Oral history interview with Myrna Colley-Lee, 2011

HT: You can sit back and relax. My name is Hermann Trojanowski. I'm in the Alumni House today with Mrs. Myrna Colley-Lee, and she's visiting us from Mississippi today, and we're going to do an oral history interview for the [African American Institutional Memory Project, which is part of] the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection. Thank you so much for coming all the way from Mississippi today. It's a pleasure to meet you.

MCL: Thank you.

HT: If we'll get started-If you will tell me something about your background, where you were born, and when, and that sort of thing.

MCL: Okay. I was born in Hamlet, North Carolina on the East Coast of North Carolina in 1941. I was the first of four daughters-five daughters to Val Marie Colley and Alvis [Augustus] Lee-well, Val Marie Colley Lee and Alvis Augustus Lee. And my [paternal] grandparents, my grandfather was a preacher, Church of God in Christ. And I was born in a house in Hamlet, North Carolina with a doctor 00:01:00Robinson attending my birth. I wasn't a hospital baby. I lived in Hamlet for the first six months of my life, and then we moved to Atlanta, Georgia, for about a year while my father worked in probably automotives. His brother had a series of garages, body shops. Then we moved to Daytona Beach, Florida. I started elementary school at Bethune-Cookman College. We lived in Daytona. And I stayed there until maybe the sixth grade. Then we moved to Prairie View, Texas, also to another black college campus. It was Prairie View A&M College. And stayed there until 1957 when I graduated from high school, and we moved to Liberia, West 00:02:00Africa. Prairie View had a cooperative program, a pilot program of cooperation with the Booker T. Washington High School, a technical high school in Liberia. And my father went there to teach, heavy-duty equipment use and to run the physical plant. And I went there to start college. I started college in a little town called Suacoco, [Liberia].

HT: Do you know how to spell that? Maybe we'll have to look that up.

MCL: Hum. Maybe it's S-U-A-K-O-K-O. It was in the interior of Liberia, away from Monrovia, and away from where my parents were in Kakata, K-A-K-A-T-A. Started there at a Methodist College called Cuttington College, C-U-T-T-I-N-G-T-O-N, and 00:03:00Divinity School it was. And after my first semester I got malaria. So, I came back to Kakata to where my parents were. And after I got well enough to travel, I was sent home to my relatives here in Greensboro, [North Carolina].

HT: Did you go by boat?

MCL: No, flew.

HT: Flew.

MCL: Propeller planes. Big, old Pan Am [Pan American World Airways] things that landed in the Azores.

HT: Oh, my gosh.

MCL: And Senegal. It, you know, kind of hopped. Huge, heavy things. And I came back to Greensboro, and stayed with-well, stayed on campus at Bennett [College], but my aunts and uncles were in charge of me while my parents stayed to finish my father's tour of duty there. Went to Bennett for two years. And how much more do you need to know?

HT: Well, you were a world traveler at a very young age?

MCL: Yes. Our trip coming-my trip coming home was with another family, because my parents didn't leave when I left. And we went to Paris, [France] and Amsterdam, [Netherlands], and [Brussels, Belgium], and a couple of cities. I'm trying to remember where else. I remember Paris and Amsterdam. It was the World's Fair then in [Brussels], I think. And I enjoyed that.

HT: So, you came back by yourself?

MCL: Essentially.

HT: But you were almost an adult by that time?

MCL: I was eighteen, or nineteen.

HT: And you say you went to high school in?

MCL: Texas.

HT: In Texas?

MCL: Yes.

HT: And what were your favorite subjects in high school, do you recall?

MCL: Literature. Didn't have any art classes. Music and literature. I also liked science. I loved biology. Yes. And Zoology. We didn't have any plant sciences at 00:05:00the time. I didn't think-I didn't know I liked gardening then. Now, I'm a rabid gardener.

HT: Do you recall any teachers having a great deal of influence on you while you were in high school?

MCL: Not in particular. It was a college campus practice school where the student teachers would practice on us. We were the guinea pigs and tiny, fifteen in my graduating class. So, my parents' friends were my teachers. And, so, I think I just knew them all, you know, as friends. We were all-all of the kids knew each other. We all grew up together, and their parents were our teachers. My mother didn't teach. She was a homemaker. She had five girls; she had four by that time, well, three by that time. And my father worked and supported the 00:06:00whole family.

HT: Well, tell me how did you got to Woman's College [now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]?

MCL: What?

HT: That route that you took to get here.

MCL: Well, I came to Bennett. Immediately fell in love with the art course that you had to take as a freshman or sophomore. And wanted to be an artist. My father didn't think that was a suitable career path for a young woman whom he was raising to be a wife. So, I probably pouted and carried on about it and was depressed to the point that we made a deal with each other. It was that I could do art, but I had to get a teaching degree. And he would continue to pay for my education if I did the teaching. Otherwise, I was on my own, an adult, and had decided I knew better for myself than he did, which wasn't really an option at that time. So, after I finished two years of Bennett and was in the choir a lot, 00:07:00traveling with the choir even, I applied to UNCG, because [there] was an art department over here. We were living-my parents had come home from Africa by then, and they were living in town. And, so, I only stayed on campus for the two years at Bennett. When I came to UNCG for the art classes and to get my education, diploma and degree, I lived at home.

HT: So, you had your own car by that time?

MCL: I had my own car.

HT: Well, what was the process for transferring in those days from one college to another, do you recall?

MCL: I don't recall it being complicated. I think I just filled out the paperwork. I came over here and got the application form. I knew it had been integrated three or four years before me. And I had already investigated the art major, because my teacher, trying to remember his name, because he did influence me a lot. But he's dead now. HT: Was it someone here on this campus?

MCL: [James McMillan] at Bennett.

HT: At Bennett.

MCL: Yes. He was a printmaker primarily. It will probably come to me in the middle of this interview.

HT: Okay. All right.

MCL: He suggested that I look into UNCG, because he took classes over here some. And, you know, studio classes, although it wasn't a men's college yet, he could take classes. And he thought I might like it. So, he encouraged me to do so. And I did. I don't think it was complicated. I don't remember anything. And the transcript transfer was easy.

HT: Did you come over in the fall, or was it just-

MCL: Fall. I started regular-I think so.

HT: Do you have any recollection of what your orientation-what it was like coming here for the first time?

MCL: Because I lived in Greensboro, it wasn't like coming to a place that I had never been. And it was already integrated. So, there wasn't a lot of trauma 00:09:00associated with being a black student here. I was very comfortable, but I had traveled so much, and I'd been around all kinds of races of people. So, I didn't have a provincial point of view about it. I mean I knew the South was segregated, and I lived primarily in the South. But having traveled a lot of the world at that point, it was easy for me to accept. I didn't feel weird, or homesick, or any of that.

HT: Well, tell me about your major and why you chose that.

MCL: Well, I chose the education part, because of my father. And I chose the art, because I just really liked the whole process of being an artist, the concentration on it, and the development of talents. I could draw already. I dabbled, you know, as a teenager would do. My father was artistic in a crafts kind of way. So, we would design and build mammoth three-dimensional Christmas 00:10:00cards for the front yard every year, and Santas, and things that we would put on the roof. We wouldn't buy them. They didn't have the blow-up kind of stuff you have now that people-kind of ready-made Christmas. We made our own, because daddy liked doing it. He had a shop, woodworking shop, in the garage.

HT: Were they lit?

MCL: They were lit. HT: Oh.

MCL: Lit dramatically. I mean, I could play. So, we would light from the bottom so you could see them from the street, and we would decorate the house. And I was his son. [laughing] I was his boy. And I enjoyed doing stuff with daddy, so. You know, I drove. I painted. I climbed the ladders. I handed him the right tools. I knew all the tools to fix the cars, and to saw the wood, and I just did all that and liked it. Didn't like housework. [laughing]

HT: Well, which courses on campus did you like the most? And the least?

MCL: The art classes, all of them. Everything that I could squeeze in for the 00:11:00allotted hours. I took everything I could take in the two years that, you know, was not-at that point it became required, because I was a declared art education major, and the electives that I was allowed were all art.

HT: Well, it sounds like you really enjoyed school.

MCL: I did. I always liked school. I do well in school.

HT: Even from first grade on?

MCL: From the beginning. And I was pretty young in first grade. I was like three. Because it was within Bethune-Cookman-there really wasn't really a kindergarten, and my mother's best friend was the teacher. She just took me to school every day, because mother had another baby to deal with. So, not having me home was great, and I was reading already.

HT: And where was Bethune-Cookman?

MCL: In Daytona Beach, Florida. Being the first child, you know, they doted on me. So, I was reading already. I knew my alphabet. I knew my letters. I could sing all the little rhymes and loved going to school.

HT: Well, tell me about being a town student. How do you think that was a different experience than being a resident on campus?

MCL: Well, I had been a resident at Bennett. So, I knew dorm life, you know, and all the restrictions at the timeframe, the lights out. The women were restricted. We had to travel in packs, and we had to dress at Bennett.

HT: Did you have to wear hat and gloves?

MCL: Hat, and gloves, and seamed stockings, and girdles skinny as I was. [laughing] That was such a joke. But you weren't to jiggle. You weren't to be enticing, and clothes were not tight fitting. Nothing like now. And, so, you were proper young ladies. And it wasn't way different over here at Woman's College. It wasn't Bennett.

HT: I understand that Bennett was much more strict.

MCL: Much more restricted. You were representing a whole race, you know? It was- 00:13:00you were much more conscious of the fact that you were Bennett young ladies. UNCG was more about the education. Not that Bennett wasn't-high standards of education, but the young lady part was stressed. And that was what my parents wanted. Going to Bennett was natural. Coming to UNCG was fine with them. They didn't mind that at all.

HT: Did any of your siblings go to Bennett or UNCG?

MCL: No. None of them did. By that time one went to [North Carolina] Central [College]. Two went to Central, North Carolina Central. Trying to think if anybody actually went to [North Carolina] A&T [State College]. No. And trying to remember. Okay, maybe one went to A&T. The one next to me that died. She went to A&T, Linda.

HT: As a town student, did you have any time to participate in any campus activities?

MCL: Not that I remember. But according to the yearbook I must have been 00:14:00involved at Elliott Hall with the Town Students Association.

HT: I'm guessing you didn't have a whole lot of time.

MCL: No, I didn't. Studio classes took quite a lot of time. And little sisters, and driving home, and dealing with mother and the girls. I hung out in the library a lot, but I had found jazz and was in the music rooms. You could check out music, and you could study in there. Or you could just spend hours in there. And I spent hours in there.

HT: I was going to ask you what you did for fun.

MCL: Music.

HT: Music. So, are you musically inclined?

MCL: Married a jazz musician, first husband. And, so, I must have been musically inclined as a listener. I played piano, and I sang in the choir at Bennett. I didn't deal with music here except as a listener. I filled all that time with art.

HT: Well, there was quite a bit of a scene off campus as well. Do you remember anything about The Corner down Tate Street or Tate Street itself and Yum-Yum?

MCL: Oh, yes, Yum-Yum's was every day.

HT: Yum-Yum's is still open.

MCL: Is it still there?

HT: Well, it's moved. But it's still Yum-Yum's. It moved across the street.

MCL: We went there every day. I wasn't much into coffee, but ice cream was definitely a winner and milk shakes.

HT: They're still wonderful.

MCL: Yes, that would be my route. I would take meals over there. I wouldn't go back home for lunch or anything.

HT: Did you eat in the dining hall at all?

MCL: Yes, I think I had a day pass and could eat over there, a meal plan.

HT: Because I've talked to some students who said the food was not so good.

MCL: It was food, you know?

HT: Institutional-type food?

MCL: Right. Nothing to write home about. And salads.

HT: But filling, of course.

MCL: Filling enough. College-student food. [laughter] And not a lot of choices