Margaret Gordon interview recording, 1995 July 25

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Mary Hebert	Okay, just state your full name and tell me when and where you were born please. Go ahead.	0:02
Margaret L. Gordon	My name is Margaret L. Gordon. I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, January 11th, 1911.	0:08
Mary Hebert	And what did your parents do for a living?	0:21
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, my father died before I was born. He died in September and I was born in January.	0:24
Mary Hebert	And did your mother work?	0:32
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. My mother actually finished St. Paul University. But she did not want to teach, so she did domestic work. My father was a plasterer when they were married at First Baptist Church. He didn't live very long after that.	0:35
Mary Hebert	Has your family always attended First Baptist?	1:01
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, most of them have. Of course, when I first joined church, I joined First Calvary Baptist Church with my grandmother. But my family, my mother was married in First Baptist Church. Strange thing happened. Back there they did not have automobiles, they had horses and horse-drawn hearses and what they call hacks. And their horse ran away. My mother was pregnant with me, but the horse ran away downtown.	1:04
Margaret L. Gordon	And of course the people were all excited, because they threw her out of the—When the horse ran away, she was thrown out of the hack and they thought she was going to lose me, because she was pregnant with me. And of course a White physician told her—saw to it. He came with the police to bring her home. And home was not in this house at that time. We lived on a street called St. Julian Avenue, which some people called Plank Road, because it led to the Colored cemetery. And he brought her home and told her mother, my grandmother, to give her some hot coffee and that was all.	1:42
Mary Hebert	That was all?	2:34
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	2:35
Mary Hebert	He didn't give her any kind of medical treatment at all?	2:36
Margaret L. Gordon	No.	2:38
Mary Hebert	But apparently she didn't lose you. I mean—	2:38
Margaret L. Gordon	No. Here I am. Yes.	2:40
Mary Hebert	Is that a story you heard when you were growing up? Would she tell you about that as you were growing up?	2:44
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. Mm-hmm.	2:49
Mary Hebert	Did you live with your grandparents?	2:50
Margaret L. Gordon	No. My grandparents, my mother's mother, lived on the Eastern Shore, and my father's mother lived in the downtown Norfolk where most people lived during those days. Downtown Norfolk. So I didn't, no.	2:52
Mary Hebert	But you got to see your grandmother a lot, your father's mother? Would you see her often?	3:12
Margaret L. Gordon	Once in a great while. See, after my father died, they—I had a brother too. He was older than I was. He was about five or six years older than I was. I can remember that when we went to school, we went to kindergarten. That was a school that people had in their homes. this lady had a kindergarten in her house. My mother would fix us lunch and take us around to Mrs. Hodge's house with our lunch, and then from there we went to first grade school at John T. West School. That's over here on Bolton Street.	3:19
Mary Hebert	Did you have to walk to school?	4:18
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. It was within walking distance. And I can remember in that first grade class, my brother had written his name. He was older than I was and he had written his name. And I looked over there, saw that little bit of writing, so I got my pencil and, oh, I went all over the place. The teacher said, "Oh, this little boy has written his name. Oh, isn't that wonderful?" That little, I'm going "grr—"	4:21
Mary Hebert	Did you get in trouble for that?	4:52
Margaret L. Gordon	No.	4:52
Mary Hebert	No?	4:54
Margaret L. Gordon	She looked at me and patted my hand and didn't say anything. I never forget that.	4:54
Mary Hebert	Did you ever go to work with your mother?	5:02
Margaret L. Gordon	Go to what?	5:04
Mary Hebert	Go to work with he when she went off to work?	5:05
Margaret L. Gordon	No, I didn't go to work with her. But I do remember my grandmother—When my mother's mother came from Eastern Shore to live with us, she used to work out in the fields. There were very few jobs for Blacks back there. If you were a postman or if you worked in the Navy or something like that, those were very good jobs. But the rest of us, the rest of the people had to do days work. By the way, my mother was a seamstress. She could sew. Of course very few people had money to have clothes made, so she had to go out and work. And I remember my grandmother, when she came, used to go out in the fields and work. She had made some money and had promised to buy me a pair of socks or something.	5:07
Margaret L. Gordon	Anyway, I remember she had a $10 bill and she went in the five-and-ten store. Woolworths five-and-ten was on the corner of Brambleton Avenue and Church Street at that time. And she went in there and she was in there so long, I crossed the street and went in there to see what was wrong. And I never will forget. She said, "I gave that clerk a $10 bill and she gave me change for $1." And I was thinking how hard she had worked to get 10 whole dollars and then to stand there, grown woman, my grandmother, and she couldn't get but a $1.90 change for that $10.	6:08
Mary Hebert	So, she only got changed for $1?	7:02
Margaret L. Gordon	That's what they gave her. And I remember her saying to the lady, "But I gave her a $10 bill." "I'm sorry. All you gave me was a $1 bill." That was my first encounter with people who would do mean things. To my grandmother of all people.	7:04
Mary Hebert	Did she just have to leave? I mean, she never got her—	7:33
Margaret L. Gordon	No, she never got her money at all.	7:36
Mary Hebert	Did she—	7:43
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Go ahead.	7:43
Mary Hebert	I was going to ask if she would tell you stories about when she was growing up and what life was like for her when she was a child, or when she was a young adult and those kind of things.	7:44
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. She used to tell me about her life over in the Eastern Shore. See, she lived over at Eastern Shore all of her life. She had very high cheekbones and somehow she thought she might have been mixed with Indians; a little Indian blood in her or something. She used to tell us about how she would climb the trees to keep out of the way of what they call people who were hunting for Black folks like that.	7:53
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm. So she had memories of being a slave as a child?	8:37
Margaret L. Gordon	No.	8:40
Mary Hebert	No?	8:41
Margaret L. Gordon	She was never a slave.	8:41
Mary Hebert	She was never a slave. She was too young.	8:41
Margaret L. Gordon	But her people, her great-grandmother and all were. Some of them live with the Indians. So she said.	8:44
Mary Hebert	When did your mother come to Norfolk? After she got married, she had moved here? Your mother.	8:58
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. Mm-hmm.	9:03
Mary Hebert	Did you ever resent your mother having to go off to work when you were growing up?	9:09
Margaret L. Gordon	No, I didn't resent her going to work, because that was our food and our welfare. And she was fortunate enough to work for some very nice White people, I remember. See, the house my father and mother bought together, we had to pay taxes on it. But there was no running water, no indoor toilets, nothing like that. But still, we had to pay taxes. And I remember one of the ladies she worked for told her, said, "I'm going to put you in a Christmas savings." Now, she worked all day for $2.50, but she said, "I'm going to put you in this Christmas savings, so at the end of the year when you got your Christmas check, that will pay the taxes on your house." And my mama religiously did that.	9:16
Margaret L. Gordon	When this particular lady, her name was Mrs. Jackson, when she died, she gave Mama that China. She left Mama that China clock right there in the middle. There. Uh-huh. She gave her that and we brought that China clock home from Mrs. Jackson. It used to run and chime and all that, but—	10:18
Mary Hebert	It doesn't run anymore?	10:39
Margaret L. Gordon	No. But—	10:40
Mary Hebert	Did she work for just one family for a long, long time? Did she work for the Jackson's for a long time, your mother?	10:41
Margaret L. Gordon	She did, but she was so good that they would tell the other neighbors about her. And when I grew up to be a teenager, I used to—See, the White boys would beat up my brother if he went in the White section. But I could go over in the White section and I would go over and I had some White people that I would get their clothes and bring them home and wash them. And I'd tell them, "Have your other dirty clothes ready when I bring your clean clothes," because I wanted—	10:46
Mary Hebert	Was that for extra money?	11:28
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. Sometime I get 50 cents. Sometimes they give me 50 cents for scrubbing the floor for them while I'm over there.	11:29
Mary Hebert	How much clothes would you do for 50 cents? A whole load of laundry?	11:37
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, it probably might be three or four, five dresses and things like that. Kind of heavy basket.	11:43
Mary Hebert	How would you have to wash and dry? I mean, how would you wash the clothes?	11:55
Margaret L. Gordon	With a tub and a soap, you know—What you call it? A wash board and soap like that.	11:59
Mary Hebert	Would you iron it also?	12:08
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, with the iron you had to put on a—	12:10
Mary Hebert	On the stove?	12:13
Margaret L. Gordon	—stove. That's right. I had one of those irons for a long time. I don't know where they are now, but I used it for a door stop for a long time. Mm-hmm.	12:14
Mary Hebert	You went to school beyond elementary school, didn't you?	12:27
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes.	12:29
Mary Hebert	Where did you go to school?	12:29
Margaret L. Gordon	Oh.	12:29
Mary Hebert	Did you go to junior high?	12:29
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. I went to—See, when I finished—Oh, let me see. When I finished elementary school, there was a Booker Washington High School, but not the high school that's here now. It was an old building. And I went there for a little while and then they decided that they were going to let Negroes have another old building, so I finished that school. They call that Booker Washington High School too. I finished that school, and when I finished I thought I was going to get a scholarship. But I didn't get one.	12:36
Mary Hebert	You didn't?	13:24
Margaret L. Gordon	No. I graduated with honors but I didn't get this scholarship. Because at that time it seemed that the people who were in charge of making the scholarship awards, the Black people, wanted to be good friends of the Black people who were working at the Navy yard or had a good job in the post office or something like that, so those people got the scholarships.	13:26
Mary Hebert	So, the children of the upper class families are the ones who got the scholarships?	14:04
Margaret L. Gordon	That's what happened to me.	14:09
Mary Hebert	The doctor's children and lawyer's children, those kinds of—	14:11
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes ma'am. And I never will forget. One man came up to my mother and said, "Don't worry." Said, "She'll make it." And I just wondered how was I going to make it without a scholarship? So, I decided I would go to Petersburg. We had a Virginia Normal and Industrial Institute in Petersburg. My grandmother worked in the fields and she saved money and I worked. They had a capping factory where people would go and cap strawberries and they'd pay them so much, and I went and capped strawberries. And we saved enough money so that I had enough money to ride on the train to Petersburg.	14:13
Margaret L. Gordon	My grandmother pinned that money to my bosom. She pinned it up here. And I said to myself, "I wanna put my money in my pocketbook," and I put it down in the pocketbook. And remember, we didn't have indoor toilets or nothing like that. When we got to the campus, I had to go to the bathroom and I can remember going in there and looking around, and I was known all over that campus when I came out and couldn't find my pocketbook.	15:04
Margaret L. Gordon	I just hollered, "Oh, I lost my pocketbook!" And I could see all those hours that we had worked and saved the little pennies and the dimes and that was to get that money together. And I wished that it had stayed here. But I could see myself. I just thought you had to go in and get it to pay something. I didn't want do that. So, I had a good friend from Norfolk. She let me holler and scream. She finally came over, said, "Shut up." "I lost my pocketbook!" Said, "Here's your pocketbook." "Where was it?" "Where you left it."	15:46
Mary Hebert	Oh, so you found your money?	16:31
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah.	16:33
Mary Hebert	The pocketbook with the money in it.	16:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah.	16:33
Mary Hebert	Oh.	16:35
Margaret L. Gordon	She had picked it up in the bathroom. She said, "Now, when you go in these bathrooms, you act like you've been in there all the time, so don't—" But see, everybody knew me then as the girl who lost her pocketbook.	16:36
Mary Hebert	And was that one of the first times you've used an indoor bathroom?	16:51
Margaret L. Gordon	In an institution. Now, we did have one at church.	16:56
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	16:59
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. But that was a highlight right there.	17:05
Mary Hebert	Did your mother encourage you to go to college? Is that something that she wanted for you?	17:11
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Yeah, she wanted me to go to college, because she was a college graduate herself.	17:14
Mary Hebert	And what about your brother? Did he go?	17:22
Margaret L. Gordon	My brother dropped out of school in high school. He just couldn't take that business. He had a good friend who was the son of one of these folks, but the teachers sort of—You know how they did. He would write up things and they would praise his friend but never praise him for what he had written or what he had done. So, he got tired of that. Plus, when he got to be a high school person, mama just couldn't afford all the nice clothes that his friend had. But he and this boy were good friends, so he decided—told mama he was going to work and he got himself a nice job working.	17:25
Mary Hebert	Why didn't he get the praise from the teachers? Was there a certain reason? Was it because he didn't have as much money as his friend?	18:29
Margaret L. Gordon	That's it. Because his mama was an ordinary woman and this other guy's parents were professionals.	18:36
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm. Who were some of the professional families when you were growing up? Do you remember some family names and what they did for a living?	18:44
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, I remember the Bakers who—his daddy was an undertaker. I remember some other—Let's see. Arabee. The Arabees who had a store. And there was some longshoremen. I can't think of their names right now.	18:57
Mary Hebert	Some of the longshoremen were leading families in the community who had—	19:30
Margaret L. Gordon	They got money. When the ship came in, they unloaded ships. And a postman. We had a mister—Gosh, he was a mailman. Can't think of his name.	19:34
Mary Hebert	Were there doctors and lawyers here also?	19:50
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, there was a doctor.	19:53
Mary Hebert	When you were in high school, were you involved in a lot of clubs and organizations and things like that?	20:05
Margaret L. Gordon	No, I didn't have the money to belong to a lot of those things. But I remember—That was in college. I belonged to some of the—What do they call those people in high school? I belonged to one or two clubs in high school.	20:11
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	20:44
Margaret L. Gordon	But see, having to work after school, I couldn't go to too many of those.	20:44
Mary Hebert	And you did laundry after school? Is that what you did after school?	20:51
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I remember my grandmother, my mother's mother, when she came to live with us, she used to take us crabbing like this and she'd make us put some clean clothes in a basket and we'd carry that with us. Said, "Grandma, why do we have to carry clothes? We're going crabbing. We going to get all dirty." "That's what I know, but you're not coming back through the streets looking dirty. Going to carry these clothes and when you get through crabbing, you going to take those clothes and put them on and go back home dressed up like people."	20:55
Mary Hebert	So, it was important that you be clean and look nice when walking through the streets and—	21:35
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's right.	21:46
Mary Hebert	Would she make you come in, your mother, make you come in the afternoon and get dressed up? I mean, in nice clothes for dinner and things like that?	21:46
Margaret L. Gordon	No. See, my mother would still be working. We'd have to sit at the table all clean and everything. Grandmother sort of looked out for us.	21:54
Mary Hebert	Did she take care of you while your mother was working?	22:06
Margaret L. Gordon	More or less. She would be here.	22:10
Mary Hebert	What part of Norfolk did you grow up in?	22:15
Margaret L. Gordon	What they call Huntersville.	22:18
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	22:20
Margaret L. Gordon	I think that—When I was young I think they called it Barboursville. Now they call it Huntersville. And the street was named Gordon Avenue. And when I was going to school, the children said, "Was that named for you?" And I said, "Yeah." But my mother told me there was a florist who had a house on Gordon Avenue years ago, and it was named for this florist.	22:24
Mary Hebert	There was a distinction between what Huntersville was then and Barboursville. Didn't they make distinctions between the neighborhoods at that point? Wasn't Huntersville a separate neighborhood?	22:58
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. That's right.	23:10
Mary Hebert	What kind of families lived in Barboursville? Was it mostly people who were workers, laborers, domestics, that kind of thing?	23:12
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, Black people. Most of them have been doing just that.	23:19
Mary Hebert	Were most of them in the same social class as your family? I mean—	23:25
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, most of them them. Of course, as I said here, and there there might be some who were professionals.	23:30
Mary Hebert	Were there some neighborhoods that your mother wouldn't let you go into that they thought were dangerous places, dangerous sections in Norfolk?	23:39
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, she didn't care too much for us going—Like I said, my brother couldn't go anywhere much in Brambleton. That's where a lot of the Whites lived. And she would tell stories about how, when she first moved over on Gordon Avenue, the police were looking for a Black man and he had run under one of those houses. And how the dogs, bloodhounds—they had the bloodhounds out looking for this Black man. And it's just—	23:47
Mary Hebert	Did you have any relatives living nearby you, or was it just your mother and your grandmother? Did you have aunts and uncles living?	24:42
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, I had an uncle who lived near me, near us. Because he was renting a house on Proescher Street. And I thought he was rich, because he had a piano and he used to work for NS Paper Company. He drived a truck for NS Paper Company. And then I wanted to—My mother thought, excuse me, thought I should learn to play the piano. His name was John Giddings.	24:50
Mary Hebert	Ginnings?	25:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Giddings. G-I-D-D-I-N-G-S. See, my mother was a Giddings and my grandmother was—	25:35
Mary Hebert	Did you take piano lessons?	25:42
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, I'd go around there and hit the notes on his piano. And there was a lady and mother was paying to—she would pay that lady to teach me piano lessons. I had to go to that lady's house. And I had no piano to practice on, so she put my finger down. "All right, now run the scale." And I'd make a mistake and she'd snap my fingers. When she snapped my fingers with a rod, I told mama I didn't want go to that lady no more. Because she knew I didn't have nothing to practice on but at Uncle John's house, and he wasn't home all the time because he's working. And I'm not going back no more.	25:44
Mary Hebert	And so, that's where your piano lessons ended?	26:39
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. When I got older, I bought myself an organ.	26:40
Mary Hebert	What did you major in in college?	26:51
Margaret L. Gordon	I majored in elementary education.	26:55
Mary Hebert	You became a school teacher?	27:02
Margaret L. Gordon	That's right. I was told by one of my neighbors, a Black girl who had finished college, she told my mother to tell me to work for a normal professional certificate at that time. That would let you teach, if you had a normal professional certificate. So, I worked for the normal professional certificate, which would allow you to teach. And I wanted to teach, because you could really finish high school in teaching those days, and I wanted to just go on off and teach. Mama said, "No, I want you to get your normal professional certificate."	27:04
Mary Hebert	And you did that?	27:58
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, I did. With a lot of trouble. I remember I took an art class and this lady had put a little bird up on the table and she said, "I want all of you in here to sketch this little bird." And man, I would just sketch that little bird. It looked like a bird to me. She came by, "What's that?" I said, "That's that bird up there." "Erase it." I said, "I can scream!" She said, "Scream." And I'd scream. And she said, "Oh my goodness." But on my records she wrote, "Good student. Slightly nervous." Oh boy.	28:00
Mary Hebert	Where did you live while you were out in Petersburg?	29:06
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, I lived on the campus in the dormitory, and I got a job up there waiting tables and cleaning up professors' rooms and things like that. And I wrote my mother, "Don't worry about my tuition, because I'm making enough money to pay." That was a great load off her shoulders.	29:10
Mary Hebert	How did you find time to do your schoolwork?	29:43
Margaret L. Gordon	Sit up nights and work.	29:46
Mary Hebert	And where did you teach when you came back after you finished?	29:53
Margaret L. Gordon	After I finished, I got a job. First job I got was over in Berkeley, at a school in Berkeley. And the lady my mother was working for said—And I was glad, because I always wanted to go out of town, because I hadn't had any experience traveling too much. So, the lady my mother was working for said, "Didn't you say there was a school at the end of your street?" Mama said, "Yeah." So she called the school superintendent and asked him to transfer me from Berkeley to that school at the end of the street, and I was so disappointed.	29:57
Mary Hebert	So you still lived with your mother?	30:42
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. I was disappointed, because I wanted to go somewhere to teach.	30:43
Mary Hebert	And at that point Berkeley was a separate city, wasn't it?	30:48
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. That's right.	30:51
Mary Hebert	When you were a child, I know I'm going back a little bit, but who'd you play with? Would you play out with some friends in your neighborhood?	30:55
Margaret L. Gordon	Well frankly, I didn't have too many playmates, because see, I'm working after school. I'm going to get folks' clothes to wash.	31:05
Mary Hebert	Even when you were very young?	31:20
Margaret L. Gordon	Oh, I was 10 or 12 years old when I was doing that.	31:20
Mary Hebert	So you started working from the beginning almost?	31:26
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	31:26
Mary Hebert	I'm going back now. Your first job was at the school at the end of Gordon Street?	31:28
Margaret L. Gordon	My teaching job?	31:32
Mary Hebert	Your first teaching job.	31:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Gordon Avenue, yeah.	31:34
Mary Hebert	Gordon Avenue. What school was that?	31:34
Margaret L. Gordon	John T. West.	31:34
Mary Hebert	The same school you'd gone to?	31:39
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. And I remember the principal at that time was Mr. D. G. Jacox. And I remember, I think he must've been a supervisor or something, or assistant superintendent or something. And it shocked me when he came in the building and started calling him David. His name was David G. Jacox. And I said to myself, "Well, why can't they call him Mr. Jacox like we do? See? And—	31:43
Mary Hebert	So, White supervisors would come in and call him David?	32:25
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. And I remember complaining one time to one of the teachers. I said, "Why does that man come in here and call him David? That's Mr. Jacox." She said, "Shh." I said, "Yeah, but he's Mr. Jacox." And for a long time I couldn't get used to people calling Black folks by their name, like Mary or Margaret or somebody. I remember one time one of the White folks called me. I was talking on the phone and she said, "Well Margaret," so and so and so. I was turning in the record to find her name. I said, "Oh yeah, Janet," so and so and so.	32:28
Mary Hebert	So you called her by her first name?	33:17
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. But I just still can't. It does something to me when people do that. I had to get used to that, see? But they were calling each other, Sally, Susie, John, James and so forth. But they called us by our first name so long until I just felt it was an insult.	33:18
Mary Hebert	Would they do that to your mother and your grandmother too?	33:43
Margaret L. Gordon	Sure.	33:45
Mary Hebert	What about within your own community? Were you called Ms. Gordon or—	33:50
Margaret L. Gordon	Sure. Ms. Gordon.	33:55
Mary Hebert	Ms. Gordon?	33:57
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	33:58
Mary Hebert	Did being a school teacher give you a position higher up in—Oh. Socially I mean. Were school teachers viewed as role models and things like that?	34:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, they were. That was one of the good jobs. Good in quotation marks. "Good" jobs. If you could be a school teacher. However, Black school teachers could never get more than $100. And of course they'd take out retirement money, so you probably got 90-some dollars. But when I started teaching, I was only making $60 a month. And that inequality in teachers' salaries led to our fight for equalization of salaries.	34:13
Mary Hebert	Did you take part in that fight?	35:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, I did. At that time I was in the Norfolk Teachers Association. I was a member of the Norfolk Teachers Association. And we went to court to fight for equalization of salaries. And what's that guy's name? We had that—We had lawyers. One thing about it, NAACP lawyers were well trained, and we had lawyers who would form a network of lawyers.	35:01
Margaret L. Gordon	For instance, there'd be lawyers who—There was Walter White who was almost—he was Mulatto. He was taken for White and he could go down in the south and mix with the Whites and they never knew he was Black. He could get information and whatnot. Thurgood Marshall. You've heard of Thurgood Marshall.	35:51
Mary Hebert	Heard of Walter White also.	36:19
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. Thurgood Marshall has been here in this house. I remember he interviewed me for some things—	36:25
Mary Hebert	Concerning the teacher equalizations—	36:47
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes.	36:49
Mary Hebert	—equalization thing?	36:50
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. So anyway, I remember acting as secretary of our association during that time. And teachers were afraid they were going to lose their jobs, because the first plaintiff we had was Aline Black and they fired her. And all the teachers got mighty afraid after that.	36:52
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm. Was this in the '40s? 1940s?	37:22
Margaret L. Gordon	Let's see. I can't remember now. '40s. '30s, '40s. Must have been something around the '30s or '40s.	37:27
Mary Hebert	The '30s or '40s?	37:41
Margaret L. Gordon	Something like that. Mm-hmm.	37:41
Mary Hebert	Did you, the teachers, initiate the suit? The NAACP didn't come in and say, "Oh, we should file this suit." It was the teachers who organized and contacted the NAACP?	37:43
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, that was our fighting organization. They would go to court.	37:55
Mary Hebert	Right.	38:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Because they had the lawyers who were trained at Howard University. And they were scattered all over the Deep South, so that they would plan. You down in Florida, you find out this fact. You over here in Washington, you do this, you do that. So that no one lawyer had to do everything. But when they got to court, they had all this information. I think that's what helped.	38:01
Mary Hebert	Did many teachers lose their job because of the suit that you and the group that you were working with initiated?	38:31
Margaret L. Gordon	Aline Black was the only one that lost her job. Palmer, Mr. Palmer over in—Palmer lived in Newport News or Hampton. I think he lost his job. Oh, it was another guy that lost his job in Richmond. I can't think of—But two or three of them.	38:38
Mary Hebert	So it was a statewide fight. It wasn't just the teachers in Norfolk that were fighting, it was—	39:01
Margaret L. Gordon	It was a statewide thing.	39:07
Mary Hebert	Did you win?	39:10
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. They equalized the salaries. And I never will forget the morning we went down. They said they would settle for 30—It would take $30,000 to equalize the teacher's salaries. And actually, we fought for more than that and we had papers accepting the 30,000 and we had papers accepting the higher amount. And I remember Thurgood Marshall coming to me and say, "Here. Now if we win, pass them up. If we have to take the 30,000, pass them out. And don't get them mixed."	39:13
Mary Hebert	What kind of man was he?	40:06
Margaret L. Gordon	Who?	40:08
Mary Hebert	Thurgood Marshall.	40:08
Margaret L. Gordon	Thorough, energetic, King-thinker, fine person. When he died, they came here to interview me. You remember when Thurgood Marshall died.	40:10
Mary Hebert	He did a lot of work in Louisiana too. I'm studying Louisiana and he did a lot of work there too, working with the local NAACP lawyer.	40:31
Margaret L. Gordon	That's right.	40:39
Mary Hebert	On teacher pay equalization, things like that there too.	40:41
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	40:44
Mary Hebert	That's why I was asking the period, you know, about—	40:45
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, around about that time. And I remember he made one statement I never forget. He said—I think they were arguing and saying that White kids were smarter than the Black kids. And he said, "Not according to the normal distribution curve. They've got some dumb White ones and some dumb Black ones. Got some smart White ones, got some smart Black ones. So let the dumb White ones be in the class with the dumb Black ones." He was just outspoken like that.	40:47
Mary Hebert	Did you pass on any of this desire to fight to equalize things to your students? Would you talk to them about that in class, or anything like that?	41:30
Margaret L. Gordon	When I taught at Norfolk State—I taught at Norfolk State University. I used to weave some of Black history into whatever I was teaching so that the children enjoyed the class. And some of them, it was the first time they had ever heard of Blacks doing this and Blacks doing that.	41:41
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	42:08
Margaret L. Gordon	I remember when I finally went to Howard University to work on my master's degree and you had to outline your thesis. The professor gave you a week. He would lecture about how to make a research paper and the parts of it and all that stuff. "And by next week I want you to pass in your subject of your thesis." You had to write a thesis to graduate from Howard University. If I had known that, I wouldn't have been so glad to go there. But my high school teacher had graduated from Howard and there was nowhere on earth that you could go better than Howard University, so I was determined to go.	42:09
Margaret L. Gordon	And when I passed in, I wanted to know the African background of the American Negro. That was going to be my thesis chapter. And he looked at me and said, "African background of the American Negro? They haven't done anything but what the White folks told them to do." I said, "Oh my gosh. I'm pretty [indistinct 00:43:25]." Then he said, "No, I tell you what. You go down—" Some guy on the campus had been to Africa. Just come back from Africa. He said, "Go down there and find out what he's found out about Blacks in Africa." I said, "Where is his office?" "That's your research. You find out where his office is on this campus."	42:59
Mary Hebert	Is that what you wrote on?	43:53
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	43:53
Mary Hebert	I need to turn this tape.	43:55

Mary Hebert	When did you go to Howard? What years did you go there?	0:04
Margaret L. Gordon	I think it was 1944. I have a—	0:09
Mary Hebert	A plaque?	0:11
Margaret L. Gordon	—a plaque from Howard University. I graduated from Howard.	0:14
Mary Hebert	When did you go-	0:22
Margaret L. Gordon	Got my masters.	0:23
Mary Hebert	When did you start teaching at Norfolk State?	0:23
Margaret L. Gordon	1956. 1955, '56. I think it was something like that.	0:26
Mary Hebert	Before that, you were in the Norfolk County—Well—	0:36
Margaret L. Gordon	Norfolk City Public Schools.	0:40
Mary Hebert	Right, because it was in Norfolk County. I'm just learning all of the geography of the area. You taught in Norfolk City Public schools. Did you-	0:42
Margaret L. Gordon	What happened, you see, Norfolk City Public Schools, the superintendent had—Well, one thing, when they opened Jacox School, that was one of the newer schools for Blacks and I didn't apply for the job. Different ones were applying for the job but I was working in one of the elementary schools in Norfolk City and they used to have the White principals meet in the morning when the Black principals meet in the afternoon. I got a letter from the superintendent saying to me, "I want you to come to a meeting today." Now we would meet, say 3:00 or 4:00, 2:00. And I said, "Oh my gosh, I'm busy. I don't have no time to go to that meeting, but I guess I better go."	0:57
Margaret L. Gordon	There was a White man who was in secondary. See, I was teaching elementary school and he came out there quite a bit to my school. He said, "Miss, you're supposed to go down to see the superintendent today. Today." He said, "It's a big job but don't you refuse it." I said, "What are you talking about?" "I mean, what I said. It's a big job but don't you refuse it." I don't know what you talking about. I went on down at 2:00 and when I was going up the steps, here come this guy, "And don't forget, big job, but don't you refuse it." I said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I went on in there and the superintendent said, "We are building a new school and we want you to be the principal of the school." I said, "You want me to be the principal? I'm satisfied where I am." "What do you want to do? Get in a rut?"	1:54
Margaret L. Gordon	And I started to say, "Yes, Sir, I love this rut." But anyway, I didn't say that. I said, "Well, what new school?" He said, "It's out there near you. You live out there." They were going to build Jacox School there. I said, "I haven't seen it." "You haven't seen it?" I said, "No." They had a Black supervisor, Mrs. Mildy Peters. He said, "Well, I'm going to get Mrs. Peters to take you out to see that school," and so she dragged me out there and they were building that school and I looked at that school, I said, "Gosh, that's a mighty big school. Goodness." And she said, "Margaret, you haven't seen it?" I said, "No, I haven't seen it." "Well, why haven't you seen it?" I said, "Because I have to leave home 5:00 in the morning." I didn't have a car. Catch three buses to get to school where I am. But anyway, I ended up being the principal of that school.	3:02
Mary Hebert	How many years were you principal?	4:28
Margaret L. Gordon	At that school?	4:30
Mary Hebert	Mm-hmm.	4:30
Margaret L. Gordon	Let's see, it must have been 1944 to 19—I guess about 10 or 12 years.	4:43
Mary Hebert	Did you model yourself after Mr. Jacox? Did you model your style of being principal after him?	4:47
Margaret L. Gordon	No, I didn't but I saw to it that a picture of Mr. Jacox—There's a brass plate of his picture is in the hall. I saw to it that was in there. But you see at that time, I used to read a lot. I'd go to conventions and things like that and the curriculum was changing. We had what we called combination of units of education, which was new at that time. We put English, social studies, science together, maths and that sort of thing. We were doing that type of curriculum and that school had a shop. They're teaching boys and girls how to—I insisted that the girls also go to the shop and the boys go to cooking and so on. I just tried to do something different at that school.	4:54
Mary Hebert	Did you get used books from the White schools for the teachers?	6:16
Margaret L. Gordon	Oh yes. Let me tell you, they opened that school in January and they told me, said, "We didn't put your school in the budget so we're asking the various schools to send you books from there and then you make a list, an inventory of the books and send it to us." That was a White supervisor called Ms. Charlton, Gladys Charlton. I don't know whether you've heard of her or not, but she told me to do that. These books started arriving and I told the janitor to put them in the space for the cafeteria, just put those books in there because we had to count them and pass the list. My assistant principal and I went in there to look at the books and you pick up one, it's falling all apart and you got to look at the pages and see what that's supposed to be. A math book, I guess. I don't know what all the pages—I mean, it's just a mess.	6:18
Margaret L. Gordon	This little boy was going by. He had a cart, a Billy goat pulling the cart. I said, "Come here, little boy," and he had newspapers in the cart. I said, "Where you going?" He said, "I'm going to sell these papers. I'm going up here to the paper man to sell the papers." I said, "When you go up there, ask that man will he take books?" He said, "All right, I'll do that." I said, "Then you come back and let me know." When he came back, I said, "Come to the office. Come on right through that door and come on over to the office and tell me." He said, "Yes, ma'am, the man said he'll take books. Anything for paper."	7:26
Margaret L. Gordon	I said, "You see all these books around here?" "Yes, ma'am," eyes that big. I said, "Listen, I want you to come in that door and fill your little wagon with your billy goat and carry them and don't bother me no more. Just come on in here till you get them all." "And what would I do with the money?" I said, "You keep the money. That'd be yours." Oh my gosh. He started working. Two days went by, Miss Charlton said, "Ms. Gordon, we're waiting for your inventory of books." I said, "Sorry, I couldn't give it to you." "Why? What you mean you can't give me that?" I said, "Because those books were falling all to pieces and I gave them to the little boy with a billy goat," and she started laughing. And for years, whenever she'd come or see me, she said, "Miss Gordon, what'd you do with the books?" I said, "I gave them to a little boy with the billy goats." They never did bother me about those books.	8:08
Mary Hebert	But what did you school do for books? Did you get more?	9:09
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, that's another story. By that time, they started teaching by television and goes, "I want some televisions." We got some televisions in our cafeteria and so we started teaching by television and to see they were teaching math, science or whatever. And also, we had this core curriculum. That's what we called it, core curriculum. I noticed they got a whole lot of that stuff going now in these schools but we had that long ago. And then they rumored they were going to send me to Booker Washington High School when that principal retired so I got busy then and decided I didn't want to go to Booker Washington High School as a principal.	9:12
Margaret L. Gordon	I talked with Mr. Lambert, who was the superintendent. I talked with Mr. what the guy name, at Booker T. Norfolk State, and I told him, I said, "Look." Dr. Brooks was at Norfolk State then. I said, "Dr. Brooks, if they insist that I go to Booker Washington High School, keep that door open for me because I'm not going to Booker Washington High School to be principal. I'm going to come to Norfolk State and don't you say anything about it." That was the best kept secret for that whole year and when I went to Norfolk State, the teachers at Norfolk State didn't know why I was over there. I think they thought I had been fired because I did so many odd things.	10:22
Margaret L. Gordon	One day, they had an education week speaker and they asked the superintendent of Norfolk Public Schools to be the speaker and these people that been looking at me, one of them even walked at me and asked me, "Does the superintendent know you over here teaching?" I said, "Yeah, he knows I'm over here." I taught at night school then. But then they put me in a day school and he came over there and he said, "I came over here for two reasons. Glad to be here, your education week speaker. First thing I want to do, I came over to see if I can get Ms. Gordon back." I could have hugged him for saying that. "And the second thing, I want to come and thank you people at Norfolk State for sending us such nice teachers," and then he went on. My days got better st Norfolk State then.	11:29
Mary Hebert	Did you retire from there?	12:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes.	12:34
Mary Hebert	You never went back to the public school system.	12:35
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-mm.	12:39
Mary Hebert	Why didn't you want to go to Booker T. Washington High?	12:39
Margaret L. Gordon	Because I just didn't feel like—They had moved me. I was at Tucker. I was at Smallwood. I was at Ghent. No, I wasn't at Ghent West, but I'd been to four or five different schools and I figured that would be a waterloo for me because first thing, they have football, all that stuff. And being principal, anything, you're responsible for this and that and I had just had so many responsibilities that I just didn't want to take on another step. Remember, I was an elementary major.	12:51
Mary Hebert	Right, that's what I was going to ask you. As a principal in an elementary school, I mean, going to high school would've been different.	13:28
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, because see, even the junior high was different. I had to go and learn what in the thunder do you do in a junior high school? And when I found what they did in junior high school, I picked the best of what it had. And by the way, when I went to, where did I—Northwestern. I went to Northwestern. I went to University of Chicago. And by the way, I went to—What else did I go? I'm trying to think. I carried a group of White teachers with me. They wanted a principal and some teachers to come to this seminar and I carried these White teachers from North side and some of those other places with me. And when we came back to—We wrote a little book on your money, what is it, budgeting or something and we were going to have that published.	13:36
Margaret L. Gordon	In fact, we made copies, sent it back to the superintendent. "Oh yeah, when we have our meetings, we want you to make this presentation." But they did not want the people in Norfolk to know that a Black principal had carried some White teachers to a big university and we had written up this stuff. That morning when we had this meeting, superintendent came to me. [indistinct 00:15:23]. He said, "Listen, Ms. Gordon," he said, "Now don't make your report this morning." Newspaper reporters were there. He said, "Don't make your report this morning." I said, "Well, we all ready to make it. We have copies and everything."	14:53
Margaret L. Gordon	"No, don't make it. Don't make it now." And I was so disgusted. I said, "Ain't this a mess." I told the White teachers that had been with me. I said, "Oh, we can't make our report." "Why?" I said, "They just told me not to make it today." There was a White supervisor of home economics in this city sitting behind me and she said, "Don't worry." Said, "You can make your report in my meeting with the home economics teachers." I said, "But this isn't written for home economic teachers. This is written for public school teachers, all of them." Anyway, that happened.	15:34
Mary Hebert	But they didn't have any problem with you going with the White teachers to Northwestern and the University of Chicago in those places? It was just they didn't want it made public here?	16:26
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	16:34
Mary Hebert	How did those White teachers treat you while you were on the trip?	16:36
Margaret L. Gordon	Just fine. There was one thing that happened. There was a person. See, there again, I divided the work. You do this. You do that. I'll do this, and you do that. I had decided that I was going to the library at the time the guys up there came to interview the group and they said, "Well, Ms. Gordon is in the library. Let me go and see if I can find her." They said, "No, we'll just interview you." These are all White teachers. And when I came back, they told me and said, "Look," said, "The man was here to interview us, but we told him that you were in the library, but he couldn't wait till we went to get you." They were very nice and they were mad at I don't know what, but the man told us we couldn't report because those—Whatever. But anyway, that's the story of my life. Fight, fight, fight.	16:40
Mary Hebert	Did you teach that to your students to fight, fight, fight? Was that something that you passed on to them?	17:44
Margaret L. Gordon	Not really, because junior high people are the most excitable people in the whole school system.	17:51
Mary Hebert	That's true.	18:01
Margaret L. Gordon	And I didn't feel like they would be able to handle that, see, but many of them have written back to me since they've gotten out and gotten jobs or retired or whatever they're doing to tell me that they'll never forget their days at Jacox. I figured they'd pick it up without pushing it down their throats.	18:03
Mary Hebert	By what you'd done in your examples?	18:30
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	18:32
Mary Hebert	Just a few questions about Norfolk in general and then we can stop. What was it like during the Depression here? How did the Depression impact Norfolk?	18:36
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, during the Depression, jobs were hard to get and food was—A lot of people were on welfare and I think the churches helped a lot by giving food and what have you.	18:51
Mary Hebert	Did you notice your students being hungry and not dressed well and those kinds of things?	19:24
Margaret L. Gordon	That's right, and we used to have free lunches and I was determined that they would get free lunches. Some of my teachers were saying, "Well, Ms. Gordon, let's serve them all soup." I said, "no, I want these children to get a full lunch, meat, vegetables, milk, everything." And I talked to my supervisor of lunchrooms and I told her that the Depression was really gray and some of these children were hungry, but they were too proud to admit it. I would give each teacher a chance to put down how many free lunch tickets they wanted to give. See, we had homeroom. I arranged the schedule so they had about 30 minutes in their homerooms when the school started. And another thing I had was that every child in the school was going to belong to a club and the homeroom teacher's going to be the head of a club and your children were going to be in one. They had to be anyone that you were a head of and that closeness with the teachers and the students.	19:29
Margaret L. Gordon	Every teacher got a certain amount of free lunch tickets and what disgusted me, one little boy came in and said, "Ms. Gordon, I don't want no more free lunch." I said, "Yes, sir. You don't want more free lunch. Why?" Well, that teacher said, "Come up here, all you all who are getting free lunch and get your tickets." I said, "She said that?" "Yes, ma'am." I said, "No, she didn't say that." "Yes, she did. I don't want no more free lunch." I said, "What are you going to do for food?" "I don't know. I don't want no more free tickets."	21:08
Margaret L. Gordon	I said, "Listen." I had three clerks standing there and I said, "See, this clerk right here? Your ticket will be on her desk. Don't you take it off there. You just come in and she'll know you. You just tell her your name and she'll give you a ticket and you go in there and eat that lunch and you better be eating it when I come." And sure enough, he eat on all—We had three lunch here. He said, "I ate all three lunches." They were almost right, but anyway, that's what happened during the Depression.	21:47
Mary Hebert	They were too proud to want take it. They'd have to go up in the front of the classroom to get tickets?	22:25
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, she was the only one that I knew was doing that. When I had teachers meeting, I told them, I said, "Look, don't try to embarrass the kid for a free lunch." Oh, just you could go in the—Well, I arranged it so that each teacher ate lunch at the time her children ate lunch. That was some scheduling to do it that way, but that's why we had three lunch shifts. And it was very easy for her to just give the person who taking up tickets, put those kids in front and say, "Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Get in here," and they just go on through and she's giving the lady the tickets without the children being embarrassed.	22:27
Mary Hebert	Did the government provide the food for that?	23:15
Margaret L. Gordon	We had some of it and some we had to buy it.	23:18
Mary Hebert	But your school paid for it, for those kids to be able and have at least one meal?	23:22
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Some got breakfast and lunch.	23:26
Mary Hebert	Why did you think it was important for every child to belong to a club?	23:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Because I wanted every child to feel like he's somebody and all the kid teachers raved about that. They didn't want to have clubs but I had studied the characteristics of adolescents and I tried to get each teacher to study the characteristics of adolescents. And I used to say to them, "Don't send a child to the office telling me that he has written a book, or written a note to—" Okay, all right, bye bye. I said, "Don't send anybody to the office telling me he was writing a note to a little girl." I said, "He's supposed to do that," see, and I would read off the characteristics of adolescents, but that was one of the big things we did.	23:38
Mary Hebert	Where did you visit? These are just general questions about Norfolk. Where would you go shopping? Where would you buy your clothes and those things?	24:41
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, there were places that you could go but you couldn't try on anything. Al Snyders had some beautiful hats and things, but you couldn't try them on. You could hold up something in front of you but you couldn't try it on.	24:51
Mary Hebert	Were there any Black-owned clothing stores that you'd go to?	25:07
Margaret L. Gordon	No, not when I was growing up.	25:10
Mary Hebert	You just had to guess your size and—	25:15
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	25:18
Mary Hebert	What about shoes? Could you try on shoes?	25:18
Margaret L. Gordon	Not really. They used to have a sale table that you probably could try them on. I remember when my mother was living, she was sick and I had her in the car and I asked—I knew what her [indistinct 00:25:39] and I said, "My mother's ill and she's out in the car. She wears a size eight and a half wide and could I take these shoes to the car and let her try them on," and they let me do it, but that was quite a problem.	25:24
Mary Hebert	What about grocery shopping? Would you go to Black-owned stores for that?	26:02
Margaret L. Gordon	We did have a few Black-owned stores. I remember there was a lady who lived near us. Her name was Mrs. Fanny Lo. She had a little store and there was a juice store. We called it Juice store. That was about three or four blocks from my home. My mother used to have an account at that store that she would go and get groceries and put it on the book and then she'd pay as she could. And I often wondered, "Where did those children go to school," but they went to a White school.	26:07
Mary Hebert	Were they discriminated against off of the Jewish families?	26:50
Margaret L. Gordon	If so, at the time I didn't know it because we had no contact except when we'd go to the store.	26:55
Mary Hebert	Would you ever go out to the beach while you were growing up?	27:03
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. They had a beach called Buckroe Beach, which was over in Hampton's side over that way and we used to go. Sunday school picnics would go to Buckroe. Then the Whites took over that and I remember one time I took my mother down here to Virginia Beach. She just wanted to put her feet in the water. I took her early in the morning and nobody was down there. She put her feet in the water and that sort of thing but we were discriminated against.	27:11
Mary Hebert	At the beaches too?	27:49
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm.	27:52
Mary Hebert	Did you ever feel like you were treated like a second class citizen?	27:53
Margaret L. Gordon	That, I was.	27:56
Mary Hebert	Did you feel like you were treated by society as a second class citizen, I mean? Did you—	27:57
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, they would try that, but-	28:03
Mary Hebert	You fought that?	28:06
Margaret L. Gordon	—I've always had some White friends, you know what I mean? For instance, right now—Well, I joined a lot of things when they let Blacks join. For instance, I was a member of the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce. I'm still a member of the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce. They had a woman's division and two or three of us joined that. There were always some Blacks who would take advantage when they opened the thing for Blacks.	28:12
Mary Hebert	And you were one of those?	29:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, and right now I belong to the Children's Foundation, and that's an organization that gives away quite a bit of money to projects to help children. I'm a member of that, but I'm thinking about resigning from some of those now because of my health reasons. In fact, I had written a letter of resignation for the Children's Foundation when they sent me a little letter. I did keep it up here. Maybe it's over there. They have made me an honorary member. They said, "Come to meetings when you can. You don't have voting privileges, but you're still an honorary member."	29:01
Mary Hebert	You're going to remain in as an honorary member?	29:53
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. I've always tried to get out and I guess you call it being pushy or nosy or belonging because the opportunity was there and if we don't take advantage of the opportunity, shame on us.	30:04
Mary Hebert	Do you remember the first time you voted?	30:24
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes.	30:27
Mary Hebert	How did you register?	30:29
Margaret L. Gordon	You had to pay poll tax to vote. And Mr. Chessen was our school principal at that time and he used to say, "Pay your poll tax." And I said to myself, "I don't want to pay." You remember Joe Jordan? He died not too long ago. He was a judge here in Norfolk. Oh, that's right. You're not from Norfolk. But Joe Jordan lived right back of me. This is my house on Garden Avenue and his house was right back of me. And he declares I taught him in the first grade. I don't doubt it, but I had so many kids, I probably forgot him. But we'd talk a whole long time about that and it wasn't but a dollar and a half, but a dollar and a half was a whole lot of money for Black folks and we paid our poll tax.	30:30
Mary Hebert	And voted.	31:23
Margaret L. Gordon	And voted.	31:24
Mary Hebert	There wasn't any literacy test here or that kind of—	31:27
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-mm.	31:30
Mary Hebert	You just paid the poll tax and you were allowed to vote.	31:31
Margaret L. Gordon	Seems to me at one time I heard people say they would ask you a whole lot of questions, but—	31:34
Mary Hebert	Not with you?	31:42
Margaret L. Gordon	No, but they got to the point that they had registered your name. If you paid your poll tax, your name was in a book and when you went to the polls, they look in that book. "What's your name?" "Gordon." They'd look in the G. "Yeah, okay." They let you get in line and go on up and vote.	31:42
Mary Hebert	You voted in the 30s? Was that the first time you voted in the 1930s or was it—	32:01
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, it was around the 30s. 29 was when I started. It must have been around the thirties.	32:20
Mary Hebert	This is my last question. What were some of the signs and symbols of Jim Crow here in Norfolk? Were there signs over White only restrooms and water fountains and those kinds of things?	32:20
Margaret L. Gordon	That's true, yeah.	32:33
Mary Hebert	And at the beach, was it segregated with something separating the beaches from one another or—	32:36
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, you just didn't go to that beach. There was a beach that Blacks used to go to, I can't think of it here, in Norfolk. But then what they did, they bought the ground around it and built houses up there and so you would probably not go but—	32:44
Mary Hebert	What about when you were traveling? Did you encounter those laws?	33:06
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, because we had to sit up front. I didn't travel too much when I was young, but my aunt moved to Princeton, West Virginia. And of course, we used to have to go from Norfolk to Cincinnati and change trains and then go from Cincinnati to Bluefield, West Virginia and we had to sit where all the cinders and stuff was coming down on you and all that sort of thing.	33:12
Mary Hebert	What about in restaurants? Did you have to go to a back window to order and those kinds when you could go to them at all?	33:49
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes. I remember traveling with a White lady to Florida. We weren't going to Florida. Yeah, we were going to Atlanta but it was so foggy the plane could not land in Atlanta, and he said, "We're going on to Florida." And my heart started beating. I said, "This plane has been," what they call, "hijacked." I said, "I bet they going to carry us somewhere else other than Florida," but they carried us to Florida and this White lady, and I got off and we walked into the restaurant together and all the folks looking, "Oh, dear me, what's this?" I said to her, "Look," I said, "These folks are looking at us and I don't want them to do you any harm or me either." "Don't pay no mind. Come on. We eat together." I said, "No, I'll—" "No, you coming with me." We sat down at the table and all those White folks got up and left—	33:59
Mary Hebert	And then left?	35:11
Margaret L. Gordon	—and left that table. And then I said, "I don't know whether I want to eat in here." She said, "What's the matter?" I said, "Because I don't know what they'll bring me. They'll have spit in it." She said, "Well, you're going to eat what I eat," I said, "No, I don't want to. Let's go." That was Tallahassee, Florida.	35:12
Mary Hebert	Was this in the 60s?	35:34
Margaret L. Gordon	When did I go to Norfolk State? That must have been—	35:43
Mary Hebert	You said you went around '56.	35:46
Margaret L. Gordon	Something like that. I said, "When is the next plane out of here?" I said, "We're going on the next plane out of this place" "No, we're not." I said, "Yes, we are."	35:53
Mary Hebert	Was segregation was worse there than it was in Norfolk?	36:07
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. And I remember somewhere I was going and they told us, "Get plenty of gas. Fill up your tank, fix yourself a lunch, because ain't nobody's going to serve you and they're not going to even sell you any gas when you pass a certain place."	36:10
Mary Hebert	You went ready. You were prepared.	36:32
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Just hoping the car wouldn't break down.	36:37
Mary Hebert	Well, those are all the questions I have. Is there anything I didn't cover with you that you want to talk about?	36:40
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, not necessarily. I think this book does a lot of things that—	36:54
Mary Hebert	When did you write the history of the church? When was that published?	36:59
Margaret L. Gordon	1988. It's copyright. It's a copyright book and the copyright, I understand—I was reading in paper the other day. After so many years, you have to renew the copyright. I didn't know that.	37:03
Mary Hebert	Oh really? Are y'all going to have to renew it on there?	37:21
Margaret L. Gordon	I don't know. I'm going by what was in the paper about things that are copyright. I wrote it somewhere down there, but I don't remember now.	37:25
Mary Hebert	How did you compile the book? Did you go to the archives at the church?	37:33
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, at that point, we had no archives. We built the archives. As I told you, I think I told you, Dr. Bosure, who was a teacher at Norfolk State, was a consultant for us and we went to books and sources of information here. We researched a lot of things and we asked the people in the church, "If you have any old bulletins or old stuff that your grandma or grandpa or somebody had bring it and let us look at it," and we made copies of that. And one lady had a whole lot of news clippings, but she didn't have the source of the news clippings. She brought a stack of stuff, very interesting stuff, but we couldn't prove it because—	37:39
Mary Hebert	You didn't have the newspaper—	38:34
Margaret L. Gordon	No, she didn't get the date and that was a hard thing to get, even the people who had their master's degrees, to document the stuff that they brought. And one man called me and said, he didn't go to our church, but "Y'all wrote a book or documented something? Doca-something. I mean, couldn't even pronounce documented. Well, we went to a lot of trouble. It took us about eight years to get this stuff together.	38:35
Mary Hebert	And when was the church founded?	39:16
Margaret L. Gordon	1800. See, the Blacks and Whites settled in Norfolk, which was a seaport town. Am I messing with this?	39:21
Mary Hebert	Oh, it just got caught in the back of the [indistinct 00:39:36].	39:32
Margaret L. Gordon	I know these facts are right, you know what I mean, because we went to a lot of trouble—	39:44
Mary Hebert	And you documented them and—	39:52
Margaret L. Gordon	Every one of them.	39:53
Mary Hebert	It has pastors and things like that in there, who was pastor, who was—	39:56
Margaret L. Gordon	Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have all that. And the youth program, and this little boy, Kearney's daughters or not, his heart has been operated. He's been operated on, I guess, about 10 or 12 times.	39:59
Mary Hebert	That's Andre Kearney?	40:18
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. You know about him?	40:19
Mary Hebert	No, no. The tape's still on and we have to give at least some kind of identifier or something.	40:21
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, that's right. And so, all of that is in here. We have a lot of information about the church and the auxiliaries had the right there when they were organized and under what conditions and during the Depression, what we did during depression.	40:25
Mary Hebert	Have you been active in the church throughout your life?	40:51
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah.	40:53
Mary Hebert	First Baptist?	40:53
Margaret L. Gordon	I was active at First Calvary first.	40:56
Mary Hebert	And then First Baptist?	41:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Then I moved to First Baptist because my mother was old and she belonged to First Baptist. She was married at First Baptist. What I used to do, I'd go to First Calvary and go to Sunday school and work in there. I had a scout troop and I don't want all, then I come home and get her and carry her to First Baptist—	41:01
Mary Hebert	You'd go twice on Sunday?	41:19
Margaret L. Gordon	—and that was quite a job. Then I decided I would just give up First Calvary and go to First Baptist. And of course, some of the people said that because I was a teacher at Norfolk State, that First Calvary was too small for me. Now I'm a big shot. But it wasn't that. I wanted to take my mother to her church.	41:21
Mary Hebert	Was First Baptist one of the leading churches, biggest churches in the city? Is that why they said First Calvary was too small for you, right?	41:47
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. One thing, First Baptist had a lot of well-trained people and First Calvary had some too, but not as many as First Baptist. First Baptist was a downtown church. As you can see, it's one of the downtown churches, see?	41:56
Mary Hebert	Right. Well, then I've driven by it because I've been downtown and seen some of the other churches and I know I drove by First Baptist.	42:18
Margaret L. Gordon	That's true. Yeah, that's it.	42:27
Mary Hebert	Okay.	42:31
Margaret L. Gordon	And we had the musicians and all of that.	42:35
Mary Hebert	The Norfolk 17 were tutored at First Baptist?	42:40
Margaret L. Gordon	Right.	42:43
Mary Hebert	Did teachers from the community go there and tutor them or—	42:45
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, a lot of substitute teachers went and tutored them.	42:48
Mary Hebert	Now, the Black schools weren't closed in '58? It was just the White schools that they closed?	42:57
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes, they closed the White schools, but we got a warning. I remember one White man came out there. He was a supervisor of the building, and he said, "Ms. Gordon, the White schools are closed and the White parents are angry about that so you watch Jacox school." And a lot of people don't know this even now, Jacox has a tunnel under the building. It's a one-story building, but there's a tunnel all the way under. And he said they could get—See, and if you pass the school, you see the doors here and they was there, but keep those doors locked, see, so nobody can get under there and put a bomb in there and blow up the school. That scared me to death. When I'd get there mornings I'd ask my janitor, "Have you checked," and I could see—	43:03

Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah, I'd have him check, but I could look out of my office window and see the doors to the underground tunnel at the shop. And I could see right good then, I have glaucoma now, I can't see as well as it did then. I said to him, I said, "Look here. There's no lock on that door way over there." He said, "What?" I said "Yeah." He said, "Well, I'll walk over there and look." I said, "Yeah, but you look down that tunnel too." And so very few people know there's a tunnel all the way under the school.	0:02
Mary Hebert	But there were never any incidents of violence there?	0:39
Margaret L. Gordon	No.	0:41
Mary Hebert	Just the threat of it.	0:42
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah.	0:44
Mary Hebert	Did the church take much of a role in the civil rights movement here? Did First Baptist take much of a role in the sit-ins or anything like that? Did the ministers lend support to that?	0:54
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, I think they lent their support. A lot of the groups would meet at the church and that sort of thing, but they didn't jump out and do a lot of flag waving and that sort of thing. But we knew they were solidly behind whatever it was that was going to help our church. I mean, help the community.	1:05
Mary Hebert	Did you support it when it came around? Did you talk about it in your classes and things like that?	1:34
Margaret L. Gordon	You mean when I was teaching?	1:42
Mary Hebert	When you were teaching teaching college, when you were at Norfolk State.	1:42
Margaret L. Gordon	Well—	1:48
Mary Hebert	Was that part of the discussion?	1:48
Margaret L. Gordon	Sometimes it would be brought in as to what we were up against, but I tried not to put any pressure on kids to get out and march and do all that stuff. See.	1:51
Mary Hebert	You let them decide for themselves what they wanted to do.	2:06
Margaret L. Gordon	Yeah. I never was a excitement maker, that sort of thing. I'd rather put knowledge in your head and you choose which way you going to act and let it out.	2:09
Mary Hebert	You mentioned that you had a Scout troop at, while you were at First Calvary, a Boy Scout troop or Girl Scouts?	2:24
Margaret L. Gordon	Girl Scout. Girl Scout Troop 21. Yeah.	2:30
Mary Hebert	What were some of the activities that you did?	2:38
Margaret L. Gordon	Well, we had badges. We were working for certain badges and of course they have in the Scout book certain things you have to do to earn these badges. Many of the girls were earning their badges, and I kept my Scout troop, I guess for about five years after I left First Calvary. I still had my Scout troop and I had my leaders who were working with me. I remember one girl said, "You keep saying you're going to give up the Scout troop." I said, "I'm trying to wait for certain ones to get their badges and then we'll give it up." "Well, I'll take over." Then I said, "Yeah, I want you to take over."	2:41
Mary Hebert	So you almost handpicked the person who took over for you? It was someone you worked closely with.	3:36
Margaret L. Gordon	No. Yeah, she was one of the assistant leaders and she really wanted to take over as soon as I became principal of Jacox. But don't get in my way. I think we met on Thursdays or something. Whatever day. Don't get in my way because I'm going to my Scout meeting.	3:39
Mary Hebert	Did they have citizenship badges and things like that?	4:00
Margaret L. Gordon	Yes.	4:02
Mary Hebert	What did they do to earn a citizenship badge? What would your Scout do for that? Did you have certain activities for them?	4:04
Margaret L. Gordon	I'm not sure they called it citizenship badge.	4:10
Mary Hebert	Community service.	4:14
Margaret L. Gordon	Something like that was more or less.	4:15
Mary Hebert	I was a Girl Scout. I can't remember. It's been so long.	4:17
Margaret L. Gordon	That's right. I can't quite remember, but I know community service. They would fix baskets at Christmas and carry food to sick people or visit the sick and take a person who's in a wheelchair out riding and go to the church home. We have a church home for the aged and help those people.	4:21
Mary Hebert	Were they allowed to wear the uniforms?	4:46
Margaret L. Gordon	Oh yes. And most of them had the uniform. Poor little things, they'd outgrow the uniforms. They'd grow like weeds and sometimes we'd help a girl get her uniform.	4:48
Mary Hebert	Well, I really am finished now, so I'll stopped the tape.	5:03

Item Info

Title:

Margaret Gordon interview recording, 1995 July 25

Date:

July 25, 1995

Creator:

Gordon, Margaret L.

Contributor:

Hebert, Mary

Description:

Name: Margaret L. Gordon; Date of birth: 1911-01-11; Place of birth: Norfolk, VA; Occupation(s): educator; professor; school principal; Residence: Norfolk, VA
Informant ID: 1005; Interviewed by: Mary Hebert.

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

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

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Related Resources:

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Provenance:

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

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Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

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

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RL00170-CS-1304
RL00170-CS-1305
8534b46f-d4f3-4a1b-a67c-00864fc96e4c
behindtheveil
fb5694ec-daad-4947-bc04-0773a335eb6d
ark:/87924/r4jq1543z
fb5694ec-daad-4947-bc04-0773a335eb6d

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Margaret Gordon interview recording, 1995 July 25

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1. Margaret Gordon administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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