Robbie Wright interview recording, 1994 August 06

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Tunga White	Ms. Wright, before I start asking questions about your personal history, can you tell me if you remember your grandparents?	0:00
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I knew my mother's mother and my father's father. Those were the only grandparents that I knew.	0:15
Tunga White	What was your mother's mother's name?	0:21
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Margaret Parker.	0:24
Tunga White	Was your mother's father deceased when you were around?	0:30
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yes.	0:33
Tunga White	Do you know his name?	0:33
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I think his name was Louis Parker. It's in that genealogy there.	0:38
Tunga White	Do you know what he did for a living?	0:46
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He was a farmer. I understand. And he and Washington Duke, who started the Duke Dynasty, lived on adjoining farms. I was told that by a lady who was formally probate judge in Durham County and they grew tobacco together and they were very friendly. I understand that—I wonder if perhaps the first smoking tobacco that was developed by Washington Duke, he got credit for it, of course, but they ground it up in mortar and pestle and I still wonder how much my grandfather may have had to do with that, but I have no way of knowing and because he had died a long time before I was born.	0:49
Tunga White	What about on your father's side? Their names?	1:55
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Daniel Goodlow was my grandfather's name, and he had been a slave but was evidently a favored slave because he never did any work that anybody knew about. No, I don't know that he ever did anything.	2:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Now I assume that he and his brothers when they were freed must have been the recipients of the proverbial 40 acres and a mule or something because they did own a lot of property, and I don't know how in the world they could have bought it if they didn't do any work. So I assume that they must have been given that. Now my father was born about four years after emancipation.	2:27
Tunga White	And where was he born?	3:09
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He was born in Durham County as far as I know, but I believe that that is at that time was a part of Chatham County, but I'm still very vague.	3:09
Tunga White	What about your mother?	3:24
Robbie Goodloe Wright	My mother was the daughter of this Parker.	3:26
Tunga White	What's her name?	3:30
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Margaret and Louis Parker.	3:34
Tunga White	What was her name.	3:34
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Lula. L-U-L-A. She was born in 1875 and died in 1955.	3:38
Tunga White	And what did they do for a living?	3:54
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Who? My mother and father?	3:56
Tunga White	Your parents.	3:57
Robbie Goodloe Wright	My father at one time had a stall in the city market. Butcher. He sold choice meats. He was a butcher. And later the city sold the market, closed down the market and when larger stores were coming in and the city tore down the market and built office buildings and so forth in that area. And he went to work for the American Tobacco Company. He was a shipping clerk for the American Tobacco Company.	3:58
Tunga White	Okay. And what about your mother's occupation?	4:40
Robbie Goodloe Wright	My mother. What did she do? Oh, she worked in a—There was a hosiery mill there. World War I, they made socks, this heavy cotton socks for the soldiers under federal contract. Before that time, I'm not sure what she did, but she worked in this hosiery mill. And then after that, in later years, she worked for Duke University as housekeeper, I guess, in the fraternity house, Sigma Nu fraternity house.	4:51
Tunga White	And you said your father was a butcher. What did he learn butchering from?	5:41
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I don't know. Apprenticeship, I guess in some way, but I have no way of knowing. That was before I was born.	5:45
Tunga White	How many brothers and sisters do you have?	5:54
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I had three brothers and one sister, all of whom are deceased.	5:58
Tunga White	Okay.	6:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	The only person who had children was my sister. She had three children.	6:07
Tunga White	Can you tell me about the area that you grew up in? Can you describe the area that you grew up in?	6:18
Robbie Goodloe Wright	It was in Durham, section they called Hayti, and it was on this land that was owned by three brothers. My father's—Well, three, yeah, I think there were three. My grandfather's—Let's see, all that's in that thing over there, but I can't remember. But the three brothers of my grandfather were the ones I told you I think must have been given a land grant or something. They owned what later became to be known as about three city blocks. And it was divided among these three. And they later, they divided it among their children and it sort of—You know how that happened. Lifted, diminished, and so forth. And as the children got married and moved to different areas, that property was sold or lost or something. I don't know. But it started out with the equivalent of three city blocks that they owned.	6:27
Tunga White	Can you describe your family home that you lived there?	7:56
Robbie Goodloe Wright	There were three houses there. My father, his brother, and a cousin who was the descendant of one of those little old brothers I told you about. And there were three large houses. Although he was my father's cousin, we always called him Uncle Tom. And he lived on one side. He had no children. We were in the middle. And my father and mother had five children. My uncle on the other side, was Allen Goodlow, had five children. Now the other children of my grandfather were scattered all in the general area, Durham County, but they were scattered throughout, and they had many children. And all that's in that genealogy, too.	8:02
Tunga White	How did your home look?	9:17
Robbie Goodloe Wright	My father had the idea that he, when he built the house, he wanted each child to have his own room. And he built this house with six bedrooms, which became a problem later in later years, because it was big enough to accommodate any drop, anybody who happened to come along and drop in.	9:20
Robbie Goodloe Wright	When I was six years old, my sister moved in with us. My sister, her husband, and one child who was four years younger than I was. Incidentally, my sister was 20 years old when I was born, and she was in college when I was born. So they came to live with us and later they had two more children.	9:43
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Where was I headed? I've forgotten now where I was going with that.	10:15
Tunga White	You talking bedrooms? Six bedrooms.	10:18
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh yeah, six bedrooms, five children, and one for my mother and father. Even later than that, my grandmother, my mother's mother became ill and she came to live with us, and she eventually died there.	10:19
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I grew up there with these two nieces and nephew.	10:46
Tunga White	Is the house still standing?	10:59
Robbie Goodloe Wright	No, the city finally took over that area. They were cutting a throughway in that general area, and they were displacing a lot of people. So they built a large public housing area in that vicinity and took in that property.	11:00
Tunga White	So your uncle's house and your cousin's house—.	11:21
Robbie Goodloe Wright	None of those are there anymore. In fact, they closed up that street. The street isn't even there anymore. I can't even find out where I used to live.	11:23
Tunga White	Because we were living in that area by North Carolina Central.	11:33
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, you were?	11:34
Tunga White	Yeah, that's the area we were staying in when we moved [indistinct 00:11:38].	11:34
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, when you were working there? Yeah. Well, I just left there last week.	11:38
Tunga White	We're down there when we leave here next week. What school did you attend?	11:46
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I attended first Quittid School and then later became Hillside High School, which is still there, but not at the same location. And then I went to North Carolina College, which it was called at that time. It later became North Carolina Central. I went there for three years. My father died at the end of my sophomore year, and I had one more year there. And at that time, Hampton Institute had a library school, which was accredited by the ALA, and I could enter there my senior year and do all of my work in library service and get a degree in library service, which is what I did. So I did three years at North Carolina College and one year at Hampton Library School.	11:53
Tunga White	What year did you graduate from high school?	13:01
Robbie Goodloe Wright	1928.	13:03
Tunga White	And what year did you leave North Carolina College?	13:06
Robbie Goodloe Wright	1931. And I graduated from Hampton, 1932, and I went back to North Carolina. Well, haven't got to that yet, but when I graduated from Hampton, I got a job at Barber Scotia Junior College, and that was the first year that they had an all Black faculty. It was a school for girls supported by the Northern Baptist Missionary Society, I think it was. I'm sorry, not Baptist. Presbyterian. And I worked there as librarian for seven years.	13:08
Tunga White	What made you want to get into library science?	13:58
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Frankly, I don't even remember. It was something they knew that was opening up and there weren't that many people who were trained in that area. And I just thought I'd like to do it. And that's what I did, because I knew I was going to have to help my mother. My father had died, and my sister died six months after my father died and left three children. So my mother and I had to help these three children.	14:10
Tunga White	How did your father and your sister die?	14:40
Robbie Goodloe Wright	My father's death was accidental. He fell from a trestle. He liked to walk at night, and this was in June and he went for a walk. And when he went over this area, he just went straight ahead over this trestle, which is over a street. But when he was coming back, there was a spur that went to a mill, a cotton mill, and he made a misstep over the rail and fell to the street below. He had perfect health. He was 64 years old and lived for three days with practically every bone in his body broken. He probably would've lived to be a hundred or more if it hadn't happened that way, but his death was a result of an accident. My sister's death was a result of hypertension.	14:42
Tunga White	How old was she?	15:43
Robbie Goodloe Wright	39.	15:43
Tunga White	What did she do before she died?	15:48
Robbie Goodloe Wright	She first, when she finished college, she taught in Mayesville, South Carolina. And then she got married and lived in Orangeburg and had this one child there. And then they came to Durham and she worked for the North Carolina Mutual.	15:49
Tunga White	Were there a lot of incidences of hypertension, people dying of hypertension back then?	16:12
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah, I think so. But they didn't know how to treat it. They were giving medication, but she would take the medication, as soon as she felt better, she'd go back and eat anything she wanted to eat. So I always jokingly say, "She dug her grave with her teeth," because that's probably what she did.	16:17
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Now my mother also had hypertension, but she still lived to be 79. And because of that bad history, I was put on blood pressure medication, and once they put you on, they won't take you off. So I'm still taking blood pressure medication, although I've never had a serious problem.	16:34
Tunga White	Back when you were in college, what kind of fields were open for Black women?	17:03
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Mostly teaching, and that wasn't paying very much. Very little. Two of my former teachers in the high school were going to library school at Hampton at that time. And I went along with it because they persuaded me to go because they said that the field was opening up and that might be a good chance for employment, which it turned out to be.	17:11
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But the first job I had when I went to Barbra Scotia paid $75 a month. I graduated from college the same year my niece graduated from high school, and my mother and I put her in college, but she thought college was a place to have fun and she didn't bother to study. She had sailed through high school and didn't worry about anything, didn't bother about studying or anything else. She just had a good time. She got to Hampton, she thought she could do the same thing. So she flunked out the first semester, and she didn't go back. So she went to Winston-Salem Teacher's College. And that was such a comedown from Hampton that she was terribly unhappy there. So she cried and wanted to leave.	17:47
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So I took her with me to Barber Scotia and made her do some more high school work for that semester. But that involved three entrance fees in one year. Three entrance fees at colleges. Three colleges and one semester really, because she wasn't too happy with being there, but she didn't have any choice. She had to go.	18:42
Tunga White	What kind of price differences were between these three schools as far as tuition [indistinct 00:19:20]?	19:14
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, Winston-Salem, of course, was much cheaper because that was a state supported school. And Barber Scotia, I could work out something wherever I could cover her tuition there. So that wasn't too much of a problem because they weren't getting any help from the father.	19:22
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So later their father remarried and one of the girls, a younger girl went to live with him, and the boy and the older girls insisted on staying with us. So they were with us from then on. And the boy graduated from high school. What year did he graduate? I don't remember that now. But he went to Hampton. He wanted to go to Hampton, because he decided he wanted to take agriculture. Now why he decided on agriculture, I didn't know, but he had grown up and my father always—He was very close to my father, and he always had a garden and he used to work in the garden with him, but he always said he wanted to have a poultry farm. So he went to Hampton and he took agriculture. He graduated in '40? Oh gosh, I got the Hampton thing here somewhere.	19:41
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I think it was '45? No, it couldn't have been '44. I don't remember. '46, I think it was. And he got his greetings from Uncle Sam the day after he graduated. So he had to go in service, and he stayed in the service for four years. He went through officer's candidate school and came out second lieutenant. And then he used his GI bill when he got out and went to University of Illinois. Or was it Iowa? I don't remember. One of them. I think it was Illinois. And got his master's degree in agricultural economics.	20:48
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He went back to Hampton and taught for a while. Then he got a John Hay Whitney Fellowship. And with that and the rest of his GI Bill, he went to Ohio State and got a PhD in ag economics.	21:50
Robbie Goodloe Wright	From there, he got a job with, what was at that time, a Rockefeller project in New Delhi, India. Stayed there 12 years. In the meantime, they set up those projects for a five-year period after which the country was supposed to—They were supposed to employ local people and with the hope of turning over those projects to the country, while the country wasn't in a position at that time to take over. But the Cooperative League of the USA stepped in and took over and they still were training native Indians to do the work. But he stayed there, as I said, for 12 years.	22:13
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He came back to the states with two boys and his wife. And they lived in Washington where he still lives. His—	23:05
Tunga White	Did he get married over there, or—.	23:22
Robbie Goodloe Wright	No, he was married before he went over there. And the two boys, when they came back to the States, they had gone to school in India, American school in India, and they wanted the boys to go to an Ivy League school, and they weren't sure that they would be qualified to enter Ivy League school from school in India. So they sent the older boy to a prep school in Connecticut, and he went to prep school for three years, which turned out to be a waste of time because he didn't really need to do it. And after which he decided he wanted to go to Yale. When he graduated, his father knew a lot of people and he could have made some contacts to get him into Yale. He said, "No, I don't want it. I'm going to get in on my own or I'm not going." So he got in on his own. He went to Yale, graduated.	23:24
Robbie Goodloe Wright	When he graduated from Yale, he got a direct commission because he had joined reserves in order to get through college. And he went in the service, went in the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. He is still in the Marine Corps and has now worked up to Lieutenant Colonel. That was his wife I was talking to on telephone when you came in and she was saying that they just got a surprise offer that he may be considered for a command somewhere and she isn't sure where. And she is very reluctant to move again. So I don't know how that's going to work out. That's something that just popped up.	24:33
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But he is Lieutenant Colonel and is stationed in Virginia and right now he's a logistics officer, but he's been in just about every branch of the Marine Corps that you can get into and has done just about everything. He went to the Naval War College, graduated with top honors, first in his class, and for the past three years, he has been invited to teach at the Naval War College in the summer. He just came back from that.	25:27
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So he's got a very good record with the Corps, but he wants to get out and get into something else. And I hope he won't do it right now, because things are too critical out here now. I think he'd be better off if he stays in, but I think his wife wants him to get out, so I don't know what he's going to do. They were here Easter, by the way, and that's his wife and two boys over there on the picture on the right.	26:03
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So the other boy refused to go to prep school. He went to public school in Washington. His name is Robert. The other one is Ally the third. And when he graduated from high school, he refused to go to Yale. He didn't want any part of Yale, because he wasn't going up there and compete with his brother's records. So he decided he was going someplace on his own. Well, he's an all around guy. He was smart, but he wasn't bookish like the other one was. The other one just had his head in a book all the time. But Robert was really a great guy and still is. He decided on Princeton. So he graduated from Princeton, and went to Cornell Med School, and he did his internship in residency in New York at—. I forgot the name of the hospital now. But anyway, he did all that in New York. And he is now with Kaiser from an entity set up in San Diego and is doing very well. And he has three boys, the little picture up there. Three boys.	26:33
Tunga White	And what about the daughter? The sister? Your niece.	28:23
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, she didn't have any children. She lives in New York. She went to Rochester, New York during the war. Oh, yeah. I gave her an option at the end of that year that she had messed up and gave her an option, decide what she wanted to do with her career, because I had had it. I wasn't going to get involved in—I wasn't wasting any money, couldn't afford it. And so she decided she wanted beauty culture. She had an aunt who lived in New York, and she went to the either Walker or Poro or one of those top beauty colleges in New York. Her aunt gave her room and board, and I paid her tuition and all of her expenses. And she graduated there.	28:36
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And then she was working in a beauty shop in Charlotte, but during the war, she had got married and she went to Rochester, New York to work in the Kodak factory plant at that time was making some kind of war products. I don't know exactly what it was. And she went to work there. And while she was there, she decided to go to school on her own. And she trained as a dental technician, and she became a dental hygienist. And that's what she did until she retired, but lived in New York. And she still lives in New York. She's 79 years old.	29:29
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And right now I think she's in the early stages of Alzheimer's. She doesn't know which end is up. So that's a pathetic situation. And we don't know what to do about her because she has nobody. She has a co-op apartment and she just can't manage. She has enough income to manage if she knows what to do with it, but she doesn't. So her sister has been there, her brother has been there, and I refuse to go because I just cannot take that. At this stage, I don't need it.	30:31
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So anyway, I have been financial support and been giving financial support over the years, and she still expects it. Some people are just like that. You do things for so long and then they just expect it. But we have to see that she has medical insurance and things like that to cover. But she has, as I said, a co-op apartment, which she owns. And all she has to pay is maintenance and her utility. She doesn't have utilities, really. Cell phone and cable bills and things. Food and medicine, things like that. That's all she has to worry about. But she has gotten to the point now where I'm not sure she's managing very well.	31:01
Robbie Goodloe Wright	The other sister lives in Rochester, New York, and she went up doing war work at the same time that her sister went up, and she still lives there. She owns her own home. Her husband has since died. She had two children, both of whom are grown. Her daughter is a registered nurse. They live in Atlanta. Her husband works for Kraft General Foods. He has a very good executive position with them, and they're doing all right.	31:52
Tunga White	When did you get married?	32:33
Robbie Goodloe Wright	1944, Montgomery, Alabama. Well, I didn't get back to my career after.	32:35
Tunga White	Okay.	32:46
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Going back to mine.	32:49
Tunga White	All right. Okay.	32:50
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I worked at Barber Scotia for seven years, then I went back to North Carolina College and I worked in the library and went to school and got another bachelor's degree because as I said, I had left after three years and I got another bachelor's degree while I was working there. And after that I went into Army Library Service for three years. First at Camp Butner, North Carolina, which is just outside of Durham, and then Tuskegee Army Airfield.	32:51
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And you talk about a bad situation. That was a bad situation. It was the dumping ground for all these Blacks that they didn't know what to do with. Black intelligentsia, really. They were forced to send to train a number of these Blacks as officers, but when they got them trained, they didn't have anywhere to put them, so they dumped them all down in Tuskegee. They were down there butting heads with each other. There were PhDs and people like that dime a dozen down there. And they had to train these guys as pilots, but they would bring them right up to graduation and wash them out for any little—Any, well not reason, just only so many of them could graduate. And I was there when just after the 99th pursuit squadron left, and the 332nd was training when I was there.	33:47
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And I was post librarian at the time. And to give you an example of the sort of thing that they did, my husband was trained. He went through OCS as quartermaster officer. He went through quartermaster school. And when he came out, there were 36 quartermaster officers graduating, and they didn't have any place to put them, because no facility needed more than two quartermaster officers at one time. And so they just dumped them all down to Tuskegee. They wanted to send them out on tree planting details and all kinds of weird things.	34:53
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And there was one guy there who had started law school, Raymond Brown, who was an outstanding lawyer in New Jersey. He's still in New Jersey somewhere, I think, I haven't heard from Ray in a long time. But he studied. All he had to do was study army regulations, and he knew them up and down and he would advise these guys, "No, you don't have to do those things." And so they had a perpetual poker game going in the BOQ, bachelor officers quarters, and that's where they spent most of their time because they refused to do these things that they wanted them to do.	35:43
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Eventually, they had testing service because these pilots, the cadets who were going to be training as pilots, had to have all these tests, intelligence tests and so forth. And they had the set up there and give you an idea of what that was like. The top officer was White, had a bachelor's degree in drama. The second in command was my husband with a bachelor's degree in business and a quartermaster officer who knew nothing about testing. The third guy was a corporal who had a master's degree in psychology.	36:25
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He knew something about testing. The low man on the totem pole had a PhD in psychology and licensed test—Well, he was licensed in psychological testing. He had taught at Bennett College incidentally and other schools. But that was the setup. He was a low man on the totem pole, the only one who could interpret the Rorschach test, which was a requirement. And the commanding officer who was White, a bachelor's in drama, wanted him to do all these reports for his signature. He refused to do it. He was a PFC at the time. They busted him to a private, and that man almost went crazy, because the way they treated him. They just pushed him around something awful.	37:31
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And I think he finally refused to go to work, and they were getting ready to court marshal him, but somehow he managed to get some help. I don't know who. I don't remember the details now. But anyway, he ended up years after that, after we left there, as an officer at the VA administration. And he was, that's where he was, the last time I heard of him. I don't know where he is now. But I met my husband there and we got married and soon after that, they were getting ready. They were going to send him with the 332nd to Italy, and he didn't want to go. So he brought up a physical problem, a hiatal hernia, which he had had all his life, but which did give him a lot of trouble. And he pursued that avenue and got out on medical discharge, but without any benefits because they said it was something that it was not service connected. So he didn't get any benefits.	38:41
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But before he went in the service in 1940, he had just started the funeral business here. And while he was gone, the four years that he was gone, his aunt tried to carry on for him and did a little bit, but not very much. So when he came back, he had to rebuild all that, and that's what he started working on. And he finally ended up, built up very good business.	40:04
Tunga White	And that was here?	40:37
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah.	40:38
Tunga White	He was from this area?	40:39
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah, he was born here.	40:41
Tunga White	So what was the name of the business?	40:47
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Wright Donaldson. It ended up, first it was Wright's Funeral Service, and then he had a partnership with another undertaker, and it was Wright Donaldson. And they sold out in—Well, he retired. His health was bad. And he retired in 1977. And they sold the business.	40:49
Tunga White	Now he started his business on his own. What year did he business start?	41:20
Robbie Goodloe Wright	He came back here in '44. Well, he said he started in 1940, but he was gone for four years and he came back and went back to work at it in 1944.	41:26
Tunga White	So he hired like an embalmer?	41:39
Robbie Goodloe Wright	No, he was a licensed embalmer.	41:42
Tunga White	He was a licensed embalmer.	41:42
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah.	41:45
Tunga White	Where did he go to school for that?	41:45
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Eccles in Philadelphia. And he worked in Richmond. And where else did he work? He did his apprenticeship and qualified for his license and everything with—Can't think of the name of the funeral home now, and in Richmond. And then he came home in 1940, started his own business, but he was already qualified.	41:51
Tunga White	So you're saying it became a partnership, what year did it become a partnership?	42:23
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Let's see, '44 became—I guess it must have been about 1950, about '55. Must've been about '55.	42:28
Tunga White	Why did he want to become a partnership?	42:41
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, the other person who went in with him lived out where the Marine Corps Air Station is now. And his family had lived there, and that's where his father was in business there. And the Marine Corps took over all that property out there, and he was going to have to move. And Joe wanted to build his own business, enlarge his business, and they just decided to go together and build this place. So that's what they did. And they were both licensed embalmers and funeral directors. I had a funeral director's license, too, but not embalmers.	42:44
Tunga White	Do you know of any other funeral homes that were here in that area at that time?	43:35
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah, there were others, but they weren't really qualified. They were the only two who were qualified as embalmers, and they did most of the embalming for the other funeral home.	43:39
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But there was competition, of course. That worked sometimes, sometimes it didn't. But now we came here in November of '44. I was qualified as a librarian from an accredited library school, had another bachelor's degree with a major in English and sociology. And, well, the national teachers' exam was a big thing then. And you had to pass the national teachers' exam. So I took the national teachers' exam, made an A, which was a requirement at that time. But South Carolina had their score, for an A and I wasn't satisfied with South Carolina A, I wanted a national A. So I went back and took the exam again and I made the national A.	43:53
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, the first time I took it was under terrific circumstances, because they had put us in this little country school with one light bulb hanging down in the middle of the room. It was a cold day, wood stove over in one corner, and I had a cold, and I felt terrible. So that's one of the reasons why I went back and took it again, because I knew I could do better than I did.	45:12
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But I was here for six years and nobody would give me a job.	45:36
Tunga White	Really?	45:42
Robbie Goodloe Wright	There wasn't—The only trained librarian in this area was at Paris Island. So I worked at the Mather School, which was a little Baptist supported school. Northern Baptist supported it. And first, I did volunteer work there, and then I finally got a job as librarian there. And since I got a state certificate, and I went to Walter Bar and I was librarian in high school there for two years. Then.	45:42

Robbie Goodloe Wright	Decent. A decent person offered me a job, and at that time, they had what they called jean teachers. Did you ever hear about jean teachers? Well, that's what I was, I did when I came back to this county. I did that for three years. There were 44 small schools scattered throughout the county. It was my job to supervise these 44 small schools. Before I took over, the person who was doing that work was a White person, and all she did was go around to these schools and deliver brooms, toilet paper, chalk, and little supplies like that. And nothing was being done about the educational standards. And I worked at that, as I said, for three years. Then we got a decent superintendent in here for a change.	0:02
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Up to that time, the schools had been run, like everything else by the good old boys network, and they called all the shots. And they hired this guy who was the first real professional superintendent that they'd had. He was the nicest thing. He came in here and he saw what the situation was. He was smart enough to get all the background that he needed and whatever progress needed to be made, changes that needed to be made. He had mapped out all this out and he knew where he was going, what he was going to do, and he sort of picked me as his right hand.	1:15
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And I was doing practically everything for the Black schools at that time. Well, in the meantime, federal funds were being allocated for federally impacted areas because of the military basis here. And the people coming in the counties were not able to support all these facilities, and they were given federal funds. Well, those federal funds looked awfully good to the politicians.	2:10
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And about that time they were talking about integration. In fact, they passed the law. What was that law now? That schools had to be integrated in 54. Well, in 53, this superintendent, Dr. MacArthur, Carry MacArthur, was his name, had me do the groundwork for the first consolidated school, elementary school. The high schools were already organized, and this first consolidated school that they built in 1954 was built with federal funds. It was an attempt to get around desegregation, and all they did was put up walls and classrooms as an excuse for what they wanted to do.	2:51
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So they got away with that. Then later, they built other schools, and I was instrumental in helping to get them started. This superintendent in the meantime was working out budgets for the schools and the money that was available. And before that time, nobody ever knew anything about a budget. The White principals didn't know. The Black principals didn't know. And you'd go to ask for something, and if they wanted you to have it, they'd give it to you. If they didn't, they'd say there isn't any money, so you didn't get it.	4:15
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But this superintendent set up budgets for each school, and the allocations were based on the number of students. He also set up teachers' salary scales, and he took the—When he got these budgets set up, he took the school budget and sat down with each senior class, high school senior class, Black and White, and went over the budget with them because he said, now these are things that you're going to have to pay for when you grow up, so you need to know something about them.	5:00
Robbie Goodloe Wright	When the politicians, the good old boys, found out what was happening, all this was done before they even knew what was happening. When they found out what was happening, they had a fit. He was eventually fired, or they just made it so unpleasant that he left. They didn't really say they fired him, but just one of those things. By the time he left, he had opened up Pandora's Box and they couldn't close it anymore because everybody knew—I mean, there were budgets set up for all schools and everything was running smoothly, and they couldn't cover that up anymore. Couldn't go back to the old system.	5:45
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Incidentally, he was here just a couple weeks ago and came by to see me, but he's now retired. He taught at Walford and he is now retired. And he came by to see me. And well, off and on. I sort of tried to keep in touch with him, but I saw a loss of contact. I always offer to see him because he was the best thing that ever happened to this county. I'll tell you.	6:29
Tunga White	Now, what year did he come you?	6:56
Robbie Goodloe Wright	53. When the law was passed, ordering desegregation with all deliberate speed, he called me on the telephone. Oh, yeah. Incidentally, this first consolidated school was on St. Helena. The high school had grown out of the Penn setup, and it was on Penn campus. So the high school just moved over to the new building. The buildings were adjoining and they just moved over there. So there was no reorganization there. But with the elementary school involved, 11 small schools scattered throughout St. Helena and Ladies Islands, and I served as principal that first year after organizing it, pulling it all together and pulling all these faculty members together, all the teachers from all these little schools. I served as principal for the first year, and at the same time, I was training somebody to take over, and that's when I left St. Helena and came to Robert Smalls.	6:59
Tunga White	What was that first year like for you?	8:21
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Wasn't bad, because we had done all the groundwork and I knew all the teachers having worked with them for three years and we got along beautifully and everything turned fine. We had no problems. There were—	8:24
Tunga White	That preparation when you've been given prior to consolidation.	8:40
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, well, we had a hard time convincing the people in these little communities, because you see, each one of those little communities had its own school. The schools at that time, up to that time had been built with Rosenwald funds, and the county operated the schools, but the land was given by the people in the community in each case. And Rosenwald put up the buildings and the county did furnish the staff and so forth. Well, they weren't paying anything. The teachers were miserably paid at that time, and they had a lot of people, of course, who were not really qualified because the standards were improving all along and some of these people had to be dropped, and they were unhappy. Of course, then the people in the communities didn't want to give up control of their little schools, and they fought it for a while, but they finally accepted it.	8:46
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And now there's no question. And I have seen every school in this county except one built since I've been here, and that's one little school in Port Royal that the people in the community refused to give up and it's still there. But after that, as long as Carry MacArthur was here, I just sort of—Well, practically ran all the Black schools and we were beginning to get federal funds then and doing projects for different things that had to be done, that needed to be done in the county, and that could be done with federal funds. And I was responsible for setting up libraries in every one of the elementary schools.	9:57
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I had the first special ed class. The state didn't even have any standards for special education at that time. I picked one of the good teachers. She was an older teacher. She was interested. We had set up this class for children who had been kept out of school to take care of younger children. And they were kids who could learn, but they weren't given the opportunity. And so it was a matter of trying to help them. And we were doing what they now call mainstreaming even then with special ed, what we set up as a special ed class. But anytime I went to him with a project that made sense, he'd let me do it. And we went and went. We were doing a lot of things. We were teaching French and Spanish at the elementary school.	11:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, incidentally, this person who was doing this special ed class, Loretta Frazier, she's dead now and she had retired some time ago, but she went to A&T and took the necessary courses. And when the state set up their qualifications, she already had them. And she became the first special ed teacher that is certified in this area. What was I going to say now? I lost my thought.	12:15
Tunga White	You all were all from Spanish and French.	13:10
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Yeah, but back to the special ed class, I had a friend who had worked with me at Barbara Scotia, and she was from North Carolina. She had a PhD in psychology and was a licensed psychologist. She would come down in the summers and do the testing on these children, the children that we put in these special ed classes were tested, all the qualifications that they needed were met even before the state had anything set up. And we had the first special ed classes here, but now the Whites would not admit that their children needed to be tested and they'd never had any—They refused to have special ed classes in the White schools, but we had them in the Black schools and the children were tested, the classes were set up to meet all necessary requirements, and we were moving on and nobody knew what was happening. And they found out there wasn't anything they could do about it because it was already ongoing.	13:11
Tunga White	And who was this lady to come down and do the testing?	14:25
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Dr. Carol Cotton Bowie, B-O-W-I-E. And she just did it as a friend in the beginning. And finally Carry found some money to pay for her.	14:30
Robbie Goodloe Wright	So she got—Well, it's a minimum amount because she stayed with me and there wasn't any problem. She didn't have a lot of expense and she enjoyed doing it. She just didn't like to come down here in the summer.	14:48
Tunga White	So the children that were in the special education program were students that were staying—	15:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	At first before we really had the classes set up. And we were getting those children, giving them special help and moving them into regular classes, which they now call mainstreaming. And now they've got special ed set up and they are spending money galore on special ed kids. But at that time, nobody cared anything about them. And of course, as I said, the Whites weren't interested because their children didn't have any problems.	15:08
Tunga White	What brought about the interest, the thought of getting this up?	15:40
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, the one that we set up at Robert Smalls to begin with this one teacher and Carry's interest. And he just let me do, as I told you, anytime I came up with a project that he approved, he just let me go ahead and do it. And the powers that be, the politicians didn't know what was happening. So we had it all done before they knew it.	15:44
Tunga White	So how did you find out about these different areas?	16:09
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, we knew that there were children with—See, as I said, I had worked with the whole county 44 schools and I knew where these children were and what the problems were. And I worked in the school system for 23 years.	16:13
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And most of the work that I had done beyond that was—I mean, well, altogether I had worked 40 years, but I worked in private school seven years, as I said, and Army Library Service for three years. I didn't get any credit for that. I didn't get any credit for the Mather School years that I put in here. And when I decided to retire, I only had 28 years that they accepted the three years at North Carolina College. The two years in Walterboro, which was in a state school and the 23 years that I worked here. And the requirement at that time was you had to be 65 or have 35 years experience to retire.	16:46
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I had neither. When I got to be 62, I said, "I have had it." I had no children and I decided I had had enough. I'd worked 40 years and I was getting out. The highest salary I ever made with 20 years as a principal and all this other stuff that I had done was $10,000.	17:49
Tunga White	What?	18:16
Robbie Goodloe Wright	That's the highest salary I ever made. If I had stayed in two more years, I would've been 65. They dropped the requirement from 35 to 30 years. I would've met both of those. Salaries had taken a big jump. I would've been in much better shape. But I said, "I have had it. I'm getting out." And I did. And I haven't looked back. End of story.	18:19
Tunga White	What year did you retire?	18:59
Robbie Goodloe Wright	73 and retired 21 years. Enjoyed every minute of it. Wouldn't go back.	19:00
Tunga White	Why did retire?	19:06
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, no, everything. I have served on the board of Historic Buford Foundation. I did volunteer work at the hospital. I ran for school board. Well, I was appointed first to fill an unexpired term for two years. Then I ran on my own for a four-year term. I was elected and I retired from that after six years. I have served on the Board of Architectural Review two separate terms, five years, first time. And no, six years the first time and five years second time. I was on among the first group to organize legal women voters locally.	19:07
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I was working with the group from Hilton Head who were interested in mental health. And we worked on setting up mental health organization here, Beaufort County Mental Health Association. And nobody knows that even that part of it even existed. They don't know anything about that. Just we were out beating the bushes and going door to door, trying to build up interest in it and getting started with mental health setup. They've got a fine thing going now, but nobody knows anything about what we did then.	20:23
Tunga White	Well, you all asking—	21:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, that was somewhere back in the fifties. I'm not sure.	21:06
Tunga White	You said resident.	21:13
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Right. Benny Newhall, who was now dead. And 18 McCracken, who was a deputy superintendent at the time. Gosh, I don't even remember the names of most of those people. There was one person who was, oh gosh, what was her name? Because she was really the power behind the whole thing. And these people were the original settlers on Hilton Head when they started developing. After a while they got disgusted because it was getting too commercial and they left, several of them left. Benny Newhall stayed there.	21:15
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And a lot of the others, I wish I could think of the name of that person because they have a special school in—A reading clinic in Savannah. She moved to Savannah and they set up this reading clinic. And, gosh, I can't think of her name. It still bears her name because she's dead now too. Oh, yeah. And while I was working with the mental health setup, I also served on an advisory board for the State Mental Health Association. I can't think of anything else, but I've been—	22:12
Tunga White	What are the goals of the [indistinct 00:23:11]?	23:07
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Well, first was to identify some of these people and to provide whatever help we could. At that time, nobody was paying any attention to people with problems and nothing was being done. But this sort of spearheaded development services.	23:10
Tunga White	Okay. I'm going to ask a couple more questions. What is your full name?	23:36
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Robbie, R-O-B-B-I-E, Godloe, G-O-D-L-O-E, Wright Louise. But I never use it.	23:45
Tunga White	And your address here?	24:02
Robbie Goodloe Wright	1015 Prince Street.	24:03
Tunga White	And your date of birth?	24:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	January 6th, 1911.	24:04
Tunga White	And [indistinct 00:24:23] county.	24:04
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Mm-hmm. City of [indistinct 00:24:25].	24:24
Tunga White	You're a widow? What was your father's name?	24:24
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Joseph Miller Wright. Incidentally, his mother was the school and community nurse at Penn for many years. And she was later married to Mr. King who was—I think his later classification was superintendent or something over there. And some years ago when they started the building fund, started raising money for improving the buildings. I gave some money and I got his, he had a half brother. His mother married Mr. King and they had a child, Joe's father died when he was 10 days old. His father was a doctor. And his wife, later after he died, his wife went to Hampton, took nursing, and she came back here, the registered nurse and worked at Penn. And Penn at that time was serving not only the school but the community. And so he grew up there. He went over there. He was six years old, I think when he went over there.	24:43
Tunga White	What was his father's name?	26:00
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Joseph Wright. Well, not Junior, because they used Miller was his middle name. That was his mother's maiden name. So it was Joseph. I don't know what his father's middle name was. But his father was a doctor and he had worked in Newbury and that's where he met his wife and he developed tuberculosis. And at that time they were, that was back in 1904 or 1905, something like that. 1904, I guess.	26:02
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And they advised him to go out west because that was the only thing they knew, sent him to cold climate. And he got a job on the medical staff at an Indian reservation in [indistinct 00:26:57], Colorado. And that's where he worked for sometime, I don't know how long. Anyway, when he realized that he wasn't going to get any better, he moved his wife back home. She was pregnant at the time. And I think about three weeks after they came back here, my husband was born, 10 days after he was born. His father died.	26:39
Robbie Goodloe Wright	But as I said, he grew up at Penn. And do you know what they call Orchard College Cottage. That's the one near the office building. The one right over to the right of that on is—It's slated for renovations. I don't know whether they've started it yet or not, but—Well, that's where he grew up. And that's where his brother was born. His brother's James O. King, James Holler King. Well, when they started this building project, raising money for it, I wanted to give something in memory of Joe's mother, his stepfather.	27:28
Robbie Goodloe Wright	And after his mother died, his stepfather married again. So he had a stepfather, stepmother and his mother who worked there, and an aunt who worked there. So I got Jimmy to give $500. I gave $500 and said I wanted a memory of these people. Nobody knew them, knew anything about him. Well, I'm not kidding. And she gave her life to that school, as did Mr. King. Mr. King had graduated from Hampton way back two years ago. And that's the only place he ever worked.	28:21
Tunga White	And what was his stepfather full name?	28:55
Robbie Goodloe Wright	James P. King.	28:59
Tunga White	And his mother?	29:06
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Margaret Miller Wright King. They didn't even remember them. Nobody knew anything about them. All these younger people were there. I had to tell Campbell who they were. Campbell's father had gone to school over there. And incidentally, his father was teaching at one of the little schools on Hilton Head when I was supervising all those schools. His father was teaching them. So I knew his father.	29:06
Tunga White	So the people that were working there didn't remember?	29:38
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Didn't remember. No, people who worked—There were all younger people who would come there much later. And they didn't even know anything about Mr. King or Nurse King, as she was called and she worked with—You've probably heard about Dr. Bailey, right? Well, she was his Wright aunt.	29:42
Tunga White	I heard a lot about Dr. Bailey.	30:03
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Of course. But she was the one who did all the work in the community.	30:04
Tunga White	Who do you think I could talk to in the area that could maybe—?	30:11
Robbie Goodloe Wright	I don't know because I most of those people have since died.	30:19
Tunga White	Yeah.	30:22
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Let me see if there's anybody I can think of. I don't know who would know anything. She was a midwife. She trained the midwives in the community. Incidentally, her picture's in this—	30:22
Tunga White	[indistinct 00:30:41].	30:40
Robbie Goodloe Wright	Oh, I'm sorry. You finished with that?	30:41
Tunga White	Mm-hmm.	30:48

Item Info

Title:

Robbie Wright interview recording, 1994 August 06

Date:

August 6, 1994

Creator:

Wright, Robbie Goodloe

Contributor:

White, Tunga

Description:

Name: Robbie Goodloe Wright; Date of birth: 1911-01-06; Place of birth: Beaufort, SC; Occupation(s): librarian; Residence: Beaufort, SC
Informant ID: 477; Interviewed by: Tunga White.

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Librarian

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Language:

English

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Behind the Veil

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Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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8b82b0db-b930-4549-893f-a69b9474e46a
behindtheveil
a19d11d4-88a2-4ffc-9f4f-563e0eddc180
ark:/87924/r44t6sc66
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Robbie Wright interview recording, 1994 August 06

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1. Robbie Wright administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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