Transcript - Beverly Washington Jones

Transcription

1 Southern Oral History Program Collection University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Transcript - Beverly Washington Jones Interviewee: Interviewer: Beverly Washington Jones Gerrelyn C. Patterson Interview date: April 5, 2005 Location: Length: NC Central University in Durham, North Carolina 1 cassette; approximately 30 minutes START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A GP: With Beverly Washington Jones in Durham, North Carolina. It is April 5 and we're in her office. The interviewer is Gerrelyn Patterson and this is part of the Spencer Grants project on school desegregation in the South and will be used as part of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The tape number is 40505BWJ. Okay, Dr. Jones, how did you come to be at Hillside? When did you attend? BJ: We were the first group to actually spend, I would consider the ninth grade, at Hillside. That probably was, graduating in '66, probably '62 or '63 going over to Hillside. So we started something different, which was ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth. GP: And previously, ninth graders had gone to BJ: We were at Whitted Junior High School and then they sort of moved us over. Your elementary went up to the sixth grade when I was in school, and then seventh, eighth, and ninth was considered to be, I would assume, junior high; we didn't call it middle school. Then, of course, your high school was really ten, eleven, and twelve.

2 Beverly Washington Jones 2 GP: So can you tell me what you remember most about Hillside? BJ: I think the most significant thing that I remember and I'm just going to point out a personality, that would be Prop Alston. When I think about Hillside, a school that demanded discipline, despite whether you were a child of the banker at Mutual or you were the child of someone who taught at North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company. Everybody was disciplined so it was nothing unusual to see honor students, if they'd done anything wrong, picking up trash. I think the signature of Hillside is a tremendous concern with education despite the economic background of parents. Everybody was treated as equals. I think the most second significant thing about it is that you could never say you couldn't do it. It was a really strong motivational type of faculty that demanded excellence without any excuse whatsoever. Then again, I think the other thing is that these individuals were not afraid to communicate with the home, the parents, if need be, as well as a visit to the home. Not only they weren't afraid to do that, many times the teachers and principals were from the same church, so there was a sense of community as it related to Hillside. You could be walking down the street and your parents could run into the principal or your teacher. There were no sacred hiding places as it related to the clientele of faculty there, because they were from the community and understood that, and did not decide to withdraw to go to somewhere else. They lived in the community, went to the same ABC stores, went to the same grocery stores, went the same churches. There was no hiding place of communication as it related to the staff there and the parents. GP: You've spoken a little bit about the community. Can you tell me a little bit more about what it was like to live in Durham when you went to Hillside? Was it very different from how Durham is now?

3 Beverly Washington Jones 3 BJ: I lived really about two blocks from Durham, which is on Dunston Street. So there was no problem in walking to Hillside, walking home. That's what you did. You really don't see the busing type of activity, which is a part of desegregation. It was in the community. You were close enough to it. The central!ty of the community was really Hillside. The community took a lot of faith and a lot of pride in the band, which of course is legendary. But in everything that took place at Hillside, in terms of students excelling, in terms of plays, the community was there. There were no empty seats in the auditorium if the theater group decided to perform. It sort of represented a sense of from slavery to freedom. The biggest goal that African-Americans had was to ensure that their children were educated. So even working-class individuals found time for the PTA, or found time to make sure that they were there when their children would be performing. It really brought about a close ( ). If you had to start a conversation, you could easily start one by saying "Hillside." You didn't have to fumble if someone came in your presence. That became the dominant type of conversation in the community, a strong sense of support for school, individuals going into their pockets if need be to assure that students were going to get the experiences that were necessary. You did have some top ( ) students that came out of that environment. There was no such thing as a group of students not doing well. There might have been one or two. But never was there a group that was not excelling or doing well, or the behavior of individuals. You really didn't have some of the deep-seated issues that we find in our community. Students knew that they had to excel and they knew that that was required. There was no negotiating on the type of culture that was created in the community, that demanded and everyone knew their responsibilities in that culture. That's the ( ) of

4 Beverly Washington Jones 4 culture excellence. That was demanded not only in terms of academic, but also behavior, the responsibility was clearly indicated, building of character, all of those values were instilled by the faculty and also the community. There was no problem if someone from the community saw you doing something wrong, calling your parents. Your parents received it very receptively, so that that was a difference of culture and values. GP: Now I've heard a couple of people that I interviewed, and you've just touched on that, say the students just knew and started talking about this culture of excellence. Can you say a little bit more explicitly how students just knew and how their parents and faculty and the community actually created this culture, how those expectations were communicated? BJ: Well I think for one thing, a segregated environment, I think what grows out of that is, even starting with my family, despite if you were poor or impoverished, there were values and parents instilled those values. I think there was a closer connection to the history, a closer connection to a civil rights movement, that you that you were going to be alienated. And despite the Jim Crowism of this time period, it really worked in essence in creating that culture, because everyone demanded that of you and you knew that that was something that was instilled upon you. So parents sort of instructed that yes, you're going to face these dilemmas in life and there will be separate water fountains and we're going to be treated separately, but the struggle is not only in terms of creating a change in terms of the attitude of that time period. It's that you also have to be worthy of saying yes, we deserve this. Your actions will speak highly of the race. So that means that at all times, you need to uphold the race. It's a lot of race elevation and enhancement. They say we are not good enough, but you can prove it by the way you act. You can prove it through your academics. You are not only upholding your family, but you are upholding your race at the

5 Beverly Washington Jones 5 same time. It just became incumbent that this was to be expected because of the type of environment. Segregation does that to you. Discrimination does that to you. You are constantly proving, and by proving it instills those values and therefore it becomes an ethos, a way of life. I think that everybody understand the situations that we faced under Jim Crowism. BP: So in the mid-60s when you were at Hillside, talk to me about Durham in terms of segregation, because I don't have a context for that. I don't have a picture of that in my head. BJ: Well segregation permeated Durham not only in terms of your work life and school, but also even going to the ( ). Economically, you did see the ( ) segregation because even Booker T. makes it very clear that you cannot be separate as it deals with politics but economics, there is a blending here and an understanding. So the business community understood, to a large degree, how to cross those lines for economic empowerment, even though we created our own economic structure. That structure, many times referred to whites to understand that we can also work together interracially on several things. Durham is a typical, the largest number of PhDs, you will find in Durham or Atlanta. I think E. Franklin Frazier makes it very clear which ( ), he's talking about Durham. Durham is very different. Being different, you basically understand that desegregation, to a larger degree, was being economically, than practiced ( ) or socially. So there were separate communities, separate conclaves. But also Durham was unique too because there was a middle and a lower class. There were working-class individuals who were struggling and many times, many of the homes that individuals rented out or apartments, were owned by landowners who were black, and many of them were slum

6 Beverly Washington Jones 6 landlords. I don't want to give anybody the impression that black folks didn't do nothing wrong in terms of their lives. They did. Economics many times makes you do things that you would not ordinarily do. Though we believed you lift as you climb, in some areas, people lifted but they didn't help others to climb. We had our own social institutions, North Carolina College. We had, of course, our own library, the Stanford L. Warren library. We had our own social ( ) groups, the YWCA. We created a culture, a structure within, as a means of empowerment as well as a means of survival. That empowerment to a large degree helped us to identity ourselves. We defined what it meant to be a black person or a Negro or an African-American. It was defined by our culture, despite what segregation did. African-Americans understood their identity. Creating these structures even gave a much more strong sense of identity that also brought a sense of strong community, as well as empowerment. GP: Okay, I'm going to get to Brown vs. Board in You attended '62 through '66. Did you feel that Brown vs. Board had any impact on Hillside when you were there? BJ: Not really. I think that we continued to maintain. I know the consent decree was one that, or freedom of choice was one that some of our students opted to go to desegregate Durham High School and things of that nature. But Hillside went on as Hillside. GP: Did white students come to Hillside during that time period at all? BJ: No, there were no white students. I think that was later when white students began to come to Hillside. We were totally from a segregated school and we maintained that, basically graduated from a desegregated school. GP: Do you feel like school desegregation or integration had any impact on your family at all?

7 Beverly Washington Jones 7 BJ: I'm eleven, there are eleven in my family. GP: Siblings? BJ: Yeah. I'm the ninth in the family. So I know that one of my brothers ( ) did attend Durham High School. But that was during the latter part of the '80s and at that time, much had been settled in terms of the--. I was very active in the civil rights movement. Even in high school, ( ) at Howard Johnson and sit at the white folk's table, so extremely active with the NAACP, knew of the Malcolm X University, ( ), the name now has changed. To a large degree, I think that was part of the beginning of my activism. My older sisters and brothers participated and I want to participate too. Why not? So it was nothing unusual for my mother to get a call saying you have five of your children downtown here locked up, and whatever. I think the activism basically strengthened my life to make me understand and to remember from whence I've come. In many ways, my activism has transformed into being involved in a lot of K-12 efforts in terms of closing the achievement gap or eliminating the achievement gap, which means in essence, those who came from that truly understand what their responsibility is to the community and the role that they must play in the ( ). GP: Do you think there's something special that schools like Hillside did that's lost? BJ: Well I do think it is. You know the whole question I think the Brown decision made very clear, it's still a lingering question today, and that question is the issue of educational resources that need to be provided to all schools and there should be no differences. That's why Linda Brown and her family sort of became involved in this, because the school that she was attending, to a large degree, was one that was many miles away, but not the resources. Those same issues are back today. We still don't have the

8 Beverly Washington Jones 8 equity that is needed for resources in reference to our schools. What that desegregated environment did was that, despite that, students were motivated and pushed to excel. There are many products that will show that these students excelled and are leaders in the different professions that they're involved in. Despite it all, they didn't acquiesce. Even though we just may have had one microscope to be used by several students, that didn't stop this sense of eagerness to learn and to make something out of their lives. That's what that movement did. It really forced individuals to go beyond and to excel. Now with desegregation, many of those values that have been inculcated are sort of dissipated. Students don't really have a compass on what direction and focus that they're going in. Many of those values, they have become Europeanized and they're accepting values from a different race that, to a large degree, has been deleterious and a lack of understanding of what that history is. And that culture, which was so ingrained, would make a world of difference. It is a different generation with different values and much of that eroded under desegregation. GP: What do you think the gains were from school desegregation? BJ: I do believe in pluralism and I believe in diversity. I think it's important that living in a very international and global society, that individuals would need to go to school together to sort of understand, but they also have to be sort of discreet as to what accept from the majority race, which will become the minority race, because the people of color will dominate very soon as ( ). I think that bringing those cultures together is important, but we sort of have to instill in our children to be very, very discreet in terms of analyzing and accepting certain things and what you do not accept. I think the second thing in regard to it, it did prove that there were some whites who weren't as smart as blacks. Many times we were always given the perception that they are smarter and they are

9 Beverly Washington Jones 9 brighter because they've had exposure in terms of that, but there are some students who are African-Americans that can compete directly with them. The other thing it showed too is that some teachers within that desegregated situation didn't understand African-Americans, especially African-American males and began to label. They saw them as threatening. Believe it or not, African-American males, many times you have to just be stern and holler out to them to stop it. But you can't say ( ) because living in an environment, they've been taught to be strong and to be resilient. Many times with that, that softness is not what they're trying to, they're used to. They have not learned in terms of that. Also I think the other issue is that African-Americans many times have different learning styles. I think all children have different learning styles. I think the desegregated movement was not ready to deal with the students in a class of thirty with these diverse learning styles, and in many ways, our students were lost. They were caught in the gap. As a result of that, you began to see a large number of them not excelling. Now the other thing with that, and I have to be very pragmatic about this, is that many of them were coming out of environments that did not have family structures that created those values. So I'm not placing everything on the school. I'm saying that there were some systemic issues that impacted their lives. And the understanding of those systemic issues, I don't [think] the schools understood how you deal with the young kids coming here ( ), how you deal with the young kid whose mother didn't come home and they're coming to school in the same shirt they wore yesterday. How do you deal with that because they're coming from environments that they are not used to that. So they are not ready to handle a situation like this, regrettably they're not.

10 Beverly Washington Jones 10 But I think the desegregation movement has made it very clear to our community that the role that we played prior to desegregation, we must rekindle that role. It is our responsibility to set up Saturday academies and after-school programs and to look to our churches to say we need your support. We need to set up these programs also in the churches, that we don't just need to go there on Sunday for salvation and on Wednesday night. They need to become a part of this civil rights movement. I call what we're going through now as the second civil rights movement, the reclaiming of our children. That role has to be a responsibility. As the other civil rights movement taught us, African-Americans went to the streets. They called upon others to assist them. We must go and reclaim our children and call upon others to assist us. The faith community must be at the vanguard of that movement, like the civil rights movement of the '60s. They must be at that vanguard. The largest number of African- Americans are in church on Sunday. The message has to delivered by those ministers. They will listen to the minister. We have to be a part of this counter-revolution to assure that young people, like you and others, that our young people can walk in the footsteps of you one day and to be in leadership roles and to get their education and to be able to excel. But it is incumbent upon African-Americans, the community, to make sure that they're playing the role that's critical, and to be about the business of trying to look at this culture and instill them in it. Within any revolution or movement, you're not going to save everybody, but it is a responsibility and we are an accomplice if we do not attempt to save some of our children. To me, desegregation has said back to us it is our responsibility. It is not theirs. We are saying that you can participate but you must participate on our terms. That's what the movement is about.

11 Beverly Washington Jones 11 GP: Okay. And so I'll end by asking you what do you think makes Hillside so unique? It's kind of abroad question. What do you think is important for us to learn from the legacy? When I tell people that I'm interviewing people about why Hillside is so important to alumni in this community, what sorts of things should I be telling them? BJ: Historically, Hillside is one of, I think, thirteen black high schools or maybe sixteen. That makes it unique ( ) that it was able to withstand a movement of desegregation in which principals lost their jobs, in which many of our schools that were centered for the naming of a legacy of individuals prior to them, or the naming of the community, that those institutions' names were changed. Schools were ( ). That makes it significant. I think the second thing that makes it significant is that it has maintained a leadership that has been African-American. Many of those schools, of course, whites came in and became principals. So that legacy has still remained and the community itself has been ( ) to the remaining of the school under the leadership, as well as the naming of that school. I think the third significant thing about Hillside is that, withstanding the era of Jim Crowism and the obstacles that confronted the lives of African-Americans, Hillside has remained true to its community and to its race, that it would bring up and nurture and educate a group of students of African-American descent, that will be able to be leaders and to be very prominent in various professions. It has maintained that. It has never in any way sort of moved from its position in terms of that. If you look at leaders that are coming out of the community, Hillside has produced the bulk of those leaders. So it's maintained, it's adhered to its mission, it's maintained to its singing of the alma mater. That has been what's been sort of sustaining about that institution, and that the community has always saw it as its institution. So lessons that we can learn from all of this is that the struggle

12 Beverly Washington Jones 12 begins every morning. The lesson that we learned from all of that is that we must be actively involved, as Hillside is, in ensuring that there will be a generation of African- Americans who will be able to still move this community and to assure that all these young people would have an opportunity. GP: Okay, thank you. END OF INTERVIEW Transcribed by Emily Baran. November, 2005.