and his son's wife. 

Serena Rhodie: Neither one of your children at Duke for the grand— 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: No, no, no cousin. I'm sitting by the cousins, but my son has two children, little girl and this one. And his wife finished Meredith College last June. Last May, rather. And the daughter is in tenth grade in Virginia. My son and his wife are divorced. She's remarried and she lives with them. And he lives here. He's a television videographer for WTVD. 

Serena Rhodie: How did he get started in that field? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: You know, he came out of the service and he heard about that job. From a baby he's always loved television. First TV we had, we got it when he was born. And he used to, when he started talking, he wanted that peacock. NBC, he wanted to get that peacock and I never did try to get it for him. But when he got out of service, he heard about this job and he applied and he got it. And at that time he was carrying a little box. I guess it was the voice box maybe, behind the photographer. And this photographer decided to go to another job. And my son learned the photography work that he was doing from following him. And he worked in the news department. Well, after 1979, November third, I think it was, there was a shootout in Greensboro, and he was doing the story, and he saw how dangerous it was with the news. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: So he transferred to the production department, and that's what he works in now, production. And they do promos for TV station. You might see Miriam Thomas talking about something that's coming up in the TV station, but he'll deal with things like that. And he loves his job. And he's been there about twenty years now, or more. Nineteen or twenty. 

Serena Rhodie: When was he born? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: 1952 October. 

Serena Rhodie: And did he go to college or? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: He went to college, but he did not stay. He decided he wanted to get married and go into service, in that order. 

Serena Rhodie: So he voluntarily went— 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Voluntarily, went into air force and he was—after he did his basic training, he went to Denver, Colorado specialized training. And he came back and he was stationed at the Pentagon for two weeks. And then his time was up and he just came on out. 

Serena Rhodie: So, how long have you been living in Durham? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: I was born here, born here. Soon, be seventy years ago I've been living here. 

Serena Rhodie: Have you ever traveled outside of Durham? 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: Oh, yes. I've traveled outside of Durham. Haven't been that many places, but I used to go to New York quite a bit because I had an aunt and uncle there. And when I was in college, I went to Philadelphia and stayed three weeks to get a job. My brother was living there, and I found a job on one day and I worked four days on that job, and the war ended, and the job ended. So I left there and went to New York to visit my aunt, stayed up there about two weeks and came on back to Durham and got ready to go back to school. 

Ruth Spalding Boyd: That was my senior year. And then we've been to Mexico and Bahamas vacations. But we had a terrible experience when we went to Mexico. We went on Air Mexico from Acapulco to Mexico City. And we looked up on that plane on our way back on Mexico City, back to Acapulco, and we saw smoke at the top and everybody started "Oh, oh, ooh, ooh, there's smoke, there's smoke!" I said never again, will I get on an Air Mexico plane, but we got there safe. Yeah—