Jennie Taylor interview recording, 1993 November 08

Download
- Rights
- Limited Re-Use
  CC BY-NC 4.0
  More Rights Info
- Files (3)
- MP3 Part 1
- MP3 Part 2
- MP3 Part 3
- Please be patient with media downloads. They are often large files.
Document
- btvnc03037.pdf
Share

Embed Code
<iframe src='https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43b61p41?embed=true' height='125px' width='100%' frameborder='0' marginwidth='0' marginheight='0' scrolling='no' loading='lazy' allowfullscreen></iframe>
Permalink

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43b61p41
Skip to Item Info

Loading the media player...

Files for this Item

Transcript

Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.

Paul Ortiz	Okay, so Mrs.	0:03
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, but maybe if you ask me questions, I could give you the information that you want, may be better than if I just talk.	0:04
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	0:14
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Because I can talk. Like most women, I may not be on the subject.	0:15
Paul Ortiz	So Mrs. Taylor, you were born in Charlotte?	0:22
Jennie Douglass Taylor	In Charlotte. I was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. My father at the time was professor of mathematics at what was then Biddle University, a Presbyterian college established by the Presbyterian Board out of Pittsburgh. It was called the Presbyterian Church North. And I went to the public schools there until my father sent me down to Atlanta University in high school. I think last two years of high school, I went to Atlanta University and completed my, then on through college. But Atlanta University was one of the schools established by the American Missionary Association. And the purpose of the establishment of these schools or the purpose of the association was to provide education for the freed slaves and their families, their children. So I finished Atlanta University College in 1929, but I finished high school, then went on to college there.	0:26
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. Before you went to college, what was Charlotte like growing up at that time?	2:09
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, Charlotte at that time was really the largest city we had in North Carolina. It was rather progressive, although it was right on the border of South Carolina, but it was fully segregated. And we went to the segregated schools. I went to several schools because they determined which school you would go to.	2:18
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And the school that my brother went to was down in what we call Biddleville. And it was a one room, one or two room school with just maybe two teachers, and it was typical of that type of education at the time. The teacher had all of the grades, it ran from one through to seven or eight, she had to, had all of the grades. And she'd teach this group a little while and teach another group a little while. Then the older children had to help take care of the younger children, but the teachers were dedicated and wanted to help the children get a good education and so they worked very hard. They didn't think about how much time they were putting in.	2:57
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I went to, the first school I went to was up in Greenville. We called it Greenville. And I had to go across the campus, Johnson, Biddle University, down a railroad track on the, walk on the side of that. And then finally over to the school. But it was a new school. They had just built that school that had about six rooms, I remember that. And then I had to pass what you would call, what would you call it now? The trash pile where they had put all the, dumped all the.	3:51
Paul Ortiz	Garbage dump?	4:39
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Refuge from the town there. And then it was burning all the time. I can just see and smell this now. But I took something called whooping cough, came down with that. And once you got whooping cough, you lost the year because it just lingered so long and it was dangerous. And it was entirely contagious, and so the child had to stay home. So I lost that year.	4:40
Jennie Douglass Taylor	So the next year, the board said we had to go to Myers Street School. Now Myers Street School was about three miles from where I live and I had to walk that distance. But my mother always saw to it that there was an older girl to accompany me. So went on over to Myers Street and this school had been the White school, but they were giving it over to Negroes and so. But as I see the school now, it had started as a smaller thing and had been constantly added to, no real plan to the school. And I did my first grade there and I guess first, second, and third, I can remember that. I'm not sure about where I went to the, who didn't, the fourth and fifth and things like that, but it could have been right there.	5:16
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But it was such a distance to walk. And things were so tight financially, even though finally they got street cars, and it would've cost me only a nickel to ride over there. It was hard to get a nickel so we had to walk. And I remember riding on the back of a buggy, another girl in the first grade, father had a buggy. He did cement work. So she lived above me, and she would come by in this buggy. But the father and the man working with him would be sitting on the seat and we had to stand in the back of it. And I don't remember any top on it, but we would just hold on to the seat in front and there they would go, this horse pulling this thing. But I remember that because it was a big help to get that three miles over there.	6:21
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And we had a, yeah, I stayed at that school because I remember in the seventh grade, we did a lot of memorizing of poetry and speeches of former presidents. And then they made a big thing of it, some of them relative to famous Blacks like Frederick Douglass and people of that nature. And somehow or another, all along they've always training me to speak. And then we had would have contest. And then not only would we have these, that type of orations and whatnot, [indistinct 00:08:45] have to do long poems. And I was in a contest, I can remember that now. And I came out second, but my mother always felt I should have been first, but they gave it to a boy. They gave it to an old boy because he was a boy, then I was a girl.	7:40
Paul Ortiz	Oh.	9:15
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, but I enjoyed that, I liked that. And it had been very helpful to me because so much of my work has been in front of the public and having to do that type of thing. So that was a lot of extra work the teachers did, say with you.	9:16
Paul Ortiz	Now you mentioned Charlotte was a segregated town. What was it like growing up in Charlotte? What was the Black community like at that time?	9:37
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I guess I lived on a college campus. I was born very near the campus, my father owned the house. Then the university gave all of the professors homes to live in. Didn't give it to them, but this was in, rather than give more money for salary, they gave them this home. So I was living in a university house on a university campus. So you see, we were really segregated ourselves, but it was of a different class from what I call Biddleville. See this?	9:50
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	10:39
Jennie Douglass Taylor	The college was Biddleville and down below it, the college was Biddle but the down below was Biddleville. That's where the, shall I say, the poorer people than we were and less educated and they had not had the opportunities they had.	10:39
Paul Ortiz	So would it be fair to say that you had a separate community in, next to the college?	11:06
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes.	11:14
Paul Ortiz	And that was separate than Biddleville so.	11:14
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Down below me. But as I recall, you didn't have what you have now, these kind of places where they're killing each other and carrying on. People were just poor. And most of them worked for Whites. And a lot of, I can see mothers passing my house going down below me. Now this other side is what they call Seversville. And it was named for the Severs, they were Germans. I remember there were three brothers and they were all merchants, but because those were what we would call at that time the poor crackers, like the poor Blacks down there. But you see, we are sitting in the middle of this thing. We are the university folk. We had no privileges, let's say, than they have.	11:17
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But now go way across town where I went to this Myers Street School, that's where you had a different element of Blacks. And they had one street there called Second Street, and that's where Blacks used to hang out. And I was told don't ever come, don't ever walk on Second Street coming home from school. I must go First Street and then a certain way, because my father didn't want me to come in contact with what was on Second Street. But you did find some Black businesses there and a theater.	12:27
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And on the corner, I can see the library, the first Carnegie library so I guess that's one of the few we had in the South. It was facing the other street though, it wasn't right on Second Street. But that's where you got a lot of roughness, just that little area. And yet all over this part of Charlotte was, we called Brooklyn I believe. And there were nice people, nice families living say over there, just that little area. That little portion of Second Street was so bad.	13:13
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Then they sent me over to another part of town, was in First Ward. That was a new school they had built, but they built it down in a hollow and there was a branch running through there. And I remember the mosquitoes, when we first went there in the fall of the year, the mosquitoes were terrible because I guess there was a lot of stagnant water say around. But now in elementary school, in going to Myers Street School, just about four blocks from me was a White school, elementary school, brick school. But I had to pass that, to go beyond that this three miles to get to the Black school.	13:56
Paul Ortiz	How did you feel about that?	14:57
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I never could understand that. And I would ask my mother why I had to go so far when they, and I'd see the children out there playing and she would try to explain it, but it was very painful say for her.	14:58
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And, only time I've ever been called nigger in my life was right in that area, where the Seversville. I had gone with my father and the other children to see a parade, the circus, I guess Barnum & Bailey, whatnot was, the circus was in town. And we went uptown and I got lost in the crowd. It was just full, people would go to that. And if I looked around, I couldn't find my father and anybody. And I didn't have any money to get on the street car to come home. But my sense of direction told me to go to the square and turn that way and keep going so I did.	15:16
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And see, I had a long ways to walk as a little girl. And when I got into Seversville, I could see these children playing then. And all I was doing was I was scared to death start off with, and then they started calling me nigger. That did upset me. And I think I shed a few tears. But I walked on, I went on, I knew where I was then. And I got home and my mother was at home, she didn't go. She's there sitting at the machine sewing and I told her what had happened. So she tried to comfort me and let me know that there was, they didn't know what they were talking about, that there was not a nigger, there's no such thing as that and so forth. And I was a nice little girl and so forth. But that's the only time I've ever been called nigger in my life.	16:14
Paul Ortiz	Now when you walked by the school, the brick school usually, was there any kind of mixing? Did you ever talk with any of the children?	17:16
Jennie Douglass Taylor	There was a big fence around the school.	17:24
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	17:24
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Big fence around the school.	17:24
Paul Ortiz	So there was.	17:30
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And their children, the little White children were all on the inside, was the fence. And I don't remember us ever saying anything to them. At least they didn't say anything to me, whether they said anything to the other children or not, I don't know.	17:31
Paul Ortiz	That's interesting. What was your family life like then? Were you living? Basically, how many people in your family?	17:50
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, with five children. I had a brother and two sisters, had two brothers. But the two younger children were spread far apart. The three of us came a year, nine months apart, then about five years elapsed, then another one, then about five more years elapsed and another one. But we're a good family. We loved each other and we felt and wanted to take care of each other. And my mother, my father had bought up some property. At that time, there wasn't any place much for a Black man to invest. He didn't know anything about the stock market, and with the little bit money he had, he wouldn't have trusted it there. But they could buy property. It seems as though I know my father's real estate agent encouraged him to buy property. And in some cases the real estate agent, if it was auction, he would go and buy it for my father.	18:01
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Because he was afraid that maybe they would not sell it to my daddy. So he was White and he would go ahead and he would buy it. But of course, when he settled he'd put my father's name and everything say on it. So that way he brought up say right much property. But what was it now? And that was to be for our education, for his children's education. And that was really what it served its purpose. And all of those men, those professors at Johnson C. Smith University, all of those older men, that is the way they invested their money. See, the board gave them a house to live in and my father was making $75 a month. We were faring so much better than other people, $75 a month for a year round, 12 months. And most school teachers, when they taught a little while, they taught maybe about, at that time they were teaching not more than five or six months. So we were fairing say much, much better.	19:26
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember your grandparents?	20:52
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I never saw my father's people, but I saw my mother's father. My mother's mother died in childbirth, and so she was dead before I was born. But my father, my mother's father was living, get this picture.	20:55
Paul Ortiz	Whoops.	21:26
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I see it.	21:26
Paul Ortiz	Oh, that's okay.	21:26
Jennie Douglass Taylor	[indistinct 00:21:30].	21:26
Paul Ortiz	No, I didn't. So your father was a barber?	21:37
Jennie Douglass Taylor	My grandfather.	21:39
Paul Ortiz	Your grandfather.	21:40
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Was a barber. His name was George, W-A-Y-N-E, Wayne McLean. And the story goes where he is concerned, in Camden, he had a friend. I've heard it two ways, but he had a friend that was a physician in New Jersey and he was a Dr. George Wayne McLean. But he came down to visit this colonel somebody and he was colonel from the Civil War. And when he came to visit them, the colonel was trying to entertain him. And as you know, they had slaves that some, what they call house, the terminology, they termed the house niggers and then some that worked in the field. Well, I don't have any of those pictures that got taken away, but his mother, as I understand it was the daughter of the owner. You see, the mother was a house slave. And she had this child, well, she had a child, a girl.	21:40
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And so when the doctor came down, and to entertain the doctor, they gave him this girl to sleep with. As I said, I think once in a reunion where I had to do this, we didn't have the movie houses and the TV and this and the that for entertainment that they have now. So to entertain him, they gave the owner gave to the doctor, this girl. But this girl was really his daughter by the slave. And so grandpa came out of that union and there must be something to it too because now he lived over on this way, his house is facing that way. And then they went all the way to this other street that was Littleton Street.	23:35
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And he later, after grandpa married, he gave this property, there was a ditch running through there. And from that ditch he gave all that property to grandpa and he still say lived over, he faced that way. And then grandpa had a man working for him they called Uncle Billy. And it just seems as though this owner just included grandpa family in the, just always doing things for him. And this was the first family reunion we had. And you can look there and you can see, because grandpa dead long time ago before that.	24:42
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember, did he tell any stories that you remember?	25:55
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Grandpa? No, I don't remember his telling any stories. Well, tell you the truth about grandpa. Grandpa was more White than he was Colored, and he associated with the White men in Camden. And when they went off fishing, they'd go off on fishing trips together and so forth. And so it wasn't that kind of a relationship because really grandpa was more White than he was Colored.	26:00
Paul Ortiz	Did that ever, how did that work with your parents, with your father? Did they have much of a relationship do you think because of that or?	26:41
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, he was in Camden. Grandpa was in Camden, South Carolina. My father was in Charlotte, but.	26:52
Paul Ortiz	Right.	26:58
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I remember grandpa was always concerned about his children and he sent us a goat. Now how on earth, that goat got there seems to me, I can see it coming in on a buggy. But he was concerned about the health of the children. And you could milk the goat, you could get the milk. Then I had a little brother, they were going, he was constantly sending us something from Camden of that nature. Anybody that came from Camden, was coming to Charlotte, he going to send some vegetables or send something, that concerned. But I don't know him as far as race is concerned. And we had a Uncle Georgie, Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Johnny. Yeah, those were the three brothers. Well, they're not on that picture. I've got that picture somewhere but.	26:59
Paul Ortiz	So did your parents, when your grandfather would send the vegetables and the goat and that was, how was that seen by your parents? Were they?	28:28
Jennie Douglass Taylor	When he would send that?	28:42
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, when he would send.	28:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh, they were happy to get it.	28:45
Paul Ortiz	Happy to get it, okay.	28:45
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Happy to get it. They appreciated it. And I know my mother would go down at intervals to visit, go back to Camden to visit, spend some time with him. And then they would send us down there. I remember my brother and I going down there, especially there was any fellows at Biddle at the end of the year, they'd take this little train, Southern Railway, and they would send us by them and they would, the other sisters and all, would take care of us. That is to help relieve my mother so she wouldn't have as much safe to do. They were very caring about each other.	28:50
Paul Ortiz	Now, how about your grandfather's wife?	29:45
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, the first wife died. The first wife, this is the story I heard there. Grandpa used to pass a place where he saw these two pretty little girls in the backyard of this particular place. They were slaves. But see, grandpa said if he ever made enough money, he was going to buy this girl. And he did. So that was his first wife. He bought one of them. And I think of the names now, I don't have that. I should have that. And so that's the one that died in childbirth.	29:49
Paul Ortiz	So he bought her out of slavery?	30:45
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Who?	30:45
Paul Ortiz	So he bought her out of slavery?	30:48
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, he bought her out slavery.	30:48
Paul Ortiz	So his second wife was from Orangeburg?	31:05
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But from Orangeburg. But it was a sort of interesting family. And that mama doesn't have anything on there, does she? But this is when she is a young girl, young woman. And my father and mother met at South Carolina State College. Mama was teaching in, let's see, early childhood education. We would call it what? Kindergarten now. See, this is way back there. And she went to New York, you ever heard of New York, Chautauqua? Well, the way I see it is they, more like a workshop that we would have now, but they would have this every summer and so forth. And she had finished Browning Home. That was a private school, financed or run by the ME Methodist Church, White, because they established it there. And so she would go up there to New York and she'd learn or took courses and studied this.	31:07
Jennie Douglass Taylor	So when the South Carolina legislature gave the Blacks a school, a college, my father and my mother were on the first faculty. Trying to think, Old Man Tom Miller. If you go to South Carolina, you will want to get some information on Thomas Miller. My father always spoke of him as Old Man Tom Miller. That's right. But he was the first president of South Carolina State. Now he was, during the period of reconstruction, Old Man Tom Miller was in the legislature. You know about that period, you read about that period.	32:44
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And so then when the Whites were trying to take things back, they were paying the Blacks off. And so the Old Man Tom Miller, what did he want? And he said he wanted a college for the Negroes, so they gave it to him. And this is Orangeburg State, I guess it's university now, they all. That's in Orangeburg, South Carolina. And my mother, father were on their first faculty, and then.	33:50
Paul Ortiz	Do you know about what year? 1890s?	34:38
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, mom and papa married in 1903, in January 1904. So that must have been in the very early part of the century or the last part of the century.	34:45
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	35:03
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Go ahead.	35:03
Paul Ortiz	I'm curious about some other parts of your childhood. Who were your playmates in those days?	35:13
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Most of my playmates were other professors' children. But we did play with some of the village children. As I look back at it now, our parents were very careful about our associates, you see. But we had a good group of children because wasn't there such thing as birth control, and all of the professors had a whole lot of children and so we had plenty of them there on the campus there to play with, and some of the children from the village. But we made those friends in school, so we had plenty to play with. Good wholesome relationships. And we went to the football games on the campus, the baseball games. The basketball hadn't come in then but. Then my father used to play with us. One of the men on the campus would play with us. They'd play ball and so forth with us, which fathers don't have time now I guess, but they would play with us.	35:28
Paul Ortiz	Who made the decisions in your family?	37:08
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, my father. He was definitely the head of the house. But now I've heard him say this, if he bought a piece of property, I've heard him say, "I would never buy a piece of property without taking my wife with me. It's not that she knows anything about business, but she has a woman's intuition." And if she said, "Dad, I wouldn't buy that." He said, "I never touched it." Can you beat that? She had a woman's intuition and that directed him to leave that alone.	37:14
Paul Ortiz	Interesting. So who made the budgeting decisions, did he make those or?	38:05
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, they worked together on that. I think they worked together on that because my mother did not work to start off with, she did not work until, I think I got to about the eighth grade. And then we had these two little, one little boy and one little girl, and she went out into the rural area to teach. And it wasn't so that you could get in a car this morning and go out there like they do now. But she had to go out there and live.	38:12
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And housing conditions were very poor, especially in the county. And I've often thought about what a sacrifice she made. But Papa had overloaded himself with property and needed to pay for it so she went to help him pay for this property. And I can remember that, and then she gave me the little boy, no, she gave me the girl. This was to be my child. And the little boy was to be my sister's child, we had to take care of them. We had a woman who came during the day who did the cleaning and the cooking. But now when I get home from school, I've got to take care of my little sister, see to it that she's fed and bathed and put to bed so we did very well. But that was, during that day, everybody had to work together.	38:48
Paul Ortiz	What kind of values did your parents bring you up with and did you, when you went and raised your children?	40:06
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, you did not tell a lie. That was just one of the worst things in the world that you could do. I can't think of just what this was now. Something about some insurance I took out and my father thought that I had told a lie to the insurance agent, turn out that I hadn't. But ooh, you just didn't do that. You tell the truth. And if you, it'd be, because they used to whip us every time we did something they thought that was wrong. And you had to be in the house, be back. If you went off to play, you had to be there before the lights came on. They very strict. I don't know if you know anything about the Presbyterian Church or not. Well, it's very strict. Yeah, they just laid the law down. You don't do this and you don't do that and you don't steal, you don't lie. Or where values were concerned, they really taught us that.	40:20
Jennie Douglass Taylor	So much so now until I can't stand for anybody to lie to me, just to tell me that you're going to do a certain thing and don't do it, that really vexes me, and I think very little of that person if they don't live up to what they said they were going to do because that's the way I came up. If you commit yourself, you do that or you die trying. And not only did I get that from my parents, but I went to Atlanta University, that was the same thing. And Atlanta University, the faculty was composed of New England Whites who had come down under the American Missionary Association to help the slaves and the children of the slaves. So very strict I came up. Ooh, the moral bag was very strict.	41:40
Paul Ortiz	When you began to raise your children, were there any modifications or any changes that you made in?	42:56
Jennie Douglass Taylor	No, I think I stuck to there, and my daughter told me just recently or something that she had encountered and she's making her children stick to the same thing.	43:10
Paul Ortiz	Now you were going to Atlanta University in the 1920s. What was Atlanta University during that period of time?	43:22
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Atlanta University was one of the most prominent Black colleges. This Fisk, Atlanta University, that's what, I'm thinking about American Missionary Association schools. But we were considered to be the elite of the Black colleges. Now Du Bois, you've heard of W.E.B Du Bois. He taught at Atlanta University. He was not there when I was there, but that's a caliber of person. And so many of the professors that we had even while I was there came from the New England School. What is that school that the Dr. Adams came from? Hm.	43:34
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I know one year we had somebody there from, one fellow from Yale, one from Syracuse University, one from Harvard. We called them the four horseman. They were tough fellas, but they just finished college now. They didn't have a master's degree yet, but they did pile the work on us. But it was high class and they gave us the best that they were at that time.	44:37
Paul Ortiz	What was it like making the transition from Charlotte to Atlanta University? Were you apprehensive about the change?	45:16
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I don't think so. I don't remember that. I remember going down there, they put me on a train in Charlotte, and I had to travel at night and I'd get to Atlanta the next morning about five or six o'clock. Now the conductor took me out of the Black coach and put me in the coach back of that. And in that coach, as I recall, there were some foreigners. Don't know just what nationality they were, but why, for what reason he took me out of the Black coach and put me back there, I don't know.	45:31
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Now that's way back younger. But because I was fair in color or something of that nature, he wouldn't even let me stand. Put me back there with these foreigners. And then what got me about it was I didn't know what they were saying. See, they were speaking a different language. But fortunately, since it was at night, I soon fell asleep and when I awakened it was time to get off in Atlanta. But I adjusted very well. That didn't bother me for a bit because I make friends easily, and so I soon had folk that I was having a good time with.	46:34
Paul Ortiz	I don't know much about community life at Atlanta University, was most of your time on the campus, did you ever get out to Auburn Avenue or?	47:29

Jennie Douglass Taylor	But most of our time was spent right on the campus. And I do remember they wanted us to see the condition of our people. This is where I figured it out. On Sunday mornings, we would go walking, but you had to be chaperoned. If we went to town, we had to be chaperoned. And you go in groups of 10. But in walking around Atlanta—You've been there to Atlanta. You know where Fair Street is?	0:01
Paul Ortiz	I've been down by Auburn.	0:42
Jennie Douglass Taylor	You've been over on the other side?	0:44
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	0:46
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, near our campus—See, I'm talking about the old Atlanta University. What's there now is the new Atlanta University. Do you know where Morris Brown College is?	0:48
Paul Ortiz	Yeah.	1:04
Jennie Douglass Taylor	All right. That was the buildings that are there now. All of those buildings were not there when I was there. But that was the old Atlanta University at campus?	1:05
Paul Ortiz	Yeah. And then Morris Brown, back in those days was the men's college?	1:16
Jennie Douglass Taylor	No. I think Morris Brown has always been co-ed.	1:21
Paul Ortiz	Coed. Okay.	1:24
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Morehouse. Morehouse was male. Spelman was female. We were co-ed. Clark was co-ed. We had a whole lot of colleges then. They brought them all so to put them together now. But I enjoyed—We had a beautiful campus, and we had good teachers, good library, and they kept us busy. And we had different types of organizations on campus. The YWCA at that time was a good strong moral building organization. And I served the students there—I served two years as president, and they used to send me off to represent them in different places. And then we would go to—YWCA would have its national convention at Talladega. I think we were having it at—Did you ever hear Howard Thurman and Sue Bailey Thurman?	1:27
Paul Ortiz	Howard Thurman, yeah.	2:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, he married Sue Bailey. Sue Bailey was the representative for the national YWCA for the college, the Black colleges. And see these secretaries, I believe that they call them secretaries. Benny Mays was one at one time. But they would come to the colleges and then they would work with the YWCA and the YMCA, offered a lot of inspiration. I'm sorry they are not as strong as they once were. We are losing a whole lot there because I don't, have very few. Do we have—What do you see what's happening with YMs and YWCAs?	3:01
Paul Ortiz	Well, I know actually in Washington they're pretty active.	3:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Pretty active. And we've got some over in Rocky Mount, but we need some good character building organizations over this side.	4:02
Paul Ortiz	And that's really what the YWCA was. That was a character building. I'm curious now you started talking about, was it your professors who would take you out on these walks on Sundays?	4:14
Jennie Douglass Taylor	On the walk? Yeah. Yeah.	4:29
Paul Ortiz	And what was that? What was the purpose?	4:32
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, we were getting off the campus and getting a little exercise, but as I look back at it now, I think they wanted us to see the condition of our people and to say to us, "You have a job to do." Because they didn't take us into the nice parts of Atlanta because the Negroes have been progressive in Atlanta, and they've made money and they've built beautiful homes. But they didn't do that. They took us down in the dives back over there in Fair Street and down and so forth and so on. You have no idea what it is now because they have put housing projects and so forth in there now. But I have figured it out that they are saying to us, they're charging us to do something, say about this. And—	4:34
Paul Ortiz	Now, when you were going to Atlanta University, did the W.E.B. Du Bois ever come back?	5:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	No, I never saw him. Never saw him.	5:49
Paul Ortiz	But you were mentioning that at Atlanta University, they taught you basically, from what I understand, what his, Du Bois's vision was for Black people who went to college to become leaders.	5:54
Jennie Douglass Taylor	To lift your race. And this is an obligation you have. And it was so instilled in you until you want to do it. I got this little prayer group around here now, and what I tried to give them something uplifting, even though most of them are retired and many of them have not had the education and so forth. But I tell them they can still learn. There's still much to learn. And we keep on learning as long as we are here on this earth. And I try to inspire them to inspire your children and your grandchildren to see to it that they go to school and stay in school. But all that came from Atlanta University, and of course born into a home where my father was a professor. That's all I know. I don't know anything about loitering. That's a sin. That's a terrible thing to waste your time.	6:12
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I guess children don't know anything about that now. They got to look at television. My daughter's having a time with her children because they want to look at television and she wants to select the things that they see. She's got a lot of me in her, and she's been well-trained. But now I had a little period with her that I guess that's normal with children though, want to go their way. But she was talented. And when the North Carolina School of the Arts opened, she was one of the first students there in dance. And you don't see too many Black children in this type of dance, classical dance. You see them in the other type of dance. But she went there to do classical dance.	7:33
Paul Ortiz	And what timeframe was that?	8:34
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I was teaching at North Carolina Central and I went there in the late fifties. So that's the early sixties. Must have been.	8:42
Paul Ortiz	And now, when she made that decision, was that something you agreed with at the time?	8:53
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, from a little thing, she was always dancing. She had looked at television and she had seen it. So she was just like a little butterfly, just dancing around. Well, I had taught dance. I studied dance at Harvard University, but I didn't keep it up. But when I saw her wanting to do this type of thing, I wanted to encourage her all I could. But I could not find anybody around here that did that. So a girl in Rocky Mount did organize some kind of little class, but it was not that type of dance. So when I was in Durham and they were opening the School of the Dance in Winston-Salem, I got busy trying to get her ready to go. And there weren't but five Black children accepted. And she was one of them.	8:57
Paul Ortiz	So when you left Atlanta University, where was your first job? Where did you go from Atlanta?	10:10
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I think I went to Alabama. No, I didn't. I didn't go to Alabama. I went to a little place called Hastings, Florida, H-A-S-T-I-N-G-S, Hastings, Florida. I went because I couldn't get a job in North Carolina. They didn't have many high schools for Blacks in North Carolina. I was prepared to teach in the high school. And my sister, where is that? Someplace in North Carolina. But she took sick with appendicitis. So my father sent me on her job to save her job. Then when she got well enough to go on her job, here I am sitting up here with no job. But I did get this message from Hastings, Florida. They didn't open as early as the others. It's called a potato city. They raised white potatoes mostly and sweet potatoes, a potato city. So I went on down there and stayed the remainder of that year. And I taught in the high school.	10:21
Paul Ortiz	That was 1930.	11:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	It must have been the fall of '29. I came out in '29. Fall of '29. I stayed until the school closed in June.	12:02
Paul Ortiz	What were your experiences teaching in public school in Hastings?	12:09
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, they had a pretty nice building. The children wanted to learn. They were all poor people. Everybody down there, as I can see, were poor. I didn't call myself poor in that respect because I had come from a little different class of people. But they were ambitious. They wanted to learn. And I found a lot of talent, lot of talent. They could sing, whether they had their music lessons or not, they could play, just natural talent.	12:10
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And they were beginning to play basketball then. And I guess even before then, because there was a girl teaching with me and she had a brother. Was that her brother? Yes, she was our basketball coach. And the Olympics, when it was happening in Germany, her brother was one of the fellows that did track, I guess, went to Germany. So they were conscious about things of that nature. I enjoyed my year down there and I could go out and pick the grapefruit off the trees and oranges. And if you went to visit one of the families, they'd take a whole big branch of this with all these oranges on it and give you and I take over and hang it on the wall. Nice experience.	13:21
Paul Ortiz	So they were mainly agricultural workers?	14:33
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. But you see that's just seasonal work. Just seasonal work. And I did not like the relationship of Whites and Blacks there. The Blacks are definitely across this branch. And I don't remember much about the Whites, but one bad experience, I remember. Why I went downtown, I don't know. It was during the day, and the principal had sent this boy downtown to get the mail or to get something. And somebody said to me when I down there that so-and-so was in jail. That was one of our students. So I said, "Well, where is he?" So this person pointed out, I know whether it's a Black person or a White person that was telling me this, I don't remember now.	14:36
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I went there and I could not see the boy. And there was a glass up at the top of this thing, but it was too high for me, you see? And that must have been an awful type of thing that they had him in. And what they had gotten him about was he was driving the principal's car. The principal had sent him to do an errand, and they made up something, just mean. But I have never forgotten that poor boy and how he was in that awful hole, like terrible. But yet time came to pick up potatoes, everybody's picking up potatoes, had their little money. Didn't make much.	15:39
Paul Ortiz	So from Hastings, Florida, you went back to North Carolina. Back to Charlotte?	16:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	No. Well, I'd go home in the summer. Where did I go after Hastings, Florida? Hastings, I was with the Florida Educational System. I believe, I went to Charleston, South Carolina to Avery Institute. That was under the American Missionary Association. Now Charleston is high class. You've got your different sections, but Charleston is different from any other place in the world. You ever been to Charleston? Yes, and I enjoyed my experiences in Charleston. I think I must have been there about two or three years.	16:50
Paul Ortiz	And you were teaching at the Avery Institute. What types of subjects were you teaching?	17:51
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I was teaching the seventh grade, and my friend who came from AU was teaching the sixth grade. So we set up a sort of, what would you call it, a system where she would teach certain subjects and I would teach certain subjects. So for her sixth grade, I taught geography. My seventh grade, I taught geography. I can't think terminology. And she liked math better than I did. So she took my math class.	17:54
Paul Ortiz	Oh, so you're like team teaching.	18:31
Jennie Douglass Taylor	No, that's not team teaching. It's another term. It won't come to me. But you're not teaching the same grade, you're working in this little section here, but you are teaching certain subjects to both of the grades or the three grades or whatnot. So yeah, that was in Charleston, that there, and I had a boys' basketball team there and those boys played some basketball, and I used to take them traveling.	18:33
Paul Ortiz	So you were coaching?	19:14
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And won some games. One fellow, and on that team has been one of the officers with North Carolina Mutual. Clement, I think it was. He was on my team.	19:19
Paul Ortiz	So the children at Avery Institute were, is it fair to say they were from a different social class than the children from Hastings, Florida?	19:37
Jennie Douglass Taylor	They had to pay tuition. See, we had public schools there. But to come to Avery, you paid tuition. Not everybody could pay tuition, but yet there were some, as poor as they could be their parents, but they wanted the best for their children. So they, somehow or another, they would get that tuition. Very proud people in Charleston, very proud. High class. I enjoyed my stay there. And we lived right on the campus with 54 Montague Street. I can remember that beautiful old colonial home. And the very basement was where they had been the slave quarters. Then up on the first floor, this gorgeous dining room and living room, A lot of, what would you call that, but it was hand carved around the walls. And then the third floor was our bedrooms and bath. Then they even had the fourth floor bedroom up there.	19:45
Paul Ortiz	Where did you get your information from in those days?	21:17
Jennie Douglass Taylor	What do you mean by that?	21:17
Paul Ortiz	News.	21:19
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh, we had newspapers. Yeah, the Charleston—What was the Charleston paper? Most of us would take a newspaper. We'd always have one at the school and the library. But then we had something else that we don't have now. We had some Black newspapers. One was the Norfolk Journal and Guide. I think the Carolina Times. Is that still going out in Raleigh? And the Carolinian out of Durham. In Charlotte, we had the Afro-American newspaper that was published at Johnson C. Smith. Then over town, oh, Mr. Somebody published a paper, but we called them Black newspapers or Negro newspapers. And you got a lot of news there. Plus they cared a lot about Blacks and individuals that would inspire other Blacks. Well, we had radios. We didn't have TV then, but I think we had radio because radio, I remember we got that before we left Atlanta University.	21:20
Paul Ortiz	Did you read also The Crisis?	23:01
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. Magazines like The Crisis. And I know Ebony hadn't come into being then. Let's see, The Crisis and what else was there that we used to have? You think of any other Black magazines?	23:05
Paul Ortiz	Oh, there were many. The Crisis was the main. The Journal and Guide and—	23:21
Jennie Douglass Taylor	The Journal and Guide was one. We have to see that.	23:31
Paul Ortiz	Oh, The Defender out of Chicago.	23:35
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh yes, The Chicago Defender. Now The Chicago Defender. What's the man name? Mr. what? Oh, oh, oh. Abbott. Think it was Abbott. I don't know who was working with him.	23:37
Paul Ortiz	I've just read about him. But it was, Abbott was one of the people	24:06
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Abbott. A-B-B-O-T-T. I believe it was.	24:09
Paul Ortiz	Abbott, yes.	24:12
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. Anyway, Mr. Abbott married my girlfriend's aunt. Was that Aunt Ethel? Who was that? It was the family from Athens, Georgia. And he married one of those—They were all nice and they all looked like White. And when I was at AU one time in this room I had there on the second floor, there was a room to my left. And in that room were two girls. And they were nieces of Mr. Abbott. One was Gwendolyn Sainstack, that came to me. I don't know what the other girl's name was, but she was big and fat. The other one was slender. Very poor looking. But I think he was sending them to Atlanta University. And they were very quiet. They didn't mingle with us much. They got their lessons and graduated. Oh, Gwendolyn Sainstack. I can't think of other one. But that was a very popular newspaper. I guess it's gone out of business now. Yeah.	24:14
Paul Ortiz	How about entertainers at that period of time? Were there people that Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson—	25:58
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Now, I heard Marian Anderson and Paul, I've seen Paul Robeson. Now, what's the other one named? The other Black singer. But in Atlanta, Dr. Adams, our faculty member, Dr. Adams was our president. They wanted us to have the benefits of all of the good things, even though things were segregated. And Dr. Adams would take us himself. He would be the chaperone. So I heard Marian Anderson when I was a college student in Atlanta the first time. I don't remember what Paul Robeson, how he came there, but they was in Atlanta when I saw him. But there's still another one. Who's the other one? Roland Hayes. Roland Hayes. And the thing we talked about was, here we are in this building and we are up in the gallery and all the White folks are sitting down here. And yet these are Black entertainers.	26:10
Paul Ortiz	Roland Hayes was singing and—	27:33
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes, I heard Roland Hayes. I heard Marian Anderson and then Paul Robeson. I don't remember just on what occasion that was. What about the poet?	27:35
Paul Ortiz	Langston Hughes?	27:51
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes. I had the privilege of his being my escort.	27:53
Paul Ortiz	Ah-huh.	28:03
Jennie Douglass Taylor	One summer. I was on the faculty at Atlanta University. He was a visiting professor. And when I got to Atlanta, they were having this big thing down on Auburn Avenue, a roof party, some club was giving it and they had already, my friends had arranged for him to be my escort. So that was something wasn't it?	28:04
Paul Ortiz	It was, well—	28:37
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Now I look back at it now, but then I don't know that I thought it was so fine. I mean it was just—It's more significant now than it was then.	28:39
Paul Ortiz	That's interesting. Did you talk much with him?	28:50
Jennie Douglass Taylor	He had very little to say. He had very little to say.	28:55
Paul Ortiz	Most of it was written down in paper, I guess. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a great admirer of Langston Hughes, his works.	29:00
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Good poet.	29:10
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, he was. Now when we talked on the phone, you mentioned that you were on one of the first integrated committees in the state of North Carolina. Can you tell me a little bit about that?	29:11
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh, I told you, I guess I told you I was with the North Carolina School Health Coordinating Service. It's not a committee. It was a staff of Blacks and Whites. And we had there, at first, I was the only health educator. Or did we have two health educators? We had nurses, both Black and White. Directors, Dr. Hughes was the Black and who was the other fellow? Anyway, he was an MD and a PhD. His PhD was in nutrition. And people didn't know much about nutrition then. Nurses or physical educators, they did not have a Black physical educator. Charlie Spencer was the White. And then, I can see this girl now, she was a woman. But I was a health educator. Dr. Hughes, Miss Cobit was the nurse and Lydia Johnson was a nutritionist.	29:32
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And at that time we were confined to the Black schools, but the Whites could come over and work with us. But now all that information is at the State Board of Health. I'm sure. I hope they haven't thrown that away because it was a pilot project, improving the community through the schools. And we had the privilege of, let's say, inventing any kind of program that we so desired to experiment with. I remember one of the things I did in Goldsboro, I found so many children there with tonsillitis and adenoids and tonsils. They taught us to screen the children. So in screening the children, we can find certain things and then we send the child on to the doctor, the nurse and so forth. But once we found the children with these tonsils and adenoids and various things, the parents couldn't do anything about making corrections. So I sat down and wrote a proposal for an insurance, a school insurance. I guess I'm the first one that did this.	31:10
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And we arranged it so the children, the parents paid so much money. We raised money and teach it on. And we got this pool of money. Then we worked with the doctors and got some corrections made. I took the plan to the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Asa Spaulding. What was that term? Now what was he? What kind of business person was he? What was his title? Asa Spaulding had been to one of the big schools and had in this field, but he was their specialist. So Mr. CC Spaulding told me it would have to go through Mr. Asa Spaulding. They would have to—You'd have to see about it.	32:55
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Anyway, when they wrote me was they could not do it. Asa said they could not do it because it would not give any benefits to the company. It would help the children, but there would be no monies coming in to the company. So I wasn't able to get that through. But yet, it wasn't too long after that an insurance company over in High Point started insuring all of the athletes. The schools could buy insurance for them, the athletes. I don't know just how far that went, how many more people they took in on that.	33:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I did that. I remember. And I'm so sorry that the mutual didn't go along with me. And then even though as I look back at it now, I shouldn't have stopped it at mutual. I should have gone to one of the White insurance companies. They'd have found a way to make some money out of it, I believe.	34:51
Paul Ortiz	You think so. But I mean this was quite a new innovation on your part, the school insurance because it didn't exist.	35:19
Jennie Douglass Taylor	It didn't exist.	35:30
Paul Ortiz	And what other kinds of activities did you try to encourage in the Black schools?	35:35
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, we had our programs pretty well outlined. And it was given to us. I'm trying to think now. When I did that, I was with this North Carolina School Health Coordinating Service. I did some other things there. I just can't think about them now.	35:50
Paul Ortiz	Before I forget this, the coordinating service was that state funded?	36:22
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Rockefeller Foundation.	36:27
Paul Ortiz	Okay.	36:28
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Rockefeller Foundation. See we went all over the—We had certain counties, I can't say we went all over the state. There was certain counties selected where was heavily populated by Blacks. And we taught the teachers. The teachers had to come every day. They didn't like that. But we would go into a county. Each one of us on the staff had certain lectures to make and so forth. And then we taught the teachers how to screen the children and nutrition was the thing. But we had two nutrition—The headman was a nutritionist because it wasn't—Well, yes.	36:30
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And then we had this woman, and she came from Hickory, I believe, but she was just in home economics, but she was interested in nutrition. So she kept studying and so forth. And one time in Durham when we had our summer workshops there, we set up both at Chapel Hill, UNC and at North Carolina Central, an experiment. We took so many children, we examined them and then we saw what condition they were in. So then we put them in two different groups, and we fed one group certain thing and fed the other and didn't feed the other as good as a nutritional diet as the other. And it proved that nutrition was a key to much of the illness and the development of the children.	37:30
Paul Ortiz	And the development in school. They couldn't really learn if they weren't well-fed.	38:39
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well-nourished. Yeah.	38:46
Paul Ortiz	So that was one of the things you were trying to prove.	38:49
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Trying to prove.	38:50
Paul Ortiz	What came out of that? What was the outcome?	38:52
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I think we got better lunchrooms. So got lunchrooms. And then we tried to get foods within the child's community that were very nutritional, made up a lot of different recipes so they would use them. We even made, what kind of ice cream was that we made? But it was good and very, very nourishing. I can't think now what it was, but it's something that the children had within their own environment and the parents did not know really how to use it because they had a lot of things there. But your child will tell you, "I don't like that. I don't like that." And it's the very thing that he needs. You see, children were very poorly nourished, very poorly nourished. Some of them had the food but didn't eat it. So that was one of my big things, working with improvement of the nutrition of the child and getting the child's corrections. Then we had the state dentist in North Carolina. They had a whole slew of dentists, White and Black, that went around and corrected the children's teeth.	38:56
Paul Ortiz	And that was going on before you started this work or?	40:34
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I think it was going on before we started. I don't know who financed that, but we would pull them in to help us.	40:37
Paul Ortiz	Who financed the better lunchrooms and was that?	40:47
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Now, I really don't know. I remember, you remember when they had free commodities? Seems to me. I was in this program and I had walked into some of these schools, one and two room schools, and the teacher had free commodities, and she's got a pot on the stove. She's making them some soup or something. That must've been given to her. But I guess they really got started more in the towns and that's how they were financed. I don't know. I don't remember now.	40:54
Paul Ortiz	I was wondering if North Carolina State had anything to do with it.	41:55
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I don't know. I just really, I'm lost where that is concerned. But that was very important because the children began to get at least one meal a day, a decent meal a day.	41:56
Paul Ortiz	How about other issues involving schools? How about teachers' salaries?	42:15
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Very poor. Very poor. When I went to Charleston, I got $55 a month and room and board and the American Missionary Association paid my railroad fare there and back. But they paid me for 10 months. And the teachers here in North Carolina were getting less than that. They thought I was getting a fabulous salary. But then when I came to North Carolina, where did I go first? I believe I went to Lincoln Academy, but I'm still with the AMA. But my sister was working and my mother was working in the state system and they were getting something like $50 a month and no room and board. There was one period here in North Carolina where the people were paid—What did they call it? Anyway, they gave them a piece of paper. Oh, what does that term?	42:26
Paul Ortiz	Like scrip?	43:38
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Similar say to that. And sometimes your grocery stores or your other stores would let you buy things with it. They didn't call it scrip. It's something else.	43:40
Paul Ortiz	Promissory note or—	44:01
Jennie Douglass Taylor	It's equal to that.	44:05
Paul Ortiz	That's interesting. Now, all this time, were you involved with the NAACP? Do you remember?	44:06
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh, most of us joined the NAACP. I can't say involved with it. Just joined. I never worked too much with the NAACP. Haven't worked with it. I have always been a member. I don't know whether I haven't been where there was a good chapter or what, but I've usually been involved in some kind of community work.	44:25
Paul Ortiz	Do you remember the Scottsboro case?	44:53
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. Where was I when that happened? These boys were in this boxcar. Wasn't that it? And there was a White girl in the car. And I remember that. I don't remember the details now. But then the boys were arrested, and they were sentenced, I believe. Have you read about it lately?	44:56
Paul Ortiz	I just read about it. But from what I understand, they were wrongly accused of rape. And later on the woman actually came out, the White woman came out and said that she had perjured.	45:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, yeah. And that's in Alabama. Someplace in Alabama. But I remember going to Alabama to teach and that was always on my mind. But I don't ever remember going to this little town of Scottsboro. But these boys were just trying to get out of town and get somewhere to make some money and get a job. And I don't know what she was doing on there, but she did accuse them wrongly.	46:00
Paul Ortiz	Yeah, there's a lot of groups involved in trying to, in their defense and I know the NAACP and some other groups.	46:41
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Now you got to give the NAACP a lot of credit. Give them a lot of credit. Yeah. Walter White, isn't he one of the founders of the NAACP?	46:53
Paul Ortiz	He was president of the NAACP. I don't know if he was one of the founders, if he was one of the founders. Walter White—	47:13
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And it seems to me Walter White and Du Bois knew each other at Atlanta University. Now Walter White, this is what I remember reading—	47:23

Jennie Douglass Taylor	—and Walter White's sister was secretary to the school of social work at Atlanta University. I think when I first started going down there, teaching, I met her then. I guess he was dead by that time, though.	0:01
Paul Ortiz	Did you have a chance to meet any other, Charles Houston, maybe?	0:33
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Any what?	0:40
Paul Ortiz	Any other prominent people in the NAACP at that time?	0:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Let's see, if you can remember who was there. I have been privileged there because so much of my life has been associated with the university as a child growing up. Now, Paul Laurence Dunbar, you ever heard of him? I heard him as a child because at Johnson C. Smith University, which was Bittle when I was a child, he came every year and recited the poetry. He gave a concert every year. All those people would come to the various colleges where I was. And even at Avery Institute, they would bring the celebrities. Trying to think of anybody else.	0:49
Jennie Douglass Taylor	It looks as though we've let this thing go so much now until we almost don't remember. But now, they don't say as much about Paul Laurence Dunbar as they should. My father and mother, when they cleaned out the house, my father had a book of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem and that book was about as thick as this. I took the things. I was teaching at North Carolina Central when I cleaned that house out and I took some of the things I couldn't get rid of or did not want to get rid of. I took them with me there and I put them in the basement but I didn't lock them up, so I haven't seen the book since I got that. It was a faculty house where those faculty members lived, but I lost that.	1:52
Paul Ortiz	In the '50s, when did you actually start teaching at North Carolina Central?	3:13
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I did two stints there. I guess I went to North Carolina Central about, was that about 1945? Yeah. I married from North Carolina Central. The state sent me there to help establish the graduate school and a Department of Health education in the undergraduate school. And Dr. Lucy Morgan and Chapel Hill had worked to together. I set up the department for undergraduates, that was my big thing. And then Dr. Shepard sent me out to get the first graduate class and I selected those people from people who had been with us at our workshops.	3:26
Jennie Douglass Taylor	We had a workshop every summer. Chapel Hill had one and North Carolina Central had one. It was North Carolina College for Negroes at that time. So the girls that had shown, or the students that had shown a real interest in health education, I had kept in touch with them and I had their records. Then I had to contact these people and see if they were interested in a scholarship. We got scholarships for them. I don't know whether it's still the Rockefeller Foundation or not. Plus, we brought people from Mississippi, so I'll say some of the southern states. And they came for our workshops so that they could learn what we were doing and go back to their states and help the poor folk.	4:42
Paul Ortiz	And this was all out of North Carolina Central?	5:54
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. It was really not North Carolina Central doing it, this is the state board of Health and State Board of Education in this joint venture, North Carolina School Health Coordinating Service. They were the ones working together and they were getting the money from Foundation. Now, what I heard, let's see, was it this or the other thing? The Rosenwald Foundation, was that it? Dr. Hughes started working with the State Board of Health when VD became such a problem. No other board of health in the south had ever had a Black doctor on it.	5:56
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But the company, the foundation was giving the money definitely said they had to attach a Black physician to their staff. And they tell this on North Carolina, said North Carolina may be prejudiced, but it's not going to turn away any money. So in order to get the money, they attached Dr. Hughes to the staff, then later he became one of the directors of North Carolina School of Coordinating Service. Yeah, North Carolina has been pretty liberal there.	6:53
Paul Ortiz	What other things? It must have been quite a exciting experience and very challenging to set up this graduate program in health education.	7:34
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Those students, Fitz is one of them that came. I didn't get Fitz, though. He hadn't been with us. Most of the folks I got were from down east. And then we had some people that came from other states stay on their own. One girl, she's Bobby now, I don't know whether she was Bobby then or not, but she's in Durham. They were all good students, but it was a challenge to them and it got them out of their little towns. And some of them got training and they went to other states because they were needed, so it was quite an experience.	7:45
Paul Ortiz	What was the curriculum like that you set up? What types of things were you teaching?	8:43
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, there were certain things they had to have. Let me see, I can't even think of the terminology of different courses now. You've got to know something about germs and how they spread, something about sanitation. Everybody had learned something about nutrition. Inoculations for the different disorders and so forth. Mental hygiene, I had teach that to my students. For the graduate school, it was a one year course. Now, I don't remember whether the graduate students in North Carolina Central had to do a thesis or not. I don't know, but what I did down at Atlanta University, I always recommended that my students do a thesis. You learn so much more from your research and what you're doing.	8:49
Paul Ortiz	How did you meet your husband?	10:23
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I came here to do public health work. (laughs) Came here, went looking for Ms. Mattie—	10:32
Paul Ortiz	Garrett?	10:39
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Garrett, because she was going to take me around to find a place for me to stay while I was here. And he was the pharmacist in that drugstore, Garrett's Drugstore.	10:40
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And he was courting, of course, already, when I got here, but anyways, we just kept on. I kept on until about two years, I caught him. (laughs)	10:52
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And we had a good life together, we had a good life together. Dr. Shepard did not think that I would be happy, coming to Tarboro. So he said to me, he walked down the hall with me as I was leaving.	11:07
Jennie Douglass Taylor	See, I married, then I taught that year because I had promised and then I came over here. So he said to me, "Young lady, I wish you the best of luck, but I don't see you being happy down there in Tarboro. I want you to know this, you are a member of this family and if ever you want to leave there and come back here, you just get on that telephone and call me." And I thought that was nice to leave with knowing that you could go back and that they wanted you.	11:23
Paul Ortiz	I've heard that Dr. Shepard was quite an amazing figure.	12:06
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Oh, he was, he was. We lost something when we lost Dr. Shepard.	12:13
Paul Ortiz	What was he like, working with him?	12:15
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I enjoyed working with Dr. Shepard. I found him honest with me. And then he got me money to go off to graduate school to the University of Michigan. The state had set this thing up and I don't think the folk were asking for it. And so anyway, I wrote out this thing, Dr. Shepard got me the money to go to graduate school to University of Michigan. He was a man of integrity. I would say he's a man of integrity. Good Christian gentleman, good speaker, very persuasive. But what did he say to me one day? I know one thing. He said, "Whatever they get down at Chapel Hill, I want to get it from my Black girls and boys here."	12:21
Jennie Douglass Taylor	And he didn't mind going to the legislation, asking for it. And he was sincere about what he was doing. That was his life, the education of these young Black boys and girls. But he wanted them to study. He didn't want them messing around, doing nothing. Yeah, he was very sincere. And you knew Dr. Shepard. He wasn't a man that sat in his office all the time. He'd talk to you, he'd meet you outside and he'd talk to you. He'd try to find out what the students are thinking. Yes, indeed. Have you met Helen Edmonds?	13:22
Paul Ortiz	No.	14:12
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Have you heard about her? Dr. Helen G. Edmonds, she lives right in Durham. Now, she's done quite a bit of writing, she's a PhD. She's originally from Virginia.	14:12
Paul Ortiz	And she was going to North Carolina Central when you were?	14:45
Jennie Douglass Taylor	We were on faculty together. They say Helen was on the program the other day when the new president was inaugurated. She's quite decrepit now, I understand. But they say she did something on the program she [indistinct 00:15:23].	14:49
Paul Ortiz	I'll try to get in touch with her. What was it like coming here to Tarboro? I mean, Dr. Shepard obviously thought that it would be very difficult. Was it?	15:22
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I was associated with a different class of people all together. But I think I was so much in love with my husband that it didn't really matter. Then I found that the people here, if they liked you, they liked you, they were your friends. And I enjoyed that. I lost the cultural atmosphere that I had. But yet, when I first came down here, the high schools were giving plays and the people teaching, training the children did very well and I enjoyed that. Then they gave me basketball to coach. I was always pretty business when I taught down here. But now, I didn't stay down there long.	15:40
Paul Ortiz	That was the high school?	16:46
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes, Patillo High. And I'll tell you why I didn't, I got fired. First time I've ever been fired from any job in my life. There was a thing going on, the legislature is supposed to appropriate the money for the schools, but they never gave as much to the Blacks as they gave to the Whites. Yet, I understand this thing was going on in both sides. And so the principal, every year he had something that you had to raise money for and he'd tell you how much you had to raise if you wanted your job. I didn't like that. My daddy came in at that time, I saw him and I knew he would not. So I went along with it, but I never was happy about it, well, the two years.	16:47
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Then I had some of the teachers, I've heard them, they didn't like my fussing about it. They were enjoying doing it because when they raised $100 for the school, they raised $100 for themselves. Didn't find all of them, but there were some. And I felt this is terrible to drain this poor community. People just poor as they could be and here we are draining them, instead of seeing to it that enough monies were appropriated to us. So when they invited me to come to Northeastern Teachers Association to speak, they had a professor from East Carolina. Not East Carolina, Elizabeth City. They had about five or six of us on this sort of thing. But we weren't all together as a panel as I thought it was going to be.	17:56
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But I know I was so fed up at this money raising when my time came to speak, somewhere in there I said, "I've been through high school, I've been through college and I've been through the university, but never in my life have I been taught a course in the art of money raising. And that is all I'm being allowed to do." And all these poor teachers sitting there, their mouths were open. But do you know, they applauded me and the people—I had gone there with a friend of mine from Rocky Mount, and she had me by my skirt, trying to stop me from talking. But I let them know that we were not having time to teach the children, that we were so busy raising money. So finally, it got to the State Department, but I was fired at the end of that year for non-cooperation.	19:05
Paul Ortiz	How would you raise the money?	20:22
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Any way you could. And then it made me mad, too. You sold sandwiches at school, hot dogs and you sold drinks and you sold peanuts and you sold whatever you could to raise money as a teacher. I remember one day I was talking to my little 9th graders and I had had more advantages than the children. I had traveled and had come from different backgrounds. And so sometimes I'd just share my experiences with them.	20:25
Jennie Douglass Taylor	This particular day, something had come up and I was telling them something and they were just fascinated. And here, the door, "Come in." She has a notice, "Ms. Brown's room will be selling hot dogs today at recess." That wasn't the first one that had come and interrupted us. And this little girl sitting right there, when they wrapped on the door, she looked at me, she said, "Ms. Taylor tell it anyhow." She was vexed at being interrupted. So I saw what it was doing to the children.	21:04
Paul Ortiz	It was just a common thing for class to be interrupted with?	21:50
Jennie Douglass Taylor	It's just to raise this money and this child's going to go to every classroom in the building and give this notice, and nothing's going to be said because the principal wants you to raise that money. So I put a feather in my cap, I broke that up in North Carolina. I stopped it. The Board of Education said no more of raising of money in the schools like that.	21:54
Paul Ortiz	How did that happen? Did you petition the board of education?	22:27
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I'm trying to think now, I got a lawyer. I think I got a lawyer, Taylor. I don't recall just how I went about it at that time, but it was made known. I did go to a lawyer, talk with him, but he wouldn't take the case because he evidently didn't see it as a case. But somehow or another we got that done and they stopped that money raising. And they're not supposed to be raising any money in the schools now like that where the teachers are, as I said are told, "You raise $300 for the band or you raise so-and-so for the lunch room." That's not supposed to go on now, so I broke that up.	22:32
Paul Ortiz	And it also cost you your job at the time?	23:39
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah. But that didn't bother me because I felt I had done the right thing and I felt that this is my daddy telling me. That's what he would've done and he would've been satisfied that I had done it and I didn't worry about it. Then later on, Mr. Green, W.L. Green, who was head of the Colored Teachers Association in the state, he didn't like what was going on himself, when I had talked with him. He may be the one that got it to the Board of Education, I don't recall now. But anyway, he called me and asked me, he was going to get an assistant, would I be his assistant? I said, "Well, I'll talk over with my husband."	23:41
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I did, so my husband said, "Well, we can see what that is to it." Anyway, he presented me to the board for the Colored teachers and they tell me, the former principal here that I had been working with, he said, "I wouldn't give it to her, she don't need it. Her husband has a lucrative business. Give it to the man over there that doesn't have any job." And that was a fellow from up near Burlington that didn't have a job. I don't know why he didn't have a job, but he evidently had asked for it. He said, "Don't give it to me, her husband has a lucrative business." But that was the type of thing I was accustomed to. That's what Mr. Green was talking about, where I'd be going around, lecturing to the teachers.	24:34
Paul Ortiz	In a sense, you became a ringleader for change, though.	25:47
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, yeah. No, I never regretted that. You know what I did? Norma Stokes, I think it was, told me one day, said, "Jenny, I'm selling Stanley products. Don't you want to sell Stanley products?" So she told me about it and so forth and I put in an order. So I started selling Stanley products and what you do is get one person to have a Stanley party at her house. Then you come in, introduce them to these things and take orders. I started doing that and I enjoyed that. I learned, saw a lot of people, met my folks and what did I do? Then somebody put me on the beauty products and I started selling beauty products to hairdressing parlors. I went to Greenville and I would sell these things. I enjoyed everything I did. Met new people. I'm trying to think, what else did I do? I don't remember right now.	25:49
Paul Ortiz	After doing that, did you go back to Central to teach?	27:19
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes, but each summer I was teaching down at Atlanta University. So I came back, my aunt had a cottage at the Atlantic Beach in South Carolina. When I left Atlanta, I came to spend a little while with her at the beach and the president of North Carolina Central, Dr. Shepard had died. It was Dr. Elder and Dr. and Mrs. Elder and I had been in Atlanta University. I didn't know him when I went to Atlanta University, I knew her. She was about a junior or senior there when I first met.	27:24
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Anyway, when I saw Dr. Elder, their cottage was right near my aunt's. So he said, "You come on the right day, I'm looking for a teacher." Then he told me the girl had just resigned to go to Elizabeth City Teacher's College to teach and asked, would I take her place? So I said, "Well, I'll talk to my husband." My aunt and I talked with him over the phone, so he said, "We'll see how it is." I went on back then to North Carolina Central because they needed somebody and I felt at home in North Carolina Central.	28:03
Paul Ortiz	And that was during the 1950s?	28:57
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, it must've been the late '50s.	29:00
Paul Ortiz	And then how long did you stay there?	29:08
Jennie Douglass Taylor	I stayed until '72, I retired in '72. When they asked me to stay home until I was 70 years of age, but no, I gave up then. I said no. I figured I had been away from my husband long enough.	29:12
Paul Ortiz	Your husband was living in Tarboro.	29:34
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes.	29:36
Paul Ortiz	And you were you coming back to Tarboro over the summer?	29:37
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, only one summer I missed going to Atlanta University. I'd been going down there to teach for nine weeks, but any other time I was right back here in Tarboro.	29:41
Paul Ortiz	What were some of the changes that you saw in the '50s and '60s and '70s?	29:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, when did we integrate? I know they integrated while I was at North Carolina Central the last time. And I had White students in my class.	30:14
Paul Ortiz	At Central?	30:31
Jennie Douglass Taylor	At Central, yes. And they were good students, they studied their lessons and I appreciated that. But I saw that it was saying to some of the Black students, "Now, they're studying their lessons and making us look bad." So it did make some of them do better than they were doing, of our children, which was good.	30:33
Paul Ortiz	What did you think about the civil rights movement?	30:56
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Personally, I think it's a good thing and I see a lot of progress that has been made. I've had a lot of people around here that say it was awful, what it did to our children, but I don't say that. And I said this, when something of this nature happens, everything is not going to be hunky-dory to start off with. We've got to lose something to gain something. And they are saying that they were so close to the children, the Black teachers, they were so close to them. And now that they're integrated, that the Black children don't get the attention that they gave the children. So I don't know, I can't verify that, but I felt it was certainly worth the move.	31:15
Paul Ortiz	You think so? Because I mean, that is controversial.	32:20
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah, I thought it was worth the move. Yes, indeed. And the children, they're going to profit from it in so many ways, both sides. I see little children now, little Black children, little White children playing together and not thinking about any of this stuff that we grownups were thinking about, they just happy as a lark. So let them play and enjoy each other and it's going to be sort of normal in a little while.	32:23
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Right now a lot of these children, they don't know anything different. These little fellas I talked to yesterday, they don't know what I'm talking about when I say segregation. So just let them have this new world and enjoy it, because there's enough room here for everybody and we all just work together to make it so everybody can have a job and live comfortably. I have great hope and I think things are so much better now, they're so much better. Don't let anybody fool you. I don't think we are taking advantage, some of our children aren't taking advantage of the opportunities here. I don't know what it is. Whether we are not pushing them enough or inspiring them enough.	32:59
Jennie Douglass Taylor	But when I was a child, my daddy used to say to me ever so often, "Bunks, what are you going to be when you grow up?" Well, I didn't know what I was going to be, but I knew this. I had to be something, I had to be somebody. So I don't know whether we are inspiring our children to that extent now or not, but never a day passed but what I knew, Jenny had to be somebody because her daddy was expecting her to be somebody. And so I was always striving hard to do something [indistinct 00:34:55] and to do what they wanted me to do. I've always had higher aspirations and I wonder if our children, are we neglecting to help them have high aspirations? Somewhere we falling down, don't you think?	34:11
Paul Ortiz	It's a good question. It's some people say yes, some people—I mean, I tend to take your more optimistic viewpoint of the improvements that have happened and that I think that every generation has to struggle over again to a certain extent. Because as you said, sometimes you have to take a couple steps backward to take one step forward.	35:20
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yes. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, I knew it was not going to be easy. But this is what the children find themselves in. They'll handle it all right if the mammies and the pappies would stay out of it. Some man I knew used to say that all the time, "The children would be all right if the mammies and the pappies just stay out of it." Because we've had it on both sides, some of the Whites have not as been as cooperative. And we've had right here, some of the Blacks. And they're going down to the school ready to fight, don't know what it's all about. But in Tarboro, I really think we've done a marvelous job here. We've had no great big thing to happen where we didn't get along when this thing happened. Did you know how they ran that, our integration here?	35:49
Paul Ortiz	I've heard that it was pretty smooth.	36:51
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Very smooth, yeah. They put all the elementary children in one place and all the high school children in another place. And the White parents I noticed mostly were bringing their children in the cars to start off with, but nobody said anything. But then I notice the buses now, I don't see as many White people passing there. Saw one this morning, one man taking this little boy, but they put them on the bus and sent them on and they get along all right. We had a very smooth integration. And I am a member of AAUW, do you know what that is? American Association of University Women. In fact, I'm the president right now. But we have a good group of women and well, you just don't see any racial animosities. We just all happy together, we all well trained women and we enjoy each other's company.	36:52
Paul Ortiz	And that's the local chapter?	38:07
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Yeah. Of course, AAUW was not always integrated. For a long time it was just for Whites, but I think I'm the first one down here. When the national said that they had to, they invited me and that didn't matter to me. I guess I'm the wrong person for this type of thing because I have been with White people so much in my life until it didn't bother me. All my teachers were White in the Atlanta University, so much of the contact that I've had. So it really never makes any difference to me, I feel comfortable. Now, maybe somebody that don't feel comfortable, but I feel comfortable.	38:08
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Plus, my daddy always told me, "Bunks, just as good a blood runs through your vein as it does through anybody else in this world." He would tell me that and I believed it, I believed it. But I don't guess parents do that to children now. No, but we have a good chapter of American Association of University Women and we enjoy meeting. We are going to, this month in December, there's a play in Rocky Mount so we are going to the Carlton House for dinner first and then we will go to the play afterwards and have an enjoyable evening. Be Friday, at least once during the year we have a sort of sociable time like that.	39:08
Paul Ortiz	Wow, I think that—	40:03
Jennie Douglass Taylor	You've got a lot of stuff down there, but I don't know whether you can use it or not.	40:12
Paul Ortiz	No, we can use all of it, it's been wonderful hearing you talk. Yeah, unless you want to add something, that's all my questions.	40:15
Jennie Douglass Taylor	Well, I don't think of anything right now, I'll think of something when you leave. I enjoyed this concert the other night.	40:32

Item Info

Title:

Jennie Taylor interview recording, 1993 November 08

Date:

November 8, 1993

Creator:

Taylor, Jennie Douglass

Contributor:

Ortiz, Paul

Description:

Name: Jennie Douglass Taylor; Date of birth: 1906-10-08; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation(s): educator; health services; Residence: Tarboro, NC
Informant ID: 357; Interviewed by: Paul Ortiz.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

Series:

Related Resources:

See below

Provenance:

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

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

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

Identifier:

Interview number: 344
508e6b16-3204-417e-b3f7-9db16e8e815d
behindtheveil
btvnc03037
ark:/87924/r43b61p41
fd27577b-504d-4f8c-8141-687edd6c4760

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r43b61p41

Sponsor:

Sponsor this Digital Collection

Jennie Taylor interview recording, 1993 November 08

Transcript

Item Info

1. Jennie Taylor administrative file, 1993

2. Jennie Taylor slides: Douglas family: Jennie, Roberta, George, Sarah, James, Douglas, Langan, Robert, Rebecca, Davis, 1930s

3. Jennie Taylor slides: Julia McLain Douglas - Jennie Taylor's grandmother, circa 1900s-1910s

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options

Jennie Taylor interview recording, 1993 November 08

Transcript

Item Info

Related Items (4)

John Hope Franklin Research Center

More Info & Options