Della Sullins interview recording, 1994 July 24

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Della Davison Sullins	October 13th, 1917, Charlotte, North Carolina.	0:06
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:00:21].	0:11
Della Davison Sullins	Well, the community was a segregated community. There were the Black schools and White schools.	0:21
Tywanna Whorley	And were there Black businesses?	0:33
Della Davison Sullins	Black businesses? Yes, there were Black businesses.	0:47
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:00:47].	0:47
Della Davison Sullins	Well, I had things such as drug stores and restaurants. Offhand I don't remember exactly who ran them at this time, and there was one Black hotel, but it was small and certainly not what hotels are today. But it was the only hotel that Black people had to go to. And it got a lot of business because it was the only hotel.	0:47
Tywanna Whorley	What about the community [indistinct 00:01:35].	1:33
Della Davison Sullins	I lived in the community where Johnson C. Smith University is located. I live on the street that runs beside Johnson C. Smith University.	1:34
Tywanna Whorley	All Black neighborhood?	1:49
Della Davison Sullins	All Black neighborhood.	1:49
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:01:54].	1:49
Della Davison Sullins	Oh. We did a lot of participating, we went to Bible school over there in the summer, we played tennis on the tennis court. And of course Dr. McCory, who was the president, his wife was, she wasn't a president, but you would've thought so. She was constantly out there telling us about our shorts that were below the knee, that we shouldn't be out there playing in. But anyway, at that time we thought that we lived pretty good, because segregation was what was going on at that time. You rode the back of the buses, and of course the buses coming out our way, if you rode the one that went beyond where we lived, basically it had nobody on it except Black people. But we were maybe about three blocks from where some White people lived.	2:00
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:03:26]	3:20
Della Davison Sullins	My dad was self-employed, and he had a maintenance company, about six people. My mother was a housekeeper.	3:26
Tywanna Whorley	Your father was [indistinct 00:03:43].	3:36
Della Davison Sullins	Who employed him? He did work for maintenance work in homes like repair services, et cetera. And he did it in middle class, White homes for the most part. He did some for Lee Rose, but for the most part, most of his work was the neighborhoods like that.	3:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:04:16].	4:16
Della Davison Sullins	That he worked for? Not an awful lot because he was a man who expressed himself and he didn't have that much of a problem, because he was very independent.	4:16
Tywanna Whorley	Where did he [indistinct 00:04:43].	4:38
Della Davison Sullins	No, they went to one school, we went to another. And there were fountains that were Colored and fountains that were for Whites. Those kind of things, they were there before me. So there was just things that you had grew into. I don't know that I particularly asked questions, but I would take a sip from the White fountain, and it'd taste like any other water. I told my mother when I was very small that that water tastes just like the other water.	4:49
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:05:53].	5:42
Della Davison Sullins	In elementary school, I started out in first grade at Fairview Elementary School, and then I went to Myers Street, and I went to Second Ward High School, graduated Second Ward High school. I went to Lincoln Hospital School, nursing, in Durham.	5:55
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:06:26].	6:21
Della Davison Sullins	Kids used to fight, Black and White kids would fight. And we had to pass the White school to get home and it'd be such things as throwing rocks. And either they would throw rocks or us walkers, though they hadn't done anything or we'd do the same thing. No big serious fights. But that wasn't anything serious.	6:36
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:07:22].	7:16
Della Davison Sullins	I was in an all Black nursing school.	7:23
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:07:33]	7:24
Della Davison Sullins	I traveled by train when I first went to school, came back on vacation. But when I first entered, my parents took me there.	7:35
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:07:56].	7:50
Della Davison Sullins	We traveled by car.	7:55
Tywanna Whorley	Was it long [indistinct 00:08:02]?	7:56
Della Davison Sullins	No, it's not that far, maybe. It's about two and a half hours, three hours. Charlotte to Durham.	7:56
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:08:13].	7:56
Della Davison Sullins	Well, we didn't do much stopping, because my mother would take—We were traveling any distance, she'd pack a backpack of lunch and that kind of thing. And we didn't do a lot of stopping when we made trips like that. And that wasn't a long trip.	8:20
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:08:44].	8:36
Della Davison Sullins	How long was I in school? The nursing school? I was at Lincoln for three years. I had a diploma from Lincoln, then I got a BS degree from Tuskegee nursing—	8:47
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:09:02].	9:01
Della Davison Sullins	Nursing school at Tuskegee. Why do you say that?	9:01
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:09:15].	9:11
Della Davison Sullins	No, I worked for about 15 months in a hospital at Asheboro, North Carolina. No, I was really the only Black nurse there, or Black registered nurse thing.	9:16
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:09:43].	9:36
Della Davison Sullins	No, I'd been kind to be nervous. It wasn't that bad. Those of us who came in about the same time, I think there was five of us. We walked town together, which wasn't but a few blocks. We did things together. We socialized there in the building. We were—	9:43
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:10:16].	10:11
Della Davison Sullins	Well, most people look for a job when they get out of school. And I applied to several places, and I accepted the appointment at Asheboro. Ran the hospital at Asheboro. And I stayed there 18 months, I mean 15 months, and then I took the civil service examination and I was sent to Tuskegee VA, VA Hospital, of Tuskegee. And after I got here, I went to school. Tuskegee did not have a bachelor of art degree in nursing at the time when I came. So to entertain myself, I guess, and I liked to go to school, I went to school and I was taking elementary education, I went to school after work and they put the bachelor of art degree on in 1948.	10:17
Della Davison Sullins	And I changed to the nursing program, picked up courses that I needed, and I graduated in '49 as their first Black art graduate in nursing.	11:18
Tywanna Whorley	What do you think [indistinct 00:11:48].	11:44
Della Davison Sullins	It was very big [indistinct 00:11:56], and that was real fascinating, this place that was so big. And of course at the time that I came here, they had 2200 beds. Of course now I think they have some like seven, 800 beds. So, you know it was a very, very highly populated institution, because it was the Black hospital for Negro veterans. So they came here from all over the country.	11:51
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:12:40].	12:33
Della Davison Sullins	You mean as a nurse? Well, when I came I did general nursing, and of course then I had responsibilities from staff nurse all the way through assistant chief nursing at VA, as time went on.	12:42
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think of Tuskegee compared to Durham and Charlotte?	13:13
Della Davison Sullins	Yes, small. Durham was a city. And Charlotte was a bigger city. And I grew up in the big city, so it was very small. And had too many gnats and all of the crickets kept me awake, I wasn't accustomed to the crickets and so forth. But I soon got used to them.	13:21
Tywanna Whorley	What [indistinct 00:13:51].	13:46
Della Davison Sullins	I enjoyed, after I got accustomed to it, I enjoyed living in Tuskegee.	13:50
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:13:59].	13:54
Della Davison Sullins	It was segregated. There were more Blacks here than White. And they did have Black businesses. There were Black businesses here. And of course when I first came, I didn't do an awful lot of going in to town, because I wasn't doing that much shopping. Because I lived on the hospital, the nursing hospital dormitory I think, when I first came.	14:03
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:14:43] somebody [indistinct 00:14:47] downtown area [indistinct 00:14:50].	14:37
Della Davison Sullins	There was a grocery store downtown that belonged to a lady named Miss Fairs, right in the downtown area. And I think somebody had a barbershop down there. And I think there was a cafe, a restaurant around the corner. [indistinct 00:15:24]	14:49
Tywanna Whorley	Does it mean you traveled [indistinct 00:15:26].	15:15
Della Davison Sullins	Did I go to town? Sometimes we'd walk. I didn't have a car at that time.	15:26
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:15:36]	15:28
Della Davison Sullins	And it wasn't bad walking down there. Yeah. We walked for recreation and walked downtown and didn't have anything to buy. Just walk. Walked on campus, walked downtown.	15:35
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:15:55].	15:50
Della Davison Sullins	I don't remember how long it would take, but it didn't bother us at all. Because we were young walking for recreation, basically. And if we went to town, otherwise we used cycles, they had cycles there.	15:55
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:16:17].	16:10
Della Davison Sullins	Yes, I knew Dr. [indistinct 00:16:17]. He's a great man. He was just here in April. I talk to him frequently.	16:16
Tywanna Whorley	Did you take classes?	16:27
Della Davison Sullins	Take classes? Yes. I took a sociology classes under him, the family.	16:30
Tywanna Whorley	Do you know about his activities and [indistinct 00:16:46]?	16:34
Della Davison Sullins	I worked with them, as part of the executive cabinet of TCA for the last 37 years. [indistinct 00:16:56] the last 40 years.	16:45
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:17:02].	16:46
Della Davison Sullins	I didn't join when I graduated. I guess I joined after I was married. I married in '42, and I think I became—I can't remember. Of TCA, possibly about '44. And then I became very active holding offices and so forth around '46, '47. And I've held offices ever since then.	17:02
Tywanna Whorley	Were there some women who [indistinct 00:17:52].	17:48
Della Davison Sullins	Yes.	17:51
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:17:59].	17:51
Della Davison Sullins	This is [indistinct 00:18:00] Johnson. This is Ms. Woolsman, Ms. Lara Buff-McRae, who is not here now in Tennessee. Ms. Ratonia Chisholm, she still lives here.	18:00
Della Davison Sullins	They were just like the women who were members was of TCA, TCA started out as a men's club and then, when it was called Tuskegee's Men's Club.	18:29
Tywanna Whorley	Oh really?	18:43
Della Davison Sullins	Mm-hmm. And then they decided that they would make a community club, and that's when it became Tuskegee Civic Association, and women were accepted for membership.	18:44
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:19:01].	18:56
Della Davison Sullins	I don't know who the first woman was. I was not the first woman that joined. I take a while. Yes, it was possibly Ms. Viola Johnson. Her husband was very active in the men's club, and possibly an officer at the time that they decided to take women in.	19:02
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:19:47].	19:46
Della Davison Sullins	TCA has its objectives, civic education, and deals with civic and democracy, education democracy and political actions, political education. And those activities that had to do with that kind of thing were the kinds of activities such as we had a legal redress committee, we had educational committee, economic development committee, concerned with development. We had a voter registration. Voter franchise committee. And what we did was we went out into communities and set up clinics to teach people how to vote. And those are some of the things that we did.	19:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:21:01].	20:56
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. Mm-hmm. Sometimes, well at that during the early days they had this rule that you had to have two people to vouch for you, two voters to vouch for you. Well, that would make it very difficult, because there weren't many Black voters. So as we would get ourselves registered, then we would help other people to get registered by vouching for them, helping them to fill out the form, going down to make sure that we kept records of who reported, who were seen, how many they saw that day.	21:11
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:22:05] why was that [indistinct 00:22:18].	22:04
Della Davison Sullins	Well, the early people had to have White people to vouch for them, because there weren't that many Black voters. So—	22:17
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:22:29].	22:26
Della Davison Sullins	—then they'd vouch for other people.	22:28
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:22:36].	22:30
Della Davison Sullins	Many of them, that was the routine. That's why we went to court.	22:39
Tywanna Whorley	In the beginning of that [indistinct 00:22:52], what was going on in terms of [indistinct 00:22:55] frustration for those that [indistinct 00:23:00].	22:51
Della Davison Sullins	Was there what?	23:01
Tywanna Whorley	Frustration?	23:02
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. We had hundreds of people. Sometimes we'd have 50 to 70 people. We'd go out and we'd tell the people to come. And when people wanted to be registered, they would come. Sometimes they'd stay all day and they may see a few, two or three, but they were very patient. They'd come back the next registration day. And there have been periods when the board would hide. There were periods when if they get somebody White and they just had them sit there so they couldn't see that so many of all those Blacks who were out there. And of course we had the Justice Department send people in. Finally, for we to help to get people registered. For—	23:04
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:24:19]	24:12
Della Davison Sullins	I believe I was registered about 1939 or '40. It was about '40. I [indistinct 00:24:36], but I think it was around—I registered pretty early.	24:23
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:24:47].	24:42
Della Davison Sullins	There really shouldn't have been anything to study for, because it's just a matter of writing down the information, et cetera. But as a delaying tactics, or to keep Black people from registering, what they did was ask people to read long sections of the constitution, then they had them to write long sections of constitution. That was a delaying tactic. And it meant that some people could not—Wrote solely, or read solely or whatnot.	24:47
Della Davison Sullins	And then some people, who were PhDs, and the PhDs and so forth, were turned down because they said they made several mistakes, and they had to go back many times because they get turned down. And of course what happened, they registered a White woman, and this was when we really had a case was they registered a White woman who could not read or write at all. And that was one of the cases that was used when we went to court about voter registration.	25:37
Della Davison Sullins	And the court ruled that the person who was anybody, who could do as well as this woman could do, and she couldn't read and write, was entitled to be registered. They had already registered her. So that was the winning of that decision.	26:26
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:26:58].	26:55
Della Davison Sullins	We kept records. We knew everybody that—We wrote down the names of everybody that applied, everybody who came, we wrote the names down. Those that they took in to fill out the application.	26:58
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:27:27].	27:19
Della Davison Sullins	Well, yeah, we did, in our instructions, we showed people the kinds of things that they were likely to do. The kinds of things they were likely to ask, and then tell them what the responses should be if they were asked those questions, or whatever.	27:41
Tywanna Whorley	How [indistinct 00:28:09].	28:04
Della Davison Sullins	I don't know exactly how many years that we had worked in trying to get people registered to vote. But when the opportunity came, because we had many, many people who were PhDs, school teachers, professors on campus who were turned down. And then we decided to have a class action suit. I was not a plaintiff in the suit, because I was already registered, but I was on the executive cabinet of Tuskegee Civic Association.	28:17
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:29:03].	28:58
Della Davison Sullins	The suit for people to become registered I believe came first, because that is what prompted the mayor of the city of Tuskegee, who was Lightfoot, and others to—And Inglehart, who was the senator, that is what prompted them. Because once the court made the ruling, they decided they did not want Blacks to take over the city of Tuskegee. So then came the gerrymandering.	29:09
Della Davison Sullins	And the four-sided city became a 26-sided city, and two doors up the house next to me put a fence right above that house next door, above that was the line, which put us out of the city limit. White people lived, there was no house right there on the corner, but that White house next to it, and the next house over White people lived there, and White people lived across the street. In two of those houses that are over—No one house, one of the houses. So that's the kind of gerrymandering bring the line down, between houses, really.	29:58
Della Davison Sullins	So that was to, they could not do anything about people registering, but if they gerrymandered all of as many of the Blacks as possible out of the city limit, that would keep the majority of the voters White. And so I think they just couldn't get around. They'd sent off some places that would've had to go around people's houses like that, because Whites lived here and Black lived there, and whatnot. They would've done basically like that in order to get everybody out. So—	30:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:31:31] another roadblock [indistinct 00:31:40].	31:39
Della Davison Sullins	Well, we went to court, we filed a gerrymandering suit. That's the Gomillion Vs. Lightfoot. And we were a party to that suit. My husband and I were a party to that suit. Well, we filed the suit and, as you know, when you file a suit, all the plaintiffs are listed. But the first name on the list gets the name of the case. And this one was Gomillion Vs. Lightfoot. After we had signed it first, and we went to court. We went back and forth to court on that, we had little Charles in the paper, we asked the legislature to retract that gerrymandering and they didn't. We did everything that we could do locally, before we filed. And then we went all the way to the Supreme Court with that suit, and we won.	31:40
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:33:06].	33:01
Della Davison Sullins	Not in gerrymandering, we didn't personally. And I don't know, I think Dr. Gomillion had some harassment, and—Not many, I don't think the rest of us had any threats or anything like that.	33:08
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:33:30]	33:27
Della Davison Sullins	No. We weren't fearful people. My friends used to tell me that I ought to be afraid, but we weren't. I think that I deserved to have what other people had. I deserved to have as much as anybody else. My father taught me that if it's there, it belongs to you. That was the kind of father I had. And that's why they never said anything when I took a sip out of the old fountain.	33:31
Tywanna Whorley	So then the case was settled in [indistinct 00:34:16] settled.	34:08
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. But we never stopped the process of getting people to register and vote. We had all these things still going on, but it was legal for them to vote, and really what happened a lot of people, this was new and they could vote without writing anything. They could vote, except the name, and they could vote without reciting any long passage of the Constitution. And so a lot of people did go down and register to vote.	34:21
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:35:01].	34:53
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. I really don't remember what the poll tax was at that time. A couple dollars, $2. It wasn't a lot.	35:01
Tywanna Whorley	Was that the same for [indistinct 00:35:24]?	35:11
Della Davison Sullins	Yeah. Until the poll tax became unconstitutional.	35:27
Tywanna Whorley	What did you all think about that? [indistinct 00:35:35] a lot of money, was that a hindrance? What you got [indistinct 00:35:48].	35:32
Della Davison Sullins	People at that time did not seem to mind the sacrifice that it might have been. They weren't as complacent as they are now. They weren't as—It bothers me now to see people who have the opportunity to vote, and it doesn't bother them that they're not registered. It doesn't bother them if they don't go to the poll and vote. And that bothers me, because many of them don't know what it took to get the privilege to vote.	35:51
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:36:34].	36:28
Della Davison Sullins	TCA never stopped focusing on voting in those days. Voting is a right. And that was one right that we always stressed, and we still stress the need for people to vote. That's their privilege. And that is that. In fact, it's an obligation if you're going to be a part of a supportive society. But other things came up, came about also. The school desegregation said Macon County, which ended up expanding to cover the State of Alabama. This suit covered the State of Alabama, and that's the Lee Vs. Macon County Board of Education. Again, it was the [indistinct 00:37:47] Lee suit, because what we did was, as parents, we were thinking of our children, for our children. And we signed for our children.	36:40
Della Davison Sullins	And Lee signed first, for it became the Lee Vs. Macon County.	38:05
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:38:19].	38:13
Della Davison Sullins	We really originated the suit. We originated the suit. It was our suit, and when I said our, independent of Tuskegee Civic Association. The school system was paying for buses for White children to be transported to school. Black kids walked to school, unless they were far away, very far away. They spent, and somewhere I had exact figures, I don't know, very little money per Negro child, we pay about three times as much, three or four times as much for each White child as they spent for Black children. They had better equipment and everything else.	38:28
Della Davison Sullins	And because by that time I had children, my children did not deserve that. So, the group of us were sitting down the talking about it and we decided we needed to do something about it. So we decided to file a suit to see if we could file suit. So then as a group, we went to Tuskegee Civic Association. And I had a double role, but I went as a parent, we went as parents, friend for our children, and we filed suit for all three children.	39:27
Della Davison Sullins	And the children who went to the school are not the same children necessarily who went to school and filed a suit.	40:11
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:40:29].	40:22
Della Davison Sullins	Well, and you possibly will be seeing people who are not a part of the original suit. I don't think the Jenkins were, their children were part of those who entered the school, the desegregated school. The Jones children were the same way. And as I think about it, I think the only ones who were part of the original suit and did integrate the school was my daughter. Not even all my children because they had this process by which they gave examinations to Black kids, but didn't give them to Whites, that you talked to her about. But some people, as I think about it, people who—The Johnson, Willie C. Johnson and Ruth Johnson, they were plaintiffs. Evan and James Moore were plaintiffs, but their children were not part of the integration process.	40:28
Della Davison Sullins	But so the people that people usually see when they come in, they're talking to people whose children integrated the school, not necessarily to the people who filed the suit. Mabel Jackson filed for her children, but her children were not a part of [indistinct 00:42:09] went to school, they never went to school. And so it happened, we went to court, we went to the Tuskegee Civic Association, and they decided that they would sponsor our case. So Tuskegee Civic Association sponsored the school desegregation suit, paid fees, et cetera.	41:44
Tywanna Whorley	Did any time [indistinct 00:42:38].	42:35
Della Davison Sullins	Oh yes, we talked about it. My daughter who was in the group, that desegregated school, was in eighth grade. My sons were not accepted. They are listed as plaintiffs in the suit. Yeah, we talked about it, we had to, because it was not easy. Now we did get threats. We got calls, we had marshalls sent in who escorted our children places, to the activities, if they went to a party they kind of followed us.	42:40
Della Davison Sullins	But we didn't have a lot of fear though. We weren't afraid. And the calls that were most disgusting were calls from people who knew us, Black people who knew us, who would call and say, "Y'all shouldn't be doing that. Aren't you afraid? I'm scared your children are going to get hurt. I'm scared you all going to get hurt. I wouldn't do that."	43:45
Della Davison Sullins	Same thing happened in terms of the other case, gerrymandering, along with the gerrymandering we had a boycott trade. Boycotts are illegal, but we did not tell people not to buy from anybody. We only said trade with your friends.	44:21
Tywanna Whorley	How long did that last?	44:59
Della Davison Sullins	It last maybe two years, I think, about two years. And the effect of it is still here.	45:01
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:45:17].	45:11
Della Davison Sullins	That was in the late fifties. That's gerrymandering where we had the—And we still have the effects of it, because people got accustomed to going out of town to shop and people still go out of town to shop.	45:16
Tywanna Whorley	So this [indistinct 00:45:43].	45:35
Della Davison Sullins	People joined in, many not openly and said, because we had mass meetings, we had weekly mass meetings and had thousands of people attended those mass meetings. And we had speeches made and people—We talked about who your friends are, your friends will do this for you, your friends won't take your rights away, your friends will speak up for you. And the businesses in Tuskegee virtually closed. The White businesses closed. And then we had a White exodus, that's when the White people basically left City of Tuskegee.	45:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:46:41].	46:37
Della Davison Sullins	Mm-hmm. [indistinct 00:46:48].	46:48
Tywanna Whorley	What did you think when they started—	46:48

Della Davison Sullins	We had the same, we were working for a purpose, and— Turn it off now. We had a goal. And that goal was to fight for gerrymandering so that we would not be gerrymandered out of our rights to vote.	0:00
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:00:30] Was he still in office, or did you vote him out?	0:30
Della Davison Sullins	No, he was voted out after. But the thing about it was he was a party to the suit. He was a defendant in the suit. The churches, we had mass meetings at churches. The churches would be filled with people. They would be on the outside, couldn't get in. We took a collection, they had little collection boxes, one of which I have in there now, we passed around a rock on it, and people contributed and this was the way we could support our efforts.	0:37
Della Davison Sullins	TCA membership, that was the thing of TCA, the mass meetings were sponsored by TCA. Membership jumped. And of course that's, it's something you can expect, because that's what people do. Us particularly. If there's a crisis, and this was a crisis, people join the groups that they think is working to resolve the crisis. And we had very, very large membership. Thousands of membership of people who were in the [indistinct 00:02:19] association. That time, annual memberships were what we had, $5 a year.	1:36
Della Davison Sullins	At that time, I think it might have been a dollar. We went up to five later, a dollar a year, I believe it was.	2:21
Tywanna Whorley	Was the NAACP [indistinct 00:02:42]?	2:41
Della Davison Sullins	The NAACP had been active, but during that period, and I believe that was the period when NAACP had been barred from— The courts had barred the NAACP from being active in Alabama. And of course, they had go to court for that.	2:45
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:03:01].	3:00
Della Davison Sullins	Yes, they were active, but TCA was more active than. They were not involved in the voter registration as a group, and things like that. They were not involved. Not involved in that.	3:01
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:03:34].	3:33
Della Davison Sullins	They were in both. They were in both. I was in both.	3:45
Tywanna Whorley	How was that, [indistinct 00:03:46].	3:46
Della Davison Sullins	They both have their own objectives and their own goals. I'm still a member of NAACP. I do not participate actively, but they don't have an active group here. They got a group here, but it's not real active. I am active in a few [indistinct 00:04:05] associations.	3:47
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:04:12].	4:05
Della Davison Sullins	They weren't opposite. They worked together. They were not opposite. NAACP shared an office with us, the TCA. They had one room in the office that we had at that time.	4:17
Tywanna Whorley	Where was it?	4:33
Della Davison Sullins	The office was right there on campus, right across from the lower gate where you go in and go around. Right across from there. That building, that big building there. We had an office upstairs there at that time. That building now belongs to the university, but at that time, it belonged to Federal Savings and Loan, which is now the First [indistinct 00:05:06].	4:36
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:05:14].	5:02
Della Davison Sullins	No. But Dr. Gomillion always says he was fortunate enough to have to had a president who just kind of turned his back on what he was doing and did not interfere with the activities. They weren't doing anything illegal. They were good faculty members. Like Dr. Gomillion, Mr. Stanley Smith, Mr. Tolan. Have you talked to Mr. Tolan?	5:34
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:06:10].	6:08
Della Davison Sullins	Very, very, very active. And they were members of this, and leaders cabinet of TCA.	6:14
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:06:39] Be afraid in terms of [indistinct 00:06:48]?	6:25
Della Davison Sullins	We were apprehensive. My husband was possibly more apprehensive than me, because he rode behind that bus with those children on it every day. Although they had escorts, the day that they were to enter the school in 1963, the governor sent troops out and would not let them enter the school. That was a delay. We stayed out of school, went back into court, and I can't tell you how many times we went back and forth into court. We went back into court and then finally, they closed the school and tried to send the children to the existing high school here, which was the Black school, the existing school here.	6:47
Della Davison Sullins	My daughter and the other little girl in the eighth grade would not have been going there, because eighth grade was not at the high school, they were students of the children's house. But we refused. We went back to court. And the courts upheld that and ordered since they closed the school and said that it was not economically valid to have— See, the White kids had done an exit. They left the school. Course, those who showed up for school, they didn't let them in either. They didn't let them come to the school.	7:53
Della Davison Sullins	So we went back to court, and the judge ruled that six of the children— There were 13 children originally. Ruled that the children— Well, they did get a chance to go there for a little bit. And then they said it was not economic. Very sound to have them, just all these teachers with 12 children. They had 13. One was dismissed because the man said he didn't say, "Yes, sir." Or something.	8:37
Della Davison Sullins	So it was 12 of them. Sent six to Notasulga. Was a high school in Notasulga, and there was the White high school in Shorter at the time. So the judge ordered six to Notasulga and six to Shorter. In Shorter, it was the 10th and 11th grade. In Notasulga, was the 8th and the 12th grade. And we went. So we went to Notasulga. The mayor up there, who was Mayor Ray, he stopped the bus, got on the bus, and he got on the bus and demanded that they not go to the school. And then the one time, he said that increased the load of occupancy over the overload, six children. And it was fire hazard. Course, we were back in court and the judge ordered them, they would stay there in school.	9:28
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:11:06].	10:57
Della Davison Sullins	My daughter.	11:06
Tywanna Whorley	Your daughter.	11:06
Della Davison Sullins	Notasulga.	11:06
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:11:14].	11:06
Della Davison Sullins	We talked every day. And I don't remember what she talked about the first day or whatever, 'cause she gave a report. Her daddy was behind that bus all the way to school every day, and he was out there to— He made his work schedule so that he would not be working at the time that bus went and came. He came back behind that bus every day. They had a lot of support, because people from the Justice Department, the assistant to Robert Kennedy, who was the Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General John Doar, came down very frequently and he sat down, sat here and he talked to my daughter. Goes to the other homes and he talked to those children.	11:16
Della Davison Sullins	Robert Kennedy wrote them nice letters and he was the Attorney General. And he even talked to them on the phone occasionally.	12:23
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:12:41].	12:34
Della Davison Sullins	When I say we did get some, but not a lot. I guess we didn't act afraid or we didn't act— And we didn't stop our activities soon.	12:47
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:13:04].	13:04
Della Davison Sullins	With the what?	13:04
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:13:14].	13:11
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. I guess it was. Possibly more so during the gerrymander. Now the schools, when the kids came back, they ordered the school reopened here in Tuskegee and some of the Whites came back to the school. When our kids came back, the Whites came back also. We went back to court and they ordered that it be general, because this was token. So what they did, they ordered that they used the placement test equally with the Black kids and the White kids, use that for placement. They tested the Black kids, but they did not test the White kids. My daughter was accepted. My two sons were not. And that's the same like Mr— A lot of the kids who had been parties to the, who had been plaintiffs in the suit, their kids were not accepted. And most of the kids who were accepted, they and their parents were not party to the suit. And then after they declared the use of the placement test unconstitutional.	13:18
Della Davison Sullins	So then all that they had to do was to apply, and it was open to all the kids. And then all of the people who have said, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." We couldn't get to the school for them, with their children.	15:13
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:15:38].	15:32
Della Davison Sullins	We knew. We kept records on everything. We had records on everything.	15:44
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:15:59]. Did the mass meetings help?	15:50
Della Davison Sullins	Yes. The mass meetings kept people motivated and so forth. And of course, after we filed suit, all we were doing was going back and forth to court, just as we were doing when we filed the suit for voter registration. Just going back and forth to court.	16:10
Tywanna Whorley	Any time you think [indistinct 00:16:34]?	16:28
Della Davison Sullins	I don't think so, because we weren't disgusted, we were determined, and we knew it wasn't going to end a few days. We knew it was going to be a long term thing. But we had a goal.	16:33
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:16:44], I want to ask you, how did [indistinct 00:16:45] because you were a woman? [indistinct 00:16:59].	16:44
Della Davison Sullins	Well we couldn't tell that. As women, we were office holders, we were a part of the organization. It wasn't like the men over here, the women over here. We were part, we were officers. We did things. We were part of. And it was really a reorganization. It didn't operate just like the men's club did. It became completely reorganized. I have a copy of— I don't know whether I have [indistinct 00:17:45]. I let somebody doing a report have the brief that came back from the gerrymandering case, and the young man was going to bring it back like the weekend. That's been two years ago and I haven't seen him since.	17:02
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:18:08].	17:59
Della Davison Sullins	They possibly showed you the same, they may have showed you the school, the big document from the court, for the school.	18:12
Tywanna Whorley	No, actually they showed me the small one. This is [indistinct 00:18:28].	18:22
Della Davison Sullins	Gerrymandering.	18:44
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:18:50].	18:44
Della Davison Sullins	Okay. Demetrice was in the voter registration.	18:49
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:18:56].	18:51
Della Davison Sullins	He must have been voter registration. He was not a [indistinct 00:19:01] the chairman.	18:55
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah. The maximization of the [indistinct 00:19:15].	19:14
Della Davison Sullins	Voter registration. Mm-hmm. And [indistinct 00:19:25] might have been. [indistinct 00:19:25] was [indistinct 00:19:25]. They were not a plaintiff in the gerrymand, either. I believe they were in voter registration also.	19:23
Tywanna Whorley	Yeah, because [indistinct 00:19:32]. When you look back now and see the plaintiff [indistinct 00:19:54].	19:24
Della Davison Sullins	I guess the thing that is disappointing, that's most disappointing, is that when many of our Black people became office holders, they forgot the purpose, and their attitude became, they did it. They do the same thing. Try to do the same thing. And that makes you sick. That's not just Tuskegee. That's forever.	20:01
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:20:47].	20:41
Della Davison Sullins	And the progress. And I don't know that things could have stayed exactly the same and still been progress, because people— I'd like to see people a little more cooperative, but I have to give credit to the development that people have made within themselves too. See, in those days, we formed the Macon County Democratic Club, which was really the first of the now Macon County Democratic Conference, I mean, Alabama Democratic Conference. It was the first group. And what we did, what our purpose in doing that for, Tuskegee Civic Association was non-partisan. That way, we could help people to evaluate candidates. So what we would do, we get all of the information under the name under that group about candidates, and present the information to the voters. They would meet for that. And we didn't say, "This is who you need to, have to vote for." But we made recommendations.	20:49
Della Davison Sullins	But now we have moved from that now, or we should have moved from that now, because people— What you're looking at, basically here, we are looking at Black candidates, and we are looking at— And other factors come in. Friends and all that kind of thing. And people do not look necessarily at the qualifications of candidates. They look at my friend. Then we've had other things to enter, whereby a lot of money is paid, that kind of thing. Which is not always— It's not in the best interest. But I do think that with the progress that people, I hope, have made as far as being able to think and make some decisions as in relation to the issues, I'm hoping that we have progressed to a point that we can look at issues and think for ourselves little better than we did, than we were able to do at that time. It's learning process, and we needed the help, which we may not need now if we just look at issues and not look at personal kind of things.	22:36
Tywanna Whorley	Were you able to get out into the rural areas [indistinct 00:24:00]?	23:55
Della Davison Sullins	Oh yes. We went into rural areas, rural churches and talked with people. We had big gatherings. People came.	24:00
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:24:09].	24:08
Della Davison Sullins	If they could read any, sometimes it was a matter of almost memorizing answers. And that was one of the reasons that we were looking so hard for an out for these people. It was almost like kind of tricking somebody. Somebody let us know that this woman and some others, we had heard that other people were being registered who could not read, White people were being registered. But we always had a few friends who can tell us a few things, and somebody kind of told us who had been registered who couldn't read and write.	24:08
Della Davison Sullins	And we did our own kind of investigating before we— And the woman was cooperative. She admitted that she could not read or write and whatnot. So she became a good case for us. And so then we [indistinct 00:25:29] rule that the least anybody who could perform to the extent that this woman had to be registered. So that means they no longer had to read that Constitution. They no longer had to do the writing, et cetera.	25:13
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:26:03].	25:56
Della Davison Sullins	The people, no, they weren't a lot of— They didn't seem to have a lot of fear. They wanted to vote. Not everyone went and voted though, but they seemed wanted to vote. This is new, this is like having a new doll, a new toy. And they were proud that they were able to do this. But I don't think many people were threatening them if they voted or if they went to vote or anything like that. They weren't getting a lot of threats that we heard anything about. In Mississippi, they were getting threats and so forth. But that didn't go on right around here.	26:11
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:27:00].	26:54
Della Davison Sullins	That was not in conjunction with the VA. That was in conjunction with the Public Health Department. They had a clinic over at John Andrew Hospital. I was not involved. I knew they had the clinic. I did not know the details and so forth until later.	27:06
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:27:42].	27:36
Della Davison Sullins	Well, I knew they had what they call a study going on and I didn't get into what it's all about or whatnot until it really became something that was being focused on.	27:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:28:06].	28:01
Della Davison Sullins	Well, I knew that this was something that needed to be looked into. It wasn't the first case where people have been used as guinea pigs and not know that they're being used as guinea pigs. That's just one that went to court. And it happened to be one that was basically a dangerous one, to leave people with their— Some treated and some not treated. Some given placebos and not being treated with medication to see what happened to them. That was dangerous. And that wasn't anything that was so new. 'Cause [indistinct 00:28:54] that time, you have to use human specimens, you have to get all of the paperwork and so forth and people have to know what's being done.	28:10
Della Davison Sullins	That was one of the cases that introduced that kind of legislation, because a whole lot of blind research went on, people really didn't know what they were being— What the research was all about.	29:05
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:29:29] Do you see any changes happening in Tuskegee as being [indistinct 00:29:45].	29:29
Della Davison Sullins	We have moved forward and then we've moved back and Tuskegee, it's about one third of an inch from being zero, because we don't have anything that we can show that we're still progressing. We're boarding up stores, we're boarding up buildings, we have no industry, et cetera. And then we have a lot of greed going on that's self-centered.	29:50
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:30:43] A long way to go.	30:42
Della Davison Sullins	Well, we are going backward. I don't see us moving forward. In fact, did pretty good. And then we've had administrations lasted too long.	30:46
Tywanna Whorley	[indistinct 00:31:05].	31:02

Item Info

Title:

Della Sullins interview recording, 1994 July 24

Date:

July 24, 1994

Creator:

Sullins, Della Davison

Contributor:

Whorley, Tywanna

Description:

Name: Della Davison Sullins; Date of Birth: 1916-02-26; Place of Birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation(s): nursing; educator; Residence: Tuskegee, AL
Informant ID: 688; Interviewed by: Tywanna Whorley.

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Behind the Veil

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

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

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Della Sullins interview recording, 1994 July 24

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1. Della Sullins administrative file, 1994

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Della Sullins interview recording, 1994 July 24

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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