Elizabeth Randolph interview recording, 1993 June 05
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| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Kinds of things he did was [indistinct 00:00:02]. | 0:01 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | [indistinct 00:00:02] the first thing that I'd like to ask you, Dr. Randolph, is how long you've lived in Charlotte. | 0:02 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I came to Charlotte in 1944 and I have lived here ever since. I came here To teach. | 0:12 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | To teach. I see. | 0:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Uh-huh. | 0:23 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And where— I'd like to come back to your teaching, but where did you move here from? | 0:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I grew up in Raleigh. | 0:30 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | In Raleigh. I see. Mm-hmm. | 0:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And since I brought you back a little bit, I'd like to ask you a little bit about growing up in Raleigh. Were you born in Raleigh? | 0:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, I was not born in Raleigh. I was born in Farmville, North Carolina, down in Pitt County. My mother was a teacher, but my father was a plastering contractor and he traveled where the construction jobs were. So, we moved from place to place until we finally settled in Raleigh. | 0:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I was born in Farmville and my brother, my oldest brother was born in Farmville. And we moved from there to Norfolk, Virginia. And from Norfolk, Virginia, we moved to Southern Pines, North Carolina. And then my mother got tired of moving and so she told that my father that we were going to decide on a place that was going to be home and he could travel and we would stay there and be a family and welcome him when he could come home. | 1:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, we settled in Raleigh and that's where all of us grew up. The six of us. My parents had three girls and three boys, and we grew up in Raleigh. All of us went to school there. | 1:43 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And did your father continue to travel around after you moved to Raleigh? | 1:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yes. He continued to travel around where the plastering contracting jobs were. And he, well, yes, he did that— really, when he got sick and died, he was on a contracting job. | 2:01 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Hm. | 2:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm—hmm. | 2:24 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And your mother continued to work as a teacher when she had six children? | 2:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes, she certainly did. She was a very, very strict, a loving but very, very strict parent. And she taught in Wake County and we lived across the street from the elementary school where we went to school. And we had our instructions when we got home before she did. And our instructions were to go home, to lock the doors, not let anybody in. And when she got there, we ate dinner and we washed the dishes. And then we gathered around the dining room table and did our homework. | 2:25 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. And were you one of the older children? | 3:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I was the oldest. | 3:07 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | You were the oldest? | 3:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I'm the oldest of six children. | 3:09 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, what was— did you have special obligations as the oldest child when your mother was at work? | 3:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, yes, I was to see to it that everybody did what they were supposed to do. I was to see to it that nobody even tried to go outside, to let in any neighborhood children in. And all of us learned to read when we were very young. And we would, until she got home, we would read or just talk about what had happened in school to each one of us that day until she got home.When she got home, she cooked dinner and we ate dinner and then we gathered around the table and did our homework. | 3:18 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What about the children who weren't old enough yet to go to school? Did your— | 3:58 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I was— My brother and I were the babysitters. We were the two oldest and we were sort of in charge of the youngest ones. | 4:05 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And you say that you all learned how to read at very young ages. | 4:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. | 4:21 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did your mother teach you how to read? | 4:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. Yes indeed. She did. She taught us how to read and we learned to read by reading stories of the Bible. Mm—hmm. | 4:24 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did you have any stories that were your favorites when you were a little girl? | 4:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, my favorite was the story of Ruth. | 4:42 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Hm. | 4:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | It still is. | 4:47 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. | 4:48 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. | 4:51 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So— | 4:52 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | She was a liberated, liberated woman. | 4:52 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm—hmm. | 4:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. Our family was a religious family. We went to church, we went to Sunday school, we went to BYPU. We were Baptists. The Baptist Young People's Union. We went to— | 4:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | [indistinct 00:05:11] I see. | 5:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. We went to Wednesday night prayer meeting. And we went to church, we went to Sunday school, we went to day church, we went to BYPU, which was in the afternoon, and we went to night church. My mother sang in the choir and we went to everything that the church had. Well, and when I was growing up, not only did we go to school, but my mother, we always knew that we were going to be somebody. We grew up knowing that. | 5:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And she sent me to a music teacher and I learned to play the piano when I was, oh, before I was 12, and I played for the Sunday school. And as I grew older, I learned to play the organ, pipe organ. And when I was in my teens, I was assistant organist for the church. So, whatever went on in church, we were there. | 5:42 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Were there social events at church as well as more— I mean, I guess everything that goes on in the church is religious and spiritual. But do you remember picnics and things like that? | 6:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, yes. Yes. In fact, on Tuesday we had a, what was called a WIC circle that it was— What did WIC mean? It was a club. It was a women's club. But what they did was they had activities for children. And that was every Tuesday. And after we went, we came home from school and mama came home. We had dinner. On Tuesdays, she would take us to church, to that WIC meeting. And that was a social activity. | 6:25 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | We went to Sunday school, we took part in Christmas plays, Thanksgiving plays, Easter plays, things like that. And everything that went on in the church. And the church was, as well as you say, religious, was really a social institution where you learned how to know other people. In fact, I have friends, the first name, that young lady on that list I gave you, she and I grew up in the same church in Raleigh. [indistinct 00:07:38] Durant. Mm-hmm. | 7:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Ms. Durant. | 7:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. We grew up together in the church. | 7:41 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And you're still friends today? | 7:47 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And we are still friends today. In fact, we are just like sisters. We talk to each other just about every day. | 7:48 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And you were friends as little girls? | 7:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | As little girls. Mm-hmm. | 7:57 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember any conflicts or disagreements coming up in the church and how people might have settled those if they did arise? | 7:59 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, if so, our mother didn't let us know about. I'm sure she did. I do remember one thing and that had to do with our first instruction in the sex education at home. In the Baptist church, I don't know whether it's still done now or not, but I know when I was growing up, if a young woman got pregnant and had a baby out of wedlock, she was put out of the church. | 8:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I remember one such instance that that happened. And I remember when she came back to the church, she had to come before the church and apologize and say how sorry she was and everything. And church had to vote on getting her back in. And that was the first time that, when that happened, that was the first time that our mother set the three girls down and talked to them about the facts of life. And— | 8:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | How old were you then? | 9:30 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, we were— I was less than 12, I know. I'm pretty sure I was less than 12. And there were three of us. See, I was the oldest and the second oldest was a boy, third girl, fourth boy, fifth girl, sixth boy. And of the six, there are three of us who are living now, my sister and I, one sister and one brother and myself. | 9:34 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And so your mother didn't speak with the boys about this incident? | 10:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, my father did. | 10:15 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I see. | 10:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now when he came, you see, he was a good parent. And although he was very seldom at home, when he came home, he was dad. And I remember really overhearing mama tell him that the children were getting to the point now where they needed to have some serious talk about the facts of life. And he instructed the boys and mama instructed the girls. | 10:17 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And do you remember the young woman who came back to the church and asked for forgiveness? Do you remember anyone— Was the young man treated the same way? | 10:49 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. No. Nobody ever knew who he was. Well, I guess some of the adults did, but I don't believe he was a member of the church. | 10:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I see. | 11:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But I never heard of any young man being put out for fathering a child because I think, most of the time, people didn't know who the child was, who the father was. | 11:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, you said that when your father came back to the house between jobs or came back to see you, he was dad in the house. | 11:25 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes, he was dad. | 11:34 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What was it like when you knew that your father was coming home? | 11:34 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, dad was not as strict a disciplinarian as mama. And we were always glad to see him when he came home because we knew that we weren't going to get a whipping. We thought— I got— Because mama did not spare the rod. She did not spare the rod at all. | 11:37 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I remember, in growing up, the only time that I got a whipping from my father was when I slapped my sister for something that she did. And I slapped her and he saw me do that. And he took me across his lap and spanked me. But that was the only time that he ever punished me. And I don't think he ever punished any of the rest of us. | 11:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did your parents disagree about that? About discipline? | 12:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. | 12:31 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | The children? | 12:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. You see, dad was not there very much. And so mama was really the disciplinarian. So, anything that required discipline happened when he wasn't there, most of the time. And, you see, that spanking that I got, he spanked me because he saw me when I slapped my sister. He saw it. | 12:31 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | How old would you have been then at the moment? | 12:52 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, let's see. I guess I was about 10. | 12:55 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Can I ask you a little bit more about school now? | 13:01 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | School? Sure. | 13:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | School. Did your mother teach in the elementary school? | 13:06 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah, she taught in the elementary school in the county. And we lived in the city and we lived right across the street from the elementary school that we went to. | 13:08 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, you didn't go to the school where your mother was teaching? | 13:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, no. | 13:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I see. Do you remember the name of the school that you went to? | 13:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Of the school? Uh—huh. Crosby Garfield School in Raleigh. | 13:22 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Crosby Garfield. | 13:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And that school now is no longer a school. It's a community center of some kind. It's one of the schools that was closed during the desegregation times when lots of Black schools were closed. But that was one of them. But it's a community center now. | 13:28 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And let's see— | 13:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, that was the first school we went to. And we moved from the house where we were living across the street from the school, to another location which was not in that school district. And we were assigned to another school. The name of that school was Lucille Hunter School. | 13:52 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Lucille Hunter. | 14:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Uh—huh. And it was a new school. And we were among the first students to attend that school. And I remember that I was in sixth grade then and I was in the first sixth grade class of Lucille Hunter School. | 14:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And from there, I went to high school, to Washington High School. And Washington High School was a long way from where we lived. And it was a long, long walk every day. But I wasn't the only one walking. Everybody in the neighborhood was walking to Washington High School. Everybody who went to high school walked to Washington High School. | 14:32 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did you have friends who you walked with? | 14:56 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. Yes. | 14:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | How long would it take you to walk to school? | 15:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, let's see. School opened at 9:00 and I believe we left home probably around 7:30. | 15:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oof. | 15:14 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I guess. [indistinct 00:15:15] 7:38 because we ate breakfast. 'Cause mama always gave us breakfast before she went to work. And see, she drove with— She carpooled with some other ladies who taught and out in the county at the same place she did. But we always had breakfast before we left. | 15:14 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, did you have fun with the other children on the way to and from school? | 15:35 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. Yes we did. We had a good time. We would skip and we would have a good time. And there was a certain place that we met at the end of the day and we came back home together. And some of those people are people who are— Well, some of them are no longer living, but there are a few of them who still live in Raleigh. And on the rare times when I go to Raleigh, there are several I call up and we get together. | 15:39 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm—hmm. What do you remember about your teachers? | 16:14 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My teachers? Oh, I always loved school. You see, my momma was a teacher and she taught us at home. So, going to school was not our first experience with teaching, you see. And I just loved school and I love my teachers now at Crosby Garfield School, which was the first school that I went to. And I entered that school in third grade. I didn't go to first and second grade. | 16:20 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. | 16:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I would stay home. When I went to school, I knew how to read. So, let's see, my third grade teacher was Miss Dorothy Laine, and Miss Dorothy Laine is living now. She has some relatives that live around the corner. And she's living now. So, oh, she's in her nineties now. She's probably almost a hundred. And she is the only elementary school teacher that I had that I think is still living. | 16:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, my fourth grade teacher was Mrs. Daisy Evans. And I know Ms. Evans is not living, but she was my fifth grade teacher. And my sixth grade teacher was, I never will forget her. Her name was Ms. Minnie Bell Clark. And she was— because Ms. Dorothy Laine was not married, but she never did get married. Ms. Lane, Ms. Daisy Evans was married and she had one son, I remember. | 17:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But Ms. Clark was single. And during that year that she was my teacher, she became engaged and she told us about her fiance and told us that she was going to get married. And I never will forget that we made up a song about her and her husband—to—be was name. And it's just this— My memory just goes, but I remember this, I don't know why on Earth I still remember that man's name, was Adolphus Henry Ross. | 17:51 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Adolphus Henry Ross? | 18:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Adolphus Henry Ross. And we made up that song with his name in it. We said Adolphus Henry Ross and Minnie Bell Clark planned to marry. And the song was around that, you know, but she would come in in the morning, we'd start singing, "Adolphus Henry Ross and Minnie Bell Clark." Mm-hmm. | 18:32 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But when she married, she left Raleigh. So, I never saw her again, but I never forgot her. She was a good teacher. And in high school, the teachers as I remember, let's see, I have a picture of one of them. I'll show it to you. | 18:56 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'll remember to ask you. | 19:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yeah. She was— Her name was Mrs. Susie Vic Perry. And she was— | 19:20 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mrs. Perry. | 19:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mrs. Perry. She just died last year. She was my chemistry teacher. And she taught me a lot of things besides chemistry. She taught me to not let people pick on me. And she taught me to speak up for what I believed and what I knew. She taught me— well, she told me that I was going to—See, and I was a pretty good student. I really was. In fact, I graduated from high school as valedictorian and also college valedictorian. | 19:27 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But she told me that I was going to join her sorority. Well, I didn't know anything about a sorority. I said, "What is a sorority?" And she told me and she told me about her sorority, which is Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. And that's the sorority that I joined. But when I was in college, I went to Shaw University. | 20:08 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Shaw University. | 20:34 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Shaw University in Raleigh. But we didn't have sororities at Shaw when I was a student there. And they had fraternities but didn't have sororities. And sororities didn't come on campus until I was a senior. And my sorority didn't come on campus then. | 20:35 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And the other sororities, I was rushed by the other two sororities. And I told Ms. Perry that these other sororities wanted me to come to their rush. She said, "No, you don't. You are going to join Alpha Kappa Alpha." I said, "Well, Alpha Kappa Alpha is not on the cam—" "It will be. And you just wait. So, you just wait. And if it doesn't come on campus before you graduate, well, we have, in our sorority, we have alumni chapters and I will see to it that you join the Raleigh alumni chapter." | 20:56 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And she did. And I joined the Raleigh alumni chapter, although I had finished college and had gone to teach at my first job. And I came back to Raleigh when she told me that they had voted to take me in. And there were two or three other young women they were going to take in. And when I came home for Thanksgiving, that was the time that they had that. But going back to high school, I didn't finish high school. Ms. Perry was my favorite teacher in high school. | 21:32 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I'm trying to think of the name of Ms. Hicks. She was my Latin teacher in high school and I liked her, too. But Mr. Johnson was my English teacher. And he was a person who sort of kept me going on what I had already learned at home. That was reading, just reading widely. And he had us learn poetry and he would assign us to poems to read. And well, of course, when we came home, we always had to let mama know what our homework was. And if we had a poem to read, she would see to it that we would learn it sometimes that same night. | 22:08 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of books and poems did your teachers assign you to read? | 22:58 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, shoot, hold on and see. I'm trying to think of one that came to my head. On my mind and it went right— It'll come back to me. I know when I was a senior, we had the Shakespearean plays. We had to learn passages from Shakespeare. Now, if you didn't ask me that, I could just rattle it off. | 23:07 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Of course. | 23:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I could just rattle it off. | 23:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Do you ever— | 23:43 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I'll think of it. | 23:44 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Do you ever remember reading any African American poets [indistinct 00:23:50]? | 23:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | We had African American history when I was in sixth grade. And we didn't read poetry, but we studied history and we learned about Booker T. Washington and Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes. So, I never will forget. I lost that book and I always intended to keep it. And when we moved, it was lost. But there was a textbook that we used in sixth grade about— a Negro history textbook, starting with slavery and coming all up through whatever was happening at that particular time. | 23:51 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And did the students have to pay for these books? | 24:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | We rented. We rented books, but I don't know how I came to be in possession of that book. But we rented our books. The first of the year, you paid your rental fee and you went to the book room and you had your little slip, and you gave the slip to the person who was in charge. And whoever was in charge would give you the books that were on that slip. But I don't remember that we rented that book. Maybe we bought it because I know that we had it at home. We lost it somehow. | 24:43 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, you stayed in touch with some of your high school teachers like Ms. Perry for a very long time? | 25:25 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm—hmm. Yes. Yes. I told you, she just died a couple of years ago. And I have a picture of her in there that was taken when the two of us received awards from the sorority at one of the national conventions. Both of us received an award at the same time. And ooh, I was just so, so pleased to go up on the stage with her. And she received a plaque and I received a plaque. And the picture I have shows the two of us, both with our plaques and the national president of the sorority was standing beside us. So, I'll show it to you before you leave. | 25:25 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to see that [indistinct 00:26:07]. | 26:06 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 26:06 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to come back a little bit before we move forward to talk a little bit more about your family. And your mother was a teacher. Where was your mother educated? | 26:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, during the times that mama was a teacher, you didn't have to be a college graduate to be a teacher. You would go to a school in the summertime. And sometimes there were, at Shaw, they had on Saturday, they had Saturday classes that people who were teaching who wanted to be certified and to keep their certificates up. And that's how she got her certificate. | 26:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | She never went to college. She wanted to go to Fisk. And she did go to Fisk for one semester, but she couldn't stay there. Her folks could not— I don't know how she got there. But she did go to Fisk one semester and she wanted me to go to Fisk. But the family didn't have enough money to send me away to school. And that's why I went to school at home, at Shaw. | 26:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And what did your— I guess a better way to ask you would be what you remember about your grandparents, your mother's parents or your father's [indistinct 00:27:19]? | 27:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I never knew, none of us ever knew my father's parents except what he told us about them. We had a picture of my grandfather that was lost someplace. My father came from Alabama. And he met my mother in Farmville, North Carolina, where she was teaching when he was on one of his jobs. And she never went to Alabama. We never went to Alabama. | 27:21 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But a brother of his came to North Carolina after we moved to Raleigh. And we met him. He lived in Durham, but we saw him. Every now and then, he would come over to see us. And we met— One of his sisters came to see us one time from Alabama, but we never met his parents. Now, we knew my mother's mother. In fact, my mother's mother lived to— She was nearly a hundred and she was living with us in Raleigh when she died. | 27:49 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, you grew up with your grandmother in the house [indistinct 00:28:28] some time? | 28:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, she wasn't there all that long. No. In fact, when she came to live with us, she was really in her latter years. And she wasn't even well, but we used to go to— She lived in Weldon and in the summertime we used to go down there to visit her. | 28:29 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But we would just go— My mama, we had a little old Essex and mama would drive us to Weldon and we would stay two or three days and come back. But we weren't around her enough for her to have any lasting impact on our lives. But the fact that mama was a religious person and she grew up in the church, and, of course, that was her mother's teachings. | 28:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And when you did go visit your grandmother in the summertime, I guess, in the summertime, you didn't say. | 29:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes, in the summertime. | 29:25 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did she ever tell you stories about her childhood or anything like that? | 29:30 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. What I remember about those summers is the neighbor's children that we met. And we'd go fishing and we would always— If we were there for a weekend, we always went to Sunday school and church. And we would play games, we would play jack rocks and things like that. And the children's games, of jumping over— Somebody would be moving the rope and you would jump rope, you know, that. | 29:35 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, those are the kinds of things I remember doing when we went to see grandma. I don't remember— In fact, I just don't ever remember her sitting down and talking to her. | 30:12 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What did your parents' parents do? Was your father's father a plasterer also? Or did something else? | 30:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I don't know. Let's see, never met him. Never met him. Now, his brother who came to Durham was a plasterer. And, now, whether they got that from their father, I don't know. I never knew that. | 30:29 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | How did your parents teach you to address adults when you were a child? | 30:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Ms., Mrs., yes ma'am, no ma'am, reverend, and doctor. | 30:53 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And were you to treat White adults and Black adults in the same way? | 31:03 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, we never came in contact with Whites, with White adults. I guess, the only time you'd ever come in contact with a White adult was if you happened to go into a store to buy something. But then there was never any conversation. You just said what you want and you tell them what you want and you pay them. And that was it. I never came in contact with Whites, really, until I went to graduate school. | 31:08 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What about White children when you were a child? | 31:42 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, you see, we grew up in a segregated society, completely segregated society. And we lived in a segregated community. There were no Whites anywhere in the community where we lived in Raleigh. Now, if you'd go downtown and then go into Woolworth's, Kress's, Sears Roebuck to buy something, you know, would see Whites there. But as far as having any kind of social interaction, school interaction with Whites, nuh—uh. There was none. | 31:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember seeing the signs? The Crow signs? | 32:33 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, yes. You couldn't possibly miss them. You couldn't possibly miss them. The signs that said— The water signs, I remember. The ones I remember most are the ones that were downtown at the post office. And they had a water fountain, they had two water fountains and one was for White and one was Black. And I remember asking mama why that was. And she said, "Well, that's the way it is, and if you want water when you're downtown, you go to the one that says— that didn't say Black, that said colored." We were Colored then. | 32:34 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And, of course, there's no such thing as going the restrooms in the stores downtown. No such thing. I remember when we would go to Weldon in our Essex in the summertime, if we needed to relieve ourselves, mama would drive off on a dirt road. You would go find a place to urinate in the bushes somewhere. I don't think that I— Let me see, did I ever— No, it was when I went to the University of Michigan, when I first realized I didn't have to pay any attention to— In fact, there were no signs for you to pay up there at Michigan, for us to pay— to have to observe. But, in growing up, I grew up with everything you ever heard about segregation, the segregated everything. | 33:12 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did you and your brothers and sisters ever talk about that? Since you were the oldest, did you have to explain to the younger ones how— as your mother explained to you? | 34:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, she explained it to all of us. There were certain things that, you see, we always were, at home, at night, we were around, after dinner, around the table, and we studied our lessons and we learned what she had to teach us, what she wanted to talk about that particular day. And if that subject ever came up, for instance, if we had gone to town and had to use a Colored water fountain, and if that happened to come up around the table, she would explain to everybody how that was, that Blacks and Whites were separate and they had separate facilities. | 34:32 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And she would want us not to do anything that would get us into any kind of trouble. He said, because I remember my brother asking one time, "What would happen to him if he went to the White fountain?" And she said, "Well," she said, "Even though you are a little boy, you might be arrested and I might have to come to jail and get you out." So, that was enough to scare him and the rest of us not to— In fact, something happened to me then, during those days that I still remember. I do not use public facilities. I do not use a public water fountain. I do not use a public toilet. I just don't. | 35:16 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Anywhere? Or only in the south? | 36:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Not anywhere. Not anywhere. If I'm in New York, I'll come back to my hotel or wherever I'm staying, if I'm at a convention. There's just something. And I know it came out of the experiences in my childhood, that the White and Black. I just don't like them. Now that's not to say that I have never been to, because there are sometimes that, you know, you're in a situation where you better go or you better go. But that's been my habit, not to, if I don't have to. | 36:12 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | That's interesting. I'd like to ask you about your first job now because you went to Shaw University and then you came— Did you immediately come to Charlotte? | 36:52 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, I didn't. No. This was my third job. One thing that my mother taught us by her example and also by precept, was to press— always stick together, help each other. And when you of age, register and vote because she always did. And we would ask her why she was voting and she would tell us why. That's the way you could help elect the people who are going to run the city. And she never missed voting. | 37:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And in Raleigh, you could vote. Black people could vote in Raleigh. And the voting place was the school across the street, where we went to school. And she always voted. Well, when I graduated from Shaw in 1936, my first job was up in the mountains, up in Rutherford County in Rutherford [indistinct 00:38:12]. And I was old enough to vote and had registered in Raleigh, but had not voted. | 37:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, when I went up there, it was— The year that I went up there was the year that Franklin Roosevelt was running for his second term. And I was looking forward to voting for Franklin Roosevelt because I got through college on the WPA and some of it there, the programs that he initiated. And Franklin Roosevelt, he was my idol, and I was going to vote for Franklin Roosevelt. | 38:21 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, when I talked about voting, the teachers in the school where I was said, "What do you mean voting?" I said, "Well, I mean voting. I'm going to cast my vote for Franklin Roosevelt." And they said, "Not up here, you are." I said, "What?" They said, "Black people can't vote up here." I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it and I didn't believe it. So, I went down to, what you call, the place where you register and showed up, said, "I wanted to—" They asked me what I wanted. I said, "I want to register to vote." | 38:49 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I told them I was already registered in Raleigh. And so they told me I couldn't register up there. "Well, why?" "Well, we don't allow Colored folks to vote up here." "Why?" "We just don't." And I did not vote and, ooh, that hurt me so. And I didn't go back up there to work. I didn't. I told mama that I wanted to come closer to home to work. So, I got in touch with Shaw and told them I wanted to get a job near home. And they found me a job at Wake Forest, which was just 16 miles from home. And my second job was at Wake Forest. | 39:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I have voted ever since. I never, never missed voting, never. I taught in Wake Forest for six years. My first job up in Rutherford County, my principal was Dr. Johnson. And oh, he hated so much for me to leave, but I did. But he left, too, that day. He got a job as a principal in Burlington. And I went to Wake Forest. I worked for Wake Forest, I taught English, I taught French. I was a part—time librarian, a part—time music teacher. That was just the way it was. That all the facilities that you had. There was not a single teacher on a faculty who didn't have multiple duties. | 40:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, Dr. Johnson got in touch with me. And I think I had been working in Wake Forest for, well, four or five years there, five years. And he wanted me to come to Burlington. And I was interested in going to Burlington because Burlington paid a supplement and Wake Forest didn't. So, I told him, "Yes, yes, I would come." But when I went to my principal to tell him that I was resigning and I was going to teach in Burlington, he would not sign the papers to release me and I could not go to Burlington. | 41:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Why was that, Dr. Randolph? | 42:05 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, you see, it's interesting. You have to understand how this segregated system was— how it operated. The teachers never went to the [indistinct 00:42:22]. Wake Forest was in the county and the county seat was Raleigh. So, when the principal had reports and things to give to the central office, he had to come to Raleigh to bring them. But teachers never went to the central office. We didn't know anything about the central office. We knew it was the superintendent of schools, but we never saw him. He never came to Wake Forest. | 42:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, all the principal had to do was just not to turn the papers in, you see? And put me on his roster as continuing since I'd already been there five years. Well, I taught there one more year. But the principal, Dr. Johnson, came to see me at Christmas holidays, I think, and see, because I commuted. I was in Wake Forest during the week and I went home to Raleigh on the weekend and he told me, he said, "I still want you to come work with me and I'll tell you how to do it." He said, "Now, you wait until school closes and when you come home," he said, "You send in your resignation." | 42:49 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And he said, "There's nothing that the principal can do about it." He said, "You can resign." And he said, "You have the time to resign," he said, "Because," he said, "Just don't wait a month." He said, "If you wait a month, see, you can't get released from your contract, but you can resign." He said, "Just do it the week after you get home, send in your resignation." And that's what I did. So, that's how I got to Burlington. That was my second job. | 43:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Excuse me, Dr. Randolph, you said that they paid a supplement in Burlington? Why was that now? | 44:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, just like the reason they pay a supplement here, they pay supplements just about everywhere now in all large cities where— They pay a supplement because they want more in their schools than the state basic funding allowed. So, the supplements come out of local taxes and, see, now, we have the largest supplement in the state, but it comes out of local taxes. You see, all schools in the state are funded by the state, but cities and counties and small towns who have the— whose people want more than that, who don't mind paying the taxes, the extra taxes, well, they have the supplements. | 44:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, Burlington has supplements. That's the reason I— There were two reasons I wanted to go. I wanted to leave Wake Forest because I was mad because the principal wouldn't let me go the last time. And then I wanted to make some more money. So, I went to Burlington. Now, that was in the 1940s, during World War II. And when I got to Burlington, my principal had been drafted. | 45:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, he was not there when I got there. But I liked the school. And in fact, the place that I got a room to stay was right across the street from the school. And I was teaching. I taught English and I taught French and I was librarian. And I did the same things I was doing at Wake Forest and played for the Glee Club. | 45:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, I was the kind of person who would— When I see something that needs to be done, I would do it. So, if I saw some paper out on the sidewalk and there weren't any children around, this was after school, I'd go pick it up myself. And I mentored a lot of kids, the kids I taught. And so there was a fellow from Charlotte who was on that faculty, his name was Audrey Heffington. | 46:17 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Audrey— | 46:46 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Heffington. | 46:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Heffington. | 46:46 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yeah. And bless his heart, he's still here, but he's very, very ill. I haven't seen him in years. | 46:47 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But he came to me, he said, "You know?" He said, "You ought to be teaching in Charlotte." I said, "Why?" So, he said, "Well, you're a good teacher." And he said, "You just need to be there." And saying, "You know, Charlotte pays a larger supplement than Burlington," and said, "You ought to apply to teach in Charlotte." | 46:58 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I said, "Well," I said, "You know, you can't get jobs in big cities like this unless you know somebody." | 47:13 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | The principal in the state, he had a lot of interest in the drama and he would bring plays to the state drama festival, which was held at Shaw. When I was a student at Shaw, I used to cut classes sometimes to go in and sneak in and see the plays at the drama festival. So I knew who Mr. Blake was. He was principal of West Shaw High School. But Heatherton hounded me until I wrote the letter of application to get Heatherton off my back, and he mailed the letter. | 0:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I never thought I'd hear anything more about that letter. I didn't expect to. At that time, I was going to summer school at the University of Michigan, working on my master's degree. So when I went to Michigan that summer, in one of my classes, there was a young man from Greensboro who taught down in Eastern North Carolina someplace. He was asking me if I knew if there were any vacancies at Jordan Sellars School in Burlington where I was teaching. So I told him no. I said, "There were no vacancies that I knew of." He taught English just like I did. | 0:39 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | In about the second or third week that I was in Ann Arbor, my mother forwarded me a letter from Mr. Blake, offering me a job as teacher. So I told this young man that I didn't know whether there would be a vacancy in Burlington or not because, you see, the 30 days that you had to resign if you were going had passed. So I had no idea I could get released. So we decided, he and I — He was an English teacher. He wanted the job, and he was an English teacher. | 1:28 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I wanted released, and I was an English teacher. So he was going to write a letter to the superintendent, a letter of application for an English job. I, at the same time, was going to write a letter to the superintendent asking to be released. We did that, and it worked. That is how I came to Charlotte in September of 1944, and I've been here ever since. I taught at West Charlotte High School. I taught English. | 2:05 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | For the first time in my teaching career, which at that time was — Let me see. I was in Rutherfordton one year. I was in Wake Forest six years and in Burlington one year. That's what? That's eight years. First time in eight years that I did not have any extra duties. I taught English. I taught junior and senior English. But the second year I was there, Mr. Blake found out that I was interested in drama, and he assigned me to drama club. | 2:43 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | The third year I was there, I had the drama — No, I didn't have drama club then. I had student council. Somebody else had drama, and I had student council. But I worked at West Charlotte High School for 15 years. And I enjoyed my work. I really did. I enjoyed my work. Well, when I worked at West Charlotte, we were down here on a — I'm sorry. You're not from Charlotte, so you don't know what I'm talking about. Well, you remember the school that you passed on the way up to— | 3:27 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 4:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, that was where I taught. It's a middle school now. But that was West Charlotte High School then. Let's see. We had been there, I've forgotten how many years. Anyway, they built a new school that was up on the other side of where you were last night. I was still there. When we moved to the new school, I was still there teaching English. I taught English, and I was the advisor to the senior class. | 4:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, after a few years, I just don't remember the dates. But in the meanwhile, this side of town was growing. This community began to grow. When I came to Charlotte, there was nothing here. This was just undeveloped land. But Dr. McCrorey who was, at that time, president of Johnson C. Smith, owned most of the property. He began to sell the lots, and people began to build. There were other places in the area where people began to build houses, and the younger people began to move into this area. | 4:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, the elementary school was up on Beatties Ford Road. It's where you turned into Patton Avenue. The expressway that you came over was a place where there was a school. As the families began to increase, the school began to get very, very crowded. It got so crowded that they had to put the kids on double sessions. Well, after a couple of years, parents got tired of that. So they went to the board and told them they wanted another school in the area because they were tired of their kids being on double sessions. | 5:30 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So the board told them that if they could find the land, they would build a school. So they found the land up off of Beatties Ford Road, and the school board built a school. Well, the superintendent called me to his office. "I wondered what on earth he wanted," I said, "because the superintendent called a teacher to his office." But I went down to see what he wanted. He told me that a delegation of parents whose children were to be assigned to that school wanted me to be the principal of it. | 6:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I just couldn't believe it. Now, I was a high school English teacher. I didn't know anything about elementary school, and I told him. He said, "Well, you're not being asked to teach first grade. You're being asked to be the principal. So, you think about it. I'm sure you have friends in the principalship who have been high school teachers. Find somebody who has had that experience and see what they say, and you think about it." | 7:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | [indistinct 00:07:44], the school was just being built then. It was under construction. So I did. I did have some friends who were some college friends who were elementary principals and had been high school teachers. I got in touch with a few of them, and they encouraged me. But the person who really convinced me was the man whose name is on that list, Dr. Spencer Durante. He was here then, and he was principal of Second Ward High School, and he told— | 7:44 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And married your childhood friend. | 8:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. They were college sweethearts. He told me essentially the same thing that Dr. Garinger had told me. He said, "The principalship is a leadership position, and your job as a principal is to see to it that there is a climate where teachers can teach and students can learn. You can learn everything you want about elementary school teaching by visiting classrooms." He was saying, "You have taught English, and you know what good teaching is. You know a good teacher when you see it." | 8:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He said, "You won't have any problem of being an elementary school principal." Well, I took the job. I had to become certified. So I started in the summer going to University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. They were still— | 8:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | This would have been? | 9:21 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That was 1958. | 9:22 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I see. Thank you. | 9:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Schools were still segregated, but the university was just opening. Rosalia Durante and I went to the university that summer, and we were the first Black students to go to the summer school at the University of North Carolina. | 9:26 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | At Chapel Hill? | 9:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | At Chapel Hill. We were the first. Of course, after that, there were many, many, many. But that first summer, we were the first. It was interesting. We had applied for housing. We learned from the literature they sent us that we could get a room that it was sort of a suite. It was a large room, and it had its own private bath. So we applied for that and got it. I never will forget the Sunday afternoon that we drove down there and we showed up at Kenan Hall. | 9:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | When we went in to check in, the person who was on duty, we identified ourselves and she checked us in. She said, "Well, let me tell you something." She said, "We will never integrate the schools as long as you choose not to assimilate with other people." She said, "I know why you asked for the room that you asked for, and you have it. But that's not the way that we are going to learn to live together." | 10:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And how did you respond to that, Dr. Randolph? | 11:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, we didn't respond. We went to our room with our private bath. But we understood what she was trying to tell us. But we found that it wasn't so bad. We weren't using the bathrooms at the end of the hall. We had our own, and we enjoyed that. But in the classes, well, we were just like any other student. We did not have any unpleasant experiences that summer at Chapel Hill, never did. I went four summers. Mrs. Durante and her husband, and they'll tell you if you ever get a chance to interview them, if they let you, they went to Nigeria the next year. | 11:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He went on a special mission for the State Department. They were developing a college there in Nigeria, and so they were there for four or five years. I visited them while they were over there. But anyway, it took me three summers and going on Saturdays to get my certificate, my credentials to be a principal, and I did. The next two summers that I went there, I had a single room but it didn't have a bathroom. I had to use the bathrooms at each end of the hall like everybody else did. It was no problem at all. I enjoyed that. | 12:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I got my principal certification, and they had a little graduation ceremony that third year that I went. See, I not only went during the summer, I went every Saturday. So it didn't take me that long to get the certification. I remember Dr. Otts, who was the person who was in charge of the teacher education department. I had to go to his office for something. | 13:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So he asked me if I realized that I was going to be the first Black student to receive that certification from the School of Education. I said, "No." I said, "How would I know that?" He said, "But you are." I said, "Well, I hope there will be others." He said, "Oh, yes." He said, "There are others studying there now." He said, "But I just thought you'd be interested to know that you were the first." So I was principal at University Park School, opened it, brand—new school. | 13:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What was the name of the school? I'm sorry. | 14:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | University Park. | 14:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, I see. | 14:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Right now, it's not an elementary school. It was closed as an elementary school about four or five years ago. It's a discipline school in part of it. And then it has some state department offices and some local offices there. But all those things are going to be moved and changed, and they are opening again in September as an elementary school. It's going to be one of the magnet schools. I'm just so glad because I just hated it so much when they closed it. | 14:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But I was there for nine years, and I enjoyed it so much. I never did think that I would enjoy anything more than I enjoyed teaching. But I enjoyed those nine years, and I hated to leave. I really did. It's really the best job in education. You have children at the time of their lives when they are most eager to learn, and you have parents who are most cooperative. You have teachers who teach the child and not the book. I did enjoy it, and we just did a lot of interesting things at that school. But in the late '50s, let me see. It was not late '50s. It was '60 what? '58. I was there nine years. What would that be? | 14:57 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | 1967 that would be. | 15:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | '67, that's right. '67. The superintendent called me to the office again and told me that that was the year that — During that time, Lyndon Johnson was president, and there were Head Starts started and Title I funds for disadvantaged children. Our school system had applied for some of the Title I money. The state didn't have kindergarten at that time, and he wanted to use that money to develop some kindergarten programs. He told me he wanted me to be the coordinator. | 15:52 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So I left my University Park Elementary School kicking and screaming because I surely did not want to leave it. But I went to Central Office, and I did that. I was in Central Office. I had that job for two or three years, and then another superintendent. I was in charge of school operations, administrative assistant for school operations. Then I had a charge of several schools in the school system. For instance, I had West Charlotte High School and all the schools whose children fed into West Charlotte High School. | 16:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I had that job for about three years. And then under another superintendent, Dr. Robinson, I was promoted to the job I had when I retired, which was associate superintendent for program services. I had charge of student services and curriculum. I retired in 1982. I had been teaching since 1936 when I graduated from college. But I had been at West Charlotte since 1944. That's when I came here. But I had a total of 48 years, I think, in the teaching profession. | 17:30 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | A long time. Seen a lot. | 18:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But I enjoyed every bit of it. I enjoyed it. I was talking about being surprised when I was asked to be a principal. I was certainly surprised when I was brought to Central Office. Now there was one Black person at the Central Office when I went there, and he was the person who was in charge of federal programs. I worked with the federal funding for kindergartens, and I worked under him. He was my boss. | 18:15 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, he was the first person who had the title of assistant superintendent. Let me see. I was in that. Let me see. I think I brought a copy of my resumé over here for you. If you're interested in those years, they are in that. But I was really surprised when I was made an assistant superintendent and then an associate superintendent. Dear me. It was never anything that I ever even aspired to, and certainly never thought that any Black people would be hired for jobs like that. But that was just the beginning. Just the beginning. | 18:53 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Dr. Randolph, when you were called to be the principal of University Park School, was your mother still living at that time, ma'am? | 19:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. | 19:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And what was her reaction? | 19:47 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, she loved it. You didn't ask me about my marriage. | 19:49 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I wanted to get to that. | 19:53 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. But yes, I was married, and my mother had come to live with us at that time. We wanted her to come live with us when we first got married, but she didn't want to. She didn't want to leave Raleigh. That was her home, and she had all of her involvements. Not only did she have her church involvement, she still sang in the choir. She taught Sunday school. She belonged to the lodges. She belonged to the Household of Ruth and the Eastern Star. She just had all of her involvement. | 19:58 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But my husband told her. He said, "When you get ready to come and when you're tired of living by yourself, you just pick up the telephone and we will come and get you." She did call. We knew that she wasn't coming because she wanted to. See, the neighborhood was changing, and we believed that something frightened her. Now, she never said so. But we believed that that was why she came, because the neighborhood was just changing. It wasn't like when we grew up in it. | 20:33 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What were the changes? [indistinct 00:21:14]— | 21:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, different kinds of people living there, people who — I remember, and that was after she had come with us, that a friend of mine who lived near there was asking me if Mama told us about the break—ins that have occurred in the neighborhood, and I said, "No." I said, "She wouldn't tell us that." I said, "But I'm glad you told me because," I said, "we thought that something had happened." | 21:14 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, I don't think she ever had a break—in. I think she would have told us that. But I think that she became uneasy about living there in the neighborhood. | 21:43 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So if I could ask you about your marriage now? | 21:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | All right. | 21:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | When was it that you married him? | 22:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | When did I marry? I married on June the 10th, 1950. 1950. I married at the First Baptist Church in Raleigh, the church where I grew up, where I played for the Sunday school and the church and where I went to WIC Circle and all those other good things. Well, I met my husband on a blind date. I was introduced to him by a friend of mine who taught with me in Wake Forest. I was here in Charlotte teaching, but she and I kept up a correspondence. | 22:03 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | She called me on the telephone one day and told me. She said, "I've got a man I want you to meet." I go, "Really?" "Uh—huh. Yeah, I want you to meet him." She told me, "His name is John Randolph." She said, "He lives in Rochester, New York, and he is a widow. He's been a widow now for, oh, about three years." She said, "I think he wants to get married again, and it's time you got married." Because I had had boyfriends and dates growing up and all like that, but I had never got to the marrying point. | 22:48 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, here I'm in a Charlotte, and he is in Rochester, New York. So I said, "Well, how are we going to get together?" She said, "Well, he's willing to come to Charlotte." So I thought about it and I said, "Well, so what? It'll be an interesting experience." So I told her yes, to tell him to — I gave her my address and telephone number and all. So he wrote me, told me he'd like very much to come to Charlotte and meet me. So I wrote him back and told him okay, and he came. | 23:27 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | At that time, there was a hotel. The Alexander Hotel was the only Black hotel in Charlotte. You've heard about the Alexander Hotel. Well, That's where he stayed, at the Alexander Hotel. Of course, I stayed where I was up here on Beatties Ford Road where I was rooming. He would come, and the lady who I was living with liked him very much. He was very, very personable. I have to get his picture and show him to you. | 24:06 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He stayed. Gosh, I think he stayed a week. We would have dinner. After school, he'd come pick me up and take me to the hotel. And then sometimes my landlady would insist that he stay and have dinner with us. But everybody he met, all my friends that he met, liked him. Well, he was at least 10 years older than I, but he was a widow. He had no children. He lived in Rochester, New York, [indistinct 00:25:05]. | 24:37 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, after he went back, we still corresponded and everything, and he wanted to meet my family. So I always went home to Raleigh for Christmas and for Thanksgiving, to all holidays. So I had told Mama about him. My father had died, by the way, by that time. In fact, my father died the year that I was a senior in high school. Mama had remarried by the time I met John. So she said, "Well, why don't you invite him to come and visit at Christmastime." | 25:06 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | She said, "We can get him a room at the hotel." The Sir Walter Hotel was the Black hotel in Raleigh. So that happened. I told him that my family would like very much to meet him. He came down, and he stayed for the Christmas holidays. My mama told me. I'll never forget. She said, "You don't have sense enough to marry that man." She said, "You don't have sense enough to marry him." Well, I took my time. I didn't rush. It was a long distance courtship. | 25:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | How long did you court over a long distance, Dr. Randolph? | 26:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, not very long. Not very long. Let's see. We married in 1950. Let's see. It must have been '48, probably '48. I had a church wedding in First Baptist Church and— | 26:47 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'm sorry. Please go on. | 27:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, he wanted me to come to Rochester, and I didn't know whether I wanted to go to Rochester or not. But when we married, after we spent a honeymoon in New York City, that's where we went. We married in the summertime. You see, we married in June. I did not resign my job because I didn't know what was going to be available up in Rochester, New York. Well, I found out that there was not anything available in school systems in Rochester. | 27:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | There was one Black schoolteacher in the Rochester, New York, school system. One. But I had library science credentials. I didn't tell you that. When I was working at Wake Forest, I took some library science courses over at North Carolina Central, and I had library credentials. So I said, "Well, if they don't have any teaching jobs, maybe I could get a job in the library." So I went to the main library and talked to the director, and he had a job open. | 27:56 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But he asked me some questions and wanted to know why I wanted to leave Charlotte. I said, "Well, I'm married to a man who lives here, and he wants me to come here to live." I said, "I'm used to working." I said, "I'm not going to come unless I can find a job." So he gave me an application and told me to fill it out, and I filled it out. There was one item on there where I had to give something about my employment history. | 28:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | One question I had to answer was what my salary was at my last job. Well, that was the straw that broke the camel's back, as my mother used to say. When he saw that, he called me and he told me that he could not offer me the job. I asked him why. He said, "You make more money than I make." I will never forget that. I will never forget that. So I told my husband. I said, "John." I said, "I am going back to my job. I am going back to my job." | 29:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I was still teaching then. So we started out with a long—distance marriage. I would go to Rochester in the summer, and I would go to Rochester at Christmastime, but I'd come back to my job. Well, John got tired of the long—distance marriage, and he told me to help him make some contacts and get a job here. He said he didn't mind moving to Charlotte, and that's what happened. | 29:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He got a job. He was manager of one of the housing projects. He had charge of all the maintenance in all of the houses in this housing project, Double Oaks Housing Project. So he came down to Charlotte, and we lived in an apartment first over in Double Oaks. That was the apartment complex where he was working. | 30:32 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Double Oaks? | 31:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Uh—huh. During that time, we saved the money, and we built this house. We moved into this house In 1958. That was the year that I got the principalship and the year that Mama came to live with us. But she came to live with us before we moved into the house. House was under construction. But she came to live with us. In fact, I never will forget. She made that telephone call. | 31:01 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | John said, "Well, [indistinct 00:31:40]. You want me to come down and get you?" So she said, "No, I'll come on the bus." I never will forget. We met her at the bus station. She stayed with us until — In fact, he died before she did. He died in '58. He died— | 31:38 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | 1958? | 31:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He died there. What was the year that Kennedy died? Wasn't that in the '50s? '60s. | 31:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | '60, | 32:03 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | '63. | 32:03 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | '63, JFK. | 32:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | '63, yes. He died the week after John F. Kennedy died, and she died in '67. | 32:07 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Just a point about your long—distance marriage, how long did that go on for, about how long? | 32:16 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That didn't go on two years. | 32:23 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I wouldn't think so. | 32:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. No. I think I spent two summers and two Christmases in Rochester. It was too cold up there [indistinct 00:32:34]. | 32:28 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Did you have any children, Dr. Randolph? | 32:34 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. No children. He had no children from his first. I told you he was a widower. | 32:39 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. | 32:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But he had no children, and we had no children in our marriage. | 32:44 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So, you're Dr. Randolph. When— | 32:48 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. Now, that is an honorary degree. I have two honorary degrees, and I do not like to be called Doctor, but people insist on doing that. No, I got my master's at the University of Michigan and my administrative credentials at the University of North Carolina. But the doctors that I have are honorary, the first from Shaw University, my alma mater, and then the other one that I got just the year before last at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. | 32:51 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Quite an honor. I'm sure you deserve it. | 33:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, when you look at that vitae, you'll see why I got it. | 33:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I look forward to that. I'm trying to think of what I might have left out asking you about. When you were a principal, did conflicts come up between teachers or different administrators? I guess the question would be how did you handle any conflict that might have arisen as the principal at the elementary school? | 33:49 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, one thing about it, my style was not to be a boss. My faculty and I were a team, and our job was to teach children, to give them the best education possible. We were a team, and we worked together to make our school the best school in Charlotte. There's only one thing that I remember, one problem that I ever had with a teacher. That was not a very serious problem, although it was serious. | 34:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He was a young man, and he was late for school one day. He was supposed to be at school at 8:00, say. 9:00 came. He wasn't there, and he had not called. He was rooming with a principal who had, at one time, taught with me. I called her at her school, and I said, "Evelyn." I said, "John Hunter hasn't come to work." I said, "Is he sick or is something wrong?" She said, "No, he's not sick." She said, "He was still there. He hadn't left when I left for work. So if he's not at school, he must be home asleep." | 35:03 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, that's where he was, home asleep. So I said, "Well, thanks a lot." I didn't call him. I didn't call him at all, but I did get a substitute. He came. I guess he got there about 10:00. I was so tickled. The secretary came in and told me and said, "Ms. Randolph, Mr. Hunter is here." So I said, "Really?" I went out into the office there, and I said, "Well, good morning, Mr. Hunter. How are you? You decided to come to school. I was really beginning to think you was sick." | 35:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I said, "I called your landlady and she told me you weren't sick, that you were there." "Well, Ms. Randolph, I am just so embarrassed. I'm just sorry. I overslept. I overslept. I just didn't wake up. I just woke up about a half hour ago." So I said, "Well, it seems to me that you need an alarm clock." "Well, yes, ma'am. I guess I do." He turned around like he was going. I said, "Well, now, Mr. Hunter, you don't need to go to your class." "I don't?" | 36:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I said, "No." I said, "There's a substitute there teaching." "Well, Ms. Randolph —" I said, "Now, look, don't Ms. Randolph me." I said, "You come to school at 10:00, and you're supposed to be here at 8:00. You expect to teach today?" I said, "No, dear." I said, "There's someone covering your class, and she will be paid out of your salary." So I said, "Now, what you need to do is go back home," I said, "because I would suggest that you go to the drugstore or someplace and buy an alarm clock before you go back home." | 37:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But I said, "That's what you need to do." I said, "But I think that you need to finish your nap." Well, I'll have you know that John Hunter never, never was late again, and he is a principal now in Durham. He has relatives here, and I see him sometimes. Whenever he sees me, he'll come up and give me a hug and say, "You're the person who taught me how to be a principal." I said, "No, I didn't. I just taught you how to get up on time." | 37:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So we had a family relationship. I wish I had known you were coming. I had a picture of our first faculty at University Park School, but I gave it to Pat. If you ever go back up to the library and see her, tell her you would like to see the picture of University Park School that I left up there. But when the superintendent in charge of elementary education had something innovative he wanted to try, he would come to us. | 38:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | We would talk about it and see if anybody wanted to try it. If somebody did, they tried it. We had a wonderful PTA, so many of the parents. There were parents that I had taught at West Charlotte High School, and they were very, very cooperative. So we had a good school. We had a good school. Good teacher/parent relationships, teacher/student relationships. | 38:55 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Was it mostly the mothers of the students who were involved with the school or were the fathers involved? | 39:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Fathers were involved, too. Yeah. | 39:29 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I have one more question to ask you sort of about work. You were single for several years while you were working. Were there a lot of other single teachers? Since you didn't have families of your own, did you do things together ever? Did you socialize? | 39:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. I don't have a picture. Pat has that, too. Yeah, Pat has that picture. There was a club that I still belong to. Some of us have gone on to our reward. The name of it was Les Savants. We called ourselves Les Savants, the Wise ones. It was a club of teachers, and it was a social club. We called it a chat—and—chew club. Well, we have added members, new people who have come to town. | 39:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | If somebody comes to town and joins the Church or comes to teach and somebody in the club will meet them and say. "We have a young woman who is new in town, just joined our church, has come to teach." And said, "I think that she would fit in with our club." Well, you'd first invite them as a visitor. If everybody liked the person, we would invite them to join. | 40:32 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Of course, I belong to my sorority, and I've been very active in my sorority on the local, regional, and national level. I'm still active in the alumni chapter here. I've been president of it. I've been South Atlantic Regional Director. I've been national parliamentarian of Alpha Kappa Alpha. I belong to The Links. In fact, that's where I was today, last meeting of the year. That's a group of professional women— | 41:00 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | [indistinct 00:41:39]— | 41:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | — who do community work. I'm not a good bridge player. I belong to one bridge club, and that's a club when — We have one good bridge player in it, and she teaches the rest of us. We do more visiting and socializing than we do playing bridge. But we meet once a month. | 41:39 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Is that all women as well? | 42:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | All women. Yeah. Yeah. I belong to First Baptist Church. You didn't come down to Oaklawn Avenue? | 42:08 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I saw First Baptist last night— | 42:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Did you? | 42:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | — because we received an invitation to go there tomorrow morning. | 42:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, you're going to be in my church tomorrow? | 42:23 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. | 42:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, all right. I'll look for you. I'll look for you. | 42:24 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'll be happy to. | 42:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. Well, that's where I belong. I joined that church. Of course, it was not that building. When I came first came to Charlotte, I transferred my membership from First Baptist Raleigh to First Baptist Charlotte. I have belonged to that church ever since I had been here. | 42:29 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | It's a lovely building now. | 42:46 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | It is. Harvey Gantt was the architect of that building. | 42:47 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I suppose that's your car outside that has the Gantt for US Senate bumper sticker? | 42:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That is my car. | 42:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yeah. I'll bet you worked on his campaign. | 43:01 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Well, let me tell you some more about my family. | 43:06 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am, please. | 43:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I told you there were six of us, and there are three of us who are living. There were three boys and three girls. We lost the first member of our family when she was 14. She was still in high school. She died of pneumonia. I went to Shaw. My brother, who was the second in the family, went to Shaw. After he finished high school — See, my father had died. I told you he died when I was a senior in high school. She couldn't send us to college. | 43:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Of course, I was valedictorian of my class, and I got a scholarship for my first year in college. But that was The Roosevelt years. There were jobs available, and money available in college. But my brother went to join another Roosevelt program, the CCC, Civilian Conservation Camp, a program that provided jobs for young men who wanted the jobs. But after he came back from the CCC, he went to Shaw and got his degree. | 43:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My third brother joined the Army, and he made a career of the Army. My sister went to Shaw. My sister, she was a old flirty girl. She really didn't want to go to college, but Mama made her go. But when she finished high school, she went to — Let me see. Did she go up to Baltimore first? No, she went to college. She didn't want to go. My mama made her go. But when she finished college, that's when she went to Baltimore, and she worked for Social Security. She stayed there. | 44:29 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now, my youngest brother, he was the youngest of the family. All the rest of us were out working when he finished high school. So he was the only one who did not go to Shaw. He went to Morehouse in Atlanta. I paid his way. I had come to Charlotte then, and I paid his tuition. We all helped each other. I was the first one out of school. I would send my mother a portion of my salary every month. When my brother worked in CCC, he did the same thing. So we always helped each other. | 45:07 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So when he went to college, I helped him. When he came out of CCC and went to Shaw, I helped him, of course. I completely paid the expenses of my youngest brother and my sister to college. We always do that. We always helped each other. We're a very close family. Now, the other two brothers who are deceased, they've just died, both of them, in the past 10 years. Now, my brother who went to Shaw became a teacher, and he taught in Prince George's County, Maryland. | 45:53 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My sister worked for Social Security, but then she got tired of Social Security and decided that she wanted to teach. So she went back to school and got her master's, and she taught in Annapolis, Maryland. She's retired now. My youngest brother who went to Morehouse and he graduated from Morehouse, he graduated in chemistry and he worked for the— | 46:33 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But their marriage didn't last because they didn't— He was a musician. He sang in the Wheelhouse choir. He directed the choir at his church. He has a beautiful, beautiful bass voice. And they, he and Irene lived together, oh, let's see, they divorced when their son, they had one son, he was in elementary school I think when they divorced. He is currently the mayor of Baltimore. | 0:02 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Your nephew? | 0:35 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes. | 0:36 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And what is his name? | 0:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | His name is Kurt Schmoke. | 0:36 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Kurt Schmoke. | 0:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm—hmm. I have some pictures of him I will show you. Both of them, his mother and his father both remarried and each one of them had one child. She had a daughter and he had a son. So Kurt has a half sister and a half brother, and all of us are very, very close. We are still. In fact, you can see him and his family right there. Of course, now, that was— | 0:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. | 1:09 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | — before he was married. He was a lawyer. I have to tell you, we brag about him. He's the star in our family. He was very bright and he went to Baltimore, graduated from Baltimore City College, which is a high school. He would've gone to Morehouse where his father went to college. But he got a four year scholarship to Yale and he went to Yale. He was awarded a Rhode Scholarship and he went to Oxford for two years and he came back and went to Harvard, the law school. | 1:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | He worked in the Carter administration and I've forgotten what department, but he worked in the Carter administration. Then when he got married, he came home and he started working in a law firm. He got interested in politics and his first political job, he ran for state's attorney and that was the job he held when that picture was taken. His wife, Patricia, is a doctor, she's an ophthalmologist. | 1:48 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | It's a beautiful picture. | 2:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Now the girl Kathy, Kathy is Catherine Elizabeth. | 2:25 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 2:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | She's named. Her middle name is for her aunt. For this aunt. | 2:31 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 2:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But she had a— This young man is her son that she had out of a different relationship before they married. But he adopted him. | 2:37 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, it's a lovely picture. | 2:47 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. And she's an ophthalmologist and he's a lawyer. But, the second brother, the brother who went to the army, now my oldest brother had no children, but the second brother had three children. No, four children. Two sons and two daughters. And everybody with my family just believed in education. So the one who went to the army, although he did not go to college, all of his children did. And that's one of his daughters— | 2:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, yes. | 3:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | — there. No, not that one. The other one. That's his daughter. Mm-hmm. Mm—hmm. Now her, she was the only one in the family who ever lived in Charlotte. Now, this young man, the man she married, worked with [indistinct 00:04:02] and he was transferred here and they lived here about five or six years. And she worked for Barclays America. | 3:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 4:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And they just left Charlotte. He was transferred to Portsmouth, Virginia last month. And I just miss him so much. | 4:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, I'm sure. | 4:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And that other picture is Kurt at his wedding. That's Aunt Libby standing between Kurt and Patricia. | 4:20 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. Mm-hmm. | 4:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 4:31 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | That's a really nice picture. Everybody looks so happy. | 4:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Now, my sister married— Baltimore. She moved to Baltimore, and she married a Baltimorian. And while she was working for social security, before she decided to— She wanted to teach. And she taught in Baltimore for a while. And then she got interested in special education and she moved to Annapolis and works in school with special kids. Her marriage didn't last long, but she had one daughter and her daughter, she graduated from high school, but she didn't go to college. But she has one daughter and that daughter's getting married in September. We have a family reunion every other year. | 4:35 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 5:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | It's usually in July. And for this year it's going to be in September because we had this wedding in the family. So our family reunion will be in July, in September, September the 18th. | 5:26 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | From how far around do people come to this family reunion? | 5:41 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, my father, my mother was my father's second wife. And he had one son by his first wife. And he has a— Well, he's passed now. He was the first one of the family to pass. But he lived in Fall River, Massachusetts. And my brother who went to the army was stationed in Springfield, Massachusetts. And when he came out of the Army, he stayed in Springfield and he served World War II. And then he served in the— | 5:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | In Korea? | 6:19 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Korea. But when he came out, he came back and he settled in Springfield and that's where his children grew up. His oldest son went to college. Went to, gosh, I can't think of— He went to one of those Ivy League colleges and he got his master's at Georgia Tech. And he is a business now. He has his own computer business and he lives in a town outside of Atlanta. | 6:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | The other daughter lives in Springfield. And she's married. She has children now. She has one daughter who's getting ready to go to college next year. So we believe in education. If there's anybody who has any problem with tuition, well, they know who to call. In fact, Kurt's brother, I'll show you some pictures of him too. He graduated from— Now, he went to his father's school and he graduated from Morehouse last year. And of course we went down to see him graduate. But when Kurt's money ran out, I mean, not Kurt, Alex. Alex would pick up the telephone and call Aunt Libby and Aunt Libby would send him a check. Yeah. But it's a wonderful family. | 7:01 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Sounds like it. It really does. | 7:57 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yep. | 7:57 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Sounds very nice. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell me about Mrs.Randolph that I haven't asked you about? | 8:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, now that I— Because I've always— I learned it from my mother, community service. She not only worked in church, but I told you she worked in— I told you she always voted and she worked at the polls every— She always worked at the polls. And she belonged to her lodges and everything. Well, I learned that from her. And I have always been involved in community work. So if you want to look at that video over there, I got all that stuff for you to look at if you weren't interested. | 8:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'd love to. Yeah. | 8:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. And you'll see all the things I'm involved in on that resume. | 8:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Wonderful. | 8:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And you can have it if you want to. | 8:52 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, thank you. I would include that with the interview. That would be very useful. Thank you. One thing, did your father also vote? Mr. Randolph when he was— | 8:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, you know, I don't know because he wasn't— I know he didn't vote in Raleigh. | 9:05 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Raleigh. | 9:09 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And he probably didn't because he was on the road all the time. | 9:10 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. Well, thank you very much. I have to ask you to help me fill out some forms of genealogy, family history, which shouldn't take very long considering you've given me a lot of information about your family already, but— | 9:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Okay. Mm-hmm. Well, let me— I want to show you some things. | 9:30 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 9:37 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Unless you have a— I brought that— | 9:37 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I would love to look at that. | 9:39 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. I brought those books for you, those scrap books for you. This is family stuff. And some of it is just pertains to me, but most of it is family. | 9:41 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Well, why don't I liberate you from the microphone and we can fill out the form. | 9:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Okay. | 9:51 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So there's a story behind your family name, Schmoke. | 10:00 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, my father, as I told you, he traveled. And he was living in, I think it was Birmingham. And his name was spelled was Smoak, S—M—O—A—K. | 10:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. | 10:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And after he lived there a while, he began missing his mail. And when he checked into it with the post office, he found that there was somebody else with the same name living on the same street. And so when the post office investigated, they found that this man had been getting Dad's mail, including his checks. | 10:22 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, no. | 10:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. So that's when he changed the spelling of his name. Well, the thing is so interesting about it, also funny about the name, anybody who sees it, who knows our family, knows who we are. And when Kurt first ran for office and when he became a public figure, people would ask me if they saw his name in the paper. I know that fellow who's attorney in Baltimore, fellow who's mayor, he must be kin to you. But he is so much in the news now that I guess everybody— People who know me tell him that, "Oh, I know your aunt in Charlotte." | 10:53 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But he got mail from people of German descent who think he's German. And he sent me a letter one time. I sent it back to him, from somebody who lived way out in the Midwest, and they telling him how proud they were of him and they knew that he belonged to such and such a branch of the Schmoke family, and that their roots were someplace in Germany, and wanted to know if they could meet sometime or could they at least correspond. So I don't know how he responded to that. He told us that at Christmas. I always go to Baltimore at Christmas. I spent every Christmas with the family at Baltimore. | 11:50 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But of course people have asked me if we had any German people out there. I said, "No indeed." I said, "We are all African Americans." Now my father's father had some Indian blood, whatever, the Indian tribe who lived down in Georgia, in that part, in Alabama. He was sort of had some Indian, some sort of Indian blood in him. | 12:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And was this— So you know this from your father? | 13:15 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That's from my father, yes. See, he had a picture of his father and he was a handsome man. He was a handsome man. And we just talked about how handsome he was. So he told me, he said, "Well, you know he's part Indian." I said, "Well, how much?" "Well, not very much, but some." But nobody outside of the family inherited any of that. So there's nobody in our family who looks like the Indian. | 13:20 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Would you like to talk to me about your travels now or would you like to continue to with the forms? Well, I have some on you. | 13:59 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Let's finish the forms. You probably want to do that. | 14:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Your sisters and brothers. I would just, if possible, like to have their names. | 14:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Okay. | 14:13 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And then their date of birth and date death, if you remember them. | 14:13 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I have their birthdays. That's why I can go get my little thingy-bob. | 14:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | — Name was John. | 14:26 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. John Hagen. Mm-hmm. And when he gave the doctor, whoever takes birth information, he gave the doctor— He named his oldest son after him. So he didn't tell Mama what he named it. He just gave the information. So mama didn't know he'd named him John until a long time afterwards. But she didn't want her son named John. But she didn't do anything about it. But my brother never wanted to be named John. Oh, she added a middle name to him. She named him John Harold. | 14:29 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | John Harold. | 15:30 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. John Harold. That was his name. John Harold Schmoke. But she never did anything about changing it on birth certificate or anything like that. So when my brother got ready to go to the Army, he had to have his birth certificate. So when he sent to down to Farmville to get his birth certificate, he got a letter back saying that they didn't have anybody out by the name of John Harold Schmoke. But they had a Harold Lewis Schmoke whose parents were the same as he had said his parents were. | 15:31 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So, Mama was either still living there, or she hadn't moved. So Harold went— And so we always called him Harold. So he went to Mama and asked Mama, "What on earth?" So she said, "Well, you say, your father gave birth information to the doctors to give to the register of deeds. And he didn't tell me what he had done, but I didn't want you named after him. I just didn't want to. I just didn't like name John Hagen Schmoke. So when I could, I went down to the register of deeds and changed it." And said his name was registered as Harold Lewis Schmoke. Now, his birthday is May 16th. And he— | 16:10 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What year was he born? And what place was he born? | 17:13 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I was born in 1917, and I'm one year older than he. So he was born in 1918. Now, my sister, my third sister who died, her name was Alice Mabel Schmoke. And she was born on July 29th. I don't know why I remember that. | 17:15 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember the year born? | 17:46 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Let's see. Let's see if we can figure it out. Now, she was the third in the family. And now, my brother was born the year after I was born. But I think there were two years between my brother and my sister. So if he was born in '18 and there were two years, she must have been born in '20, huh? | 17:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 18:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 18:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And she was one who died when she was 14? | 18:14 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Now, let me see. Now, my brother Julian who died— I'm going to have to look someplace else. This is my birthday book. And I don't— This is his son Julian Junior. Gosh. I have to look in the Bible to get his birthday because I just don't remember when he was born. | 18:16 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | That's fine. I can— If I— Any information that I get is wonderful. | 19:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So let's see. | 19:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | You don't necessarily have to— | 19:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I don't know why on earth I wouldn't know. Let me see. Now June— Let me see who was born in— Harold was born May 16th. Well, let me find a sister and my youngest brother. And I know my youngest brother was born in February. His name is Murray Alexander. | 19:13 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | M—U—R—R—A—Y? | 19:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Murray Alexander. And he was born February 1st. And oh, dear. He just retired. Let me see. He born on February 1st, '19. His name is— Sister Alice. Baby. R.L. Allen? No, Julian. Hermia. And Murray. He just turned 62. So how old would he be? | 19:42 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | He would be, would've been born in 1931. | 20:39 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | 31. | 20:42 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | It's '93 now. | 20:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yeah. Because he just turned 62. Now, I've got to find— I know my sister's in here. Oh, boy. She's in here someplace. How old would he be now if he was born in 1922? | 20:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | He would be 71. | 21:41 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Okay. That's it. | 21:41 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | So that's your brother, Julian? | 21:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yes. | 21:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you. | 21:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I don't know why I wrote it down here is Julian M. Schmoke, 1922. Let me see if I can find my sister. She ought be in here. I passed it. Oh yeah, here she is. She was born in October. On October 21st. Now, Murray just turned 62. She is older than Murray. She's next to the last. And she is, is she 65? Yeah. He's 62. Two, three, four, five. She retired last year, so she must be 65. So if she's 65, when was she born? | 21:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Born in 1928. | 22:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That sounds right. | 22:54 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And her name, do you know? | 22:57 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Her name is Hermia. | 22:58 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | H—E—R— | 22:59 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | M—I—A. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Hermia. And her middle name is Calanthe. My mother got her out of some Shakespearean play. | 23:03 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. And how did find it? | 23:12 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I think her Hermia came out of a Midsummer Night's Dream. | 23:12 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I think so. | 23:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm—hmm. Yeah. | 23:17 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And how does she spell her middle name? | 23:17 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | C—A—L—A—N—T—H—E. | 23:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | C—A—L—A—N—T—H—E. | 23:19 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 23:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. And you just told me that you were born in 1917. | 23:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 23:24 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | What's your birthday please? | 23:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | March 18th. | 23:37 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | March 18th. | 23:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. I am 76. I was 76 on March 18th. | 23:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Awards and honors we have on your resume I think. Yes. Good. And so that's on there. And your current religious denomination is Baptist? | 23:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Baptist, yeah. | 24:06 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And your current church affiliation is First Baptist— | 24:08 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | First Baptist West. | 24:10 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | West. | 24:10 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 24:11 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And the church membership of your childhood was First Baptist. | 24:18 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | First Baptist in Raleigh. | 24:21 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Raleigh. | 24:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 24:23 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And organizations are on here as well. And are there any hobbies or interests or we've been asking people if they have a favorite Bible verse or a hymn or something like that, that they would like recorded just for the record. | 24:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 24:54 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Anything else that you'd like to leave with people? | 24:54 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, what was the first question you asked me? | 24:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Well, the first, I'm sorry. There were two, yes. | 25:05 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My hobbies. | 25:06 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. Hobbies. | 25:06 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My hobbies, reading and travel. And as you can see from my resume, I belong to a lot of organizations. | 25:07 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 25:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And I don't know what you want to call that, but I enjoy being with people and working in organizations. | 25:28 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. And community activities. | 25:40 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 25:41 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And so the second question was whether there was a saying or a quote or something like that, you'd like me to put on the record. | 25:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | A quote? | 26:00 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | A quote or a saying or I don't know. Sometimes people have little sayings that their parents taught them that go through their minds. | 26:01 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 26:15 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I interviewed a lady last week who had a Bible verse that she wanted me to write down. | 26:15 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well see if I had time to think about that, I could tell you plenty of them. My favorite hymn is "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind." And my favorite chapter in the Bible is the 23rd Psalm. And I like the Last Slide of Thanatopsis. But also something else that I like. And see when you leave, I'll think about it. | 26:19 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I'll see you in church tomorrow too. | 27:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, that's a good idea. Oh, dear. It's something about, it's by Tennyson. And it has something to do with life and death. Oh, dear. Oh, I know. "Come my friends is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off and sitting well in order. Strike the sounding for my purpose is to sail beyond the sunset and the baths of all the Western stars until I die. It may be that the floods will wash us down. It maybe we will touch the happy hours and see the great Achilles when we do. Though much is taken, much abides, and though we are not now, that which we were, that which we are, we are. Something, by time and faith, but strong and will to strive to seek to find and not to yield." | 27:27 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | That's the last of it that I— Let's see now. "And though we are not now, that which in old days moves earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, one equal—Something of heroic hearts. Removed by time and faith for strong in will to strive to seek, to find not to yield." That's it. If you want me to, I'll find it. | 28:39 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Well I think that gives us a really good indication, what you've said so far. It's interesting because when you see the quotes or the phrases that people hang onto, I think it tells you something about the person. And I think that sounds a lot like you. | 29:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh. | 29:33 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I think it really does. So that's wonderful. Thank you, Mrs. Brenda. Let me see if have— Probably, I can do that on my own. | 29:34 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, another one that I like is Rabbi Ben Ezra. "Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be, the last of life of which the first was made. Our times are in His hands who said a whole, I plan. Youth shows but half, see all, trust God, see all and not be afraid." That's from Rabbi Ben Ezra. | 29:50 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. | 30:13 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Tennyson. | 30:22 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | We have one more form, which is as you know, these tapes are going to be deposited in the archive at Perkins Library, at Duke University, and also in the local archive. | 30:33 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 30:44 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | And so in order— | 30:45 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I have to sign this to let you know that I give you my permission to use them. | 30:47 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 30:51 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 30:52 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Otherwise we can't use them. So I have two separate forms here. One is the interview agreement, which simply says there are no restrictions. You just contribute this and anyone can use it. Then this one allows for restrictions, which could include, for example, someone needing to get your permission to quote you. That would be probably one of the more common ones. | 30:52 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I haven't told you anything that is a secret. | 31:21 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I see. So in that case, you wouldn't mind signing this one without restrictions, ma'am. Thank you. So, I have to initial here. If you could put your initials here, please. And then sign there. | 31:24 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Initials here? | 31:46 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. Thank you. You were mentioning earlier that you enjoyed traveling and that we haven't spoken about your traveling. Is this something that you've started recently— | 31:47 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No. | 32:39 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | — or have you traveled for a long time? | 32:39 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | No, I started traveling before I retired. | 32:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 32:43 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I had done some since I retired. My first overseas trip was while I was teaching. I went to London with a group of teachers. We were visiting the British infant schools and that was an educational tour. And we went to London and we visited the infant schools in Oxford. And I have been back to London twice since then. And I went— My last trip to London was during the time when Kurt, my nephew, who was the mayor, was on his Rhodes in Oxford. But at the time that I went, it was during the Easter vacation and he was on vacation. He was over on the continent traveling like the students do, you know the knapsacks. | 32:44 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | But, I went to his dormitory and I asked the person who was in charge, I told him who I was. And, of course he knew Kurt and all. I said, "Well, would it be possible for me to just take a look at his room?" And he said, "No, that that's not permitted." So I said, "Well, if I left something for him, could I be assured that he would receive it?" So he said "Yes, yes indeed." So I decided just to take a chance. And so I left him some money and he got it. | 33:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, good. | 34:20 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. He sure did. I decided to take a chance. I knew if he got it, he could use it. So he received it. Then the next trip that I took to Europe was another educational tour. And we went to Holland. And I went to France. And let's see, where else did we go? Went to Switzerland. And then we came back to London and came back to the States from Heathrow. One of the most— Now, I went to London another time, but that was when I visited the Durante's in Nigeria. And I went alone. This time, it wasn't a tour, I went alone. | 34:21 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Around what year? | 35:22 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I went to— Tell me, what year was that? Gee, I don't remember what year that was. It was the year that they came back to— The year that they came back to the States. And it was shortly before John died, and John died in '63. So, it must have been '61 or '62. Because I knew he had not been dead long when I came back. And I traveled alone. It was in the summer. And I went to New York and I flew from New York to— We had to stop before we got to Monrovia. | 35:25 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm—hmm. | 36:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I've forgotten where that was. But it was interesting. I got on that plane in Kennedy. I was the only person in the plane. The only person. And that was 747, with all this huge crew. But I'll have— When we made the first stop, it was not in Monrovia, it was, gosh, what was the name of that place that we stopped? The first place we stopped, it was in Africa. And that plane filled with people from all over everywhere. And I never will forget the little lady, she was an Indian lady, I believe. And she sat next to me and she wasn't wearing any shoes. And she curled up on that seat and her head was on the outside and her feet were toward me. And I had to sleep all night on that bed with that lady curled up beside me with her feet almost in my face. I never will forget it. | 36:23 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Well, I stopped in Monrovia because I had a friend who was in the Peace Corps there. And I stayed in Monrovia a couple of days. And they took me around and showed me all around. But they gave me a party on the night that they took me on a tour. And I never will forget that. See, I still had jet lag and I hadn't recovered. And they had people from the city of Monrovia to come in and met me. I mean, all these African dignitaries and everything. But, you know I went out like a light during that. And when I woke up, it was the next day and I was in bed. They had taken me to bed. They said I just went out just like that. | 37:32 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 38:21 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. And then I went from there and I was still traveling alone. | 38:23 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Nice. | 38:27 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | I went from there to Ghana. And I was in Ghana. I had a friend who was teaching in Ghana, and I visited her for a couple of days and then I went on to Nigeria where the Durantes met me at the airport. And I stayed there about the week and then they were coming home on a furlough. And we came— So we traveled together. And we came from Lagos, Nigeria. And we flew across the desert to— Let's see, where was the first place we stopped? First place we stopped was— It wasn't Italy. Oh, it was, help me with my geography. | 38:28 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. In Spain? | 39:33 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | In Spain, yeah. Now what's the capital? | 39:34 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Of Spain? Madrid. | 39:36 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Madrid. Okay. Madrid. That's where we were. And the most interesting thing, we were on a shopping tour in Madrid and the Durantes ran into a couple whom they had known, a couple who had taught as a Lagos in Nigeria. And see, now, we left there and we went from there to Athens and from Athens to Rome and from Rome to— Let's see, where is that place? Someplace in Germany. It was some little place in Germany. And I remember that because we took a tour and we went up into the area where the play, the Passion play is. And of course the Passion play wasn't not there, but we got to see the site. And we were on a tour and we stopped at various places coming back on the way back to where we started. | 39:38 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And we Rose Durante, she loves to shop. And we decided that the two of us stopped at a hotel and the merits would tell you, this is the time we're going to be leaving and this is the time we're going to be having lunch. And if you go shopping, just don't forget when we are leaving. So we walked into the little town and we did some shopping. So when we started back, we made a wrong turn. We went into a store and when we came out the store, we made the wrong turn. So there we were walking, we didn't see any sign of our bus or hotel or anything. So I said, "It must be—" We saw an Exxon station, it was called, Esso then, and in this little German town we saw this Esso station. I said, "I know somebody there must speak English." | 40:55 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | So we went answer to the Esso station. And sure enough, there was a young lady in there who was in charge and she spoke English. So we told her that we were lost and what our problem was. And we didn't even know the name of the hotel where the bus was. So we told her that what we would like to do was to have her call us a cab and we would like the cab just to take us around to every hotel in that town until we found our bus. And that's what she did. And that's what happened. And we didn't know the name of the hotel, but she told the bus driver, or the taxi driver, what our problem was. So he would take us from one hotel to another and we never did see a bus. So we were coming out of one hotel, we were going down the road and we saw the sign with the name of this hotel on it. It wasn't the hotel, but it was the name of something. Maybe was some little town. But anyway, it was the name of this hotel and we recognized it. | 41:58 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | And so we said, "There it is, there it is." And neither one of us could speak German, but we tried. And so he said— But he knew what we were talking about because he knew what the hotel was when he saw the name. So he called a name and we said "Yes, yes." And so he took us to the hotel and there was the bus. And they waited on us. And Dr. Durante, he didn't go with them. He was in the sitting in the bus, and he didn't come out or anything. We got him. I said, "You didn't even miss us." He said, "Oh, I knew you all would be back. I knew you ladies were shopping." Oh, dear. Well, that was really something. | 42:59 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | It sounds like you had fun. | 43:39 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yeah, we enjoyed that. And we came back by way of London. Came back. Then my next travels where after I retired and since I had retired, I had been to China, to Russia, to Alaska, to— See where was— Oh, to South America. And the last trip that I took out of the country was in Australia and New Zealand. And I have a friend who lives around the corner who also is a retired educator and we traveled together, and we said we wanted to go to Scandinavia next. But things started getting a little tense over in Europe and we decided we'd wait a little while. We still say we going, I don't know whether we will or not. We probably won't. | 43:40 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Sounds like it's about the only place you haven't been. | 44:42 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh yes. There are a lot of places I have. Oh. But the most interesting place that Mildred and I went and we went, not because we had not been to London before, because I'd been to London at least three times and she'd been more than once. But we wanted to travel on the QE2 and the Concord and we took one of those trips. | 44:45 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | The Concord too? | 45:01 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Yes, indeed. We flew to Kennedy and that's where we got— And we got a cab to the landing place where we boarded the QE2 and we sailed on the QE2 to London, five days. We stayed in London five days and we came back on the Concord, four hours. Well, that was one exciting— I would like to take that trip again. | 45:02 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | That sounds wonderful. | 45:43 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 45:49 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Great time? | 45:49 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh, I'd like to travel on the QE2 again. It's a magnificent ship. | 45:49 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to have those kinds of experiences one day too. One day. | 45:57 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Oh you can, if you want to. | 46:02 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. | 46:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 46:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Make up a mind. | 46:04 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Mm-hmm. | 46:04 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Well— | 46:09 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | Now I want to show you some of my books. | 46:10 |
| Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 46:11 |
| Dr. Elizabeth Randolph | My family books. | 46:12 |
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