Alene McCorkle interview recording, 1993 June 11

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Alene Stewart McCorkle	And you are.	0:00
Kara Miles	Where were you born?	0:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I was born in Mecklenburg County.	0:09
Kara Miles	That's in?	0:12
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's in North Carolina.	0:14
Kara Miles	And you grew up here?	0:17
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I grew up here. Moved to Charlotte when I was five months old.	0:18
Kara Miles	Okay.	0:19
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Almost said I was born in Charlotte.	0:19
Kara Miles	What neighborhood did you live in, in Charlotte?	0:26
Alene Stewart McCorkle	In Washington Heights, it was called. Same neighborhood, right up there on the corner. I've lived here all my life.	0:27
Kara Miles	Who were your neighbors when you were growing up?	0:40
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I had cousins that lived next door, friends that lived on the other side. When I grew up, of course, this street wasn't here, this was, the two properties were joined and the two families got together and cut the street and then gave it to the city. That's this Mulberry Avenue here.	0:43
Kara Miles	So your family and someone else?	1:09
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My family and my mother's brother and his family.	1:13
Kara Miles	What was your house like?	1:18
Alene Stewart McCorkle	We had three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and bath.	1:20
Kara Miles	Who lived in your house?	1:27
Alene Stewart McCorkle	There were mother and father and six children. I had four brothers, five brothers. I was the only girl.	1:30
Kara Miles	Were you the youngest? Where were you?	1:40
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I was next to the youngest.	1:42
Kara Miles	What were your parents like? What did they do and where were they from?	1:47
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They were from Union County. My daddy was a farmer. My mother was, too, until they moved to Charlotte and he continued to farm and she did domestic work. But early in life, she did a little school teaching. Back in those days, you could teach after you finished seventh, eighth grade and she did that for a while.	1:52
Kara Miles	So your father had a farm in your backyard?	2:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	He had a farm out in Mecklenburg County that he was trying to purchase from some White guy because he lost it in the Depression.	2:26
Kara Miles	Who? The White guy lost it in the Depression or your father?	2:39
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My father lost it in the Depression.	2:42
Kara Miles	He lost his land?	2:43
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Mm-hmm. White folk didn't lose many things. He took the things. So, he lost his 62 acre farm and came very close to losing the houses on the corner and all down here that he had purchased. It's about two acres, I think he called it, that he almost lost that, too, because he had mortgaged it trying to save the farm. But it wasn't lost. I took care of it when I finished college. I took up the payments myself.	2:45
Alene Stewart McCorkle	It was in the—They had a government assistance program. They called it the Homeowners Loan Association. You don't know anything about that. I'm sure it was before you were born. He was able to get them to take it over. I paid them. Of course, there was a second mortgage on the property that this man, who had taken the farm, had a second mortgage on it. I actually had to pay both of them off. I guess I was making about $69 a month teaching at that time.	3:21
Kara Miles	How much of that did you have to pay?	3:55
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't remember how much it was, but it took all of it to do that. It just happened that we had food because he still had his garden and things around here because no houses were in here. So he had his garden and he raised the hogs down here. So we had our meat and our vegetables and all that. He raised it so we didn't go hungry.	3:59
Kara Miles	Do you know how your father had gotten all that 62 acres?	4:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, he got it just like anybody else. You see it. You want it. You make a little down payment and you pay as much as you can every time you get your crops in. If you got enough money, you give some. Your crop's no good or the market has gone down, you can't pay. But they still expect the money. Whether you can pay or not, the money's expected.	4:27
Kara Miles	So did that happen to a lot of people that you knew during The Depression?	4:51
Alene Stewart McCorkle	A lot of people lost homes. I had an uncle who lost everything. He lived in the Cherry section. It was farmland around. He had mules and horses. They not only took his horses, but they took his home. They took everything he had. They took a lot of people's things, especially if they were farmers because the farmers weren't making anything and they didn't have skills for other jobs.	4:56
Kara Miles	Did you know your grandparents?	5:34
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yes. I knew one. I knew a grandfather. My mother's father, I knew.	5:36
Kara Miles	Did he live around here?	5:41
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, he lived in Union County on a farm with his daughters. After the daughter got married, he came to live with us. In fact, he died with us. He was on his way.	5:44
Kara Miles	Did he ever tell you anything about [indistinct 00:06:09]?	6:08
Alene Stewart McCorkle	The only thing I know about his childhood, he was supposed to have been a Leek. But he was taken into slavery and his name was changed to the name of the master, so he was named David Little. So, my mother was a Little. Of course, her grandmother was a slave. She had two children by the master, her mother, and an uncle. They were Bentons.	6:08
Kara Miles	Okay. That's your mother's—	6:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Mother was a Benton. My mother's father was a Little.	6:48
Kara Miles	Did your parents ever tell you anything about their childhood?	6:59
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I think they had pretty good childhoods. Their parents were married. Of course, they had a number of children and they all lived on the farm together. I guess they got along fine. I never heard anything different from that.	7:06
Kara Miles	Did you have relatives living in other states or anything?	7:24
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I guess I did have some living in New York. They would come down sometimes to visit. These relatives were my mother's uncle's children. They were Bentons. They would come down sometimes to visit. But most of our family live right around in Mecklenburg County and Union County. Union County's joining county to Mecklenburg. Most of them live right around here. We didn't do much running off to places, stayed home.	7:32
Kara Miles	Were there any older people in your community that you looked up to that you talked to?	8:10
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, it's just one big happy family. Everybody was just together. If I made a cake, I wouldn't eat it at home. We ate parts of it at home, but I always had to carry some around to the neighbors so they could have a little taste of it; the lady down at the store, the lady down the next step, and then across the street and down. If they made something that was good to eat, they just shared it. They couldn't make anything good and not share it with somebody else. I'm still that way. If I cook something good I've got to give somebody some of it. I was just raised that way. Share what you have with others.	8:16
Kara Miles	Who used to discipline you as a child?	8:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My mother did most of it. I was my daddy's pet. My mother did most of it. It wasn't bad because I wasn't a bad child. Being the only girl with five brothers, she had to do more discipline with those boys. I don't know why they just picked on the sister. I don't know why they did that, but I had a very difficult time with those boys, I thought. But she would always discipline us.	9:03
Kara Miles	What did you used to do for fun as a child?	9:41
Alene Stewart McCorkle	We used to dance and play cards. That's nothing. My parents were very different from most parents because on Sunday, we came back from church. We'd play one of these things, you wind up the switch, those gramaphones and things, and we could dance on Sunday at my house. There were other people in the community, you couldn't even read a newspaper in the house. Down the street, there was Lily Tupmann, her children could not. The newspaper was kept closed on Sunday. You read it on Monday. I'll never forget that lady. But we could just do about everything.	9:45
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Then our parents played cards with us, which is so different from other people's parents. We played, there was a game, five, what you call it, what is high, low, jack, joker in the game. I don't know, that's a long time, but that was the main game that we played with our parents, five up. Then there were two or three neighbors up the street that would come down and play with us. My mama and daddy and the children, and those people up the street, we just had a good time. It was just different from what most people were doing.	10:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I was raised different from most people in the community. We had a good time together with our parents. There was some television and things like that. So for recreation at nights, we would sit around the fire and write, see who could make the prettiest a or b, little things like that. We just did things together. This business thing of parents not dealing with the children, I don't understand. It's difficult for me to understand that because we did things together.	11:04
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My daddy would go hunting. He'd take his sons hunting. Farmer, he'd take them farming, too, but I didn't do much of that. I just had a good life with my parents.	11:40
Kara Miles	Why do you think your parents allowed you all to do things? You said your parents would.	11:56
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't know why. I just don't know. Now, we went to church. We had to go to church every Sunday. We'd go to Sunday school every Sunday morning, the family did, and we would go to church every Sunday. When I was 11 years old, I started playing for the church. The strangest father, he never had any music, but he taught me music. From the time I was 11, before I was 11. I started taking music from an old man named Mr. Jones and had to pay 25 cents a lesson. Well, the lessons went up to 50 cents. After the lessons went to 50 cents, I couldn't pay for them because we didn't have the 50 cents to pay.	12:00
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But how my daddy knew music, I don't know. I never will know. He would take me every day of my life. I played the piano. He kept putting his [indistinct 00:12:57] upright pianos. He did like that. First was an organ and then he traded that for a piano. Every day of my life when he was there, we would go into the living room, make a fire in the fireplace, and I had to play some music. He could tell me when I was wrong, even when I was playing it fast enough, or slow enough, or whatever.	12:44
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I played some very difficult numbers under his tutorship. He had not had any music. The first band that the House of Prayer had, he taught them. The first band they had at the House of Prayer. Now, we're Methodists, but he could play all the instruments. I had a brother who played, was it the clarinet. It's the clarinet or coronet? That's the thing with three things, something like the trumpet. The mandolin they called it and the slide horn. What they call that now?	13:26
Kara Miles	Trumpet?	14:02
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, the trumpet is something that had just three things, but this thing slides.	14:02
Kara Miles	Trombone?	14:06
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Trombone. He played, all those instruments he could play. How he learned, I don't know. Because not only did he know them, but he could teach you how to do it and he read the music.	14:08
Kara Miles	And he said that he had never had any music?	14:21
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Never had any music. So that made another thing we always did as a family, always sang together. I won't say we had always good voices, but that was a form of recreation. I was trying to remember about that one. I know we played cards, we danced. The next one is, we sang together. We still do that, to this day. I have nieces and nephews because my mother's gone, my father's gone, and all the brothers are gone but one and this one is not well. But we will get together anytime right now and sing. That's just one of the traditions of the family. We can get along, just the family. We don't need anybody else. We have the best time together. We dance and all kind of things together. Even at my age, we still try to dance and do all those things together.	14:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My daddy sang bass. My mother sang soprano. I had a brother who sang tenor. I sang alto and I played music. We had every, every voice; soprano, alto, tenor, bass. We had all those in the family. There were times that my daddy and his sons would sing at the church and I would play for them. Good voices at that time because we kind of outgrew it. I still sing in choir. As old as I am, I still try to sing in our choir after all these years. I'm the oldest person there, in the choir, and I've been there the longest. I think I sang in the choir about 66 years. I try to get out, they say, "We can't let you go. We can't." I didn't go last night. I was called today to find out why I wasn't there. They said, "Altos did all right, but they do better if you were there."	15:19
Kara Miles	Did your father ever used to play or sing places other than church?	16:20
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No. No, but he directed the choir at the church. They called them choristers. He was chorister of choir for a number of years, very dedicated.	16:25
Kara Miles	What church did you go to?	16:38
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Gesthemane AME Zion. It's a Methodist church on Campus Street.	16:40
Kara Miles	You said that your father taught the House of Prayer.	16:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't know how they found him, so don't ask that. I don't know how they found him.	16:52
Kara Miles	This was when Daddy Grace was—	16:57
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, yes. Of course. That was when they first started.	16:59
Kara Miles	How were they seen in the community?	17:06
Alene Stewart McCorkle	How were they what?	17:07
Kara Miles	Seen in the community?	17:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	A lot of us didn't like the House of Prayer people. Now, my father had a sister that was a staunch member of the House of Prayer. I taught students who went to the House of Prayer. I finally loved them people. I just loved them to death and still do. They laugh at me because I say, "If I ever left my church, I'd join the House of Prayer." I don't know that I would do that.	17:11
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But some people look down on them because they felt they were worshiping Daddy Grace rather than worshiping God. They worshiped him and God. I like them. I really like them quite a bit. Because the only contact I had with them was the students because the sister of my daddy's belonged to House of Prayer, she lived out on the country. She didn't live here in town, so I didn't have much contact with her. But as a teacher I was around a number of the House of Prayer students, kids.	17:35
Kara Miles	Were there any Muslims, Black Muslims?	18:19
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No. That's something that I've heard of pretty recent.	18:22
Kara Miles	And Catholics?	18:30
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I have, my daughter is Catholic. She says she's Catholic and Methodist both. That's when she's in Charlotte. She goes to the Methodist church and the Catholic church. I have nieces who were Catholics, a nephew who is Catholic. So, a lot of friends in Catholic church.	18:33
Kara Miles	Back when you were growing up?	18:56
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No. It was after I was grown because there was not a Catholic, I don't know that there was a Catholic church that Black folks attended at that time. I never heard of them when I was growing up. They came along after I was grown. That is, I began to hear about them after I was grown.	18:58
Kara Miles	Did you ever hear talk of gypsies when you were growing up?	19:24
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yes, I heard of them, but I never met any of them. I never knew about them, but I heard of them.	19:29
Kara Miles	Did you hear of them being around?	19:35
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah, I understand that they did come around, but they never bothered with us. I guess the gypsies go in the White communities. I don't know whether they bother about the Black communities or not. They might have been afraid to come into the Black communities. I don't know.	19:38
Kara Miles	Did any Whites live in your neighborhood?	19:59
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No.	20:03
Kara Miles	Were there areas that Whites and Blacks lived together?	20:03
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Not when I was growing up, but they are now. You can hardly find an area where are Blacks, where there are Whites that you don't find a Black around the corner somewhere. You look over the hill, you're going to find a Black one down there someplace, most of them. They're not totally integrated, but in most areas in the city of Charlotte, you're going to find some Black people.	20:06
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But see, what happened, what would happen around here, if there's a White community and the Blacks moved in, the Whites left the community. Just like, we have a section called Hidden Valley. Just about all of it's Black now. It was all White. There was a section, Clanton Park; it was all White. Now it's all Black. A section called Druid Circle over across the way here. Was all White, now it's all Black.	20:29
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Most of the places that were White and the Blacks moved in, the Whites fled that community. Now, as they flee, the Blacks find a place around the corner and get in there, too. They can't flee from everything, but they try. They really try.	21:06
Kara Miles	Did you ever hear of a neighborhood called Blue Heaven?	21:30
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Oh, yes. I know about Blue Heaven. I taught the kids from Blue Heaven, because I taught a second one over in the Brooklyn section. Yes, I know about Blue Heaven. I knew all the kids in Blue Heaven. It's supposed to have been a very bad section, but I don't know that it's all that bad. There's a lot of nice kids came out of Blue Heaven. Some teachers have done a lot of good things out of Blue Heaven.	21:33
Kara Miles	Did you ever go there?	22:00
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yes, I did because I visited my students that lived in Blue Heaven. They were very nice to me. I had no problems whatsoever in Blue Heaven.	22:01
Kara Miles	Were there any neighborhoods growing up and places that your parents wouldn't let you go that were considered dangerous or places you shouldn't be?	22:12
Alene Stewart McCorkle	You see, I wasn't the type who ran a whole lot. I was more of a home type person. So they didn't have to not let me go. I didn't care about going. There were people in the community who thought I thought I was better than somebody else because certain places, I didn't go. But it wasn't I thought I was better. I just didn't want to go there.	22:24
Kara Miles	What kind of places were those?	22:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, nightclubs. I didn't go to those places. Which is a little of this at a time, to get to the movies, we had to go all the way across Venice. Matinees, you go sometimes in the afternoon. But at nights, I didn't care to go all the way across town to a movie because I had to walk up about five or six blocks and get the streetcar. Not the bus, now, the streetcar. It'd take you God knows how long to get there. Then you catch the streetcar coming back. That was too much of a hassle.	22:48
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They had places that you would go dancing, clubs. I didn't frequent them. It just didn't bother me. I wasn't interested and I just didn't go. I had a lot of friends who did go, but I didn't. Not that I thought I was better. My brothers went, but I just didn't.	23:26
Kara Miles	Were you in any kind of social clubs or civic organizations growing up?	23:51
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I was a member of the I forgot, I have a sorority. I belonged to two pinochle clubs. I guess that's about it, but I belonged to a lot of things with the church.	24:04
Kara Miles	When did you join the sorority?	24:26
Alene Stewart McCorkle	When I was in college.	24:26
Kara Miles	Where did you go?	24:26
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Oh, North Carolina College in Durham. North Carolina Central, it's called now. When I was going, it was called North Carolina College for Negros. The founder of the college was the president at that time. I was there in its beginning. I knew everybody on the campus. I worked in the registrar's office, so I knew everybody. I knew what everybody was doing. It was very small then. I guess about 300 or 400 students. Now, of course, it has thousands of students.	24:32
Kara Miles	Why did you join that sorority? Was there other sororities on campus?	25:02
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They had them. There was a Delta. There were just two; the Deltas and the Alpha Kappa Alphas. I looked at all the ladies in the different sororities and I was more impressed with the ones in the AKA sorority, so that's the one I went to. You belong to one? Uh-uh. Good.	25:05
Kara Miles	Why do you say good?	25:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, sometimes it causes a little confusion. You kind of segregate yourself from each other and you find the AKAs against the Deltas, the Deltas against the AKAs, and all that kind of mess, not worth it.	25:32
Kara Miles	Was it like that when you were in college?	25:47
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Oh, yes. Uh-huh. We thought we were better than the Deltas and the Deltas thought they were better than we. To this day, we have a little funny feelings about Deltas. There's something about them that it's what you find with the AKA folks. They're just not ladies that the AKAs are, we didn't think. Some of them are very fine. My very best friend was a Delta. Of course, she's dead, but we were just like that. My very best friend was a Delta. We never let that, I don't think it ever came up. We didn't talk about it. We were just good friends.	25:48
Kara Miles	Were you in any social things like that in high school?	26:34
Alene Stewart McCorkle	In high school I was in the chorus and the drama club. That's about all we had. Sing and act. That was just about it when I was going to school.	26:40
Kara Miles	You mentioned having to take the streetcar to go to the movies.	27:00
Alene Stewart McCorkle	A streetcar to go to school and everything.	27:03
Kara Miles	Oh, to go to school?	27:04
Alene Stewart McCorkle	A lot of us walked, but I was an only girl and my parents thought I was too small and too sweet to walk all the way across town, so I always rode the streetcar. But when I first started, it was the old school monastery school. Sometimes my dad would take me in the buggy, ride the buggy over there to monastery school. My brothers always went to Fairview, which is in walking distance, but that was too far for me to walk, so he carried me to attend monastery school. Then I caught, when I got to high school, I rode the bus. I paid but five cents to go. Sometimes I'd slip and walk home, and save that nickel and buy a bun on the way, walk with other kids, have a good time.	27:05
Kara Miles	You attended Second Ward?	28:09
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Uh-huh. I attended Second Ward and I taught at Second Ward. I taught at Second Ward 31 years. Loved every day of it.	28:14
Kara Miles	You were still teaching there when integration came?	28:33
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Mm-hmm. That's when I left Second Ward and I started teaching at Garinger. At that time, it was the largest White school in the city. But I think it's not as large as one or two others now, but it was the largest at that time.	28:38
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That change from Second Ward to going out to Garinger was a pretty big change. I saw things that I didn't know existed. At Second Ward, for the whole school, we had one mimeograph machine. By the time the first semester ended, you were out of stencils. You were out of paper and all this. You had to start buying your own. When I went to Garinger, there were what you call, say three, four, five, let's see, one, two, three, five buildings they call them. Every building had a teacher's lounge. At Second Ward, we had no lounge. You go to the bathroom, which is five by six. You might find a little chair in there sometimes to sit down. People smoked. You'd go there and smoke if you wanted to.	29:05
Alene Stewart McCorkle	At Garinger, they had five lounges, teacher lounges, big places. In each one of these lounges, they had a mimeograph machine. They had all the typing paper you wanted, all the stencils you could use. I was just amazed. Everything you wanted, you'd find in there. Can you imagine one mimeograph machine in the whole school and by December you had to buy your own paper? You could get all the paper you wanted out there, all the stencils you wanted. Anything you wanted, you could get it. Whatever you wanted, you got.	30:08
Kara Miles	What year did you go there?	30:49
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Second Ward closed in '69 and I went there and stayed seven years. In '69 I went over there.	30:59
Kara Miles	Let's go back to your schooling for a little while. Where did you go to elementary school?	31:11
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Biddleville Elementary School. It was a four teacher school right off Beatties Ford Road down there. It doesn't exist anymore. Then I left there after fourth grade. Fifth and sixth grade, I went to a school in Brooklyn, Myers Street. From seventh through 11, they didn't have 12th grade, I went to Second Ward. I left there and I went to North Carolina College for Negroes in Durham.	31:17
Kara Miles	When you were in elementary or high school did you ever learn Black history?	31:47
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Black history?	31:57
Kara Miles	Any history of Black people?	31:58
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Did they have history of Black people there? If they did, I never heard of it. No. Black history was, you just didn't discuss Black history. They didn't talk about Black history until I had come out of college and just about through teaching. No Black history.	32:02
Alene Stewart McCorkle	You had to slip it in. I had a friend, this friend I said, who was the very best friend I ever had in my life, taught history. She would bring in Black speakers. She brought in, the first time I saw Chambers. She brought him out to talk to her class. Then she showed her White kids movies, showing that Black people were really something. I think she showed them this picture called Prejudice, where it shows that the Blacks were the beginning race and all of them came from the Black race. Some of the kids would take it and some didn't like it very much. Then she had books that she let them read like Mandingo. She let one children read that book. I had one boy who wasn't in her class. He asked me about the book because he'd heard some kids talking about it so I took and let him read it and he was real impressed because they just didn't know anything about it.	32:28
Alene Stewart McCorkle	We used to talk in the lounge. We'd talk about bus riding. The White folks were bused before we were bused. They were bused because it's too far for them to walk to school. They were bused right by our schools. They passed us walking. Then when it got to a place where they were going to bus Black and Whites together, they didn't want to be bused. But they were bused first.	33:38
Kara Miles	What did you think of that as a child, when you'd see the White kids on the bus and you all were walking?	34:08
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, you see, I didn't have to see that because I would catch the bus right up here on the corner and ride to school myself. I didn't have to walk. So I had no thought, but I'd hear other people talking about it. We had county schools and city schools at that time. The county kids are the ones who would see most of that. The city kids didn't see it because they were riding. Most were riding. They didn't have any White schools out this way. We just had Black folks lived here, Black schools out here. They didn't have to worry about seeing them pass by you, but in the county, they were seeing them pass by. That happened all over North Carolina, I guess all over the South.	34:14
Kara Miles	Can you talk about when you were on the streetcar and things? Were there sections for Blacks and sections for Whites?	35:02
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah, you went to the back seats and let them take the front seats. If you got in a seat that's up near the front and some White person got on and they was in the corner, they'd ask you to move back so they could have the seat.	35:11
Kara Miles	What did you think of that?	35:24
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I didn't like that very much. Sometimes I would move and sometimes I'd act like I didn't hear them. To keep from facing that, most times I would just go on back there and get a seat because I didn't want to be asked back and I might not have gone back so easily. Because like I used to tell the people out at Garinger, we had one ride out where a White boy spat on a Black boy and he knocked him through the cafeteria window. That was after Martin Luther King's time.	35:29
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They were talking about that, the boy being so nice and everything. I said, "Why you call him so nice and he spat on a boy?" "Well, I'm sure it was an accident." I said, "Tell you what, you accidentally spit on me and you would go through a window, too." They said, "Well, that'd be violence." I said, "I believe in violence." That's bad for me to say, but they knew I believed in violence. They said, "Martin Luther King did not believe in that. He didn't teach that." I said, "My name is Alene McCorkle. My name is not Martin Luther King. So if you spit on me or if you hit me, I'm going to retaliate and don't you forget it."	36:09
Kara Miles	So what did you think when Martin Luther King was around and what he was saying?	36:49
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, it was all right for him, just wasn't all right for me. I'm sure things had been different if it had been on me. It'd have been terrible. Look here. I never could take stuff. I never could.	36:55
Kara Miles	Were there ever times that you had run ins with Whites because?	37:17
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah. I'd go into the store sometimes and they would call me a girl. I would say, "Do I look like a girl to you? You don't look like a girl to me." I go into a place, they call me Mary. I said, "Janey, I didn't know you knew my name," because my name wasn't Mary, but I'd call them a name back. I never did, it was funny because I would take my daughter and my niece at the store sometimes. The lady would look like they're getting ready to say, "Mary," or, "Janey," or, "girls." My daughter said, "Don't call her girl. Don't call her girl. She don't like to be called girl." I said, "I'm not a girl and you don't look like a girl." She said, "We're all girls." I said, "You don't look like a girl to me." Someone say it to me, I say, "You don't look like a girl to me. A full grown woman, that's what I am."	37:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Sometimes that would happen when I'd be coming from work and I'd be so tired. A niece I raised off my daughter in the store trying to buy something and I was too tired to even look and then they want to call me a girl. I talk real ugly, very ugly. I was looking bad, too, after working all day long and dragging these kids around. I'm tired. I didn't like that at all.	38:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Then I, coming home from school one day, I was slipping and walking home. We were coming down Trade Street and met these White kids going in the other direction. They were going to Harding, I believe. This little boy passed me and kicked me. Well, you know he had to get up off the ground. He didn't know that. I just didn't take that kind of stuff, so I couldn't have dealt with, I didn't even try to deal with Martin Luther King's program. I stayed at home and [indistinct 00:39:33] was so mad when they turned all these dogs and turned all this water and stuff. I was so mad, but I knew they couldn't fight it with everybody. But I declare, I've been trying. So it's a good thing I just stayed at home and didn't bother with it.	38:55
Kara Miles	Were there a lot of people you knew that felt like you?	39:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't know. I don't know. I didn't do too much discussing it. I know there were a lot of people who went to prison, getting locked up and all that kind of stuff. Children locked up in jail and all that stuff. Mine didn't participate. She sat back like me and looked. We'd go with them and sing while they were in prison. We'd go outside the jail and sing songs while they were in prison. We'd do that. We'd go to some of the meetings that they had. But we didn't do parading and all that stuff because around here, they didn't have it anyway, not too much of it.	39:59
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They had a few locked up or go and sitting in some of the places where they weren't supposed to sit to eat in cafeteria and places like that, and Woolworth's cafeteria. They'd go sit down and get arrested. Because I had one cousin who were just as White as they were, so she decided she'd go to the movies downtown and she went. They didn't know she wasn't a White. It didn't hurt anybody, not a soul. But she did go into the theater, White theater downtown.	40:48
Kara Miles	Did you ever do things like that growing up, like drink from the White water fountain?	41:33
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah, I did. I've done it just for the heck of it. They had Black water and White water and I wanted to know what the White water tasted like and I would taste it. I certainly did.	41:39
Kara Miles	Did you ever get in trouble for that?	41:48
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No. I didn't get in trouble. I'd go in a White restaurant. They said, "You're not supposed to be in here." I said, "Why?" But I'd go.	41:49
Kara Miles	Where do you think you got that from?	42:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't know where I got that from. I guess being so free at home, I guess that helped me to know I'm free everywhere. You're treated nice at home, then you're going to be treated nice outside. My daddy was rebellious. My mother was the calmer type. Maybe it came from him. I don't know. But I never felt that I should be treated any different from anybody else, and that I had rights like everybody else had, and that I should go wherever they went and feel comfortable about it.	42:09
Kara Miles	Did you ever see your father defy these rules?	42:51
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, I never did see him defy them, but I knew that he was a person who did not let people just walk on him, Black nor White. He just didn't bow down. If he didn't bow down, you don't bow down.	42:54
Kara Miles	Were you ever friends with any White children growing up?	43:13
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, I wasn't. Why I was going to be friends with them? They didn't live in my neighborhood. They didn't go to school where I went. I had no dealings with them. So, I couldn't be friendly with them. But I have a White son-in-law. My daughter went to an integrated college in Muncie, Indiana. She and this guy fell in love, so they got married. So, he calls me Mama and we just get along fine together. They are in Florida now, visiting his parents who are celebrating, today is their 50th wedding anniversary. My husband and I celebrated our 52nd anniversary yesterday. So, it's just a matter of, you do what you have to do.	43:18
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So I accepted him. He accepted us, but I let him know in the beginning, "This is my daughter. I didn't have but one child. She's had everything she needed, everything she wanted. She's been treated real good. If you're going to marry her, then you're going to be nice to her. If you get to a place where you cannot be nice to her, you know where you got her. Bring her back to me. If she has any children, bring them, too. Let me have all that belongs to her." He said he would not mistreat her.	44:15
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So he hasn't. They have one child and they're doing fine. He's finished Indiana University and he works in Chicago. They live in Puerto Rico and they've been married 26 years. I didn't expect her to marry a White guy. I didn't choose that White guy for her, but if she's going to be happy with it, I went along with the program. It wasn't my choice at all, but I wasn't going to have her unhappy. I didn't interfere with it. I let them do what they wanted to do. If I fought it, what do you do? They do it anyhow. If I had encouraged it, I guess she was going to do it anyway, so anyway it would have went.	44:52
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Like she said to her grandmother, she called her Mama Rosa, "Mama Rosa, how would you like to have a White son-in-law?" Now that was my husband's mother. She's about 80-something. She said, "It's all right with me." She said, "The White folks been knowing the Black folks. How you think all them different colors in the Black race? They just did it behind closed doors. Now it's coming out in the open. It's all right with me. If that's what you want, I want it."	45:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So she had the blessings of everybody and went on about her business, had a nice church wedding. Just as soon as they said—it was in June. The federal government, the Supreme Court decided that any race could marry, Black and White could intermarry, because you couldn't do that in North Carolina, so they got married in December, had a wedding. They're still happy. If they're still happy, I'm happy.	46:17
Kara Miles	Let's go back to other stuff in your childhood. When you were growing up, who did you look up to in the community?	47:03
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Who did I look up to in the community?	47:13
Alene Stewart McCorkle	There was one lady I just thought was wonderful because she played the piano. She taught music in Winston-Salem, I believe. She finished Howard University. Music fancy from our church, she could play, so I thought she was wonderful. I thought she was and she dressed so nice, too. She never married, but she wore the prettiest clothes in the world. She could sing, and she could direct music, and she could play the piano. I said, "Now, that's just what I'd like to be like." She was a teacher. She was model. I thought she was wonderful.	47:14
Kara Miles	Where did you have her as a teacher?	48:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Beg your pardon?	48:07
Kara Miles	You said she taught you?	48:10
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, she didn't teach me. She taught. She just belonged to our church and she had charge of the young people. I sang within her young people's choir. She was just good. She directed sometimes. She did the senior choir and sometimes just played music for us. I just idolized her. I wanted to play the piano, but when it went up to 50 cents, I couldn't take music any longer, so I could never learn to play it like I wanted to, just play hymns. I was able to play anthems and things like that because my daddy made me learn how to do that, but I was playing with the choir.	48:11
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But going further in music, I never did do that. My daughter took music. She did 12 years of music, from little kids up to through high school. But she did it just because I loved music. She didn't care too much about it. She doesn't bother with it anymore. She went to college and majored in math, just like I did, and like her daddy did, and like her uncle did, but she did more math than we did. She had master's in math and master's in computer science. I didn't know anything about that computer stuff.	48:48
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But Miss Steele, I think would be called, would be my ideal lady, the one I looked up to.	49:27
Kara Miles	How about your teachers? What role did your teachers play in your life?	49:34
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, let me see. What teachers, I had one teacher in Lily Blue who was, she's still living, too, by the way. I believe she's, there are two of them. She's a math teacher. Mr. Blake, who was principal of the way taught me math. I idolized them. I think that's why I went into math, because of those two people. Mr. Blake was a math teacher and Lily Blue was a math teacher. It may have been because of Lily Blue that I went to the sorority because she was an AKA. I thought she was a fine little lady and I still think so, even though she's kind of senile now and all that good stuff, but she certainly was a fine little teacher and she taught me in high school.	49:41
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My first and second grade teacher, I thought she was great. I won't ever forget because I started school before time and she let me come to school every day, but my name wasn't put on the role because you couldn't go to school at age five at that time. You had to wait until you got six. So she would let me come to school every day because I'd cry so they couldn't keep me at home. So, I went to school every day and she let me come every day, expected me every day, but enrolled me the next year in second grade. So she taught me and I loved her a lot. That's my first grade teacher, Miss Anderson.	50:35
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Mr. Blake was my 11th grade teacher. Miss Blue was my ninth grade math teacher. Then I had another math teacher I was very fond of, a Reverend Hunt. He's the one who taught me how to stand erect and walk erect. I always stood up straight and never bent down. I guess that's why at this age I'm still standing straight. He always taught you to walk with a book on your head sometimes, stand up and walk erect. I learned that. He taught us that and I will never forget it. It's good chatting about these things. It comes back to me. It's been a long time ago. I've been out of college 50 some years. That's all right. Mr. Hunt, Miss Blue, Mr. Anderson, Mr. Blake.	51:20
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Then I had another teacher, Oswald, taught me chemistry. That caused me to have an interest in science. So I majored in math and science, two majors. That was right. They did have an impression on my life, influence on it. Hadn't thought about it for a long time.	52:15
Kara Miles	Did teachers play favorites? Were there some students that teachers let get away with things and ones they were strict on?	52:45
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, is this thing being recorded? This is off now, I hope.	52:53
Kara Miles	No, it's on now.	52:55
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Is it on? Tell you the truth, when I was going to school and when I first started teaching, they showed favoritism toward the lighter kids, the mulattoes. Black kids had a little more difficult time, which was not good, but that's the way. I don't know why it was that way. I guess that came back in slavery time, when the mulattoes came. A light child was born and that child was given more or better off than the ones who were pure Black, pure Africans or whatever. But there was that prejudice among the teachers. They gave the lighter kids a break.	53:03
Kara Miles	Did all teachers do that?	53:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I wouldn't say all of them did that, no. But some of them did. Then another thing that happened, depending on who your parents were. The doctor's kids, or the lawyer's kids, or the preacher's kids were treated better than the farmer's daughter. That thing helped me to be resentful, too, because I was the farmer's daughter. That might have had something to do with it. But if you were people with money, I suppose they had some money, then you were treated better than the ones who didn't have anything.	53:56
Kara Miles	How were those students, how were the lighter skinned students that got treated better by the teachers, how were they seen by the other students?	54:44
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I guess they were nice. I guess they were nice. They were all right. I don't think they necessarily wanted to be treated different. Most of them were very nice. Some of my very best friends were very fair. Right now, I have a friend who is very fair, still living. We went to school together from seven on through to high school and we're still good friends. I don't think they ever, I don't think they felt sorry for us. I don't know what it was, but they were very nice to us as far as I can remember. They were very nice.	55:00
Kara Miles	Why did you decide to go to North Carolina College?	55:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Because I didn't have any money to go to Livingstone. (laughs) I wanted to go to Livingstone College, but I didn't have anything to go with. It just happened that it was a girl [indistinct 00:55:49] or something, had a scholarship to North Carolina College. She got pregnant. She wasn't going to school. She had a scholarship and they gave the scholarship to me.	55:48
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's how I got to North Carolina College. I never heard of it. That was in Durham. I had a cousin who lived in Durham. I went there to live with her the first year, while I was going to North Carolina College. Walked one side of town to the other. I had a class 8:00 in the morning. Up every morning about 6:30, left home by 6:30, 6:45 and walked to North Carolina College from, you know where Duke is. There's a Baxton Avenue over there. It's not over there anymore because the highway's taking it up.	56:16
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But later over there at Duke and I walked to North Carolina College. You know where North Carolina College is? That's how far I walked every morning for a year. The next year, there was a lady that lived a little bit closer to school who wanted somebody to stay with her and her husband and do a little housework. I got over there. I was sure enough doing housework, and cutting wood, and keeping fires, and cooking, and washing. I was doing everything.	56:57
Alene Stewart McCorkle	The Dean at Whitman found out I was living under those conditions, working like that and sick, and a good honor student, too. So she had me to move to the campus. Didn't have a penny, not a red quarter. Not a coin, nothing. But they brought me on the campus because I was a pretty good student and they knew I was having problems trying to do that kind of work. They brought me on campus.	57:31
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But I got to North Carolina College because I got on a scholarship because a girl had got pregnant and she couldn't go, and they gave it to me.	57:57
Kara Miles	You said you had wanted to go to Livingstone.	58:05
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah, because it was a Methodist school and I was Methodist. But I had no money to go to Livingstone.	58:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My daddy, I don't think he believed in about education, because he told me what I needed to get myself a job and go to work, help pay for the house where I was living. After that day, I thought my daddy was the best thing in the world. I loved him better than I did my mother. I just idolized him. When he told me that day, I was trying to get to school and he said, "What you need to do is get a job and go to work, help pay for this house here," I was through with him. Not that I, I didn't turn him, I took care of him until he died, but he wasn't interested in my going to school any further than high school.	58:17
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Now my brother's school, because I finished college one morning. He finished high school that night. I sent him to college and he just thought I was working too hard to send him to college. He thought I needed to let him stay at home. But you see, I couldn't do that.	59:02
Kara Miles	Where'd you send your brother to college?	59:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	He went to North Carolina College, too.	59:24
Kara Miles	So none of your brothers that were older than you were able to go?	59:28
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No. That's the first one I got out of that.	59:31
Kara Miles	Did the other ones want to go?	59:36
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I had one who might have wanted to go, but he didn't want to go to Smith and they wanted him at Smith because he was a great athlete; played basketball, football, and baseball. But he didn't want to go there, so he wouldn't go anyway. But they wanted him at Smith, but he wouldn't go.	59:40
Kara Miles	How far had your father gone in school?	1:00:02
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I guess six or seventh grade. Out in the country there was no, I don't know. I guess six or seventh grade. That's about as far as he went. My mother, about the same thing. But we did so much reading around the house, see who can read the best, who can write the best. They were really good with reading, writing, and all those things. That's what we did as having fun time, one of the things we did in addition to playing cards and dancing, that kind of stuff, singing.	1:00:07
Kara Miles	Did you like being at North Carolina College?	1:00:50
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Oh, yes. I loved that. Sure did. Yes. I loved it because I was into, they didn't have many activities, but whatever they had, I was in it. I loved it, the social life. It was really funny, though, because when I went to North Carolina College, when it came 5:00, they came out of the dining room from lunch 5:30, 6:00, you went into the dormitory and you didn't come back out. The door was locked.	1:00:53
Alene Stewart McCorkle	The ladies were in their dormitory before the sun went down and you stayed in their. You could go to the library with a chaperone. That's funny now. You just didn't go anyplace. When the sun went down, you were in the bed ready to go to sleep or studying your lessons. Standing and wave to the boys coming from the dining. I was waiting on tables there, so I could stand in the window and wave to them as they came out, going where they was going, but we thought they were going to the dorm.	1:01:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So much different. If you went to town, you had to have somebody. You didn't go to town as one or as two. There were three and one of them had to be a senior to take you to town. They had to sign out when they left and sign in when they came back from downtown. Folks can't imagine that kind of stuff. Having partners out in the city and boys and girls live in the same dormitory. Never heard of a thing like that. And the certain hours that you could talk to boys on the campus.	1:01:57
Kara Miles	What? Just a few hours each day?	1:02:36
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's right. Certain hours in the day is social hours on campus when you could talk to them. They had different bowls, depending on campus. There was a senior bowl and nobody go in there but seniors. If you had a boyfriend, I'm sorry. He couldn't talk to you down there because he was not a senior. You could talk to him up on the walk some place, but not in the senior bowl.	1:02:38
Alene Stewart McCorkle	It was something, going to school. Then this business of going to classes on time or cutting class. You didn't cut classes. If you were tardy three times, you were marked absent. If you were absent from your class three times, you fail that class no matter what your average was. That's the thing about me now. I have to go wherever I'm going on time. I cannot go there late. I just don't want to go if I'm going to be late. You go on time to class. You don't cut your class. Now the kids do more cutting than they do going. But at North Carolina College, you didn't.	1:03:01
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I can't take a piece of paper and drop it on the floor nor on the street as I go along, because you don't do that. You didn't do that. Our campus was the cleanest campus you ever saw in your life. If the person smoked, they better take that cigarette when they got through and take this thing, and do like this, and get all the paper to put the piece of paper in their pocket and the tobacco stuff can go on the ground. But you did not even drop a cigarette butt on that campus. We get in that assembly room, in that auditorium, and he'd bless you out for half a day for dropping a piece of paper on the floor on the campus. He would do that. And I cannot do it yet. I've got to go places on time. I just can't be late.	1:03:51
Kara Miles	Were there different rules for boys and girls?	1:04:41
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yes because the boys could go downtown. We couldn't. The boys could do what they wanted to do. When it came to keeping the campus clean, that was for everybody. You had a certain term on Sunday mornings, you'd go to vespers in the morning and the evenings. You had a certain seat you sat in, boys and girls. But when it came to going out in the city, boys could go up the street when they're ready, come back in when they please, but girls just couldn't do that. There were different rules. That was standard.	1:04:45
Kara Miles	What did you think of that?	1:05:20
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's the rules. I didn't think anything about it. It's what I was supposed to do. Times were different. That's what you expected. If that was the rule, that's what you did. That's all. You didn't think anything about it. It didn't bother us at all that we had to be in that dormitory or that you couldn't go to the lounge, go to the library unless you had an escort. You couldn't go downtown unless you had somebody to go with you. That didn't bother us. It was just what they did. That was just the rule and you followed the rule and thought nothing of it. I didn't. It's all right with me. Didn't make a bit of difference.	1:05:23
Alene Stewart McCorkle	But now, Jesus. They let them come in 1:00, 2:00, 3:00, 4 o'clock all night long. If you're out after 12:00, you stay out or something. (laughs) Don't come back in. But jeez, you don't come back in there at North Carolina College when I was going there, you were going to be sent home. That's something. Now that I think of it, I guess it was kind of silly. Really, wasn't it?	1:06:05
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's how you know, I get on this tape saying yes, it was silly, but it was. I'm telling you. Sunshine is as pretty. And even that number. Locked in. You go to the library about 9:00. Library said 9:00. At 9:00, you get out of there and come right back on in. You sign out when you're going to the library. You didn't just go walk out the door to the library. You signed out and somebody took you over there. It was right next door to the dormitory. About, I don't know, it was 50 feet. (laughs) That's funny now, but that's what they did. Wasn't necessary, but that's what they did. That's rules all back. Forget it. That's it. That's funny.	1:06:39
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I had a niece who went to North Carolina Central, finished year before last. When I told her what the rules were, she just laughed. She just straight laughed. Teased her to death.	1:07:43

Alene Stewart McCorkle	They had to take it. And then they taught us certain graces. We would have a program, RSVP. You know, "Respond, s'il vous plaît." We'd get the invitation and you had to write a response. Then would have a formal tea or formal dinner. So as seniors, we did that. Did that for seniors, finishing us up at a state school. I guess it was different at other schools, but Dr. Shepard wanted his people to come up polished, knowing what to do and how to act on all occasions. So we just had all that, how to eat, what you know, how to set the table. Should learned it long ago or maybe learned it at home. But we didn't know those formal things at home, then you just ate with your fork and went about your business. But here you had your forks, your knife, your spoons, your glass and you just did it right. They taught you how to do that.	0:01
Kara Miles	Where did your husband go to school?	1:03
Alene Stewart McCorkle	He went to Smith.	1:07
Kara Miles	Then he didn't have the same kind of experiences?	1:07
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, he finished—He did his undergraduate at Smith. His graduate at—He did something at North Carolina State and at Columbia University. Got his Master at Columbia University. I didn't have a Master, I just went to school where I wanted to go. I went to Davidson College, Duke University, North Carolina State in Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. I'm a Science Foundation Scholar, so I just used them, had a good time, learned a lot. But I didn't get a Master's. I didn't particularly want a Master's. I guess I should have wanted one because you got more money if you got a Master's. But I enjoyed the spirits of going from school one to another.	1:12
Kara Miles	When do you remember there being political organizations, things like the NAACP groups that were trying to fight against segregation? When do you first remember those?	2:12
Alene Stewart McCorkle	When they started—What are those folks called? The Black Panthers or something? The Panthers. I think maybe that might have been the—I belonged to NAACP. I joined that. I don't know which one came out first. No, I think NAACP came first. I guess that's when Martin Luther King came along with his stuff, with his nonviolent movement. NAACP came along with that I believe. That's when I first knew about the NAACP and then the Black Panthers came along and whatever, something.	2:27
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Now they were violent, but I wasn't that violent. See, I didn't believe in them. I guess I was kind of in the middle of the road. I was straddling the fence, let's put it that way. I wasn't going to be violent, I wasn't going to be nonviolent, but I couldn't be a Panther. And then I didn't run at Martin Luther King either. So I guess I was just by myself, straddling the fence. That wasn't good, I guess. But that's the way I was.	3:17
Kara Miles	You came back to Charlotte after getting your degree? When did you meet your husband?	3:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	The summer after I finished college. I was going to get a job working that summer doing something and he was a principal for the school and they were opening up a swimming pool for Blacks. And he had started concessions at that swimming pool and they needed somebody to check wraps or do something and somebody told him about me. I just finished college so I met him then. He came back to see me about working there under him. So I accepted the job and worked that summer and I guess that's how we got connected and we went together about four years before we married.	4:06
Kara Miles	What kind of places would you go on dates, what kind of things would you do?	5:06
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, we went to dances and we would go to the movies because at that time they had to movie right down there at Smith, very close by. Because he was driving and could have gone across town. But this was a better theater down here. That's where we would go to the movies.	5:10
Kara Miles	What theater?	5:28
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Called the Grand Theater. And dancing, we played cards, little things like that. There was nothing else to do. Go to movies, go to dances, go to church. You know, the little things. There wasn't much to do when we would—Now that's been a long time. See, we been married 52 years. So that's been a long time ago and there wasn't very much to be done.	5:29
Kara Miles	How about as a teenager? When were you allowed to start dating?	6:00
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's funny. As another lenient thing. I guess about 12 or 13 years old. I was 13 and I was going to Second Ward High School. I finished high school when I was 15. So I was very young. And these were boys that came in the house one Sunday afternoon and they asked for my oldest brother. Now there they are, 15 to 16, asking was somebody—The older brother at home at that time, asking because he's a football player and a basket—So they knew him.	6:08
Alene Stewart McCorkle	He didn't know them, but they knew him. So they came asking for him. So he say, I'm bout to say, Mama told me, "You didn't know none of those boys, to come here to see you." So just like that. Yeah, 12, 13 years old. She trusted me. No problem with the boys, nothing. Because there having five brothers, she knew I knew how to get along with boys. So I guess I started talking to boys or let them come to the house, I was about 13, 14 years old. Very young.	6:53
Kara Miles	When could you start going out?	7:27
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Going out? I guess I could have gone out then if I'd have wanted to. But there wasn't no way to go, but to the movies, walk to the corner. So going out, I guess I started really going out, but I guess I was in college because I was so young. I guess I was in college when I first started going out with boys. And then I would go to the movies or go to the dance, that kind of thing. But I always had little house parties and could always go to them. Had some when I was in high school, mostly when I was in college, we had house parties.	7:29
Alene Stewart McCorkle	You know anything about house parties? (laughs) Okay. Yeah, we had house parties, that's a good time And one of our teachers always played for those house parties. She's dead now. Played the piano for us. And some was chaperoned real well. And then when my daughter came along, we had house parties. Every weekend, one of the parents had house parties. But when you raise your children that way, you don't have any problems with them really. They don't do that anymore. Parents don't care. They let your kids go any kind way, go and shoot up and—Terrible. But I think if you been teach them right at home, they'll come out all right. Give them some freedom. And actually, when I moved in this house, she was ninth grade. Maybe ninth, [indistinct 00:09:14] we were—I would be putting up curtain, she down in the basement dancing with a party going on. So well, we just let them have freedom. I was raised free so I raised her free.	8:12
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So I started dating when I was about 13, 14 years old. And going out when I was about 16. I had finished high school. 16, 17, 18, going out. I had the best time. And another thing about it, when I came along and when I brought these two girls, when I'd go out and come back, mama would always be sitting up waiting to hear how the date went. So we came in and tell everything that happened and they do me the same way. If the boy wanted to kiss them or whatever, they'd come in and tell me about it.	9:31
Alene Stewart McCorkle	And you don't find that happening anymore. They don't tell the parents what the boys wanted to do and what they let them do. [indistinct 00:10:28] I never said where she was going. My daughter was going with a fellow and he carried her out several times, she said, "You know one thing, mama? He hasn't kissed me yet." I said, "Hasn't he?" "No." I said, "That's all right." So she came one night, just beaming. She said, "Guess what?" I said—"He kissed me tonight." I said, "How was it?" "Yummy." (laughs)	10:15
Alene Stewart McCorkle	You have to be a friend over the children and then they won't make you ashamed of them. That was always my philosophy. I guess that's the way my mother and father thought. I said they were different people, but most people you find back in those days, that was just weird. But that's the way we were raised and I'm glad of it. I always felt free as a bird and I always felt loved.	10:55
Alene Stewart McCorkle	So I don't understand parents now who don't show love to their children and tell them that they love them and hug them every now and then. This child of mine is—She doesn't want me to tell her age, but she has some age on her. Right now when that she was here from last Saturday, Wednesday, she and her husband. When she gets up in the morning, she comes and kisses me good morning. Ready to go to bed at night and comes and kisses me goodnight. That happens every day. Every time I'm around her, at her home or in my home. It just one the things that we do and we tell each other we love each other.	11:31
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I think if parents did that more with the children, it wouldn't be as bad, the crime wouldn't be as bad. You got to let them know that you care. Anytime my daughter telephones, before we close, "I love you, mama." "I love you too." Or, "I love you, Lizabeth." "I love you, mama." It's just one of those things that you need to do to keep things going as they should go. Even my grandson. Now he's born of this age, he tells me, "I love you, mama." He calls me mama. "I love you, mama." The same kind of thing because she did that with him. From me, carried on to her. From my parents on down to her and on down to him. And I hope he keeps doing that if he ever gets married. I got off the point and we can go back to something else.	12:14
Kara Miles	Did World War Two affect your family in any way?	13:15
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Yeah, my husband's in World War Two and I had two brothers in World War Two, so that did affect my family. And my mother died just after the thing started. And then for my husband to go away at the same time, it was pretty traumatic for me. For my husband and my mother all the same time to be going away. But now he didn't stay in the Army for so long and then he came back. But my brother stayed, two of them stayed, what? Three or four years, whatever the time was they had to stay. I think it was three years they had to stay. And they were both overseas in the European theater. So I know about the rationing of the food and gasoline and all those things that we had to do during that time.	13:19
Kara Miles	Did your brothers or your husband talk about it when they came back?	14:41
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Well, my brothers were living in Washington, so they didn't have much to say about it, but he didn't say very much about it because he didn't get into any combat. But my brothers were involved. I don't know what they had to do. I don't think they were on the battle field as such, but they were in places that were bombed and they had to do a lot of dodging and hiding and all that. But so far as them having to do any real fighting, I don't think they had to do any of that. I'm sure they didn't. But now what their jobs were, I don't know.	14:46
Kara Miles	Were things different after the war in the country or did you see changes in society or in your community after the war?	15:44
Alene Stewart McCorkle	No, I didn't see any changes. Like I said, segregated community, segregate everything ran on. They didn't start the integrated schools until in the '60s and you see, the war was over long before that. So in my community, I didn't see any difference. In Charlotte as such, I didn't see any difference in the way they treated Blacks on the Whites. I didn't see any difference.	15:59
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Didn't make any difference that the Blacks did go fight and get killed. Didn't make a bit of difference. Just like the Vietnam War, that didn't make any difference that they did get killed. Just another war that you didn't need to have. One thing I remember in World War Two, I think this is something I hear from my brothers that—I don't know just where they were when the people trying to look and see where the tails were. Because they said Negroes had tails, like the monkeys? They wanted to see where the tails were. It is little ugly things.	16:30
Kara Miles	Where were they when this—	17:26
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That was in Europe someplace. I'm not sure just where.	17:28
Kara Miles	And people came up to them—	17:33
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Look around and see where the tail is. But I was in Europe in '65 and there are not so many Black people. And if you see television, when you see the people of Europe and of France and Germany and Austria and Australia and all the places, you see White folks. You very seldom hear Black people. Now in France, there are a lot of Black people, quite a number. You very seldom see them on television, but they are a number of Black people in France, Black French people. I don't know where they came from. And England's getting more Blacks than they did have before. We didn't spend much time, mainly, we spent most of our time in France and Germany and Italy, those places.	17:35
Kara Miles	Were you just vacationing there?	18:39
Alene Stewart McCorkle	My daughter went over there to study at University of [indistinct 00:18:46] in Tours, France and I went with her. We went to different countries while she was there. We stayed over there nine weeks. So during that nine weeks, we went to Switzerland and Italy, France, Germany, Belgium. About six or seven countries we went to over there just to see what it was like.	18:44
Kara Miles	And how were you treated by White Europeans?	19:29
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Fine. Fine. I didn't have any problems. They just treated us like we were Frenchmen, German or whatever. They're very nice to us. No problems. Only problems you have are at home. You don't have problems over there. Just like in Puerto Rico now, where they live, you don't know I'm Black there, you don't know if she's Black there. You don't know anybody color. They're just nice. Everybody just is friendly to you and when you have a party there, everybody comes, they just White or whatever you want to call them, and they just as nice as they can be. Lovely. You don't know what color you are. They don't pay color any attention at all.	19:39
Kara Miles	[indistinct 00:20:41]	20:36
Alene Stewart McCorkle	United States is the finest place in the world and always will be, but I was just onto one because I had to go to Africa, because of color. And I guess maybe in Somalia, are they Blacks that they treat ugly, or a Blacks treating Blacks bad and all that kind of stuff. But now where you have White and Black being bad, that's in Africa and United States. We are just as bad as we can be. And I don't see where integration's done a lot to help. I had to get out the school system. One of my main reasons for leaving is because I couldn't deal with the way the Black kids were being treated. I couldn't work with that. I said, "Let me out of this as soon as possible." So I took every retirement and got out there. Couldn't deal with that.	20:44
Kara Miles	What differences did you see between before integration and after?	21:46
Alene Stewart McCorkle	With the way the kids were treated? Well, you see I never thought it was necessary for you to teach me how to get along or how to treat any child. We had, before they got the schools integrated, right now, and send the Black teacher to White schools, we had sessions, meetings where you got taught how to treat Black one, how to treat a White—I never could understand that because to me, a child was a child. I didn't care what color it was. You treat them like children, like human beings. And so I didn't like that. But when I got to the schools and I saw where they let the White pretending—And I say pretending because I think that's what it was, that they were afraid of the Black children and they would tell them—They wouldn't discipline them, they'd stand back and look at them. They'd come into class.	21:51
Alene Stewart McCorkle	That's the first time I ever saw Black kids wearing hats. Because in the Black school, they didn't wear hats on their heads, to class and that kind of stuff. They'd go into White classroom with a hat on the head and they didn't say word to them about it. Let them wear hats on their head. I've gone into a number of classrooms and said to the child, "Why do you have a hat on your head?" And they'd take it off. I had 'em in to teach the classroom, but I've done that lots of times. They'd walking down the hall with a hat on their head and I'd say, "Come here, why are you wearing that hat?" And they reach up there—they knew better. But they wanted some attention. They wanted somebody to show some interest in them.	22:58
Alene Stewart McCorkle	They'd let them sit in the room and go to sleep and say nothing to them. And I've gone to the class and asked them, "Why are you letting that child sleep like that?" It wasn't my business, but I couldn't understand that. Because now I taught at [indistinct 00:23:55], was all Black for 31 years and I never had to tell a child to take a hat off in the hall or take a hat off in the classroom or to wake up unless he was maybe sick because he had worked hard the night before. But they just going to go to, put their head down and go to sleep because the teacher didn't pay them any attention.	23:36
Alene Stewart McCorkle	And I couldn't stay in that. They didn't treat the Black like they did other kids. They wouldn't let the White ones come in there like that. So why let the Blacks come in? I couldn't deal with that. I was sick of it. Then some of the Blacks got so they were just as bad as the Whites toward the Black kids. And the Black kids, all they needed to know was that you cared, but they didn't care.	24:11
Alene Stewart McCorkle	And I had gotten notes from some the White kids saying that they had never been around Blacks before, but being around me, they knew that Black people were nice and they loved it. Black is beautiful. That's what they taught, they saying, "Black is beautiful." And I got one little girl came from Florida and Florida's a very—It's a rebbish place. And this child came from Florida. Very pretty girl. And she said, "You let me know that Black is truly beautiful." And she didn't know it before. But they just didn't treat the Black kids right. And they still don't.	24:47
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Have them sit in the corner or send them outside, and all that kind of foolishness and it's not fair. It's not right. And they could do better than that. I know when they first started having the competency tests here in Charlotte, and a lot of the kids had began to fail it. And I said to my husband, I said, "You know one thing? I'd like to take those kids that fail that competency test and work with them. I want to teach them something." And you know about two days later, the principal began to call me and said, "Mrs. McCorkle, I want to ask you do something. You're the only person know to ask do this." I said, "What is that?" He said, "We want to have somebody to tutor these kids who failed the competency test." I said, "Well, I would be delighted to do that." So he sent me a list of, I don't how many kids, who had failed.	25:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I got in my car, went all over in First Ward—Blue Heaven was gone, you know— where they had the housing things, housing projects. That's where most kids were. Most of them were Black. I went over there and as I go in there to see these people. When I'd meet a parent, nine times out of 10, it was a child I had taught in high school earlier. That child had to fail the thing. And I got all those kids and took them to one of the centers where they had rented to teach them. And I noticed as you'd call one to recite or ask a question, teaching math, they would, before they'd answer, looking around.	26:22
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I said, "What you looking for?" They were looking around and see who's going to laugh at them because that's what had happened to them at the schools. Because if they read or recite, a few of them in class, the rest of them, White. And they knew that they might say it wrong and somebody's going to make fun of them. So I made a rule. Nobody laughs at anybody in my class. I always had that rule up. If they make a mistake, now I don't care what the mistake is, if they laugh, then you laugh. If it's funny to them, then it's funny to you. But if they aren't laughing, you don't laugh at anybody because they make mistake, because they don't know. And then I said, "You ask your questions and nobody's going to laugh at your question because you're here to get information."	27:04
Alene Stewart McCorkle	And before they left there, I got know from the schools and they were improving in all their classes. They felt like they belonged. Nobody's going to laugh at them when they recited. And they just were amazed at what progress those kids made. And when they took the competency test, all of them passed it. All but one. And this one was a special education type who hadn't no business being in special ed, little Black boy. I get so tickled some days, some nights, because the night class in the afternoon.	27:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I would be so tickled sometimes I wouldn't know what to do. Because they'd ask some of the craziest questions and it was funny to me and I just had to pinch myself so I wouldn't laugh. But when they laughed and that was fine, we all had a good time laughing. I said, "Now this is the time to laugh." We laughed at, we just had a good time. At one time, a child broke out there had laughed at somebody asked a question and he was White.	28:31
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I jumped on him in all my feet. I said, "Now why are you laughing? Did that child laugh?" "No." "Then why are you laughing?" I say, "You don't know any more than they know or you wouldn't be in here. You are here for the same reason they're here, so you can't laugh. And don't you ever do that again in here." That was my [indistinct 00:29:31] from there on in. But they finally got around a bit and laughed at nothing. But those kids did better and they passed competency tests. And they did better in their other subjects. And so that's what they need. They need to know that somebody cares and that's what they're missing.	29:02
Kara Miles	It sounds like you were wonderful teacher.	29:54
Alene Stewart McCorkle	Say what?	29:56
Kara Miles	Sounds like you were a wonderful teacher.	29:56
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I was not that wonderful. I just did a lot of—I taught Vermelle Diamond. Vermelle Ely. She was one of my students.	29:58
Kara Miles	Oh. Well, I don't have more questions. If you have other things that I didn't ask—	30:04
Alene Stewart McCorkle	I don't have a thing. I've just talked myself out. I just talked plenty.	30:14
Kara Miles	Okay, well I have some forms I need to fill out.	30:21

Item Info

Title:

Alene McCorkle interview recording, 1993 June 11

Date:

June 11, 1993

Creator:

McCorkle, Alene Stewart

Contributor:

Miles, Kara Giselle

Description:

Name: Alene Stewart McCorkle; Date of birth: 1915-06-27; Place of birth: Charlotte, NC; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Charlotte, NC
Informant ID: 47; Interviewed by: Kara Miles.

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Educator

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-1999

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The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

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Limited Re-Use

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Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

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Interview number: 255
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Alene McCorkle interview recording, 1993 June 11

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1. Alene McCorkle administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Alene McCorkle interview recording, 1993 June 11

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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