Barbara Boardly interview recording, 1994 July 27
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| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Boardly, could you tell me where you were born and about the area that you grew up in? | 0:01 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I was born in West Palm Beach, Florida. Only lived there two years. And you want me to go on? And then my father had a what you call a dry good store down in West Palm Beach. And then he decided he wanted to go into medicine. He had already finished college and so he decided he wanted to go into medicine. And we moved to Chicago to live with my grandmother while he was at Meharry in medical school. So my early education elementary school began in Chicago. And I was there until, let's see, we came here in 1932 and I started the rest of school. I think I started in fourth grade here. | 0:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | In Tallahassee? | 1:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | In Tallahassee, yeah. We came to Tallahassee. My daddy was interning at a Florida A&M Hospital. They had a hospital and he was interning that year. And then he decided to practice here, although he was from Jacksonville, Florida. And we went around to the Marianna in different places. My mother said it was just so primitive. She said that she just didn't want us to grow up there. So we came here because of the schools, university. And I went to elementary school, Florida A&M, and also high school. | 1:04 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you live in this area? | 1:48 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, we didn't live in this area. At the time, we lived in the areas close to the hospital during my daddy's interning. And then we had one or two other places that we lived before he built a home over by the governor's mansion. We just lived two blocks from the governor's mansion. And that's where I really grew up. And we were primarily by ourselves in that neighborhood. If you could see that the rest of the community was sort of underneath this little hill that we lived on. And that's where I spent my remaining of my childhood there. You'll have to ask me questions. | 1:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was it like moving from Chicago to Tallahassee? | 2:46 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, I was young, but I do remember that my father writing us, because he was here, writing us that we were going to go to school at a little brick school on a hill. And of course, as a child, I remember thinking it was almost like a mountain and I could see myself living there. But listening to my mother, it was really like going into the jungles. It was very primitive compared to the city we lived in Chicago and very rural and paved streets. We used to pave street public transportation and we didn't have any of that. And red clay, this hill I was telling you about, it was red clay. And when it was rain, it would slip and slide, cars did. Now on the campus here, it's just above the campus, just above it, there was one paved street going through the campus, Florida A&M. | 2:54 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And we were accustomed to indoor plumbing. And the woman that we lived with, she did have running water, but there was no hot water. See, Mama would have to take buckets of water to put into a tin cut tub because we didn't have that. And so that's where she would bathe us that way. And let me see, oh, she had to cook on a wood stove, which she wasn't used to. And then we enrolled in the elementary school and it was just above where we lived. It was walking distance. So I went to school. I entered the fourth grade, I think. And let me see what else. | 4:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, wherever we went, we had to walk because if Mama went to the grocery store, she went to a big store, A&P was what we had there. She'd have to walk all the way downtown to come back because there were no buses. We didn't have a car. And almost wherever we went at that time, we always walked. Then when we moved over, where I told you was originally we had to walk from to school, we walked all the way from one side of town to the other to go to school. | 5:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And then we walk home in the evening. If it rained, my father at that time had a car. He would pick us up and bring us home from school. My mother didn't work and she had finished college too. They had met at in Wellforce and she had finished college, but she didn't work for a while. One time she did teach, I guess about six years she taught, but primarily she remained at home. That was after my daddy started practicing. See, he was practicing then. | 5:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was Florida A&M Elementary, was that a different kind of school than you had been used to? | 6:23 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes, because in Chicago, the tall buildings, and you went up to upstairs and to the classrooms and down, I vaguely recall you go down to the gymnasium. But this was all on one level. And that was surprising. It was small. The classes were small and it was a model school. It had been designed as a model school, I guess some program. And you had the tables, the chairs before you had these old-fashioned seats where one child sat behind the other. | 6:29 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | But this school, you sat around the table and made it a little bit different. I remember being able to talk to the children about what I saw in Chicago and things, and they began to tease me about that. I remember my grandmother would take us to different museums and things like that in the stockyard. And I remember telling them, and the kids began to call me Stockyard. It was like a little jealousy. And it was different. Yeah, it was quite different. Go ahead. | 7:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was it difficult to make friends at first at school? | 7:55 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, because I have a friend now that we are still girl friends and she was the one that initiated it to come up and make me feel welcome and things. And no, I didn't find that difficult at all. The children weren't quite, now some of them I can remember just in Chicago, they would fight a lot. Looks like to me, they were children. I remember once in Chicago, my grandmother, I guess went to the superintendent to see if we could change schools. And they didn't want you to have to cross this boulevard. And so she got permission for us to cross the boulevard to go to a school she liked better for us. | 8:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And when we came here, this was like a lab school and the kids would see this kids did have to pay a fee. So that sort of eliminated some children who couldn't afford to go to it. So you had a sort of select group of children who did attend. | 8:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's Chicago? | 9:10 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | That was here. Now Chicago's strictly public, now they had a public school here, but we didn't go to it. We went to A&M and there was a small group of kids who went and I guess their parents could afford or sacrificed to pay this small fee so that you could attend. | 9:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. So how many children— You started here in fourth grade? | 9:31 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I started here fourth grade. | 9:35 |
| Paul Ortiz | And then how many children were in your class? | 9:36 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I imagine no more than about 20, 25. It was small. It seems as though that school had been designed for a model school where they get those Carnegie funds and things like that. And I think that's what it had been. And so they were maintaining that. But it was a small class. | 9:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember having favorite teachers? | 10:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, yeah. My sixth grade teacher, she's living now, was one of my favorites. And she was interested in literature. You know how some people have special— And she introduced us to, she'd read every afternoon, I remember after school or after classes and she would read Shakespeare's story. I remember The Merchant of Venice. That was one of my favorite ones. She would read those type of stories to us. She'd read poetry, of course we'd have to memorize some of the poetry. But I remember her, that was one of the pleasures of school is that she would read every afternoon before the kids would leave. And another one, well, I was always interested in reading, there was a librarian that I liked very much. And let me see, I think those were about the two that really stand out. As I got in high school, I had one teacher, a math teacher that I liked. And I always liked most of my gymnasium teachers. | 10:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you mentioned that there was a fee, kind of a lab fee to go to the elementary school. Did your parents also purchase the books? | 11:34 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | In high school we had to buy books. I don't think we had to pay for them in, but when I got in junior high school, we did buy our books. | 11:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | And junior high school was also at A&M? | 12:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, I went from fourth grade onto 12th, finished. We changed buildings but stayed there. | 12:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, during this time that you were back here, your father was in residency? | 12:16 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, they called an intern then. He was doing his internship, but that's the term they used now. | 12:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | And he was interning at Florida? | 12:33 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Florida A&M Hospital, that's where the Black people went at that time, A&M. | 12:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | What was family life like during these years? | 12:51 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well see, my mother and I work and that meant that she could prepare things. We carried our lunches, we carried our lunches to school. So she prepared that. And my father's home was in Jacksonville, so we would go see my grandmother from time to time, Jacksonville and really enjoyed, we enjoyed it. I had a good childhood, very good. And my mother and father were young, so they attended dances and things on the campus. And see, they both belonged to fraternity things. And so they had fraternity affairs. So they would go those. And then we would go to our parties and we would go to the movies and picnics and things of this sort. When my father first started practicing, we would go around with him some evenings to the churches where he said drumming up patients. And we'd go out to the rural churches and my father would talk a little bit and then they would have refreshments and things like that. And let's see, what else did you want to know about the family life? | 12:55 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you have brothers and sisters? | 14:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes, I have one brother and I have one sister. They're younger than I am. | 14:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Who was responsible for discipline in the family? | 14:31 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | My father was to a certain extent and my mother was. My mother, probably more so. But she would always say to him, they did and so, and maybe if he felt like reprimanded he would. But she took care of it primarily, she did. | 14:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, Ms. Boardly, how about say, budgeting decisions? | 15:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | My mother took care of the household budget. My father, he gave us allowances and he would handle that out. And he paid the bills. He paid all the bills, but he gave her cash, I think, for the household. But if we got something like a new chair, something like that, my father was the one that took care of that business. It was typical, him head of the house and she did the things concerning us and within the house. | 15:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you mentioned that your father would go to different congregations to basically— | 15:55 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Well, to introduce himself to the community. When we first came, that's really what it was. He was introducing himself and us, the family to the community. And I guess if anybody decided they'd go to him. See, because there were only three Black doctors I think at that time. Let's see, because my daddy, let's see. Yeah, because there was an older doctor who had been here sometime. And then the fellow who was sort of in front of my daddy interning, it was three of them. | 16:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know the names of the other—? | 16:38 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes, the older one was Dr. Alpha Omega Campbell. He'd been here quite a while. And the other one was Dr. I don't remember his first name was Bait. Bait. | 16:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | He was the younger of the two? | 17:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Of the two. And then my daddy came and then we had a Black dentist. Now he was younger than my father. He came and at one time our father and Dr. Campbell had their offices together. | 17:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. And so did your father set up a private practice after? | 17:22 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, after. Now that other Campbell was Wilbur Campbell, the dentist was Wilbur Campbell, Wilburn I think. My father's office was downtown on, see, living in the south was paradoxical, his office was downtown on College Avenue. | 17:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | College Avenue. | 17:45 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It was across the street from the theater. And later I think there was a Mrs. Diamond who owned that building. Later, she was raising the rent. I can remember my dad, so she told him, and she had another place around, just around on Adam Street. All this is still downtown. And then that's where he stayed until he came out this way later. | 17:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | You mentioned that living in the South is paradoxical. Was that part of the paradox? | 18:22 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes, it really was. | 18:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember early experiences with discrimination? | 18:32 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I was trying to think. And I was trying to think. We never were told, I think it's just something that just sort of grew or you either saw it. But see, my mother never seen, "You can't sit down there," and she never did that. And yet either you didn't come in contact with it. I was trying to remember how, I just don't remember. But anyway, early, let me see. It probably was, and that's something I can't, that you just would hear other people talking, older people. And you were sitting down, you said they were probably talking about their times. | 18:39 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I think some of the experiences that I had came later. For example, and this may be jumping, I guess you'd have to see how, just organize. Okay, I was at school, I went to school at Hampton, Virginia, college and this was college. And I had gone in to get a money order. My father had sent me some money and I was had come in, there was a person who had come in before me and was at the counter. I came in and was at the counter. And just as this woman was getting ready to wait on me, this White man came in and she cut across me, just walked across me and waited on him. Now I remember feeling anger, terrific anger. | 19:31 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I was trying to think when I was a child, I didn't have too many bad experiences as a child because you had to remember that we weren't thrown a lot with adult Whites, other than you go downtown. And I don't remember anybody mistreating me, even saleswomen like walk over or pass you. Maybe you weren't paying attention being young. I was telling you, I really didn't have real bad experiences. One thing is that, I hate to say being who we were, we were doctor's children. There was a difference in the way that they treated my mother and us. See, when they knew you, because I can remember this, I had to go get my glasses, had to get some glasses, I had my eyes examined and I was young and my daddy would call the doctor, he would tell us when to come. | 20:24 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | When we came, we would go directly into his office. We didn't have to sit in the waiting room. I don't even know where Black people sat because we would go directly into his office and then he would take us. And I remember that as one example. And then when I was a young woman, because this is jumping around, my father sent me to a White doctor because I was about to lose my second child. And when I went into, my mother took me to the office, we'd never been to a White doctor before. We went up the steps just like anybody else. And when we got there at the desk, the girl told us to come around, we went around and we sat in his office and then he would take us. And I only knew I opened the wrong door, one time I was up in his office and I looked down and I saw these Black people sitting on the steps. | 21:33 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | So then I realized that they would go around to the back and have to sit there until they called on him. And so that's why I'm saying the treatment was a little different. So therefore I don't think I had the bitterness. My brother, Laura's sister, my sister is a little bit more bitter than we are, but the bitterness that a lot of people have because there was a little difference in that treatment. That's why I say it's paradoxical. And I remember once, it was just my son was at this same doctor's office, the nurse was talking about how pretty he was and she takes him and goes into the White waiting room and they were all cooling and carrying on about him. | 22:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And I was saying that I was sitting back and I'd always come through that way, but I never did stop it that way. But that's why I'm saying it was so many different things that people just don't realize. I crawled and all that. I didn't see that, but I knew that it was there. And see, we didn't work for them, so we didn't come into contact with them. | 23:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you think now looking back, that there was a conscious effort by your parents to maybe lead more of their lives and your lives perhaps on and around the campus area? | 23:51 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, I was going to say, almost all of our lives, especially those connected with the university was get there. And of course you had everything if you really wanted to see, you went to your own doctors, you went to your own hospital and you didn't have to say, for example, you went to a hospital. Now, in Thomasville, I understand they used to sit in the basement. But see, going to A&M, we didn't have to do that. It was just it should have been. And all the theaters, we had our own theater, which it was. And we went to the A&M, A&M was the hub of everything because we went to the movies at A&M every Friday night. See, they had the movies every Friday night. Finally, we had a Black woman open a Black theater. And so then, we attended that. | 24:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, do you remember the name and the year of that? | 25:12 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Her name was Maggie Yellowhair. | 25:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 25:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It was the Lynn Theater and it was over on Macomb Street. Now the year, I don't remember, but it had to be, let's see, I was still in high school, had to be like '35 or '36. And she had what she called a, oh, I'll tell you, which I have a friend, he and I grew up together and he probably can tell you more and I'll give you his name. But he remembers so many things because he lived right in that area, the neighborhood. See, we lived kind of off from the Black community and he lived right in it. So he probably could give you a lot of information. | 25:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | And with the theater at say A&M, and then this is Yellowhair Theater. Would they show the same types of movies that were—? | 26:12 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, sometimes, I don't know where her outlet came from, but we would get sometimes the current movie before they did downtown. So I don't know, maybe Nick knows, but I don't know that. But we would get the late ones. Yeah. Now when we went to A&M, they would be a little bit behind because it was a school. They were showing the students, for the students. | 26:24 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | But yeah, Ms. Young had the ladies, I remember the opening night was, oh, I'll tell you, she had Nae West and something, I forget. And she was a woman that had been an old residence here and a business woman, that type of thing. And she was sitting with the diamond rings on. She was a ticket person. But we laugh about that at theater, now you don't really think about it. But she had the big floodlights, just like she had seen Hollywood and she had the big floodlights and she was naming the people who were coming in. It was a lot of fun but Nick would tell you more about that. | 26:49 |
| Paul Ortiz | During those years, say the '30s and then in '40s, were there areas of town that your parents considered unsafe or that kind of may have told you was—? | 27:36 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | You talking about with Whites? No, never put fear in a body. See, we lived what you call Brevard Street. I'd walk up to, what is it, I'd walk up and walk through the White Town, the Calhoun Street where well, some of them were shady. And this is where the Whites lived all along. I remember Governor Collins, they were young and they lived on this particular street. And I would walk down there going downtown. That had to be Monroe Street, Monroe and Adams. I'd walk down Monroe and Adams all the way into town. And they never told us not to be careful or anything like that. Now, I don't know about my brother. See, that being a boy may have been a little different. He's younger than I, but no, for me never, I don't ever remember her saying that you must be careful. In fact, we never were warned against somebody bothering us. | 27:51 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | An, I don't know, my father wasn't afraid and my mother wasn't either. So I guess they didn't put that fear in us. They thought no one would bother us. I don't know. Now, one time I remember we were walking to Sunday school because we came to church, we were Episcopalians and we came closer this area and this car came down and there were young White kids in it. And the boy reached out the window and slapped a girl on the shoulder. And my brother was into that FBI thing at the time. So he took the license down. And when we got home, we told Mother the boy didn't hurt her, he just reached out the window and hit her. And we told my mother. And my mother was friends with one of the judges' wives. And she told her and gave her the license number. | 29:01 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And then Ms. Ovan told my mother that we didn't need to ever worry again about that happening anymore. So we don't know what took place. My mother was— The Whites would call her for different things if they needed somebody, they would see if she could find somebody. Or when they wanted to organize the Girl Scouts, they called her and she would— So she sort of had a tie with quite a few of them that you would call influential ones. And I don't know, I just don't know their relationship. | 30:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | But she would help organize Girl Scouts? | 30:42 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well she did. She was one of the first. But the funny thing is that my mother kept asking, see this is Mrs. Ovan I think it was the person, I know Ms. [indistinct 00:30:56], she was over the Girl Scouts. But anyway, my mother had a group of my friends that come in and she organized it. But my mother kept saying, "Well what's the number?" But they never gave us a number. So we feel now that we weren't really registered, they really were trying to see how it was going to work out. | 30:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | With an all-Black Girls Scouts? | 31:15 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And we never had uniforms, but we had the book and we were doing some things, we didn't get badges or anything like that. | 31:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | That's really interesting. | 31:28 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. She called down, one of them, this old one of them called down and would meet with my mother and I remember she said would be like to be in a Girl Scout troop. And so we would, so my girlfriends met with these ladies and they explained everything and we carried on a program. But we never, as I look back, we weren't considered the first organized Girl Scout troop because Mrs. Wright came and she was the first organized leader, official leader. And this is what I had become, I guess, acceptable. But they did try to. | 31:36 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you mentioned that your mom had contacts. Were these related to social contacts or—? | 32:17 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I don't know just how that was. See, Ms. Ovan, I don't know whether it was through the church. Because see, my mother worked with the Episcopal church and she never said— Now the only thing I remember is that when the women came down, what infuriated me is that they called her by her first name. And I remember that. It didn't seem to faze my mother at all. But we realized that whenever she was called, it was always my grandmother's first name. | 32:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | And she would call them by their— | 32:57 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Ms. Ovan. Now my father was different. I forgot to go back there, just a minute. | 33:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | [indistinct 00:33:17]. | 33:12 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Okay. She and Mama seem to have been friends and several other people, I can't remember their names. And I know she used to tell me, she said, "You need to know these people. You need to know." And I wasn't even thinking about it, but she was saying. Mama could tell you who married who and who else. And I don't know if she got it from the paper because we always took the daily paper. But these were people, and then she said, "You never know who would be able to help you." And my father was different, very independent. He didn't want to have to do anything with Whites. But he did not talk against them. | 33:25 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | He didn't talk to [indistinct 00:34:10], but he was very independent. If something came up, he didn't want to even ask them for any type of help. And sometime, Mommy there, sometime argue and he never wanted them at the house. They had to be paid by check. No insurance man could come to the house, nobody selling anything because he didn't want my mother to be in contact with them. And he didn't particularly like for her to even associate with these women. | 34:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 34:54 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Because he said they would turn on you. That was his thing he said, and I remember my sister and brother, one place we lived before we built our house, they played with some White kids that live in a neighborhood. And my father was totally against it. He said, because he felt that when their other friends come, they would make them feel badly. But my brother and sister continue to do it, but he didn't like it. I never wanted to, but he never did. They didn't like to, I didn't have any reason for not joining. But the kids in the area were not age that I was at that time. I think that's what it was. | 34:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you have White playmates when you were—? | 35:32 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, I didn't. I didn't have anybody. We would sometimes pass the— I guess before they got school buses, because that was another thing that was funny. I never knew until I was grown that we had school buses here. But evidently they rooted them so the Black kids wouldn't see it. Because I didn't know kids rode on the buses. That's just my version. I just don't have any. I read in the paper, I think in 1935, I think school buses, we had them, but I didn't really realize they were— But I remember one time, this was all White community back out in here, and they would walk all the way over to Leon, which was closer to where I lived. | 35:34 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And then we had to walk over this side, you see it's A&M and we would pass them. And never any ugly words or anything. We was just the groups of would pass each other. And then all of a sudden, now that I look back, I missed them. And so what they were probably riding because they had moved Leon out farther. And when they consolidated that school, that's probably when they put those school buses on there. But we didn't have to come in contact with them. | 36:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | What would've been the primary information source? You mentioned that your parents had a daily paper. | 36:56 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, we took a Daily Democrat. That's what it was called then. It's called a Tallahassee Democrat now. But it was called a Daily Democrat. And we also got Black newspapers of Pittsburgh Courier. And let's see, what did we get? Another one? No, Pittsburgh Courier is primarily what we got. And my daddy always took The Crisis magazine, which was put out by the NAACP, I think. So we always had that in the house. | 37:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you mentioned that he really didn't want White insurance agents around the house. | 37:35 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No. | 37:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | Would he get his insurance through say the Afro-American? | 37:40 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, well, he did have that. Yeah. But his insurance, they had to deal with him at his office. That's what I'm saying. But never to come to— And he would tell them, but you never to go to my house to collect. I'll send it through the mail. And so he would send his, what do you call, premiums or whatever it is, whatever he paid for and insurance, he'd send it through the mail. | 37:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 38:10 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Or they would come to his office to get it. | 38:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | But not to the house. | 38:12 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No. And if he came and they were on the porch, he wouldn't be ugly but he would be rude in a way that they would know that I've done wrong, he would tell them to leave, whenever he made business transactions, he'd always tell them, you're not to go to my house to do this or to do that. | 38:18 |
| Paul Ortiz | Primarily with White business? | 38:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. | 38:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | I understand. Now, when you began high school at the A&M High School. Now, did that high school have a name or was it known by—? | 38:46 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Oh, let's see. The elementary school had a name. It was the building. Lucy Moten. You ever hear anyone say Lucy Moten, she goes to Lucy Moten. Well, that was the elementary, lab school really. And then in high school, it was just Florida A&M High School. | 38:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | At that point in your life, are you thinking in terms of a career, particular aspirations? | 39:19 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | College. That was understood. | 39:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. And were you hoping to go to Florida A&M or—? | 39:29 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, my father had always said that he wanted us to go away, so that we can broaden ourselves. And so my mother wanted me to go to Wilberforce. I said, Ohio, where is she finished from. My daddy finished from there too. And he went to AU in high school because they didn't have a Black high school in Jacksonville. And his father was able to send all of them to boarding school. So they all went to boarding school. My mother was from West Virginia. She went to high school there. And then she went to Wilberforce, to college. And that's where they met. And so it was always understood, I mean, just silently understood that we'd go to college and he said that he would like to send us away. So he sent me away. I went away. My brother went away too. My sister decided not to go to college, so she didn't go. But I went away to college. | 39:37 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you went to Hampton? | 40:46 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Hampton, it was called Hampton Institute. Nice university. But it was Hampton Institute, then up in Hampton, Virginia. | 40:47 |
| Paul Ortiz | And how did you make that decision or how was that decision—? | 41:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, I really wanted to go, and I'll tell you why, I really wanted to go to Fisk or either Howard. That's what my father wanted me to go too. They didn't want to, see, Hampton was more like a vocational, it wasn't a liberal arts college. I don't know what else. | 41:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | Like this. | 41:22 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. So my mother said I couldn't go because I was coming from a small town and they were a little bit broader in their rules and regulations. And she didn't want to go to Howard because it was in a city. And I was young and I was 16 when I went to college. So I was young and she didn't want me to do that. So there was a teacher here that had gone to Hampton. She's a very beautiful girl. And they had a dance group. And so she asked me one time about that. So I said yes. So that's how I went through her. She really interested me in going to Hampton. | 41:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | So your parents really felt that perhaps Fisk might've been too—? | 42:07 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes. And coming from a small town and young, my mother was afraid that I'd get out of here, I guess. So that's why I didn't, and why Daddy didn't object. Now he did not want me to go to a school like Hampton. He wanted me to go to a liberal arts college, but my mother didn't mind. So whatever she said and things like that and he went along with it. | 42:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Well, how about yourself? Was that, were you hoping to go to a place like that? | 42:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, I did. I had that in mind. But I was a sort of a complacent child. And so whatever my mother says, she was my whole world. My mother was whatever she said and whatever she agreed to, I agreed to. But I never regret that because that was some of the happiest days of my life at Hampton. | 42:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | And this was your first time out-of-state? | 43:05 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, it was in the summers. We would go see my grandmother wherever she lived. And that was in Chicago for a number of years. And then she was originally from Virginia. We went to West Virginia, some summers Virginia, Washington DC. In fact, we went away every summer. My father, my mother and I, would take us and my father approved. And then we went all around the southern part of Florida and we traveled like that. Alabama, now that those were the places that I had fear and I was talking about little humiliation, being in a segregated world. There was humiliation and there was not so much fear, but I feared those states. And I think it's because of what you see in the paper. So much went on, I read a lot. And the quarry would always have big headlines of what happened to Blacks in those states. | 43:09 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | So when we would go there, I'd be a little fearful, not over in Thomasville, Georgia, not so much Georgia, but Alabama and Mississippi. I'm telling you, those states were— I don't know what I expected, but those were the two. I didn't fear Florida. And the humiliation wasn't so bad for me because as I said, the way I had grown up, it was the part from the White world, really apart from it. So I didn't get humiliated too much. It was more like after I got older and began to realize, when I say old, I mean into my, I'd say the latter part of my teenage and also the early marriage. Early marriage was one or two incidents. | 44:10 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, really? | 45:06 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | But other than that, I didn't. | 45:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | What were those incidents? | 45:08 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, let me see, one of the first ones that I really felt humiliated I was pregnant and I went to the store. I was married then and I went to the grocery store and I was standing in the line at that time. You stood in the line and took your vegetables and the fellow would weigh them, young boy, it was a young boy. And there, it was a White woman standing over in a white uniform. I'll never forget it, I think she was a beautician. And as I came up, she stood there until I came. There were men and women doing it. She waited until I came and put her bag over into the weighing basket. See the fella was standing here and you'd go in here and get your things and you'd take them and move over to the right. | 45:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, okay. | 46:02 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | See face-to-face. And she was standing over there, he was wearing the things here. And just as I got here, she stepped here and put hers in the basket. He was a young fellow, I remember that. And he didn't really know what to do. And she stood there and I said, "It's not your time," or something like that. And she just ignored me and just went on and he didn't know what to do and nobody said anything. Well, who were right behind. So then, she took her things and he weighed them and marked them. Then he took mine and oh, I was so humiliated. And I remember going over to the meat counter because it wasn't too far. And I sort of laid upon the counter. | 46:04 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And he said something soothing or something, I don't remember. But then I walked over and the manager sort of was sitting up in our little booth and I told him about this and he said, "Well, we'll see about it." But I knew nothing. But that was one of the most humiliating, and I guess because I was pregnant, I was hot and I was mad, but that was about the only time that I just almost cried. I was trying to think. | 0:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And see, as I said, I was not like my sister. See, my little sister would've probably hit her, but she was just like that. I remember once my sister touched a woman, she was touching the cashier to ask her something. She was in her teens and woman turned around and said, "Don't put your hands on me nigger." And my sister said, "It takes one to find one." Because she was dark complexion. But I wouldn't even said that. I just couldn't have even said it. But anyway, I often wonder what should I have said, but I felt there was nothing that I could have done, so I accepted that. And then I think that was about the only time that I was evaded. | 0:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | How about now, travel experiences? Your family would travel once a year. | 1:24 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, what we would do, we would go from here to maybe— Well, we'd go from here to say maybe Augusta, Georgia and stay overnight with relatives or something like that. Most of us stayed with friends or relatives when we traveled. Now, they did have some motels, I guess, that was in later years. But we would always stay with friends or relatives. When it came to the restroom, we would find a bus station, because they had two there, or a train station. And when I was young, we'd go from here to Jacksonville, if we had to go to the bathroom, I think we learned how to control it I know, but if we did, my daddy would just pull over to the side of the road and that would be what would happen. Or if there was some filling stations, the big ones, maybe Gulf, they would have two restrooms. | 1:30 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | But that was really a bad time to be traveling. But it didn't stop you. But that's the way we would do that. The bus station and the train station. And then when my husband and I traveled with the children, see, I had a friend that they would take a little potty and the children would use that. But we didn't ever do that. I was trying to think. Kids had pretty good control, and we would just go from one place. If you knew somebody in Albany, Georgia, you'd stop and refresh yourself there. | 2:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. | 3:08 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And that's the way we traveled when we were growing up. We knew people all along the way, and you just stop and refresh yourself and go on back. | 3:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did your parents or perhaps even your husband use any kind of travel guides? | 3:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Now, when we traveled, my husband did because he wasn't too familiar with this area of the country. And we would use some maps, but usually we work it out before we leave with I guess the maps. And then my father, well there weren't so many roads, you didn't have a whole lot of roads, so you got familiar with that. Or then you'd ask the experts, how do you get to a certain place and they would give you the directions. | 3:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now you alluded to the fact that going to Hampton became really a turning point for you in a way. It was very— | 4:09 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, it was different, yeah. | 4:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | —different. | 4:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It was all together different. One thing, I was on my own. And because I had relied totally on my mother, my mother was just everything to me. I remember she didn't like a dress or something. I was no problem when I was in my teens and my sister was a different story. But if she said she didn't like a dress, I wouldn't buy it. And so being away and then you meet so many people from different places and met a lot of kids that some of the kids from their town had come here to school, and those are primarily boys. Those boys down here when you go, it just was a wonderful time. You on your own and you met so many people, kids from different parts of the country and kids who came up in a different type of environment and everything. So it really was a wonderful time in my life. | 4:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I had a very good life growing up in the South. I really did. I can't say that because I used to hear tales, but I worked with a fellow and he said that they really in his town had to step off the sidewalk when Whites would meet. We didn't have that in Tallahassee. You could go in any store. You couldn't try on in any store, so you didn't buy from that store. It was no problem. They had special waiting rooms, dressing rooms for you. The Vogue, I'll never forget, that was a store that you couldn't try on anything. But you know what they would let the teachers do? Take the clothes home and try them on, and then they could bring them back. They would select, especially A&M's teachers and anybody who was in that salary bracket, they could take them home, try them on, choose whatever you wanted, and then they bring them back. Now, that was one store. | 5:18 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Another store would have maybe separate dressing rooms. So then you would go to your dressing room. Some stores you couldn't try on your hats where the hats were, you'd have to take the hat into the dressing room. | 6:24 |
| Paul Ortiz | So it was kind of a secretive thing. | 6:42 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, I guess they didn't want the Whites to see you trying on a dress that maybe they would want if you put it back in there. I don't know. I don't know what the reason was. | 6:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. And you mentioned that your sister had a much different experience than you did. | 6:56 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. I don't know. Well, she went around with a different crowd of kids for one thing. And I don't know whether she listened to them. She was good for listening to them. I don't know about influence her, but see, they would tell what had happened to them, and then I guess the anger would build up in her. But she would come home and my mother say, "You don't pay that any chance." My mother was always the type who said, "You can't listen to that." And she never talked and an ugly way about White people. So I didn't come up with that feeling of Jack. That's what we call her. She did, because see, she was playing with kids whose parents worked in what I call, worked in service, worked in the homes. Well, they had to go to the back doors when they go up there. | 7:04 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well see, we didn't even come in contact with that because we didn't work for anybody. And my father wouldn't let my brother work like that. He'd have to find work either with Blacks or my father would find something for him to do. But he wouldn't allow him to work for, as they say, for Whites. And so we didn't come up with that way they treated them and see, I guess Jack would listen to them talk about what their parents had to go through and things like that. So she just was different when it comes to that, and says derogatory things about Whites, even making it some time now. But I never did and I never did it with my children. | 7:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | So at Hampton, were you thinking in terms of following a particular course of study? | 8:49 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Well, I thought I could sew and thought I could do a little cook and sew. I took home economics. Well, there weren't too many jobs. Now, see, you must remember there weren't too many jobs, especially for Black in other fields. So you could teach home economics, so you were a teacher. And so I had in mind to teach home economics. And then while I was there, I took a course in early childhood development and I just loved it. And when I did my student teaching with high school girls, I hated it because I didn't like that age group. And so I finished with a degree to teach, but I went into a daycare center, because at that time it was World War II and they were opening a daycare center. So I worked in a Federal daycare center. And then I just loved it and I went on and did the rest of my work in early childhood. | 8:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | How did you get in contact with the daycare center? The Federal Daycare Center? | 10:01 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | See, they had the placement office at Hampton. And so, they would give you different job openings and you'd find out where you wanted to be and that type of thing. And that's how I got there was through the school. I had opportunity to teach in Quincy, Florida, which is just a little town over here. But I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to come home. I didn't want to come back home. I wanted to go somewhere else. I always wanted to go someplace new. And so I didn't want to come back home. And so this was in Baltimore. So I worked in Baltimore before I got married. | 10:08 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you worked for the Baltimore Public School System? | 10:52 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, I think it was, they had a munition plant kind of outside of Baltimore, and I think that's the school service then. So I don't know how that was, but I know they got federal funding at this daycare center. So I guess it's one of those first groups of daycare because they had one at A&M at the time where the government was financing it for the workers or whatever. | 10:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Was that a segregated daycare center? | 11:30 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, it was still. See, everything was segregated until '64. Now, in Baltimore you could ride the public conveyances. You didn't have to sit separate from them. Let's see, what else did they do? Well, they were almost worse than down here in the stores. See, now they had a May Company up there, you couldn't even go in there. I didn't believe it and I went in one night and I noticed they weren't waiting on us, but they were having a sale. So I just assumed that with a friend of mine. And after a while, the floor walker came up to us and asked us if we were waiting for someone. And he said, "What?" And he said, "Someone who's working here is getting off from work." He said, "No." He said, "Well then I must inform you that the May Company does not cater to Colored clientele." | 11:33 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And so I believe that then, because I didn't believe it still. Because see, here there was no store that we couldn't go into. And this was supposed to be above the Mason-Dixon Line, up in that area. So we just assumed, I did assume, that anytime you went to that part of the country, everything would be different. But it was in some ways worse there than it was here. Because they didn't want you to try on anything. Now here there's no place we couldn't try on. At shoe stores, we just— See, in Baltimore you'd have to go into the shoe store he told me, it was a company called a Hans Company. And you give them your measurements and then they gave you the shoe. But we never had anything like that. You tried on the shoes here, but they didn't let you try on the shoes there. And I understand Washington DC, I wasn't too far from Washington, that was just as bad. | 12:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you were at this time living in residential in Baltimore? | 13:25 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. I was living in Baltimore. | 13:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there defined Black communities in your, where you were living? | 13:35 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Where primarily the Blacks still live. Yeah. Now, here was a little different. You had streets where Whites lived on one side and Blacks lived on the other side. | 13:40 |
| Paul Ortiz | In Tallahassee? | 13:54 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Tallahassee, yeah. It was so different. And in some areas, you had White neighbors. And see where we lived, we lived on a corner and here was the street, and then rest of that was Whites. And then the Governor's mansion was just a block away. And then when you went here, these were Whites and they became here and this was Black. They were kind of mixed up communities, and they got along. And my church was in a White community. But when we got ready to rebuild, the Bishop said that, "We moved closer to A&M, because they said they weren't really particular about them rebuilding over there." They allowed it at that time. But nobody ever bothered the church or bothered us going to church. | 13:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | So from Baltimore, what was your next move? | 15:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I came back home and got married. You know how a paradox, what happens? Well, because I feel that I will use that again. But when I got married, we went to a certain jewelry store for, let me see, did I put my plan in there? No. My father always did business, and it was right across the street from his office. And when she was, I guess, talking to him about it, and she said, they mentioned something that she didn't have, a punch ladle. I've forgotten the man's name, Mr. Putnam. He said, "Well, we have a beautiful ladle and you just take this and you use the ladle for your wedding." | 15:04 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And they would do things like that. He didn't charge anything or anything, and just take care your word that you were going to bring it back. My husband found that most unusual when he came. He say, "You don't even have to leave anything. You just tell me your name and they let you do it or take it or whatever." And the relationships were pretty good. You didn't have a lot of people being unkind to people. Well, not so far as I was concerned over when I came in contact. But now you talk with somebody else and see if you'd be all together different. But I think being a college town, that made a difference. People would little bit more educated and I guess civil. | 15:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | And how did you meet your husband? | 16:48 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I met him in school. College. He just from Philadelphia, and he came to school and I met him there. | 16:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | So you moved back down here after working in Baltimore? | 17:05 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. | 17:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | And where did he settle down? Is this the area that you settled down? | 17:11 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, we were closer to A&M. It's over, let's see, you're not familiar with different areas? This is right off the campus. We lived right off the campus. Just walked up a hill and we were right on the campus. So we were in the campus area. | 17:17 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. | 17:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And that's where the children were born and grew up. We came out here, I think my oldest girl was about 14. I think she was 12 or 14. | 17:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | When she was—? | 17:49 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | When we built this. | 17:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | And were you attending the same church that you were growing up in? | 18:06 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes, I do. Yeah, no, I was going to say my husband and the children are Catholics. But yeah, I'm in the same church that I grew up in. | 18:14 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now when you came back to Tallahassee after being more or less gone for some time, do you see any changes here in terms of growth, race relations? | 18:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, it had begun to grow. You had more paved streets. But it still was, as I say, country. It still was not as cosmopolitan as you maybe thought being a capital. And the race relations, that still was isolated. We were isolated. Let me see. I only came in contact with the saleswomen and it still was that separation. Clearly the separation. Let me see, I think we had buses then. We got city buses I think when I was around junior, senior high school, because I remember it was during the war years that we had it. But it was a lot of turmoil with the soldiers, Black soldiers and the local people. | 18:46 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, here? | 19:49 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Uh-huh. And see for example, they did have a bus that ran primarily into the Black area and then ran out. And these boys would get on the bus, maybe been at the A&M, and see they weren't going to get up off the seats for the Whites. And now I never had to do that. You know how they said get up. I never was in a situation that they say you have to get up now and let them have the seat. I've seen it. As I said, as I grew older, I think I saw more and became a little bit angrier than when I was young because I wasn't paying attention. My life was all together different. But you did see that. And then there was a lot of turmoil there. Sometimes those soldiers would fight back. | 19:50 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And I was trying to think, I remember once when I was growing up, there was a lynching and my mother didn't want us to read the paper because of what happened. I think my daddy knew the people because being a doctor, he knew almost all the Blacks. But that was the only time that I remember it being such a terrible time. Seems like this Black fellow killed a White policeman or something, and they did that at a viaduct or something, over in that part of town. They hung his body up there. But we didn't see that. A lot of people went to see it. | 20:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you remember what street that was on? | 21:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It's on Jefferson I think. I think it was the underpass, we called it underpass, and I think that was Jefferson. You probably could find more about that. Nick probably could tell you right there, that's why I said I would recommend him. Because Nick was, what you call a Tallahassee boy, and he was into everything. Going right in the hub of the Black community. | 21:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I see. So that was an event that happened when you were—? | 21:42 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | When I must have been in eighth or ninth grade, something like that. | 21:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you read about that? | 21:50 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Mm-hmm. And I don't know whether they had the picture in our paper, but I know they had it in the Blacks papers. The Black paper. I don't what we were talking about, how I got off on that? | 21:52 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, you were telling me that during the war time— | 22:07 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Oh yeah, yeah. But I was never on the bus when somebody had a argument or anything. But you'd hear about it later on. | 22:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | And these would've been African American GI's? | 22:23 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. See, we had a air base out not too far from here. And so they would come in town. Then there was a camp out on the coast, and they would come in to the city. | 22:31 |
| Paul Ortiz | And you would hear stories about them, and they would [indistinct 00:22:47]. | 22:46 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. And there'd be fights and things like that. But I think the city rooted those buses where it primarily didn't go through White neighborhoods. It would come down to main downtown I would say, and then they would make a turn and then it would come into the Black community. So I guess that kept a lot of the fights and things. | 22:48 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, I was going to ask you, did your parents vote here? | 23:17 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. I wish my mother was living, she could tell you. My mother, she was really not afraid of anything. She was a little woman, but she wasn't afraid of anything. But now I can't tell you the year, but I remember my mother said, "We are going to register to vote." I don't know when this was, but I think they had the poll tax then, something about the poll tax. | 23:26 |
| Paul Ortiz | So during your childhood? | 23:57 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, she voted. And they went up there and they went to, I think the American legions or something, my mother was nervous. My father didn't want her to think that he was afraid or anything. So he was following behind her and they went up and voted. And Mama said that, no problem, but they were so cold, you had to have some nerve to do that. But they were one of the few people who did. But my mother did. She was determined, she was. And you could vote here, but you had to pay, I think, a poll tax or something. A tax or something. But yeah, they did went before that '64 thing. | 23:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | So was this a particular incident? Do you remember your mother just up and saying, I'm determined to vote, or? | 24:40 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | She probably did and probably ready. She was a history major, and so she was always into government and things you could do and what you couldn't do. And I just remember that I was apprehensive because at that time they just didn't do that. And she did. And she and my father voted. So I don't know how long that was before everybody did or just what, but they registered them, and she didn't have to do any of that, you know how you take those exams you heard about Mississippi? They didn't have to do that. | 24:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh yeah, we've heard about those tests. | 25:27 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, I was going to say, but they didn't have to do that. | 25:32 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Do you know were they involved in any other kinds of political events? | 25:34 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. I'm ashamed that I wasn't, but during the sixties and all, they were always at the meetings. And they belonged to a group that was trying to— What did they call that group? Where there were Whites who were trying to do better, get things better. What was that thing called? Civics. | 25:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh, the Inner Civic Council. | 26:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Council. Inner Civic Council or something. And they believed that. So my mother said, "Well come and go to one of the meetings." So I did go to one of the meetings, but then I told her, "Mom, I'm not interested in that." And she said, "Oh, you should be." And see, my daughter wanted to march but we didn't let her march because she was young, and I didn't want her going to jail or anything. We supported financially, but for me, I did not participate in it. I know sometimes I feel a little bit ashamed that I didn't, other than financial. But I didn't go to meetings and things like that. | 26:05 |
| Paul Ortiz | Do you know by any chance when your parents would vote, would they vote for independent candidates or—? | 26:45 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, Democrats. | 26:53 |
| Paul Ortiz | Democrats? | 26:55 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | They were Democrats. They registered as Democrats and that's what they voted. | 26:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. And so when you came back here with your husband, this would've been the late forties? | 27:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | We got married in '46. This was '46 and on around. | 27:19 |
| Paul Ortiz | Okay. Oh, now you mentioned hearing stories about the African-American GI's who would resist the segregation process. And maybe this could even draw on your experience working in federal daycare, did you see a different kind of political climate gendered by World War II, say upon Black politics or upon— For instance, women who would bring their children into the daycare? | 27:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, no, because see, it still was segregated. It was segregated until '64. And so, there was still the Black families going to the daycare centers that were staffed by Blacks, and see, the schools were same thing. And so it didn't make a change, I don't think, especially in that realm, until after '64. You'll have to excuse me again. | 28:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | And so you came back here in the late forties. During this time, were you kind of beginning to lead your own social life? | 28:56 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. See, we were connected with the campuses. Both of us were working at the school then at A&M. And because our social life revolved around the school and the people that we met or worked with and some people in the city, because see, there were several kids that still remain home, they were starting their lives here, and so we associated with people in the city as well as the ones on the campus. | 29:11 |
| Paul Ortiz | How would you characterize social life at Florida A&M during those years, late forties, fifties? | 29:52 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Well, it was low keyed. We had parties and we had dances. There were fraternities and sororities who, the graduate chapters had things. And then we went with some of the student groups if we wanted to. We were invited to student dances that you didn't fraternize with them, but you were there with your own crowd. And then we went to football games, traveling around the state following the team. And there was certain things for the children. See, the school provided so much. They had drama classes and things of that sort. And we had picnics and we had the lakes, we'd go to the lakes for swimming and sometime to the coast. We used to go up to Panama City. It was St. Andrews, and it was separate, but lovely facilities for both areas. | 30:00 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is that a beach? | 30:59 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Beach. It was a state park. And we would go up there with groups and then they opened up a place out off from Apalachicola, some Blacks bought a beach. There had been, what do you call it? A motel sort of thing for Whites, and this fellow I understand got angry and he sold it to Blacks. Lovely place up there. So we'd go up there and we just had a good life. And see, nobody bothered you. It was just a wonderful time. | 30:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there women's clubs? | 31:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yes. See, I belonged to a Pinochle Club that's about 40-something years old. And they had different— Some of them like the Eastern Star, those things that were connected with those Elks and things like that. They had those. I didn't belong to any of those. And you had your church women's groups and you generated your own fun and things that you did, and you didn't have to rely on either— We had this theater I told you that opened up, and then Whites, I don't know whether they're a White group, they said that they really tricked her into selling. She was going to sell to a Black, this woman I was telling you about, Ms. Yellowhair. But some group got the Black fellow to maneuver and this White group got it, you understand? | 31:42 |
| Paul Ortiz | Got her theater? | 32:40 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Ah-huh. Got her theater. So it was called the Leon Theater then. So then we would go over there. That's where we'd go to the theater. And we still would go to A&M to the shows. And used to go over to Quincy, they had a drive-in. They got a drive-in here, it was segregated, but nevertheless, we would go to those. | 32:41 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now at a segregated drive-in, what would that entail? | 33:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, you know what, I don't think that it was. They had one out here and that was all Black. But now there was one out there, it was out on Adams Street. I don't know how they do it. I don't know whether they divided them in half, like side by side side. I think that's what it was. I don't think it was back and front. See, my husband may know, but I think that's what it was. Or they had certain rows for you or something. But the one we went to that was in this vicinity wasn't. All Black went to that. | 33:07 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. Now you were part of a Pinochle Club. That's something that you helped organize? | 33:43 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, it was a group of us young women played Pinochle. We had to teach one girl. She told her she played and she didn't know how, so we had to teach her. But that's the way we were doing. Then it was another time that three or four couples would get together, put in so much money, and that couple would entertain or provide the recreation and whatever we do. And then in about a couple of weeks, the other ones would do it, and they would provide the drinks and the food with the money that we had put in. See, but they'd be responsible as being the host and those kind of activities. | 33:53 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Then there was a group of men on the campus called the Faculty Men's Club, and they would have dances and they had been given a barracks, one of the barracks, and that's where their clubhouse was. And they fixed it up. And we would have parties there. | 34:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | And people that were in the Pinochle Club would be primarily people associated with the university, with Florida A&M? | 34:48 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Or the public schools. See, we forget about the public schools. That was apart too. The public schools. Most of them worked. We were young women who worked and primarily in public schools at A&M. | 34:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | And what was your position at this time at A&M? You were— | 35:24 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I started out as an instructor in the College of Education. And when I retired, I was an assistant professor. I was in the College of Education the whole time. Worked at the Laboratory School, the Nursery Kindergarten Laboratory School for 20 years, and then moved up into college teaching. I taught the teachers. I was a teacher of teachers for young children. So I moved up after 20 years from the lab schools to the college department, and I taught the rest of the time. I supervised students on the fields in the various public schools. But by that time, they weren't segregated. | 35:28 |
| Paul Ortiz | I guess, in the first leg of your career here, what were the conditions of the schools that you were—? | 36:27 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Servicing? | 36:38 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mm-hmm. | 36:40 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | They were fairly decent schools. See, because when I went up there, that was after '64 and they had started integrating some. Now I know one of the schools out here, Bond, that had been all Black schools. Well, they upgraded and put playground equipment, a lot of things that they didn't have prior to that time. See, that was what happened is that when that happened, a lot of things didn't change, but there was some things that did change for the best. See, because if some of the White kids were going to go to those schools, they upgraded those schools, playground equipment and stuff. And see, now it's almost going back to where it was because they moved out. | 36:41 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | First, they adhered to the ruling and the law, then as I guess everybody got stock of themselves, then they began to pull their kids out of the Black schools, the primarily Black schools. And it probably makes a difference, I'm not sure. But I know that they did upgrade them. And the schools when I went into them, were really nice schools. And they'd had a few White kids. See, I was working then with FSU's Faculty. There was really the integration, so-called integration. So it changed a lot of attitudes and things. | 37:26 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I remember the Head Start Program coming in. I was up in the college department then, and I was asked to be a part of FSU's program for the summer, when they got those funds for these teachers coming in to certify themselves in early childhood. And it was very funny that I was riding the bus, they had a bus that was taking us out to the Junior Museum at that time, and they had one of the other teachers to sit on the bus with me, I guess, to see if I was knowing what I was doing. And she was a nice person, so I didn't really get resentful. I didn't like it, but I went on. And then she stopped riding because I guess she saw that you could do it. And you'd encounter little things like that. | 38:07 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I remember the first time I got on the bus, that was the first time I had ever dealt with a whole busload of White people, and I was reading their faces, just looking at them. And this woman was sitting there, she was older, I know older than I was, and she was scrutinizing me just up and down. And it almost threw me, because I couldn't read what she was saying. But afterwards, she came up to me and she said, "I really enjoyed your talk on the bus." See, I was talking as we were riding to the center. And I said, "Well, you can't make judgements." Because see, I was about to make a judgment about this woman, and I said, "You can't do it." Because I never would've thought that she would've been the one to come up and say that she enjoyed it and this, that and the other. | 39:06 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I enjoyed it. It was a learning experience. It was my first dealing with Whites on that level. See, I had White teachers at Hampton. When I went to Hampton, almost all the teachers were White. Isn't that something? And so I'd had dealings with them. And I'd had dealings with Whites, with these women with my mother, the Girl Scouts. Lovely people, really nice people. And so I was accustomed to them. It wasn't like you weren't. And I didn't have any false impressions about them. But that was the first time I had dealings with a large group of White women. So that was quite an experience with me. | 39:56 |
| Paul Ortiz | During the fifties, was there a sense that Black political participation in Tallahassee was quickening in any sense? Say before the Tallahassee boycott or the bus boycott? | 40:50 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I don't really know. There probably was because there were groups, what do you call it? Interracial Council, or whatever it was. Now, they were trying to do things. They would have picnics and have invite Blacks and things. And they were really trying to, I guess, smoothing out or whatever they were doing. As I was telling someone, there was always White people who were kind and who you just felt at ease with them. There was always been that. And at this time, I think they were making a special effort to try to smooth out things and things of this sort. There were people who were interested. My mother and father were, and there was another doctor, Dr. Anderson and his family always were into those groups. And I believe speed, if I'm not mistaken. But there were always persons, and at that time they were trying to make it a better place and things of this sort. | 41:14 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And of course they were becoming conscious of voting. More people were voting and getting involved in it. A lot of people who were not what you call educated primarily, they were involved in that. And there were a lot of elderly people who this was their first time and they just were gung ho about it and really it would work. And the churches were trying to do things. I remember my mother was a church worker and she would go to Quincy, to those women's groups, and she'd come back and she says, "Oh, they were just so lovely." Because Quincy was one of those bad towns. What we call bad town. | 42:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | In terms of race? | 43:00 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. And my mother said, "Oh, they were so lovely." And then sometimes people would say, "Well, that was a wealthy group of people and that's why they were." But that wasn't true. There were others who didn't have any money that were just as kind and just as good. | 43:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did the churches in this area, perhaps Episcopalian church, have or conduct voting right seminars or registrations? | 43:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Oh, our minister, Father Brooks, now he was really into it. And he did, yeah. The bishop told me, he either had to give up one or the other, but he was just always gone. And then the Baptist Steele, you may have heard of Reverend Steele, see, they were working with Father Brooks. And then there was some women up in the A&M who were up in the business office. A little woman named Young. She was right in there making changes, trying to make changes in things. | 43:34 |
| Paul Ortiz | Ivy Young? | 44:13 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, let me see now. Her name is— Hey John. What was that young woman's name? The little one that's up in the business office? | 44:15 |
| John | What do you mean the little one? | 44:41 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | She's little. You know, Young. You know what I'm talking about? | 44:41 |
| John | Yeah. She's not in the business. Well, she's retired now. | 44:41 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. But what's her first name? | 44:47 |
| John | Daisy. | 44:52 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Daisy. Well you heard, Daisy Young. | 44:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | So it seems now, looking back on this, even before the events in 1957, that there were some things happening. Seminars— | 45:05 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. | 45:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | —voting rights seminars. And then you said also that there was a sense that less educated Black people were getting involved? | 45:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Those who hadn't really gone to school and everything, but they were church people. See, the church, they had a great influence in the marches and things, and the ministers. Well see, these people were very devoted to their ministers. And Reverend Steele's people, a lot of them were what we call people who worked in service and mechanics and things like that. They really were the backbone really of it. | 45:30 |
| Paul Ortiz | And that was the Bethel Baptist? | 46:06 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Bethel Baptist. | 46:09 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now at this point, you were busy with your career— | 46:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And family. I was starting a family then. And see, my oldest daughter was one of those gung ho people. But we brought them up, we never referred to anything as Black and White. My mother didn't think this was a good policy, but I did. I thought that if they didn't differentiate between that, that it would give them— | 46:27 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Would. If she wanted to. If Mama let me have a ice cream cone, unless I could buy it at the counter, I would say, now, we don't eat anything before lunch and we've got to have our lunch, so we are going home to have our lunch. And I would pull her away from the counter. | 0:01 |
| Paul Ortiz | Oh. | 0:19 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I never told her she couldn't eat or she couldn't do anything like that. Then, we had a television that time and my youngest child used to say, "I want to go to the show," and they would advertise the show because the one we went to, you see, wouldn't be advertised on television. And I'd tell her, I said, oh, that theater is so far away and I just won't be able to carry you there. It's just too far away. One day, we were riding and she had begun to spell and she looked up at the marquee on the Florida Theater. She said, spell the word F-L-O-R— Florida. That's the movie on the television. You told me that it was so far away. And I just ignored her, I pretended I didn't even hear her talk about it. But the ironic thing about it is that, within two weeks, the law had come where they had to go to the show. | 0:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | '64. | 1:21 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I never had to explain to her. And they were some of the first Black kids down there in the line. And we often laugh about that because we kept it from her pretty good until then, and she saw this, so then they started going to the theater. They never had that really that feeling that they weren't wanted or anything. And I tried to protect them from that in the best way I could. My mother thought it wasn't real. She said that's not realistic. They're going to learn. I said they're going to learn. But, when they learn, they will not be able to say I can't do this because I'm Black or I can't do this because of so-and-so. Now, that was my thinking. They never really felt that they were any different than anybody else. I felt that way. | 1:21 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were they ever, now, you mentioned real briefly water fountains. Would they—? | 2:07 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. See, I said we don't drink at public water fountains. And they accepted that. I said because everybody's drinking it, and I told them, I said, sometimes people bathe their dogs. And I said we just don't drink. I said, I just don't want you drinking at public water fountains. They didn't question it. They just went on. And if they wanted ice cream, you could go and get ice cream from certain counters. But they wanted to sit on the stools and I didn't want tell them they couldn't. I didn't want to explain to them why they didn't. The bus, we all rode the bus, so we didn't have to— It was that bus that went through the Black community and all, so they didn't have to worry about that and protected them in that way, so that they wouldn't have a feeling that they were different and I think it worked. My mother, she didn't think that I should do it, but I did. And I wouldn't let them refer to anything as Black and White. | 2:12 |
| Paul Ortiz | What would've been her strategy or I guess where did you differ? | 3:14 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | She probably would've, although I don't ever remember her telling us that, but she probably would've said you can't drink here because that's the law. The law is not a good law. But that's the law. And now, I remember that. It seems to me I remember hearing her tell me that one time and she said it's not a good law but we have to abide by it because it's a law. And that's the way she would've done. | 3:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, whereas your strategy was to maybe redirect your children away from any possible connotation or—? Did your husband concur with this? | 3:51 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. He thought I was a genius, you see, because I was in the early childhood and whatever I thought about— And I remember now, it shows how kids are. See, my children were primarily in a Black world. Very seldom did they come in contact— Now, the mailman was a part of our world, so they never thought of him as being different. But, one day, I took her on the bus, she must have been about five, and when she got on the bus, she looked up at the bus driver was there and she said, "Look at that White man." But she meant, not like we would say it but, actually, here's a man that's a different color than what I've ever seen. And she said it real loud. She said, "Mama, look at that White man!" | 4:09 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I always remember that as a— And he was. I guess he was. But the mail man, she never— Isn't it funny? She never. And I figured that, because he spoke to her and we'd see him and she never ever said anything to him about him being different. And I just imagine it's because it was a funny thing about it. But this bus driver, sitting up there, that really shocked me because she didn't know, we didn't talk about being Black but he really looked like, I guess, white paper or something to her. And he just looked, but he didn't say anything. But that's what she said, was a surprising thing. Then she went on about her business. She must have been about four. But— | 4:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | What about other Black parents in this area? Would you talk with other Black parents about strategies? | 5:43 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, we talked but we didn't talk about— I guess everybody did their own way but, the children, they protected them in a certain way or even they didn't come in contact with it because never had them say anything. Now, the younger girl, see they had started going to the Catholic school and I think she said one time a friend said something ugly about them. Those are White people or something. And I think she did question me about that. And I just explained to, her different colors. But I never did want them to feel inferior, neither did I want them to have any anger toward anybody. Now, my oldest daughter is different than the other two. The boy and the girl, they went to Catholic school, and from there, the girl went to Florida High and the boy went to public school records. | 5:50 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | My oldest girl, evidently, when she got older, the kids would be discussing things, see, because she went to primarily a segregated school and she didn't want to change to go to the integrated school. And so, we let her stay at A&M. She didn't want to change. And her friends who went to Leon talked about how they were treated and I believe that she developed— Looking for trouble, looking for people to do things, because when we go in the stores, even now, if a person just the least bit seems to her that they're being discriminatory, she's ready. And, see, my daughter and I are not like that. I know my other daughter, she said, I hate to go to the store with Diane because she's always looking for something. At least time you do something different and she's real outspoken. Her attitude is a little different than the younger two because, my boy and my young girl, they had friends of both races, got along fine and visited and partied and everything with them. But Diane didn't want to. | 6:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. That's interesting. Now, as an outsider, the literature I've read on race relations in Tallahassee would lead me, as an outsider, to view the bus boycott as, in a way, a watershed in terms of race relations. Now, as an insider, would you take the same view or— | 8:15 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Now, what do you mean watershed? | 8:43 |
| Paul Ortiz | Leading to major changes. | 8:48 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Yeah. I would think so. Yeah, I would think so. And we were all right on the campus with a lot of that. Yeah, I would think so, that would be the time that there was a change, a great change, in Tallahassee. But I think what made it easier is because there were people who didn't really think it should have been in the beginning. Whites that were also glad that it changed. I always think that there were Whites who were glad that they didn't have to do or ignore or whatever you do, because they didn't want to. They wouldn't have been ostracized. | 8:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did the boycott affect you or your family in any way? Were you—? | 9:38 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No. You mean— | 9:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | In terms of, now, were you—? | 9:47 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | We abided by it. Yeah, we believed in that. We didn't ride the bus. And, if anything that they decided that they wanted to do, we did it. If they told us to stay away from a certain store, then we would do it. | 9:50 |
| Paul Ortiz | How would a word get passed around if you weren't going to— Now, were you going to meetings? | 10:11 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | There were meetings and then, of course, they had the Black paper. They had a Black paper here at that time. And then word of mouth. Somebody said, did you hear they were going to boycott, someone I'm just saying that. And they said, no, I didn't hear that. Yeah, they don't want you to go, so you didn't go. | 10:16 |
| Paul Ortiz | And, at this time, did your family have a car? | 10:42 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah. Now, see, people who— You have to just really give them credit who were riding the bus. Now, I hadn't been in the bus in years, but I remember they had a law school here, a judge came here and the woman in one of the stores that we had always gone to, a dress shop, I forget what they said to her, I can't remember whether what they did to her— They challenged her or something. But, anyway, she came back and organized a boycott for that store and we almost put that store out of business. | 10:44 |
| Paul Ortiz | Which store was that? | 11:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It was a store called Lyndon's at the time. And the woman's name was Stout. I don't remember how you just forget those things. But I can't remember what they did to her, whether they said something or she had an argument. But, anyway. It was with the man's first wife and then they divorced and he married again and then they made a special effort to get their people back, people who would cater to him. Of course there were always some who continued to cater to him no matter how they acted to this family. But we didn't. I didn't. | 11:22 |
| Paul Ortiz | Is that because those people were not connected to— | 12:08 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No. A lot of them have their own ideas about that. Maybe she said something she shouldn't have said to them. People have their own reasons. But enough people did it that it really made a difference in the clientele. | 12:13 |
| Paul Ortiz | I see. By the sixties, you were ready to— Your oldest daughter was getting ready to— She was in high school? | 12:30 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Let me see. Yeah. Let me see. I'm not good at figures. '64. Let's see, she must have been about, it was 14. See, I'll tell you, and you can figure quicker than I am, she's 44 now, I think. And that was in, what was that? '60, '64? She was around 14, I think. Because I know she was young enough that we didn't want her to be arrested. She wanted to march. | 12:58 |
| Paul Ortiz | Did you have aspirations for your daughters that perhaps differed with your earlier aspirations as a young woman? | 13:32 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Let me see. I'll tell you something I didn't do. I never did talk marriage all the time to them, like you need to get married and you need to do that. Yeah, I wanted them to be independent women and I wanted them to achieve in what they wanted to. And my oldest girl was very talented, articulate, but I never had any aspiration, like be a lawyer or whatever. I just wanted her to be good with what she was doing and encourage her in that respect and wanted them to go to college. I really wanted them to go. The younger one, I probably was very lenient, but I would see to it that they did their lessons and things like that and tried to. But never they would tell somebody, my mother never pushed marriage and I didn't, because I figured there's other things beside marriage, although marriage is good. I have a good marriage. But I told her don't worry about that. Don't worry about getting married. | 13:45 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were there contrasts or were there some differences in, say, what you tell your daughters as opposed to, say, what your mother told you? Was there anything—? | 14:45 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | No, I think we both are the temperament. My mother, she was real, what do you call it? Unassuming. And wanted us to be happy and never forced. Now, I wish, though, that she had been a little bit stricter about being scholarly because I did play a lot and I could have been much better than what I was, and I know that, but I didn't because my whole life was social and they never did reprimand us about grades. And they would recognize us but they never pressured us into— My father either. He was a smart man but he never pressured us, you got to get your lessons, you got to do this, you got to do that. We, more or less, as I told my husband, laissez-faire. Really. And I think that's why my life was so enjoyable because there was never a lot of pressure put on us. We weren't pressured to do these things because so and so, you're supposed to do this and you're supposed to do that. We weren't pressured into that. | 14:59 |
| Paul Ortiz | If you were, say, writing your biography and you were summing up some the things that have been most inspirational to you, in terms of helping you go through life or transcend barriers you may have faced, what would be some of those in inspiring things? | 16:12 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Let me see. Let me see. As I said, my mother was my role model and she supported me, there was a support that, what you did, it didn't have to be great, but whatever you did, she went along with it. Whatever you wanted to do, that was within something good that was going to benefit you, and she went along with it. My father used to give me, I'd say certain things but they weren't. They were, more or less, for example, he would tell me, he said, don't ever put down in writing something that you can't live with or something of this sort. Different morals, like you don't read other people's mail or other people's diaries. You just don't do that. Those are the type of things. | 16:38 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And that was the type of household it was, that I came up in. And I think it was just the idea that I knew I had support, that made me do what I want to. They wanted me to go to school and they'd probably say, you want to go to college? But it wasn't ever forced. See, they told my sister, you don't want to go to school, then don't do it, but do whatever you're going to do. But they didn't raise a whole lot of sand about her not going. And I would have. See, I wanted my— Although my son didn't complete his work and I didn't raise sand but I did want him to finish. But I would never made him feel badly by not doing it. | 17:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Gotcha. | 18:23 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And then I eloped with my husband, married him. I became a broader type of, better, a little bit more unselfish, being married to my husband. Because I was really into myself when I was growing up. But you wouldn't have known that. But, as I look back, I know that was part of it. And then I had teachers who supported you and just made you feel good about being who you were. But I don't know of anything definite, that I just said that was a person that caused me to change my life or anything. | 18:25 |
| Paul Ortiz | Let's see. I have about seven or eight pages. | 19:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, I was rattling on. | 19:03 |
| Paul Ortiz | No. [indistinct 00:19:04] might be taking up too much of your time. Do you have any other thoughts that you wanted to share or any other experiences? | 19:03 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I was going to say, I was just thinking that Tallahassee has always, to me, been really a wonderful place to live. I don't think I'd want to live in anyplace else. And it's been good to my family and to my children. My husband liked it when he came here. A lot of his people didn't think he was going to like it down here because this was his first time, when he went into Virginia, it was the first time South and he's made a good living here and made good friends. His experiences with Whites were altogether different because he was an electrician too. | 19:37 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | He worked at A&M in the technical but he had a little business on the side and he came in contact with all kinds of Whites, did work for them and things and got along very well. And he liked it when he came here. We've just had a good life here and they've enjoyed it. And my mother and father lived to be 86 and 83. We had them. My brother lives here, so we have the family, his family and also it's been pretty good. He's a pharmacist, has his own business, and just had a good life. I had a good life and I was lucky because I could have been in other circumstances but my father before him came from good life, so it was really, had a head start compared to some of other peers and things. | 20:15 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And I'd say it's been— The race relationship hasn't been ideal but it hasn't been, to me, demoralizing for us. And I never had the anger. Like I said, there's some people, I can see that. I can see why some people don't understand it but we can see it because you come in contact with people who really had hard times. And, if you talk with any of those people whose life— Speed's life should have been— | 21:15 |
| Paul Ortiz | Birmingham. | 21:53 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | That's right. And Cornelius was from the rural, so I don't know how— How did he feel as a man? Speed? | 21:54 |
| Paul Ortiz | He— Let's see. | 22:06 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Do you recall? | 22:06 |
| Paul Ortiz | Yeah. It seems to me that there are more— And generally I think this is true. In general, when we talk to people from rural areas, there's a different experience and sometimes there were more intense race relations. | 22:07 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Because they came in contact with— Now, his father was a businessman, so he should have had a pretty good life. Although, coming in contact with the people that he did, because his store catered to both Black and White and they were, what we call, lower income people. I imagine he came in contact with some who were really not nice— I don't know that he did but his life was all together different from mine, although I knew him growing up. | 22:23 |
| Paul Ortiz | Mrs. Boardly, you were telling me that some incidence came up when you were playing cards? | 23:02 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Yeah, this is when my older daughter could write real well. And there was a legion, I don't know know whether it's American Legion of Women, but it was some group of, Daughters of the Revolution, whatever, one of those civic groups offering a prize but it wasn't submitted to the Black schools. And this friend of mine heard about it. And so, we had my oldest daughter to write this essay, and I can't remember the subject, but it was dealing with why I love America or something of that sort. And so, Trudy called the people to get the information, because we didn't have any information, and she disguised her voice, because she had a Northern brogue, she disguised her voice as what she thought a White woman would talk. And, evidently, they accepted it because they gave us all the information. | 23:08 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Then, Diane sat down and wrote this essay and we had it critiqued by an English person, so it was going to be perfect. And then, we sent it through registered mail. That's what it was, so we knew that they got it. But we never heard from them. But, anyway, we did that and that was during that period of time. But, see, a lot of things were offered to other people but weren't offered to the Black kids, so we wanted to do that, but we never heard from them, so I guess, they found out, or either her essay just didn't pass, see. But that was just one thing. Then we'd sit around in Pinochle and laugh about these different things that would happen. That was it. | 24:02 |
| Paul Ortiz | Really, in that Pinochle club, you had really— You would just talk about local issues— | 24:49 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Everything. Yeah, we'd talk about everything. Experiences that we had with White people or Caucasians, if you want to call them, and just anything that we would— And we'd laugh and each person would have something to contribute. | 24:57 |
| Paul Ortiz | Were you talking about politics? | 25:17 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Oh, sometimes. If there was someone, we sometimes would talk about it if it was time for the governor to be chosen or something like that, we would, but we didn't get into the local politics. Now, we voted. I always voted. But a lot of times you'd vote for a person that maybe somebody else said that they liked and they had a little bit to do about it but I never went to the rallies or anything like that. | 25:20 |
| Paul Ortiz | But, in a way, the club was a— | 25:47 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It was. And then, see, you had people in there who were. See, you'd have girls maybe who was going to the inner council thing and they would tell us about it and each person was doing their own thing. And then, see, some of them were in teaching the public schools and they had experiences with those superintendents and other teachers and things of this sort. The word of mouth was how everything got around at the time. | 25:51 |
| Paul Ortiz | And so, you had registered to vote in Tallahassee before you went to Hampton or afterwards? | 26:20 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Must have been afterwards. Yeah, it was after I got married. I don't don't recall registering while I was in college. It had to be when we started, when I was married. Started married. I remember that's when I voted. I voted here and my mother kept behind me about that. Be sure and register. Yeah, she was always, "Did you vote?" And we all registered. She had us do that. Now, if you wanted some— I don't know that would help, because you're probably doing it on your own, but there's a friend of mine whose daughter is with MTV, M somebody, is it with the radio? National radio thing. They made a tape called No Bed of Roses. | 26:30 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | And what they did, they had a group of us sit around and talk about travel, just like you did, about how we traveled when we were younger, and it became a part of some group that they were doing. And I was going to say that if you wanted to hear that, she gave me the name and number that you can contact. It's a 800 number and it's a audio tape. I couldn't find mine. She gave it to us, because my husband and I are on it and she gave it to us. And so, I was just thinking about it. I said, I'll tell him if he wants some added material about how people travel. | 27:39 |
| Paul Ortiz | Sure. | 28:26 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | I'll give it to you. | 28:27 |
| Paul Ortiz | That was called No Bed of Roses? | 28:27 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | It's called No Bed of Roses. | 28:29 |
| Paul Ortiz | Now, you said you knew some people we should probably talk with and I'm also particularly interested, if you think it would be appropriate, to talk with other women involved in the club. | 28:34 |
| Barbara B. Boardly | Oh, yeah. Okay. Give you that name. I'll give you the person that rewrote this letter, if she truly remembers. I'll give you that name. And, also, I was saying that this friend of mine who lives right across here, he grew up in Tallahassee. He's a Tallahassean. His father had a business here and he seems to remember names and things. And so, he may be able to give you some information. I'll give you his name, too. I'll have to look it up in the phone book but— | 28:48 |
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