Oral history interview with Yvonne Cheek, 2012

HT: Today is Monday, September 24, 2012. My name is Hermann Trojanowski, and I'm at the home of Dr. Yvonne Cheek in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is class of 1967 at UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro]. Yvonne, thank you so much for meeting with me this morning; it's great meeting you. We're here to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG Institutional Memory Collection's African American Institutional Memory Project. Again, thank you for meeting with me this morning.

YC: It's my pleasure.

HT: Well, let's get started by my asking you about your background, such as where you were born, and when, and that sort of thing.

YC: I was born in Philadelphia, and my parents moved to North Carolina when I was five years old. And we moved to Kittrell, North Carolina, which is a little village about forty-five miles north of Raleigh on highway number one, ten miles south of Henderson. And in this sweet little village in a very cocooned atmosphere, I grew up and had a very protected environment and it was-it brought 00:01:00us all the joys that we could imagine in that setting because there was a junior college there; there was the railroad-The Silver Comet train went right by our house. Our relatives could get on the train in Philadelphia and Washington DC and get off two blocks from our house in this little village. I went to elementary school. I walked to my first grade, so it was just an ideal.

HT: And why did your parents move to Kittrell?

YC: Well, my parents didn't want us to grow up in the wicked city of Philadelphia. They both were from North Carolina originally, and so they wanted to move back to North Carolina. My parents had a friend whose family house was the Thorpe house and this house-they needed somebody to live in it, and so they allowed us to live in it rent-free and take care of their family home. Mr. 00:02:00Thorpe had been the first black postmaster in that area when he was a younger man.

HT: And what did your parents do?

YC: My mother was the breadwinner, primarily. She was a teacher, actually taught me in the fifth grade. She graduated from Fayetteville State Teacher's College. My father went to high school at A&T went to college at Hampton Institute which he loved, loved very much. He majored in auto mechanics there and then when he and my mother married, they lived in Philadelphia. He got his bachelor's degree in industrial arts at Cheney [College] but he never-he really was an artist at heart and so he would figure out ways to-he had this relationship with the world that if he did things for people, things would come back to him, so he was an excellent plumber, electrician, wood maker, and gardener. Sometimes we had forty 00:03:00vegetables in our garden. But he didn't make money at any of these things, which kind of irritated my mom a little bit. He did-he was an insurance agent for a little while but made very little money. He taught school for one year; industrial arts. That didn't work so well, and so he was the manager of his sister's and brother's family farm, and he was the guy at home who kind of cooked breakfast every morning and did his thing. He was also an artist-he made jewelry; he made leather pocketbooks; he was a sculptor-so if he had been born the right year, he could have declared himself an artist, but he was born in 1903 and so black men born in 1903, it was difficult to declare yourself an artist, so he just had to figure out a way to live on the fringes. He was an interesting person in that he was seventeen years older than my mother when they 00:04:00married, but she never-she didn't find that out until they had-she thought he was about ten years older because he lied about his age. She didn't find that out until, I think, they were married about five or six years.

HT: Well, tell me about your brothers and sisters.

YC: My sister Cheryl-Betty is two years younger than I am, and my sister Cheryl is thirteen years younger than I am. Betty also went to UNCG, and she was a year behind me. She was two years younger than me, but when I went to the first grade, I loved my teacher so much. I just loved learning-even as a little girl-so every day, whatever Mrs. Spencer taught me in the first grade, I came home and taught it to Betty, and so when Betty got to school in the first grade and by two weeks the teacher said, "Well, you know all this" so they sent her to 00:05:00the second grade. So she stayed two weeks in first grade because I had taught her everything I knew. Cheryl is thirteen years younger and she was a surprise baby to my parents, and Betty lives here in Minneapolis. You'll be interviewing her. She's also a consultant and has her own firm, and she graduated from UNCG, majoring in art. I majored in music education. Cheryl lives in Durham, North Carolina. She has her undergraduate degree from North Carolina Central University in nursing. She has a master's degree in-from-is it Medical University in South Carolina?

HT: Yes, in Charleston.

YC: In Charleston, South Carolina in midwifery, and then she just most recently got a master's in psychiatric nursing, and she also has a-she also studied 00:06:00religion and is a minister as well as being a midwife at a clinic, Women's Durham Clinic. She's been there for over fifteen years. She is a well-known midwife in North Carolina. She's kind of a little super-star.

HT: Well, tell me about where you went to high school.

YC: I went to Henderson Institute in Henderson, North Carolina which, when it was founded, was like a boarding school for black students. The teachers lived on campus. In fact, when I was there, some of the teachers still lived on campus because they had private quarters for teachers who didn't want to have their own home or live there during the week and went back to their homes in Raleigh or Durham or wherever on the weekends. I was a-in the choir-no, I was in the band 00:07:00most of the time that I was there, and I played occasionally for the choir. I graduated valedictorian, and I was the announcer for the school for two years. I remember it was such a high status thing that I would leave class-French class-and go make the school announcements every day at 11:20.

HT: So, it sounds like you have always been interested in music.

YC: Yes, I really-both my sisters and I started taking piano lessons when we were six years old, so it was our father's dream that we would do that. He would take us to piano lessons every Saturday morning for, it felt like, a thousand years. I took piano lessons until I was thirteen, and then at the age of thirteen my piano teacher said, "I've taught you as much as I can. I can't take you any further." So she said, "Why don't you start teaching?" And so I took 00:08:00piano students starting when I was thirteen.

HT: Oh, my gosh!

YC: I had piano students all day every Saturday, every hour on the hour from nine o'clock until three o'clock; charged them a dollar a lesson. That was good money back in those days.

HT: I bet it was.

YC: And I also started playing for church when I was in the fifth grade: ten dollars a Sunday. Really good money.

HT: That is truly amazing. Did you play piano or organ?

YC: Piano, at first, and then one church wanted me to play organ and I said, "Well, I don't know how to play organ" and they said "Well, we'll pay for your lessons so you can." And so I took organ lessons to play for them, and when I was in high school, I had three churches that I played for. I had a city church in Henderson that had-I played there second Sunday and fourth Sunday playing organ, and then I had another church on the first Sunday, and another church on the third Sunday. So I was making really good money, and I was busy all the time which is, I think, why I have this high energy and over-achiever; overdoing it 00:09:00all the time, even now, because I was just programmed that way early on.

HT: That is truly amazing.

YC: My sisters and I were also 4-H champions. We had a wonderful mentor; Mrs. Roscoe. Mrs. Esther B. Roscoe was our 4-H agent, and we entered every contest and won every contest there was, whether it was cooking or sewing or lamps or vegetables or-we were the superstars; we even made presentations at 4-H camp-4-H short course, which was in Greensboro at A&T. At that time everything was segregated. I was the president of the black 4-H Clubs of North Carolina, and Betty came along after me and was the president after I was. We were so famous for winning everything that agents from other parts of the state would call Mrs. 00:10:00Roscoe and say, "What area are the Cheek sisters entering this year." And if she would say "electricity," they would say, okay, we won't enter that area because they knew they would lose. They would enter another area. Even though I loved the 4-H Club and I loved all the opportunities, I had a-I was the first 4-Her in the country-the first black 4-Her in the country to go to 4-H camp in Washington, DC, and I was supposed to go to 4-H short course in Chicago the year after that. I had done everything possible; done all the right things; Mrs. Roscoe had done all the right things; and I was selected to go. And then Mrs. Roscoe got a call from the national 4-H office saying, you know, "We are so sorry to inform you but 4-H Congress is just not ready for a Negro to come." So 00:11:00she told my parents and my parents told me and they said, "We would appreciate you not going to the papers about this. In fact, if you don't go to the newspapers about this, we'll give Yvonne a scholarship to college," and so when my parents-we were devastated. We were shocked; we were miffed. But my parents did something I didn't expect them to do, which was, they left it up to me. They said, "It's your decision. We're going to let you think about that." I was shocked that they would leave this big thing up to me but I thought about it and I thought, you know, I really love the 4-H Club. I'm really disappointed but I think I'll take the scholarship and I won't go to the newspapers. And so that's what I did. And I'm kind of proud of my decision although if I had known better then, if I had gotten a little bit more counseling, if we had asked somebody outside, I would have asked for a bigger scholarship. But I didn't know how to negotiate at that point.

HT: How much was the scholarship worth?

YC: You know, I don't remember; I don't remember at this time, but I took it and 00:12:00I went to UNCG.

HT: Oh, my goodness. Well, what were your favorite subjects in high school? Do you recall?

YC: Probably English-oh, history; history and English. I think history was my number one favorite because I had such a great history teacher.

HT: And what year did you graduate from high school?

YV: Sixty-three.

HT: Sixty-three, and what made you decide to go to-well, of course it was still Woman's College in '63.

YC: It was just making the transition. The year that I arrived there was the first year that it was UNCG.

HT: Right and that will be fifty years next year.

YC: Oh no! Oh, my gosh. You know that's startling to me every time I think about that. Next year I will have entered college fifty years ago. I'm in age denial, 00:13:00all the way.

HT: Oh, gosh. Well, did you apply to other schools or just UNCG?

YC: I'm a little foggy on all the details, but I know that we had talked about me-I had talked about going to Hampton, my father's alma mater, but my parents said that private college was too expensive; you'll need to go here in the state. And my cousin Emma Lois Hairston, who I think you may have interviewed; I'm not sure. Her last name is-oh, my God, what is her married last name? She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Emma Lois, oh gosh. Anyway she went to UNCG, and so her parents talked to my parents, and we thought we might as well apply. Emma Lois is there and she's doing fine and so that's how I happened to go there.

HT: You'd never thought about going anywhere else other than UNCG; except maybe Hampton.

YC: Do you know, I don't remember. I think I must have applied to some other 00:14:00schools but I don't have a clear memory of it.

HT: Well, what do you recall about your first days on campus in the fall of 1963?

YC: Shock, utter shock. I went from an all-black high school to a just about all-white college. And when I was a 4-H camp counselor, I had met some other camp counselors who were in college-black colleges-and they had told me how they dressed and that kind of thing so my first day, you know, I was kind of dressed up because these black students from the black colleges had told me, "You'd better dress up." And so some of the white girls looked at me and said, "Are you a teacher?" I went, "Oh, God." I am in the wrong shoes. I remember I had on some little wedge-heel shoes and I thought, "Oops, these are not the right shoes for 00:15:00this campus. I'm too dressed up." I also remember just how strange it felt to be the only black student in all of my classes, in all of them. And this was the way it was all four years. My freshman class had ten black girls and we all were assigned to room with each other on the first floor of Coit Hall, which we found kind of strange, but at the same time, it was kind of nice to be-to know that you could go to your room and be totally accepted without being stared at or looked at as strange. But still it felt strange that we were only on the first floor of Coit Hall. But I loved my roommate. My roommate was Carolyn Suezette 00:16:00Brown Roney, and we got along really, really well together. One of the things that was uncomfortable for me, though, it was when I would go to class, there was never any camaraderie, no chit-chat, no "How are you doing? How are things going?" Nobody ever talked to me in any of my classes; before class or after class. It's almost like we didn't know how to extend ourselves to each other. There was an invisible wall. They didn't know how to talk to me; I didn't know how to talk to them. Nobody ever treated me poorly. I was never insulted to my face, but I was invisible. And it still hurt to be invisible, but it just was very strange. So I, when I figured that was the case, I would arrange to get to class just three minutes before it started so I wouldn't be sitting in class ten or fifteen minutes before it started, feeling left out of the conversation because it just pinched a lot. The other thing, when I look back on it, I'm 00:17:00still surprised at this: that not one of my instructors ever asked-took me aside and said, "Come to my office and let's chat" to ask me "How are things going? How are you doing? How are you feeling?" Not one. And I thought, wow-

HT: Not even your advisor?

YC: Not even my advisor. No, no, no. It was all a strict transactional thing with the advisor. We didn't have that much interactions with the advisor.

HT: Do you recall what your advisor's name was, by any chance?

YC: I don't, not at all. I hardly remember having an advisor; I hardly remember that at all. In fact I'm not sure I did. If I had an advisor, it was a ten-minute relationship just to make sure I was taking the right course, and that was all; but no relationship.

HT: Right, what about interaction in the dining halls, and physical education, 00:18:00and places like that?

YC: In dining hall, all the black girls would sit together all the time. That was our one time to kind of have some camaraderie, and white girls would never come over and join us at our table. And I think every now and then we might eat at a white table, or we would not eat with our group, but most of the time we would eat together. And the thing is, I always had at least two jobs and so I was on a very rigid schedule. Being a music major, I needed to practice piano two hours a day, and I did. I tried to practice voice one hour a day; then I went to my classes, and then I needed time to do my homework, so I was on a very, very strict schedule. Thank goodness I had a bicycle. Coit Dorm was on one side of the campus; the Music Building was on the other side.

HT: Yes.

YC: If I didn't have a bicycle, I wouldn't have been able to make it. And it was so funny: you'd just ride your bicycle and lean it up against the building and go to your classes. Nobody would ever bother it; nobody thought about locks or 00:19:00taking the bicycle but everything was-I'm not ever sure we locked our doors. I can't remember locking our dorm doors. I don't think we did.

HT: Well, what do you recall about your favorite subject or subjects?

YC: Favorite subjects. Isn't that odd that I have to pause to think about that. Wow, my favorite subject in college; nothing pops in mind. You know what pops in mind immediately? That I audited a course every semester. I audited a course outside of my major every semester, so I would audit an art course, a psychology course or a philosophy course, and I would alternate auditing an academic course with auditing a PE course; with taking-I took a PE course every semester even 00:20:00though it was only required four semesters, I think, or two semesters, because I wanted to learn how to bowl; I wanted to learn how to swim; I wanted to learn how to do all these things-play tennis-things that I had never been exposed to before. My sister Betty took pool. I didn't take pool but-

HT: That's billiards, I assume.

YC: Yes, billiards, yes. But I didn't-so I'm struggling with my favorite-oh, you know what: I think I did fall in love with psychology but I think I audited that course; I don't think I took that course for credit. Maybe I took one psychology course for credit. But I enjoyed that a lot, but that's odd that I-I think I enjoyed choir, but I'm thinking; what did I-my methodology courses-I enjoyed learning how to teach people how to teach. But I think-the whole thing was a real struggle for me to just keep up and I studied really hard because my 00:21:00academic-the academic rigors of UNCG were so much different than the rigors of my high school. I had to learn how to write a term paper; I had never written a term paper. When they would say analyze this poem, I would go "What? Analyze this poem?" So I would go to the library and look at other people's analyses and read about what other people had written about this poem. I would do a lot of extra reading in order to understand what my own thoughts might be about it. So I was scared every semester. "Am I going to flunk out? Am I going to flunk out?" But you know, I maintained a B average, but it was still on the horizon. "Are you going to dishonor your family by flunking out?" It was always on the horizon.

HT: You say your worked another job on campus as well.

YC: I had two jobs on campus. One job was in the UNCG library, which was a 00:22:00wonderful job because I could study the whole time I was on the job. I was just somebody there to monitor people coming in and out. My other job was to make coffee for the faculty at the School of Music and I was kind of embarrassed about that job because here I was-there were three black students at the School of Music at that time. I was one of the three and here I was, a black student making coffee for the white faculty. It was like, I don't like this role, so what I would do was get there early in the morning before anybody else arrived. People usually arrived by eight o'clock. I would make sure I was gone by 7:30, and I would set up this big coffee pot that would last all day, and then the next day I would come and make coffee again. So that was something I did my entire four years. And so I was so humiliated by that process that although it was-I think it took me about half an hour to do it. I would say it took an hour 00:23:00because I thought, "They owe me for the humiliation of being here, doing this." So I would turn in an hour because I thought, "Well, it did take-I had to ride my bicycle over here and ride my bicycle back: that's an hour."

HT: Oh, gosh!

YC: But I have to tell you one other thing that I did for a job. My sister Betty was an art major, and at that time I think we were getting four dollars an hour. Were we getting two dollars an hour or four dollars an hour for being a work-study student? These were for all work-study students.

HT: Right.

YC: So whatever amount we were getting, she said, "You know what? We need people to pose for our life-living arts class or something," so she said, "Would you be interested because it pays twice as much as all the other jobs on campus." I thought, "Oh, what!" So I posed nude for-when I was a sophomore. I did it for 00:24:00one or two semesters in still life class. These were all girls so all you had to do was just be there and don't move for forty-five minutes and they would just draw. So I did that and got twice as much. I never told anybody. You're probably the fourth person I've told. Now the whole world will know. Oh, my God.

HT: Well, any art school is going to have live models, both male and female, so-

YC: Yes, but I didn't-it was a stretch, but I sure would have died if anybody found out.

HT: I'm assuming all these jobs you had helped pay for schooling and books and incidentals and things like that.

YC: Yes, yes, and we also had some scholarships, and my father was a veteran so we had some money there, too. But we also got some loans, so it was a combination of work-study, scholarships, and loans.

HT: And having two girls in college both at the same time: that was a stretch 00:25:00for the family budget.

YC: Yes, yes, yes.

HT: I think you said your major was music education; is that correct?

YC: Right.

HT: How did you decide on that major?

YC: I never thought of anything else; never occurred to me to do anything else. I knew in the first grade that I wanted to be a teacher because I fell in love with my first grade teacher. I loved my second grade teacher. I said, "Yes, I want to be a teacher" when I was six and seven years old. And then, when I got to high school and I found out there was such a thing as a music teacher-I didn't know that when I was in elementary and junior high because we didn't have them-I thought, "Oh, that's what I want to be: a music teacher." And I played piano since I was in the first grade, so no other major ever crossed my mind to consider.

HT: Well, tell me about what it was like being a music major, because I'm not really familiar with that area of schooling.

YC: As a music major, we had to take music theory, music history our first two 00:26:00years of concentration. And you had to be-I had to be in the choir every semester and if you were taking for your major, I was a piano principle, so I had to-I was supposed to practice piano two hours every day; I was a voice minor-

HT: Seven days a week?

YC: Five; at least five, sometimes six. And I was a voice secondary, and so I would practice voice one hour a day.

HT: Were you in the choir and the chorale?

YC: I was in the choir; the chorale was a bump up so you had to be a junior or really good to be in the chorale, and I was in both. We were required to go to Thursday recitals at three o'clock every week, and then we were expected to go to concerts because you were required to give a concert if you were a junior or 00:27:00senior and a voice or instrumental major. And we were expected to go to concerts at least twice a week, so that was a pretty full schedule.

HT: Do you recall taking any trips with the choir or the chorale?

YC: Oh, I did, yes. I had forgotten about that.

HT: Where did you go?

YC: I think Tennessee and Kentucky and Kansas. I think I went on two choir trips, and we stayed in homes. I think Dr. [Richard] Cox-he was afraid; he didn't want there to be any incidents and there were no incidents but I was the-yes, there were two of us traveling, usually two black girls with all the white girls. We didn't experience any incidents.

HT: What were those trips like? That's quite a distance to travel, from Greensboro all the way to Kansas.

YC: Yes, I think I looked at it as sheer adventure, sheer adventure. It was fun, 00:28:00it was-I don't think I traveled until I was a junior so it was-I was used to the milieu by that time, so-

HT: Yes. You mentioned Dr. Cox; what are your recollections about him?

YC: He was a standout. In fact, he has visited me several time here in the Twin Cities-he has a son here. He was our choir director and head of choral studies for many, many years, and he was very revered. He was just an all-around good human being, and he had the choir at the Episcopal church there in Greensboro for many, many years. Yes, he was a gentle soul.

HT: Is he still alive?

YC: You know, I don't know. I should check. He was here three years ago, and we had lunch together. Dr. Richard Cox.

HT: Barbara Baker, Class of '69 whom I interviewed last year, thought very highly of him. She just thought he was just the most wonderful person around.

YC: He was a stand-out of all of the people on the faculty when I was a student there. I think he was probably the warmest to me as an undergrad.

HT: Well, what did you do for fun at UNCG? Did you have time for fun?

YC: When I was a student, what did I do for fun? Sometimes I would go to my cousin Emma Lois's room. Her room was a magnet for all the girls to come, and we would gather there occasionally. I would go to every play that they had; every play on campus I would go to; every time we had an outside person to come and perform. What was the name of the auditorium?

HT: Aycock Auditorium.

YC: Aycock Auditorium, yes. It was the attractor for major out-of-town-yes, I 00:30:00would make sure I went to every one of them, sometimes alone, I think mostly alone. I couldn't talk my colleagues and friends, my girlfriends, into going as much as I did. I would say probably I went to something at least once a week that was a major-or once every other week-was a major event. Other kinds of fun? Oh, my God. I did a little dating, but not much. There were times when there would be busses that would come to take girls to Carolina [The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill].

HT: I have heard of that.

YC: And I was one of the black girls on one of those busses twice, the only one, so when we got down there, they would let us off and there would be all these white guys ready to greet the girls that got off the bus, and there was one black guy. I said, "I guess he's the one I'm supposed to talk to."

HT: How did that work out?

YC: I think we dated a little bit, but not much.

HT: I've heard other people speak of those trips. It must have been quite interesting.

YC: Yes, It was just an odd thing but they-that's how the tradition worked.

HT: You mentioned very early that you were at Coit. Were you at Coit more than one year?

YC: Coit was a freshman dorm.

HT: Just freshmen? And where were you the other three years?

YC: I was in Winford-Is it Winford?

HT: Weil-Winfield [Residence Hall].

YC: Weil-Winfield, that's it. And I think-yes, black girls were still expected to room with each other and they put me in-they assigned. I don't know that I got to choose my roommates. How did that happen? Oh, I know; I started out with