Oral history interview with Charlotte Renée Byrd, 2015

LW: My name is Lisa Withers and today is Saturday, June 13, 2013 [June 13, 2015]. I am in [the Walter Clinton] Jackson Library with Mrs. [Charlotte] Renee Byrd, Class of 1973, to conduct an oral history interview for the UNCG [The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina] Institution Memory Collection's African American Institutional Memory Project. Thank you, Mrs. Byrd, for participating in this project and for sharing with me your experiences. I would like to start the interview by asking you about your childhood. If you would be willing to share when and where you were born.

CB: Okay. I was born February 4, 1951, here in Greensboro, North Carolina, in L. Richardson Hospital on the corner of Benbow and McConnell Road.

LW: Is that "L" as in the [letter]--?

CB: It's "L" period like--.

LW: Oh, the letter "L."

CB: Like Richardson Preyer, the Vicks people.

LW: Okay.

CB: The letter "L." Richardson Preyer. And that was the only black hospital for blacks. I was born during segregation.

LW: Okay.

CB: So every black child in Greensboro was born at that hospital and delivered by the same doctor, Dr. Evans, and I think he is still living. He is probably 101 [years old]. But he delivered every black child in Greensboro. Every one that was ever born. That facility now is a nursing home and one of my old neighbors lives there. Where I grew up on East Market Street, right at Gibbs Hall at A&T [North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina], Metropolitan United Methodist Church is my church. The church across the street is a Seventh Day Adventist Church. The parking lot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church is my front yard. East Market Street, when they went through--okay. The city decided, okay, we're going to rehab [rehabilitate] this area. So when they rehabbed it and they took all the houses 00:02:00away, all the black businesses, okay, that's what you have left. So where Gibbs Hall is, on East Market Street, that was actually a restaurant and a florist shop.

LW: Really?

CB: Yes.

LW: Okay.

CB: Across the corner where A&T has the apartments, that was a service station. And it was about four houses before you get the underpass. Where the Seventh Day Adventist Church is sitting here on the corner, those were houses down to the underpass. Where our church is sitting, there was a grocery store. So all of East Market Street was changed when they came through and did the rehabilitation.

LW: Rehabilitation.

CB: They didn't call it that. They called it something else. So all those black businesses, restaurants, everything were taken away. So, like I told you, I grew up in segregation. My elementary school was on Raleigh Street. It was Jonesboro Elementary. It no longer exists. The building is still there and the City of Greensboro uses it. The site on Murrow Boulevard, that's really on, let's see, 00:03:00what do I want to call that? That's Murrow. Lindsay Street maybe. A&T uses that building. That was an old elementary school. It's Charles H. Moore Elementary School. So a lot of the black elementary schools have other uses now. And there's really only Bluford, Washington Street, and Peeler left. Maybe Hampton. But they've gotten rid of Mount Zion, Jonesboro, Caldwell. Caldwell is on Little Asheboro Street [Ole Asheboro Street now Martin Luther King Drive] across from Smith Hinnant Funeral Home. There is a residential retirement facility. That was an elementary school. Beside the funeral home was the first black fire station. 00:04:00So Greensboro doesn't destroy everything. Some buildings they take down, some they have left. So I grew up at a time when, went to elementary school that was first through sixth grade. Junior high was seventh through ninth [grades]. Senior high, which they called it, was tenth through twelfth [grades]. So, those were segregated situations with black kids all along. I have three classmates that I went from elementary all the way through high school with and my best friend, went from elementary school all the way through UNCG with. And it's really rare. So there's a kind of closeness that children don't have now. We could not sit downstairs in the Carolina Theatre [of Greensboro]. We had to go--there was a side door, where the side door was, we used to go in--there was a side door with some stairs, we would go up in the balcony. That is now, they've 00:05:00got, you know they've really done mirrors or something over it because the words colored entrance on it they couldn't get it off the brick. So they've made it to look like a little gateway because they couldn't whitewash it off. And we used to go up, go upstairs, pay a quarter, go up in the balcony, and watch the movie.

LW: And this was at the Carolina Theatre?

CB: This the Carolina Theatre downtown. Now people love to go up in the balcony because they've redone the balcony but we could not sit up there and the way the balcony was situated it was two parts. You had the black section and the white section. So everything was totally segregated. Even Elm Street downtown where the old First Citizen [bank] sits on the corner with the big brass doors.

LW: Yes.

CB: That building across from there that's now a rec [recreational] facility or whatever. That was a department store. I think it was Belk's. Then further on down the street you had Thalhimer's, which is Macy's now, and you had Prego-Guys. Those stores we could go in the front but you had to wait to be waited on. So you may be standing there a while because, you know, they were 00:06:00going to wait for a white person to walk in. And I will never forget an incident when I was younger. My mom and I were in there. She went in the story to buy some stockings, we were standing there and we were waiting, waiting, waiting and the lady looked over top of us like she didn't see us. This white lady walked in and she reached around and said, "Ma'am, may I help you?" The lady looked at her and said, "I think she was here first." So you have a lot of that going on back then, okay. It was blatant. It was open. Now it's kind of hidden but it's still there, so, even with the Woolworths. I had to correct the lady when I first went down there to the International Civil Rights Museum because she's doing this tour and she going, "Oh yes, and by the way, this door here on the side was the entrance for blacks to come into Woolworths." And I said, "Excuse me." I said, "We could come in the front door. The door you're talking about on the side was the one we went out of after we came from downstairs." There used to be a 00:07:00downstairs in Woolworths. So the first level, we could walk in. You could buy anything you wanted to. You could buy food from the counter but you couldn't sit down and eat it. But you could buy it. And, then you go downstairs and when you go downstairs is when you had like toys, pets, animals. That was downstairs. So that was the fun place, downstairs. And you could go out that side door and come back to February One Place [street name] but we didn't have to enter that way. So I had to correct her on that. So you could buy whatever you wanted to up and down Elm Street in any store. They would take your money. Where that Self-Help Credit Union is, that building across the street from it used to be what they called Montaldo's, which was a high dollar--.

LW: Montal--?

CB: Mon--M-o-n-t-a-l-d-o-apostrophe-s. It was a very expensive women's clothing store.

LW: Okay.

CB: For white's only. But, the seamstress who worked in there was black. Now, my senior year at Dudley [James B. Dudley High School, Greensboro, North Carolina] you know how--we had the cotillion, which is the AKA version.

LW: Yes, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

CB: Yes. We had a cotillion. You do it in twelfth grade. So, you know, we had to wear white dresses. It was white. So I will never forget. My dress came out of Montaldo's. It was a, like I told you, they [would] take your money. They would take it. It was--I still have it. It was, you know, sleeveless. It has a long train. It was actually a bride's dress. It has a long train and it took a size five and made it down to a size one because I was because I was really small back then. Because when I graduated from UNCG, I only weighed eighty pounds. It took me a while to get up to 100 and then I progressively went up as the years went by. But, there was store downtown--there was a garage downtown. 00:09:00The backside of it faces the back side of Schiffman's [jewelry store] and they still park cars there. That was Thalhimer's and what you do at Christmas time, you pull up and they'd actually take your car and park it for you and give you a ticket. And then you could get in the elevator, and actually get in the elevator and go across to Meyer's which was another store. Get in the elevator and go across to Meyer's. And that's where we had our senior--senior pictures were taken in Meyer's. Even though our colors were blue and gold, our robes were [unclear] so if you look at our pictures from the yearbook from Dudley, they look like a powdery blue, not the royal blue. But our senior pictures were taken in Dudley and during out cotillion, that's where they teach you--the little dos, the formal manners and stuff. We had a tea in the Meyer's tea room. That was a big thing for us. So even though everything was strictly segregated, we were allowed to do certain things, were open to all avenues which was really good. Let's see. So 00:10:00when I actually came to UNCG, I'm coming from all segregation to a white university, strictly white. So, being around a segregated situation all that time you know you're different because when we grew up, our teachers stressed you always can do better, you are the best. So they pushed you. They taught us well. They taught us that we could go out and do anything in the world we wanted. So you come to UNCG. Here's this white university and, I'm going to be honest with you, you had some people that were truly nice. Then you had those that eventually showed their true colors. But the thing about this university--I'll never forget. We had this incident where I had a freshman English professor, had his doctorate, he was twenty-seven years old. Very smart man and the first paper I wrote for him, you know you work [on them] for seven 00:11:00or eight weeks back then, wrote it and I get it back and he had an "F" on it. So I confronted him about it because this was a blow to me because I always got straight "A's" in high school and I knew I could write. I was trained by the best. So when I questioned him about it, he wrote in the margins, I still got that paper too, he wrote in the margins, "You have racist ideas. These are activist notions." So I encountered him about it. I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "You haven't lived the life I've lived. You're like Ivy League, you don't' know what I'm talking about." Well, he never did change the grade. But I went from him to Dean [Dr. Bert A.] Goldman with that grade, okay. I told him, "I don't think this is fair." I know I can write. This man's telling me, "You can't 00:12:00write." Basically he's saying, "You have no sentence structure." I said, "I'm sorry but I have been trained well." So I did get a "C" out the course and after that year, he was gone because they got so many complaints about him. He was doing it to all black students and they didn't tolerate that kind of thing back then. They said, "No. This is one family," you know, "we don't segregate. We will not tolerate this. We are integrated." So, he was gone. Oh, another interesting thing I need to tell you. Freshman year we came in. Well you know you already had three classes above us. So it was--like I can count them on my hand, okay.

LW: Kind of like a what?

CB: The blacks, when I came in my freshman year, I could count them on one hand.

LW: Oh, you could count them on one hand.

CB: If I was doing sophomore, junior, senior year. There were not many. So what they'd do freshman orientation they sought us out and they told us, "Okay. What classes do you have? Okay, you need to get this person, this person." They told us who to get. They said, "Stray away from this one." So we had that 00:13:00little--which was a big help. Because coming in new like that, you don't know. And they'd just assign you somebody. "No, you need to get out that class. You don't want this one. Let's do this professor." So we had that kind of support from them which was really good. And if we had problems, they were our study coaches. And back in the day before we had exams, we would have those study nights and Elliott Hall [now Elliott University Center] would be open and they'd have a study break. And you could come and in the winter time they'd have the hot chocolate, doughnuts, or whatever. You could eat and relax and go back and study. They did that. And that was their exam thing they did in the fall and in the spring, so that was really neat, my relationship with the National Black, the NBS here.

LW: Neo-Black Society.

CB: Okay, Neo-Black Society. It was already in existence when I came. The people that I told you that met us the first day we were here and told us what professors to get and everything, they were already members. This was already setup. The by-laws were already in place. It was open to anybody. Anybody could join even though it was NBS. We got funds from the student association just like all the other organizations so anybody could join, so, the amazing this was my freshman year and that's when this painting happened.

LW: Could you describe, because [of] audio, this painting?

CB: Okay. The old build--the old room that they gave us in Elliott Hall was downstairs. They actually let us paint it red, black, and green. We painted the walls red, black, and green. The furniture was red, black, and green. The back