00:00:00HT: Well, today is Saturday, April 13, 2013 and my name is Hermann Trojanowski.
I'm in Jackson Library with Jackie Sparkman, Class of 1967. Good morning,
Jackie, and welcome.
JS: Good morning, thank you.
HT: We're here to conduct an oral history interview for African American
Institutional Memory Project, which is part of the UNCG Institutional Memory
Collection. Jackie, if we could get the interview started by my asking you some
basic information about your early life; some biographical information such as
where and when you were born and where you lived and grew up and that sort of thing.
JS: Okay. I grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. That's in the eastern part of
the state, and when I came to Greensboro, it was probably my first time in the
western part of the state. My parents were Dorsey and Daizel Sparkman.
HT: Could you spell that?
JS: Dorsey, D-O-R-S-E-Y, Daizel, D-A-I-Z-E-L. And my father worked for the Pepsi
00:01:00Cola Company. He drove a forklift at the Pepsi Company. My mother was first a
domestic, and she also worked in the restaurant business for Wilbur Hardee. You
know, you've heard of the Hardee restaurant chain. Before there was a Hardee
chain, there was a Hardee restaurant; so before he franchised, my mother worked
for him in that restaurant. He told her he would be a rich man one day and he
was. Well, now by that time I think she had already moved on to the Imperial
Tobacco Company. They had a factory. There were a lot of tobacco factories in
Greenville at that time so she worked at the tobacco factory. I had three
brothers and one sister. One older brother (I'm the second oldest), two younger
brothers, and a sister. I went to C.M. Eppes High-Fleming Street Elementary
00:02:00School and from Fleming Street Elementary School to C.M. Eppes High School.
Eppes was the only black high school in Greenville, and the schools then, of
course, were still segregated. Let's see, one of my favorite courses, I suppose,
was band. I loved the band, and I played saxophone. Back in those days we had a
wonderful marching band. I was teasing classmate Suezette Brown Roney [Class of
1967], with whom I drove down here yesterday, that she lived in Farmville, the
next town over. Greenville now has grown so that it is almost touching
Farmville. But we used to play Farmville in football, and I teased her yesterday
that our band used to go over there and show them what a real band looked like
at halftime when we took the field. Greenville is where I developed a life-long
00:03:00love of popcorn since I worked at the movies. That was my favorite job when I
was in Greenville as a high school student.
HT: Were you an usher?
JS: No, I worked at the concession stand.
HT: That can be deadly, can't it?
JS: Back in those days you know the popcorn didn't come in those great big bags
already popped; we popped it there in the big kettles and so we'd pop a
kettleful for the patrons and a kettleful for us. I've loved popcorn ever since.
HT: What was your favorite academic class in high school?
JS: I liked all my classes. Let's see: I loved English; I loved algebra-all the
math courses. I had very good math teachers. And civics; I liked all my courses,
00:04:00I think. Band was probably my absolutely non-academic favorite.
HT: And when did you graduate from high school?
JS: In 1963.
HT: And what made you decide to come to UNCG?
JS: I had gone to-The National Science Foundation (if it still exists, I don't
know) sponsored programs for high school students in the summers back in those
days, and I had applied for and had been accepted to a National Science
Foundation summer program at North Carolina Central [University] in Durham, and
I think chemistry was what I majored in there in the summer program. And I met
there, by the way, two other girls who wound up being in my class-here at UNCG:
00:05:00Ruth Rainey [Class of 1967] and Sara Bryan [Class of 1967] were also in that
National Science program at NCC. During the course of the program, we went over
to Duke [University] for something and Duke's chemistry department, by far, was
so much better than North Carolina Central's was, and I thought, Wow, what a
school this is. Duke was very impressive back then; it's probably impressive
now, but it was very impressive then, too. And I thought, "I think I'll come to
Duke." And of course when I went home and checked things out, I learned that I
could not afford to go to Duke; no way, no how. And so I thought, "Okay, I'll go
to UNC [University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]." I probably applied to
00:06:00some other schools, too; some smaller-maybe Shaw [University, Raleigh] and, no
doubt, North Carolina Central, but I'm not positive. But I do know that the only
school I really followed through with was-I applied to UNC-Chapel Hill because
that's all I knew about, and I got a letter back that said: "Dear Jackie, There
are so many girls named Jackie nowadays, we thought we'd write to tell you that
in case you are a girl, we at Chapel Hill don't accept girls until the junior
year. You might want to apply to WC [Woman's College]." That's how I came to
apply to WC.
HT: That was about the time they were changing all that because it became a
university at that time and so, yes.
JS: Yes. And so as it developed, after graduation WC was the only college I had
00:07:00truly done everything in terms of applying for and July rolled around. I had
applied for student aid because my parents were poor. We were a poor family. We
didn't have any money. I mean they had no contribution for me to go to college.
I had a $250 scholarship from, I think, United Negro College Fund, which was
encouraging blacks at the time to apply to integrate schools, so they gave me a
$250 scholarship. And I might have had a $100 local scholarship from somebody
else. I can't remember. And they said that tuition, room, and board were just
under a thousand dollars so I was a little short. And by July, with school
scheduled to start in September, I didn't have all the money yet, and I hadn't
heard anything from WC. At the time Terry Sanford was the governor and he had
00:08:00run on [an] education platform: how we need to improve education in North
Carolina. He was going to be very supportive of education so I wrote the
governor and told him that I had applied and been accepted at WC and had applied
for financial aid but I hadn't heard anything from them yet and I couldn't go to
school without some money. And I think within a week of writing that letter, I
got a letter back from the governor's office saying they had sent my letter to
the secretary of education and within a week or ten days of that, I heard from
the secretary of education saying that they had been in contact with WC, and a
few days after that I heard from WC that I had my loan.
HT: That is amazing.
JS: And I thought, "Okay." And so I arrived with the loan-they weren't called
Pell Grants in those days, I don't think-whatever the federal loan was. I had
00:09:00enough to get me-to pay everything for freshman year. And I had a job; I got a
job in the cafeteria because as you heard one woman yesterday say [at the Alumni
Reunion's Interactive Session Between African American Alumni and Students], the
cafeteria were the best paying jobs. And I worked in the cafeteria at least
three years; I'm not sure-I might have worked there all four; at least three years.
HT: Do you, by any chance, recall what the wage was at that time?
JS: I don't really.
HT: I bet you it was maybe a dollar fifty or maybe two dollars. I mean it was-
JS: Well, the minimum wage was very low.
HT: Oh, it was very low. Oh, yes. But you could still buy a lot with it.
JS: Right, you could take care of things like movies and any other things that
girls did. I didn't go off-campus very much because I didn't have the money to
go off-campus, but I had enough to participate in the social life.
HT: But when you were working in the cafeteria, did you work just one meal a day
or how did that work?
JS: No. Well, whatever you wanted. You could work fulltime or part-time, and I
00:10:00worked whatever fulltime was. I probably worked all three meals. And I
definitely remember getting up early in the morning to work the breakfast. But
even working in the cafeteria wasn't enough money so I also-by second semester-I
think I had-Was it second semester? I'm not really sure whether it was second
semester, freshman year or whether I started that sophomore year, but I also
delivered the local Greensboro newspaper so that had me up early in the morning.
And the thing is, as I mentioned yesterday, since I got paid extra for the
longer the subscription was, I only sold long subscriptions. And there was an
off-campus dry cleaners. I worked for the dry cleaners, going around to the
dorms and seeing if kids had clothes they wanted dry cleaned. And I'd pick up
00:11:00their clothes and deliver them to the dry cleaner's and bring them back. So I
had lots of little jobs. So other than just being generally a gregarious person
and running around and meeting people and hanging out because of my work, I met
lots of people anyway, which was probably helpful when I did do things like run
for office. I knew a lot of people, and a lot of people knew me from being
around and all over.
HT: Well, what do you recall about your first day on campus? That would be in
the fall of 1963.
JS: The fall of 1963. My parents had borrowed a car (because they didn't own a
car) from a friend of my father's. They [My mother and my father's friend]
brought me up but you know I'm still-I think that's true. They had to have had
00:12:00because I would have had suitcases but you know I've gotten to thinking about
that. Let me say I'm not positive that's true. I got to thinking that way
because I had first read Suezette's [oral history interview] and she said her
parents drove up in a car and I thought well, we must have come up in a car,
too, but I'm not positive I didn't come up on a bus. My parents didn't own a
car, and I only had two suitcases so I might have come on the bus. But they
might have brought me, but I just don't remember. And of course they're not here
for me to ask anymore. But I'm thinking they did borrow a car and bring me up
because my mother was on campus just once, so that must have been the time. And
I don't remember a lot about it; I remember being excited. I didn't know that
Sara and Ruth would be here until we got here and saw each other again.
00:13:00
HT: But you had not been on campus prior to that.
JS: No.
HT: So this was all brand-new to you.
JS: All brand-new and I'm a little girl from a small town so this was all just
new and exciting, and it's fall, so the campus was beautiful and green and a
bustle of activity with people running about. I remember meeting, of course, my
assigned roommate, Carolyn Black, and going to our room. Ours was the first
class of blacks that were housed on each side of the first floor of Coit. Prior
to that, all blacks had been on one side of the lobby of Coit.
HT: So do you recall how many black students were in that class in '63?
JS: Suezette and I were talking about this yesterday. I thought we were ten; she
says we were twelve so we have to go through the yearbook and count the
pictures. I always thought of us as ten of a thousand total enrollment of that
00:14:00freshman class. So the first day was just full of excitement, of moving in and
meeting people. Our side, we were issued-going into Coit, the dorm mother was
on-Her quarters were, I think, to the left of the entrance and our room was on
that side and most of the black students were on the other side of the hall, but
the whites on each side. But ours had more. And everybody was just-I recall
everybody happy, greeting each other and everybody on our side was friendly.
HT: And just two to a room?
JS: Yes.
HT: Two students.
JS: Yes. There was only one room, I think, that had three students in it:
Suezette's room.
00:15:00
HT: Do you recall who your housemother was at that time?
JS: Frances Falk.
HT: I've heard that name several times.
JS: I don't really remember too much about the first weeks or months of being
there other than just studying, hanging out. Like I said, after we would study
in the evening, frequently somebody would put on some music and we would go out
in the hall and dance. Because you know at night, lights-out was at, I think,
ten o'clock or ten-thirty.
HT: It was fairly early.
JS: That doesn't mean, of course, that we went to sleep, but people would slip
out of one room and go into another room to talk; you know, that kind of thing.
HT: And I've heard people say they used flashlights under cover to continue
00:16:00studying and that sort of thing.
JS: To continue reading, yes; that kind of thing. We would play cards together
and just hang out talking.
HT: If we could backtrack for just a minute to working in the cafeteria: What
was that like? What type of work did you do?
JS: I was on the line.
HT: The serving line.
JS: Right. The food was prepared in the kitchen and there was a serving line and
long lines of students would come through with their trays and we would give
them what they wanted of hot food.
HT: I think I asked you earlier how many hours you worked a day or something
like that. You worked all three meals and that was like a two-hour shift around
each meal's time or something like that.
JS: Probably. I'm not sure. And I don't know if I worked all three meals every
day. It probably depended on my class schedule. But I know I worked all
breakfasts and most dinners, if not all dinners. I remember a few-I thought the
00:17:00food was fine. As a matter of fact, I gained twenty-five pounds my freshman
year, primarily from the brownies. But we did have a couple of food protests my
freshman year. Some people, particularly the upperclassmen complained about the
food a lot, and there were a couple of food protests where the kids came
through, got their trays full of food, took it to the tables and refused to eat
it. It was just they banged on the tables with their forks and knives and left
all the food there on the trays and walked out. So we on the serving line had to
go out and clean up all the mess they'd left and bring it all back. Working in
the cafeteria, I would bring back brownies and cookies for people in the dorm,
00:18:00so we all got fat. I gained twenty-five pounds. My mother was appalled when she
saw me. I used to have that picture with the class officers and I'm standing
there in the front and I thought, "Jeez, I'm huge."
HT: Oh, my goodness. Do you recall what your favorite subject was when you were
in college?
JS: Well, I didn't hit my favorite subjects until I got to be a junior, and they
were economics. And if I had known anything about the subject of economics, I
would have majored in that as a freshman. But of course having come from a
small, poorly-funded high school, we didn't have any subjects like economics.
The only economics we knew about was home economics. I started out as a math
major but math-The highest level of math in my high school was algebra two. I
00:19:00hadn't had trigonometry or calculus or anything like that and so I thought once
I got here and I thought, "I don't think I'm going to make it as a math major."
So my sophomore year I think I had switched to history and political science. So
I enjoyed the political science courses; I enjoyed French I wasn't that good at,
but I had had French in high school. I enjoyed the English courses and the
political science courses but economics turned out to be my-Once I had
discovered economics, I took, any time I had remaining, every course I could fit in.
HT: And so your major turned out to be-
JS: History and political science.
HT: What do you recall about the professors in history and political science? Do
you have any memories of-?
JS: I remember one woman but I don't remember her name; I can see her face but I
00:20:00can't remember her name right now. I think that's more a function-I used to
remember her name but now I'm getting older and that stuff just goes. And I
thought she was fine up until-I don't know what the discussion was about, but at
some point I recall her making a remark to the effect that we can't legislate
morality. We might have had some discussions around the civil rights commotion
that was going on in the country and she said, "Well, we can't legislate
morality." And the way she meant it was that we can't force people to like each
other or to be together or accept each other, and I'm thinking, "Okay, I know
she can only take me so far in terms of my intellectual development because to
me, we legislate morality every time you put up a stoplight." We tell people you
can't just drive willy-nilly. There are so many ways you legislate morality so I
00:21:00thought, "Okay, but whatever-" Like I said, I don't remember the specific
incident at all. And I remember a teacher in another class, a male who was tall
and thin and wore horn-rimmed glasses. I don't remember his name. He didn't-He'd
called on me for something. I probably had volunteered and he called on me for
something and I used-In my response I said something about-I'm trying to
remember what the word was. It wasn't "obfuscate" but it was some silly word
like that. He said, "What?" And I repeated the word and I thought: "My goodness.
00:22:00He almost sounded like he was surprised I knew words that had three syllables."
HT: What was that word you used?
JS: I said "obfuscate" but I don't think that was the word. [It was "obviate."]
I'm trying to think. It will come to me at some point during the conversation.
So I kept talking and continued to answer and at some point later in class, I
was talking to two fellows (because I was the only black person in that
particular class and I think that he seemed a little surprised that the students
and I were interacting just like regular normal people; that there was no-We
were just talking, you know, and I thought he would maybe-I don't know whether
in previous years there had been less interaction but I didn't really have any
difficulty with him. And my economics professor, whose name I don't remember,
00:23:00actually I heard him saying to someone, "I think she's pretty smart." I remember
taking a test in one of my economics courses. I think maybe it had four
questions and you get to writing and sometimes you write too long. You're
running out of time and I think when we had ten minutes left, I had two
questions left to cover and I remember writing two paragraphs on question number
three, and on question number four, I maybe had two minutes left. I thought,
"How would I approach this question?" I decided to write what would be the first
sentence. I would break down my answer into three paragraphs and I would write
what would be the first sentence of each paragraph. It was all I had time to do.
And I got an A on that test; an A over B on the last part, because-I thought
00:24:00well evidently those were the points he wanted me to hit. So I really enjoyed
economics; I enjoyed my professors in economics; they liked me; and I really
wish I had discovered that subject earlier.
HT: Well, getting back to history for just a second: Did you ever have Richard Bardolph?
JS: No.
HT: But you've heard the name, I'm sure.
JS: Yes, he was head of the department.
HT: The head of the department at that time, right.
JS: But you know, one of the things the sophomores [did]-Paulette [Jones
Robinson, Class of 1966] who was at the meeting yesterday. The sophomores came
to us freshmen and said, "If you have to take 'such and such,' do not take 'so
and so.'" And we had been given guidelines along the way on whom to avoid and I
don't know if that's the reason I didn't take anything from Bardolph, but it
might have been.
HT: I think so because it might have been Paulette who sat in his class or one
of the other [black] students and he would not call on her.
JS: Right and I don't recall being ignored by any of my professors anytime I
00:25:00raised my hand. But so we had been told whom to avoid, if at all possible.
HT: So that was good networking.
JS: Yes.
HT: Well, it sounds like you enjoyed school.
JS: I loved the first two and a half years but I've been thinking about it since
I got your questionnaire, perhaps because I was just naive and clueless. There
were certain things I just wasn't looking for or prepared to see. I hadn't had
any personal experience with personal rather than group-aimed discrimination
before coming here. I mean, certainly having grown up in segregated Greenville,
I knew that if when you were in the grocery store line or something and a white
person wanted to come through, they got to get in front of you. But you know,
00:26:00you didn't-I hadn't-I was a kid so of course I didn't take it-You noticed it but
you didn't really-It just-That was life and so, you know, nobody had ever cursed
me, you know, or called me any names or anything. I do remember getting fired
from my job working on a tobacco farm because I talked too much. Like I said, I
was a teenager. I wasn't working fast enough. I was talking to the other
workers, so I let it be known that this was not going to be my life because I
was going to college so the white owner of the farm didn't want me around,
disturbing his good workers who were going to be content with their lot. So I
00:27:00came to school not really expecting anyone to be mean to me and was all over the
place, like I said, my first year or two. My best friends, even as a freshman,
were sophomores and maybe a junior or so. By the time I hit mid-junior year, I
was starting to get lonely because my best friends had graduated and gone on and
so that's when I actually started thinking about the outside world more and our
place in it.
HT: Did you ever think about transferring to Chapel Hill?
JS: I didn't because, again, Chapel Hill was more expensive and I didn't really
have money. And I had lost touch with Poinsettia Galloway Peterson [Class of
00:28:001966] who did transfer, and probably had I really thought about it-I was always
a person who thought if you could think, there must be a way, but I did not
think about it and I started concentrating more on my studies in my last two
years because my first two years I spent so much time playing bridge that I
didn't have the best grades. So I spent the last two years being more of a student.
HT: And were you-In your junior and senior year, were you still working in the
cafeteria, delivering the newspapers, and all the other jobs that you had?
JS: I didn't deliver newspapers all four years. I worked in the cafeteria at
least three and probably four, but I had various other jobs. I had one: I worked
00:29:00as assistant to the lab assistant in the chemistry department one of those
years, but I think that was freshman year. I had a lot of jobs my freshman year.
As assistant to the lab assistant, my job was to wash the bottles and that's
where I was, washing bottles-beakers-in the chem lab when I heard that
[President] Kennedy had been shot. So I had various jobs throughout college and
loans throughout college because-and was very, very well acquainted-and
embarrassed that I don't remember her name [Kathleen P. Hawkins]-with the woman
in the financial aid office because I was frequently there looking for money.
And as a matter of fact at one point I was there my sophomore year because I
didn't have enough money to finish the year and she was telling me they didn't
have any money. I insisted. I said, "That can't possibly be right. Are you
00:30:00kidding me, with all these nice brick buildings around here and all this, you
don't have any money? I'm going to sit right here in this chair until you find
me some money." I sat until she came back later in the afternoon and said,
"Okay, there's another loan we can get."
HT: Were any of these scholarships or were they all loans?
JS: They were loans.
HT: Just loans.
JS: Yes. But see, again, school was much cheaper in those days and so I [didn't
have] the longest time [to pay them off]. I think my last payment on one of
those loans, like $350.00 or something, I have it with a nice "paid in full"
stamp on that. That might have been a National Science Foundation loan. Who
knows, but anyway, some federal loan; whatever it was called back in those days.
HT: We're going to transition now to campus life. You've already mentioned some
00:31:00of the things you did for fun, like playing bridge. What about other things that
you got involved with on campus, extracurricular activities and that sort of thing?
JS: I was on-
HT: Or did you have time?
JS: Oh, yes. There was always time for something. I was on the fencing team one
year. Yes, I fenced. We went to the state championships that year. I don't think
that many schools had fencing teams so it wasn't a huge thing, but I did fence
sophomore year. And-or was that junior year. One of those years I was fencing.
We had a bowling alley; I took bowling. I was a horrible bowler though so I
didn't do that very long. I took golf, which I enjoyed. I did not have golf
clubs but one of my white-well, she was a classmate or a year behind me. Her
00:32:00name was Penny. Penny loaned me her golf clubs and I played golf. I enjoyed
that. We had a golf course on campus, a nine-hole course on campus then. There
were pick-up volley ball games so I think that was about it athletically. And
the ever-present all-night bridge game.
HT: Oh, goodness. And you already talked a little bit about this, but what
about-Can you tell me a little bit more about your roommates? What were they
like and how you got along with them and that sort of thing?
JS: My first roommate was Carolyn Black. She was a music major. She was very
00:33:00nice; much more sophisticated than I. And I suppose I was out of the room so
often and elsewhere so often that we probably-I know we did. We drifted apart.
We weren't as close by the end of freshman year. She announced to me that she
would not be my roommate sophomore year so sophomore year I roomed with my best
friend-turned out to be my best friend at college-a sophomore. She was one years
ahead of me. Wait, let's think about it: She was the Class of '65 so she was two
years ahead of me. Susan Kessler. We met in the dining room because she worked
there, too. She was a white student from Burgaw, a little town I had never heard
of in North Carolina. But we roomed sophomore year. I have been thinking about
00:34:00it: that were we actually roommates or did I just stay over in her rooms so
often that I felt like we were roommates? But I did know she lived in Mary Foust
[Residence Hall] and I moved to Mary Foust my sophomore year and, like I said, I
remember spending most of my time at Susan Kessler's so we might have been
roommates. I remember when I first met her she had a roommate named Pam, but
that might have been before. Then from Mary Foust, I think I might have lived in
Guilford [Residence Hall], which was attached. Whatever dorm I lived in my
junior year, I probably was in my senior year. I don't remember living in any of
00:35:00the other dorms. I had a-One of my jobs-Was that after, probably after junior
year-I had a job on campus at Reynolds [Residence Hall], which was one of the
newer dorms at the time, one of the high rises, I was the resident-what do they
call them? RAs, resident-
HT: Assistant.
JS: Resident Assistant that year. The dorm was only open for-there was-The only
overt discriminatory action I remember, came not from on-campus people, but from
off-campus people. One of them occurred that summer. I had a job as-That dorm
00:36:00was open to house some high school golfers who had come here to participate in
either classes or workshops or a tournament or all of that, and they were boys,
high school boys. I was in charge. I stayed in the same quarters that the dorm
mother would have been in and I had the keys to the place and I had to register
these boys and assign them rooms. During the course of registering one of these
boys-High school students away from home so they were acting grownup and, I'm
sure, smoking. I remember one of them standing over the desk and he would blow
smoke down in my face as I was trying to register them. So I said, "You blow
00:37:00that smoke down here one more time, I'm going to slap your face." And his
friends fell out laughing at him. He didn't do it again. I thought, "To me, he
might have understood it as a matter of race; I understood it as a matter of
position. I'm a junior, going to be a senior, a rising senior, in college. I'm
not going to take guff from a high schooler of any race." So to me, you know,
RHIP [Rank Has Its Privileges], you were going to do what I say. And he behaved
himself from then on.
HT: So were you in charge of the boys the entire time during this camp or
whatever it was?
JS: Yes, of the housing. When they were out, of course, it was somebody else's
responsibility, but as long as they were in Reynolds.
HT: I bet they were a rowdy bunch.
JS: They were a rowdy bunch.
HT: So you had summer jobs as well as jobs during the winter-time.
00:38:00
JS: Oh, yes. My parents had no money to send me to school.
HT: So you probably didn't get a chance to get home too often.
JS: No, and my freshman year I think I only went home-I went home more my-That's
how I remember the bus because I remember riding the bus. I went home maybe just
twice my freshman year, less than the other girls did, but not because I was
always working. Sometimes I was visiting the homes of other students. You know,
you are invited home with somebody. I remember going to New York over the
holidays, Christmas, to visit my uncle there and I went home with some classmate
once or twice, but then I was working. But I did go home for the summer after my
freshman year, and the summer after my-maybe my sophomore year was how that
00:39:00worked. But the summer after my junior year I was working here and the summer
after my senior year I-. The placement office was very helpful. I got a job.
When I didn't get-Was it you I was talking to about the job at the bank or was
that Suezette?
HT: It must have been Suezette.
JS: The job I didn't get at the bank. I was looking for a summer job and went to
the placement office the summer after my senior year. Right, I think. I'm sorry
I don't remember exactly but I'm fairly sure it was the senior year. The
placement office sent me to a bank downtown because they had gotten notice that
00:40:00the bank wanted a teller. I got to the bank and I think they were surprised to
see me, so they gave me a test. I don't remember the name of it but it was one
of those standard, one of those IQ tests that used to be standard back in the
day that didn't really measure anything, but [was used to deny jobs to blacks.]
And there were a hundred questions on the test; I finished 98 of them in the
time allotted and got 97 of them right, which surprised them. But they said,
"Sorry, they didn't have a job. I was just the kind of person they wanted
because I obviously was smart, but they didn't have a job." I was thinking as I
left there, "I came here to the bank as a twenty-year-old because I finished
college at twenty. College graduate from UNCG. Why are you surprised that I
00:41:00passed the test? They don't graduate dumb people, you know what I mean. They
certainly didn't accept any dumb black people and they didn't graduate any dumb
black people." And I think a lot of the questions on the test to me were logic
and I had just had logic; a philosophy course in logic. And so I did very well
on that test, but I thought, "Why would white people think that black people who
finish "their" schools would not know stuff?" But anyway so I wound up working
at the Hot Shoppes that summer before-. The placement office had given me the
lead to what turned out to be my first professional job after college. I had
managed to go through school without getting a teacher's certificate. One, I
00:42:00didn't want to be a teacher so why get a teacher's certificate? But at the same
time, you finish in four years and you don't have a teacher's certificate and
not a clue about what you're going to do? You go, "Oh my goodness." So the
placement office got me an interview with HUD, the Department of Housing and
Urban Development in Washington, DC, and to this day I don't know-I don't
remember who paid for the plane ticket, it was my first plane trip. I flew from
Greensboro to Washington, DC. Now who paid for the ticket. I don't know. Maybe
it was me; I don't know. So I had an interview with HUD in Washington, DC. They
told me all their openings in Washington, DC had been filled but they had an
opening in Philadelphia, [Pennsylvania]. Would I mind going to Philadelphia? No,
I've never been to Philadelphia before so I went up to Philadelphia to interview
and that's where I got the job and started to work for HUD after college. I
00:43:00think I said that was through the placement office here.
HT: What type of work did you do when you first started out.
JS: I worked for the Housing Assistance Administration. I was one of two people
assigned to work with the seven largest housing-local housing-departments in the
Atlantic region, so we worked with housing authorities in Philadelphia, New
York, Boston, et cetera. Did we come to DC? Maybe DC, Baltimore, Newark, New
Jersey. Not New York City but Newark, New Jersey I know was one of mine. So my
first job I had a hot pink Samsonite briefcase. And I traveled a lot through
00:44:00airports with my nice hot pink briefcase going to visit these various housing
authorities, you know, to work with them on the aspects of their housing
programs that the fed [federal government] was overseeing because we funded
these public housing authorities. That was great. I flew a lot that first few
years. I enjoyed that job but I didn't know anyone when I went to Philadelphia.
I had no relatives there; I didn't know anyone there. I'd never been there
before. I think the first week in Philadelphia-The fact is that before going
there I worked at the Hot Shoppe the first part of the summer to get money to
start me off, and I remember telling my mother, "I didn't want to go because I
00:45:00didn't know anybody." She said, "Well, you don't have to go." I said, "But I
have no job. I have no choice; I have to go." I did hop the bus and got on up
there and lived in the Y because I had learned that the Y rented rooms. But then
I got to the YWCA in Philadelphia and they said, "We have no more rooms, but I
think they still have some at the YMCA." I said, "That could be a problem." She
said, "No, they have two wings. They have one wing and they put-One part of it
they rent to women." So I stayed in the Y for a week. It cost $50.00-I recall
that-which ate into the maybe $125.00 I arrived there with so I quickly made
00:46:00friends with some other new employees, one in particular, at HUD and went to her
apartment and slept on her couch because I recall that they withheld the first
two weeks of pay and then you got paid at the end of the month for two weeks.
That first two weeks, you got paid at the end or something because I would not
have had enough money to last for a whole month and at the Y living there, so I
made friends and moved to the couch until we got paid and that gave me a chance
to find somewhere to stay. I was resourceful.
HT: It sounds like you were very resourceful. That's just amazing. If we can
backtrack to UNCG for just a few minutes, were there any particular social or
academic events that stand out in your mind during the time that you were here
00:47:00in the mid-60s?
JS: I remember enjoying the teas. We had teas.
HT: Were they formal? They were formal teas.
JS: They were formal teas and were very dainty affairs. They were nice, you
know, very nice. I took the tour of Aycock Auditorium yesterday and I enjoyed
that. We had wonderful plays, dances. We saw the Russian Ballet artist Rudolph
Nureyev there. I remember lectures. Hannah Arendt, the German economic
philosopher, came. There were poets. There were lots of activities at Aycock and
at Elliott Hall, musical performances that I enjoyed, which stood me in good
00:48:00stead. As an aside, after I had been in Philadelphia for a year. This is an
aside. Like I said, I didn't know anyone except the people I worked with, and I
decided and-Most of the people I worked with were older people and this was, of
course, at the height of the Vietnam War so you look around and say, Where is
everybody. Where are the young people? Well, let's see: they're not at work.
They must be-If they're not at war they must be in school to avoid the war and
so I applied to graduate school and Ah! Young people-So I applied to Temple Law
School [Philadelphia]. I had taken the LSAT [Law School Admission Test] and made
00:49:00a high enough grade to get admitted and got a call from somebody I thought was a
young man because he had a high-pitched voice but it did turn out to be a
professor there who said they were very interested in me coming to Temple. I was
interested in going to night school; Temple was the only school in Philadelphia,
I think, that had a night school, a night law school, because I couldn't afford
to stop working. And he said to me: "We're very interested in having you come
here. You did well on the LSAT and we're recruiting black students." He said,
"We have a scholarship for the culturally deprived." And I quickly said to him,
00:50:00"I'm not culturally deprived. I mean, I have seen opera, I've been to UNCG. I
have been exposed to ballet and concerts and plays. I've read Shakespeare. I'm
not culturally deprived." But then I thought, "My mama didn't raise no fool. If
you're stupid enough to give me a scholarship, a full scholarship, just because
you think by being black I'm culturally deprived, I will take the scholarship
because my mama didn't raise no fool."
HT: So were you able to quit regular work and-
JS: Oh, no. I worked all four years. Law school is three years during the day,
four years at night so I continued to work and my work continued to require
travel so I missed some classes but-And I remember riding the Broad Street
subway sometimes I was so tired I would sleep between downtown and the campus,
00:51:00would wake up right at my stop in time to get to class. And I loved law school.
I love being a student so I loved law school. I just like studying, not
studying, but I love school; being around the academic environment. But to get
back to the social activities on campus, I thought that did prepare me for later
on to say, "I'm not culturally deprived."
HT: That's a cute story. Well, men came in the fall of '64, which would have
been your sophomore year.
JS: Yes, sophomore year. I remember one in particular.
HT: Well, there weren't that many on campus, but I was going to say, do you have
any recollection of any of them?
JS: Larry McAdoo [Class of 1968], whom we called "Mac will do" because he was so
cute. I remember [Anthony Thompson] Reginald [Class of '67], too. He was tall.
00:52:00
HT: What was Reginald's last name? Can you recall?
JS: No. Moore, Morris, I don't recall really but I remember there was a tall guy
named Reginald.
HT: There were not many men, period. How many black men came in the fall?
JS: Those were the only two.
HT: Just those two.
JS: Those two I remember. I didn't really know any of the white men.
HT: Now Charles Cole [Class of 1969] was on campus; he played basketball. Do you
have any recollection of him? He might have-
JS: I don't know if we had basketball then.
HT: Let me see, I think he graduated in '69 so he may have come in about the
time you were leaving. So, yes, but I read his interview that he did for the
Centennial Celebration about twenty years ago and he said he actually lived off campus.
JS: Right, as I recall. I don't recall men being on campus. They were here but
they were commuters.
HT: Probably day students, that sort of thing.
00:53:00
JS: There wouldn't have been any place-Well, unless they carved out a-
HT: I think they did convert a dorm. It took about a year because the school
became coeducational in '63 but it took a year to convert one of the dorms so
that's why they [unclear]
JS: Right, because we were still calling it WC for a while.
HT: Oh, right. I'm sure. Some people still do.
JS: As I said, the only instances of "discrimination" or looking askance came
from off-campus things. I remember freshman year, churches used to send cars to
pick up students to deliver them to-And Sherrill White [Class of 1967] and I
were Catholic and so a car came to take us to the Catholic church, and it
couldn't have been the one that's really close to campus because we would have
been able to walk there.
HT: Well, St. Benedict's [Catholic Church] is downtown.
JS: Okay, it might have been.
00:54:00
HT: Our Lady of Grace [Catholic Church] is over here.
JS: So it couldn't have been Grace because Grace was too close. We would have
been able to walk there but a car delivered us to this church and I remember
getting an absolutely hateful look from a parishioner who turned around and saw
us sitting a few pews behind her. And I thought, "My goodness; well, this is her
church. She obviously does not want us here and if this church can create or
foster or tolerate this person, there's no room for me here." So I didn't go
back. Sherrill continued to go but I did not go back to that church. I don't
know if I went to any churches after that but by that-You know, most of my
friends who were sophomores and juniors were the avant-garde of their time. You
know, they were the drama majors and the literary people and they didn't do
00:55:00church. And so I was hanging out with them, you know; being cool.
HT: Oh, my goodness. Oh, goodness gracious. Well, I read in your senior yearbook
that you were the chief jester at Rat Day.
JS: I know; you sent me that and I thought, what is that? I couldn't-And so I
spent some time thinking about whatever could that have been and looking through
the yearbook, it must have been some kind of-The sophomores, you know, got to
harass in a friendly kind of way, you know, freshmen.
HT: The hazing kind of thing.
JS: The hazing kind of thing but not physical stuff. But they could make you do
00:56:00things like stand at a corner and bark, or bow down before them. And you
definitely had to greet them with all reverence due. And maybe-I'm thinking
maybe it was my-If they had asked one of my classmates to do something onerous,
the only way to get my classmate maybe out of that chore would be for me to
amuse the potential tormenter to do something. I'm thinking that might have been
something along that line.
HT: That sort of makes sense, yes.
JS: Well, I really-I thought, I was a chief jester. Well, what were my duties?
HT: I don't know.
JS: So I'm thinking that might-There was something like that I had to do. Of
course that might not get the person off, but at least I had to do something to
keep them amused.
HT: Yes, that's a good explanation. And another thing was that you were a class
cheerleader during your sophomore year. What did that entail? Being a
00:57:00cheerleader, does that mean keeping everybody's spirits-
JS: The spirit, right, those spirit things, yes. We led the sing-alongs and
cheers and things.
HT: And then you were Junior Show chairperson, chairman, I guess.
JS: Yes, yes.
HT: What did that involve? A lot of time, I bet.
JS: Yes, during the summer between sophomore and junior year, I wrote the play
that the class would put on. I'm trying-Did we do that as a fund-raiser? I don't
know, but whatever, all juniors had a Junior Class Show and so I wrote the play.
Had I ever written a play before? Never, but I had seen several plays. And it
was a musical. And looking back on it, I thought of course, you know why:
because nobody had ever done that before so of course nobody had ever done it
00:58:00before, so it had never occurred to me to write a rock musical [though] that was
the music of our time, but nobody had ever-I think The Who, who came along
after-You know, from the English group, The Who wrote the first rock musical, So
of course I was thinking that musicals are things like South Pacific and Show
Boat. The Rogers and Hammerstein kind of thing, so I thought, "Okay." Anyway I
wrote a play and came back in the fall and we had auditions and one of my
classmates, Janet, I know, was a good musician so she became the musical
director. We had other-Kids volunteered for things they were good at. I remember
Giselle, maybe, or somebody like Jeanine, somebody who as good at makeup so she
was our makeup artist. And so we did the play and it turned out to be fairly
successful. We filled-pretty much filled the first floor anyway of Aycock
00:59:00Auditorium that night. I remember Miss Falk; I had a caricature of Miss Falk in
my play. She enjoyed it but she came to me afterwards said, "Now, Jackie, I
wasn't that bad." You know. But, yes, that was an enjoyable experience.
HT: Well, after we finish this, maybe we can go back and look and see if
we-because we have something called the Class of 1967, what do you call it,
folder. Maybe we can find that play in there. Hopefully we will.
JS: Well, it was not [memorable]. Someone came to me yesterday and said, "I
would love to read that play because it must have been funny." Talking to people
yesterday. I said, "I wrote the play; I did not say the play was a good play.
All I know is, we put on a show. It was a one-time event so there were no
chances to correct anything. It wasn't a good play; it was just a play. It was
called 'A Girl's Dream.'"
01:00:00
HT: You were also involved in the student legislature. Can you tell me a little
bit about that?
JS: Yes, first three years; yes, student government. I had been in student
government activities in high school so I ran for student government here, too.
I can't tell you about any particular issue we worked on; whatever teenagers
were interested in at the time, I imagine. Being more liberal on clothing
allowances because we couldn't-Could we wear pants the first year? I don't think
so. So we might have wanted to do things like wear pants. We had mandatory-We
had eight o'clock classes and we had-You could only miss three classes before
you were on attendance probation. I know this because I was on attendance
probation at one point having missed my three classes and I remember
01:01:00going-waking up late one-I had a Saturday morning eight o'clock class; I don't
remember which one it was-having already missed not three of that particular-Was
it three of any particular class or was it three classes period. I forget, but
anyway I couldn't miss anymore and I woke up around eight-thirty for this eight
o'clock class, threw some water on my face, rolled up my pajamas, put on a
raincoat, dashed across campus to the class, got there, I think maybe, five
minutes before the class was over so of course it was way too late and the doors
were closed. So I sat-There was a chair out in the hall which I sat in. I sat
beside the door and continued to sit there as all the students filed out and the
professor came out-The teacher came out and he said, "Have you been here the
whole-Oh, you could have come in." I said, "Oh I didn't want to disturb class."
01:02:00So he thought I had been there for most of it, so he didn't mark me as absent,
but he could [have]. I'd just gotten there five minutes before. So I skated that
one. So then we might have worked on things like, you know, being more tolerant
on attendance.
HT: Right. And you were also involved in, was it the Service League? Do you have
any recollection of that?
JS: Not really. I don't remember what Service League was.
HT: I know during World War II, they started something called the War Service
League which lasted until the sixties, or maybe early seventies. They just had
service projects, and that's probably what that was all about. And then, let me
see, you were also a member of the Young Democrats Club.
JS: Yes, I remember that.
HT: Okay, do you have any particular recollections about that particular thing?
JS: I remember writing the constitution for our organization. Looking back, I'm
01:03:00wondering why wasn't I an English major? I enjoyed writing. But, no, we still
couldn't vote then. I didn't think you could vote before twenty-one, but we were
interested in the issues of the day and so we talked about the issues of the day
from a democratic perspective. I don't recall helping with any registration
drives before I was older or something. I don't remember a lot about it other
than just getting up and talking about various social issues. I remember I was
only in student government three years. I remember being defeated when I ran for
the fourth year by Nan Hammond [Class of 1968] because I wasn't attentive enough
to my constituents in terms of asking their opinions on the various issues that
student government would-I assumed that they would want to do what I wanted to
01:04:00do. And Nan assured me that I was wrong. And she was right; as a politician, you
really should check in with your constituents on a regular basis.
HT: Well, the sixties were such a turbulent time here in the United States, you
know. Were you ever involved politically while you were on campus? Protests, or
anything like that.
JS: I was not, and to this day I don't know why, and I thought with so much
going on, why wasn't I involved. I remember Paulette and some of the older
students talking to us, and trying to get us involved in things but I know they
were more-Like I say, we knew them. They were sophomores when we were freshmen
and we were just more involved with getting ourselves together on campus. The
campus was very isolated, too. If you didn't go off-campus, you didn't know
about stuff that was going on except if you saw stuff on TV, and there was only one-
01:05:00
HT: You were busy.
JS: I was very busy; I worked constantly so between work and school, I probably
didn't-But I don't recall even having a consciousness, you see, to go
participate in a-Were the sit-ins-I don't think the sit-ins were still going on.
HT: No, the [Greensboro] Sit-ins were in 1960 and then there were some
demonstrations on Tate Street to try to integrate Tate Street in '63 and then,
of course, you graduated in '67. There was the ARA strike, the cafeteria workers
strike [against the ARA food service company] here on campus in '69.
JS: I was gone then.
HT: So you sort of fell in between where there really wasn't as much going on as
there was a little bit later and a little bit earlier. Yes.
JS: Exactly, I recall thinking when I was in law school and participating then
in organizing low-income tenants and leading them on demonstrations in
01:06:00Philadelphia. I recall, then, being ashamed that I didn't have any scars to show
from those earlier battles because we were sort of in the middle. And that I
didn't have an arrest record. I thought, "Jeez, I want an arrest record." So no,
we were in the center there and I remember going- The movies must have been
integrated maybe by '64 or something because I definitely went to the movies
down on the corner at some point and- Was there any-There was a restaurant
called the Rathskeller. Maybe it wasn't open to blacks my first year but I know
01:07:00it was certainly open my second year because I remember having maybe my second
beer in life there.
HT: I think it was downstairs, wasn't it, on Tate Street.
JS: Yes, right. I think we could go to the Rathskeller at some point. Of course,
we didn't go that often because one of the things that surprised us all when we
got here. We didn't drink; white girls drank. There were these trash chutes. On
Monday morning you'd hear glass clanking down that because bottles would be put
down the trash chutes and people had brought, you know, the remains of the
liquor bottles back with them. I thought-We were like, My goodness, we didn't
know young girls did this. We are definitely some sheltered people.
HT: We've touched on this just a little bit, but did you ever feel discriminated
against while you were at UNCG, other than that time that young fellow blew
smoke in your face?
JS: No, other than the guy, him, and, like I said, the church woman was
01:08:00off-campus. I recall maybe some car of white students-male students-driving
through. But I don't think they were students; they were just people who drove
through yelling out the window if they saw anybody walking along. But I don't
recall anything from any of the teachers or any of the administrators.
HT: Well, speaking of administrators. Did you ever have any interactions with
any of the administrators: chancellor, dean or women, dean of students, or
anything like that?
JS: No, I recall maybe speaking, maybe to Dean Hawkins at some of the teas
maybe, but that was just, you know, pleasant tea conversations.
HT: What about Dean of Women Katherine Taylor?
01:09:00
JS: I'm sorry. That's what I [meant to say:] Dean Taylor, Katherine Taylor. I'm
trying to think; was the financial person [Kathleen P.] Hawkins?
HT: It could be; I'm not sure.
JS: It might have been Hawkins, so she would have been the administrative person
I had the most contact with, and she got used to me.
HT: What about any of the vice chancellors like Mereb Mossman or I think the
chancellor at that time was-
JS: [Otis] Singletary.
HT: Singletary.
JS: Handsome man, but no.
HT: And I think [Chancellor] James Ferguson might have been a little bit later.
JS: Now I remember Dean Ferguson more. He was very friendly; he was a really
nice man but I don't remember any prolonged contact with him, but I do remember
meeting him and having some brief conversation with him; maybe on more than one
occasion but usually, probably, at some general event campus-wide event.
HT: And we touched on this a little bit, but did any of the professors make a
01:10:00good impression upon you or a lasting impression?
JS: Yes, like I said, my economics professors, none of whose names I remember so
that's not fair. I'm sure I had one of them for more than one course, but I
liked them very much.
HT: Is there anything else you'd like to add about UNCG before we go on to what
you've done after you left here?
JS: I really regret that I don't remember what got me into almost a funk state
second semester, junior year, because that is the first time I truly started
thinking about race and class and that kind of thing, and I don't really
remember what triggered it. I just don't.
01:11:00
HT: Well, what impact do you think UNCG has had on your life?
JS: Oh, I think I had a very fine education here so it had a very formative
effect on my life. It launched me into a professional career. And by
enabling-Like I said, I came here with no money and by doing everything to allow
me to continue here and to graduate here, [UNCG] was critical to my life.
HT: Well, tell me a little bit about what you did after you graduated. I know
you went on to law school, so did you become a lawyer?
JS: Yes.
HT: Okay, and in what specialty?
JS: Did I have one? Let's see, well I only practiced civilly so I don't know if
I had-When I finished law school, I went to work for the Equal Employment
01:12:00Opportunity Commission because one of my favorite law school subjects had been
labor law, and I worked for EEOC for three years. EEOC was a new agency then.
And that was great fun.
HT: Was that in Washington? Or-
JS: Philadelphia.
HT: Philadelphia, okay.
JS: My boss at EEOC eventually left to take a job as a litigator for Bell
Telephone Company. "Ma Bell" still existed then. Bell of Pennsylvania was a
major corporation and I think after he'd been there about a year, he called me
and asked me if I was interested in working for Bell. I interviewed with the
01:13:00general counsel at Bell and went over there as their first black lawyer. So I
worked for Bell of Pennsylvania for thirteen years; first in the corporate law
section doing rates and regulatory work, which was sort of-The rate lawyers,
because their job was to go before the public utility commissions to convince
the public utility commissions that the telephone company needed higher rates
which I thought was kind of bizarre because at my level of management-It was a
managerial job; I was third-level management. I was not only the first black
lawyer; I was, at twenty-nine that summer, I was the highest ranking black in
01:14:00the company at the time. At our level and above, our telephone service was free,
so I thought, "Here we were arguing to raise poor people's rates and we're
making plenty of money and we don't pay for service."
HT: There's something wrong there.
JS: There's something wrong with this picture. But anyway, but I did rate work
for a year or two and then decided it was a little stuffy, and against the
advice of other people I knew who said, "But Jackie, you're the only black rate
attorney in the state. You could be-" I was young. I wanted to something more
01:15:00exciting, so I moved to labor law because I always liked labor law and it was
more exciting to me. And I did labor law there for a few years and finally did
litigation. And I loved litigation, too, a lot. I traveled all over-We each
covered Pennsylvania and Delaware for Bell, trying their cases there. After
about thirteen years, I decided-You know, the grass always looks greener
somewhere else and so I thought private practice is what I should do. So I went
to work for a law firm in Philadelphia and I think a year, year and a half after
I started with that law firm dissolved but my group moved into a larger law firm
01:16:00that was starting out so I worked in private practice for several years. Then I
left there and decided on public service again and went to work for the
Philadelphia School District where I worked for twelve years before moving to
Washington. And-
HT: So are you in private practice now?
JS: Yes. Well, no. Yes and no in that I call myself semi-retired so that I'm
working now for a private law firm, but as a contract attorney, just doing
projects. But I left the Philadelphia school district as general counsel. I did
01:17:00rise there to become general counsel.
HT: Well Jackie, I don't have any more formal questions. Is there anything you
want to add about how UNCG has impacted your life or has made a difference or
anything about UNCG that we haven't already covered in our discussions this morning.
JS: I don't think so. I definitely loved my first two and a half years. I
probably loved all around and probably enjoyed the experience overall because I
did get to my favorite subjects and so while I was in the funk in terms of
social thinking in those last two years, academically they were my best two
years because I had found economics by that time. And I made very good friends
here. The black students, of course: we've kept in touch over the years. I kept
01:18:00in touch with some of the white students for several years afterwards. Susan
[Kessler] became an airline stewardess so I remember I visited her in New York
and again, when she left the airlines, she lived in Charlotte so I visited her
there, so we kept in touch for a while. Interestingly enough, when I came back
to this reunion, I saw a member of Class of '63-you know they had been gone by
the time when we got here-who [is] a member of my current church, so that's a
white member of the Class of '63 and I go to the same church now in DC. So we
01:19:00just met again, so okay, hi. I didn't know that.
HT: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate this.
JS: You're welcome.
HT: It's just been great listening to your stories this morning.
JS: Thank you. Thank you very much for tolerating me and my wandering. And I'm
sorry my memory isn't sharper but if I ever do remember anything else, I will be
sure to e-mail you.
HT: Okay.