Corine Mabry interview recording, 1997 November 14
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| Abrielle Beaton | Testing testing, testing, testing, testing. | 0:01 |
| Corine Mabry | Corine Mabry, can you hear me? | 0:26 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Ms. Mabry, when were you born? | 0:30 |
| Corine Mabry | July twenty-fifth, 1932. | 0:31 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And where were you born? | 0:33 |
| Corine Mabry | In Savannah, Georgia. | 0:35 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? Okay. So did you grow up in Durham? | 0:36 |
| Corine Mabry | I came here when I was five. | 0:41 |
| Abrielle Beaton | When you were five. Okay. And so what made your parents move to Durham or whoever? | 0:46 |
| Corine Mabry | My mother was attending Central and my father decided to come here to work— | 0:47 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. Okay. | 0:52 |
| Corine Mabry | —so they could be together. | 0:52 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. And what section of Durham did you live in or what neighborhood? | 0:55 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah, we lived, when we first came, we lived on the same street my mother lives on now, as a matter of fact in the house right next door to it. At Dunbar Street, two blocks from Central campus. | 1:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. So is that the Hayti area? | 1:11 |
| Corine Mabry | No, not exactly. That's more, I guess you would call it the NCC area. | 1:14 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 1:19 |
| Corine Mabry | Because it's right— | 1:19 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 1:19 |
| Corine Mabry | —around there. | 1:19 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And what was that neighborhood like? | 1:22 |
| Corine Mabry | It was the street that I lived on, it was a two block street. It still is a two block street. And everybody who lived on there was a teacher. | 1:25 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 1:32 |
| Corine Mabry | So the neighborhood, the block was known as, Dunbar Street was known as the street of teachers, children and dogs. Cause all of us had dogs and all of them had children. | 1:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really. And you said that all the neighbors were teachers. Was this the fathers and the mothers? | 1:46 |
| Corine Mabry | Most of the time. | 1:55 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Most of them. Okay. | 1:55 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, the fathers for sure. Some mothers were stay-at-home mothers and then some work also. | 1:55 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. What about your parents? What did they do? | 2:02 |
| Corine Mabry | Both my parents taught at Hillside. | 2:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh they did? Okay. | 2:07 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 2:08 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Growing up, did you have a lot of contact or relationships with your grandparents as well or other extended family? | 2:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, by the time I was born, my mother's mother had died and I never knew her father. They said he was in a VA hospital. He had gone through, I guess, it was the Second World War. | 2:17 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 2:31 |
| Corine Mabry | The First World War. And was confined to the VA hospital. During that time, you know, didn't take children to see him. So I never met him, but on my father's side I had my grandmother and my grandfather. | 2:31 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And did, they— | 2:49 |
| Corine Mabry | They were in Seale, Alabama. | 2:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. In Alabama. I was going to ask if they live in Savannah. Okay. | 2:50 |
| Corine Mabry | No, in Alabama. My mother's family is from Georgia, South Carolina. | 2:50 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 2:58 |
| Corine Mabry | My father's family is from Alabama. | 2:59 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. Okay. And so did you have any other relatives in the Durham area? | 2:59 |
| Corine Mabry | I had no one in Durham. | 3:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. Just your parents? | 3:07 |
| Corine Mabry | Just my parents. | 3:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | What about any siblings? | 3:08 |
| Corine Mabry | I have a brother, but he's ten years ten months younger than I am. | 3:08 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Younger than you? | 3:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Yes. | 3:20 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. So you were an only child for a while? | 3:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Yes, but every minute I'm— | 3:20 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I'm an only child. When was he born? How old were you? | 3:20 |
| Corine Mabry | I was ten years, ten months. | 3:20 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right? Oh God. Sorry about that. | 3:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah, almost eleven years old. | 3:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And so your parents' friends, were they mostly the people who lived— | 3:29 |
| Corine Mabry | Teachers. Teachers used to come to the house on Dunbar Street. Well, let me tell you something about that. We have lived in, I have slept, let me put it that way in one, two—it's just two blocks long, in one, two, three, four, five different houses on Dunbar Street. | 3:35 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 3:53 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 3:54 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 3:54 |
| Corine Mabry | 'Cause it was near everything. The whole social situation centered around Central's campus. | 3:55 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 4:01 |
| Corine Mabry | So we were just two blocks from there. | 4:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 4:03 |
| Corine Mabry | We were right there. | 4:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And what kind of social things were there to do? | 4:05 |
| Corine Mabry | Basketball games. My father was a coach. | 4:08 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh, okay. | 4:11 |
| Corine Mabry | And also a referee. So he went everywhere, but we went to all Central games. It was like, I'll tell you exactly what it was. You went to elementary school, you didn't have junior high school then. You went to high school and then you went right to college. | 4:11 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 4:31 |
| Corine Mabry | The college was around your neighbors so it was just automatic. | 4:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 4:33 |
| Corine Mabry | It's like going from elementary school to high school. | 4:33 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 4:35 |
| Corine Mabry | Then you went to college. It was just a known, a given. | 4:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. So that was expected of you— | 4:40 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 4:41 |
| Abrielle Beaton | —from your parents and from— | 4:41 |
| Corine Mabry | From everybody. | 4:43 |
| Abrielle Beaton | —and then also from the school? | 4:43 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 4:44 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. | 4:44 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 4:44 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah, okay. | 4:46 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 4:46 |
| Abrielle Beaton | That's not interesting. So you're talking about the social things to do was kind of focused around Central? | 4:46 |
| Corine Mabry | Around Central, around school activities, around certain meetings, church. I was a rebel because I joined the Catholic Church. Yes. Of course, that was the— | 4:54 |
| Abrielle Beaton | From what were your parents? | 5:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Baptist. | 5:10 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 5:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 5:10 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I didn't want to assume anything. | 5:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Yes. White Rock. Yeah. | 5:10 |
| Abrielle Beaton | When did you decide— | 5:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Twelve. | 5:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 5:22 |
| Corine Mabry | Twelve. | 5:22 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Did you just not like the Baptist church? | 5:22 |
| Corine Mabry | No. Well, it wasn't that I didn't like it. I grew up at a very interesting time in White Rock because Miles Mark Fisher was the pastor there. And I don't know if you've read any of his writings or anything? | 5:22 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. | 5:36 |
| Corine Mabry | But if you really want to know about things, you need to look up some of the writings of Miles Mark Fisher, or contact his two sons who are still here in Durham. | 5:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 5:46 |
| Corine Mabry | He had a yearly sermon, a series of sermons that he did that old time religion that all students at Central were required to go listen to. | 5:48 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 5:59 |
| Corine Mabry | To attend. Right. | 6:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. And then at age 12, you picked up on that? | 6:07 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, I was a strange child, I guess, but what I didn't particularly care for in that church in particular was the fact that after a while you got to know everyone there and the shouting was okay, because if the Spirit moved you. But then you noticed that on the day that somebody would shout, they would be next to the lines. It was almost, they knew today's my day. And I just found it sort of false. | 6:07 |
| Corine Mabry | And I remember the day that I joined White Rock, I joined White Rock before I went to Catholic church, my mother was so upset. But she wasn't upset because, or excited, because I had felt the need to join church. She was upset because I hadn't told her that I was going to join so that she could dress me to the nine. Even though I was always dressed to the nine. She was a home ec teacher, so. | 6:39 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay, right. | 7:00 |
| Corine Mabry | But that was her concern. The fact that I hadn't—how do you know? How do you know when that's going to happen? | 7:02 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 7:09 |
| Corine Mabry | I started to look at things with different eyes then. And I also with my friends, my friends were also from that area. But once we got to high school, we had friends from all over Durham because that was the only high school in the town. | 7:11 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Hillside? Now you said that you only had elementary and high school. When did, what was the break off? | 7:26 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. That something else that's interesting. The schools were one through, I skipped the ninth grade, so it was one through seven and then eight through twelve. | 7:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 7:48 |
| Corine Mabry | I skipped the ninth grade. I got out of high school at nineteen, not nineteen, at fifteen and out of college at nineteen. | 7:50 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 8:00 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 8:00 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. Okay. So you were saying how when you entered high school, it was kids from all over? | 8:04 |
| Corine Mabry | Kids from all over Durham were there. And my friends were also there. But then I started to see how most of them would treat, the other kids were treated by both teachers and my friends. | 8:11 |
| Abrielle Beaton | The kids from outside of the teacher's community? | 8:25 |
| Corine Mabry | Yes. The teacher's community, the Mutual's children, Central's instructor's children, that little clique. And that bothered me. It bothered me to no end. And of course I wasn't supposed to be upset about things like that at that age, but it really bothered me. And when I came back home, everybody says, here comes the rebel because that was my fight. Why can't so and so come to this party? Why can't? And I remember when I asked my mother, if I could go over to one of the girls' houses and she said, "No, you can't go into that neighborhood." | 8:27 |
| Corine Mabry | And I said, but it's okay for her to come to my house. Why can't I go to her house? And it's her turn for us to come to her house now. And she's going to be upset if we can't come. My mother didn't understand that—Mama's too bougie, and she is definitely. My father on the other hand was totally different. Everybody tells me I take after him. | 9:05 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? But mother's word was law, basically? She was the one— | 9:26 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh yes. | 9:31 |
| Abrielle Beaton | —giving permission whether or not you could go? | 9:31 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh yes. Oh yes. | 9:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So what areas were you forbidden from? What areas are you talking about? | 9:35 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, you stayed right in that Fayetteville Street. | 9:40 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yes. | 9:43 |
| Corine Mabry | From Pettigrew. You only went on Pettigrew Street if someone was with you. From Pettigrew Street to the end of the campus, that was the area that you were allowed to go. | 9:45 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. Okay. | 9:55 |
| Corine Mabry | You never rode the bus, and that's one of the problems here in this town now. Because bus transportation is not just a matter of transportation. | 9:55 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 10:03 |
| Corine Mabry | It's a class system that's connected with that. The city has to get over all of that before you can really get people to leave the cars at home and get on a bus. | 10:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. Yeah. Was this the same DATA system that we have today? | 10:13 |
| Corine Mabry | Sort of. It was a city system. | 10:16 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So how long has that been in Durham? | 10:17 |
| Corine Mabry | What, DATA? | 10:17 |
| Abrielle Beaton | As far as you can remember? | 10:24 |
| Corine Mabry | DATA? | 10:24 |
| Abrielle Beaton | The bus systems. | 10:25 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh, there was a bus system as long as I can remember. | 10:25 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 10:26 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. We rode in the back. | 10:27 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 10:28 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 10:28 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 10:30 |
| Corine Mabry | Except that was so funny because when the bus turned to come Fayetteville Street, everybody on there was Black. So you just sat anywhere you wanted to. If you were young enough not to understand what was going on, you sometimes made the quote mistake of just taking a seat. | 10:30 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 10:47 |
| Corine Mabry | Thinking that that was okay. | 10:47 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 10:48 |
| Corine Mabry | But you learned. | 10:48 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. You talked about your interaction with other Black kids or Black people. How about any contact with White people growing up? | 10:49 |
| Corine Mabry | There was none. Absolutely none. Except at Central, somehow another Walker who's now into track a lot. | 11:02 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 11:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Was able to arrange with the basketball coach at Duke to have scrimmages. And when I was in college, I was like the person who kept scoring everything at practices. So I was privy to that. They were always closed. Public was not invited. Some men would drift in who knew about it, but other than that, it was closed off. But that was the only connection we had. That, and the fact that I don't know how my mother did this, but we weren't allowed to go into many of the stores on Main Street for clothing. You just didn't do that. Or if you went in, you bought it and went home and tried it on or whatever. You couldn't bring it back. | 11:12 |
| Corine Mabry | But Mama knew someone who owned the store that's still on main street even now. I remember when I was going to NYU to graduate school, we went in and she brought me this whole, everything that I needed to go away. I was just —I kept looking at the door. Wondering, is this okay? Is this going to be right? But it turned out, she had been going there all the time. I just didn't know about it. | 11:51 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. So if that was just the extent of the interaction you had, what did you know of White people? What did know about them? | 12:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Nothing. Not a thing. My first real racial incident happened at NYU, as a matter of fact. It was in a class that I was in and teacher asked a question. I raised my hand, she looked at me and then at the rest of the class and said, "I see no one knows the answer to this question and kept on going." It didn't affect me. I kept saying I must not have raised my hand high enough. The fellow sitting next to me was a fellow from California, White. He was furious. He got up, left, withdrew and went back to California. | 12:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Did he really? Were you the only Black person in that class? (train horn blowing) | 12:59 |
| Corine Mabry | I was the only one. I didn't know we were going to have so much happening. In most of my classes. In most of them, because I was in graduate school and there weren't that many up there in graduate school. | 13:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right, right. | 13:24 |
| Corine Mabry | The only one and the youngest one— | 13:28 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right, of course. | 13:30 |
| Corine Mabry | —in most of my classes. | 13:30 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Going into an age 19? | 13:32 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. | 13:33 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Did you go directly from Central to—? | 13:34 |
| Corine Mabry | Right from there. Right there. | 13:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. Before going off to college, if you can talk about in high school, the things that you learned? Or I guess I'm trying to get more at the things that you didn't learn about Black people, about Black history or Black literature. If it was not an all Black environment. Your teachers were Black and I'm assuming the administrators— | 13:37 |
| Corine Mabry | Everybody was Black. | 14:03 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Did they they do anything to bolster the curriculum in terms of learning about yourself or was it just the standard curriculum? | 14:07 |
| Corine Mabry | Not really. It was the type of thing where you didn't have to worry about aspirations because everyone you saw had already reached a certain level. | 14:12 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 14:24 |
| Corine Mabry | The doctor that you saw, the dentist that you saw, the lawyers that you saw, the preachers that you saw. All of the careers that were out there then were—Durham really had two cities, it was the White city in the Black city. And I really was very upset when I heard that the four, is it 471, the Durham Freeway? | 14:24 |
| Abrielle Beaton | 147? | 14:47 |
| Corine Mabry | Was going to come right straight—I knew I got those numbers off—right straight up Pettigrew Street, around that way, and destroy that whole area. Because there was a hotel there, there were movie houses there. Dr. Garrett. Dr. Garrett is still living by the way, have you all interviewed him? | 14:47 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. | 15:01 |
| Corine Mabry | He's a hundred and something. | 15:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 15:02 |
| Corine Mabry | You need to interview him. You also need to interview his son who was my main competition. We were one, two in school, all the way. York Garrett, his name is. He lives on Fayetteville Street, still. Same house. | 15:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? Hey. | 15:15 |
| Speaker 3 | How are you? | 15:19 |
| Speaker 4 | Good, how are you doing? | 15:20 |
| Abrielle Beaton | We were talking about the two Durhams and just how— | 15:24 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah, the White Durham and the Black Durham and very seldom did they ever mix. It was more mixing with the lower income Blacks because they were the ones who were on the fringes. If you look at the makeup of Forest Hills, you see that area? Okay. Right across the railroad tracks, there are those houses. Those were the houses that the people who cleaned the houses for lived in and they had them close by so they could work until ten, eleven, twelve o'clock at night, and then— | 15:24 |
| Abrielle Beaton | You wouldn't have a problem. | 15:51 |
| Corine Mabry | There you go. | 15:51 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. | 15:52 |
| Corine Mabry | So that's set up right there. | 15:53 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So those kids also went to Hillside, too? | 15:57 |
| Corine Mabry | We had, yeah, they went to Hillside. We had no contact with them until we got to Hillside. | 15:59 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So how was it like then? You talked about how you saw your friends from the teachers' community treating the kids who were outside of that. What other things did they face in terms of— | 16:03 |
| Corine Mabry | You mean those kids? | 16:15 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yes. In terms of not belonging— | 16:15 |
| Corine Mabry | Teachers sometimes had different attitudes about them, and things I could get away with I knew they couldn't. Not that I tried to get away with anything. It was like more was expected of us, but more also was taken from us. They allowed us to get away with more. | 16:16 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 16:35 |
| Corine Mabry | So they really had a hard time. I admire every person that I run into now who came from one of those neighborhoods. [indistinct 00:16:43] is one of them and did well. Only his mother sent him away to private high school, he didn't go to Hillside. | 16:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 16:47 |
| Corine Mabry | But he came from another community. I never would have known him until Hillside otherwise. | 16:48 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. And you were talking about how for you and the other children who were children of the teachers, it was expected of them to go on to college. Was the same expectation placed on the other kids who came from outside that community? | 16:58 |
| Corine Mabry | They went to college because a lot of their parents, and this is where the tobacco factory comes into town. Their parents want, they were first generation college kids. So their parents were working hard and aspiring to send their kids to college because they saw that as the means for gaining height. Everyone looked to us thinking that that was the life. Little did they know that my mother and father was scuffling just like a duck floating on the water. | 17:09 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. | 17:37 |
| Corine Mabry | It looks as thought he's just skimming along, but underneath those feet are paddling. | 17:37 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 17:41 |
| Corine Mabry | Right? Everybody was trying to keep afloat. | 17:41 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. And was Central really the only college that people aspire to go to? | 17:42 |
| Corine Mabry | You mean here in Durham? Oh no. | 17:52 |
| Abrielle Beaton | At Hillside? | 17:52 |
| Corine Mabry | As a matter of fact, my friends, many of them went to Hampton, went to Howard, went to Fisk, went to—Nathan went to Yale. I'm trying to think of other places, but they went all over. It depended upon their parents. Were their parents were affiliated, what affiliations they had, who they knew in the town a lot of time, whether there was family there to watch over them while they were in school. Where they could get in. Except we couldn't take everybody. | 17:54 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Bottom line. | 18:32 |
| Corine Mabry | Those were some of the delineated. | 18:34 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Kind of interested to know about what the disciplines were, I guess, among gender lines for— | 18:34 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh. I should have been an architect, I'll tell you that. | 18:45 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 18:48 |
| Corine Mabry | Yes. I definitely should have been an—my father taught architectural drawing, and I'm sure he thought my brother would be the one who was interested in it. But I'm the one who grew up underneath his drawing, who were chewing on that little scale and interested in every line that he put on the paper. My brother has no interest in that at all. None whatsoever. As a matter of fact, he's a child psychologist. | 18:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 19:09 |
| Corine Mabry | No interest in that at all. But of course, then girls didn't become architects. I also was interested in athletic, but I was Phys Ed major. | 19:10 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 19:21 |
| Corine Mabry | You wouldn't know it to look at me now, but I was Phys Ed major. My father would take me to games with them, but he didn't think that I should have any interest in the girls' basketball team at Hillside. Lavonia Ingram Allison, was on it when I was there. And Daddy thought I shouldn't play even though he was the coach of the girls' basketball team. Right. | 19:22 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 19:49 |
| Corine Mabry | So I became a majorette, stuff like that. | 19:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Hear that was a tight squad. Really great squad. What other kinds of things did women typically aspire to? | 19:50 |
| Corine Mabry | Teacher, librarians, nurses. Never doctors, nurses. Let's see what else. There are a lot of kids who wanted to be dress designers, but it only got so far as them sewing out of their houses for other people. It never got into what they really thought that they were capable of doing. And I don't know if a lot of that was because we were in the South or because we weren't in a place where things like that happened. Now, once I got to New York and started looking at all the other careers that were out there. I went to New York to get a Master's in Physical Therapy, because that was my first— | 19:58 |
| Abrielle Beaton | After physical education? | 20:40 |
| Corine Mabry | That's why I got in. I was a chemistry major to start out with, and then someone said you better get into physical education because that's the major they're going to be looking for you to go into physical therapy. So I changed. I got up to NYU and I got my Master's in Physical Therapy. And I worked at VA hospitals there. Did clinical practice all over everywhere in New York. But at the same time, I got a chance to see all the other little careers that were out there that I never saw here, because what did people do here? It was Duke, it was Central, that was it. | 20:41 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 21:14 |
| Corine Mabry | Another interesting point I wanted to bring out is that even though the tobacco factories were killing everybody in town, because you could smell the tobacco smoke all over everywhere. And a lot of my friends who grew up at that time and also smoked coming up are now dead with cancer. And I keep wondering if there is a connection at all with that, like you reach a saturation point and then they pass up. | 21:15 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Sure. | 21:38 |
| Corine Mabry | But I admire the factories in that they did push their workers to do things for their children and everything. Duke on the other hand—and they did, because they were here, had put people who were unskilled in a position to be really blue collar, middle income. Duke on the other hand, did nothing but take workers, treat them like slaves and still do that. | 21:38 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Not much has changed. | 22:04 |
| Corine Mabry | Right? No change at all. They've been here sixty some years and haven't done too much for the community. They've taken a lot. They haven't given much. | 22:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | You labeled yourself quote unquote rebel, even as early as twelve. What— | 22:19 |
| Corine Mabry | Because I was always acutely aware of any type of injustice, any type of injustice. And I always didn't know how to keep my mouth closed and I spoke out about it. I've settled down a little bit now, I think, because I've learned to sit back and try to see both sides and then listen to what's being said, but back then, it was, man, I'm right into it. And always taking up for someone else. If someone did something about it later, they said I would cry, would just sit back and cry. But somebody else, out there with a whole [indistinct 00:22:57]. | 22:24 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. What injustices did you see in college, during college days? Or were you actively involved in any particular cause? | 22:59 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. You were tracked in college so that if you came in say the top so many kids, you were with them right straight through that, especially at freshman year when you're doing your core curriculum, you were with them right straight through. You never really got to mingle with the other kids unless it was a game or something like that. Or you just happened to know them. | 23:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | In a social aspect. | 23:31 |
| Corine Mabry | You tended to have classes with people who were in other classes. And then when you got into your major very deeply— It's funny when you got into your major, well, one or two of those same kids would be in still in all of your classes and you tended to gravitate towards them. That's weird. I never thought about that. You tended to.. I have people come up to me now and say, "Oh Corine Mabry, how are you?" And I'm looking and saying, who is this? And where do I know them from? | 23:33 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 24:14 |
| Corine Mabry | And should I know them? | 24:15 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. | 24:16 |
| Corine Mabry | Then they say, "I was in your class." Never noticed them, never noticed them. | 24:16 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 24:20 |
| Corine Mabry | But they knew who I was. | 24:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. How large were the entire class? The freshman class? | 24:22 |
| Corine Mabry | 1820. Oh you mean the entire freshman class? I doubt if it was, oh, I'm trying to think in terms of the dormitories, because there was a freshman dorm, there was a sophomore dorm, senior dorm. All of the fellows lived in Chidley Hall, whether they were freshman or seniors, but for the girls, it was each dorm. I would say not more than 200 because I used to help Dean Rush take attendance when I was little and Mama was still at Central. | 24:26 |
| Corine Mabry | By then we were living across the street from the B.N. Duke Auditorium. And I would go to Vesper and sit next to her. And she'd say, it's a third girl in the first row there. And I'd stand up and people, everybody saying, "No, that seat is empty." So I helped her check attendance before. It felt like I was just going to the next stage. | 24:54 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 25:17 |
| Corine Mabry | And I remember once they had on Central's campus, they had a watermelon party. It must have been July fourth or something. And I told Mama I was going down to get some. And she said, "You can't go, you don't go to Central. You you're not allowed." I said, "I bet Dr. Shepard would let me come." And she said, "Corine." I said, "Can I go ask him?" And she said, "Yeah, go right ahead. You go right ahead." And I think she called him— | 25:17 |
| Speaker 5 | Hello. | 25:41 |
| Corine Mabry | Hi, how are you? | 25:41 |
| Speaker 5 | How are you doing? | 25:42 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. | 25:42 |
| Speaker 5 | How's your mother doing? | 25:42 |
| Corine Mabry | She's doing fine. Thank you. | 25:44 |
| Speaker 5 | Good. | 25:45 |
| Corine Mabry | She must have called ahead because by the time I walked across the street and around the little circle and got to his office, the secretary said, "Corine, come on in. Come in and have a seat." I came in and sat down and he finally came to the door and he says, "Corine, what can I do for you?" So I told him and he said, "Of course, come in, let me write a note." And he wrote a note for me to go. So I went and handed him my— | 25:45 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh, great. That's great. Did you want to go to Central? It sounds like you just, it was a part of you? | 26:16 |
| Corine Mabry | Yeah. Well, my mother went, I went, my brother went and my son, who he in his way was rebelling against all this college, has decided now maybe he'd better go to college. So he's taking the Stage Coast courses at Shaw right here in Durham so he can work and go to school at night. And he says, "But you know what I think." See his father went to Central. So he says, "You know what I think transfer my last year so I can graduate from Central." It's almost a family tradition. | 26:27 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Sure. | 27:00 |
| Corine Mabry | My father on the other went to A&T. | 27:00 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh, did he? So he went away from home to go to college. | 27:01 |
| Corine Mabry | He went to Tuskegee. | 27:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | My mother went there. | 27:09 |
| Corine Mabry | Really? And then he went—was she from down that way? | 27:10 |
| Abrielle Beaton | She's from South Carolina. She followed her two sisters to Tuskegee. | 27:13 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. He started in Tuskegee and then he went to A&T. I don't know how the change came about. Maybe job wise, but that's what happened. | 27:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right? Let's see. So from Central, you went straight to NYU to pursue a degree— | 27:33 |
| Corine Mabry | Finished in June, NYU that September. | 27:40 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. So what was that transition like going to the big city from Durham? | 27:47 |
| Corine Mabry | Let's see. I think I had, I don't know it was a chip on my shoulder, but I just felt like it was just a larger city. I didn't really realize—I lived in the village once I moved out of the dormitory and I didn't realize I was living in the neighborhood everybody wants to live in. And so as soon as I could, I moved and went to Brooklyn. | 27:51 |
| Corine Mabry | It was just another city, just a big city. But see, we traveled a lot, an awful lot. Every summer we went somewhere. And when Daddy left Hillside and started teaching at Texas Southern, which was around my junior, senior year in high, in was it high school? My sophomore year in college, he went to Texas Southern to work. And we went to Texas every summer. Mama drove, and the stories were about going through all these other cities in Alabama and Georgia and everywhere as we got to Texas. | 28:16 |
| Corine Mabry | That's the only way you could really get there was either on the train. And sometimes because school would close for her later than it would for me and my brother, she would put us on the train and send us to Houston by ourselves. And we had to change trains in new Orleans because you left the North-South and you started going East-West. And I remember getting in New Orleans with my little brother. I was holding under his hand and trying to get a cab to go to the other train station, because it was two separate train stations. And I was just hailing a cab. Mama didn't say get a Black cab. She said, get a cab. So I'm hailing a cab. And the one cab driver came up to me and he said, "Little girl, I can't take you." He says, "But I'll send somebody else over here to get you." A White cab driver. And he did. And we went on over— | 28:52 |
| Abrielle Beaton | This is New Orleans? | 29:41 |
| Corine Mabry | —and made that. I think it's the innocence. The fact that they know you are just unaware of what is out there, but we made that. And we always had a compartment, so were just treated like Royal. So because all of the workers on the train, the word would get around, those little Black kids in the compartment. They would bring us ice cream, and anything else we could imagine. | 29:42 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 30:13 |
| Corine Mabry | Yep. My son on the other hand had his first train ride, I think when he was about fifteen or sixteen. In the meantime, my brother and I got on the train all by ourselves. | 30:14 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So that makes it different. If you'd been outside of Durham a lot before even having been in New York. | 30:25 |
| Corine Mabry | See, I had that privilege even more so than some of my friends, because I look now at people like Mickey Michaux—who he's older than I am, but we were still with that same old clique. Mickey's never really left Durham. He was a brief stint in the army and that was about it. Lavonia, Lavonia was not into the clique. She became the clique after all of us left and there was nobody else here. She was not in the groups, which I think causes her to do some of the crazy things she does now. It stifles your ability to see what really is a put down and what has nothing to do with the put down. It's just the natural scheme of things. I don't know. I'm glad I was able to get away from here. I never wanted to come back. | 30:29 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Really? | 31:21 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Cause I saw too many things happening and all of these things that I saw were in my own neighborhood and I just didn't want to come back to that. There had to be another way of doing things. And why did people treat one group of people so much—Mine was discrimination within the community. | 31:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Within the Black community. | 31:39 |
| Corine Mabry | That I was always fighting against. | 31:39 |
| Abrielle Beaton | How long were you in New York? | 31:45 |
| Corine Mabry | From the time I was nineteen until the time I was—how old was I when I left? I've been down here. I'm sixty-five now. I've been down here for six years, oh, six years. So it was '91 that I finally moved down. I had been coming back and forth a lot because my mother and father were both ill. That's why I came back. It's the only reason I— | 31:47 |
| Abrielle Beaton | That's the reason. | 32:07 |
| Corine Mabry | The only reason I came back. | 32:08 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 32:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Then everybody would say, "Well, come back, the place has changed." It done this. It has gotten larger. Yes, it has gotten larger, but it has not changed. And what I'm finding is that even the outsiders who are now coming in, choose a place like this because it's easy for them to now show their real colors. And it's something that I see that others just don't see. And it bothers me. It bothers me because the place isn't been growing the way it could grow. Right. There's a lot of potential here in this town, but it's just not growing. | 32:12 |
| Abrielle Beaton | So you were away during the whole time of— | 32:46 |
| Corine Mabry | Civil Rights. | 32:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | —urban renewal. | 32:49 |
| Corine Mabry | Right. | 32:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And for instance, like you talked about earlier. | 32:53 |
| Corine Mabry | Hayti. | 32:56 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Building—destroying Hayti by building the Durham freeway. And I've been trying to get at, how it was allowed to happen? | 32:56 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay, during that time. And a lot of the Black leaders had a lot to, well, not a lot to, in particular, had a lot to do with that. People at the Mutual sold the dollars. And I continue to say that they sold out everyone because they came, they were the ones who were to come back and convince the Blacks to accept it. Daddy was one of the ones who spoke out against it. I don't know if you've done anything on John Stewart's family. | 33:03 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. | 33:36 |
| Corine Mabry | He was the one who was very instrumental in convincing people that it should happen. As a matter of fact, he and my father died the same year. And when the Omegas had their Memorial, you know how they have it once a year, we were sitting together and I thought, oh gosh, of all people to be sitting with. I always say that he's what—he went to federal prison, too. And I'm not exactly sure what the exact charges were, but I do know that he took the fall for a lot of White men that he was involved with. And of course, when he came out, then anything that he asked for was his, but he never asked for anything that was going to help for Black people who really needed the help. So in this town we have been our own worst enemy. And it's one of the reasons why I really got involved with Durham committee. Because I said, let me get in there and see what they're planning to do now. | 33:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 34:41 |
| Corine Mabry | Because I knew that's where all of that started from. | 34:41 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. It's just hard for me to imagine being sold on that. I guess being on the other side of John Stewart and those who were doing the convincing. Because as I understand it, the trade-off was the receipt of, for instance, that small little shopping center on Fayetteville? | 34:41 |
| Corine Mabry | But see that they didn't call it a small little shopping center. They called it, they knew about the malls. It's going to be this huge mall. This thing, we won't have to go all the way to the—we're going to have a mall right here. And some people bought it. Other people— | 34:57 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Where did those people move? Those people whose homes were destroyed? | 35:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, let's see whose homes were destroyed. Stuart's house was destroyed, but by then he had already built down there, the old Hillside, the one that you all call old. That was my elementary school. | 35:17 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Sure. | 35:26 |
| Corine Mabry | Then up the street from that his two, the Dunes' daughters, who were his two daughters. Was Dunes related to Stewart? No, that was another family that was involved in all of that. So it was Stewart, the two Dunes, White Rock Church, that old church that we used to live right across the street when we were in the MacDougal house. The MacDougal house was destroyed. And then you started with the drug stores, the soda shop, the electrical shop, you know where the electricians, you were an electrician, you go there, grocery stores, DeShazor's Beauty Parlor, where the kids learn to be beauticians. | 35:28 |
| Corine Mabry | It was beauty parlor and school. It was my—I'm trying to think of some of the other things coming up that street. And all of that was before you got to St. Joseph. | 36:21 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 36:34 |
| Corine Mabry | It was before you got around that bend. They destroyed the whole, even the configuration of the street. | 36:34 |
| Abrielle Beaton | It's just so devastating to me because before you get to St. Joseph, all I see, like I told you before is that little shopping mall and that little fast food store that's not even open anymore. And I just— | 36:43 |
| Corine Mabry | Well see that, now that is an indication of exactly how things work in Durham. If you can dig down and find out the real truth, where that money came from to put that place up, who got the money, when it was built where the money really went and now it's closed. What good is it doing the community? | 36:56 |
| Corine Mabry | And yet when it was supposed to be coming up, everyone talked to them, oh, this is going to be your own fast food place. You won't have to go there. But I kept saying, they keep saying, they're going to sell fried bologna sandwiches. That's not helpful for anybody, much less the people who don't have money to eat. | 37:14 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right? | 37:31 |
| Corine Mabry | Why are you letting them sell? I kept bringing that up and nobody, everybody would just overshoot it. | 37:32 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And when was this? This was when you were in New York? | 37:39 |
| Corine Mabry | No, this was since I've been back home. | 37:39 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh, okay. Okay. | 37:43 |
| Corine Mabry | That place has just been built in the past two, three years, | 37:43 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 37:49 |
| Corine Mabry | That little quick store—in the past two, three years. | 37:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I thought I had seen it open before and I was shocked last time I'd been down there and it was closed. | 37:59 |
| Corine Mabry | It had just been—now, instead of them saying we are going to sell some, do you know of any soul food restaurants here in Durham that are owned by Blacks? | 37:59 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. | 38:05 |
| Corine Mabry | There you go. And yet when you think of soul food, who do you think about? | 38:08 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Us. Of course. | 38:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. So there you go. Instead of them saying, this is the kind of place we're going to be, it's going to be a restaurant. It's not going to be a drive through where you can drive through and call in your order and drive through and pick it up or something like that. No, it was going to be fried bologna sandwiches. And that's all I could think about fried bologna. I didn't even have those when I was growing up. Fried bologna sandwiches. | 38:10 |
| Corine Mabry | Eventually I think they added hamburgers and stuff because they saw that it wasn't going to sell. Even the people in the projects had better sense than to come up there and buy that. What they didn't have anybody on whatever committee was in charge of that, they didn't have anyone who knew that low income people always want. You look at their shopping carts, they're not buying generic foods, they're buying labels. I found that out in New York. Because my kids to my school came from one of the largest, low income projects in the country, Fort Greene. And I found out a lot. I found out a lot just working. | 38:31 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I think that, and I'm looking at the time, when do you have to? | 39:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh, what time is it? I have a meeting at four thirty and I got to go get some [indistinct 00:39:24]. | 39:19 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. One of the things I find myself kind of in a similar feeling is to you. I look at the strife we have within the Black community a lot and the class struggle. I'm from the Washington area. | 39:25 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. So you've seen that town go. | 39:40 |
| Abrielle Beaton | The urban flight, the suburban flight is so apparent. I mean, I live in Prince George's County, which is just the stereotypical Black middle class is where they go to get city to retreat from the lower income Black community. And while I appreciate the life my mother has given me, it's a nice neighborhood and stuff, I grapple with it because I feel like we were running away from something. Coming to Durham, I came in the fall of '94, started at Duke. That was the year that Raleigh-Durham area was voted the number one place to live and just a haven for Black people, Black middle class people to come and just prosper and all this and all that. | 39:45 |
| Corine Mabry | But they went to Atlanta. | 40:36 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. I came here and everyone was telling me this, there are these lovely homes here and there. Being at Duke, the only Black people I saw were the workers that I established relationships with. They weren't middle class. They were working class people who lived maybe on the edge of campus or in the other neighborhoods that are more or less run down now, Walltown or something like that. I'm saying to myself, where are all these— | 40:37 |
| Corine Mabry | Middle income, Black. | 41:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Middle income Black people. | 41:06 |
| Corine Mabry | That's what the same Blacks who come here to work in Research Triangle Park, ask. I keep saying to Durham committee, you've got to reach out to some of these new Blacks who are coming so you get some new ideas. But the fact is they don't want new ideas. They want it to be status quo, because that makes them who they are. That makes Ken who he is. Ken was a little bitty something crying, because Asa and I would not let him win baseball games when their backyards and our used to meet. I look at him now and I can't believe this is little Ken, but that's what makes Ken who he is. That's what makes Lavonia who she is. And she'll say whatever she mean. You read a comment of hers in the paper. She always add that she is from, because she really thinks it's great stuff and it's just not. | 41:07 |
| Abrielle Beaton | It pained me so much because I didn't see any cohesion among Black. | 41:51 |
| Corine Mabry | You won't. | 41:56 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And I— | 41:56 |
| Corine Mabry | You won't. | 42:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I think maybe I'm just thinking about a utopia. | 42:01 |
| Corine Mabry | No. | 42:06 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. I'm just really looking for it. I'm straining for it. I was disappointed to find out that it's just—might be even worse than D.C. | 42:06 |
| Corine Mabry | You see what happens is we keep falling into the traps that are put there for us without realizing that they are traps. We, as a people have bought into the great White father complex that has been built up and made up by them to convince them that they indeed are great. They know from whence they cometh. They know the settlers that they sent here to this country were nothing. So they had to build up all of this self-esteem, which they did very well for themselves. But in order to make them build up, they had to tear down the others and they have done an extremely good job of that and we have fallen into that particular trap. Hook, line and sinker, even to the extent that we now do it to each other. They even started that house against the field. | 42:15 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Sure. | 43:04 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. It's been that way ever since and it still goes on in one way or another. | 43:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Because in order for the Black middle class to feel built up, they got to be able to step on someone else. | 43:09 |
| Corine Mabry | And anybody who thinks the end is in sight must not see the haze that I see out there because I can't see through it. I tell you. | 45:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 45:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Maybe it's not to be, maybe it's simply not to be. Maybe this is the way it is to be so that God can figure out who's coming to heaven, who's going to Hell just by the way that we react to each other as people not White or Black. | 45:12 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 45:27 |
| Corine Mabry | You have to go. | 45:27 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I would love to, I think— | 45:33 |
| Corine Mabry | Are you driving or did you catch— | 45:34 |
| Abrielle Beaton | No. | 45:38 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh, okay. I'm just going to walk home. | 45:38 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I was going to say you could come out to the house one day. | 45:39 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Interview number two with Corine Mabry by Abrielle Beaton in Durham, North Carolina, November fourteenth, 1997. | 0:04 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. Do you want to— | 0:17 |
| Corine Mabry | My father came to A&T and he finished there. I think he finished his undergraduate work or a master's, I'm not sure because I know he had gone to Tuskegee before then and when he left A&T, it must have been some graduate work because he had already worked other places. And then he came to North Carolina to work. First in Greenville, North Carolina. And I was a little bitty [indistinct 00:00:47] and then to Durham. | 0:18 |
| Corine Mabry | And when he came to Durham, he and my mother both taught in the school system. Before that, my mother was attending Central and Greenville while he was in Greenville. And when the time finally came that both of them had finished and they moved here, they both started working in the Durham Public School Systems at Hillside and stayed there. My father stayed with Hillside for many years. This is about the time I was ready to go to college, he got a job in Texas, in Houston. Transferred, went there and was teaching at Texas Southern for a while. And I finished college and got ready to go to NYU in New York. And that's when he had this long talk with me and tried to prepare me for living on my own because I had been so protected. | 0:49 |
| Corine Mabry | And that summer when I went to see him in Houston, he had my own little place. He had rented this little place for me where I could stay by myself and all of that. I was scared to death. And that was the kind of person he was. He thought in advanced and then tried to prepare you for it. I cannot remember my father ever saying no to me. He would sit down and he'd say, "Well that's one way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. And I'm sure there are many other ways out there of doing it. You think about it and decide for yourself." That's just the way he always approached everything. And I think that's why I tend to think that way. But my mother on the other hand, it was "No, no, no, no, no. Definitely no." She's not that kind of person. But I really appreciated that and I've tried to do it with my own son. It doesn't work all the time, but I've tried to do it with him. | 1:54 |
| Abrielle Beaton | How old is your son now? | 2:49 |
| Corine Mabry | He's twenty-nine. | 2:51 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 2:51 |
| Corine Mabry | Going back to college. Was at Howard when he first got out of high school. Went to Howard, was put in the senior dormitory and forget it. I mean all he did was party because they were partying. They had finished all of their requirements and they were partying like I don't know what. And that's what he did. And I said, "You come home. You come home, you work." He got a job. That was his choice. He could either stay there and get it done or he could come home because I wasn't going to throw my money away like that. | 2:53 |
| Corine Mabry | So he came home and unfortunately in New York, young kids can get jobs that pay quite a bit and are prestigious, whether or not they have a degree or not. Which is why a lot of New York children stop school in high school. So he got a job with Donald Trump's lawyers in that office and he worked there. Of course, the Christmas bonuses and everything, he was doing just fine right down there in the Wall Street area with everybody else. And he thought he was something else. | 3:26 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Oh wow. | 4:01 |
| Corine Mabry | Until I moved down here to take care of my parents. I didn't push him, I said, If this is what you want to do, okay, go for it. But that's the salary you're going to be making when you're forty years old. You're not going to be making as much as someone else forty. How are you going to support a wife and family? But of course at that age, he was just partying. So when I moved down here, I left him up there— | 4:02 |
| Abrielle Beaton | What year was this? | 4:25 |
| Corine Mabry | That is what? '97? It must have been '91, '92. | 4:27 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Okay. | 4:30 |
| Corine Mabry | I had retired in '90. But before I could get my act together to start my traveling, my mother got ill and I had to come home because my father was also ill. So, I just came on down. And for a while, I tried back and forth but that didn't work. That was a long haul. And I must have made I guess about 30 some trips back and forth that way, when I decided it was too much on me. And then when I got here, I was too tired to do anything. So when I moved down I said, "Okay, you've got the apartment but you've got to pay the rent on the apartment now. I'm not going to pay that for you." | 4:31 |
| Corine Mabry | And we had a lovely apartment. I was on the twenty-third floor in Brooklyn and looked out over all of Manhattan, part of Long Island because I could see the planes landing. And then from the other side I could see all down to Coney Island. | 5:11 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Wow. | 5:31 |
| Corine Mabry | In Brooklyn. It was gorgeous. It was really nice. And I missed that view. I always miss that view. So he stayed for a while. He found out he wasn't going to be able to do everything that he wanted to do and take care of business too. So next thing, "Ma, I'm worried about you down there." And he came down. See boys are not like girls. Boys will hang on until the very end. And even now, there's the basement of the house I'm in, has a kitchen and bathroom. So he's down there like that's his apartment. But his little girlfriend is not satisfied with that. So she's pushing him to get his own place and I'm so happy. | 5:31 |
| Corine Mabry | I don't know what in the world to do because at twenty-nine it's time for him to move on out. But he did decide on his own and I think she had a lot to do with that, to go back to school. And that's what he's doing now. He's in that Shaw K program where he could work during the day and go to school at night. So he's doing that and we'll see what happens. He signed up for a Chapel Hill Police Department. Now his father was a New York City policeman. So I guess that's in the blood and I can't fight it. I'm just letting him see for himself what that job really entails as I think he has no idea. | 6:13 |
| Corine Mabry | And knowing that he's as scared as he is of blood, as soon as he sees his first victim or touches his first dead body and the stuff oozes out, he's going to give up that job in a moment. So I'm just sitting back, letting him find out for himself. But I think a lot of my attitude has to do with what I was telling you about my father. Go ahead. And this is what he used to say, "It's your little red wagon. You can push it, you can pull it or you can sit in it and let somebody else pull you." And that it really is life, if you think about it. So that's that. Now what else shall we talk about? | 6:48 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Let's see. You mentioned— | 7:31 |
| Corine Mabry | Oh. | 7:33 |
| Abrielle Beaton | You mentioned in the last interview and also a little bit now, I guess your reasons for coming back to Durham and how that was basically just contingent upon of taking care of your parents. Not that you necessarily wanted to, that you would've done it on your own. | 7:34 |
| Corine Mabry | When I left here at nineteen, I promised I was never coming back, which is why I made sure I had finished college and had something under my belt that could carry me on. Never intended to come back to Durham, North Carolina. I found it to be, when I would come back, I found that there was no change. The place had grown physically, but the mental mind, the mindset of everybody here, was the same. At least those people that I was coming in contact with. I have been put on a committee though that has—I'm very excited about it. And it's a PAC committee, it's a formation. You might have read about it in the paper the other day. | 7:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Which one? | 8:30 |
| Corine Mabry | Of all the political active groups in Durham, White and Black sent representatives to a meeting last, I think it was Tuesday. And we sat and talked and had dinner and got to know each other. And then from that group committee, a committee was formed and I happened to be placed on the committee and we're going to see what we can do about racial harmony in the city but not approaching it through solving some of the problems in the city so that the blocks can intervene and let the others know why some things exist and how some of the laws that are being passed and some of the rules that are out there might just cause this to happen. | 8:30 |
| Corine Mabry | Last night at the Durham Committee, we had a meeting with housing and just had to let them know what was found by our housing group when we went into some of the low income housing here. And some situations are really atrocious. Really atrocious. And of course, people try to explain it away, but that's no excuse. Just because you are going home to a good home at the end of the day, doesn't mean that other people shouldn't have a decent place to stay twenty-four seven. | 9:19 |
| Corine Mabry | But when you think about child being afraid to go out to play and then coming into a—where is the peace in his life or her life? Where is the peace? And maybe that's why we are having some of those problems. But I'm very excited about being on that committee. And it's the first in this area where groups have really come together to talk and do, not just give it superficial, like the one with John Hope Franklin. The night over at the Durham, I call it Durham High School, Old Durham High School, Magnet Center, I can't think of it's name. That was so superficial. | 9:53 |
| Corine Mabry | He spoke and then we broke up in groups and of course, in each group I suppose there was someone who dominated the talking and if you didn't have a strong moderator it just got out of hand. And then that was only for a few minutes and then you jumped up, you never got to know anybody really. And you went back into the auditorium and that was it. There will be a future meeting they said. When? Where? Who? How? What are we to do? What should we be doing in the meantime? So I have better feelings about this group. Yeah. | 10:35 |
| Abrielle Beaton | That's good. | 11:09 |
| Corine Mabry | Mm-hmm. | 11:09 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I know some about the history of the Durham Committee and as I understand it, it's really a political group that really encourages voting among the Black community and possibly even endorses candidates. What attracted you to the committee when you came? Did you came back to Durham? | 11:11 |
| Corine Mabry | Well my father had been involved as long as I can remember. And I'm not sure how old the Durham Committee is, but I do know it was a small group before I left here. And my father was active, at least he went to the meetings a lot. Now, when I came back, what caused me to go to that first meeting? Oh, I was taking some notes because I was going to do a newspaper article. I had started to write for a newspaper and I was taking notes because I was going to do a newspaper article on it. And I got there and it was so funny because everyone was coming up saying—it was the night they were voting on who was going to be the new leader. And everyone was saying, "Aren't you going to vote? Aren't you going to vote?" And I was saying, "I can't vote, I'm not a member." | 11:33 |
| Corine Mabry | And they were looking at me like, "You are not a member?" And later I found out that membership meant that you were Black. If you're Black you're a member, automatically. Anyone can walk in there on any night that there's a meeting and just sit down and participate. So they were like, "Who does she think she is? What does she think she is? She's not a member then what is she?" And I didn't realize why I was getting all those looks until I found out what the ruling really was on membership. So I just started coming to meetings and of course, I speak up a lot. So, that caused me to really get involved in some of the things that were going. Right now, I'm co-chair of the youth committee. So, I go to a lot of meetings in the city that have to do with things that pertain to you. | 12:26 |
| Corine Mabry | One of the things is the Peach Committee over at Central that has to do with removing lead in some of the buildings where children are eating the lead. You know that story. And the health department has joined in on that. And I think the next step on that is to notify these landlords what we have found, what we done to try to remove it because we have sent teams in just to wash down a block. But that's a temporary solution. And to try to see if we can find a more permanent solution. I think the grant didn't afford enough money so that they could do the painting and removal of the blinds and put new blinds up. So, we are now going to the landlords to let them know, as if they didn't already, that these situations exist and what can be done to correct it. And that we would be willing to do it at a nominal fee if they just supplied the paint and everything. So I find that interesting. | 13:21 |
| Corine Mabry | And then I'm on the youth service board, which portions money to different organizations in the city that serve youth. Right now, we were looking for an organization that did more toward retribution when a child is charged. And they said, "Well because of this you will serve so many days of detention but you will also have to pay back that family and different ways of retribution and everything." And we were looking for a group that geared its program toward that part of it. I think we found one. So that's what that group does. | 14:25 |
| Corine Mabry | And I'm on—that's why I told you, let me look at this calendar, on the social service board. I told you about that I think. Didn't I? Last time. | 15:06 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Mm-hmm. | 15:16 |
| Corine Mabry | And I'm finding that very interesting, very interesting. But one of the committees that I'm on from that board is the child fatality. And that is so depressing. God, it's depressing. And I haven't done any statistical work on it, but I really feel that perhaps the city has a higher ratio of suicides than even New York. When you think of the teenage population there and the number of suicides and the teenage population here and the number of suicides, I was really appalled at that vast number. And the listing that I get each time is for one month, from one time to the next time. And you see all these kids who have died or killed themselves, a lot of the babies because of abuse or neglect. | 15:17 |
| Corine Mabry | And the older children, seventeen, sixteen, suicide because they just don't see any future. They don't see any out, from their situation and it's really depressing. But they had a meeting last week and they have decided some things to plan, some things to try to do to prevent it because I got the feeling the first meeting that all they did was just go over who had died but not take the next step. What could we have done to prevent it? So I think now we've decided to try some preventive measures, put some plans into effect. | 16:18 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Right. | 16:59 |
| Corine Mabry | Is that all? Oh, no. I got a call last week and they have placed me on the, what is it? It's not the planning board. Is it the planning board? Anyhow, people who want to change the zoning in that board. And I haven't been indoctrinated as yet. No one has interviewed me or taken me through the ropes. But that's to come next week sometime. And that's it. Look, that's my mundane existence. But I'm enjoying it. I really am enjoying it that I feel, because I have seen so much and been involved so much in New York, that I'm really in a position to add something to it. And I come with varied experiences rather than having been here all my life and just having this to offer. So, that's the way it's going. | 17:01 |
| Abrielle Beaton | That's what keeps you busy. | 17:59 |
| Corine Mabry | Yep. | 17:59 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Does the Durham Committee have a committee specifically designed to deal with the problems or deal with anything having to do with the public school system in Durham? | 18:02 |
| Corine Mabry | Durham, they have an education committee. Now, Lavonia Allison, I don't know if you know her, Dr. Allison chairs that committee and Anita Hammond I think, is her co-chair. But they attend the education, the Board of Education meetings and come back with reports. And that's all I want to say about that committee because being an educator, you know I must have my own thoughts about it. | 18:15 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I wonder why. Guess I'm wondering why you haven't— | 18:43 |
| Corine Mabry | Gone that way. | 18:47 |
| Abrielle Beaton | —that committee. Yeah. | 18:47 |
| Corine Mabry | Well, part of it is because of the people involved and I didn't want to rock boats, but at the same time, I do things sometimes. I circumvent to get to a certain point to keep from stepping on other people's toes, but at the same time to try to get something done. And I felt that I could still help children by working on the boards that I do work on rather than being on that and clashing every minute with them. So, that's why. | 18:50 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. Do you see a real difference in what you experienced in the New York Public Schools with what you saw when you came back to Durham? | 19:26 |
| Corine Mabry | Okay. What I see happening even now is the same thing that I saw happening in New York in the '50s and '60s. It's the same thing. And I used to come home and say to Mama, when I would tell her some of the things that were happening in my school and she'd say, "Oh my goodness." I said, "Don't 'oh my goodness' because I see the beginnings of it happening right here now and the contributing factor is drugs." I don't know whether legalizing drugs would stop it for a while or at least identify those people who need physical help. | 19:35 |
| Corine Mabry | And just what? It would take the money part out of it. And I think that's what keeps that going, is the money. And we tend to concentrate on the small seller. The little guy standing on the corner. He's making pennies compared to the man who has this mansion down on one of the islands or in a South American country. I mean he's making nothing compared to what they're making and their hands are quote, clean, unquote. You know what I mean? | 20:09 |
| Corine Mabry | And that's where we have to concentrate. And at the same time, I think if the money angle was taken out of it, if it were legalized, even for a short term, it would be for long enough, that they would have some bills. They wouldn't be able to maintain these places that they have. They'd have to find something else to do. I also think that our borders need better patrolling. I really do. In this day of technology, there's no reason for people to be able to fly those small planes that evade all detectors and bring all that stuff in here. It's not grown here except for the marijuana. So, how does it get here? And then planes that come in and with all this stuff on there, why is it they don't have dogs sniffing before the plane takes off? | 20:39 |
| Corine Mabry | But well, there's so many people with their hands in the till when it comes to drugs, people that you would not even suspect that, this is why I think it is perpetuated because it's too lucrative for too many people and nobody really wants to stop it. But that's where the problem really is with children having trouble in school, with parents having trouble controlling their children, which was something unthought of down here before. And if a parent had a problem controlling a child, there was always somebody else in that neighborhood who was willing to step up and take over. | 21:32 |
| Corine Mabry | But now, people are afraid and the fear comes from drugs and with drugs came the guns. Guns and drugs are necessary components. And that's what put fear out there. And I tell everybody, fear is a four letter word. It is. You just cannot be afraid. You can't. You have to do what has to be done. | 22:14 |
| Abrielle Beaton | And I guess I'm still thinking of the comparison— | 22:41 |
| Corine Mabry | Between the two time? | 22:46 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Yeah. Or even between the two places because do you think that drugs here have even more of effect on the kids because there's so much less to do in Durham? | 22:47 |
| Corine Mabry | There's less to do there. It's not that there's less to do is because there's no light at the end of the tunnel. The kids can't see any light. Now, Work First may help that situation. It may escalate that situation. What I think might happen is those few parents who have control of their children now because they're home, when they get out of school, they pick them up, they bring them home, there's nobody talking to that child who shouldn't be talking to that child, between the school and the house. When the child gets home, there's adult supervision there. | 23:01 |
| Corine Mabry | When that parent has to go to work, he doesn't get off until five, four-thirty, six, seven o'clock at night. Who's going to be taking care of that child? Who's going to be looking for out for that child? Who's going to have that child's back to keep somebody from saying, "Hey come here. Let's get on with this." | 23:46 |
| Corine Mabry | So this is the fear that I have about Work First. And I wonder if the people who are responsible for it being, thought that far. Sometimes, we think just to the first solution and we don't think of the repercussions behind what we may be doing. And I think government really needs to look at that again, I think they need to reexamine that. | 24:03 |
| Abrielle Beaton | What is the Work First program? | 24:28 |
| Corine Mabry | Work First is that welfare families, if they have the health to get out and work, a parent with a child over two, I think they let them stay home until the child is two, has to get out and find a job. They have to work if they are going to make money. And then once they make enough to sustain themselves, they're cut off of welfare. In trying to reduce welfare roles, this is their solution. | 24:29 |
| Corine Mabry | And I laugh in social service meetings and I said, we're just going to have more of a population because women are going to start getting pregnant as soon as the child is two years old, they'll get pregnant again and then this will be their way of staying home and solving the problem. Of course that's not the answer. So it'll be interesting. It will be interesting. There are some people, however, for whom jobs have been found and they're out there, they were ready to work, they have their families under control, but most of them have backups. | 25:01 |
| Corine Mabry | Their mothers are home to take care of those kids. And that's the one factor that I've found almost in every case that's successful so far. There is some backup person there to take care of what kids do exist. And remains to say that's going to be another thing to watch, to see how that works out. | 25:34 |
| Corine Mabry | And with people laying off so many people, where are they going to find jobs? Where all the jobs? The tobacco factories aren't here anymore. And that was the solution for everything before. You needed a little extra money, you got a part-time job at the tobacco factory and you could build that room onto your house or whatever you wanted to do. Now, they just aren't here. And no other industry has come into this town that does not require skilled technology as one of the prerequisites, a background in that. So I don't know. | 25:59 |
| Abrielle Beaton | That reminds me of the first interview when we were talking about, I guess urban renewal and the diminishing of all the shops and stores on Fayetteville Street and we were talking about Quicks, and the fried baloney sandwiches, as if that was going to really make a big difference. Is there anything that the Durham Committee either focuses on or just aside from the Durham Committee, what you think could not only rejuvenate the city but like we were just talking about, just simply providing jobs for people? Where are the jobs? | 26:36 |
| Corine Mabry | Mm-hmm. My whole thing is, is it right that tobacco was the crop at that time? And I really think with the population increasing every year and people wearing sometimes cotton all year round because it can be made of different weights, the flannel for the winter, the thin cotton for the summer, that that's the crop to go into. And we go to other countries who make that good fine quality cotton, why can't we do it here for sheets and stuff like that? So you can get that 310 whatever it is, sheets. Why can't we do that here? Get that prima cotton right here and it would supply jobs for everybody. You don't pick it by head anymore but at least people could work at the factories that made the materials. We used to be a textile state also. And even those plants are closing because we're giving our business overseas. I think this government has to get this country back on its track first, then we can start to go overseas. | 27:22 |
| Corine Mabry | The cotton that comes in here from overseas, they have insects in there. You have to wash it first before you can wear it. All those little things. Sometimes I really think we are too lenient and I think some other countries might be putting something in the stuff that will eventually kill all of us. I really worry about that because we think everybody has the same good heart that we go into a meeting with and people don't. They scheme a lot. | 28:30 |
| Corine Mabry | I also think, and this is something I probably shouldn't be saying, since my fore parents were brought here in chains, but I really think we let foreigners into the country much too easily. No restrictions. Guy gets off a plane at JFK and by six o'clock the next morning, he's working at somebody's kitchen. Now he hasn't been examined for malaria, he hasn't been examined for anything else, tuberculosis. He hasn't been examined for anything. He might not get that exam for two more weeks. | 29:04 |
| Corine Mabry | By that time he could have infected God knows how many people. You come home, if your resistance is very high, you get a little fever, you say you've got a touch of the flu, you really don't know what you've just had. So it's affecting all of us. And hepatitis I understand, is on the rise all over everywhere, especially in California. And I think a lot of that has to do with the workers who work in kitchens. We don't know what's happening back there in the kitchen. Even the man who's preparing, chopping the food and preparing. He cuts his hand. You think he stops to go wash it off and put a bandage on? No, he's got to have that stuff chopped so the chef can go on with the cooking. We don't know what's happening. And the standards that we once had, have just flown the coop. | 29:33 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Mm-hmm. That reminds me of something I see a lot now. Just being here in Durham for the last three years, I've seen more and more Hispanics joining the population. How do you think that's going to affect the future of employment, I guess, for Black people here in Durham? | 30:20 |
| Corine Mabry | Well I think Black people, I said it the other day at this racial meeting. I said, "if we don't start to pull them in—this group—and this group should have some Hispanic representation here." I said, "because they are really politically astute." And we started talking about the incident that happened at my church, Holy Cross, the church where it was on the front page of the papers that Holy Cross doesn't want the Hispanics. It wasn't Holy Cross that didn't want the Hispanics. The Hispanics had been coming to Holy Cross with a priest that spoke Spanish. All of a sudden the diocese pulls that priest out, gives us another priest who does not speak Spanish. Which, what does that say to you? It says you're not wanted. | 30:44 |
| Corine Mabry | Now in the Catholic church, you have no control over who comes to your church. You take whoever the diocese sends you. And they were up in arms and this was their way of trying to get the diocese attention because they had been begging, I understand, for a church of their own for a long time. And you go to any large city and you will find Catholic churches of every racial denomination. You'll find the Greek Orthodox church, you'll find Yugoslavian church, you'll find an Italian Catholic church where mostly Italians go. | 31:29 |
| Corine Mabry | And you know that these are ethnic churches and when you go there, you know what type of mass you're going to have. Really, the mass said in that particular language. I guess that's what they were looking for. They wanted their own church. Their churches are decorated a little differently from the average Catholic church. Their masses are said in Spanish. They have certain saints that they revere more than the ones that the Blacks would revere or the Italian would revere. So they have their own saints and this is what they were asking for. | 32:03 |
| Corine Mabry | And I said to the group, wasn't that politically astute because you know we don't have people coming into mass with cameras. But supposedly, this was a spontaneous thing and yet here was a picture of them filing out of the church. How did the cameramen know and the newspaper reporters know to be there at that time, at that mass? See? So once they take over, they're going to leave us in the dust if we don't get our act together. They will leave us in the dust. They are very politically astute. | 32:40 |
| Corine Mabry | And I think that with construction, since most of them are here in construction doing construction work, we'll find that they are like Asians who come here because they can't get licenses in some areas. They have to work doing other things until such time. And that's what we're going to find. You're going to find Spanish medical doctors, you'll find Spanish teachers, you're going to find Spanish lawyers, you're going to find Hispanics doing everything. | 33:15 |
| Corine Mabry | And I think back to construction, the whole look of this town will change because some of their own Mexican ideas are going to be reflected when they get their own construction companies. Mexican ideas are going to be reflected in the designs. We going to find real stucco houses, not stucco like that, that they found up in Cary that had to be pulled off because it was synthetic or whatever. The stucco houses, the tile roofs, which I would love to help on my house. We going to find all of that. | 33:46 |
| Corine Mabry | The whole—there will be a noticeable change in the structure of this town. We really will. So, I think they have a lot to bring. Everybody has a lot to bring. And the country, even though the term melting pot is used a lot, we're not a melting pot and we shouldn't be a melting pot. We're a good fine stew. A soup where everything in there has its own character and lends a little something to everything else and you put it together and it's great. But that's the way it should be because everybody has something to bring to the table. | 34:18 |
| Abrielle Beaton | I think that you bring a really interesting perspective on how Durham used to be and how it is now. And because you're politically involved in it now, I wonder, when you talk to people who knew Durham then, when you were there as a child, and who's who live here now, who aren't as politically involved, what is the general feeling? | 34:59 |
| Corine Mabry | A lot of them have given up. They've just given up. They don't think the place is going to get any better. They haven't been able to see anything that was done any better. Most of their friends are dying out. They don't reach out. And communication is really almost nil. You think now Black newspapers, the Carolina Times, it comes out once a week. But the news in there that is Durham News is from two weeks before when you submit something there, you have to have it two weeks before it comes out. And that in itself keeps communication at a low. By the time you read something, it's already happened, that your time for getting involved is over. | 35:27 |
| Corine Mabry | I think there needs to be a weekly or daily, semi-weekly, something some kind of paper or pamphlet out that lets people know what's going on. And when I say lets people know, I mean those newcomers who are coming to Durham because they are the ones who are going to make the changes. I don't see those died in the wool Durhamites making that many changes. I really do not. They are set in their ways. They don't really want to see any change. Change to them would mean a change in their way of living and sometimes, it would be for the worst because all they have going for them is the Black, White thing. The Black, White thing. If you would cut out the Black, White thing, they would be nowhere and they would be no one. And everybody wants to be somebody. So that's what I see happening. | 36:15 |
| Corine Mabry | Now, some of my friends who are new to the city, I'm in a book club and most of those people are newcomers to Durham and they don't want to have anything to do with Durham Committee because of what they've heard about it or stories that they have heard they really don't want to get into mainstream Durham. And most of the time when you ask why, it's because of some incident where they've been somewhere and they have been put down by one of supposedly, the Durham elite. And they feel, why try to fight it? I'll go to work, I'll come home and stay in my own neighborhood. And that's what they do. | 37:09 |
| Corine Mabry | So this town is missing out on a lot of brains, a lot of thoughts, a lot of new ideas, a lot of new energy because of that. But as I said before, it behooves those others to keep them in their place because people would listen to them and their new ideas, rather than these same old things that are coming out over and over. Back to education committee. Right Back to that same point. This is why I don't want to come head on with that because it's an established thing and in time, in time. And this is the south, you can't do things overnight. It takes time. | 37:49 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Do you have any final thoughts or words about anything that we talked about or? | 38:31 |
| Corine Mabry | Really, this past week has changed my whole attitude about Durham. I think there is a good future here. Atlanta was the place in the south, but Atlanta is its own thing. It has its own pockets all around. I think we really could become the place in the south. I really think we could. If this group works out well, I think we would be setting a precedent and all these other people who've been up, even Jesse Jackson and all of the rest and preaching about stuff, but doing actually nothing. When you look, what have you done? You don't see anything. I think this can work. I really think it can work. I feel very good about it. Now, two weeks later I might call you and say, "Guess what?" But really right now I feel it will work. | 38:38 |
| Corine Mabry | There's some influential people on both sides there. And like I said, I'm in a peculiar spot because I bring stuff from other places, but I'm an old Durhamite and so I can say things that somebody else probably couldn't and I do. So that's why I think we're going to be okay. I think we're going to be okay. I think even Duke might change some things, even with the lynching of the little baby. I think even Duke will bring some change. And we are not so sure that that wasn't a message because of some changes in personnel that we don't know how to read that yet. We're still working on that. But I think the people at Duke are going to find that they need us. They need us. They've taken advantage of the Black population a long time, but they need us. They need the whole city. | 39:28 |
| Corine Mabry | They can't stay here in isolation. They've got to reach out. And not just in the neighborhoods surrounding their campus. They've got to become a part of this city. They've been here much too long. They own too much property here. Either use it for the good of everyone or give it up. Give it up. Developers would be glad to buy. Maybe we could get some good businesses in here if we had more land close to other places. So I feel good. I feel good. Aren't you glad we waited this long to have this? Because it would've really been on a down note had we not, I tell you. But right now, I'm very up about this. | 40:23 |
| Abrielle Beaton | Great. | 41:05 |
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