Performance Presentation at the
Conference on Qualitative Research in Education
Athens, Georgia
January 1996

Charlotte Matthews Harris, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Georgia College
3920 Arkwright Road
Macon, Georgia 31210
(912) 471-2988/2898
FAX (912) 471-2985
charris@mail.gac.peachnet.edu Abstract
The meaning of the lives of older black women who have lived most of their lives in an historically African-American college community is interpreted in relation to the racially and culturally specific context in which the lives were situated and the interconnected processes of race, class, and gender through a presentation of excerpts from their oral narratives. Oral Narratives of Women of a Negro Haven
Introduction
This study is an interpretation of the narrated life stories of a select group of black women, ranging in age from 60 to 90, who have lived from 40 to more than 70 years of their lives in the racially and culturally specific context of a close knit, historically African-American, family oriented, rural college community--Wilberforce, Ohio. Employing an Acrocentric feminist angle of vision (Collins, 1990) and the techniques of narrative inquiry (Blumenfeld-Jones, 1995; Connelly and Clandinin, 1990; Polkinghorne, 1995), I drew on the everyday, concrete experiences of these women, revealed through their own storied accounts, obtained through in-depth interviews and group conversation. The purpose of this study is to add to the body of literature that has emerged from the traditions of black feminist thought and narrative inquiry by a) defining the identities and realities of the women of this racially and culturally specific community individually and collectively from their points of view; b) examining how the social and historical context of this historically African-American cultural system serves as a dynamic process which simultaneously shapes and is shaped by these women's life experiences; and c) revealing how the interconnected processes of race, class, and gender interact with and influence the course of each woman's life and the development of the community.
The women were placed at the center of analysis, participating fully, as visible, strong, independent subjects in the interpretive process through the act of storytelling and, in so doing, defined their own identities, realities, and truths. The data, configured and presented as storied narratives told in their own words, reveal their individual personal histories and developmental experiences and establish linkages between these histories and experiences and the historical and social development of the community. In addition, both the personal histories and the community's development are examined in relation to issues of race, class, and gender. All elements combine in determining each woman's individual identity and the collective identity of the women as a group.
The community that serves as the context for this study was established in the 1800's, prior to the Civil War, by wealthy slave owners for their children born to their slave mistresses. This is a community with a rich and exciting history that also includes having been a site for the "underground railroad," a place where black Americans stopped en route from slavery to freedom. A racially integrated community, Wilberforce has always been predominantly black. Its early growth was directly connected to the establishment of Wilberforce University in 1856, prior to emancipation. Wilberforce University is known as the first institution of higher education in the United States to be established by blacks for blacks--"a pioneer institution for the higher education of the Negro race" (McGinnis, 1941, p. 3). Education, therefore, has always been a central focus of the community, and black women have always played a major role in this endeavor, serving as teachers, administrators, and "mothers." As Hallie Q. Brown, an 1873 graduate who later served as professor of elocution at Wilberforce University, explained, "Every woman felt it her bounden duty to mother, to cheer, to restrain, to admonish, and no student questioned her authority" (1937, p. 23). Many black families migrated to Wilberforce to take advantage of the educational opportunities and social elevation it offered. They all were seeking better opportunities for their children. Wilberforce was a "Negro haven."
Twelve women participated in this study. All born within the thirty-year period from 1905 to 1931, these women entered the community at different stages in the courses of their individual lives--as children, as college students, or as adults--and in different periods of the community's history and development--the twenties, the thirties, the forties, or the fifties. What follows is a selection of salient data from the oral narratives of four of these women--Inez, Maxine, and Edna, who entered the community as college students in the twenties, thirties, and forties, respectively; and LaVerne, who spent virtually all of her life in the community. These excerpts have been configured and restoried to represent a "reasonably accurate" and "meaningful" portrayal of the lives of women in this community, both individually and collectively (Blumenfeld-Jones, 1995, p. 27). The restorying is presented in four parts: Part 1 - Portraiture, a picture of each woman's personal history painted in her own words; Part 2 - Campus Life, a description of the social life in this college community that influenced the shape these women's lives would take; Part 3 - Community Tensions, a dialogue that focuses on some of the not-so-harmonious elements of the community; and Part 4 - Centerwomen, dialogue that reveals the roles these women continue to play as community shapers.
Part 1 - Portraiture
The portraits which follow are the stories of the lives of four women of Wilberforce, providing information about each woman's family background, education, and career development and revealing when in the course of her life experiences she entered the Wilberforce community.
Inez. I was born in Columbus, Ohio, December 15, 1907. When I was eight years old, we moved to Washington Courthouse.
I went to grade school just a year or so in Columbus, and then I did the rest of my grade school and high school work in Washington Courthouse. I finished high school in 1925 and had the highest grade point average in my class. It was a mixed school, and, being a member of the colored race, they did not want me to have the highest honors, so they split the class for the first time in the history of the high school. Instead of giving me the exclusive high average, they split it according to the courses you took. They had a high average in college preparatory, a high average in . . . well, they had about three or four people with high averages.
I came to what was then called the Combined Normal and Industrial Department--CN&I Department--at Wilberforce University to take a three year commercial teacher's course. Then you could take it in two years if you could carry the load. So this is what I did--1925 to 1927.
After completing the course, I got a job in Durham, North Carolina, as a school clerk from 1927 to 1930. During the summer months I came home and worked at the CN&I Department helping them take inventory and doing other office work. When I went back for my third year in Durham, a vacancy occurred in the business manager's office where I had been working during the summer. They sent for me to come to take that job.
I started working in Wilberforce in 1930 at the Combined Normal and Industrial Department. They were not qualified at the CN&I Department to give degrees in those years. If you got a degree, you got it through Wilberforce University. This is what I did, working part-time and going to school. I was pretty busy, but I managed. I started working on my degree in commercial education. I finished magna cum laude.
In 1939, the Public Employees Retirement System was established, and I was one of the original members because I had been working here since 1930. I was able to get my eight years free. I know they are wondering when I'm going to die. I worked 43 years in the same school, and I retired in 1973 as payroll supervisor at Central State University. I've been drawing a pension ever since. I know they wonder what's making her live so long.
Maxine. I was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, April 17, 1916. My mother was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and my father was born in St. Vincent, British West Indies.
They came together really by chance, because my father was assigned the small church in Chelsea as a pastor while he was attending Harvard. They married, and he was assigned when he graduated to New Bedford, where I was subsequently born.
From New Bedford we went to Raleigh, North Carolina, where he pastored the Great St. Paul and where I started school. My mother never worked, and my father was one of the old-fashioned type who believed that his wife should stay at home. Because she was at home with me all the time, she taught me to read.
When I went to the first grade, my father took me to school, and while he and the teacher were out making arrangements for me to get enrolled in school, I was entertaining the kids by reading all the books that were around on the table. When the teacher came back in and saw that, she said, "Oh, she's got to go." So I went into the second grade.
We stayed there until I was eight years old. The Klu Klux Klan burned crosses almost every week in front of my father's house, in front of the parsonage, because he was a very outspoken man. It became quite uncomfortable for my father. He didn't want to cease his fight for the right of people to vote and to be human beings. There was a reporter in his church every single Sunday, and they wrote down everything he said. There began a period of harassment for him that he could have stood had he not had a family. Mama was absolutely petrified. She had never known anything like that in her life before, having been brought up in that small Jewish community. He sent Mama and me back home to Chelsea.
We stayed in Chelsea until I reached junior high, and by that time I was 12. We moved to Cleveland. The teachers in Massachusetts were almost like nuns. They weren't allowed to marry, and they were meaner than a snake. The training that I got was tremendous. The vocabulary that I had when I went into the seventh grade was far superior to kids who came from other states. If you do well in school, even now, nobody likes you much. I didn't care. I was an only child. I just skipped a lot.
I went to Howard University when I was 15. I had never been away from home by myself before. I didn't have Daddy to tell me what I had to do or Mama to tell me what I had to wear or whatever. Oh, mercy! Free at last! Thank God almighty! I had never experienced anything like this, at 15, sheltered as I was. You know, it's a wonder just all kinds of things didn't happen to me in Washington, DC.
That first year - wow, did I have a good time! I celebrated my 16th birthday while I was there. At 10:00 we were allowed to leave, and we didn't have to come back until ten. We didn't have to say where we were going or anything, just come back at ten. A bunch of us signed out. I came back to the dorm five minutes to ten, and the lady said to me, "Your father is here." So I said, "Oh, what time did he call?" It just didn't occur to me that Daddy would come all the way down here and not tell he was coming. She said, "I said, 'he is in this building,' in the living room, and best you get in there. He's been here since this morning." Now I had had hair to my waist. I had cut it, just took the scissors and knocked it off. He loved my hair, did not want me to cut it. I flew up to my room, got a rubber band, pulled my hair together, and tried to make the huge knot that I used to wear. I put a little tam on my head. I remember it like it was yesterday. When I walked in that room, standing behind my father was my mother. I knew that was the bitter end. He might not have noticed the tam, but Mama would. She came right over and snatched it off my head. Oh, he was furious. Needless to say, it was my last year at Howard. He said, "Enjoy. Enjoy because you will be transferred."
He sent me to Wilberforce where he was on the board of trustees and getting ready to be the president. I came here in 1933, and I graduated in 1936. Daddy became president in 1936. That's how we came to be such an integral part of the institution.
I went to Boston University right after I graduated from here, got my master's degree, and came back here to teach in the academy. That was in 1938. I didn't begin to teach in the college until 1955.
I became the president of Wilberforce University at an age when most people had retired. I was 68 years old. But I had been everything else in the institution. I didn't miss a rung in the ladder. As a matter of fact, I got kicked back a couple of times, but I believe that I was fated to become the first woman president of Wilberforce.
When I actually was inaugurated the 16th president, it was the proudest day of my life, because I actually followed in my father's footsteps. He had only had one child, and they used to feel sorry for him because I wasn't a boy. I was Miss Wilberforce as far as I was concerned and as far as a lot of people were concerned. I did not have to initiate people into seeing Wilberforce in me and me in Wilberforce. It was a natural.
I enjoyed being the president. I was the happiest person in that job. I worked harder than I ever dreamed that I could work. I did things I never dreamed that I could do.
My husband died one month before I became the president. And my husband was the wind beneath my wings. I get the one thing that he wanted for me, and he dies. Well, it knocked me out. And I really didn't know how to manage. I had no children and very little family. So, here I was, the president of Wilberforce University, with no one. But it helped me overcome the death of my husband. We had been married 20 years.
Edna. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee, April 30, 1919. I am the only daughter; I have four brothers. My mother is from Alabama, and my father from Mississippi. My father, due to some bitterness that had to do with black/white, left Memphis, Tennessee, and came to Cleveland, Ohio, to practice law. I think they originally thought that he was white. He finished Howard University, class of 1910, in international law and Greek, and he came to Cleveland to work in some type of law incorporated thing, but it did not materialize well. So Mother and the children, we went to Havana, Alabama, and stayed with my grandparents for a while. My mother's family is mixed up. We're Indians and whites, and I've never known where the black came in, but some were black. Later my mother brought us children to Cleveland, Ohio, and we established that as our home. I finished elementary school, junior high, and senior high in the Cleveland school system.
We've never been rich, but I never thought of ourselves as being poor. My mother provided good meals and clothing for us and sewed. My father brought in the money and was able to send all of us kids to college.
I went to my first two years of college in Schauffler College for Women, which was a branch of Oberlin, a girls' school in Cleveland. That was my first encounter with the world, so to speak, because in college I ran into young people from all over the world. It was a religious school, a Congregational school, and you could only get two degrees--a degree in religious education or a degree in social welfare with the religious background. I wanted to go to Haiti and work.
I came up in a religious family. We're not fanatics or anything like that, but I went to church a lot. I met through the church several educators who were working in Haiti, blacks and whites. I just thought it was something I wanted to do, to go to Haiti and teach, just because of my background in church. I went to church every Sunday. I was very active in the church. I'm still a member of Mount Zion Congregational Church in Cleveland.
Like all young people, I wanted to get away from home. Schauffler was right there in Cleveland. I was commuting. I wanted to go to Howard University to school, but my father would not permit me. I wanted to go into law at first, but my father was of the old school, and he felt that law was not a field for women. "Let the boys go into law." He said he didn't want any daughter of his going to Howard University Law School. So I didn't go; I transferred to Wilberforce. I had had several real close girlfriends who had been with me in elementary, junior, and senior high school who were at school at Wilberforce. At the same time my mother's close friends were tied in with people in Wilberforce. That's how I happened to come down to Wilberforce.
I really wanted to go into medicine. I really could have had two degrees, biology or pre-med, because a lot of the kids thought I was pre-med, but I have bronchial asthma that I have learned to control and to handle over the years. Formaldehyde and chemicals from the chemistry labs and things like that caused me to cough and wheeze.
I was always very active in sports. I'm a girl with four brothers, so I was a tomboy. I could shoot marbles. At one time I was city marble champion. Horseshoe pitching - tennis - I belonged to the Cleveland Tennis Club when we had blacks playing tennis long before many blacks played tennis. I would come down to Wilberforce to the tennis meets as a little girl. I was quite a tennis player. I did all sports. I decided I'd shift into physical education and health. I finished Wilberforce University with my bachelor of science degree.
I returned to Cleveland and taught in the Cleveland school system, elementary and junior high school, for about six years. I got my master's degree from Western Reserve University.
I came back to Wilberforce University to teach in 1946. The chairman of the physical education department contacted me and asked if I would come here to teach. It was my alma mater, and I was proud that they would call me back to teach. I've been here ever since, other than one year that I took off to complete my residential requirements for my doctorate at Ohio State University. I taught here and retired December 31, 1972.
LaVerne. I was born in Dayton, Ohio, October 5, 1931. When my mother and father separated, she came home to Wilberforce to live with her parents. That's basically how I got to Wilberforce. It was around 1937. My grandfather had moved to Greene County around 1922 so that his two daughters could get an education at Wilberforce University. He had a small, what they call, truck farm where he raised vegetables, and he had chickens and hogs and so forth like that. That's how our family originally got to Wilberforce, Ohio. I have really lived here all of my life.
I had three sisters. I am the oldest of four girls. And we all lived at Wilberforce on property that was owned by my grandfather. I remember the roads were gravel. And in the wintertime, you could slide, you know, sleds. In the summer, we would walk down to Massey's Creek and along the banks, pick flowers. You could almost reach down and pull fish up from out of the water. You could see the clay in the banks, and some of it was still pliable. My grandmother knew how to work the clay so we would have our own homemade clay. We had a lot of nature studies. We could identify thirty-five or more species of trees that were out here. And rocks, loved to collect rocks.
My grandmother did not work at all. She was part Indian, part French, and black. I can remember seeing all these nice flowers and roses and hollyhocks, bridal wreaths, spiraea, just smelled beautiful, lilies of the valley and peonies. They were more of our parent structure because my mother worked. In fact, we called my mother by her first name. We called my mother Emma and called our grandparents Mama and Pop.
I attended school, as did my sisters, at the laboratory school at Wilberforce University. By and large most of the children were children of teachers or people in the community. We were well acquainted from the very beginning with practice teachers because that's where the laboratory concept came from. It was a way to give training and experience to people who were in the education department of the college. Since it was an all black school--been to all black schools all my life--we got a different kind of education. The very games that we would play in the schoolroom would be geared around black people. I specifically remember one way that they had of teaching us about famous people would be games like "Who Am I," and children would give clues, and it would always be somebody black. Many times it was the parent of one of the children because some of them were scientists or, you know, whatnot like that. I went to high school at what they called the Wilberforce University Academy.
My mother read to us all the time. I think anybody that went to school at the laboratory school in those days was very well read. By the time I was in the eighth grade, I had read all the books in the first row to the right in the old Carnegie building, which is now part of the museum complex. We were constantly over there.
Growing up at Wilberforce, the social graces were important, at least to my mother. We took piano lessons. We took elocution lessons from Hallie Q. Brown. Hallie Q. Brown would stand in her hallway and teach us how to speak. Very eloquent. Very dramatic. Now children, if you're ten years old, you don't really want to stand there straight and tall and breathe in and breathe out, but it was valuable. I think we had a sense of social class that really was at an economic level far above us.
We didn't feel poor. We didn't know we was poor as we were, I'm sure. Because my grandfather, if he needed any money, all he had to do was go sell another hog. We had just as much things as anybody else. We had plenty of food. And even to top that, there was always wild raspberries, wild strawberries, that we picked, and they made jelly and jam. If we were poor, we didn't know it. We began to realize when we began to get much older that we really didn't have everything that everybody else had. But we probably had more in the way of education, I'm sure, and of sensitivity.
Since our grandfather owned the property, we didn't pay any rent. And if I remember, I don't think we even paid any utilities or anything. I think he did the whole thing. He was one of the first people on our road that had running water. And when I say running water then, I mean a spigot in the front yard. That was when we were real little, and people who had wells would come down to get water because the wells weren't that safe anymore. He had a car, an old ford. The first one I remember had a crank in the front of it where you could crank it. When we were real little, we had to crank up the car. But he always had a car, always had a black car. In those days, town people didn't have those.
We had a telephone, and we used to have to run down the road and call somebody up to the telephone. One reason I think I remember that is because I didn't always like to do it. Maybe you were reading; maybe you were playing; maybe you were doing nothing, and they would say, "Go call so-and-so to come to the telephone," and they'd wait and you had to run down the street whether you felt like it or not to call somebody to the telephone.
But I enjoyed growing up in the country. And I'm sure most of us did. It was rather a close community because of the people that were here not just for the college, but who lived here and worked to do the other kinds of work for the college, like maintain the boarding house and all the things like that. Everybody knew everybody. There was a lot of interaction in the community.
Part 2 - Campus Life
Unlike, LaVerne, who grew up in the community, Inez, Maxine, and Edna came as college students from diverse family backgrounds. Their stories of campus life at Wilberforce University in the twenties, thirties, and forties reveal the context in which a significant period of their lives was experienced--a context that intersected the course, and influenced the shape and meaning, of each woman's life.
Edna. The community life was such that there was a close relationship between students and teachers, primarily because the faculty members lived in the community. They lived on campus in university housing. And as such their lives and the students' lives were all tied in together. There was such a relationship that counseling was a part of teaching. As such and being a small school, you received a lot of help and you had a deep understanding coming from the teachers relative to student educational, social, and cultural life. Everything we did as students was centered on the campus. We really didn't endeavor to go out and seek a lot of things relative to daily living habits and education because we had it all here.
At that time, a large percentage of the students worked. It was an honor to work, and you took your work seriously. Agriculture was one of the largest departments, and the students majoring in agriculture worked on the farm. All of the food that we ate in the cafeterias came from the farm--the milk that we drank came from the cows; all the vegetables, potatoes, everything came from the farm. In the cafeterias we had table service, big round table with ten at a table, and everything was served family style. The food was brought in and put on the table just like you were at home. The waiters were all young men who that was part of their job. They got their room and board by working in the cafeteria, just like working on the farm. Because of the religious implications, you'd sit down at the table, you'd say the blessing, and then the food was passed around, and you took your servings. It was true at some time before the dish got to you it was empty, but there was always plenty, and it was sent back out. The food was well cooked, and a number of the young people from home economics worked in the kitchen, helped with the food. It was a family life in eating.
We had to go to chapel once a week. It was required. In your dormitories, the house mother or the house male director had keys, and they came in your room whenever they felt like it. At chapel time it was always filled up because all classes stopped, everybody came, and the house mothers, house directors, made a check of the rooms. Such a thing as hiding in the closet or underneath the bed, there was no point in doing it because they looked under there and out you came. You came to chapel.
And, of course, we always had excellent speakers because, being the first all black university, four-year college/university--Lincoln University claims that, but they were not a four-year college with black trustees and whatnot; Wilberforce was the first all black university under the control of blacks--we had excellent speakers because most outstanding black educators in the United States of America somehow or another had an opportunity to come to this university to speak and to display their educational and cultural backgrounds and ability, whereas they were not permitted maybe to go to other universities. That's an example where segregation was good to the extent that it provided opportunity for blacks. We had outstanding white professors and things from Harvard, Yale, and places like that. A large number of the black teachers were graduates of large universities--Harvard, Yale, Ohio State, Michigan, Brown University--so we had the cream of the crop. The students were very serious minded, and they took education seriously. We had a type of dignity and we prided ourselves as students. The faculty prided themselves. They respected one another.
We were proud to be United States citizens. The first black ROTC in the United States was here at Wilberforce University. If you trace back into the names of outstanding generals and officers of the past, they were Wilberforceans. They were Wilberforceans! Military was required for two years, and then you qualified for third and fourth year and went into officer training. I can remember when the war broke out--they bombed Pearl Harbor--that they took our junior and senior ROTC members, in advanced ROTC, and they took them off to war. I can remember very well how we went to chapel and we bid them all goodbye. Periodically while the war was going on, someone was killed, and we would get the word, and we'd go to chapel. We would pray for our dead. It was just something that you just had a pride for. You never saw an uncultured Wilberforcean.
Inez. Campus life was very restricted. The girls walked on the in sidewalk of the campus, and the boys walked on the outside. You weren't even supposed to walk on the same sidewalk. Dad and mother used to come over and visit me. On Saturday night we went to Galloway Hall to the movies. Dad and I were walking along--I don't know why mother wasn't with us at that time--and the dean of women came up. I had my . . . or he had is arm in mine, and we were walking on the outside walk out of Galloway. The dean came up and tapped him on the shoulder, said, "You're not supposed to take the young lady's arms. She's supposed to take your arm." Daddy said, "She's my daughter. I'll take her arm if I want to." He didn't know who it was because he got mad right away.
Edna. They had closed dormitories then. No young men got passed the first floor, and no young women were known to be in any men's dormitory. When you went to the theater, you went in a line. There was a chaperon at the back and at the front of the line, which is your young adult teacher or we called them big chums and big brothers. Big chums were young ladies who had been chosen because of scholastic and leadership abilities to be big chums, and they helped with the chaperoning. We saw nothing wrong with it. You got in line with your escort, or if you were by yourself, your dormitory got in line, and you walked to the movie, Galloway Hall. When the time was over, you gathered and went back with the chaperons back to the dormitories. You said good night in the hallway or on the outside, the sidewalk, kissed goodbye or whatever it was, and that was it.
Every dormitory also had very lovely living rooms. Most dormitories, girls' dormitories, all of them had a baby grand piano. They had a section off from each living room where they had card tables or where you could go and sit down and play table games, or get up and dance. I can remember so well, we used to sing a lot. They had an excellent music department. It was always someone who would sit down at the piano, and we'd gather around the piano, you and your boyfriend and the rest of them, and you would sing songs. It was a family, family type.
When we had the dances over in the gymnasium, you again would be chaperoned. You'd go in a line. Your dormitory would go; another dormitory would come. In the line would be you and your boyfriend or by yourself, whatever the case might be. At the door would always be two or three faculty members. The dean of men and the dean of women would be at every social function. They'd greet you at the door, you'd pass by, and you'd go on and dance, have a good time. When you left that night, as you went out the door, the dean of men and the dean of women would stand there, say, "Good night, young ladies; good night, gentlemen." They were standing there. When you got back to your dormitory, your house director was at the door to greet us when we came back in. Campus life was a home away from home.
We didn't know what it was to have a jukebox or tape recorder. We had the Wilberforce Collegians who was one of the most outstanding college bands in the United States of America. Played at all our social functions like big name bands. Excellent musicians. Played at all of our functions.
Maxine. Wilberforce was much more restrictive than Howard. It was very different. You lived a kind of peaceful life.
Edna. Men and women had rules and regulations they had to adhere to. Girls were expected to be ladies, and boys were expected to gentlemen, and that was just a part of the rules and regulations.
When I was here in school, people didn't have cars. If you wanted to get to town you, you took Johnson's bus. He had two big old funeral hearses, I guess you would call them, that were made into big cars. That's how we got back and forth to town. Or we got on the "sweat" corner. Teachers would pick you up, take you to town, bring you back. Just thumb, and you wouldn't be there two minutes before somebody would pick you up and take you to town with them. When you got on the "sweat" corner in Xenia, you stand there a few minutes, and every so often somebody would slow down and pick you up. Faculty members who had cars would bring you back to campus. It was a closeness there, so you didn't have to worry about a ride from campus to town and back.
Maxine. I adapted to the country life, enjoyed myself thoroughly. I was into drama. I sang with the school band. I was Miss ROTC and rode a horse in the parade with jodhpurs on. Oh, I was Miss everything, you know, except Miss Wilberforce. I never was pretty, but I was vivacious and full of the devil--full of fun--and athletic. That got me a lot of boyfriends that I normally would not have had unless I'd been pretty. I had a beautiful life. I wouldn't change anything for the years I spent here at Wilberforce.
God, I was happy every morning I woke up. What would I get into today? What are we going to do in class today that I can get involved with? I just loved it. I just loved my life. I used to cry when I had to go home, not because I had an unhappy home at all, but because I was alone at home, no brothers, no sisters, and sheltered.
Part 3 - Community Tensions
Although each of these women describe a homey, nurturing, and family-like community environment, their stories also reveal several critical tensions in the community's historical and social development that had a significant impact on the community and on the course of each woman's life.
LaVerne. There was a division of people who we used to call "town and gown." There still is. Town is sort of like the people who were already in a place, maybe like Xenia's town. Gown, we call the people who were related to the university through the academic area. The students come under gown. People who live in a town are always hesitant about students, even back then, and even now, because students sometimes and faculty or academic people seem to take over and want to tell town people what they should do and how to do it.
We lived on the back road, and I know that at the time that we lived there, there were a lot of people who were in the academia who felt that we were culturally deprived. Well, there was really nothing further from the truth. But as I look back, I know there was a division made. It wasn't until I came to work at Wilberforce University in 1966 and I was historian of our church and had done a lot in research in the area of African-Americans and people here at Wilberforce that I began to be accepted. Now someone else may say that's not true. That was my total feeling. It was sort of like, "Hello. How are you?" and on up the road over to your area. But then after I began to do these things, then people would ask me to come and speak to them about different things. And I'm not sure it was acceptance, but I had more of a dialogue with people who were in academia.
I think that most of the people who worked at the university thought of themselves as middle class, and they probably thought of the people who didn't work at the university and lived on the back roads as poor. And I might be wrong. Somebody else will say no. I can only tell you what I think. I know that they felt privileged. Lots of time somebody would stop by our house and want to know, you know, like do we need a job, . . . my mother said no. That told me something. That told me that she had a lot of pride and that we didn't need their money. We didn't work for anybody.
There were two social sets, maybe three. But there were at least two, because my grandparents [and] my mother did not socialize with the academia, even though we went to the university for all the things that we did. I don't socialize with any of them now. I'm so busy now, I don't have time to socialize with anybody. But our life really revolved around the church. And I could name a lot of people who were working at the university as opposed to teaching or in research or in those kind of things. So that was sort of a separation. There were people who worked at the state farm. Somebody had to do the maintenance at the school, cut the grass, just the same way it's done now. And there's probably just the same kind of division now. There was and there always will be a working class of people, and those were my people.
Edna. There was always a church side and a state side. If you were a student and you came from Ohio, you lived on state side. You lived in dormitories that were paid for and built by the State of Ohio. The teachers who taught on the state side, primarily industrial arts technology and education, were paid by the State of Ohio. The teachers who taught in liberal arts primarily--English and literature and chemistry were the liberal arts courses--were paid by the AME church. The salaries were different. The teachers who were paid by the state side were paid a little bit more and were paid on time, whereas on the church side the teachers weren't paid as much and frequently had to scuffle between pay checks because the church was not able to meet the payroll. I venture to say, and I may be criticized for it, but Wilberforce never would have gone as far as it did if it had not been for the State of Ohio. There were only three buildings on the campus that were what you call church buildings. All the other buildings were on state side. There was a natural dividing line, which was a ravine down in a big gully, a deep ravine, that divided the church side from the state side naturally. It always stayed that way. There was no animosity between church and state side. We were just all a part of Wilberforce University, but the names and those titles did exist--church and state.
They had at that time two separate boards of trustees. It wasn't until Charles H. Wesley came, and he only came after they agreed to have one board of trustees, a joint board of trustees, rather than two separate ones. Of course, it's ironic, but his leaving here was the result of the fact that the church side bishops met on their own and fired Dr. Charles H. Wesley by their own vote, and gave him 24 hours to get off the campus. That was later after I came back here to teach.
LaVerne. They burned the Bishop in effigy. I'm not sure what year it was, but it had to be shortly after the split. It was done on the state side. It wasn't done on the church side as we said at that time. There were rumors that Taxi Johnson--what they called Mr. Johnson with his bus service because he would come out bringing students to Wilberforce--the people would hijack him off the bus and take him to Central State. I'm not saying that for a fact. I'm just saying that rumors had it that such a thing happened. Wilberforce did indeed lose a lot of students because when they came and saw the physical plant, all it was was Emory, Shorter, and the library over on the other side, and there was no football team. We did indeed lose a lot of students. We thought they were coming to Wilberforce, and then they saw the facilities over [at Central State] and decided to register there.
After the split Central State was called Wilberforce State. I guess I was on the church side by being in liberal arts. The students [and] the administration did not want the state to use Wilberforce in connection with their name since the split. They went to court and, when the edict came down, they could not use the name Wilberforce in connection with the college. We danced in the street all night, so to speak. People knocked out lights and things. This was over at Wilberforce. They were real happy about that. I don't know where they got the name Central State. That was one of the big events in that part of the history that everybody was really happy about.
The split did make a change in the education. Probably some community people lost their jobs. Probably some of [the teachers] did too. There was a whole new change in the administration. Charles Wesley being the first president over there, if you were not on his side, if you were faculty, you probably lost your job. It was just traumatic all the way around. I don't know too much about that end of it, but I'm sure there were a lot of changes like that.
[There was a division] that most had to do with the employment--if you were employed with the state, or if you were employed back over at the church. Even in the alumni, we have people who were graduated from Wilberforce University who were employed at Central State. So where did they put their allegiance? Some may go to both.
Edna. There were women faculty members as well as men. You could just as well have a woman president because if a woman went to a college or university and graduated with her doctorate, she took up the same training as the man did. So what was the difference? Only because she was a woman. More than likely she was an honor student. There was an acceptance of women educators as well as men.
Maxine. This is an academic community. Women have been here as professors and progressors, and they were allowed to be what they wanted. I don't remember any cases of harassment on women. From the early days of the inception of Wilberforce University, there were women here. I think when we got here, we were accepted as to who you are in whatever. Most of the women who migrated here came here as part of the family of a professor or came here as a professor or came as I did as a student and came back. My role is dual. I came as a student, and I came back as the daughter of the president. I always thought that I could be and do anything that I wanted to do. We ran for student government. Women had been relatively free here.
LaVerne. A lot of those women who have the degrees, their husbands did not have a college education. Many of them worked at the university while their wives were the teacher. Black women who were in education couldn't find a man who makes more money than they do or has more education, that's still not going to be chauvinistic. And that's a problem. That's one of the problems that have been for black women. I have friends who were married, had children, divorced, and they won't marry again because of that. But black men in one era could hold you down because of the chauvinism. You know, they didn't want you to travel. My husband didn't want me to travel. I know other people it was the same thing, even though they won't say that. They're not going to tell you that, but they probably could have ascended to most anything if they had had strong male support. But at that time, most of the women in my age group, you could go teach school, that was okay, but otherwise you were supposed to be at home, if you had children. If there were no children, then that's another story altogether, because I'm sure they didn't expect you to stay home. I know in our church they felt that women shouldn't work. Teaching was all right. I don't know why people thought teaching wasn't work. Once your husband got used to it, it was okay. You'd have been in a position where you were administrative or managerial or something like that. I believe even those where the men were educated, they were educated to a point. When they got home, they still expected you, if you were a college administrator, you still had to cook unless you were the president's wife, where you had help to do it for you.
Part 4 - Centerwomen
Women of Wilberforce have always played very prominent roles in the community. They are and have been active club women both for social and service purposes, and, as "women who initiate and sustain informal [community] social networks," they are "centerwomen" (Sacks, 1989, p. 91).
Inez. I was taken into the Links in 1953. I've been a Link now 41 years. It's not so easy to get into the Links. We look like we have a thing that we don't want to share. It's so good, we don't want to share it with anybody. But every now and then we get some new members. The people who have been the best working members are the ones that had the hardest time to get in. Why they continue to want to, I don't know. But I'm very proud to be. Now I've taken what we call alumni membership, alumni status. We can participate and do whatever we want to do that they let us know is happening, but we don't have to pay any national dues. I feel like I'd earned that.
I'm a life member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. I belong to the Daughters of Isis, too. I went because my husband is a 33rd degree Mason. He's a past potentate of Akbar Temple. I'm a past commandress of Akbar Court. We've enjoyed our association with the Shriners and the Daughters, and we've had a lot of trips. We've been almost all over the continental United States, largely going to these conventions.
When you were in a small community like this, you make your own pleasures. You get a group together that likes to do the same things. We formed a group called the Town and Country. Some of us were together sitting and talking and said, "We owe everybody. We owe social courtesies to a lot of people. Let's form a little group and give a big party." We did, and we called it the Town and Country. If you weren't invited to the Town and Country dance, you didn't belong in this area. It was very popular. Then we have a group now called the Podners, and they named that because my husband and I call each other podner. We organized it in 1966. We celebrated our 25th anniversary in 1991, and we're still going strong.
LaVerne. I still belong to First United Christian Church. I'm chairperson of the board and congregation. I go to all the retreats, women's workshops, and general assemblies, national convocations, which is the black constituency, and regional assemblies in Ohio.
I'm doing a lot of research. I'm a genealogical researcher. I got interested in genealogy about ten years ago, and I do that on the side. I do speeches and workshops on how to research black genealogy, but most of it I've done has been for white people who send in queries and things to the Greene County Society. I'm not really into all of that society stuff about who lives where and would you want this kind of address and all this kind of a thing because I'm too busy doing something else.
Maxine. I'm known now as the Distinguished Presidential Professor of Education at Central State University. My involvement is with the College of Education at Central State because that is my first love. My first love is teaching. Now I have a chance to help train others. I've had this job now ever since I retired. That's what keeps me alive. That's what I do. I do it best. I like doing it.
Inez. I have been a volunteer worker at Greene Memorial Hospital since 1975. But in the last few months, I've had to assess my priorities. My husband hasn't been too well recently, and I'm not the healthiest person in the world. There's just the two of us. What one can do the other can't do and vice versa. Two of us together make one good old person.
Edna. I've stayed in the community. I've lived here, primarily, doing some research. I've written a couple of books, and I've published some records and tapes. I serve now more or less as a consultant where I feel that I can be of value in education, recreation, and health education. I've assumed a lot of responsibilities as a volunteer in Greene County. They call me the volunteer lady. I don't work for money, but I work everyday doing something. It's my contribution to humanity and to my people and mankind and to the State of Ohio and the United States of America.
Maxine. This has become a desirable retirement area. This is a lovely place to retire as well as a lovely place to raise children. We still don't go around locking doors, and I don't lock my car when I'm on campus. It's so peaceful here. I think that's why we have so many octogenarians around. To see somebody 75 or 80 is nothing around here. I think it speaks for the peacefulness of the community. Now you can go on and get involved in any kind of ruckus you want to, but outside of the community. It wouldn't happen here. We have the museum, and many of the persons who live in the community are volunteers at the museum. We love our museum. We have our center, and most of the organizations meet at that center. It's a marvelous place to have meetings because it's so central. We have the two universities and Robeson Center and the programs going on. It's just nice to be in. You could concentrate your time and energy here on this campus if you wanted to and have a really good life. We are a community of aging people. One thing I must say for this community, we look after one another. It's a wonderful place to live. I wouldn't live any place else.
Conclusion
Throughout its history, the Wilberforce community has provided a fertile context for the growth and development of black men and women. The community and its university were established for the social and economic upliftment of blacks. Consequently, a protective, nurturing, self-contained, African-American cultural system was created that provided educational, religious, and moral training for blacks at a time when such opportunities were rare. Blacks who were fortunate enough to have been immersed in the Wilberforce experience emerged empowered, liberated, and self-actualized, ready to join the larger society with pride and dignity.
The contributions of women were always recognized, encouraged, and valued. Black women had a legacy of strength, resourcefulness, perseverance, hard work, independence, and self-reliance and, historically, have made significant contributions to the survival of all black Americans through education. They were involved from the beginning in the development of Wilberforce and Wilberforceans. The historical and social development of the context of this African-American cultural system served as a dynamic and fluid process that must be considered in the interpretation of these women's lives. As players in this process, these women can be characterized as both shapers and shaped.
The interconnected processes of race, class, and gender function in concert with historical moment to shape these women's individual and collective identities and realities and the historical and social development of the community. The participants in this study experienced life as blacks, as females, and with middle-class values in a context where to be black was the norm, to be female was appreciated, and middle-class values was the way of life. These were liberated women at a time when the larger society that surrounded them was segregated and the women's liberation movement was not yet conceived. Yet, each was a victim of the multiple oppression of race, class, and gender to some degree. Race, class, and gender effects and how they are personally perceived are interwoven into how each woman defines her reality, names her identity, and assesses her truths.
Some experienced overt instances of gender oppression--a father who had definite ideas about what his daughter could or could not do would sometimes influence the direction her life would take; marriage and children meant that schooling and career plans for the woman should take a back seat; a woman university president had to struggle continuously against her detractors. But these women persevered. They persevered because of who they are and because the community was generally supportive of women. The women in most cases achieved an educational level that exceeded their husbands and successfully negotiated both the private and the public worlds.
Although the women experienced some form of racial oppression outside, the historically African-American community provided a protective, socially pleasant, and racially harmonious environment within its borders. The racism without made the harmony within all the more valuable and desirable and progressive. As Edna expressed, "Segregation was good to the extent that it provided opportunity for blacks." "The cream of the crop" among blacks were drawn to communities like Wilberforce because these were places where they could display their talents and realize their dreams. Now that racial discrimination is illegal and black Americans can conceivably go anywhere, the strength of Negro havens such as Wilberforce has been diluted.
Class oppression was felt by "town" people in the community, particularly because the community attracted the educationally elite among black people. Although the strong educational orientation and racial, social, and cultural consciousness of the community had a significant impact on the world view of all of its members, those with higher levels of formal education and from more privileged backgrounds reflected an aura of superiority or at least it was perceived that way by "town" people.
Individually and collectively, the women of Wilberforce define themselves as educated, articulate, progressive, independent, aggressive, good-looking, sophisticated, and "clannish" professional women. In many ways they have been shaped by the community and what it represents, and in many ways they have helped to shape the community into what has been and is today. Now, mostly retired and widowed, these strong, independent women continue to play a dominant role in the community, initiating and sustaining informal social networks.
As the angle of vision of one group of black women in one racially and culturally specific context, this study essentially conveys one perspective and, therefore, represents only a partial understanding of the experiences of black women. Yet it is a meaningful example with which other black women who have had similar experiences, or who have been situated in similar contexts, might identify and connect. The partial, situated knowledge shared by these women of Wilberforce through confession and memory adds another perspective to the dialogue of black feminist thought. References
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