Behind the Veil Undergraduate class, guest Dr. Helen G. Edmonds, 1994 March 17
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| Speaker 1 | I do now is to start with Stella. And Stella will introduce herself to Dr. Edmonds and then we'll go around and Stella. | 0:01 |
| Stella | Okay. When we were ready, just met. do | 0:10 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You want, let me press the Flex (laughter), | 0:12 |
| Stella | Do you want us to talk about what we're doing now? | 0:16 |
| Speaker 1 | Well, let's do that. And then Kim, you can just mention maybe two statements and then we can hear you as fully. So let okay. Why don't you indicate what you're doing. | 0:20 |
| Stella | Okay. because I was in another American African American history course here, and we read some of John Hope Franklin's works Leslie advised me to maybe interview him. And because I read his Archival Odyssey and Dilemma of the Negro Scholar and other such essays in which he speaks about the obstacles and the circumstances, discrimination, the segregation under which he was working, I became interested in finding out how he pursued history, what encouraged him, what discouraged him, his motivations, and just basically just get more information that than what he's already published and what other people have published about him. So I've had a series of interviews with him that went very well, and I feel I have a lot of information now to write my paper. | 0:29 |
| Speaker 1 | Okay. | 1:18 |
| Kimberly Council | My name is Kimberly Council. I'm a senior at North Carolina Central University. my project is on Cly Scarborough the organizations that she was a part of, the contributions that she made to society and, and, and her, basically her history and, and the types of things that she was involved in. I originally wanted to do my paper on the African American Elite, but as I started collecting material, I saw that there was a lot of material personal material on Ms. Scarborough, and that her family was still in the area, as a matter of fact, within the vicinity of North Carolina Central University, and that they had done a lot for the African American community. And so I focused my paper on Mrs. Cly Quinn Full with Scarborough. | 1:20 |
| Alicia Fleming | I'm Alicia Fleming. I'm junior History major at North Carolina University. my topic is the Knolls Development in Chapel Hill. | 2:07 |
| Speaker 1 | I didn't hear it. | 2:17 |
| Alicia Fleming | The Knolls. | 2:18 |
| Speaker 1 | Spell it for me. | 2:19 |
| Alicia Fleming | K N O L L S Development. the reason that I chose that topic is because I'm working with the community service project K V A, the Knolls Community Development Association. And it's an opportunity to build houses and stuff for African Americans to move back into that community. What I'm gonna do in my paper is compare the Jim Crow period and the function of the community, and define the community during that period and compare it to the community. Now today. | 2:19 |
| Valerie Bell | My name is Valerie Bell. I'm a senior at North Carolina Central University. I'm a history major, and my topic is the African American women, the violence perpetrated on women during the, during 1940 to 1950. And I had to refocus my topic because, you know, you, you really have a hard time trying to interview people about rapes and legends. So now I'm trying to focus on how hard it is to document things like that, the silent tears of women. | 2:57 |
| Nicole Owens | Hi, my name is Nicole Owens. I'm a junior at Duke University, and my major Afro-American Studies and Philosophy pre-Law, and my project began with the focus on, well, we took a lot of avenues, but we try to focus on my family because I found that from both sides of my family on mother's side and my father's side, that there's been a lot of oral history that's been passed down and a lot of document history that's been, that's been kept and preserved. And when I went home last week for Spring break, I began to do some interviews. I had four interviews really extensive interviews with a lot of helpful information. And each interview was approximately an hour long. And then I had a lot of documents and pictures and things that I didn't even realize that we had. And it turns out that I'm able to focus more on the position, the, the economic and political position that my family played. And there were three prominent families in this community. It's called the Mount Springs Community where I live. And it turns out that my great-grandfather's family, and it turns out that his wife, my great-grandmother's family were two of the most prominent Black families in the community. And which, | 3:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | What's the name Of the community? | 4:37 |
| Nicole Owens | Mountain Spring Community in Anderson? Well, it's in South Carolina. Oh. And Anderson, South Carolina. Yeah, I know Anderson. And my grand and I really, I didn't realize until I did this research that it was my great-grandmother's family was like the I guess you say the most elite family in the community. I mean, even as far as Blacks or Whites went. And they, there was like a really powerful family. So I decided, and I also talked to a lady who knew the family really well, and her family owned a lot of land. And they were pretty powerful economically at that time, at a time when a lot of Blacks were sharecroppers and were independent. They had their own farms and they, they hired people to work their land. So I'm want to focus on those three families and the impact they had on the community. | 4:38 |
| Unknown Speaker | Hi, my name's [indistinct 00:05:27] at [indistinct 00:05:27] I'm a history major. And I'm talking about the I only writing of the, the blues tradition on the what? The blues tradition. | 5:27 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You gotta almost spell that for my age. | 5:36 |
| Unknown Speaker | (laughter). I said I, I'll be documenting the the blues tradition. | 5:39 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | The blues position. Tradition. Oh, tradition. I'm sorry. Gotcha. | 5:43 |
| Unknown Speaker | Documenting the travel of the Blues tradition from and Alabama up the East Coast, New York, Detroit Chicago. and among the issues that we're gonna be dealing with are the demographic changes as to, you know, as, as to both who performs and listen to who. and focusing on you know, certain hotpot in Northline during being one of during, during while it wasn't in Detroit or Chicago as far as the Blues went, or, or New York. yeah, it was kind of a secondary, you know, a secondary center. the blues, you know there certain individuals in the community that would be able to give us, you know inside as to, you know certain things were going on, how they feel about the changes on demographics. Among some of the people that we, that Scarborough and people contact with were guitar Slam Watch for Sam. both of whom I, I don't know their real names because no one knows their names. The way that they refer to. And I'll give some references by Glenn Hesson folk University of University of California, | 5:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You know, one of the frequent telephone calls I get when, you know, from the younger people talking about what's passed and passed, they always ask me about the McPhatter. Have you anything? You come across that name. | 7:07 |
| Unknown Speaker | Where have— | 7:21 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | McPhatter of Durham, Clyde Mc, maybe it's Mac fatter. I guess it's, is it They always Do you, can you find me something on the Mac thas? I'm always so sorry. | 7:23 |
| Unknown Speaker | (laughter). | 7:34 |
| Shane McKnight | My name is Shane McKnight, and I'm a senior at Duke University. My majors at Economics and Public Policy, and I'm focusing on the Work Condition of African Americans between 1940 and 1960, and a particular focus on African American involved in labor unions. And my reason, I guess, rationale behind doing this study is the majority of history courses and African American studies courses that I've had in school has been involved with slavery, I guess. | 7:36 |
| Shane McKnight | So I, I've gotten a, a broadcast of knowledge about that era, and I read like a lot of current periodicals, you know, that tells about the situation with Blacks, but modern times. But there's like a big gap in between them that I didn't really know much about. So I went to study the 1940s, 1940s and 1960 just to see what, you know, what the working conditions were like after Americans and how they were trying to change things, I guess through the, more through the infrastructure that was already set up, I guess, through the unions. 'cause a lot of the stuff that's publicized is just through the market and the dynamic speeches and the leaders and stuff like that. But the kind of normal everyday person's life gets basically left out. And I guess that's when I wanted to, you know, discover what the normal everyday labor went through. He or she went to work on an everyday basis. And, and how effective were they in working with the unions and changing their position? | 8:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | May I ask a question? Oh, by all means. What about, what about the the scope of that? Are you going to take the whole 50 United States to do this topic? No. Or you confining it to No, I'm working an area you can handle. Yeah, it | 8:54 |
| Shane McKnight | Is just with a | 9:05 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Juror. Oh, whoa. Well, that's right. Yeah. Because I figured, I figured it would take you 40 more years to graduate if that was, you'd be so busy. thanks very much. | 9:05 |
| Alicia Summers Peaks | My name is Alicia Summers Peaks. I'm a women's studies major and AFAM major, and I'm writing a piece of historical fiction based on a story of women who are involved with Women in Action for the Prevention of Violence, which was an organization started here in Durham in the late sixties by Mrs. Spalding. So I'm, I'm interviewing women, getting their stories and putting it together to make my own woman. And basically she learns that no matter how hard her life is, she able to help other people. And she basically gets enlight about [indistinct] and grassroots organizations. | 9:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yep. I'm very familiar with that organization. (laughter), they are having the annual dinner sometime in April. 13th, 13th of April. I wouldn't try to urge you all to try to get to that, although your president is going to be the speaker, the Duke University President Manel. But, but I tell him, I said, I can't go $45 for (laughter). You. Right. But anyway, that's a good organization that you are working with. Alright, | 9:56 |
| David Swineton | Good evening. My name is David Swineton, and I'm a history, a history major senior at Duke University. And what I'm really focusing on is trying to answer three questions. And I'm, I'm interviewing people mainly at Hill Haven Nursing Home. And I'm trying to find out what life was like trying to Jim Crow era between the races as they remember it from their youth, from, from a, a child's perspective. | 10:25 |
| David Swineton | And so I'm trying to find out what life was like for the Black child. For the White child, and to what extent, to what extent to there was interaction between the chil between children and what were, what was the ramification ramifications, if there was interaction, what were the ramifications of an interaction family life and, and so on and so forth. And so, and what I'm finding so far at now is that there're kind, there are misconceptions not misconceptions, but they're different conceptions of reality when I, when I interview an African American, as opposed to when I interview a White male an elderly person as to what is the, the way things were as— | 10:54 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You have another institution here. Is there not one at Hillcrest? Hillcrest Convalescent Home? | 11:41 |
| David Swineton | Hillcrest? | 11:46 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I know Hill Haven because that's where I go to visit sometimes. (laughter). Oh, | 11:46 |
| Andre D. Vann | Good evening. My name is Andre D Vann. I think my topic is is entitled Black Women Unite, is to look at the Black Women's Club movement in Durham, North Carolina from 19 17, 19 53. And directly, I'm focusing on the Daughters Dorcas Club of which is founded in 1977. | 11:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Tell me some more, because, you know, I'm also writing on women's clubs, but mine, I went too far back. I went back to the 1900 and I bit off more than I can comfortably digest, but yeah, that period you have is up to 53. 53. Why'd you stop at 53? | 12:17 |
| Andre D. Vann | Well one of the presidents of the Daughters of Dorcas as well as the North Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. Mm-hmm. Group G Rush. but that's the end of her tenure. Yeah. And that's just a, that's a period that I chose to talk that she had. She | 12:36 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Was involved. You're gonna examine what they, their activities here in, | 12:50 |
| Andre D. Vann | In Durham as well as state implications because those who many times were presidents of the generation here in Durham, or the Durham Dorcas Club in Durham, were also involved on the state level. And many had also national positions within Federation. | 12:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | What do you think about what do you think about the Federation Federated Club you talking, writing on, and I guess you take it back to— | 13:11 |
| Andre D. Vann | 1890 1890 1896, I— | 13:21 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Believe. Well, 96 is when they gave their first organization. And then Mary Church Terrell was the leader there. That's yes. That's the lady she has written on. I have quoted from her in my work on this club. (laughter). Fine. Well ask you about the, you doing, who's doing something on the National Council of Negro Women? You figure that's too recent, huh? | 13:24 |
| Andre D. Vann | No, but I'm not sure. | 13:54 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, I have recall Ms. Bethune created it in 1936, 30 December 35, I think. Well, I have one of those staff book coming out from National Council. She's, who's that? Stephanie? She's a graduate ncc. Yeah. Yeah, I know. I see her when I go out there. Yeah, when I go out. That's my school. I, they, yes, yes. Well Dr. Jones is working on has done something on Mary White. I mean I call them Mary White (laughter), Mary Church, Mary Sterile. and of course, that's one of the questions I'm saving to ask, not to provide you people to for an answer, but I note that on the big program they're going to this week in all the sections says somebody's gonna talk on the club movement. And also, I suppose on the Federated Women's Club Club, and it's an interesting history. I won't go into all of it now, but the club you're talking about, the Federated Club, that's more prominent in North Carolina than ever. Ms. Bethune Club. Mm-hmm. , these people here will tell you, I remember women, I, we have our quilting parties and our sewing bees, and we meet up in Morganton Morganton, North Carolina, Dr. Patella's mother, if you want to talk to him about it, you know Dr. Patella on our campus? Yes. His mother's one of the leaders in the Federated Women's Club. Mrs. Mary | 13:56 |
| Andre D. Vann | Merricks and Moores? | 15:24 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | No. Well, the Merricks and Moores were, were among the, the leading people in the Dorcas Club. But all of these clubs, no matter what they were, were also members of the Federated Club. And Dorcas was a member of that also. | 15:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And of course, Mrs. Mrs. Moore, you know a lot about her because husband was a prominent position. His name is engraved on what's it hospital Lincoln. Lincoln Lincoln Hospital, the three of 'em. He and Charles Shepard somebody else. And so she led that Dorcas Club. And then her daughter, I was talking about that coming out here, I guess, or somebody. And then her daughter. Mrs. Merrit. Yes. Merrick. M e r r i c k, Ms. Eliza Merrick. | 15:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I don't know who's leading that now, but all of those were clubs within the Federated Club movement. So, technical questions I'm gonna ask, are we till Saturday morning? These guys (laughter) when these ladies come forth in the club movement. Alright, next. | 16:07 |
| Omar Martin | Good evening. My name is Omar Martin, I'm examining the desegregation of, of Person County public school in the question of education. Basically the time 1954, because the Brown Board of Education decision, and I mean, it was 1970 because that's the year a lot of North Carolina counties, specifically my county ended the desegregation process. Basically I wanted to get at why I took North Carolina 16 years to desegregate that school, but I couldn't approach it in that way. So since it was a tri-racial system of education, I decided to take a look at the Native Americans role in the desegregation of my home county. And I chose my home county because the population the High Plains community, which is where the Native Americans lived in 1950, was only 693 people. This was also the time that baby booming out. | 16:24 |
| Omar Martin | In doing some field research last semester, I discovered that a lot of the kids came back to or the Native Americans children came back to work or teach in the county. So the community is still intact today, is basically what I'm saying. they had their own church, their own stores their own land basically in that section of our so is that, it is my hope that the conclusion of this research paper, I may be able to draw some implications on the counties that had a significant Native American population, like on County or something like that. But this is sort of like a micro study for the purpose of this class. But, you know, you have definite a starting period. You're definitely ending period. And I'm sure there's the implications of similarities and differences, you know, should exist with the desegregation process as a whole. | 17:27 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I go, I want to ask you about two or three, one or two families there. And in that county was Reverend Harper, the principal of the high school there during the segregated period? Do you remember the name? You haven't heard anybody say whether you'd interviewed him? I don't know whether he's living or not. He may not be. He's long. But my contemporary, and I'm very fortunate, (laughter) that I'm alive. there's some other families there, you know, any other families there that came to Central? | 18:21 |
| Omar Martin | You mean Native American or Black or what? | 18:55 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, who are you interviewing in the county? | 18:56 |
| Omar Martin | I'm interviewing Native Americans right now. | 18:58 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, that's what you're asking. Just want they have view on it. Okay. | 19:00 |
| Omar Martin | There some people well I'm trying to get an interview with the the Board of Education during that time period, but I keep getting turned down. So I'm trying to go back and research who was at, who exactly was on the Board of Education. and also I'm trying to take a look at the minimum minutes of the Board of Education time. And I say try, because when I went to the Board of Education, they told me that they threw away all their records every five years. Ah, but they kept, they keep the minutes Board of Education County safe. So usually you have to make an appointment a week in advance. And then depending upon whether, you know, it is approved, you can see the records. So it's a lot of red tape. | 19:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, the thing about it is if you got the minutes, I don't know what the minutes might tell you, the minutes we look up on minutes as being official documents, but during that touchy period of desegregation, they had more meetings without minutes, I dare say, than they had with minutes. But but if you want to see them, you still can see them, but you may not get the total picture of truth from the minutes. 'cause all groups were, you know, sneaking and sliding and we were doing that right here in Durham. A lot of things will be settled at, at the cafe rather than at, alright. | 19:43 |
| Stacy Brown | My name is Stacy Brown. I'm a junior at Duke University and African-American Studies major. And what I'm doing is interviewing Whites and Blacks to find out what life was like during Jim Crow in Durham, North Carolina. And what I'm trying to figure out is what it was like during World War ii. And what I've been learning is that many people's lives live more changed because those who left, if they came back, they still returned to a segregated area. Mm-hmm. and many people's lives. | 20:16 |
| Stacy Brown | They had lived in Jim Crow life for so long. The segregation that much of World War ii or the effects of it had really trickled over to them. And I asked, I I'm trying to figure out if overseas the global dilemma of race or ethnicity or religion ever made 'em think about desegregation or segregation and actually have a question I've been asking. And many people never really thought about it as Jim Crow as a way of life. And I've chosen to interview White people also because I think that their views or voice is just as important to figuring out what life was like for Black people. | 20:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And, and you found, you think that that derham was really behind the time or what way behind time in this, in this situation of adjusting? I kind of thought we did very well during that period. Come on, go on, educate me. Say, listen, this is, this is part of this, for instance, on February, 1961, but 61 that the a n t students they had the sit in 60, you know, you know, central started the next week. You know, I don't know whether the students felt that keenly about the whole question of integration as they did. We don't let a and t do anything that we can't do. So while the February the first was the T then came here, I say that said, because both of these areas would certainly be vital areas, and I commend you. Take it down. Unless you been in, in Greensboro, I'd say E N t I don't know whether the other areas of North Carolina had what you call a kind of reaction to the city ends and all the things that would lead to ion. Who are the people you were interviewing? | 21:20 |
| Stacy Brown | Well, I can give you names of people that I've interviewed. Alright. George Warren is the White man that I've interviewed. Can I give names? Everything. | 22:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Okay. Oh, you're not supposed to give names out. Sure. You don't have to. They're, that's all right. You X, Y, Z. Doesn't that (laughter), but I meant you, you talked to people who were in government and business, chamber of Commerce. People. | 22:33 |
| Stacy Brown | I've spoken to a lawyer, two school teachers, woman who worked and domestic work also. And two men that have interviewed went to war and returned to World War I. Mm-hmm. , | 22:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Those who came, went to war. Right. And, and came back. Mm-hmm. . And what about, well, you cover all the factory workers, Dr. Jones and the women. Yes. You do you cover those (laughter)? Not, not all of them. (laughter). I I certainly would be interested in hearing more about your topic because I have some views on Durham that you know, may not fit the pattern that I judge that you have. 'cause with the, the highest income group Blacks in Durham, Louis Austin will tell you that we owned our homes here just by immediately working at the tobacco factories. And we had homes and that kind of thing. And the cap capital home ownership lafa above Atlanta at the time. And the German people saved their money. They didn't, they didn't explore much in details that they couldn't see the way to the future. So I, I'm, I'm gonna be waiting for that topic. When did you gonna finish it? By June? (laughs) | 23:01 |
| Dr. Jones | Gonna be a part of the conference. We have a section dealing with students who are | 24:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Part of the Jim Crow classes. . Oh, well, how were you rather than I ask you Saturday. Huh? (laughter)? I'm only, you'd rather I wouldn't ask at all. (laughter). Okay. Thank you very much. All right. He just got you. | 24:12 |
| Dr. Jones | You want to compose yourself and we'll move to the next, we're just indicating what we're working on in terms of our topics and you know, Dr. Edmonds, | 24:29 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | My name is Sulaiman Mausi. | 24:38 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Spell it for me. Ma. | 24:40 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | S u l a i m a n M a u s i | 24:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | S I. Alright. Mm-hmm. , proceed. | 24:46 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | tell what I'm doing. Yeah. excuse me. Well, my mind, I'm doing entertainment. how, what we did for like, basically relaxation and enjoy themselves. Enjoy during Jim Crow. | 24:50 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So | 25:02 |
| Dr. Jones | Until, gimme | 25:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | A little more than that. (laughter). | 25:03 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | See, | 25:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | See, you refresh me. I've been here 54 years. So (laughter) | 25:07 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Basically, I supposed see like as far as like movies and like theater stuff going on. And | 25:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | What are you, what are you doing for the theater in terms of like, you going into the, what was the Logan's theater's name? You, you wonderland Mr. The Logan family. Huh? Watkins | 25:19 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Was the Wonderland. | 25:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Watkins was one earlier then Logan. | 25:31 |
| Dr. Jones | Yeah. | 25:34 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | What else did, what else did we do for a good time? | 25:36 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Know back up because, so especially spring break, | 25:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I'll be a little better organized there. Just | 25:55 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Being very honest. Know Uhhuh, I'm really good. | 25:56 |
| Dr. Jones | Tell Dr. Edmonds about your family. She may be interested in | 25:59 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | That. Oh, well my grandfather's Garrett, my grandfather's Nathan Garrett. | 26:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Say it again? | 26:08 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | York Garrett. | 26:10 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 26:10 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | That's my grand. | 26:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, do I know? Yeah. Yes. Do I know him? I know him and all his children. His wife is a member of my club and yeah. | 26:12 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Yeah. That's my great-grandfather. So I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get a wealth of information. Pretty much. Well, not at call. He's still busy in nine nine, but | 26:19 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Oh, not only that, you know, he goes to New York now. He goes to New York when he feels like it. See him in Atlantic City in the casinos. (laughter) | 26:28 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Work at down this pharmacy down street. He still, he still drives everyday. Drove to DC I guess like a [indistinct]. Yeah. He'll be | 26:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | December. Where are you in Duke or Central? You are at Central. Fine. huh. Where do you live? On campus? No, | 26:54 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | He's not right now. No. | 27:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, I, but so he's in that great big house by himself. Yeah. (laughter). | 27:04 |
| Dr. Jones | What if you, if you had to do a topic on him, what, what | 27:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Things that's, that would be, that would be a topic. Oh, yes, | 27:12 |
| Dr. Jones | It would be, | 27:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | That'll be a topic on him. | 27:16 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | I mean, I, it it's a lot of things because, you know, I really, it's lot, I mean it's a lot of things I do on, but basically especially what he enjoys mostly is like he's a pharmacist or whatever. And | 27:18 |
| Dr. Jones | How many of those were around in that time? | 27:31 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | This is what I'm gonna say. Ask him. | 27:33 |
| Dr. Jones | Oh, I'm sorry, I'll be quiet. | 27:35 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | No, you're just as correct as you could be. You, you see once the medical doctors and the pharmacists and the dentist used to all be in one head because they didn't have that many mm-hmm. . Now you would be, you would find that from him. When did this shall I say, putting people in their own orbit? That is the pharmaceutical society meets used to meet here in North Carolina, and then the dentist, and then the medical, he's lived through all of those stages in the—I'm sorry. Dr. Jones. | 27:36 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I just had no doctor. He'd almost be an interesting study himself. And then the business side knows Hayti and where the businesses were and, and, and all that kind of thing. He's a member of the business and professional chain, which which examines and keeps some kind of record. You got a mine, a minefield mine, I gold mine, | 28:09 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | I guess. Take that. Not advantage of, but he, he knows, I told him I was gonna interview with him after I got finished with the North Carolina Times, you know, do my research first. I gotcha. And I know I can just always go by and go out to dinner or something. And | 28:31 |
| Dr. Jones | What about archives? What does he have in the house? You know? Yeah. I'm just wondering what does he— | 28:45 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Like I said, it took, like I said, like the first class class I was in here, you know, it never even occurred, you know, I guess it's— | 28:51 |
| Dr. Jones | We've been pushing this and pushing this— | 29:00 |
| Leslie Brown | Another source. The old North State Medical Association, York Garrett Sr. belonged to and was president at one point, has an archive at Raleigh in the state archives, old photographs, all kinds of— | 29:04 |
| Dr. Jones | Things. Texas, just an article— | 29:17 |
| Leslie Brown | Annual meetings and, and clinics that were held for, for families and children in schools. They have a lot of, | 29:19 |
| Dr. Jones | What school did he get his degree from? | 29:26 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Howard. | 29:27 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Howard University. | 29:28 |
| Dr. Jones | That's very much, | 29:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And the thing about it is that Nathan could do much to help you. I don't mean giving you the events given to him. 'cause maybe a twice told tale by word of mouth may not be any good the third time is told. But Nathan would know what's in the home now and what you should see and the pictures and all. I | 29:35 |
| Leslie Brown | Actually, my grandmother, | 29:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I | 29:55 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Know my grandmother's been keeping my stuff together, so I get her off from her. | 29:56 |
| Dr. Jones | Well, when you're ready, I'll go with you. When you're ready, I'll go with you so we can see what she in the home— | 30:05 |
| Leslie Brown | Going do that we have a copy of an interview that the project is worked senior upstairs. And although the copy machine is not working, and either you can make a copy of it, use that as a starting point, give you some ideas, themes. Okay. That's only direction you really should be doing this. | 30:16 |
| Dr. Jones | (laughter) we're trying to help you. Time is getting very, very short and we are trying to push you | 30:44 |
| Leslie Brown | Like you need to be pushed. Oh, I mean, I, believe me, I don't, okay. Okay. | 30:50 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I am ready. You know, | 31:15 |
| Alicia Summers Peaks | Talk to me, | 31:18 |
| Dr. Jones | (laughter). | 31:18 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | He's told us what he's going to do. You'll tell us what you've done | 31:21 |
| Dr. Jones | (laughter). | 31:25 |
| Jennifer Winston | My name is Jennifer Winston and I'm a senior at Duke University, and I'm looking at the Lion Park neighborhood before the year before the 1970s, pretty much. And basically what I've, so far, I've, it is been hard for me to find people to interview. But now I have a lot of people, and when I'm realizing is that different organizations play different roles in the community, like the church and the, and the elementary school. And there was an art, a club that actually was formed in the community to help during that time period. And so it's sort of like I'm interviewing different people who had different roles in it. So they all see the community very differently. And so what I'm trying to do is put all this perspective together and see what really made the community happen. Because they all do agree that it was a community and that it was separate. That the way that the could concern the city said that the West End and community and Ly Park were two separate neighborhoods. But according to the people who are living there, they don't agree with that. So I think that's a very interesting starting point and sort of how people within the neighborhood define their own c. | 31:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Interesting. Now is, is is this area known as East End? | 32:40 |
| Jennifer Winston | No. | 32:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | 'cause I know La Harv Johnson's has lots of experiences from the East end there. Right? | 32:46 |
| Dr. Jones | So she's talking about the West End, like | 32:51 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | West End ed, | 32:52 |
| Jennifer Winston | That area. Mm-hmm. , they all, everyone kind of defines it a little differently. The street boundaries are different for every person. So one person has a very narrow definition of like, all of two streets. And someone else is like, you know what? | 32:54 |
| Dr. Jones | Okay, well, what we're gonna do is to, to hear from Kim to provide her discourse on her particular topic. And I think that's the only person that has not done it. Right? | 33:14 |
| Kimberly Council | Yes. She's not here. | 33:27 |
| Dr. Jones | Okay. So we'll give attention to Kim. | 33:28 |
| Kimberly Council | Now. Okay. I started off with my project on the elite which which I felt I was gonna focus on Mr. Shepard, Mr. Merrick, Mr. Scarborough and Mr. Spaulding. And when I started to do my research, I realized that that was just too much. so I went to the Center for Documentary Studies and I, I found some boxes on Mrs. Cly Scarborough. And to be quite honest the first thing I saw was that she was a member of Alpha Kapp, alpha four, you know? And she, you know, so that was personal thing there, (laughter). but and so I, and I as I started to do my research, what I wanted to focus on was the organization that she was involved in how influential she was in the community what view shaped her. | 33:31 |
| Kimberly Council | There's a lot of information on her genealogy, her parents' background, where she's from and how she ended up in Durham, the things that she did. I found out that, you know, I found out a lot of stuff about her that she taught at Hillside for a couple of years. And then she, she was a longstanding member of St. Joseph's AME church, a life member of the YWCA. Mm-hmm. The NAACP, I mean, she was involved in numerous organizations. As a matter of fact, I believe she was one of the founders of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Negroes, which it was called then. she also took a case to to court on the separate but equal clause. I've found out some information on that. | 34:18 |
| Kimberly Council | 'Cause she was saying that Durham's schools weren't following, and they weren't holding up to the supper, but equal clause. I found out some things like that. And okay. | 35:01 |
| Kimberly Council | On campus, I spoke to Dr. Eves because he's like a longstanding friend of the family. And I asked if I could talk to him, and he said, I'll do you one better. And he wrote me a letter of introduction to to her two children, her stepdaughter, and her daughter, and her grandson. And so I went over to talk with Mrs. Bynum, who was her stepdaughter. And while I was at her house, she called her sister Mrs. Stanford, either Stanford, who stayed right around the corner on Prince Street. Yes. And, and, and so I spoke with Mrs. Mrs by for a while, and she was telling me about the contributions that Mr. | 35:12 |
| Kimberly Council | Scarborough had made to the community. And I was like, my God. he served as, I mean, he served as Director of Mechanics and Farmers Bank. And, and, and so, and, and, and the reason why he started the nursery school, I, i I, it just, you know, it really struck a chord because he was saying that the women who worked in tobacco, in, in tobacco factories and ry factories, how their children were being left unattended. And so even back in those days, he was concerned about children and about their welfare and their wellbeing. And so when I spoke, I spoke to his daughter today Mrs. Bynum. And she was giving me a lot of information on that night. Like I said, I went over to Mrs. Stanford's house and she said I caught her right in the nick of time 'cause she's compiling history on the nursery school. | 35:47 |
| Kimberly Council | And she started giving me insight onto as to who Ms. Scarborough was, what type of person she was from selling out. She was a very private person. And she was explaining to me her different views and how she was brought up. And she got me all excited and told me I could spend a day with her tomorrow. she's going through her trunk and she was telling me how Mrs. Scarborough really didn't want to be in Durham, but, you know, since she married Mr. Scarborough and, and how her life is just evolving and unfolding and how your life is shaped and stuff. And so she's gonna take me over there and let me read some letters and go through the trunk and stuff. And when I was talking to Mrs. Byner today Mr. Scarborough came in, John c Scarborough, the third, they called him Ski. | 36:29 |
| Kimberly Council | And, and so when I, yes. And when I gave him the letter from Dr. Eves, he was just like, oh, you know, whatever you need, you know, he gave me his business card. He told me to call him in the morning. so my pro, my my my progress is like, I'm, I'm gathering a lot of material. Ms. Stanford gave me some stuff that she was compiling on the Scarborough Nursery School, but she told me I had to give it back. I went to speak to Sara de Jarman. She's she's been, I mean, that's why, you know, I was like, you know, I can get some information from her. And I went over to her house and she gave me an obituary and she gave me some information on the Negro National Council of Negro Women. Mm-hmm. | 37:10 |
| Kimberly Council | . And I just, I mean, I'm just headlong into my project and I'm getting very excited because I'm starting to, I mean, she's actually coming alive to me. The the things that I'm finding out and, and being able to, you know, see her, I can recognize her handwriting, you know, and, and things like that. So, and, and that this woman was involved in these so many different organizations is just mind boggling. So basically that's what my project was about. And why, why did he say that they created the, the nursery school? I missed it. I'm sorry. He he said that when he went into the community, that he noticed that that the women who worked in tobacco, the tobacco at Liga Myers and at the ho ho ery factories, that they, that some of them were single and a lot of the children were being left unattended. | 37:49 |
| Kimberly Council | And he, he wanted to create an environment where they could you know their health needs could be taken care of, and that they could be reared in a positive way, and that they could be sort of like a babysitting thing. And when he bought Lincoln Hospital, that property over there, and through the, the Daisy Scarborough Foundation, it was just like, you know, that type of place. And then when he married Mrs. Cly since she was, she had that background in teaching she had been trained, she got graduated from Talladega College and got mag cum laude. And, you know, she was educated in that. She went to Central for a little while. So that's when the nursery came into play. And when I was talking to Mrs. Bynum today, she was talking to me about about so much she was describing the area the area of Durham before, you know, all of this stuff came into play. And she was sort of like painting a picture of me what [indistinct] was and about king Watkins as they called him, and, and how his | 38:37 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | House was still | 39:29 |
| Kimberly Council | There and how, and about the page store and about her mother used to her mother, Daisy Scarborough used to go and they in the sewing clubs and stuff and how used to do all that kind of stuff. And she used to talk about her. Everything was embroidered and, you know, her stuff was crocheted and everything. And how her parents took her, I mean, everywhere that they went, she said that her father used to take her, you know, to to to mechanics of farmers and to the nur into the funeral home. Her mother worked and her father worked. And it was just, you know, just, you could they were just phenomenal. I mean, I'm just, | 39:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | His first wife was like that too. Yes, sir. You working on Ms. Cloudy, but his first wife was oriented toward Yes, ma'am. You know, welfare things and lifting people | 40:04 |
| Kimberly Council | With the information that I'm finding. I I, I think that the final project may be on the Scarborough family. It could | 40:13 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Be because she was, his, his first wife was Yes, equally involved in, in city working community. | 40:19 |
| Kimberly Council | And there's, I mean, the pic, there's pictures all over the place. There's at the house. And and she's just, you know, showing me this and showing me that and pulling out this. And so, like, they're, they're in the process of compiling their history as well. So it's like, I'm coming in and she's like, whatever you want, you know, just let me know. And so, | 40:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But you young people are gonna make me want to go back to the classroom. (laughter) to hear you tonight. And I'm like, very much like a Tennyson writes in Loxley Hall, a beautiful little statement. He says, turn back, turn back old time in its flight and make me young once again for tonight. So I'm gonna absorb all I can from you young people hoping that it will rejuvenate my spirit for research and all the things that that one should do. Is there any you want me to ask some other questions or may I Yes, please. That's all right. Yes. these are the questions I want to ask you. The one who's working on her family. Yes, ma'am. Mm-hmm. how many generations are you going back? I'm trying (laughter), that was the problems. I was trying to limit it because I ended | 40:42 |
| Nicole Owens | Up, well, what I ended up getting when I went home, I, I knew my great-grandparents that I was speaking of. So that's what, 1, 2, 3 is that three generations. My father, my grandparents. And then I was talking to my great-grandmother's young youngest sister. 'cause my great-grandmother's deceased, but her youngest sister is 78 years old and she's still alive, and so is her other sister and her brother. And she was, I told her I just wanted to know about their family, and she gave me information on her great-grandfather (laughter). So that's what her father, grandfather, great-grandfather. That's 6, 5, 6 generations. So I think that's hopefully this as far back as I'm going. But it turns out that she, it was just really, I don't mean going on, but it was so interesting because I was gonna focus on my great-grandfather because I knew that he owned some land. | 41:32 |
| Nicole Owens | He owns, he owned the land where my house is now, where my family's house is now, just right down the street from the house that my great-grandparents used to live. And all the houses on that street are built on land that he owned and sold to all the people there. But it turns out that his, I thought that was a lot. The land that he owned was small in comparison to what my, what his wife's, what his second wife's family owned, because the, her family's name is, last name is Hammond. And it turns out that they own such a substantial amount of land. I mean, they had the first of everything to come through, like any kind of mechanical equipment, everything, like land, everything. People would come there to like to use their, what do you call 'em, like to grind corn mill and all this kind of stuff. People would always come through their land. And I think it is, my, my great aunt told me that her great-grandfather, I think was, was given some land when, when his family was, I guess when his family from outta slavery, and then they started, I don't know how, I forgot. But suppose | 42:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You took this for your lifetime work. What are some of, I suppose you took your topic for your lifetime work. I mean, by that is once you're outta college and you want to write something mm-hmm. , what are some of the documents that you would need that you don't have now? Because now you, you're giving us the story, you got some documents to go along with what you're saying? | 43:21 |
| Nicole Owens | Well, not, not as far as like the land transactions. | 43:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. You'd have to go through land transactions Yes. Ma and all that kind of thing. See, some wheels are left. Yes, ma'am. | 43:44 |
| Nicole Owens | And there would also, I'm sure be | 43:50 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But you're making a first step. You're making, you are the first one to do that, aren't you? | 43:53 |
| Nicole Owens | Yes, ma'am. | 43:58 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. You're making a first step. The others can build on it. | 43:58 |
| Nicole Owens | Oh, well, let me ask you this. One thing that she was telling me with a couple of stories, that she was given one version. Well, it turns out now that no one in their family owns any of that land anymore. It's all, but and, but the, the city couldn't do anything with the land until the last child, until her last aunt or uncle died, which wasn't, was only a couple of years ago. Mm-hmm. So the first story that she was given was that it turned that the family had a lot of back taxes that they didn't pay. So the city took their land. And then the second she was given was that she thinks it's true, is that her uncle used to take out loans and use their land as collateral. Yeah. And then the city ended up taking the land from the family and no one could afford to buy it back. Yeah. So, and, and they have, they have no record of, they have no proof. They don't know how the city got the land. I don't know if I could do research there in the city if they would have, have it documented or not. Mm-hmm. | 44:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | . Now, the next young man, I mean, not the next, the young man sitting to you, tell me why you do the blues from you skipped all around. Why wouldn't you logically trace the blues out of New Orleans? Up the Mississippi River, up by Pittsburgh, up by Gary, Indiana, up by Chicago, up by Kansas City. | 44:55 |
| David Swineton | Wow. Man, logically | 45:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Tracy, you, you, you skipped around. They said Detroit, New York. You just switched wherever you wanted. | 45:17 |
| Unknown Speaker | well, the the progression of the progression of the blues itself, which is not the focus of paper. I want to focus more on you know, what happened once the booths got here in North Carolina, first of all. And secondly I want to deal with you know, these artists' feelings on the, the changing of, you know, the, the, the listener of the blues. they seem to feel that the history is recorded in the blues itself. And once the audience changes does Rocky Mountain play a part in your story? | 45:24 |
| David Swineton | Rocky Mountain? Mm-hmm. . I, I comment that, | 45:59 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, for, for years, even in my young days, everybody went to Rocky Mountain for Easter Monday. That was when all the bands would be there, and that required a celebration. They come from up in Virginia. Anyway, I just asked about it. You may ask somebody about Rocky Mountain as a jazz center, but that's because the people brought it in. yours was what? Tell me again, | 46:04 |
| Unknown Speaker | The [indistinct]. | 46:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah, but you're doing it for Durham, aren't you? Right. Do you ever, have you had anybody, I don't. You think Dr. Jones and Mr. Stanley, did you know him? Arthur Stanley. Arthur Stanley In the Union. | 46:29 |
| Speaker 1 | You're actually finding people who are in the, in the plant. So if you do some of those people, I guess that could | 0:02 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Really, oh, yours are purely in the tobacco plants. Well, | 0:07 |
| Speaker 1 | It's | 0:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Not, that's established. | 0:09 |
| Speaker 1 | That's, that was like the, the focus of it. But just anyone who worked as, you know, a, a plant like atmosphere, I guess industrial like atmosphere the | 0:12 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Same time. Did you find anything in Louis Austin's Carolina Times? That dealt with the union. I know Stanley was a union man, Austin Stanley. He maybe be Did that | 0:19 |
| Speaker 1 | The papers from the, the union that was in the C. But I have the papers for that, but I just don't have like, specific names of a lot of people I could interview that were actually, you know, working in the tobacco transport at the time. | 0:30 |
| Leslie Brown | Have you checked with the, have you checked with the local unions? Know the unions? They, they still exist. The locals are still here. I'm sure if you call, they can tell you about all kinds of retired members of the various plants, both from the tobacco factories and the hose mill. Who would have been active when the unions were segregated. And who would've been active after the unions desegregated— | 0:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And your topic was—? | 1:14 |
| Alicia Summers Peaks | Women in Action. | 1:16 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, that's right. You got enough on that. 'cause they got, they kept all their records very well. | 1:17 |
| Alicia Summers Peaks | I like speaking with the women too. | 1:22 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah, yeah. Yes, indeed. The of course I know about their records and all because they, they, well, they just had a lot of people who were very proficient in, in minutes keeping and things of that kind. Very well trained. And the gentleman, | 1:23 |
| David Swineton | Black and White interactions— | 1:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh wow. You are here at Hill Hill Haven, right? | 1:43 |
| David Swineton | Right. | 1:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Hill Haven. How, how do you put your questions to them? Give me, for instance, I'm old enough to be at Hill Haven, so tell me what you (laughter) what? Give me a sample question you'd ask me. | 1:47 |
| David Swineton | Okay. Well, sometimes I'll have very open-ended questions. What, what are some of your fondest recollections of your childhood? Who were your role models? Did have any role models? Did you respect? Who did you look up to? Was it a family member? Was it someone in politics or, or, you know, what was it he cared about you growing up? And then from, from those type of questions, I'll get a little bit more specific and into, so what I'm really looking for is, is who are your friends as you were growing up around with what did you do with them? How, in what, how would you play about what activities were you involved in? | 1:58 |
| David Swineton | And then I, and then I generally progress into you know, did you have any friends? Who, who did you play with any White children? What, what, what's that relationship like? Were you close friends? Would you consider yourself a close friend with, with that, you know, sometimes the answer is yes, I did relations with the opposite race and sometimes it's, no, I didn't have any. And so my questions kind of branch at that point. | 2:37 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now I'm gonna ask you a funny little question. Okay. I'm a member out there, you see at Hill Haven. Okay. But I am, I am perhaps classified as someone with Alzheimer's. How much credence are you gonna put in my ancestor? You, or maybe I'm physically sick, and how much credence am I gonna, you gonna put in? You know what I mean? How much credibility will you give my answers? Right? They doesn't wanna know how you shape up your final material. | 3:10 |
| David Swineton | Fortunately I've had the opportunity I volunteered there for, for quite a long material and I play bingo on Wednesdays. And so the, the pool of people that I interview come mainly from those that I've gotten to know while playing with them. And, and the, the head nurses in there too, and the activities coordinator. And so I'm able also to talk with her about who these patients are. | 3:40 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. | 4:10 |
| David Swineton | That's as well as their medical history . And so I find out if these people are schizophrenic or they have, if, if they're mentally clear. And, and, and I think in that way I'm able to judge how credible an interview and of course, you know, a little bit more subjective and slam things one around one another. And it's hard to know, you know, what the truth is. But I think for the, for the most part, I think the interviews that I've done so far are credible, but I, it's, it's difficult to get supporting information that's asking. Yeah. Yeah. That's, | 4:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. And I can't help you 'cause I never thought of a topic like that, but I, I wish it was something I knew that could help you along with it. But they're all sick there and oil else they age, right. That kind of thing. Yeah. Well that's, and chances are you may come up with saner conclusions and you would get at some other place. Here's hoping,. | 4:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Andre, I think we talked on your, on the Dorcas thing. | 5:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now Person County. I give you credit for taking one county, because when you take a smaller unit in any historical topic, you know, when you've covered it, a topic, if you're gonna sweep North Carolina got a hundred counties and you're gonna do one for that particular area, I wonder how are, what kind of support are you getting in your answers from that third racial element? Have you talked with any of them? Been to see them? | 5:21 |
| Omar Martin | Yeah, I talked with some. But as far as support, one of the examples of various that I was told that the history of public education in county, which is a public that, that I don't know where it— | 5:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Have you found anybody? I'll just ask a question very bluntly. Have you found anybody from the Native American group willing to talk about it? Mm-hmm. | 6:12 |
| Omar Martin | Yeah. They're very willing to talk about it. Because see, and the reason being is that they had their own school. And when desegregation came about, that school got closed. Uhhuh. But not because of the county per se, but because of the state law. They said schools, they provide hot meals. Yeah. And I could the general, general assembly records and actually find some laws. | 6:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Have you done it? | 6:39 |
| Omar Martin | Not yet. But so that's— | 6:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, you know, if you go to, if you go to the general assembly records, you are really talking, the general assembly would be the debate. But the laws would be a separate volume if you want to examine the general assembly for that particular period. Uh, we have those over there in our law school. And somewhere in the library, now that I know we got all the state laws, that's a different thing from the assembly. The simplest where the debate and discuss them when it gets to be a law's over here in another book. And it would be interesting to to see if the, as general assembly discussed the tri-racial factor. That third group, they knew Black and White. But when you're talking about a third, that if they, if they talked about it in the assembly. And then of course when you get your acts, that is the legislative acts. | 6:44 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I don't know, I, I'm very weak on this question of of Native Americans in North Carolina. Very much. I know about Robeson. I didn't know about Roxboro until you talked about it one day. You were talking, but that's ok. And let's see now, well anyway, take a small subject always if you can. Somebody says they want to, who usually wants to expand it? Somebody said— | 7:34 |
| Nicole Owens | About expanding the project to the whole family. | 8:00 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah, you can if you want. But do this one. Well first, you know, and then you'll know when you've covered her. That's the only joy in having a small topic, you know, when you finished it, (laughter). Alright. And what were you | 8:03 |
| Stacy Brown | I was saying, | 8:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, I know. And you were the one I said that. I wish you let me know what your answers were. | 8:21 |
| Stacy Brown | Well, you can ask me questions. I'll have answers for you on Saturday. (laughter). | 8:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Give, gimme just a gain of what you said. Well, what I'm doing, we were talking about Durham in terms, | 8:31 |
| Stacy Brown | I have, I'm doing Durham because that's mainly where I am. But I, it's hard to hear. Okay, I'm, I'm focusing on Durham 'cause that's where I am at the time. And I could do this in Chicago or California, where have you. But Jim Crow, or I guess not this in the South, but I'm really concerned about figuring out if Jim Crow affected World War II or how World War II affected Jim Crow. . And when I'm, and— | 8:37 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | World War II, that's, that's from 41 to 45. The war and the coming back home period is after 45 and 46. | 9:08 |
| Stacy Brown | After 47. Yeah. And originally I posed my questions, asked them first about their lives before World War II and their interactions with White people and their interactions with Black people, and ask 'em if their family members had gone and if they had gone, what was it like there? What was it like if there's an absent family member or friends and then their lives when they returned? | 9:17 |
| Stacy Brown | And what I've learned is that World War III did not really affect their views on segregation, their views on their own lives, or the lives of the opposite race while before, during, and after. And so I began to, I began to ask them, well, what changed your views? You know, what made, what, when did you begin to start thinking about racism more, I guess your life, or Oh, your life opportunities or chances? | 9:44 |
| Stacy Brown | And most of 'em started talking about when they became educated and when in high school, or not, obviously, when someone went to college. And that's when I began to, they began to really speak about Jim Crow racism because Jim Crow to them was not a major issue. It was a way of life that had benefits and disadvantages, disadvantages throughout the whole time. So, and Durham is a, I guess, a great place because I think that— | 10:12 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Have you, have you come across any of the I hate to use the word super arrogance, but that's a little bit of it on the parts of people in Durham, Blacks? | 10:42 |
| Stacy Brown | Yes. | 10:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, just wondered. | 10:54 |
| Stacy Brown | Well, yeah. And I interviewed one lawyer. I mean, I think that Durham is very unique in the sense that it's very educated and you don't have to have a lot of money to be educated in Durham. You didn't have to have a lot of money to be educated. And then you could have been poor and also gotten a very easy education or been in the environment where you had resources to be educated, which caused you to be able to read or | 10:55 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Get certain. Has the thought ever occurred to you that perhaps the, I guess you would call it the business and educational elite of Durham did not worry about segregation? Because all of the institutions in Durham are built on separation in North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, the mutual savings loan, the Bankers, Fire, and Speights Auto Service, the insurance companies for fire insurance and all these, it could be, I don't know whether they would tell you that or not, that they weren't worried about integration because they had the Black community sewed up in certain respects. | 11:15 |
| Stacy Brown | Well, | 11:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Did you ever ask them about that? | 11:53 |
| Stacy Brown | Yes. When they spoke about did you ever want, I guess, what, what Black people had? And when I asked this question, no, we had everything we needed. | 11:54 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | They did. Well, I guess they had, well, I know what you mean. They had | 12:04 |
| Stacy Brown | Whatever they wanted, they, they could figure out a way of getting, there were resources. They had avenues to, I guess, protest or resist. So, I mean, they were very, very happy in the sense, you know, that they had, they had their own resources. | 12:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. You know, an interesting topic, not for you in here, I mean, 'cause you all are working on things that are within your grasp and near you. But the interesting feature about the state of North Carolina, particularly the two cities, you see this great rivalry between Raleigh and Durham used to be, it may not be that way now, kind of don't know. | 12:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But, but back in the forties when I came here, and even before you see, Raleigh did not have the Black businesses that Durham had. See, you begin with Durham at the time of North Carlonia Mutual, 1899. And you come on, flew with the bank and all that kind of thing. Raleigh didn't have it, but Raleigh had more educated Blacks than Durham. Durham had a few, don't make no mistake, some families, but Raleigh had more. So I'm gonna tell you how the attitude was when I got here that Raleigh was the blue blood town. | 12:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | If you want to talk off blue blood among Black, while Durham was the noveau rich class, and Durham's attitude was, "We made the money and we got the money. Y'all sit over there and bank on the blood." (laughter), they would say, well, "we are families," from over in Raleigh. McCullum, Delaneys and all. And he read the book on the Delaney's, the Delaney girls have a book out, have my say. Well, they're typical of the Raleigh people. That "we are blue blood, we can look back for this long time," and so forth and so on. And Durham was saying, "Well, you keep the blood, we'll keep the money." (laughter). So it, it wasn't, was an interesting thing. And you know I belonged to, this is back in 41 or two, I belonged in not to an organization at that time. | 13:25 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | The organization had to be sponsored. You know, you couldn't just get up and say, well, come on girls, let's get together and let's organize. No, you gotta find a town nearby that already has it. Then they will sponsor you. And do, you know, one of the atmospheres in, in, in, in, in the early days that I assume learned was when somebody said, Raleigh's got a chapter, but if Raleigh's got to sponsor us, we don't want to be in it. In other words, that's the kind of kind thing. But that may not be the case today. That's the wrong case, but it's a story somebody's gonna write one of these days dealing with Raleigh and Durham in a comparison, Greensboro never worded them. what was going on in Greensboro. Well, that's all you know, and going farther was out of the question, you know, all day long to get to Charlotte then. But but that was it. Would the Scarborough, would that be blue blood? Where did the Scarborough get their money? E Scarborough. . I, I don't think they inherited. I think he did. You know, he set up have you found out how many, where did they get | 14:14 |
| Kimberly Council | Their money from? I'm, from what I understand Mr. Scarborough got his money from Mr. Haggard. Mr. Haggard raised him from Kinston. His mother left him in Kinston. And Mr. Haggard just took him under his wing and paid for him to go to— | 15:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Hargett. | 15:29 |
| Kimberly Council | Hargett. I'm sorry. Yeah. Paid for him to go to embalming school. . And he was the first Black to graduate. | 15:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I, I don't think he had a lot of money. But see, remember, have you found out they had a, a funeral place in Greensboro? No. Have you found all the places they | 15:36 |
| Kimberly Council | Had them? No. I found out about the the gas station that they had, the filling station that they | 15:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Had. No, I'm talking about the Burlington—Scarborough—and had about, well you find out what they had. And uh, and then you see another reason Blacks could borrow money because you got Black institutions. You either borrowed it from the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company or you bought it from the mechanics and Farmers' Bank, or you bought it from the mutual savings and loan. That's true. And you see and this is one of the reasons when you're talking, I thought about it's, it's not difficult for Blacks to borrow money in North Carolina, I mean in Durham from White banks, because the White banks are scuffling for that same interest return. And especially with these Blacks who are born, let's say go out to Emory Woods and you got homes out there, I guess running about 150, 165,000, which would be nothing I guess in some places. | 15:49 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But all the people out there, professional people are working. And Wachovia will get you, give you your loan. Some of the Blacks say quicker than the Black institutions. (laughter). I don't know, I don't know whether that's true or not, but that's what they would say (laughter). So that, that's a little bit on Raleigh and Durham. So you can check those. Ask her where all the places, maybe Epi doesn't we call [indistinct]? Epi may not know, but they had one in Burlington, one in Greensboro. And so it's interesting to hear that this man sent him to school. | 16:42 |
| Kimberly Council | I think his daughter. 'cause she was, I mean, she said that her father told her a lot about the business as far as he, he would take, he would take a, and, and they talk about family trips and stuff like that. Oh yeah. To Florida and to New York and stuff. So I think she was probably too . | 17:14 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Well— | 17:32 |
| Stacy Brown | I was wondering, 'cause this is one of my questions, is how much do you think education played in Black businesses in Durham? Because I mean, some people thought— | 17:32 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | It as having, well, in some, in some it didn't. You mean especially the bank and those places, you know, and just even | 17:40 |
| Stacy Brown | Coming up for loans. I mean, how do you, I mean, I just, I'm just trying to figure out how important, 'cause every person that I've asked about when they start becoming conscious about racism or their race or whatever is when they began. They, my senior year in high school. Then we lost college. They began to read or they met somebody and was always like a teacher who, you know, the mothers always wanted 'em to go to school. And education was very important. | 17:49 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, people here could borrow money if you worked at a factory and you had a guaranteed income, | 18:15 |
| Stacy Brown | I guess I'm saying like literacy, like education, just the ability to read. And | 18:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I, I, I couldn't answer that really. about the, because there were many people who worked in the factory's, husbands and wives. And I was here when they were building those homes all up and down the Dunbar store, not Dunbar, over on Dunton Street side and all those areas. And there were people, some of 'em are just clean hairdressers had built nice homes and families, had some brick and some wood. But, so I don't, I don't, I can't, I can say this with utmost clarity. It was not difficult to borrow money in do because you had the Black institutions and then you had your White institutions also offering opportunities for you to borrow Now. And maybe in some other towns you may not have had that confluence of White and Black financial institutions lending the money. That's about all I could say. | 18:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But and I don't know why I can't. I want to get comfortable with your topic though. And your topic is why there was such little reaction to racism after the war, after they came back from the war. Well, I don't know. I, I'll be interested. I I—You finish, when are you gonna finish it up? Dr. Jones will tell me about it. I'm gonna say Dr. Jones, has you got something there that I didn't know? | 19:25 |
| Dr. Jones | (laughter), we're gonna definitely invite you back and do the formal presentation too. | 19:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | We've talked, we've talked on you enough. Have we? I'm talking about the son there. Yeah. You, you, we told you everything. You can go there. Why don't you go over there and spend a weekend with him? Yeah, | 19:51 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | I do a lot of time. As far as— | 20:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | On Friday night, Saturday night I met Sunday | 20:04 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Have dinner, like Sunday nights, most Sunday nights. , Nathan— | 20:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Did you go to the uh, thing that the White Rock Church gave for him? | 20:12 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Yeah. Was it my freshman year was in 91, | 20:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I think so | 20:20 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | When I first got out here. . | 20:22 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Where have you been living before you came here? | 20:24 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Detroit. . Yeah. | 20:27 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, let's see. Uh, you know my nephew Harry, | 20:31 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | I'm hearing that name. So it's possible. | 20:46 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | (laughter). Your mother's name is what? | 20:50 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | My mother's name? Andrea. | 20:54 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Andrea I know well. When she was born? Yeah. Yeah. Andrea. And she's living in Detroit. Well the kids came home. When did y'all come from? I think you came down when your grandmother died. | 20:56 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Yeah. | 21:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | About six or seven of you (laughter). | 21:12 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Only four of us. | 21:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Only four. | 21:16 |
| Sulaiman Mausi | Yes. | 21:16 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I remember very much. I know. And you tell her you saw Helen Edmonds. | 21:18 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now let me see. Was did well your topic, | 21:20 |
| Stella | Why talking about | 21:25 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah, but I didn't know enough about it. That's another topic I'm vague on. | 21:27 |
| Stella | Well it seems like the majority of people who live there work either or I guess it depend on land. The tobacco industry and Duke University, apparently, and a few of the [indistinct] looked in the community and a few of the teachers did. And they said that the greatest change has been that um, there's been an increase in the amount of people who rent homes. And that's been like, where things have really been changing according to the members of the community. And so, I mean, most of the people, two, the people I've talked to so far, have literally grown up like two now from where they're living now. | 21:33 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, that we talked [indistinct]. Now come on, tell me yours is | 22:21 |
| Stella | John Franklin and pursuing history. | 22:25 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. You, you're writing on him good. And the pursuit of history. Well, I know plenty about him 'cause you worked on at my school and I've known him through the years. Uh, you've had your interviews with him . Now, what books are you reading to get his philosophy of history? | 22:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I mean, so you can zero in on it and say this is what makes Frank distinct and apart as a historian. So what did he give you to read? You'd be reading for the next five years if you tried to read. | 22:43 |
| Stella | And so, luckily enough he gave me essays that he's written. And those weren't like thick books or anything. Archival Odyssey talking about when he brought his students down from University of Chicago down here to do research. And what was really interesting and that what he liked to talk about was how the first time he was down here and he had done research when he first went into researching for, From Slavery to Freedom. , how he had to deal with the segregation that was imposed. | 22:55 |
| Stella | And when he came back, it was extremely interesting for him because it was completely different circumstances now. The same man that worked in the Archives here helped him. And the way he put it was this time he had, they had a birthday party for him. And the first time he couldn't even eat peanuts together, you know. | 23:25 |
| Stella | And so mostly the thing that I think I got the most out of was getting his individual perspective. Like you can tell there was emotion involved. You could tell when he was reflective, when he talks about his family and more just him as a man, you know, not just as this figure, as a historian, someone that so many people look up to, but more just on a one-to-one level to understand him better. | 23:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I know all that he's telling you about because it was correct. Yeah. I was doing some of my own research at the time and they, I had been using the library over at Chapel Hill and um, one day I went over there and Mrs. Elliot, who was the librarian, said to me I, you know, "I'm sorry, we, we can't let you people come in anymore." And I said, "Why?" She said the man's name was House. He was the president temporarily at Chapel Hill. It's in about 50 or 51. And they were trying to hold back integration of the university. And Ms. Elliott, the tears came to her eyes 'cause we used to have a good time talking, you know. And I said, "Well, if I can't, I won't." I said, "But you know, there's nothing I need over here except your documents. I come with a degree. So I'm not trying to study over here." Just wanna let 'em know that, you know, they had some things that I needed. But those were critical times in there. And what Dr. Fine was telling you is correct. | 24:08 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I never had the problem at Duke. That's another interesting thing. You have a woman at Duke and I hope somebody will write on her one day. Uh, she was chief of Archives. What's her name? Mattie Russell. You haven't heard of her? I've never heard of her. Mattie Russell. Well, ask, ask, ask some of the people. I wish some of y'all would write on her because she was doing things without even having any argument or any question that would provide my students with all kinds of information. Lemme give you an example. | 25:08 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | If you are a research university, and we are, we attempt to be that in certain areas, not all the areas, because there's something I'm holding you too long right now. | 25:42 |
| Dr. Jones | Oh no, this is interesting. Please go on. | 25:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Alright. Alright. I I know why you giving me the signal? Am I over going (laughter)? | 25:54 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now I'll give you an example. When you do methodology in American history, methodology and research, there are certain things you learn and there are books that do nothing but show you that you're not ready for that yet. Don't worry about it. You're on your way after this. Because when you get to the place where your next instructor will begin to mark out that oral history and say, can you substantiate, then you, then you'll be moving. But you gotta start somewhere. So you start with your papers, I'm sorry for instance, in in those view in history, may I say that you have to learn from the very beginning that there are government documents you got to handle long before you handle these oral speeches and all you've got to know government documents. | 25:59 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And our United States government is divided into three branches. Now, when you come to the legislative branch from the first these of George Washington on down, you got to know what are those books that will take me to any particular topic I wanted that the Congress expressed. | 26:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Alright, from 1889, Washington came in the first 12 years called the Annals of Debates. My students got to go, these are my graduate—they got to go over to Duke. 'cause we didn't have all of them tell you about the gaps we had here. Annals of Debates. Alright, around 1812 you did the Register of Debates and then about 27 you do the Congressional Globe. And then 1872, it's a Congressional Record. | 27:10 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now you've got to know that because I give you a test. I say, "I am giving you now the Missouri Compromise 1821. Where will I go to look for it?" Huh? You got to tell me that. That's in the Register of Debates if I go talk about something, of course they didn't keep good things in the early days in the Annals. I don't know why those fellas didn't our founding fathers, but. | 27:38 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Jackson's period is found in the globe. And then when we get to 72 on Congressional Records, now those Congressional Records are so voluminous. Now you know how they are. | 28:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | For instance, this may be the House and Senate Journal for one session of Congress and they got 20 more volumes dealing with other materials. You know, why don't you, I'll tell you why. Part of it, because many of the people who make these speeches don't ever say them in Congress, but they take the floor and say, I wish my speech to be inserted in the record with the Congressional Record. | 28:18 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You read when you, when you leave that part where the give and take of debates and all that other stuff packed in those 17, 18 volumes, you've got to be careful to know whether or not it was ever delivered. The man may have written, but he needs it because when he goes back home to campaign, he'll tell you, look on page so and so of the Congressional Record. | 28:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And there I stand clearly for 1, 2, 3 speech. He had some speech right on, maybe he wrote himself and he asked if he be Mr. Chairman. I asked that my contact somebody address be placed in the Congressional Record. You know, now we got something else up there. Do you ever see Congressman talking on CS Span and nobody's there. This is called special orders. But their speeches and the way they're carrying on, you think that they had a fool, but they're doing this. | 29:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And on special orders, they will be recorded in the extra Congressional Records. That's why we spend so much money on, on it. And, and everything is so big Library of Congress now with all this trap stuff. But anyway, that's your federal, your your your documents on the legislative branch. And we, we, we not only do that, we make an annotation of each one. So you can wake up at four o'clock in the morning and tell me what's in the annals, what's in the register of debates, what's in the congressional club? And then I would teach I would teach by them. Now mind you, a lot of people say what you got, those students, my sophomore class on American history would, we would reproduce the writing of the Constitution in my class. And then we'd set aside two weeks to invite the people on the campus come, come, you know, hear us express to me. | 29:36 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And then I'd always teach the dissolution of the union, the coming of the Civil War. Now, I'll tell you about the first one. And and this is the interesting thing that some of my students that I had 30 and 40 years ago who were in these uh, debates and they had to go to these records to get their material. | 30:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Some of 'em, I can't call their name, but I can call the name that they had in the historical drama. I was out there teaching at Portland State University one summer. And a boy came, young man came down from Fort something out there near Portland. And he walked in my classroom, I was teaching. He walked in, you know, I couldn't call his name. I said, but you are Patterson of New Jersey who brought the Small State Plan (laughter). He, he fell out laughing. Of course he was, I remember everybody's name. He had in history class, but position the, the role he played. But you know, the the interesting thing was history comes alive then if you could. | 30:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And I don't think students at a sophomore level are too lowly a position to read the documents. They may not know all that they say, but it gets you so that you get to be a junior, a senior, you'd be swinging those documents like you should. And you want not gonna find whole thing in there. I'm go through all that right now, but just saying now. But that is important. Now, when I give the writing of the Constitution and everybody had to have a part, you know, you had to get Edmund Randolph and George Mason and uh, Patterson and all of 'em. And then after that we put you on committees like Ways, Means, and Commerce committee. | 31:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | 'Cause you got this nation to pull together. And it was most interesting because students got very clever. You know, how previous classes tell other classes what they do. So I said, you go in there and you, you asked to be Benjamin Franklin (laughter). Benjamin Franklin was 89 years old at the time of the writing of the Constitution. And he couldn't do anything but sleep. | 32:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But when they got in a big fuss, he'd wake up and have prayer (laughter) North and southern delegates began. Frank said, we wanna be frank. Some of the others would say things like, well, I wanna be George Washington. 'cause he just sat there like the Great Stone Face (laughter). | 32:29 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But they, everybody, I'd give 'em something active to do and they would make this this, this, they'd get their speeches outta the Annals of Debates. And some of 'em, we had to work around with them to condense 'em, to put 'em in the language. | 32:44 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And when they ordered about worked about commerce and then even brought the slave questionnaire. But you see, they figure, well, no, we can handle that later on the slave, I think they said, slavery shall not enter the United States for 20 years. It's not it. You can tell me, I so, but cook that could make the mistake. Now that says, though, it could not enter officially, they didn't provide the coastal group to arrest them if they did. So people came in with impunity, bringing the slaves into Savannah and Virginia and all that kind of stuff. But that's the only, only thing, only notion that was paid to the slave question in the writing of the Constitution. | 32:57 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | The, when it got down, I could go a long time on that, but I won't. When it came to the Civil War, this is where my students absolutely rebelled. I said, now five of you must be plantation owners with your slaves. No, no (laughter), no, no, no, no. And then I'd say maybe five of you will be businessmen of the Northeast up there around Massachusetts, where you got your boats coming in and out from Connecticut to New York and, and you are interested in building uh, vessels and boats. And you are interested in shipping from Asia. I mean England, you know what I mean, shipping things over there. But you southers now you are slave owners. But they'd laugh like that and have a fit. But then they would, you should hear them when they would bring up their statements in the debate in the union. | 33:38 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And, and, and when they, that's all I wanted to shake their minds enough so that you could see another side of the subject. And then there was Fogo, you know, you know Fogo, don't you who wrote this book on it? Just one time course. But he write up two left time time course. Yeah. Uhhuh and talking about the attributes of slavery. Now, you know, my students wouldn't have looked at that unless I say, you got to read it. You know, he's saying it such a good time. He didn't, well, I would put it that way, that he had such a good time in slavery. He didn't see why anybody wanted to be freed (laughter). So this is what he has is economic statistics and his data there. And what did Genevieve write? So roll, roll Jordan. Roll. Well, but was Fogal. So, but but you have to shake a person's mind though. | 34:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You don't want to be a southern White and having slaves. This is a good exercise. And how will you use your mind and what can you get out of it that will help you to present your case? And they presented their ca their cases, you know, and they'd say and I could understand how a person would go after a slave if he ran away easily. You read Woodson and others and tell you a good big slave ran from 500 to $900 when you bought him at the dock. That is from slavery between 1800 and Civil War. Anybody would chase $900. You know that that's their money. They put it. Yes. Yeah. I don't know how much money that would that be. Oh, I don't know what today would be. And usually my, in fact, I don't know anybody who's equation for today, but I'm talking about at that time and these people, and they, and they borrowed their money from England and they borrowed some from northern. | 35:12 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | From Northern. But I'm just, what I'm trying to talk now about whether no matter what you think about slavery, God knows I'm not. That is my point. My point is an economic asset to the southern planet. And so therefore, he was forever up there in Congress. Give us some more slave fugitive laws. Bring them back. Let us go to get 'em. Let us hire people to, well, the whole thing was the union, then there was Jeff Davis, the president. And then in this question, didn't we give the reconstruction? But that was true. By that time, I had gotten down to June of school closing in June, would do the reconstruction, but we couldn't do a whole lot of it. You know, they'd have the debates on, on the Lincoln side, the question in their debates on the Jefferson Davis side, only thing I was interested in. | 36:08 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I wasn't trying to make them take hard and fast opinions. I simply wanted them to just give 'em a little shock treatment and thinking. See this other side of the picture. So, well now that was the all of these things before they went to any secondary books. They saw these in the original, the Animals of Debates, the registered debates, the Congressional Globes, and then the Congressional record. Go in and get in those things. Now, there's another side too. You know, there's a judicial side to the government, and all of the decisions ever made are right there in the what do they call? Slip them out? No, no, they're called ju uh, Supreme Court. US Courts, US Supreme Court. They have their volumes of every debate that they have given a decision on. They're there from 1,789 down to the present. And the interesting thing about that is you got, in most papers, you write, gotta have a court decision somewhere in it. | 36:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | If it's relative to what you're talking about. I don't know of any topic that any of you talked about tonight that couldn't have a judicial sign, but you're taking this now, when you get to the, to the Supreme Court decisions, it is just as important in examining a Supreme Court case. It is just as important to not only read the majority part of you, but the minority. Now, what am I saying? I'm saying that if the court votes eight to one, you see what the one said in dissent or the two said in their dissent, they may be dissenting for different, but you have to read it to see what they said. But everybody grabs the majority. Oh, there's the law Lord land. That's true. That's all right for lawyers to do that. But for the historian who's trying to trace the mood was ear at the time, he had two people who said they didn't like it. | 37:57 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And then another thing, the interesting thing is in our history, and I'd be through, is that sometimes the minority opinion becomes the majority. Yeah. Let's take the Plessy versus Ferguson decision 1896. You know, when this Black man on the train, they had to put a cover on, you know, thing around him. And they came up with a separate but equal. You know, that little cubby hole, Louisiana was not equal to that big dining room, you know, where the other, where Whites ate. | 38:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And that became the pattern throughout the south and also parts of the middle West. The other words, we are not segregating, we're segregating you, but as long as it's equal, separate but equal. And the courts gave that down in the Plessy versus Ferguson decision 1896. But nobody had bothered about it until 1940s when revival of civil rights and everything came. | 39:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So, and that's what they meant by the schools. We, we are separating you, but we make your schools equal. Never did. Only time the schools got equal was after the Supreme Court under Earl Warren said in 1954, that segregation is unconstitutional. Then they, the southern states, were busy building new schools. Well, sugar, I'm not a, I'm sorry, I couldn't answer you're ongoing because I couldn't take that money and translate (laughter). | 39:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So I'm saying those are fundamental documents in the court side. And then of course uh, the legislature. And then you got executive papers, papers of the president. Now a student has to know this when he's gonna do basic research, he's gotta get it. The fundamentals, this whole idea, not now. 'cause you people are just applying yourselves for the first time. But you cannot write a term paper by doing like two of my students. I had, and may I say one of the most brilliant students I've ever had was Dr. Jones's brother. Absolutely. Now, what I wanna say to you is this. Yeah, he was A all the way. | 40:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now what I, what I I'll say about this executive business that is president's papers. Now you're gonna find those in other places other than the President's papers, but that's all right. | 41:02 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You first learn to see you get them at George Washington's fairwell address. Let's look at it. What did he say in his farewell address? Let's go into, at the president's papers, what does he say and particular thing that he has addressed? You see, and students feel, you feel so empowered when you walk into a library and you put your hands on those things. | 41:18 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You see, this is Washington. Oh my God, you just, I felt so good up at Ohio State. I didn't have all those documents at Morgan. Only when I went to work on the Masters. And I said, I'm handling the words, the original language of these people. I was just tickle to death. Now I teach that when I teach methodology and research in American history, and you had to go. And if you don't look like you're going in, I take all of you over to Duke Library myself and good friends over there, Ms Mattie Russell (laughter). She said, I always can tell when you're back in town because your students start worrying me. I want to primary sources now. | 41:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So much on that for history, because I had, oh, I know I was gonna tell you about two students of mine. One was named Bumpus and one was named McCoy. They were good students, really. But to never would write that term papers until just the last minute, the last minute. And see Bumpus drove a pickup truck and he'd take the truck and me and McCoy would go to the library and get about 30 books out. They would, and they'd go back and they'd quote to me from every single book, and he would come about a 50 page term paper. Follow me. Now, first thing is this, every book that they took out, the library was a secondary book. | 42:19 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You know what the secondary book is first? The original book is the, is the Horse's Mouth. And somebody wrote about that. And that becomes secondary. And they would like, they would come with all this secondary material. Some of it they cling as their own. Some they didn't. (laughter) keeps a history teacher working herself or himself to death to be able to detect the person writing on the economic paper. I've got to detect for the Charles of Mary Bid. Said something on the interpret the, the economic interpretation. You follow? You. Oh, somebody come to my, well, democracy was preserved on the West, I think, and I'm sure that if you bring me Frederick Jackson's frontier thesis, alright, we'll talk, if you're hitting at the cornerstone of the debating in history, said, oh, we can, you know, and that's the beauty and the joy of it, is to have your minds expanding. | 42:59 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You're gonna do it. So I won't go anymore into this just to say it was a joy to come. Quite a joy. And I think I begged Dr. Jones and them to see can I go back and teach some more (laughter)? So it's been a pleasure. Only one little point that I would caution you on as I close. And that is, you know, you are dealing with oral history. Many of the things these people are telling you, you follow. So you gotta be careful in judicious in your thinking. They couldn't bring up the document and hand it to you, you know, other than what they've given you here. And you know, this, people aren't going to, very few people will not praise their families. | 43:52 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So you've got to be a little careful on the oral side. Take that, that seems valid, that maybe you see a point here that goes with it. Uh, don't just go wild on the oral style of history because, you know, you'd be writing, you'd be coming fanciful, you know, and writing tails right on down. Use your oral history cautiously. That's all. Is that all right? Mr. Blues man, (laughter)? | 44:31 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I do thank you for permitting me to say a few words. | 44:57 |
| Dr. Jones | Well, we have some questions for you now. Will you take— | 45:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yes. Oh, living, if I can answer 'em. Oh, what | 45:03 |
| Leslie Brown | Do you think about the, there's a debate between the validity of social history versus political and economic history. | 45:07 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I, I don't know of any debate, you know, maybe your university's having a debate , because I, I'm a political historian. I, I, my example is, Wilhelm Van Rankin, the German historian who was a political, be the state is everything and everything emanates from the state. . Now I let you know where I'm coming from . But that doesn't mean that I ignore a social history or, or any other kind economic history. I try to take it all in my stride, but I just like following the political powers and twists powers and twists and turns, be it European diplomacy, American diplomacy. So I haven't heard of that. Maybe something's passed me by . | 45:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But each one is as important because you're portraying a facet of life and, and they shouldn't be so, so so smart about that because after all, all their fields came out of ours history. Nobody knew anything about sociology until 1895. . And, and, but you know, they don't want to hear that. But political science grew out of us (laughter). We were the em embodiment of all these areas. So well that's that's that's what I would, I would say. And so but I am a disciple. You know, I went to University of Heidelberg to study Leopold. | 45:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Can write German history. I mean, or only this, that, that's not the question is put your data out there and let's examine it. And so that was it. Yeah. Alright. | 0:02 |
| Valerie Bell | How do you conduct, well, how do you document oral history when you have a topic when no one wants to talk about it? Mines is on the violence of women, perpetrated on women and trying to adapt oral interviews is very hard 'cause people don't want to talk about it. | 0:13 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. I suspect what you should have done really, maybe is to have taken, what's the period you want to? 10 years? Yes ma'am. You would have to because since they don't wanna talk about it. But a 10 year period now that's a whole lot of time. And you're gonna take the Durham Morning Harold, the Durham Morning son and the Carolina Times, and you just going through there for violence against women. That's about the best, in my opinion. And if you can't do all three of those, take one of those papers. Take Durham, Harold and the Carolina Times. That's the only thing I can see. 'cause they, they're not gonna want to talk about that is, that's terrible. Isn't But that's the what it's, well you all can give her additional ideas. I just, | 0:28 |
| Dr. Jones | Lemme ask you a question. You know, being an a woman in the field of history— | 1:07 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I tell you tonight, I was the first one to get a PhD at Ohio State University. That's what we said. First Black woman. It was a man who was ahead of me, but go on. First one. | 1:15 |
| Dr. Jones | Yeah. And we, we know that there were probably many problems that confronted you as you attempted to get that degree at Ohio State. Could you give us some examples? As you said, in many of those classes being the only Black woman. What, what issues did you have to confront at an attempt to be? | 1:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, my first issue to confront was have enough money to eat. You understand? I went through Ohio State on 50 cents a day because I'd been teaching, you know, before Mac 15 cents for breakfast and 35 cents for dinner. And I was not by myself. I named you some of the people who were there with me. Jesse Owen Owens, who was the, the runner. Mel Walker, the high Jumper Bill Bill Bell, great Bell, played football there. Jake Gaither out of Florida A&M. All of us were there trying to get our work done. And so 15 cents for breakfast was what I had to spend. That's all. Well, thank heavens for Father Divine. You never heard of him. Father Divine's restaurants would, on your way to the university, you could get all the breakfast you could eat for 15 cents. And then for the dinner, we ate the dinner at the Pom Marine, which was a little more elegant, but 35 cents. | 1:44 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So the first thing that never worried me, it never worried me about that 50 cents a day that I lived on. 'cause I couldn't splurge. You know, I couldn't go down the cafeteria line and ask for lobster a la newberg and turf and what is surf and turf and things of that kind. | 2:50 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | No, I knew what my, my, my budget was. That was it. This was in the thirties. And, but you see, it never upset me physically emotionally, because my, my, my heart was listening to the beat of another drum. I catch every word. The professor said, if you could see my notebooks now when he laughed, I put "haha" beside my (laughter). | 3:05 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now that was my goal. My goal was that, just to master that word, 'cause the best I could. And now that was it. Now on, on the question of now I, racism, I hate to use that word. I hate to use any isms 'cause they're so hard to pin down, you know, isms are. | 3:29 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But I found only one professor that I thought didn't give me a fair grade. I had three courses under him. These were tough courses. One was modern Germany from Bismarck, 1870 down to world War Through World War. I gave me an a did. He did. And they gave me an A on modern Germany dealing, I think from something else. There's something else. And and see Germany, the German, European, that part of European diplomacy was a part of one of my specialties that I, like I was saying the other day, I ought to bring out one of those old silly evil papers that I wrote and have it published. | 3:45 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But anyway, that was a part of it. The rest was over in American foreign policy, in American history. We had to write on a historian, gee, other words at this level, this's a 700 level. This is the doctoral level. You are any class and you have to take one historian and dissect him completely academically. Now, I don't mean physically taking them apart. I chose Robert Sealey. Sealey had six books that I had to read and evaluate. You could take any historian you wanted to, if it was on the European side for this class called Great European historians. And in another class you'd have great American historians and you'd select one. But as it was, I selected ly. Now Sly was the historian of the British Empire Theory. You know, in other words, he opposed a French writer named Turo, T u r g O T, you know, Turo Hill. | 4:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | That why must some other country spend a lot of money in? It's, it's prop. It's countries, you know, land what, help me be call on this. Thank you very much. Terry goes said, why I do it? Because like fruit to a tree, only when it's riping, it'll fall. So that was a French philosophy, you know, we'll help along, but we not gonna carry on any walls and all to keep 'em together. | 5:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But that wasn't the British concept. Seriously, his British historian hill that if you carry your British customs and so forth and so forth and so forth, tie the in economically to the homeland, you always have these colonists. Well, tur proved to be right. You know that when, when a colon means economically rip, it'll fall from a tree like any right piece of fruit. And then you had an African criminal. | 5:46 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | This a long story. Now I went to see him about that bee that he gave me. And when I went in, and I hate to say that this was racism. When I got to the door, he was sitting there and I had made arrangements to see him through the secretary now. And he whirled around like that, went on back working. I'm standing at the door now, the least he could say was, come in and have a seat. I'll leave you there in a minute. He never said a word. Then finally, he whirls around in the chair and says, and what do you want? I said, I came to see about that B you gave me. Yeah. And I said some other things that were a little bit on the bragging side, you know, about the first B I had gotten up there then (laughter). | 6:12 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And so he says, oh, you, you're too grade conscious. You're too grade conscious. Said it doesn't matter if you've got the work. That's all it matters. I don't think graduate students ought to be so grade conscious. I said Dr. Dawn, his name was Dawn. He's written a historian of the Empire and all that stuff, his books, they're not modern now. And he said I said to him now this is highly important to me because I have been teaching school and I have come back on a small amount of money to do the best I can. And I do not want under the sacrifices I'm making anybody that would do a wrong deeded to me, oh, you got the wrong heed, was taken off guard. Really? (laughter). He said, that's the only case I knew of where the man now Oh, I know. | 7:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Once I applied to the Y W C A for, they had $150 scholarship for the whole year. And they'd never had a Black to work in the y on the campus. And the Dean of women, she didn't, she wasn't gonna take me there, but she gave me the $150 just outright (laughter) (laughter). So I was happy about that. But things have changed at Ohio State. So but that was back in the thirties. You got to remember now they're begging us to send our students there. Mr. Eves takes up a group every year. Yeah, yeah. They're begging us. And the president wrote me and asked me would I participate in this place for Mr. Chambers's inauguration? Oh yeah. Yes, that's right. Well, they're all young now. Those presidents we got now, just like boys to me, almost, you know, (laughter) with our age difference. Now, I, I'd say this, that's all. Unless you can think of another more specific one. Those are only three, three instances that I know of. I can't think of anymore. | 7:48 |
| Stella | Dr. Edmonds. Did you ever feel that you had to establish your academics and your scholarship with others being of African American women being a member of two minority groups? | 8:51 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, see, I didn't have a lot of people of my racial group as I went up, you know, you in the bachelor's degree program, you got plenty. You know, and coming from a predominantly Black school, the masters begins to weed them out. Weed them out, when you get to the doctorate level, you're just about to only one or two up there. | 9:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, so establishing my academics, yeah, I didn't, I didn't feel like that was any burden because I was going to do that if I could anyway. I didn't want anybody to cut me down wrongfully. But yeah. | 9:21 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And then, you know, you know, when you have established your academics among your classmates, when they go away see, I never missed school up there for holidays. If they say the 4th of July came on this day in school, but we open the ne I didn't go away for a week like many of the students, or at spring, at the winter time, they would leave oh, by December the 15th wouldn't come back by January 15th. You have earned your spurs. When everybody who comes back, White or Black wants to rent your notebook, $3 an hour. (laughter), did you hear me? $3 an hour. 'cause it was very foolish of me as I looked back over it, because I didn't have double notes. I just typed them up in the evening, in, in my rough way. But everybody was scuffing from my notes because they knew they'd been outta school and they were relying on 'em, you know? Yeah. So I didn't have any problems ever. | 9:35 |
| Dr. Jones | Go back to what Stacy said in terms of the question of education that, you know, I know that you responded to that professor because to a large degree you felt that you had been wrong. | 10:31 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Yeah. | 10:42 |
| Dr. Jones | Yeah. But do you think that because of education, that individuals tend to sort of advocate on their own than to swallow and say, well, I'm not gonna respond to this. | 10:43 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You mean this professor didn't | 10:57 |
| Dr. Jones | Respond? This professor, or what Stacy was saying about the question of, of racism, that when people began to become more educated, they tended to be much more conscious that racism was evident and they attempted to sort of maybe respond. I'm going back to what you said in regard to this professor. You were the only woman— | 10:58 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Only, but I, another thing I didn't tell you, there were only seven of us who met on Wednesday nights at six o'clock, and we stayed till nine. And he would walk in, take off his muffin, came in the heavy room at the time and put up, we worked, worked in the library upstairs. And he would come and hang his coat and well around says, good evening. Good evening. And he would like, let's say, what's your name, Stella. He'd say, miss Stella, give your report. And she had given, then he had the nerve to give comments on your report and ask the others, you know? And then, but when he looks up the next time, instead of me, he goes here. He skipped me about four times like that. I room seven. You can't skip people and miss, you know, (laughter), only a blind person. I could do that. | 11:18 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But, so he didn't ever give me a chance. And that was another thing I was s saying to him. And Dr. Jones. I said, I do my work and I'm here and I'm ready to show you got to it. And the next Wednesday, do you know, he opened the class up with me? I'd got to his conscience after that speech, after the speech I made. And it could have been that he wasn't prejudiced at all. It could have been that he, maybe some people just don't like other people. Maybe your personality strikes 'em the wrong way, you know? And they said, well, so, but I, you asked me about my hard times. Yeah. My times were with money and I had that instance with Dr. Dorn, but nobody else. Okay. Nobody else. Okay. | 12:05 |
| Speaker 5 | Yeah. Well it seems to me that you know, now and as, as you're telling me, telling us about your experiences, you know, in school and in acquiring education, it seems, you know, you have all this confidence. You know, nothing fear you or you know, you weren't afraid of much. One thing that you might be, you know, spending, you know, how you gonna feed yourself? | 12:44 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I didn't have the money. (laughter). | 13:06 |
| Speaker 5 | You say that even, you know what I'm saying? You say that, you know, that was a challenge. I mean, what, you know, was there anything that you worked with? I mean, was there | 13:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Anything? Not my classwork, you know, like that kind of stuff? No. 'cause I studied hard. I read, I read those books. So a man gives me a reading list. I read everything on that list. Now, that requires a lot now, because people give you long reading list, they don't expect you to do 'em. And I think they do, just to make the work look heavy. If they could give you 10 or 12 books, would be, you know, better. But they, we have a list. I read everything. And always, always, if there are books on my reading list by my professor, I'm gonna read those first. And I'm read is, I'm gonna get his part of you. I'm gonna get inside his head as quickly as I can to see how he thinks. | 13:16 |
| Speaker 5 | How is it you know added to my question, how is it that, you know, you build this this | 13:56 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, I, I know what you mean. I have a feeling that it came out of, let's say, segregation. I give you an example. I, I was born in a little town over here in Virginia. Ms. Buck, I got about 90 miles, nine, five miles from here. A little town called Lawrenceville, Brunswick County. We had 20, about 22,000 people there. And 14,000 were Black. 14,000. So it was therefore in a county where the Whites were always afraid of being, of giving any power, put it that way. So, 7,000 rule, 14,000. But this is what I say. They didn't have integration there. And I went to a church preparatory academy. You follow me? I went to St. Paul's. It was St. Paul's School. | 14:04 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And there we had musicals, operas bring through big speakers and things like an Episcopal church school called St. Paul's. It's course now four year college. But in my time it wasn't. Lemme tell you what I had there. Now I'm gonna show you how I had to give me confidence. In the ninth grade, we took beginning Latin. In the 10th grade we did the Caesars Gallic Wars. In the junior level, we did Cicero's, orations. And four years of Latin, we did planning plan's, letters, and sometimes Juri wars. Let's go back to our, to biology. Science. Ninth grade, biology 10th grade botany, you know, about plants and flowers. And the third year of high school, we did chemistry. And the fourth year we did physics. But physics did me, 'cause I never was good at physics, but I mean, I passed it, but it never, the same thing with, with grammar. | 15:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | We did ninth grade fundamental grammar. And the ninth, 10th grade we did literature. They had us reading Keats's St. Agnes Eve, ah, bitter Cole. It was, you heard that said Keats, I've heard you talk about (laughter). And then I think the third year we began writing, writing little essays. And then senior year we had, we had to have English. You couldn't say, you couldn't say like you can today. I've completed my English requirements. You never complete. Please believe me, (laughter), you ought to go back home all the time. So I'm telling you that was it. Now what I'm saying there is we had a choir at our church. We had a debating society. I was on the debating team. And you know, you don't know Congressman Gray, do you? No. Bill Gray you heard of him, was his father, was my debating partner. Well, now when I say that, I'm saying this, that there was no in the world, those White kids in my town could get the quality of education that I got at this church academy. | 16:09 |
| Speaker 5 | This was In South Carolina. | 17:13 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | North Carolina. I no, Virginia—Lawrenceville. You never heard of St. Paul's? No. | 17:14 |
| Speaker 5 | I heard it say of St. Falls, you know you up from Massachusetts? | 17:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | No, no. I went to, yeah, no, no. But what I was saying, now, this may not have happened in another town. Maybe had I been in South Hill, Virginia or Alberta or some other little towns around, or even Petersburg. But here I was fortunate. So this is a lucky thing. I was born there and this was a church school. We had to wear the White mid blouses, you know, and Black skirts and high top stockings. In other words. But look at what we got in Latin and science, science in, in, in, in English and everything. In other words, I wouldn't want to go to red White school that we had there because everything we got was so superior in content's sort what I'm trying to say. So maybe that's an, an unusual situation. It might not be the same if I had gone to some other school. So on that question of a race, we always felt that we were in better off than the kids at the White school. And then you see, we had you know, eating in the dining room. A lot of socializing comes in there, you know, and going over to Russell Field. | 17:25 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | See, never won a football game. Never. But anyway, we go (laughter). So that's a part of it. Alright, but what else I didn't answer. | 18:30 |
| Dr. Jones | Andre. And then— | 18:39 |
| Andre D. Vann | Okay. This is in you academia. How did you refute any of those frequencies, ideas that others had of say Blacks teaching at Black institutions has viewed by those that | 18:42 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I never had a problem with that. You mean about teaching up there? | 18:59 |
| Andre D. Vann | Yeah. The idea of, of Black teaching a Black institution. How, how you view, | 19:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, I tell you what with me, and maybe this sounds cocky, but I teach at a Black institution, just like I teach at a White one. Alright? I don't melt it down to butter because I figure you can't get it. 'cause I figure if we set up the way you would get it, I'm talking about, even I say you, I mean collectively. So I don't have any difference in trying to teach one way. Whether or not, lemme tell you schools I've taught at Ohio State University, 8 19 83, 84. I'm teaching in civil rights. 84, 85. I went to m i t there. This was not in the sciences. 'cause you know, m i t is a school for scientists law, but they have a division of humanities. You know, we sit there hoping that the scientists would come by and get a little drink of the woman milk of human nature. | 19:07 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But anyway, they don't have to come 'cause it's not. But anyway, I taught there in the writing program as 84, 45, 85, 86. I was at Harvard. I was teaching there in the education school for the first semester. And then over in the history for the second. And then I went on to Radcliffe. I was up there four years in New England. I used to come back here for poor board meetings and things like that. So, I don't know what the que what's the question? Oh, how my point of view, I don't have one kind of teacher. I don't have, when I come to you, I figure if you've got certain weaknesses, I'm gonna try to fill those, you know, I will, I'll have all afters time after hours, you know, and certain things. I've had all kinds of experiences with students here at my home. When, a long time ago when we used to have elections at night, I'd bring 'em all there. If the class graduate class eight or 10, they stayed there at three o'clock in the morning. 'cause then we didn't get the returns, you know, until about three or four (laughter). We didn't have all this stuff. Exit interviews and telling you around nine 30 we was gonna win. We sit there, we all have our charts, we put 'em down and things like that. But I don't know whether I've answered Andre. You may ask me more, but I don't do any different teaching with you or anybody else. I just, | 19:56 |
| Andre D. Vann | I guess my question dealt more directly with how you were viewed by others. The fact | 21:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, oh, how I was viewed by my classmates? | 21:16 |
| Andre D. Vann | No. How you were viewed by teachers, White institutions. Those, | 21:20 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I never had any problems. Okay. Never. No. At Portland right now, talked to their six summers and they're worrying me to death to come back. But I'm too old to go back now. No, I never had any problems. Okay. But remember, maybe I'm living in a different era. Maybe. But I started, see, I, I couldn't get much, I couldn't have the time to do much teaching. Because you see at Central we worked on what is it, 11 months pay nine months. Nine months working and 11 months pay. But then you got work for teaching summer school. I never had the time until 1,965 to go to another school. And that was when I became Dean of our Graduate School of Arts Sciences. And therefore I had a month off. Now I'd go to teach any place they wanted me to come for that month. And then when I retired I just went on everywhere that I felt like I wanted to go. So I didn't have, I I a whole lot of problems. Now, now, make no mistake, that doesn't mean that people don't have problems. I'm sure they do. You know, I was just telling you about mine. Yeah. Okay. | 21:23 |
| Kimberly Council | Kim we kind of briefly talked about this. The over the chancellor's house. We talking about the Afrocentric people that coming in. But what are your views on the push for the education from an Afrocentric standpoint? | 22:31 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I just don't, don't go for it. The, the old didn't like it when I said it the other night. I don't think any Afro centrism, Eurocentrism or any particular culture ought to take a position that say we are the best. All my training has been in the European, but I don't think the Europeans can say their culture is, is is at the top and above everybody. And what's gonna happen is that when we take an Afrocentric point of view, this is what I mean, if I'm judging Afro Centrism, that everything must center. That if we take it and the whole nation is not in line with perpetuating it, then we run into grave difficulties. To explain what I mean, number one, when you finish Central or Duke for your job, got to take four kinds of examinations. | 22:42 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Let's say the first thing you're gonna do is you're going to go to graduate school, you're gonna take the G R E or you go into law school, you take the L S A T or medical school, the mcat. I'm saying this, if you put a African history above all others, you are not going to have two questions on that examination that will relate to what you spent your time. And therefore you'd be mad. I don't care if I'm not you, any of us. Alright? You may teach in Kate 543 questions on the in Kate examination. They may ask you identify Marion Anderson or Book of Washington. I'm just telling you as it is. Yeah, that's true. So that doesn't mean that you would let your culture go, but you can't put yours above all others. You don't know how to do that. That upsets | 23:40 |
| Kimberly Council | You. No, no, it's not. I'm not upset about it. I was, I was just interested to hear your opinion. Because I don't, I don't know. I see. I think the fact that this class has to be, that we have to go back and rewrite history, not necessarily from an Afrocentric point of view, but maybe from an honest point of view. | 24:32 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, that's fine. Yeah. ' | 24:50 |
| Kimberly Council | 'Cause there's so many things that have been written and that, that have been disproven by science and by history. And I mean, and I think that we were discussing this earlier on in the class about about what it's taught as far as history. Yeah. In the first, I guess, primary school systems and how you, how you want, you know, and this's, how you aren't really taught. | 24:51 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | How many classes are you having in African history American. | 25:13 |
| Kimberly Council | Right now? | 25:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | No, for the whole four years, | 25:16 |
| Kimberly Council | The whole, oh about five or six. | 25:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Why'd you take so many? | 25:23 |
| Kimberly Council | Why? Because— | 25:24 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now where are you gonna teach? | 25:27 |
| Kimberly Council | Where am I gonna teach? | 25:29 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You plan to teach? | 25:29 |
| Kimberly Council | I— | 25:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | If you teach high school, let's look at it now. I'm not trying to say, because some of that you could have read for yourself because I never took a course in my life. But God, I, when I, I'm not secure in African history, I wouldn't even try to come here and teach it because I'm not, you know, the background on. But from the minute those slaves landed here in 1619 to the prison, I think I can hold my own (laughter). | 25:32 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So now I'm saying this is a practical matter. You took five or six courses. What do you planning? Do you planning to go on and get a PhD? Don't you told me tonight? Yes, ma'am. But you gonna have to fill in some gaps. | 25:57 |
| Kimberly Council | You mean well— | 26:12 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Before— | 26:13 |
| Kimberly Council | Oh, I, but I've taken, I've, I've, I've taken you know, different, I, I'm a political science major, so I've studied Berkeley. So Locke, Hobbs. | 26:14 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But you got five of those other courses What way in each course that made it? | 26:23 |
| Kimberly Council | Well, I, I like Black experience— | 26:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But see, I never know what that's in that, that's, | 26:28 |
| Kimberly Council | That's | 26:30 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Means what does that mean? History from 1619 to the— | 26:31 |
| Kimberly Council | 1865 to the present, 1865 before. | 26:34 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | In other words, they break it down. Right? Well, I'm just telling you this now, don't don't think that I'm going to, to upset your program, but you're gonna have a lot of you got some filling in to do. I don't mean with African history unless you're going into African history. | 26:37 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But I mean, if you're going into General American history, I, I don't That's 15 hours of your 30. You're only required 30 for me. Are you? Yes. 30, 33 I think. Well, 33 and plus Mr. Chamber was giving y'all 30 hours of work experience. So you (laughter) Not yet. I knew that I would get em. Not yet. Well, anyway, now that's what I'm saying. And I don't, and then I course I had to ask you a lot of questions about under whom did you take Y three? I don't want to hear that. | 26:53 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | That would only be, you know, because I don't want to hear you tell me. X Y Z didn't do this. And see, because we, we have teachers just like White schools. Some of 'em are demagogues and others are mythologist Whites got 'em too. I can tell you, you know, they're, you take, you take anybody who says today, well, I don't believe that Blacks got any superior people all inferior. Well, you know, that person hadn't moved from toy lines since 1960. I mean 16, 19. And he brought 'em in. He doesn't even believe it in his heart. But he can't make himself safe. Oh yeah. I met something smart. Well, they got their deagon just like we got 'em. We got Farrakhan and this and that and that and that, that [inaudible] and verse ones. And somebody up here, Rutgers, I can't think of his name. | 27:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | He's always, but the students love those kind of people. They don't care. They, man, that gives 'em some excitement. They spend their good money. All that money that the college gives 'em for, for activities, they take it and bring somebody in there who will raise hell for one night. And then the money's gone. The person's gone. (laughter) talk about y'all. No. Well, she don't bother. Said No ma'am. No ma'am. I want to hear where you, you, why, why are you taking the political science? Well, I You wanna go into law? I wanna go into politics eventually. Yeah. Well, that's all right. Political science and history. Good. But you know, you still gotta know about the working of the Constitution of the United States. I'm taking constitutional law. Oh, well that's good. But I go, well, maybe I didn't know enough. Who else had a question to ask me? Was the quam was asking me something about it? | 28:10 |
| Speaker 5 | You touched on your feelings about research and methodology. Yeah, I'm sure you— | 28:57 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | That's my heartthrob. | 29:02 |
| Speaker 5 | The most, probably the most fundamental aspect of any serious historian. | 29:04 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I'm sure you do. At least you know where your materials are. Exactly. You know, but suggest you don't have to be fumbling around the cellar. | 29:08 |
| Speaker 5 | Well, what do you suggest let's say for the, the history student who didn't have your class. And that's— | 29:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, I imagine they offer methodology there. I have noticed it. Oh yeah. Yes. I haven't, I haven't, I haven't seen it. Yes. I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't think, I just think I'm the best one that ever tell (laughter) how. But that's where you set a student on fire to become a historian. That's, that's where you gripping. But | 29:21 |
| Speaker 5 | What do you suggest for the student who feels like there's more out there to learn? Oh, there's more aspects. Research and methodology. | 29:41 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, I, I don't know. 'cause see, to tell you the truth, I couldn't say one word about what we are offering now. You know, I'm, I'm, I I'm not only, only people I'm in touch with those I've known all my life. I mean all the allies. But I don't know. Somebody told me that you have a teacher for it every semester or a change one this time. One next. I don't know if you got a good one. You don't need to be changing it. Him or her all. You just need to keep 'em. 'cause that's a gateway to this. So I couldn't say just if you're not gonna get it there Yeah. Or wherever it may be, then that'll be one of your things when you, as soon as you move into graduate school, you're graduating, aren't you? Let's take a course, even if it means to go back to a senior level one course. 'cause you want to get your foundations. Once you get your foundations, you can go, you can go once, get your foundation and come you, you're interested more in social history, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah. If you get that, you can go. Yeah. Anybody else had a question? I know I've kept y'all too long. 9:20. | 29:48 |
| Leslie Brown | Can you ask a personal question? | 30:47 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Hmm. What? | 30:49 |
| Leslie Brown | Why'd you pledge Delta Sigma Theta? | 30:50 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | (laughter) You don't know what she's asking me. (laughter) You know, we have, we have three, we have three sororities in our group. And one is Delta Sigma Theta, and one is Alpha Kappa Alpha and the other one is Zeta Phi Beta. So she'd be waiting on this question. They asked me, why did you please Delta Sigma Theta? (laughter), she's, she's AKA, I'm sure she definitely is. | 30:54 |
| Leslie Brown | Why did you pledge Delta? Well, I'm not affiliated, so I get to ask the question. | 31:19 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | It really doesn't matter now. But back at that time, you know, was very, very important. You thought. And then of course, all the men in my family are Omegas. And the Deltas are considered the sisters to the Omegas. So all the women, women, Delta and the men with Omegas. I look at my nephew right now. He ain't my grand nephew. | 31:25 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | See, he doesn't know things. He's 14 years old. Ninth, ninth grade. And, and he tell me, I'm going Omega. Omega. That's what you indoctrinate them. Yeah. That's the reason. So that's what he says. You some of my best friends, [inaudible], you know Dr. Marre Parker? Yes. She was one of your presidents writes on your history. Yes ma'am. She's one of my very best friends. Yeah. Me. And I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna ask Dr. Jones to invite her down. When they had this thing again, they can stand, one old historian can do (laughter) Mar Parker. She wrote on the, you know, during the, during the, during the reconstruction, freedom, what is the Freedom School? Freedom, what's the name of the schools? Freedom Bureau? Freedom Freedoms Bureau and the Freedom Schools. Oh yeah. She's done that work on that. Very good. Uh mm-hmm. Yeah. Because she tells us, tells us what happens after the war. They were so trying to find this talented group. This is before dubois, that they began to teach slaves Latin and Greek philosophy, a curriculum that really would not give them any headway in the South where it was agriculture kinda stuff. But they, like Du Bois, Leader, said, they need leadership. And if they need leadership, we wanna produce some teachers, preachers, lawyers, doctors, and so forth. They call it the what was it, Tenth? | 31:43 |
| Dr. Jones | Talented Tenth? | 33:08 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Talented. Talented 10th. Talented 10th that are back in those days. So you find Du Bois and—not Carter Woodson—Booker T. Washington, different. A little bit on that. Although I have some scholarly friends who say they didn't differ at all. I have those who say they're miles apart. | 33:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Now. Booker said, drop down your bucket where you are and go into agriculture and get a land. Du Bois said you need leadership. Well, it needed both if you want to know the truth. But at that time it's true. | 33:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Now, what else you want, (laughter)? Well, I certainly have enjoyed my my visit with you and qua, you, you take that, you, you take it wherever you can get at the research thing. Even if you, if if you don't have another course over there, there's, why don't you come over with Duke and take a course in it? | 33:36 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You all can exchange classes, can't you exchange grades? That's true. This is I kids. Yeah. Yeah, because I was on the committee back in 1966 that when Duke agreed that the students could come here, I was dean of our graduate school, sending some over, always used their books. 'cause they had a rich library. But that was because, make no mistake, the library wasn't richer that because than we were, because we were poor. | 33:57 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But we are a teacher training institution and a research institution needs all the fundamental documents. We are teacher training. When you come over there for education, we can, you know, you're gonna be a good teacher. But the research things you know, now they got the archives over here. Ms. Mattie Russell put the archives together at Duke. That's why I said I fell somebody else right on here. Well, got anything else I'll answer. But I don't mean to be so cavalier in my answers. I'm telling you, just as I, you | 34:23 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Andre, what'd you say? You had—Andre, how do you stand on your methodology? | 34:57 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I don't mean all these secondary books now. | 35:04 |
| Andre D. Vann | Okay. Well, I I think we've strongly in the area of archive history. Oh, good. And decent on private documents. | 35:06 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Well, that's all right. | 35:12 |
| Andre D. Vann | This research that I'm doing much of it comes from other than oral parts. Quite a few pieces come from people, clauses and dealing with document Yeah. Federation journals. Yeah. Dealing with the old programs pictures, people's photo of albums, basically. You know, it's almost like invading someone's life almost. | 35:13 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Well, that's the way it is. I'm trying to | 35:32 |
| Andre D. Vann | Deal with that, but it's coming. | 35:33 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, that's good. And let me tell you something, Andre. If you write a Master's thesis and you are not using federal documents, if the topic goes that way, and I talk on federal, I'm talking about Supreme Court, Congress, and you know, executive papers and or if it's on the state level and you're not using the governor's papers, the state assembly books or the state legislature with the enactments get me. Or if you are also working on a topic in which you're not gonna find some excellent biographies, people who have written, you don't mind reading both ways on what they have said about 'em. If you are working on a topic that requires diaries and you don't find any diaries, you know, as, as, as primary sources, see, I prefer a diary to a memoir. The person who writes a diary, he puts it down here every night. | 35:36 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | A memoir said, I'll wait until I get old and then I'll write my memoirs. Well, you know, by that time, the sharpness is gone from your thinking. So I people, those of us in history, we'd rather get our hands on diaries, you know, because man may shape his views as he wants when he writes his memoir. That's the end. Or periodicals, I mean, first class historical journals, political science journals and so forth. And on down the line, newspapers. What are your best, if you don't have some of those primary stuff in this topic, you really haven't, well, you haven't gotten off this, please. | 36:35 |
| Andre D. Vann | I got one quick question. What is your thoughts on these, on the ideas of using obituaries or funeral home records? | 37:09 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh yeah, that'll give you a lot. But you know, you never saw a bad one. Nobody ever said the person was a S.O.B. (laughter). | 37:15 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | (laughter). This gives you a, you know, some flavor. Yeah. That's all. | 37:22 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | And I don't suppose, I don't suppose your professors at this stage expects you all to do an eternal report that can't be touched. It's so good. I think they wanna see how you're thinking and, and, and how you would put a story together. You see, I'll talk about those two boys who got the truck load of books, secondary books I the library. Now you see a secondary book is the last thing in the category from documents on down that you examine. That's somebody else's view. He's good if he put his eyes on the original and most out there don't. | 37:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | But God, every statement is not a fact. You know what I saying? You hear read many statements, but every statement is not a fact. Is so that when you've taken that statement and put it to its final test and what's left is the grist of the mill becomes the fact your building block for where you going. So every, every, every statement. | 38:01 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | So therefore, these secondary books, you know, with people writing them and God knows we appreciate 'em. 'cause all our textbooks are secondary books. But when you get ready to do that original piece, that original piece know you, you rely on secondary books as little as you can and try to find primary. And if you can't find enough primary, then the topic really maybe doesn't need to be written. But, but that's, that's, that's it. | 38:22 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, I've enjoyed y not gonna hold you in the long, so come see me when all you can. I don't live far from you. Maybe the Duke people I live from, you know, come and see me. I at least keep you over in my living room and we can open up some historicals. You too (laughter). Maybe Dr. Jones might bring all of you over there. Y'all got cars, so I don't need to talk about that. Well, we'll, everybody's got a call here, Dr. Edmonds, | 38:48 |
| Dr. Jones | We're hoping that many will be able to come and see you on Friday and Saturday. They're aware of the Helen G Edmonds New South lecture series. | 39:11 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | This conference isn't, I wanna tell you about that. You know who's responsible for that, don't you? The Helen G Edmonds lecture series isn't there. So I'm so flattered. I don't know what to, but all these people, 27 of 'em, my life is touched and and they, they get on fire and they go on (laughter), they get on fire, they may disagree with a lot of things. I say, (laughter), get on fire. And they go right on up to that last walking post. And, and you, you, are you taking work here? Yes, I am. What, what do, what are you majoring in? African American student? | 39:18 |
| Leslie Brown | I'm a graduate student in history. I do African American history, women's history, and US political and social history. | 39:51 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Now, does does Ann Scott teach you at all? | 39:58 |
| Leslie Brown | I had her as an advisor when I started, but she's retired. Yeah. I work with Nancy Hewitt now. | 40:03 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | I hope next year that y'all will have on one of your sessions. Okay. She was chairman of the department for a long time. Yes. Mr. Watkins, Dr. Professor Watkins. | 40:10 |
| Leslie Brown | He's still here. He's still here. | 40:17 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Yeah. Tell him I said hello. | 40:18 |
| Leslie Brown | I worked with Bill Chafe and Ray Gavins also. | 40:19 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Oh, Chafe is too young for me, but Watkins. But you know, they asked us to write a history of Durham. | 40:22 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | You know, the one history of Durham that's been written ends in 1910. And Boyd, Mr. Boyd wrote it. A Princeton man. And so really when a person closed his history in 1910, he hadn't done much from 1900 to 1910, except found some appropriate endings to say no, you know, the researchers. So they this might interest your topic. So the father's founding fathers got together and they asked, they said they wanted a new book as an adjunctive board, but didn't want it written by one person. | 40:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | They wanted I think 16 historians to do a chapter. I was assigned the chapter of North Carolina Central University that was mine and, and shepherd and so forth and so on. I did about 90 pages and just when we got all of us, 16 of us had all manuscripts ready to submit 'em to Professor Watson. He was the chairman. | 41:02 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | There was a, an, an old family here in Durham. I can't think of that man's name, where he used to wear the confederate tie. Edwards didn't, yeah, his son's a lawyer. Oh, okay. And his wife was on the, on the county, on the leg, on the Durham City Council. She was a lawyer too. The city council years ago. Okay. Probably as Edwards. Yeah. Okay. Well, they call him, you know, he still wears that little you know how the Confederates wore that little tie? It comes down in a little narrow ripple like, you know, old. And he wore Prince Albert court. | 41:26 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Well, he almost blew his fuse when he read the chapter on the sit-ins in Durham. And he, he almost blew his fuse. And he said, no, it couldn't have that that chapter could not be in it. So then we had the proposition of saying, asked this fellow man who did it over here, would you, would you withdraw your chapter on sit-ins? | 42:05 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Nobody asked him that. I'm telling you what we had to, our idea was we wouldn't ask a single one of our courts to withdraw to please somebody. We had one foot in the grave and the other one about to go in. We weren't gonna do it. So Mr. Professor Watkins gave everybody gave each of us our chapter back. And of course that's a part of, of what I'm gonna do if I ever get to it on, on Shepard's story. But I got other things, right? | 42:35 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Beverly will tell you, I've written a, have I not written a little codicile, that if I got two big volumes in my house on Black women in politics, and I have a codicile which says if I do not live to finish this, I implore Dr. Beverly Jones and Dr. Donnie Bellamy at Fort Valley to complete this work. Only thing I want is put my name first and anything (laughter) | 43:03 |
| Speaker 8 | That sounds fine with me. I hope I can be included in that as a Black, as a Black politician, Black woman politician. | 43:28 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Are you telling me, you know what? We just had about, let see this last election, 92. Carol Moses Brother Carol, I know her well. She went into the Senate and then we had several in the house. Cynthia Jordan from Atlanta, and Maxine Waters Maxine's been there long time. I know her well, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Carrie meet from Florida. But you see there were six of them. And maybe there were men and women who went into the Congress in 92 based on the redistricting of their congressional areas. Yeah, we are having a big meeting on that tomorrow. I won't get No, we won't get there. 'cause I'm promised Natalie that, but we leave about, if she close, we leave by three because all the Congress congressional people and the Black lawyers and whoever else is gonna be there meeting on the same question. | 43:35 |
| Helen G. Edmonds | Because North Carolina is one of the states. For instance, North Carolina is saying that that is Whites in North Carolina saying that the 12th congressional district was created purely to accommodate a Black. And they talk about, you know, how it's run so close together. This they say on one side of the street is another district all the way to Charlotte. Well, that's being, that will go to the Supreme Court on March 28th. And then you got some others. There's six of these. And so this is just a preliminary meeting of historians and and the lawyers and so forth. See what's, yeah. Well, I wanna tell you was joy. I all of you'll be graduating. Somebody want to thank Dr. Edwards on behalf. | 44:27 |
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