Imogene Yongue (primary interviewee) and William Yongue, Jr. interview recording, 1993 June 16
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| Chris Stewart | —each of you to state your name so I can get a level, a voice level for our microphone. | 0:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | William Yongue. | 0:10 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Jean Yongue. | 0:13 |
| Chris Stewart | Great. It's going to be fine. The first question that I'd like to ask the both of you—What we will do is I'll go ahead and just ask the questions, and if both of you would like to answer, you can. If not, we can go on to the next question. All right? | 0:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | All right. That's fine. | 0:33 |
| Chris Stewart | The first question I'd like to ask is if you've always lived in Charlotte. | 0:33 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, I didn't always live here. I was born here. I've lived a number of other places and worked other places. You want some details about that? | 0:41 |
| Chris Stewart | I do. | 1:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | How far back do you want me to go? | 1:08 |
| Chris Stewart | As far back as you can remember. | 1:10 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. The first time that I was out of Charlotte for any length of time, I guess I was in the 11th grade. I would attend Second Ward High School. It was to go to Connecticut to work at a club that is called Shoreham Club. Shoreham, S-H-O-R-E-H-A-M. This was in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. It was one of those families would come in and stay a week, two weeks, and they would have someone to wait their tables. I would have a certain number of families that I was waiting on for that summer period. Let's see. Other places, New York City. | 1:13 |
| Chris Stewart | How long were you in New York City? | 2:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Following that, I spent a good bit of time in New York City in the Navy. | 2:18 |
| Chris Stewart | I see. | 2:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I was in the Navy. I was stationed at Armed Guard Center in Brooklyn, New York. After I finished college and we got married, we went back to New York and spent some time there. The first job that is teaching job was in Lincolnton, North Carolina. Then following that, we worked in Graham, North Carolina. Following that, I went to Iowa for a while. Where else? | 2:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then you came home to Charlotte. | 3:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Then back to Charlotte and worked here for a period. Then we went to Blacksburg, Virginia, to Virginia Tech, and worked there for a while and then came back to Charlotte. In the meantime, overall all my life, we've been to many, many places here in the United States and, last summer, went to Hawaii. I didn't particularly care about going. My wife wanted to go. But I had such an enjoyable time, I'm looking forward to going back again. | 3:07 |
| Chris Stewart | What was the— | 3:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | We went to France also a couple years before that. | 3:48 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes, we went to France. | 3:51 |
| Chris Stewart | The two of you went to France? | 3:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The two of us and my son. | 3:54 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, ma'am? Were you born here in Charlotte as well? | 3:56 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, in Winston-Salem. | 4:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, you were? | 4:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hm. I met him on a bus, and within three months we were married. As I said, we both worked in Lincolnton for about a year. Then we went to Graham for a couple of years. Then we came here. We've done the same things together, completely. | 4:02 |
| Chris Stewart | Did your work take you to all the different places that you taken? | 4:27 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Either we were going away to school or—That's how we got to Blacksburg. He got his doctorate there and I got mine there. They hired us, so that's why— | 4:31 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, at Blacksburg? | 4:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hm. He worked at Virginia Tech—What, 12 years? | 4:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Actually, 15 years. 15 years. Two of them, I was on leave of absence, working for the State Department of Public Instruction here in Charlotte at the same job that I'm working at the present time. I have 15 years credit, but 13 years I was actually there in Blacksburg. | 4:47 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | See, they didn't want him to leave and they thought if they released him for two years, he would come back. | 5:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, they gave me a leave of absence for two years. | 5:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | To work with the State Department, and he stayed. | 5:14 |
| Chris Stewart | When did you move from Winston-Salem to Charlotte? Did you move when you were very young? | 5:21 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Hm-mm. I was still living in Winston when I met him. | 5:26 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, really? | 5:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I moved here because I was married. | 5:32 |
| Chris Stewart | What did your parents do in Winston-Salem? | 5:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | My daddy was a dental technician. In fact, he was the only White or Black dental technician for many years. Dental technician means that he did all the bridge work, all of everything as far as teeth were concerned, and made the braces that the orthodontists use and those kinds of things. I was from a very protective family. My father was so protective until I didn't realize how bad segregation was. Because we had what was known in Winston-Salem as a bus that was operated and owned completely by Blacks. So I never had to ride a White, so to speak, bus. | 5:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Sitting in the back of the bus. | 6:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I never experienced that, because this bus went on every side of town that Backs lived on and anywhere else that you needed to go where Blacks were going. In Winston, it was a little bit strange for most places because we had an uptown situation. One block away from the main stores was my daddy's office. They call it the safe bus. Brought in everybody from everywhere, right to that particular section. If we wanted to go to town, all we had to do was ride this bus, because it carried us to town. | 6:27 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | All of the Black businesses were two blocks away from Kress's. The drug stores and the movies and everything else was right there within—Actually, it was a radius of a block. Then it went around a block on the one side and around on the other, so about four blocks. There's nothing but owned businesses by Blacks. As I said, Kress's was two blocks away from there and all the other downtown stores. During that time, you didn't have the malls. You just had downtown stores. | 7:05 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That prevented me from really knowing about what racism was all about. As far as the stores were concerned, you could go into Kress's and some of the other stores and get food, and you didn't sit down. But everybody was standing, Whites and the Blacks, so that didn't phase me either. I didn't realize that we weren't sitting down because there were two races there. But we didn't sit and I got everything I wanted, so that was no real problem. | 7:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess the real thing—I told him and I don't even know if I should mention it or not, but I thought all Whites were rich. The only reason I thought that was because my daddy was the dental technician, and a lot of times, he would bring some of the work home, because maybe somebody needed something to go out of town, a bridge or a plate. These doctors would come to our house and pick these things up. Sometimes they would bring their kids with them, and they would play with me while Daddy and their daddy was getting the plates and all the dental work ready to leave. That, to me, became a strange thing. | 8:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then a lady who lived next door to me worked for Rob Haynes. In the summer when they would go to Europe—the Haynes I mean—would go to Europe, she would—I don't know whether she was supposed to or not, but she would bring those kids over to her house. I think she tried to decorate her house the way the Haynes did, because it was very beautiful and she had all sorts of things. When it was time to go to work, the Haynes would send a station wagon all year long with their chauffer to pick her up. Those were the only Whites that I had come in contact with, so I thought they were all rich. I know I had to be about 14 years old before I realized that they weren't all rich. | 8:52 |
| Chris Stewart | When did you realize that, the pain of segregation? | 9:40 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | When I went to Spelman, to college. | 9:44 |
| Chris Stewart | When you went to college. | 9:45 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's when I realized it. We had to ride in the back of the buses, and it was really strange to me. I remember once I must have antagonized some policeman, because he said something ugly to me, but at that time, I wasn't fearful of policeman. I guess I could've been killed, really. But I told him, "I'm not from here, so I really don't know." He said, "Move right along," or something. He didn't give me a problem. But that was when I was beginning to see what it was all about. | 9:48 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess the worst thing that I saw during that time, I was on a bus. This was right after I graduated. I was on a bus and a White man asked—There was one seat left, and it was beside a White man. This Black man was standing up. He asked the Black man saying, "Sit down. This is all right." The bus driver stopped the bus, got up, came to the back and made the man get up. Although this White man said that it was all right for him to sit there and he had told him to sit there, he laid the two of them out. The man had to stand back up again. Those were the only real things that I saw when I was growing up. I'm about 20 now when I'm seeing this. I guess, after my son was born, I experienced one other situation. | 10:23 |
| Chris Stewart | When was this about now, when you say when your son born? | 11:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | This was right at right when they integrated, right at integration. I had been riding the buses. I told you I've learned that you ride in the back of the bus. This was at the Greyhound bus station. They had allowed Blacks to come over on the White side, but since those year or two that I had gone that I had always gone on the Black side, I went on the Black side this particular day. When I went over there, the ticket agent kept waiting on the people on the other side. | 11:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | As I told you, I wasn't afraid of anything, because I had never really been harshly treated. I asked him was he going to ever wait on me? He told me to come up to the other desk or something, or maybe he told me to come around on the other side. I don't know what he said, but he hollered. I said, "You didn't have to holler at me." My mom hollered out, "No you didn't." My kid was probably two years old then, and I was carrying him because he didn't walk that well. | 11:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I didn't think any more about it. After I got around the other side, a policeman came up to me and he said, "Have you been giving this ticket agent a hard time?" I said, "Do you mean has he been giving me a hard time." I said, "He hollered at me as if I weren't human." Then this policeman implied that sometimes you have to treat people like that. He didn't say it in those words, but I was alert enough to catch what he had said. I said, "There are exceptions to the rule." I said, "Would you have hollered at me if I'd asked you for a ticket?" He said, "No." I said, "He did. So there are many exceptions to every rule." He said, "Maybe he just had a hard time today," and something about his job. | 12:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He cooled down. I said, "I teach 120 students a day, and when my husband and my baby give me a hard time, I don't go and take it out on my students. If he doesn't like that job, he ought to quit it." I guess those are the only real things that I encountered. But each time I just spoke right up. I've learned from people who were in different environments that, for several of those things, I could have been just carted off to jail. But I wasn't afraid. I hadn't thought about going to jail. | 13:08 |
| Chris Stewart | You mentioned that you grew up in Winston-Salem. What neighborhood did you grow up in, in Charlotte? | 13:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I grew up in First Ward. | 13:48 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you remember about First Ward growing up? | 13:51 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | First Ward was—It had certain streets on which Whites lived and certain streets that Black lived on. In some cases, they abutted one another. The main street through First Ward was 7th Street. That's where the main traffic going to town and away from town. On that street, there were a number of White businesses or mixed businesses that, to some extent, mainly grocery stores. There was an antique finisher there. There was a big electric company called Jones Electric Company. | 13:57 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | There was a shoe shop that was Black-owned. I'm thinking of one block, a block from Alexander Street to Myers Street. There were three mom-and-pop grocery stores there. There were a few homes there, one of which was a home that was occupied by a Presbyterian minister named Reverend Hill. He was fair-skinned and he had a number of daughters that were fair-skinned. | 14:44 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I say that because one of the incidents that occurred during the time—Just beyond where our stadium is now, there was a park there. It was for Whites only. Blacks weren't allowed. But one daughter whose name was Ruth—We call her Hettie. One of our main things on the weekend, especially on Sunday, was to follow Hettie to the park and watch her go down and swing on the swings and everything. She would go from one item to the next item. We'd all stand up. It was down in a valley. We'd stand up on the hill and look down into the park and watch Hettie as she went through these various things. We didn't think of it as a hurting thing, but I guess that was a hurting thing, the fact that you could not yourself go down there. But you were relieved that one of us was able to go down there and not be molested in any way. | 15:18 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you cheer her or were you quiet? | 16:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We were more or less quieted. It wasn't a thing where we were trying to draw attention to the fact that she was down there. In fact, we just wanted to see long, how many things she could do before she'd come back. Then we would all go. This was probably about six blocks from my home. About the same, about a half a block distance, they lived on 7th Street. I lived on Alexander Street. We would all come back home together. | 16:24 |
| Chris Stewart | How old were you when you were doing this? | 16:57 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | This was around 9, 10, 11, somewhere in there. But early in that, I had an experience. My dad worked at a Lutheran church. He was the custodian there. I went to work with him very often. I guess I must have been five, six, somewhere in there, and would go to work with him and the pastor of the church. It was a Lutheran church. The Lutheran church still is—Some would say they're Lutheran. I'm not quite sure. | 17:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But anyhow, the story is that the pastor of the—Well, the pastor had several sons and one was my age. We played together for a number of years. It was a delight for me to go up there, because he had all kinds of toys in his basement. We would play down there in the basement with trains and trucks and all kinds of things. About the time, I guess I must have been about six or so, or maybe seven, but somewhere in that period I overheard, as well as my father overheard, the pastor called his son and said to him—His name was Banner. | 17:41 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He said, "Banner, come here." Then he told him, said, "You can't play with him any longer." He want know, of course, why. He said, "Because you're White and he's Black. Whites and Blacks don't play together. So William," talking to my father, "I wish you wouldn't bring your son up here to play." Of course, my dad used some choice words and things, but he couldn't get too violent because he needed the job. He continued to work there, but it was a bad experience. I continued to go there with him, but it was the last time the two of us ever played together. I just saw the Lutherans as devils incarnate. (laughs) I hope you're not Lutheran. (laughs) | 18:24 |
| Chris Stewart | Not at all. You, at a very early age, experienced the ramifications, the real deep meanings of segregation, whereas for you it was much later. | 19:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. It was bad, but I didn't experience it. I always wondered why— | 19:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Sorry. | 19:33 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I always wondered when I was growing up, why my daddy would say—For instance, I had an aunt that lived in Statesville, which is 50 miles away from Winston, or maybe 40 miles. But my daddy would say, "Unless I can take you to Statesville, you can't go." I didn't understand why he didn't let me ride the bus. He would let me go and spend the week with my cousins. Then he'd come back on the weekend—because he always worked all week—and picked me up. But he never allowed me to ride a bus to Statesville. I just thought that was so crazy. I couldn't understand— | 19:35 |
| Chris Stewart | He didn't tell you why? | 20:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Hm-mm. He just said, "I have to take you, and if I can't take you—I'm going to be real busy this weekend, so you can't go, but I'll take you next weekend." And he would take me. | 20:09 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you remember, Mrs. Yongue, about the neighborhood that you grew up in? Mr. Yongue remembers First Ward and what it was made up of. In Winston-Salem— | 20:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You can get that. We didn't have any Whites living very near us. I don't know if you know Winston-Salem, if you've ever been there. I lived— | 20:29 |
| Chris Stewart | I've been there, but I don't know the neighborhoods very well. | 20:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I lived in the section called 25th Street, 25th. There was a place where the rich Whites lived called Alta Vista, which was probably about five or six miles from there, but it was a highway at that time. The houses stopped here. Then you'd go about two or three miles, and then you had the richest people that were in Winston-Salem, living out in Alta Vista, Buena Vista. Because I think a lot of them have moved away now, but some of those fine houses are still out there. They were very close, so we would ride out there a lot of times. | 20:44 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you remember about your neighbors and the neighborhood that you lived in? Do you recall who they were, what kind of work they did? | 21:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. A doctor lived on one side of me, Dr. Mason. Then there was a doctor who lived in front of him. Then there was an insurance agent who lived next door. Then right in front of me there was a teacher. Then on the other side of me was this lady who worked for the Haynes. She was the only one that worked—we call it domestic work, but I didn't call it that then. I just thought it was great, because this man—She had the fine station wagon picking her up, and it seemed wonderful to me. Then I'd go to her house. She always had a lot of good food to eat, because I guess she would get a lot from where she worked, too. Those are the kinds of things I remember. But most of the people that were really close to me were professionals. | 21:31 |
| Chris Stewart | Who did you play with when you were growing up, Dr. Yongue? Who were your friends, your childhood friends? | 22:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | All of my friends were people that lived right around there in the community. Some of my friends right now are the very same people. | 22:35 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, wonderful. | 22:45 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I didn't have anyone that I was friendly with that was White during that period. There were some of my friends that live in those areas that abutted White areas, where they played with the White kids. But right where I lived, basically it wasn't. It happens I knew of some White kids. | 22:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In fact, when I was about 10, I would sweep up and work in one of those mom-and-pop grocery stores. The owner of the store and his wife—He was White. The owner was separated from his wife on occasion, and she would bring the kids over to see him, but it was usually short visits. I knew them. We talked, but we never played anything together. I worked in that store for until I was about 12 or 13, I guess it was. The experience was a good one. It happened that the man was a good kind person. He wasn't one that I looked upon as being someone to shy away from. He was White. I knew he was White. Everybody in the community respected him. Everybody called him Mr. Thompson, but his name was Thomas. | 23:24 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, my. | 24:27 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But everybody called him Mr. Thompson. As I grew, I guess by the time after I'd worked there about a year or so, in the summer I would work there all day long. He ran a credit thing, and I learned to keep books with him. I kept the books, sold cigarettes, one for a penny, kerosene for 10 cent a gallon. We also had an ice house there. Sell blocks of ice for 12 cent, I think it was. No. Cut a 25 pound block and a half and sell it for 10 cents. | 24:27 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I guess one experience that was interesting to me about him was on one occasion we were there alone. I enjoyed working there, because he cooked for us and the whole bit. But on one occasion he was asking. He said, "Bill, what is it that you are afraid of?" I thought about it for a while and I told him, "The only thing I guess that I'm afraid of is the Ku Klux Klan. He said, "You have no right to be afraid of them." Said, "They're good people." (laughs) He said, "In fact, I was a Klansman myself." But no one ever would have known it. I never suspected it. I guess that took a little of the fear of the Klan away from me, because how could this good, good man have been a member of the Klan? But that's what he told me. It was a interesting thing. | 25:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He had two brothers, both of which were taxi drivers. They would come and pop by there. I came to learn the kinds of things that they talked about and what they did. I remember, basically because this is based also on that business of riding buses, there was a man. Only thing I ever knew, his name was Mr. Jake, who ran the RC Cola truck. Finally I guess he got tired of working for the RC Cola, and he became a driver of a Duke Power bus. | 26:13 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | By that time, I would guess I must have been 14, because I had a work permit and I was working at Eckerd's drugstore. I would ride the bus from the corner of 7th and Alexander, up to Tryon Street. That Eckerds drugstore at that time was located on Tryon between 5th and Trade. It was the only Eckerd's drugstore in the world at that time. It was the first Eckerd's drugstore. They finally opened a store down in Columbia, South Carolina, and they opened a store further, on the other side of Trade Street, between Trade and 4th on Tryon Street. | 26:58 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But the thing story itself was about Mr. Jake. The war was on, at that time. Buses were just loaded. It reached the point where there would be so many Whites on the bus, and you had to get to the back of the bus. Many times, you couldn't push your way through. You could get on and push your way through if it was possible, but many times, since you had to get to the back of the bus, it would be better to give him your money and then get in the back of the bus. I guess that was a hurting thing. On one occasion, I gave Mr. Jake my money. He became a bus driver. I gave him my money, went around to get in the back door, and he drove off and left me standing on the curb, someone I knew. But I guess that also gave me a feeling, "Okay, there's something different here," that kind of thing. | 27:38 |
| Chris Stewart | What do the two of you remember about the houses you grew up in? What did they look like? | 28:35 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mine is still standing. | 28:39 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, wonderful. | 28:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. | 28:43 |
| Chris Stewart | What did it look like when you were growing up? Does it look different now? | 28:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Hm-mm. The same way. The only thing, they added one room to the back. But it's a two-story house. It was just a house. We had a dining room and a living room that ran across the whole side, and then a kitchen. Then we had three bedrooms upstairs. I had a bedroom with my sister, and my brother had one by himself, and then my mom and daddy's bedroom. We didn't have a den then, but that was about the only thing. We had a basement. | 28:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, wow. That's unusual, actually. Did you have a front porch? | 29:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | A little one, stoop-like. The back porch was little, too. But it's still there where I grew up. | 29:22 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you know who lives there? | 29:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | We still own it. | 29:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Yay. Oh, that's wonderful. What about you, Mr. Yongue? | 29:33 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Ours was a little bungalow, I guess you would call it, a small house, four rooms, bath and a hallway. It was located, as I said, between 7th and 8th Street on Alexander. The number was four 415 North Alexander Street. There was a creek that ran right beside our house. There was enough room between our house and the creek for an automobile with a little bit of space to drive into beside our house. I say that because my granddaddy had a garage there on the side and behind our house. That's where he kept his car. Yeah, my dad— | 29:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | His granddad owned the whole block of houses. | 30:34 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 30:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. | 30:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He did. | 30:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But we still—it was a four room house that we lived in. | 30:40 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That they lived in. But his granddaddy owned a lot of houses. He owned them until they had the—what you call it—urban redevelopment. | 30:46 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Urban renewal. | 30:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | They got Piedmont Court. Not Piedmont. What is that place? | 30:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It's Earl Village. Earl Village is [crosstalk 00:31:03]— | 30:59 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Earl Village is where he had some of his houses. | 31:02 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you remember neighbors, who your neighbors were? | 31:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I told you who mine were. | 31:14 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. You? | 31:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. In the house right beside us, it was a duplex that my granddaddy owned. One side of the duplex he rented out to a friend of an uncle that lived on the upper side of this duplex. My uncle lived there. These friends, the Millers lived next door. Across the street was a teacher named Ms. Lindsay. She had a big yard that went down to the creek. Somewhere during the period of growing up, she sold a part of her yard. Jones Electric was on 7th Street, but it formed an L and came over to Alexander Street behind her house. So Jones Electric was a part of that that immediately faced our house. It was a stone building. Next to it, on the other side of the creek, near the Crawfords, was a family about three of four. | 31:18 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I thought your aunt lived there. | 32:28 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, she lived on up on the hill. Next to the Crawfords lived the Stevensons. Above that is where this grand aunt, it was, lived with her daughter. Across the street, on the corner lived my paternal grand aunt. My granddaddy's sister lived next door to him. This is on 8th Street now. He lived next to her. Next to there is where—At that time, the house belonged to someone else. My granddaddy bought in. One of my uncles moved into that house. [crosstalk 00:33:14]— | 32:29 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He used to own his daddy's house, too. | 33:14 |
| Chris Stewart | Your grand— | 33:16 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, I don't think he did. I don't think he ever owned Daddy's. He might have. I don't know. But Daddy bought his house. | 33:20 |
| Chris Stewart | What did your grandfather do for a living? | 33:23 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He was a porter at the Commercial National Bank. | 33:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I've never seen anybody accumulate the way his grandfather did. | 33:30 |
| Chris Stewart | He's a wizard in real estate. | 33:33 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He was. | 33:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He must have been. | 33:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He was. | 33:36 |
| Chris Stewart | Sounds like it. | 33:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | The house next to that is a house where—During that period you had a number of elderly people that were characters. There was a character that lived right there on the creek in one of my granddaddy's house. He was called Uncle Bob by some and others of us, the younger ones, called him Grandpa Johnson who lived there. He was one of those individuals that his facilities must have been leaving him. He would walk up and down the street with a wheelbarrow picking up trash and stuff. | 33:40 |
| Chris Stewart | Were there any people in either of your neighborhoods that you would consider to be neighborhood leaders, people that, as a child, you really looked up to, besides your mother and father? | 34:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess I thought all the people on that street were pretty nice. It's like I told you, that lady would have us over there eating. | 34:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. | 34:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | There was a lady that lived diagonally, was a school teacher, Mrs. Lindsey. Seemed as though, at that time, she taught everybody in the world. (laughs) Everybody respected her. She was known as a strong disciplinarian, which was what [indistinct 00:35:04] people. Right there in our immediate area, I don't think there was anyone you would've called a leader in the sense that we referred to neighborhood leader. Everybody was just a neighbor at that time. | 34:44 |
| Chris Stewart | What about in your household? Who made the decisions about, say, household expenses, disciplining the children, deciding who you were going to date, how late you could stay out at night, those kinds of decisions? Was it- | 35:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | My daddy worked most of the time, so he wasn't home too often, but my mother didn't work. Daddy took care of all the expenses. In fact, when Daddy died, my mother, I don't think she had ever paid a bill. My son was in college at the time that my daddy died. He was in law school, a couple years ago, and he got accepted to Wake Forest, but he wanted to go to UVA, which he had graduated from, his undergrad. But I persuaded him to go to Wake Forest so he could stay with my mom. He taught her how to do things, because she had never experienced anything, and that is not good. | 35:45 |
| Chris Stewart | No, it's good that your son was there and able to help her. | 36:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | As soon as he graduated, she had that stroke, so I don't think she took care of herself. Because he called me once and said he went to visit her, and she wasn't taking her medicine. The next week she had that stroke. | 36:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Her class was going to graduate in May from college, and she married my daddy that November and never went back again. So she didn't have a career that she could fall back on, and she just never worked. | 36:43 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, sir? | 37:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I guess if my dad were among the fathers now, you would refer to him as a tyrant. But no, the situation was one where he was the chief disciplinarian. My mother was one that ran the day-to-day operations. If things got out of hand and my mother thought, then she would say, "Wait till your daddy gets home." When he got home, of course, we could expect the worst, which sometimes did occur. It was that kind of thing. They were, I guess, pretty joint working in that kind of a mode on taking care of the big things and the other one taking care of the what's going on constantly. | 37:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | But my dad— | 37:58 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Dad being gone most of the time, as she said, so my mother was the one who ran the house, so to speak. | 37:59 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | But my daddy wanted to be the big cheese. (Stewart laughs) He really did. | 38:09 |
| Chris Stewart | But? | 38:14 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | But, for instance, he'd get us all up in the summer. In fact, he cooked breakfast every morning for us. | 38:16 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, wow. | 38:21 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He'd get us up to eat. As soon as he would leave, my mom and all of us would go back to bed. Because he said you're supposed to get up early. That's what I meant by it. He was a tyrant too, but we circumvented those things about him. Then we'd go back to bed and enjoy ourselves and the next morning, we'd get up. Mother said, "Get on up and eat your breakfast. Your daddy has cooked it for you. We can go back to bed when he leaves." We'd go back to bed. (Stewart laughs) | 38:22 |
| Chris Stewart | That's wonderful. Were there any other disciplinarians in your neighborhood, people who would discipline you if you did something wrong when you weren't in your house? | 38:50 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I had a lady who would tell on me. One day, when I was very young, probably about six or seven—I was real skinny. You wouldn't believe it now, but I was. I was skinny when he saw me first time. That's the only way he would believe it. Anyway, the kids would call me all kinds of little funny things, and it would make me mad. The man was going to teach me how to talk junk to these friends of mine. It was the lady's uncle. He was kind of old man. He said, "If anybody says anything to you," said, "Call them a rotten bag of bones." He said, "Okay, now suppose I said something. What would you call me?" I said, "You rotten bag of bones." He just told little funny things. It was nothing real bad. | 39:00 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And this lady heard me call him a rotten bag of bones. She told my mom that I had called him a rotten bag of bones. That was the only time that mother didn't listen to me. She just spanked me. Then the man found out what mother had done, and he got on her. So she never bothered me again from what she heard, but she got me that day. Because his sister told my mother that I had called Mr. Grover a rotten bag of bones. I had called him, because he said, "Now if I said so-and-so to you, what would you say?" And I said, "You rotten bag of bones." But he just wanted you to say funny things. He was kidding with me, and I got a spanking. But other than that, I don't remember neighbors interfering. | 39:50 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, Mr. Yongue? | 40:33 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Everybody in the neighborhood. Really, it wasn't a thing where they whipped you or anything like that. It was anyone in the neighborhood could tell you, "Hey, you stop doing that." We were fearful of all adults. The only thing the adult had to do was tell us, "Don't," and we didn't | 40:35 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Because they would tell you Mom and you'd get a spanking, wouldn't you? | 40:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yep. Usually, didn't even come to that. They'd say, "Stop," and you stopped. That was it. They rarely had to go and tell your parents. | 40:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Were there areas in your neighborhood and in your community that you weren't supposed to go to, bad places that your parents just said, "No"? | 41:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, I don't think so. You didn't wander too far from—That is, I didn't. Those of us who lived around there didn't wander too far from there. When you crossed 9th Street, going north, once you crossed 9th Street, you were in another section of First Ward. It was called Cody Town. | 41:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Cody Town? | 41:59 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hm. C-O-D-Y. The people in Cody Town were not looked upon as being a part of those between 9th and 7th Street. Basically, the people that lived right there in that area where I lived were more or less homeowners, long time. The people in Cody Town were—a lot of them were transient types. They lived there a few years and they would be gone, that kind of thing. The kids were a little bit rougher than we were. But it happened at—What? I guess when I was in that same period of 11, 12, somewhere in there, I was a paper boy for the afternoon paper. I carried papers in that section of town. | 42:00 |
| Chris Stewart | In Cody Town? | 42:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. It wasn't a case where you were told—In fact, the school, the Alexander Street School that I attend was in Cody Town. | 42:56 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 43:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You walked very gingerly- | 43:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Through there. I see. I see. | 43:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But as I said, I got to know a number of the people there in that community, so it wasn't a case where you were fearful of going there or that your parents told you you couldn't go there. It's just that that was a little bit far to go anyhow. Once you had gone there for school, you didn't want to go back there anyhow, that kind thing. Excuse me. | 43:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you remember any of your teachers from Alexander Street? | 43:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Only every one of them. All of them. | 43:40 |
| Chris Stewart | Were there any particular favorites of yours? | 43:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, I wouldn't say one over the other. Most of them we knew fairly well. For instance, my first grade teacher lived in that same block section that I was talking about. Her name was Ms. Tyson. You might have heard her name before. | 43:54 |
| Chris Stewart | I don't think I have. | 44:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Blanch Tyson. My second grade teacher attend the same church that I attend and still does. She is still alive. She's about 90 years old. Still attends church, Ms. Yongue Harris. | 44:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | She walks, too. | 44:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Her name is Louise Yongue Harris. | 44:34 |
| Chris Stewart | What church are we talking about? | 44:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | First United Presbyterian Church. It was 7th Street Presbyterian Church. Third grade teacher was Ms. Mullin. I remember her fondly, but I remember that that was the grade that I had most difficult with mathematics. I could not get the hang of that business when you were multiplying three-way multiplication. I could not get the hang of you moving over, and she gave me a fit and made it worse of all. It happened that by this time, by the third grade, there was a girl in the class named—Her name was Anne Caldwell. Anne and I had taken on a rivalry as to who was going to be the best in the class. She would have Anne to come and humiliate me. | 44:39 |
| Chris Stewart | That's what I call strategies, teaching strategy. Right? | 45:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Enough to drive a kid crazy. | 45:50 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But in the fourth grade was Ms. Stevenson, the fifth grade, Ms. Gullet. In the sixth grade was Ms. Sarah Scott. | 45:50 |
| Chris Stewart | When you went to Alexander Street, you went to the sixth grade? | 46:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Right. | 46:07 |
| Chris Stewart | There are some people that I talked about who didn't go to the sixth grade in Alexander, that they went to Isabella Wyche. | 46:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, uh huh. | 46:17 |
| Chris Stewart | But no, when you were going, you went to sixth grade? | 46:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. Right. Yeah. | 46:20 |
| Chris Stewart | What did you most like about school, and what then did you most dislike about Alexander Street? | 46:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —Right offhand, I suppose the most enjoyable thing about it was, it was participatory. You got an opportunity to do whatever you desired to do in the sense that if you wanted to perform, they provided you with the resources for doing so. There was a period when I didn't attend Alexander Street because the old Alexander Street was a wooden building, a big two-story wooden building that was really a fire trap because inside you had these big pot belly stoves. I can remember on occasions, those pot belly stoves were on bricks and they would fall over if someone happened to make too much jarring of the floor. | 0:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It was in third grade that for a half a year all of Alexander Street went to Myers Street School. The Myers Street people went in the morning, and we went in the afternoon. That was for about a half a year because we went back to the new building before I finished the third grade. The rest of the time, I was right there. The teachers, you were comfortable with them. The principal, Ms. Janie Hemphill was a tyrant. (Imogene and William laugh) | 1:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You ain't going to fool with her. | 1:46 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But it just happens— | 1:46 |
| Chris Stewart | I take it you've heard stories about this woman. | 1:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | She was terrible. | 1:46 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It happened. I knew her well because she too, we attend the same church. So, I had known her all of my life. | 1:50 |
| Chris Stewart | Is she what you would call a strict disciplinarian? | 2:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Quite so. Yes. | 2:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I really didn't know that much about her. | 2:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Not only for the students, but also at that time the principal was also a strict disciplinarian for the teachers as well. It was that kind of— | 2:06 |
| Chris Stewart | Tell me about where you went to elementary school. | 2:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I don't remember all my teachers the way he seems to remember them. I remember one lady, who was Ms. Roseman, and I remembered her because for some unknown reason she came and started teaching Charlotte after I started teaching here. She had taught me in elementary school, then she came down here with the superintendent I guess the first year I was here. We would reminisce over the kinds of things. | 2:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The reason I liked her so much, she always had little dance groups going. I was always in her little dance group, and we'd wear costumes and my little tap dancing shoes. I remember once, she didn't tell us to get the tap dancing shoes, but I wanted some. So, I told my daddy that she said we had to have them. (laughs) I got them. | 2:49 |
| Chris Stewart | What was the name of your school? | 3:10 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | 14th Street School. Then Akers was right next door to it. When I finished elementary school, I went straight to Akers, but it was across town from where I lived. I rode the safe bus again. It carried us. I didn't ride a school bus, but the safe bus carried us about 10 cents or something like that. A lot of times when I would go to school, I would walk home. My mother would give me the money, and you could get three pieces of candy for a dime. I would always walk back and eat the candy. | 3:13 |
| Chris Stewart | How far was the walk? | 3:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It was a nice walk as I think about it now, it didn't seem like anything then. Sometimes I would ride my bicycle to school, but I'd have to get up early enough to do that, and sometimes I didn't get up quite early. I was never a morning person. One thing that we had, but it wasn't as prevalent apparently, my school had a swimming pool. Almost all the kids learned to swim, seven, eight-year-olds jumping off the diving board. I think that's why I still like to swim as many days as I can. I don't miss many. I didn't ever play basketball or anything like that. The only thing I liked to do was just swim. | 3:47 |
| Chris Stewart | Who built the school, the 14th Street? | 4:34 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The city. That swimming pool was the city too. | 4:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Was it? | 4:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | But it was just a case where we had to go on the other side of town to these things. They were really nice at that time. In fact, Akers is still standing there, and it looks like about the same. | 4:44 |
| Chris Stewart | Does it really? What did you most like and then most dislike about elementary school? | 5:00 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I really liked elementary school. | 5:07 |
| Chris Stewart | You did? | 5:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. I don't think I missed a day. | 5:10 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. | 5:11 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then when I got in high school, I knew some people. At least some people knew me, that knew my mom. I didn't like that too well. I can remember once they had some sort of tournament. I don't remember what they called it back in those dark days, but it was a tournament at Winston-Salem State. My friends and I decided that we weren't going to go to class that day. We were going over to Winston-Salem State to the tournament. We must have been in about the 10th or 11th grade. When I walked into the gym, one of my mother's friends said, "This your mother? She taught there." This was at the college though. She said, "Does your mother know you're over here?" | 5:14 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I said, "Yes, ma'am." I bet you it wasn't a half an hour before my daddy came to that gym and took me out, and carried me back to school. So, I know she went someplace and called my family. It was those kinds of things that I didn't like too much. When I was in elementary school, I didn't have anybody—I guess I wasn't doing anything. By the time I'd gotten into high school, I was getting into a few things like leaving school. I guess a lot of students do that. | 5:55 |
| Chris Stewart | Your mother taught? | 6:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, she just—As I told you, during the time she was going to college. | 6:27 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay, that's right. | 6:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You only had to go two years, but she went one year and a half. So, she never had a career. My daddy tried to get her to go back to school, but she never went back. Those same people that I was talking about, who finished, she knew a lot of them because I guess they were classmates and everything. | 6:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Sure. | 6:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's what kept her posted on a lot of things that I was doing, and I didn't like that at all. | 6:52 |
| Chris Stewart | Nosey. | 6:58 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, real nosey. | 6:59 |
| Chris Stewart | What was the difference between Alexander Street and then Second Ward for you? | 7:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I don't think there was any vast difference. I always liked school, and I was always involved in something. It was an interesting place. I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Alexander Street. There were times too there, just as any other school, where we'd skip school, jump—We had a fence around our school, and we would jump the fence. Usually, you'd jump the fence and went right across the street. There was a place that sold that hamburgers and hotdogs, and beer, and whatever else there. We would go and saw JC's Place. You might have heard that, where we'd go in JC's Place and hang out there. If the principal wanted to find y'all, the only thing he had to do was come down to JC's Place and you handed. It was a good experience, along the effects of Jim Crow and segregation. | 7:15 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We were quite aware of the difference between what we had at Second Ward and what they had at Central High School, which was our counterpart so to speak. We knew that our books always had three lines where you'd write the name in, the three lines would always be filled in before we got the book. So, we recognized that were not getting new books, and also some recognized some of the names. We knew they were students at Central High School. We knew that there were a lot of other things that were needed at Second Ward that we didn't have. I suppose it was the time you did not worry about the fact that you didn't have those things. You knew it, and you went on and made the best of what you did. | 8:34 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You had a very supporting faculty. Most of the people were caring, really loving and caring people. They cared about whether you were doing well and whatnot. There were some of course that you liked better than others, I suppose, at Second Ward. You didn't get to know all the teachers there. You would know them at the elementary school. I guess we— | 9:35 |
| Chris Stewart | What about—I'm sorry. | 10:06 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I was about to say, I became a biologist and I guess it was because of a cousin who taught there. He taught biology. I guess he was the only teacher I didn't get along with. | 10:10 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 10:22 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. Yeah. | 10:24 |
| Chris Stewart | It doesn't make sense then. | 10:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Of course, it was one of those things he wanted to make sure he had to teach me biology, so he wanted to make sure that nobody thought that he was playing favoritism, that kind of thing. So, he made it a little difficult for me at times. It was just at the period where I am becoming a man in my mind, so there were certain things that I would not readily accept. I would talk back and that kind of thing. I knew he was my cousin. It was one of those kinds of things. We didn't get along well, but I acheived in his class because he made me acheive. | 10:26 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 11:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Then I guess he is really the prime reason I became a biologist, because he was a biology teacher. | 11:05 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He wasn't too bad, because he had me when I first came here. | 11:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But he didn't hire me. (laughs) | 11:15 |
| Chris Stewart | Hmm! What about extracurricular activities? In high school, what kinds of activities did you participate in? | 11:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | As I told you, I didn't participate, but they had them. The only thing I did, I took tennis a little while, but I didn't learn very much. They had all kinds of things that you have now, the same kinds of jumps and runs, and all the things that you have now, they had them. We had a wonderful— | 11:30 |
| Chris Stewart | What about clubs? | 11:52 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | —football game. Senior High Y, and things of that nature. I belonged to the clubs, but as far as activities were concerned where you had to participate and do exercises and those kinds of things, I didn't bother too much. | 11:54 |
| Chris Stewart | What kinds of clubs did you participate in, in high school? | 12:06 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The Senior High Y was the main thing that I participated in. When I was young, I was always a Girl Scout. I guess those are the major things. | 12:12 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, Mr. Yongue? | 12:23 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Whatever there was, I was in it. | 12:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 12:27 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, actually the first year I was there, in our at school at that time there was no junior high school. | 12:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, I was in the band. I forgot about that. | 12:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We began with the 7th grade. That was a big year for me because we would have May Kings and May Queens, and I was a May King my first year there. | 12:41 |
| Chris Stewart | I've heard a lot about these. | 12:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I was in the Dramatics club, Band, Chorus. I was on the Safety Patrol. My cousin was the one that was the advisor to the Safety— | 13:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Is this the biology cousin? | 13:16 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, and he fired me from the Safety Patrol. (laughs) But I had spent a year and a half on there before he fired me. Let's see what else. | 13:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was in Student Council too. | 13:36 |
| Chris Stewart | See? You were involved. | 13:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, I just hadn't thought about it. | 13:39 |
| Chris Stewart | It's all coming back now. | 13:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. I was in the Drama Club. | 13:42 |
| Chris Stewart | What about subjects? What were your favorite subjects in high school? And then of course, what subjects did you dislike the most? For you, it might be both at the same time. | 13:47 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I didn't like math. I avoided it like the Plague, anytime I could get out of it. I liked history and English. | 13:57 |
| Chris Stewart | Why did you like history and English? | 14:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Because you never studied about it. It just came easy. | 14:09 |
| Chris Stewart | It came natural to you? | 14:14 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm, if I'd read something then I could tell you everything I had read the next day without doing any kind of hard studying. But math, you had to study. At least, I did. I could study 20 or 30 minutes on an English test and make a 90, and study all night long on math and just pass. You know what I mean? It was just easy. | 14:16 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, sir? | 14:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I guess my favorite subject always science. I had an interest in science, and I guess English. | 14:40 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm still trying to figure out this relationship between you and your cousin, and why you like science and this man was— | 14:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I liked science before him— | 15:03 |
| Chris Stewart | Before. | 15:04 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —as a kid. | 15:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I think he idolized that man. Sometimes, you idolize someone and they don't pay you too much attention so you say you don't like them. I think he really liked him. | 15:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, it really wasn't that. | 15:13 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I think he thought he was pretty important. | 15:13 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Before I really knew what he was doing anything, my parents—Well, they'd ask me what I want for Christmas, and that's why— | 15:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, that might be true. | 15:27 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —an Erector set, chemistry set, that kind of thing. I just had an interest in science all the time. | 15:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That might be true. His whole family liked this man. They just thought he was really nice. I liked him too, because when I came, he gave me a job. | 15:41 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Well, it wasn't any real hatred kind of thing. Really— | 15:50 |
| Chris Stewart | He was just going to make sure you learned biology. | 15:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, that's really what it was. I had the greatest respect for him. | 15:57 |
| Chris Stewart | Here's a tough question, what kind of values do you think that your parents instilled in you to take you into adulthood? Either person. | 16:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two things. My daddy always said, "No one is any better than you, and you're not any better than anyone else. You're all human beings." He told me that from the time I was a little girl, and I think really played an important part. The other thing my daddy said was, "Don't be afraid to ask anything that you want to know, want someone to do for you. The only thing they can say is no. If you haven't asked them, they've already said no." I will ask, and mill knows it, I won't stop until the end. I'll fight a cause in a minute. They can't say anything but no, so I let them say no. But I'm going to let them tell me no. I think those are the things that really helped me. | 16:25 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, sir? | 17:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I don't remember anything along that line. There was a strong interest in education in my household. Both of my parents had attended college and neither one finished. Both of them stressed the idea that you want to get a good education. I remember that we always—At that time, we had two newspapers in Charlotte. We always had both newspapers, always had Reader's Digest and that kind of thing. We also attend church and Sunday School. I don't remember them ever saying, "This is the way it's to be done," or anything along those lines. It was just understood that you had a big family and you had to look out for one another, and you realized you had to share and that kind of thing. | 17:14 |
| Chris Stewart | How many people were in your family? | 18:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | There were five kids. I was the oldest. | 18:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, responsible position. | 18:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Right. | 18:29 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you, ma'am? | 18:29 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I have the three of us. I have a sister. My brother died when he was 28. I was the oldest in my family. I don't guess they really said too much about anything. When I was real young, my daddy would take us to Sunday School. Then he would come back and pick us up from Sunday School, and mother sang in the choir. He'd leave her there and take us home with him. I noticed he didn't go to church very much. I never could understand that. I guess it's because he felt that since she had to sing in the choir, we would be in her way. He always took us. Then after he got old, he started going himself. So I guess it was to take care of the children while she sang in the choir. I guess it would be pretty hard to sing in the choir and you've got four and five, and six-year-olds sitting back there by themselves. | 18:33 |
| Chris Stewart | Right, right, right. At what point did you think that the people started treating you like an adult, or that you had come into your adulthood? At what point in your life? | 19:22 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It all depends on what means. I guess 12. I was 12. That was when I suddenly—Now, of course intellectually I knew there was no Santa Claus, but I still had that feeling. It was when I was 12 years old that my dad had me to help play Santa Claus for the other kids, and that was the end. So, I was grown from that point. | 19:40 |
| Chris Stewart | What about you? | 20:13 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | As I said before, I was from a protective family. I think after I got married, my daddy still thought I was a kid. He was still looking out for me and telling me things to do. He really got on my nerves most of the time, but he would do anything for me. I remember one time I went to visit him and I had a flat tire on the way. He went out immediately to the downtown garage in Winston-Salem because it was on a Saturday and all the other places were closed then. He got me four tires because he didn't want me to go back without tires. When he was getting his doctorate, it was a thing called Puncture-Proof Dual 90s. | 20:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He was afraid, because I kept traveling up to Blacksburg. I didn't go to the first year. I stayed here and taught. My daddy was afraid that I would have a flat tire on the way and something would happen to me, so he got those tires for me. He was just like that. He was overprotective, and now that he's dead I can sort of see it. But then he really got on my nerves. Then Christmastime and Thanksgiving, he got baskets of food and cooked it, and bring it down and I didn't have to cook any of it. Until after my son was born, then his principal started cooking my turkey for Thanksgiving. But still, my daddy would do it for all the other holidays, 4th of July. | 20:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I didn't have to worry about any kind of cooking. I didn't really appreciate it, that's the only thing, because I wanted to be my own person and he wanted me to be a replica of him I guess. | 21:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Tell her about how you went to college. | 21:50 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Huh? | 21:51 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Tell her about you went to college, or why you went to Spelman. | 21:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | My daddy told me when I was about five years old that I was going to Spelman. Then when I got a little bit older he said, "Oh yes, Sugar Baby's going to Spelman." I thought that everybody just went wherever the parents told them. I didn't ever decide. He was good for that. He would indoctrinate me. That's what he did. When the time came to go, I didn't give anybody any trouble. I just went to Spelman. My sister was a little bit different. She was her own person. But not me, I went right on to Spelman. I didn't even know what Spelman was. | 22:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Well you're the first child as well. What did your sister do? Did she end up going someplace else? | 22:33 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm, she went to Johnson C. Smith. She finished there and taught in the city here. My sister went where she wanted to go. She did what she wanted to do, and that kind of thing. When we would go out together, I was much older than she was, but I would come home and she would be out there. My parents would say, "Why didn't you bring her?" I couldn't bring her. She was bigger than I was, just younger. You couldn't do anything with her. She had a mind of her own. And yet, they had started working with her the same way they were working with me, but it didn't work. | 22:42 |
| Chris Stewart | When you went off to Spelman, where did you go to school, to college? | 23:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I went to Johnson C. Smith. | 23:25 |
| Chris Stewart | You went to Smith here. | 23:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It was after I had come back from the Navy. | 23:29 |
| Chris Stewart | I see. | 23:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Then I didn't want to go anywhere except stay at home. | 23:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Can you talk to me a little bit, when were you in the Navy? | 23:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I was in the Navy from January '45 to April '46. 15 months I was in the Navy. I served aboard an Army transport ship. I belonged to a group that then was called Armed Guard. Armed Guard was a Navy contingency that did the fighting aboard merchant ships and Army ships, because the Army and the merchants couldn't fight at sea. So, they would carry along the Navy people. I was a Transportation Radarman. Radar was exciting to me because then radar was a secret. | 23:39 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah, right. | 24:35 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | So, I became a Radarman. When I finished high school, before finishing, I took a test to become a Railway Postal Clerk. Passed it. They hired me. I was 17 at the time. One of the things that was exciting to me then was that I was given a pistol to carry on my hip, but I was told not to carry my pistol until I became 18. | 24:35 |
| Chris Stewart | Until you became 18. | 25:13 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Anyhow, I did work on Railway Postal Service for— | 25:13 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | When were you going to become 18? | 25:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In August. | 25:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | What day was this? | 25:20 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | This was in June. | 25:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh. | 25:20 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I went to work in June. I worked there and it was a period when every fellow who was physically able was being taken into the services. I wanted to be sure that I was physically able. Anyhow, it was a draft thing. They were calling up any Blacks at that time. You could go down and volunteer for immediate induction, and that would put you at the head. So, that's what I did. I still worked for Railway Postal Service. I didn't have to go into the service. I would have been exempt. But I wanted to go because all my friends were going. | 25:29 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Why would you have been exempt? | 26:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | They just weren't taking any Railway Postal clerks at that time. | 26:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, okay. | 26:22 |
| Chris Stewart | So you wanted to go into the service because your friends— | 26:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Right. | 26:28 |
| Chris Stewart | —were going into the service. | 26:28 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah (laughs). So they called me up. | 26:30 |
| Chris Stewart | What did you do with your friends in the service? | 26:35 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | None of my friends were with me. (laughs) But I was called up. I had quit the Railway Postal Service before that. I decided I knew that that wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. This cousin that— (laughs) | 26:37 |
| Chris Stewart | The cousin that haunts you. | 26:59 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I went to him and said, "I'd like to go to school." At that time, he was on the Board at Johnson C. Smith. So, I went to Johnson C. Smith from the middle of November to the middle of December, until they got out for Christmas. Then I got my letter telling me to come to be inducted. So in January, I went to be inducted. We went to an Army station, and there they were going to separate you into different groups. I knew all the time I wanted to go in the Navy, because I had gone through this business. I didn't want to sleep in no foxhole. (all laugh) | 27:03 |
| Chris Stewart | There's this thinking, though, you got—yeah. | 27:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. They looked at it in such arbitrary ways. They assigned you to things—They looked at your blood pressure, and if your blood pressure was a certain thing then you were going into the Army. My blood pressure was at—I was destined to the Army and I stopped, "Wait a minute, look at my papers. I volunteered to be here." They said, "You're right. You have a right to choose." I said, "I want the Navy." So, into the Navy I went. I went to Camp Robert Smalls at Great Lakes. | 27:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | They tried their darnedest at that time to get me to go to Bainbridge where they train Messmen. That's of course what all Black—This was just at the time that they were taking Blacks as Seamen. But no, I wanted to go to Great Lakes so I got that also, so off to Great Lakes I went. There, we went to a camp that's called Camp Robert Smalls, named after a Black sailor, and did eight weeks of boot training there with all Blacks. No Whites were there, not even—I guess the overall Commander might have been White or something. | 28:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | After that, they test you and everything and decide where you were to go. I tested out for electronics and they decided to send me to radar school. I went to San Diego, California. That was when I was no longer with Blacks. I was most of the time the only Black that was involved in the Armed Guard. There were no Blacks in the Armed Guard either. So, I served this short time that I was in there after boot camp with basically White fellows. | 29:17 |
| Chris Stewart | What was that like? | 29:57 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It wasn't something that was distasteful or anything. I got along very well. Sometimes you ran into situations. There was one fellow that was in my Armed Guard unit that I did not like worth a cuss. It was a White fellow. He was always making slurs such as, I can remember this vividly, I didn't know anything about shooting craps. He said, "All you boys shoot craps." I knew nothing about it. They were craps shooters now, but all Blacks were supposed to be craps shooters. It was a number of things like that. | 30:06 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I kept my distance from him as much as I could. It was easy for me to do so because within a short length of time I took the test and became a Petty Officer. He wasn't a Petty Officer, so our areas where we were allowed, and that sort of thing, were totally different. So, I didn't come in contact with him for too long a time. | 30:45 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | What kind of officer was he? | 31:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He wasn't an officer. He was a seaman. | 31:15 |
| Chris Stewart | What were you doing? Were you married by now? | 31:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No. | 31:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I had never seen him. | 31:22 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We didn't know one another. Basically, I served on this Army transport ship. I lucked out because life aboard an Army transport ship for an Armed Guardsman, is altogether different than serving in the Navy U. Everybody there in the Armed Guard was almost like an officer. You sat down at a table for dinner. There was a White tablecloth on there. You had fresh milk. Everything that everybody else in the service is dreaming about, you've got all that. You could go to the galley anytime at night. | 31:29 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | They always had big, hot, fresh—It was just a plush kind of life. I had a friend that was serving, a White fellow, an Italian fellow, serving with me. He tried his darnedest to get me to sign up again. The way I got out of the service is on points. Serving aboard this transport ship, we'd go back and forth. Every two weeks we were in either France or England, and then we'd return to New York. Every time we made across and I racked up points, so I was able to get out on the points that I earned for serving in hostile waters. It wasn't hostile then. The war was over. But you still got those points, so I was able to get out. I was anxious. Once the war was over, I was anxious to get out and be about whatever I was going to be about. I knew that one of the things was that I was going back college. | 32:08 |
| Chris Stewart | I'd like to hear a little bit about campus life at your individual colleges. Did you live on campus? Or did you live at home and transport— | 33:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I lived at home. | 33:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay, let's talk about Spelman first. Can you talk to me a little bit about campus life, where you lived, what the student body was like, your friends? | 33:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Campus life was really a protective life. During that time, you didn't have too many privileges because if you knew how to get around some things, you could. They had a curfew. The thing that helped us at Spelman was that we used AU's, Atlanta University, library, which was you had to walk over there. What you could do, you could stay out until 5:00. You could go anyplace you wanted to until 5:00, but you had to sign in at 5:00. Then you could sign back out at 7:00, and stay until 12:00 at the library. What most of the students did was, if they didn't want to come in at 5:00, they'd get somebody to sign them in. | 33:33 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then they'd go wherever they had to go. Then they'd come back at 12:00. Everybody was back by 12:00 because there was a bed check almost. They didn't go to your rooms, but they had what they call a Matron or somebody, a house mother. She was sitting there waiting as you came in. At 12:00, it was kind of impossible not to be there. But until 12:00, you didn't have too much to worry about because in the afternoon she wouldn't see who was signing who in because everybody just came in spasmodically. | 34:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | At 12:00, if your name wasn't already checked in and she hadn't seen you, she would know you were out. That was pretty messy. Then we had the Morehouse fellows. They took classes. Although it was a girls' school, they took classes, and we could take classes over there. | 34:47 |
| Chris Stewart | At Morehouse? | 35:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. In other words, rather than duplicating services, a lot of times they would offer a course at Morehouse instead of at Spelman, or they'd offer one at Spelman instead of at Morehouse. You got to see the guys that way. On Sundays, they would all come over. If you were in your dorm, they could come and stay I think until about 9:00 every night. It wasn't too hard, but it was far more supervised than we have for instance now at Smith, because I work at Smith and those girls have all the fun they want. We didn't have cars on the campus like the girls have now, and that kind of thing. | 35:10 |
| Chris Stewart | What about did you belong to a sorority? | 35:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I'm an AKA. | 35:56 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you belong to a fraternity? | 35:58 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes, I do. Omega. | 36:02 |
| Chris Stewart | I'd like to just ask you one question about AKAs. What kind of qualities did you think the organization looked for in a young woman in order to join the sorority? | 36:10 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | One of the things was academics. You had to have a certain average, like a 2.5. This is like your sophomore year. They look for the best in womanhood, really. | 36:23 |
| Chris Stewart | What do you mean when you say the best in womanhood? | 36:42 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The refined people who were not boisterous, and who were about values, and no kinky stuff. That's what they thought anyway. What happens is different from I think the sororities that your group has, is that ours is not a thing where you were being sophisticated, or if you don't get into the organization you're Miss Nobody, and all the great people are going to that organization. Ours was really about service. | 36:44 |
| Chris Stewart | What kind of services did AKAs provide? | 37:21 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Read to the kids in kindergarten, things like that. Even in those dark days. Spelman had a—I guess it's almost like what Smith has now. It was a daycare center for most of the parents who were teaching there. We went over and helped them, and some of us would go out into the schools and do tutoring, volunteer work. | 37:25 |
| Chris Stewart | What about campus life at Smith? You didn't live on campus, but can you give me a sense of what it was like then? | 37:54 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Not a great deal. First of all, I kind of accelerated the time that I was there. I had the goal of finishing when I was supposed to finish. That is, finish high school in '44, so I was supposed to finish college in '48. My aim was to do that, but in the meantime I didn't get back in school until the summer of '46. I went to school year round for two years, and I was out of there. So, I didn't have a whole lot of time there on campus as such. I did join the fraternity. The fraternity has grown since then. Of course, you had to have a certain grade point average to get into the fraternity. At that time, it was a macho, how much you could drink— | 38:03 |
| Chris Stewart | Those were the qualities that the Omegas are looking for, is that... | 38:57 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It has changed significantly since that time. We had terrible hazing doing that. | 39:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Now that hazing has changed completely. It was terrible. | 39:09 |
| Chris Stewart | Across the board too, White fraternities and sororities, and Black fraternities and sororities, yeah. | 39:16 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | They had a lot of hazing too? | 39:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. I was never a sorority member, but yeah, I heard about it. I heard about it. When did you meet? | 39:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was on my way to my first job. | 39:34 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And my first job. | 39:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I had just graduated that May. | 39:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Is this the job here in Charlotte that his cousin— | 39:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, this is the one he was going—He didn't get a job in Charlotte at first, and I didn't get a job in Charlotte until after we had married and I came here to live. That's when I got one. | 39:44 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 39:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | My city mate also had a job in this location where we were going. | 39:56 |
| Chris Stewart | Your city mate? | 40:01 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. A city mate is somebody from your town. We call them your city mates. We started this in college. We'd say, "My city mate." If somebody came from your town, we'd call them city mates. Willy Wright was my city mate, and there was a girl called Jackie. The three of us—He said, "I can't carry your bags because if I carry Jean's, Jackie will want me to carry hers. If I carry Jackie's, I'll have to carry Jean's. So, I can't carry everybody's. You carry your own." As soon as he got off the bus, he said, "May I help you with your bags?" So, I looked at Willie and said—That's how I met him. | 40:02 |
| Chris Stewart | What job were you both going to? | 40:41 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It just happened we were both going to our first teaching jobs, and were headed for the principal's house. | 40:44 |
| Chris Stewart | The same? | 40:49 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 40:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It was just like fate. I didn't know a thing about him. I'd never seen him before. | 40:52 |
| Chris Stewart | That's amazing. What was the job that you were both going to? | 40:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was going to an English job, and he was going to high school. [indistinct 00:41:12]. | 41:04 |
| Chris Stewart | What high school? | 41:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It was called Oakland High School. It's still there, but I don't think it's a high school. I think they made it an elementary school. It's not far from here. | 41:13 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It's in Lincolnton. | 41:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | North Carolina. | 41:20 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Yeah, that's right. You said you were in Lincolnton. | 41:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's where I met him. I had never seen the man before. | 41:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you begin courting right away? You said three months. You were married in three months. You must have started courting right away. | 41:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He didn't really date me. I don't know what he was doing. Because see, all of us—The other people who were there may have been a year or two older than we were, but it seems like everybody on that faculty was somewhere in their 20s, like 21, 22, somewhere in there. Everybody got really, really friendly. We would go to different houses and play cards, and that kind of thing. It wasn't anything to do in this little one horse town. | 41:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The only thing, the girls got angry with me because he started getting a little friendly with me, and they called me to the side one day and said, "We don't have many men around here. You just can't hogtie this guy down, because if you're going to be our friend, we're going to all share." They didn't like me anymore. By December, we were married. But we married secretly. I didn't tell my parents. | 42:11 |
| Chris Stewart | Why? | 42:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | First of all, I'm going to tell you the real truth, I had been dating somebody since I was in the 9th grade. We had just broken up that summer, and I hadn't seen him or anything. The thing about him that was really kind of crazy, was that when my mother was in high school, his father was working in the school across the street from my grandmother's house. They didn't have a cafeteria, so she fed teachers. When mother graduated from high school, his daddy had given mother this little graduate book. She had always told me about it, but I didn't know where it came from. | 42:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then when I met him, and my family found out who I was talking to, they were all impressed, I guess. I never really went with anybody else. Then I met him, and that was it. That's all I know. When he told me that he wanted to get married secretly, because all his family had gotten married secretly, his sister—Well, the rest of them followed, but the sister had gotten married secretly. He made me think it was a family tradition. I said, "Oh, this is great. Now I won't have to go through any dealings." So, I married him and I went home to my mom that Christmas. We were out for Christmas break. He went home to his parents. | 43:18 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And then I was going to come back down and we were going to stay at the Alexander Hotel, because we had just gotten married and gone straight home. But my brother had a wreck. I just couldn't tell my parents that I'm going to leave them. My daddy was so uptight about my brother's wreck. He wanted him home for Christmas, so he had the ambulance to bring him home Christmas Day, because he wanted him home. He was all beat up and banged up, so he couldn't really walk that well. | 44:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | So, he brought him home in an ambulance and he's going to do all of this. I couldn't tell my daddy I'm leaving to go see my girlfriend. I couldn't say my husband. So, I didn't get down there. Anyway, the funny thing about it, when I finally announced my marriage— | 44:35 |
| Chris Stewart | How long did you keep the secret? | 44:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Easter. | 44:53 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 44:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Well before that. It was a little before Easter because I was supposed to be having a wedding. My daddy and I got these invitations all together. They had met him and they liked him by this time. | 44:55 |
| Chris Stewart | So you were supposed to be having a real wedding between the two of you? | 45:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, that's what my family thought. | 45:10 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, I didn't know anything about it. | 45:14 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Anyway, I told them that. But he knows that family sent out these invitations. What I did, where they had "wedding" I put on there reception. My daddy called me and asked me why was the thing changed, because he had gotten on the printer. He was getting the invitations out. I said, "Daddy, I just can't get married in front of anybody, so what I decided to do is to get married at church on Sunday and then have the reception afterwards." So he went along with that. It was that week that I came home and Daddy said, "Do you have your license? Do you have this? Do you have that?" that I finally told him that I was already married. | 45:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He stormed out of the house, but he was okay. They were waiting on me to get married. He thought I was going to have a little quiet ceremony at the church and then have a reception. So, I had the reception though. They went on and carried that out for me. His mother came up to the reception with all her family, but I hadn't given him enough invitations to give to his friends. I gave him all he asked for. So she said, "The only thing that bothers me," when my mother was asking if she was satisfied with everything, "Is that I didn't get to invite all my friends." My mom said, "Well, what—" | 45:56 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Winston-Salem was having a homecoming game. And although my mother didn't graduate, she still paid all her dues for the alumni and stuff. She stayed close to them and we went to every homecoming game and I was there for the homecoming. He was supposed to come and I had told everybody about him, but nobody believed me. | 0:04 |
| Chris Stewart | What didn't they believe? | 0:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | They had never seen him. And I'm just talking about this guy, you know, and I'm talking. My mom believed it, but I'm talking. My friends didn't believe it. So then when it was time to go to the game, he hadn't gotten there. So as I told you about my daddy, what kind of person he says, he may not even come. We taking you on with us. We're not going to leave you here because you may just be waiting and the guy won't even show up. So I went with my parents to the game reluctantly. I didn't really want to leave because I just knew he was going to come. But it's good I went because he came over to the stadium and while I was sitting there, he announced he wanted me to come to a certain gate. He had to announce over the loud speaker. | 0:24 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And that was the greatest moment in my life, especially since my friends who were sitting there had said I made it up, said that he was a phantom. So he impressed me. I said, "This guy's got a lot, he thinks." (laughs) That's exactly what I said when he, because most people wouldn't have thought about how to get you. But he said, "Would I please meet someone at that gate," and I knew it had to be him because nobody else was out there asking for me. "Oh, this guy thinks." | 1:06 |
| Chris Stewart | How long did you keep the wedding secret from your family? | 1:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He probably told them right away. | 1:44 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No I didn't. Not until getting ready for the reception. (laughs) | 1:47 |
| Chris Stewart | The reception, really? | 1:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Which my daddy thought was going to be a wedding. (laughs) | 1:54 |
| Chris Stewart | That's amazing. That's wonderful. So did you stay then, is it Lincoln— | 1:58 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In Lincolnton. | 2:05 |
| Chris Stewart | —ton? For how long did you stay there? | 2:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two years. | 2:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Teaching? | 2:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 2:11 |
| Chris Stewart | And then where? | 2:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | We went to Graham and we stayed a couple years there. | 2:17 |
| Chris Stewart | Were you teaching high school still? | 2:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And he decided he wanted to go back to school? | 2:18 |
| Chris Stewart | Why did you want to go back to graduate school? Or why did you want to go to graduate school? | 2:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Want to get away from me, I think. I'm serious | 2:29 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Actually it occurred, this was at the time of the Supreme Court decision. | 2:32 |
| Chris Stewart | '54. | 2:40 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And I said I'm not going to teach in a segregated schooling any longer. I'm wanted to get my master's degree. I came back and taught a segregated school. | 2:42 |
| Chris Stewart | I was thinking, what would've made you think that a graduate degree would've led to your teaching in an integrated school? | 2:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Well, I guess you know that you get a higher salary and that sort of thing. I don't know. It was just that, not necessarily that I felt that I would get into an integrated school, I just wasn't going to teach in a segregated school. | 3:06 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, he just wanted to get away from school. | 3:33 |
| Chris Stewart | In Graham? | 3:34 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | But I thought he was getting away from me because he left me. | 3:37 |
| Chris Stewart | To go to school? | 3:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And he went way away. I didn't see him for six months. | 3:43 |
| Chris Stewart | That was hard? | 3:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It wasn't too hard after that. | 3:46 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. | 3:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I got used to that. That was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because that day he got ready to go. It seemed like little—lump comes up in you and it just felt terrible. But I've never felt like that since then. So I think that was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because I thought I was going to die and then I didn't die. So I said, "Oh, good. This is it." | 3:53 |
| Chris Stewart | So you continued to teach at Graham for how long? | 4:16 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Just that year. | 4:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Then did you go up to, you went to Blacksburg? | 4:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Went to Iowa. | 4:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He went to Iowa. | 4:28 |
| Chris Stewart | He went to Iowa. Where did you go? | 4:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | University of Iowa. | 4:28 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | University of Iowa. | 4:28 |
| Chris Stewart | And to do master's work you went to Iowa and then you did your PhD at? | 4:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Virginia Tech. | 4:33 |
| Chris Stewart | At Virginia Tech. So tell me about your graduate work in Iowa. I mean you were now living in Iowa in the north for— | 4:34 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. Out of that segregated section. | 4:49 |
| Chris Stewart | How was that? | 4:52 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I wasn't with him. | 4:54 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | At that time, just before that time, if the state of North Carolina did not offer a program of the sort that you wanted, then they would pay your tuition and other fees for your attend. I applied for that kind money and went to Iowa and when I got out there, North Carolina Central began to offer at the same time they offered a degree in zoology, which I was out there studying. So when I wrote for my money, they sent me, I think it was $32 or something in my bills or something up in the hundreds of dollars. And I had no money. I stayed out there for one semester and a summer and then returned to Charlotte. Totally broke, totally depended upon my wife and my father. | 5:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He really did me in because he had to have a car to go there. | 5:59 |
| Chris Stewart | To Iowa? | 6:03 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And we didn't have but one car and in Graham there wasn't a bus service. So when he left I had to buy a car. I had to get a car, had no way to travel. And then I found out he couldn't pay for his car. So I was paying on my car and his car too. So (laughs) he gave me a fit there for a little while. But I guess he thought he was going to get that money and he just didn't. | 6:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. Yeah. So when you came back, where did you then continue your graduate work? | 6:27 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He went to Michigan. | 6:33 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Later. | 6:35 |
| Chris Stewart | I didn't hear about Michigan, but that was a while. | 6:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. | 6:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. He went to Michigan and that's where he got his master's from. | 6:40 |
| Chris Stewart | So did you stay then here in North Carolina to teach for a while before you went to Michigan? | 6:44 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He'd go in the summer. He learned his lesson. He didn't go any more in the winters, he went in the summer. | 6:48 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, I came back home. I went to work for the post office and worked there for a year. I think it was something like that. And then I taught at West Charlotte High School. | 6:53 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh you did? | 7:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And while working at West Charlotte High School, that's when I started working on the master's at the University of Michigan. And I got the degree there. | 7:06 |
| Chris Stewart | How long did it take you to do it over the summers? | 7:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Three summers. | 7:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, very impressive. | 7:21 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I got mine in two. | 7:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Summers. Where did you receive your masters? | 7:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The New York University. | 7:28 |
| Chris Stewart | So did you do the same thing the summer? | 7:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Just the summer. Two summers. But the reason I went, I went right away right after I graduated because my daddy said for your graduation gift, I had planned for you to go to school and I was going to send you after, because you were dying to teach. So I was going to let you go to school the next year and now you won't ever go. So I wanted to let him know that he didn't know what he was talking about. But he had planned for me to go and get my master's after I worked here. Because at first he wanted me to go when I came out, but I didn't. I was like my son, I told him I was burned out and I wanted to work at here. | 7:33 |
| Chris Stewart | So the first year that you were married, you were studying at New York? | 8:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That summer. | 8:16 |
| Chris Stewart | So really you left him for three months, he didn't leave. (Stewart and Imogene laugh) | 8:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then he turned around and left me for a year! | 8:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No— | 8:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, for a half a year. | 8:22 |
| Chris Stewart | So you spent the first two summers after you were married doing graduate work in New York and then came back. So when did you then go on to Virginia Tech? | 8:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I came back, well, still working at West Charlotte but at that time was when the National Science Foundation was putting a lot of money into upgrading and developing scientists. And so the third summer that I went to Michigan, the summer that I got my master's, as part of my program they sent me to the University of Michigan Biological Station to finish my work. And while there I found in the blood of a snake interesting looking thing at the time I thought was a parasite. And I wrote up what I had found and the National Science Foundation funded me for three additional summers. And so I continued to go up and do research at the University of Michigan's Biological Station. | 8:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | After that, the university hired me to help in teaching Protozoology up there and a new protozoology came to the station. His name's John Cairns and John had worked with Ruth Patrick at the Philadelphia Museum of Natural History. He was an ecologist and on one day we were sitting down just before I got ready to come home and he said, "Bill, if you're going to continue this research business, you are to get your union car." And I said, "John, you crazy. I got a family, we buying a house." I said, "I couldn't possibly do it." He said, "Oh you can. There are ways of doing things." He said, "Ask me what my salary was." And I told him, he said, "If I could get you something comparable to that, would you come to work at Virginia Tech?" I said, "You crazy John. Anybody would jump at something like that." | 9:38 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | That November I got a letter from the department head who's someone I knew from Michigan anyhow. And John had talked with him about my coming to work and getting a PhD. And we went up there in December and talked with them. And a couple months later I was hired to, with the understanding that I was going to teach general biology and I was going to coordinate the biology labs. There were at that time 24 sections, so they needed a coordinator. So they hired me to coordinate. | 10:38 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | They gave me an instructorship and it was with the understanding that I would work towards my degree and get it in three years while I finished in two years. And they weren't ready for me to finish. So they couldn't really, well they did, they promoted me to assistant professor, but they weren't able to pay me the salary that went with it. And after that, that next year they had the money and the budget and paid me the salary and what, two years later I was promoted to associate professor. | 11:29 |
| Chris Stewart | So did you begin graduate school because you were in Blacksburg? I mean, did you go back for your PhD? | 12:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I hadn't thought about a PhD. I saw all those people who were living like 30 and 40 miles coming to Virginia Tech at night and I lived five minutes away. So I said, let me get into the program. But I told them I didn't want to be in a doctoral program. I just wanted to take some courses. And the strange thing about it, they wrote me a letter, I guess about a year after that and said, you can get in if you want to. And I said no. And I took all these courses, this is really true. I took all these courses, not in the doctoral program. And they sent me a letter one day and said I either had to get in or get out because I had all these hours accumulated. And when they sent me that letter, I had two courses I had to take and write my dissertation. And that's when they stopped me, when I was short of two courses. | 12:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Actually one of the courses was almost the same thing that they required me to take but they said I had to take it and I had gotten an A in that course and then I just took the same thing over and the other second one was much easier because the papers weren't as long. So I got two A's for the same course. | 13:06 |
| Chris Stewart | What did you get your doctorate in? | 13:20 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Curriculum and instruction with a cognate in English. | 13:20 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. So you were teaching education at the university level? | 13:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was teaching English. I have 46 hours above the Masters in English. That's what you call a cognate. And I just got some education courses to go with. I didn't even have to use my masters for my doctorate because I had all those hours in English. | 13:35 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. Wow. I'm going to shift a little bit to talk more specifically about your adulthood before civil rights era. You've talked a little bit about specific incidences that you recall from segregation. Do you recall seeing signs? Jim Crow signs? | 13:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, I saw those all the time. Young and old. But as I said, they didn't have much meaning until I got to be an adult. | 14:15 |
| Chris Stewart | How was traveling? Can you talk a little bit about travel in the South during segregation? It sounds like you did quite a bit of traveling before you finally settled here in Charlotte. Can you talk about— | 14:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | We were driving all that time. It was only when I was going to college and not the first year I worked that I got a chance to ride the segregated bus. But in college is when I really experienced it, going from Winston-Salem to Atlanta. | 14:41 |
| Chris Stewart | Would you drive from Winston-Salem to Atlanta? | 14:58 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Not always. Sometimes my daddy took me, but then I guess he figured I was an adult and he didn't take me the last two years. But before that he had taken me. | 15:00 |
| Chris Stewart | What about accommodations for, I mean, did you take trips that were required that you find accommodations and how did you go about finding accommodations? | 15:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, you had those problems of if you needed to go to the restroom in some areas they would only have one restroom and you weren't going to use that and they would direct you to a field or something of that sort, that happened. If you wanted to go overnight somewhere, you had to know some friends or know some friends of friends and you stopped at their homes. There weren't any accommodations or no hotels, anything of that sort. | 15:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | They had one here, Alexander Hotel. | 16:04 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. | 16:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I mean for people who were coming through Charlotte. | 16:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. | 16:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Which was all Black. | 16:12 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. We ran across an advertisement and it wasn't from the Charlotte area, it was actually from even a rural area in the eastern part of North Carolina. It was an advertisement, real small little advertisement in a newspaper. And it was basically publicizing that this is a place that African American travelers could stop. Did you ever see or run across anything like that sort of markers, key markers for where you could, that didn't involve communicating with friends and family? | 16:13 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No. | 16:52 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I tell you what happened once when we had been to a basketball game, we went into a White establishment and they were very courteous to us. They didn't bother us at all. They let us come in, we ate, we did everything. And then when we came back through, that was a sign saying White only. But they didn't say a thing to us, they let us just go. You remember that one I'm talking about? They just let us go in. They didn't say you can't come in here. And all the people who were in there were just, and the people who worked there were just as nice as they could be. But I guess they must have thought about it after we left because then they put up a sign saying White only. And I said, "Bill look, that's where we went that night." That White only. | 16:53 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. What about organizations during your married life? What kinds of organizations were you involved in? Any civic or community organizations? | 17:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Civic, within the Mariners at the church. | 17:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You're talking about now or then? | 18:01 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm talking about then, yeah. | 18:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | There were mostly church organization, had a lot of little church clubs and things. The Women's Art Club and things like that. | 18:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Was the church, your church ever involved, and I mean we're talking about the official pre-civil rights era, but was your church ever involved in I guess what we would call civil rights activities, but taking place prior to that official era that we call civil rights? Or did you know of churches that were? | 18:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes, our congregation was not directly involved, but the Church, the United Presbyterian Church was, therefore a number of our friends who were ministers would be involved in the bus rides such as when the churches were burned down east and they went down to help rebuild the churches that were burned. | 18:48 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Baxter went, didn't he. | 19:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, Baxter. Worsly went. Elo Henderson. | 19:21 |
| Chris Stewart | What kinds of community outreach did your church do? Kind of community activities. | 19:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The only kinds of things I saw was things like Bible school and things with the kids. | 19:45 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Basically I guess that's what it was. | 19:47 |
| Chris Stewart | What about your minister? What do you remember? Or how many different ministers have you had at your church and what would you say would be defining characteristics of each of the ministers? | 19:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I don't remember the three at my church, one is still there. | 20:08 |
| Chris Stewart | What church do you belong to? | 20:13 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I'm talking about in Winston-Salem. I go to the same church, but he's going to tell you about that one. One was Keers and I felt close to him because his sister was my age and I used to spend the night at her house a lot. The other was Kenneth Williams. And I thought he was really a great person because he was a chaplain at Winston-Salem State and he was our preacher. And then we have this person that we have now, Bower, and those are the only three I remember. But they were all very well educated people. College graduates and, well Kenneth had a doctorate and I guess Keers did too. | 20:15 |
| Chris Stewart | What about at your church? | 21:00 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | The pastors were typically in advanced years. The first one that I remember was an old man when I first knew him. He wasn't involved in anything other than just being the pastor of that congregation. The one that followed him was somewhat younger but not a young man. His involvement was through the church united rather than through any congregational type things. He was involved in general assembly and things of that sort and was well respected in the United Presbyterian Church. | 21:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | The one that followed him, I didn't get to know because we were away during the time but I know that he was heavily involved in Boy Scouts and things of that sort. They finally, when he left here, he moved to Ohio and became a scout, a top official out there. The one that followed him was one referred to Worsley who was the youngest of those. And he was involved, personally involved in the Civil Rights movement. But— | 21:52 |
| Chris Stewart | In fact, I think that— | 22:30 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —the church itself wasn't, that is our congregation wasn't involved to any appreciable extent. | 22:32 |
| Chris Stewart | I talked to Robert Morsley on the telephone. | 22:44 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, you did? | 22:47 |
| Chris Stewart | I did attempt to get an interview but he was very busy, so I interviewed Reverend Hawkins who he suggested. | 22:47 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, you've had quite an interview. | 22:53 |
| Chris Stewart | Yes I did. Yes I did. | 22:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We were brought up in this same church also. | 22:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Which Hawkins is this? | 23:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | This Reginald you talking about. | 23:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, Reginald. | 23:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Reginald Hawkins. I think I was there for five hours. | 23:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh yeah, I know he told you a mess. | 23:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes, I know. | 23:09 |
| Chris Stewart | He was there for a long time. | 23:09 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Now, he had real involvement. He has a lot to tell. | 23:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | If you talk with him, you didn't need to talk to anybody else because he knows everything. | 23:15 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah, we talked, the interview really focused on, we tried to focus it on pre- civil rights, although we did talk a lot about civil rights just because the focus of our project is the pre-civil rights era. Did you ever feel at any time during your life like you were being treated like a second class citizen? | 23:16 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. When you rode the back of those buses. | 23:40 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And rode the front of the train. Yeah, of course you definitely knew when you moved across, got to Washington and changed trains and life was all together different. So you felt, anyhow, you knew it was different from that you were coming from, and certainly there were signs of White water, Colored water and of course you knew what was going on around you. You knew of areas such as, I remember going down east that people that lived in this area just didn't go down east because it was understood. | 23:44 |
| Chris Stewart | East North Carolina? | 24:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, it was understood that that was Klan land. And of course when you went down there you'd see signs indicating "Klan meeting here" or "This is Klan country," that kind of thing. It wasn't a hidden thing. It was well enough. | 24:27 |
| Chris Stewart | In fact that's one of the things— | 24:44 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But you afforded it. | 24:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. That's one of the things that we know we're going to, I mean, I don't know how much people are going to be willing to talk about it, but that's certainly one of the issues that we're really concerned about attempting to do some uncovering when we're done with his. | 24:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Well I tell you the thing— | 25:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | That's why I asked why were you going down. | 25:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. I mean, and like I said, we're really unsure about how, I mean this is really painful stuff and how much people are going to want to remember that kind of thing. | 25:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Open up and talk about it. | 25:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Well, I tell you, I don't know when I noticed this, I guess it had been there all the time, but I wasn't aware of it. And then one day I looked, here in Charlotte, the bathrooms and it had "Ladies," and where the Blacks went—in Belk's that's where it was—it had "Women." And that, I guess it had always been like that, but it was just one day that I noticed that. And it was just a little before all this integration came about, but I had never noticed it before but it said ladies and I guess they had a lounge and everything nice for them. And this little dinky place down in the basement of Belk's said women. So I didn't check to see if the thing said "Men" and "Gentlemen," but I did notice it said "Women." So that bothered me a lot. | 25:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Can you recall growing up having any heroes or heroines, either people that you knew or people that you didn't know that were maybe national heroes or heroines? | 26:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Probably. But it just doesn't come to you right now. | 26:29 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. Joe Louis. | 26:35 |
| Chris Stewart | I was going to say— | 26:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Everybody loved Joe Louis. (laughs) | 26:36 |
| Chris Stewart | —sports figures or— | 26:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Joe Louis was the great. | 26:37 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 26:38 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Practically everyone loved Roosevelt. You didn't look upon him, he was president. You didn't look upon him as a White man president. He was president and he was doing something about changing the economics for lots of people that was well known. | 26:43 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess Nat King Cole. | 27:04 |
| Chris Stewart | Why? | 27:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I don't really know. But I just thought he was great. I guess I liked his music. And then Marian Anderson came down school once and I was impressed there when I was at Spellman. | 27:12 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. Did she come to sing or speak? | 27:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Sing, she gave a concert. | 27:28 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. | 27:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And while we were at Spellman, we had a lot of intellectual things of that nature. | 27:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, I remember Jesse Owens came to Second Ward when I was in high school. | 27:40 |
| Chris Stewart | To the high school, really? | 27:44 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. I also can't think of the president of Howard University. | 27:55 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh. | 28:04 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I can't think of his name. | 28:04 |
| Chris Stewart | It's just on the tip of my tongue. | 28:04 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No, but he also came there when I was in high school in about the 10th grade or so. I remember one of the telling things about his speech that he made. He said, "White people want to know what do I want and I tell them I want everything they have, including their diseases." And I didn't really understand it immediately. Why would you want— | 28:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You thought he was crazy, huh? | 28:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —his diseases? And then finally someone told me or it dawned on me, if you want your disease cured it better very well be. Yeah. | 28:37 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. | 28:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But I always remembered he was having made that statement. | 28:44 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was crazy about Benjamin Mays from Morehouse too. I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he was really great and he was such an elegant speaker with the message. | 28:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Right, right. It sounds like you were exposed to a lot of the "race leaders," people who, I mean, I didn't realize that people were traveling around as much as they were, especially to high schools, that's very impressive. Well, I've run out of questions. | 29:01 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh. | 29:26 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you have anything else that you feel is important that needs to be on this tape and transcript that I haven't asked you? | 29:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I'm trying to think back to pre-civil rights and the school that we went to work at that was pretty civil rights. | 29:36 |
| Chris Stewart | The school where? | 30:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In Lincolnton, that first school, it was a very small school. Although Jean indicated the buildings still then still being used. They upgraded it considerably but I hadn't, we even hadn't experienced outdoor toilets and they had outhouses for this school along with the principal. We were the high school, the three of us taught everything. | 30:03 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 30:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, in that school. | 30:37 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 30:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, Charles Thorpe taught too. | 30:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | He taught one course, he taught geometry. But he was an eighth grade teacher. | 30:45 |
| Chris Stewart | Charles Thorpe? | 30:49 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 30:52 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm not familiar with Lincolnton, where is it located? | 30:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It's what? 40 miles west of here. It's in Lincoln County. If you left here, you would go through Gaston County and the next county is Lincoln County. | 30:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Was it mainly a rural school or did it draw from a rural zone? | 31:16 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It was a little town there, yes, mainly from. | 31:24 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, it was weird to me because in Winston I had not experienced anything like that. And here in Charlotte he had not experienced anything like that. | 31:25 |
| Chris Stewart | So how did you adjust? How did you make the adjustment? | 31:33 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess because we were so much in love with one another we didn't notice all the hardships. | 31:38 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | But we were only there for two years. And one of the things too, we were in the city school. The county school, well even we I think would start late, but the county school would begin— | 31:42 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, that was strange. | 31:58 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —in August and then it would close down just at the harvest season. But that wasn't happening in the White schools, it happened in the Black school. | 32:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Did the city school, did your school do that as well? | 32:10 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | When we were growing up? | 32:12 |
| Chris Stewart | No, I mean in Lincolnton when you were teaching? | 32:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No. | 32:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No, we didn't do that. | 32:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | The town school didn't. I think it was the county school. | 32:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I tell you what we did notice was that we had to play in the White football field. And when they weren't having a game, we had to schedule the Black games so that we could play in their field. And that was a little difficult I thought because they didn't really have a place for the guys to play football. And yet they wanted a football team and they didn't have the good equipment. They must have had the beat up equipment that the White students had had. But this was at that particular school where we were. Because that didn't happen when I was in high school, in Winston-Salem we didn't have that problem. But we had it when we got to that school in Lincolnton. I learned more about what was going on and the hardships in Lincolnton and a little bit traveling to Atlanta. And I really saw some terrible, it was just terrible. | 32:13 |
| Chris Stewart | From having talked to people, I mean we're getting a sense of the real leadership role that teachers play in neighborhoods and communities. What was it like for this young couple to enter into that kind of role in a small town in North Carolina? Did you feel like you were doing that? | 33:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Not really. We were. When you 21 or 22— | 33:41 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | People referred to you with respect. Old people, you were mister and this, but you didn't, at least we didn't, I didn't feel any, although I knew that people looked upon teachers as being different. In fact, I remember a situation that's very close to home. My brother happened to have gone into a club and a teacher was in there having a drink and he thought that was the most awful thing but he knew that I drank. | 33:45 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. | 34:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | So I don't know. I guess when you are on that other side, the one that others are looking up to, you may not really know that they are giving you that kind of- | 34:27 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Now I guess you'd have to ask them how they felt because you don't realize it and you don't think anybody's looking up to you. But if you were looking up to somebody, you would realize that. | 34:39 |
| Chris Stewart | So you don't really feel a sense of responsibility toward? | 34:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I didn't, but I guess they thought that we had the responsibility. Just like with you're preacher, he probably doesn't feel the way you feel about him. | 34:56 |
| Chris Stewart | How many students did you have that first? | 35:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Not many. It was a little school. It was a little place. | 35:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | The total high school was what? 100. | 35:16 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | 100 or something like that. | 35:17 |
| Chris Stewart | Had to be small with only three, sometimes four teachers. | 35:23 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And of course then too, you had an attendance problem. Youngsters in the area didn't attend school well. | 35:29 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That was in that little town. | 35:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Had a pretty good enrollment but you didn't have good attending. | 35:49 |
| Chris Stewart | Why? | 35:50 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Some boys just came to play football I think. When the football season was over they didn't want to go to school anymore. But it wasn't like that in— | 35:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Everywhere, no. | 36:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | —it was just in Lincoln. Because at Atkins we went to school and if you didn't go, you got into big trouble because they would really check you out. And at Second Ward they would check you out too. In other words, the only thing the teachers had to go out to the home sometimes to find out why you weren't there. | 36:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Lincolnton was probably pretty typical of most rural type communities. | 36:21 |
| Chris Stewart | What about Graham? Was it comparable to Graham? | 36:28 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Was more progressive then Lincolnton. | 36:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It was far more progressive. | 36:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Can you talk to me a little bit about the difference between the two? When you say progressive, what do you mean by that? | 36:35 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Well we had a nice new building when I got there for one thing. | 36:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | They were more educated people in the community. | 36:47 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah, I guess that was it. Because a lot of the people in Graham that they had kids in school but they were teachers and that kind of thing. And I don't remember anybody having a child in school in Lincolnton who was teaching. I mean, I know there must have been some, but I don't recall. And they were little narrowminded people in Lincolnton and Graham, they were wide open and they didn't look upon somebody as you are bad because you're doing this or you are doing that. You could do whatever you wanted to do. And that was just two years different. So I don't know whether it was the time span or whether it was what. | 36:52 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | School was much larger. School was much larger. | 37:40 |
| Chris Stewart | What was it size? Do you recall? | 37:44 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | About seven, 800. | 37:50 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, probably seven. | 37:50 |
| Chris Stewart | Wow. That's a large school. | 37:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It was a big school, yeah. | 37:58 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And for instance, well just one person, Miss Keck had three kids going there and she was teaching. It's that kind of thing that was existing in Graham. | 37:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Sounded like you enjoyed your time at Graham a lot more than— | 38:10 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | If he hadn't left me, I probably would've still been up there. But after he left I didn't want to work there anymore. | 38:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | And we still have ties with the people in Graham. In fact, we've been invited to two reunions that are being held at summer and yet we were only there for five years. | 38:22 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? Wow. Put down roots quickly there, didn't you? | 38:36 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I really did. | 38:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And some of those, I gave him a birthday party last year and one of the ladies from there came down and I met a teacher who was there when we were there and she was also here. So a lady from Graham came who had lived there originally and somebody I met who was an outsider came. So we had a lot of ties with that place. But they were just well educated people who thought big, not narrow minded people. | 38:41 |
| Chris Stewart | Set their sights high. Well I tell you what, I have some biographical information that I need to collect from the both of you. It's a form that I need to fill out to accompany the tape. Basically it's basic biographical information about you, your parents, your siblings, and then information about your activities. Any activities you were involved with. So if you don't mind, I'm not quite sure how we can do this. I can fill both forms out at once and we can just sort of do it the way I've been doing it thus far. | 39:16 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Because I'm going to have to change my mother in a few minutes. | 39:53 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Okay. | 39:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It's about that time since she wears diapers. | 39:57 |
| Chris Stewart | I used to work in a hospital for five years while I was— | 40:01 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | So you know what it's like then? And they'll break down if you don't change them. | 40:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. I'll get both of my forms out so that I can do. | 40:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Dido you cut your tape off yet? | 40:17 |
| Chris Stewart | No. | 40:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, I was going to ask you something, but it's not. | 40:17 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, I can. [INTERRUPTION 00:40:19] | 40:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | So anyway, this little guy told my son, he saw the bottom of his foot. We were down at the lake and he said, "Oh, you have a suntan, your foot's the same color of mine under the bottom." And the little boy said, my son said, "Yeah, yeah, I have a suntan." He didn't know what he was talking about. So the next day the mother must have carried his son in and talked to him because when the little boy came back to our house, he said, "I am white and you are brown." And my son said, "No, I am white and you are brown." And the little feller said, "Okay." (all laugh) | 40:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. (all laugh) | 41:03 |
| Chris Stewart | That's perfect. I think you're absolutely right. | 41:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And that really happened. | 41:10 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, little kids don't grow up knowing about, they don't grow up. They grow up knowing that you're different, maybe. But what does that mean? It means you have a suntan. | 41:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's what he thought. | 41:25 |
| Chris Stewart | I mean, what's a suntan? | 41:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And my son didn't know what a suntan was. So he said "Uh-huh." | 41:31 |
| Chris Stewart | Was that tan. Right. Yeah. | 41:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And those were some really nice people because they treated us nice the whole time we were living next door to them. But we were in Michigan at this time and they were out of Mavis. | 41:37 |
| Chris Stewart | But it's still, I mean it's still important. I mean it was still important for them anyway, to make sure that their child knew not only that there was a difference, but what the larger meaning of that difference was, which is what's sad. | 41:47 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | And I'm sure they told him because that first day he said nothing, that next day he made it clear. | 42:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. | 42:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | So they told him. And they probably don't know until this day that I know they told him. | 42:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, let's see if we can do this. | 42:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. | 42:21 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. First we starting— | 42:22 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You need to write with both hands. | 42:26 |
| Chris Stewart | Yes. Well I wish I could, I'm not ambidextrous. First is full name. | 42:26 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Which one you started? | 42:34 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm just going to start with you. I'm going to go back and forth like this. Okay. | 42:35 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | It's William Henry and the last name is spelled Y-O-N-G-U-E. And I was a junior and I still use it although my dad's dead. | 42:37 |
| Chris Stewart | And your full name? | 42:56 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Imogene. I-M-O-G-E-N-E. Turner. | 43:03 |
| Chris Stewart | Is that your maiden name? | 43:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 43:11 |
| Chris Stewart | Turner, did you say? | 43:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | T-U-R-N-E-R. Yeah. | 43:12 |
| Chris Stewart | And your current address is 6101 Verndale. And your home phone number? | 43:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | 567-6227. | 43:39 |
| Chris Stewart | Sorry. Now what name would each of you like to have appear in any written materials that comes out of this or in the transcript? How would you like your name to appear? The same as it is up above or— | 43:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I always call myself Dr. Jean. J-E-A-N. | 44:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Go on, tell her why. | 44:28 |
| Chris Stewart | Go on. | 44:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | When I was a little girl, I was a kid who lived across the street from me and her name was Imogene, and she was a nasty little mean girl. It wasn't nice at all. When people would see me, they would call me Imogene and I would cry because I didn't want to be, everybody said she was a bad girl. And so my mom said her name is Jean, her name is Jean. And my family picked up Jean and that was it. I never, and if you call me something else, it doesn't seem right because that's all my parents ever called me. | 44:30 |
| Chris Stewart | It's Jean. Would you like the same? | 44:57 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah, the same would be fine. | 45:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Haven't ever tried to do this like this before. I'm not quite as. Date of birth. | 45:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You won't work yourself out of a job because they'll teach you because you can do two interviews in one. | 45:28 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. Actually that is something that we really do need to do, especially here in Charlotte, I tell you. Okay. Date of birth? | 45:38 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | August 21st, 1926. | 45:43 |
| Chris Stewart | Born the day before my mother. | 45:48 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh really? | 45:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | November the 4th, 1926. | 45:49 |
| Chris Stewart | And your place of birth? | 45:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He's Charlotte now, Winston-Salem. | 45:59 |
| Chris Stewart | And the name of your parents? | 46:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Your father's date of birth? | 0:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | July—What? | 0:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | 1903. | 0:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | July 17, 1903. | 0:08 |
| Chris Stewart | When did he die? | 0:08 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | What? 1959? | 0:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Uh-uh. It couldn't have been '59. | 0:09 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Not '59. He died, what? In— | 0:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | —since it's been— | 0:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | '75. | 0:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | —that year. Must have been about '75. | 0:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Your father was born where? | 0:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In Charlotte. | 0:48 |
| Chris Stewart | What was his occupation? | 0:48 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I remember other than—the last thing that he did, he was a porter for Eckerd drug store. | 0:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I thought he worked at the Charlotte Letterwriting Company. | 1:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | That was before he went to work for Eckerd. | 1:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Your mother's name? | 1:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mildred Lenore Grigg. | 1:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Your mother's name was Lenore? | 1:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. G-R--I-G-G. | 1:18 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's why you liked my son's girlfriend? | 1:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Huh? | 1:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's why you liked it? My son has a girl named Lenore. | 1:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, really? | 1:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. I didn't realize his mother's name was— | 1:30 |
| Chris Stewart | When was her date of birth? Do you recall? | 1:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | November the, what? | 1:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | 28th. | 1:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. The 28th. What year? | 1:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I just know your dad's because he's the same as my mama's. That's the only reason I knew it was 1903. | 1:50 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. It's something like 1905 or something like that. | 1:52 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you recall the date when she died? What year? | 2:01 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | What year? | 2:03 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | July 4th, 1953. July the 3rd. | 2:03 |
| Chris Stewart | She was born? | 2:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In Charlotte. | 2:15 |
| Chris Stewart | Her occupation? | 2:21 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | She didn't have a regular job. Let's see, she worked for a while as a domestic. She worked for a while as an elevator operator at a hotel. The last thing that she did was, what? Worked for— | 2:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | The Faisons, I guess. | 2:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Harrison's. She was a domestic. | 2:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Where'd I get the Faisons from? | 2:49 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Faison's her daughter's— | 2:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh. | 2:49 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —husband's name. | 2:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, okay. | 2:49 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. How about your mother's name? | 2:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Cordelia, C-O-R-D-E-L-I-A. | 2:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Beautiful name. | 3:01 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Hooper. She was a Turner after she married my daddy. | 3:04 |
| Chris Stewart | What was her maiden name? | 3:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Hooper. | 3:11 |
| Chris Stewart | Hooper? | 3:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. H-O-O-P-E-R. Hooper. | 3:12 |
| Chris Stewart | What was her date of birth? | 3:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | November 24th, 1903. | 3:19 |
| Chris Stewart | And she died? She's— still there. | 3:24 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Wait a minute. (laughs) | 3:30 |
| Chris Stewart | Sorry. (Imogene laughs) I apologize. Where was she born? | 3:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | In Statesville. | 3:31 |
| Chris Stewart | Your mother's occupation? | 3:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | She never worked. | 3:39 |
| Chris Stewart | Housewife? | 3:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 3:42 |
| Chris Stewart | That's an occupation. Your father's name? | 3:43 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | LE. L and a E, that's it. L, a little L, and a little E. That's his name. Turner. | 3:47 |
| Chris Stewart | His date of birth? | 4:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | May the 21st, 1900. | 4:04 |
| Chris Stewart | When did he die? | 4:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | September the—What was the day before Labor Day? I know it was 1979. | 4:13 |
| Chris Stewart | That's fine. He was born where? | 4:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | In—he told so many stories about that place where he came from. Norman Park or something, some crazy place in Georgia. | 4:30 |
| Chris Stewart | His occupation? | 4:47 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Dental technician. | 4:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. | 4:58 |
| Chris Stewart | You're doing really good. Now we're onto sisters and brothers and we'll start with you. | 4:59 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. | 5:06 |
| Chris Stewart | In order of appearance. | 5:06 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. A sister—You want names? | 5:07 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 5:13 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | If they're dead, you don't want them? | 5:14 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 5:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Norma Isabelle Yongue Holden, H-O-L-D-E-N. | 5:16 |
| Chris Stewart | Is she born here in Charlotte? | 5:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Charlotte. Robert James Yongue Senior. He has a son who is a junior. He was born in Charlotte. What else did you want? | 5:33 |
| Chris Stewart | This is fine. | 5:54 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. The next one? | 5:59 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 5:59 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Who's next? MC. Mildred Catherine Young Mosely. M-O-S-E-L-Y. Charlotte. The next one Charles Milton Young. That's it. | 6:03 |
| Chris Stewart | You're the first? | 6:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 6:40 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 6:40 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. I'm the first. Okay. My brother was Biavan, B-I-A-V-A-N, Turner. | 6:45 |
| Chris Stewart | Where was he born? | 7:03 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | In Winston-Salem. My sister's Cordelia Turner. She was born in Winston-Salem. | 7:04 |
| Chris Stewart | Was she married? | 7:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Uh-uh. | 7:20 |
| Chris Stewart | Children? | 7:24 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | William Henry Yongue, the fourth. | 7:27 |
| Chris Stewart | There's a strong tradition in this house. When was his birth date? | 7:38 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Uh— | 7:50 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | November 15th. | 7:50 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | My thoughts said December the 10th, out of [indistinct 00:07:59]. | 7:50 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | That's the day we got married, December 10th. | 8:01 |
| Chris Stewart | November 15th? | 8:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. 19 what? | 8:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | '58. | 8:04 |
| Chris Stewart | Was he born here in Charlotte? | 8:12 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes. | 8:18 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's all. | 8:18 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you have any grandchildren? | 8:19 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes. | 8:22 |
| Chris Stewart | How many? We don't actually need to know the names. | 8:23 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | One grandson. | 8:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Next is the residential history and as typical academics, you have had a long residential history. Why don't we do it by state? When you lived in North Carolina for a certain amount of time, if you've left the state then we'll write that down as a different residential history, I'll put North Carolina— | 8:32 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. North Carolina would be nice. We don't have many more. | 9:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, I'll put down North Carolina and just instead of listing the specific streets and things, I'll list the towns in North Carolina and just say that you were here in North Carolina for X number of years in these towns. All right? | 9:14 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. | 9:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Does that sound okay? | 9:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. | 9:36 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. We're starting with— | 9:37 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | We're starting where? | 9:38 |
| Chris Stewart | At the beginning. | 9:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | At birth? | 9:39 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 9:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. Charlotte. How long a time are we staying in that place? | 9:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. Say how long you were there? 'Cause he don't even know. Sometimes. | 9:56 |
| Chris Stewart | Why don't we say—I know, but then if we say a really short period of time, then you're going to have a list about a mile long of residences, right? | 10:00 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. | 10:08 |
| Chris Stewart | I don't know. Where would you make the cut-off or the kinds of—You know? | 10:10 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Two years. | 10:17 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 10:17 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two years where? | 10:20 |
| Chris Stewart | If you were any place for two years, it'll go down here. If it was less than two years, then it won't. Is that all right? | 10:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | That's fine. | 10:31 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. We started with Charlotte. | 10:33 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Then next would be Lincolnton. Then Graham. | 10:35 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then Charlotte again. | 10:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yeah. Back to Charlotte. Then to Blacksburg, Virginia. | 10:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Then back home. That's it. | 11:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. For the first—Before it was—You moved to Blacksburg, Virginia what year? | 11:11 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | '72. | 11:17 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | '70. | 11:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I moved there in '72 then. | 11:23 |
| Chris Stewart | You moved there in '70? | 11:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | '70. Yeah. | 11:25 |
| Chris Stewart | You were there for how long? | 11:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | For 13 years. | 11:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Until 1983? | 11:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 11:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Then you returned to Charlotte in 1983 to present. 1926 to 1970—These places. Okay. Now I'm ready for your turn. | 11:25 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. Winston-Salem. Then the rest of them follow the same ones that he has. | 11:25 |
| Chris Stewart | But you were in Spelman for how long? | 11:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, you count that too? Four years. Yeah. Atlanta. Okay. | 11:28 |
| Chris Stewart | Then beginning at Lincolnton? | 12:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 12:17 |
| Chris Stewart | I can't decide if I look forward to the transient life of academics or not. | 12:29 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, everybody doesn't do this. My sister has been in one school, one place 30 years. | 12:35 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? | 12:41 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 12:41 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, that's good to know because I'm—Although, I like the travel but— | 12:42 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | See, my husband was the traveling guy. He never stayed put. | 12:50 |
| Chris Stewart | What were the years that you were at Spelman? | 12:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | '40—I finished in '48, whatever comes up— | 12:56 |
| Chris Stewart | You finished in '48? | 13:00 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | '44 to '48 I guess it is. | 13:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. That just helps me place the rest of it. Okay. Now we're at your education history, starting from Alexander Street School. | 13:04 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You sure do want to know a lot. | 13:12 |
| Chris Stewart | We're thorough researchers. You went to there through sixth grade? | 13:20 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes. | 13:30 |
| Chris Stewart | Then Second Ward? | 13:30 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 13:34 |
| Chris Stewart | Then Johnson C. Smith? | 13:40 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Yes. | 13:42 |
| Chris Stewart | What degree did you receive? | 13:48 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | A bachelor of science. | 13:49 |
| Chris Stewart | Then Ohio? | 13:55 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Iowa, it was, but— | 13:58 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm sorry. | 14:01 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | —I didn't get a degree there— | 14:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He wasn't there but a year and a half. I mean, a half a year. | 14:02 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Unless you want all those little summer institutes and things. | 14:07 |
| Chris Stewart | Michigan? | 14:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Michigan was the one where I went— | 14:14 |
| Chris Stewart | Is this University of Michigan or Michigan State? | 14:14 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | University of Michigan. | 14:14 |
| Chris Stewart | University of Michigan is the place to go now if you want to do African American history. | 14:21 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | It is. | 14:26 |
| Chris Stewart | It is the place to do African American history. Yeah. You got a masters? | 14:27 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 14:34 |
| Chris Stewart | In zoology? | 14:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Zoology. | 14:40 |
| Chris Stewart | Then Virginia Tech. | 14:45 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Virginia Tech. | 14:45 |
| Chris Stewart | Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor, Michigan? | 14:45 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Ann Arbor. | 14:45 |
| Chris Stewart | Had to just to think for just a minute. Your PhD was in? | 15:11 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Well, it was— | 15:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Zoology? Isn't it? | 15:16 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Actually it was ecology of freshwater protozoans. | 15:19 |
| Chris Stewart | They sure do want you to specialize, don't they? | 15:25 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | You could say it's ecology. | 15:25 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 15:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | You through with him now? | 15:35 |
| Chris Stewart | The education stuff. Now it's your turn. | 15:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. | 15:40 |
| Chris Stewart | 14th Street? | 15:42 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 15:50 |
| Chris Stewart | Was that one through six? | 15:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Uh-uh. That was one through eight. | 15:57 |
| Chris Stewart | One through eight? Then what was the name of your—Did you say Atkins? | 15:58 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Atkins High. Nine through 12. | 16:04 |
| Chris Stewart | Spelman. That was a bachelor of arts? | 16:12 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 16:20 |
| Chris Stewart | New York University, did you say? Was that in the city? | 16:24 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. Down in Washington—whatever you call that place. | 16:31 |
| Chris Stewart | You got your masters? | 16:37 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | From New York University. That's where I got it from. | 16:38 |
| Chris Stewart | What did you get your masters in? | 16:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | In English. I got a double major in undergrad. | 17:02 |
| Chris Stewart | In what? | 17:02 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | English and history. | 17:02 |
| Chris Stewart | Your PhD was in? | 17:09 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Curriculum and instruction with a cognate English. | 17:12 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you say English or reading? | 17:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | English. A cognate in English is what I said. | 17:24 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Okay. Now we're at work history, and what we would like is the current and most important previous jobs that you've had. | 17:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Current and most important? Current job is—How do you want it? What I'm doing? Who I worked for? | 17:44 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, we have job, employer, place, and date. | 17:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Okay. Job is a lead instructional specialist and authorized state department NCDPI, Department of Public Instruction, software technical center. What else? | 17:58 |
| Chris Stewart | This is in Charlotte? | 18:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. Well, it's in Monroe now. We just recently moved to Monroe. | 18:43 |
| Chris Stewart | How long have you been— | 18:48 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two weeks. | 18:49 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No. No. How long have I been with them—Nine years. | 18:51 |
| Chris Stewart | 1980— | 18:53 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | '83 to the present. | 19:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. The most important jobs to you previous to this job? | 19:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Associate professor. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg. | 19:13 |
| Chris Stewart | That was from? | 19:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | What was that? Oh, it's my mom's snore. In the room next to us. | 19:32 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | From 1970, 1983. | 19:32 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 19:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Next to that was—What comes first, the job? | 19:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 19:56 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Science teacher, West Charlotte High School, Charlotte, North Carolina. Next to that, I guess would be science teacher, Graham North Carolina. | 19:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | How many you got to give? | 20:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | She didn't give a number. Significant jobs. | 20:18 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. Significant jobs. Okay. | 20:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Five years ought to be significant. That's all that I worked at for any length of time. I worked at the US Post Office, served in the Navy. | 20:34 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, yeah. | 20:44 |
| Chris Stewart | It's your turn. Starting from your most current job and going back for the most important jobs for you. | 20:48 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Johnson C. Smith, English professor. | 20:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Did you know Ione Jones? | 21:08 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I know the name— | 21:12 |
| Chris Stewart | Know of her—She was teaching way before your time but she was an English professor at Johnson C. Smith as well. | 21:15 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Charlie Jones' mother? | 21:20 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. I interviewed her yesterday. | 21:22 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, you did? | 21:28 |
| Chris Stewart | Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful woman. It was her birthday yesterday and she celebrated with an interview. | 21:28 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, was it really? | 21:29 |
| Chris Stewart | It was really wonderful. Yeah. How long did you work at J.C. Smith? | 21:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | This is my seventh year. | 21:38 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 21:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. | 21:46 |
| Chris Stewart | Previous to that? | 21:48 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Barber-Scotia College. | 21:50 |
| Chris Stewart | She had all kinds of things to tell me about Barber-Scotia College. She just loves it. | 21:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yes. I think she graduated from there. | 21:56 |
| Chris Stewart | She did. She went to Barber College in Alabama when it merged with Scotia. | 21:59 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Oh, really? | 22:07 |
| Chris Stewart | Very early. She's 84 years old. Then she did her last year when it was Barber Scotia and she just can't say enough good things about it. English professor again? | 22:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Mm-hmm. | 22:24 |
| Chris Stewart | That's in Livingstone? No, I mean in Concord? | 22:28 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Concord. | 22:42 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm thinking Livingstone is in Concord. | 22:42 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | People in Livingstone would kill you. | 22:42 |
| Chris Stewart | Really. How long? | 22:42 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two years. | 22:43 |
| Chris Stewart | Right previous to the job that you had at Johnson C. Smith? | 22:45 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | In fact, I was on a contract when I went to that one. After mother had her stroke, I went over there. | 22:47 |
| Chris Stewart | All right. | 22:54 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Writing coordinator for—How do you say it, Bill? Writing coordinator for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg school system. | 22:56 |
| Chris Stewart | How long did you do that? | 23:05 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Two years. | 23:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. | 23:19 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | There's something not coming out right. I was at Barber-Scotia two years, and then started in '83. I was at Smith—Must have been at Smith six years instead of seven. I'm trying to get the 10 years—I guess it's coming out right. It might have been six years at Smith. I'm not sure about that. Okay. I know I was there two years with them and then two years at Barber-Scotia and six years or seven at Smith. I've been here and some places a lot. You forget. | 23:33 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. | 24:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Okay. What else I got to have? | 24:15 |
| Chris Stewart | Whatever you want to have. This is whatever you want to have on your job. | 24:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's okay. | 24:22 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Okay. Have you ever received any awards, honors, or held any offices? | 24:23 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh, Lord. I don't even know. | 24:39 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | In what? | 24:39 |
| Chris Stewart | In anything. People have been giving me community awards, church awards— | 24:40 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He has it that long—That's why said, "Oh, Lord." That's why I said it. He could tell you from now until in the morning. I'm serious. He's done everything. What do you like doing best? | 24:46 |
| Chris Stewart | Right. I mean, that would be—What's most important to you would be the best thing to— | 25:03 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | [indistinct 00:25:11] the Omega fraternity, he has all kinds of things. | 25:07 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | I was an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. | 25:23 |
| Chris Stewart | A fellow? | 25:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Mm-hmm. | 25:31 |
| Chris Stewart | The American Institute for the Advancement of Science. | 25:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | American Association. | 25:42 |
| Chris Stewart | Association. | 25:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Advancement of Science. I received an award from the National Association of Biology Teachers, outstanding biology teacher North Carolina. I was president for eight years of the Second Ward National Alumni Foundation and been the treasurer ever since. | 25:43 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Elder in the Presbyterian church. I guess that's enough. A lot of organizations, different kinds of jobs. [indistinct 00:27:16]. | 26:39 |
| Chris Stewart | There's a whole other section for organizations. | 27:15 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | What was that you were doing then? | 27:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Honors, awards, or offices. | 27:22 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Oh. | 27:26 |
| Chris Stewart | Which it's your turn now. | 27:26 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was cited as who's who in South and Southwest America. It was 1993. | 27:33 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. I'm sorry. Can you repeat what the—Who's who in? | 27:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | South and Southwest America. | 27:38 |
| Chris Stewart | I'm going to have to look that up. | 27:46 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was president of—Not president. Vice president of Delta Kappa Gamma international. Vice president for AKA. I received a fellowship from the University of—Pennsylvania University. What you call those, the NE—National—What was that grant I got to go to Maryland? | 28:08 |
| Chris Stewart | NEH? | 28:51 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. | 28:51 |
| Chris Stewart | For? | 28:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | University of Maryland for English. I think that's about all. | 28:58 |
| Chris Stewart | Your current religious denomination? | 29:06 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Protestant, Presbyterian. | 29:06 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Same. You married? | 29:06 |
| Chris Stewart | No. I'm not. Going to finish school first. Your current church affiliation is? | 29:30 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | First United Presbyterian. | 29:43 |
| Chris Stewart | Your past church membership? | 29:43 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I was a Baptist. | 29:57 |
| Chris Stewart | What was the name of your church? Do you recall? | 29:57 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | We were just saying the other day, Bill? | 30:05 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Metropolitan, isn't it? | 30:05 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. | 30:05 |
| Chris Stewart | Do you have any past memberships? | 30:18 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | No. | 30:19 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Here's the section, organizations, please list organizations to which you have belonged, civic, community, educational, political organizations. Obviously, we'll be selective here as well since I only have one pad of paper for my notes. But the ones that are most important to you. | 30:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Society of Protozoologists. | 30:50 |
| Chris Stewart | As a person who is not a scientist— | 30:54 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | National Association of Biology—If you want to use the abbreviations, then NAB, AAAS, American Microscopical Society. Omega Psi Phi fraternity. | 31:08 |
| Chris Stewart | Got to get that in. | 31:35 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Sigma Pi Phi. Have you talked to anyone else who said they were a member of Sigma Pi Phi? | 31:40 |
| Chris Stewart | Uh-uh. No, I haven't. | 31:45 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Of course, [indistinct 00:31:58]. Presbyterian Marianists. How many more lines do you have? | 31:57 |
| Chris Stewart | I have one more line. | 32:31 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | One more line? Let's see. I don't know. | 32:32 |
| Chris Stewart | We'll let you rest for a minute. This is a lot of work. It's more work for you than it is for me, I realize that. | 32:45 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Sigma Tau Delta, English Honorary Society. | 32:54 |
| Chris Stewart | Sigma Tau. | 32:59 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | T-A-U. Delta. Delta Kappa Gamma. AKA, and what is this—Virginia Association of Educational Opportunity Programs. You see why I couldn't remember it. | 33:00 |
| Chris Stewart | Virginia Association of Educational— | 33:39 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Opportunity Programs. | 33:41 |
| Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 33:50 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | What you got now? | 33:52 |
| Chris Stewart | What do I have? Sigma Tau Delta, English Honorary Society, Delta Kappa Gamma, AKA, Virginia Association— | 33:55 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | That's enough. | 34:01 |
| Chris Stewart | Okay. Last one is to list any other activities or hobbies or any favorite sayings or quotes that you'd like us to put down. | 34:03 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | What's that again? | 34:23 |
| Chris Stewart | Hobbies or activities or favorite saying or quote. | 34:24 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Duplicate bridge. | 34:37 |
| Chris Stewart | Now, my parents play bridge, and they are obsessed. | 34:45 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | He's obsessed. So much so, I can't play with him. | 34:51 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Just don't get to playing— | 34:52 |
| Chris Stewart | Really? My mother can't play with my father either. I don't know. My grandmother can't play with my grandfather either, so it always has to be the women who are partners against the men, and men are just, oh, then it gets really bad. They're trying to teach me how to play but I don't see them enough to be able to really figure it out. I only see them once in a while. | 34:53 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Yeah. You have to keep that up. | 35:15 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Work. | 35:15 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, I should know professors—Yes. Workaholics. How about you? | 35:31 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Swimming. | 35:36 |
| Chris Stewart | Yes. You don't want me to put down duplicate bridge? | 35:36 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | No. I play party bridge. | 35:48 |
| Chris Stewart | Oh, okay. Okay. | 35:49 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | I guess that's about it really. | 35:49 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, that's the end of this form. | 36:00 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | All right. | 36:01 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Now, don't you come again— (all laugh) | 36:06 |
| William Henry Yongue, Jr. | Not for that. | 36:06 |
| Chris Stewart | Really. The last thing that I have to do—really—is to get permission to use the tape or the transcript. What we have are we have interview agreement forms. | 36:07 |
| Imogene Turner Yongue | Where are you going to use it? | 36:24 |
| Chris Stewart | Well, the interview agreement form states that it's going to be housed at Duke University for use by scholars and researchers, as well as any of the sites that we go and visit, so that it will also be housed here. That's where it's going to be used basically. Each of the communities will have their own archive wherever we go, but, like I said, Duke University is going to keep the main collection. We want to try and have at least one big collection, so that people can come from all over to use it. Let me, at least, have you take a look at the interview agreement and see if— | 36:26 |
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