Doris Cochran interview recording, 1993 June 29
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Transcript
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Chris Stewart | If you could state your name, ma'am, and your address, so that I can get a level on the tape? | 0:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. Doris Hill Cochran, 101 Deerfield Place. | 0:09 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 0:14 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Roanoke Rapids. | 0:14 |
Chris Stewart | That looks fine. I'd like to begin, ma'am, by asking you if you've always lived here? | 0:15 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, I haven't. I moved here in 1950. | 0:23 |
Chris Stewart | And where did you live prior to? | 0:26 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. I lived in Washington, DC, before that in Denver, Colorado. Before that, in Berkeley, California. Before that in Portland, Oregon, and then back to Denver, and then back to Washington DC. | 0:28 |
Chris Stewart | Where were you born? | 0:40 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I was born in Denver. | 0:41 |
Chris Stewart | Were your parents from that area as well? | 0:44 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, my parents were from—My mother from Washington, DC, and my father from the Baltimore, but their parents were from other places too. | 0:47 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember your grandparents? | 0:57 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh yes. Very well. Yes. | 0:59 |
Chris Stewart | What do you remember about them? | 1:01 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Let's see. I remember a lot about them. On my mother's side, my grandfather was a dentist and he taught dentistry at Howard University, and very genteel man. My grandmother was a homemaker and very exploratory, I guess you'd call it. She traveled quite a bit and visited us when we lived in the far west. And the same was true of my paternal grandparents. My father's father taught, he was a Methodist minister also, and he was a scholar of Greek, and he taught at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and his mother was a teacher and traveled extensively too. Personal items about them would be hard for me to condense because we were in their company quite a bit, and they were very strong family figures, both of them. My father came from a family of 10, five girls and five boys, and my mother came from a family of four. And there is a lot to tell about them, but I don't know whether or not you have time to think in terms of personal items. | 1:04 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, certainly. | 2:14 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, in my father's family, the father figure was a very strong figure, bound and determined to see that his family was safe, well fed and well housed. And they also felt at that time, which was at the turn of the century, and at the beginning of the century, that the men in the family took care of the women. That they worked, the boys in the family worked during the summers to help to put money away for education for everyone in the family, which my father's family did. | 2:15 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And in my mother's family, they were fortunate enough to, because of my grandfather's profession, to have the money not to have to worry about the summer jobs. They had a more leisurely life, and they were able to vacation and to travel quite a bit. And yet all of them were well educated, and they also had a very strong family bond. And these were the things I remember, the traditions in the family, the feeling of very strong ties within the family. And although we lived in the far west and we were away from them still, we visited often enough, and they did with us, so that we would know them. And this was important to the whole family. We got to know our aunts and uncles and cousins and what have you. | 2:49 |
Chris Stewart | How did your mother and father meet? | 3:43 |
Doris Hill Cochran | My mother and father met at Howard University. My mother attended and graduated from Howard. My father went to Lincoln University, and they played each other football. And I don't know whether it was at a particular game or what function it was, I can't remember right this moment when they met, and—Oh, I remember part of it. My father belonged to the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. My mother was a Delta, and they were having a social of some sort, and that's how they met. And my mother was very impressed with him because he was a very debonair, dapper man, and well spoken. | 3:46 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And she herself was a very genteel woman, and she was very impressed with him, his stature and his command of himself. And at that time, my father, I think was completely smitten because he started writing letters, almost like love letters to her from that very moment. And he sent her violets, violets, pressed violets all during this courtship period. And after that time were really bonded, I guess, they bonded to each other and they married, they eloped in fact, which was very unusual for that time. Because my father was in the expeditionary forces when he graduated from college, they married just before he left to go overseas. And so that's how that romance blossomed. | 4:21 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have any of the letters that they— | 5:11 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh yes. Oh yes. All of them. All of our family history is documented in the archives at the University of Toronto. My brother has put that all together. So all their love letters and correspondence, and pictures, volumes of pictures because we lived in so many different places, and all have been kept. And diplomas of my grandparents, and great-grandparents, and so forth, wedding announcements and all that have been documented. | 5:15 |
Chris Stewart | Wonderful. | 5:42 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. | 5:43 |
Chris Stewart | Why did they move to Colorado? | 5:44 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, my father, after coming back from World War I was not sure what he wanted to do. He had been gassed in World War I, and had been ill in France in the hospital there for some months. And when he came back, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He'd finished college, but he decided he'd start graduate school. He went to Temple for a while and did some graduate work. He thought about law, and then he decided to go into the ministry, which was unusual because he was a very liberal man. And my mother was Catholic, he was Protestant. And of course this created some consternation, but my mother was open-minded enough not to worry about the outcome of this. Her family wasn't quite so open-minded, but in any case, he decided that he would go into the ministry, and he was interested in Methodism. | 5:48 |
Doris Hill Cochran | His father was a Methodist. And so he decided to go into that particular part of Protestantism. And after his training, beginning his training at Temple, and several other graduate schools, he was assigned to ministry in several small places. One of them being Independence, Missouri. One was in Philadelphia, where my first sister was born, and then one was in Baltimore when my second sister was born, and then my brother in Independence. And then he was moved to Denver, where I was born. And he went on, and each city that he lived in, he went to graduate school until he finally got his PhD. And my mother got her master's in social work, so the whole time that they were traveling and going to these various ministries, he was also getting better educated, and she was too, so that eventually he could come back to the east, I think, and decided to teach. | 6:33 |
Doris Hill Cochran | But he was moved, as they used to do, and I guess they still do, the Methodist church, pretty frequently, but it was adventurous for us. And every new town or city was just like a new life. And my mother used to pull out the maps and say, "Well, here we are, and this is the streetcar route, and this is where we are. And you can go from here to there by using this particular streetcar." In other words, she wanted us to take advantage of new places, and to find out what interested us, and what interested them in that particular area. And so it was like an adventure to us. A lot of times my siblings and I used to speak about the fact that we envied people who had lifelong friends, because we didn't. We had made friends, and we tried to stay in touch with some of them, but moving as we did, it was hard to have lifetime friends. And I envied my husband having lifetime friends, because that seems to be special when you haven't had that opportunity. | 7:27 |
Chris Stewart | How long did you live in Colorado, then? | 8:28 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, I was born there, and they left when I was about three, I think. | 8:28 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 8:32 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And then went to Portland, Oregon, and then down to Berkeley, and then back to Colorado when I was about 16, and left there when I was 18, and came back to Washington. | 8:33 |
Chris Stewart | Where is the place that you first remember as a home? | 8:43 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I remember Portland, Oregon, because I was there from the time that I was around three until I was about six. And we used to go up to visit also after moving to California because we had a lot of very close friends there, and I remember that very well. It was a beautiful city, Portland, the City of Bridges. And I can remember right now my father running from one side of town to the other to beat a bridge that was getting ready to go up, the tow bridge, so he could make time and do what he had to do. And I can remember that vividly, and I remember a friendliness of people there. I also remember that when we lived there, there were only 3000 Black people in the whole state. And it was unusual to see other Blacks throughout the state. Of course, at my father's church, this was another interesting thing. | 8:48 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Most of the Blacks in that area were the slaves, or ex-slaves, or families of slaves that were brought from the south to the northwest for lumber. They were brought with their owners or former owners, for working with families because they had gone into lumber from the south. And a lot of them were progeny of the masters. And the whole congregation was, well, I should say a great number of the congregation, were people who had evolved from the south, going to the west, and settling there because of their masters or their families bringing them there. And it was interesting to hear some of the stories that they had to tell. It was very interesting. I remember some of the people from that area, the older people. | 9:39 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of stories do you remember? | 10:29 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh gosh. I remember quite vividly, and it struck me as being so strange, because I had no concept of slavery or the effects of slavery. And I remember some of the older people speaking of the fact that those who were brought with the families were usually the house slaves, and in many instances related to the masters. And so they were fair-skinned and some of them were very White looking, and I can remember them saying that they were the only people who were allowed to work in the houses. Those people who were dark, of course, were not able to work in the houses. They were the field people. And that struck me as being so strange that there'd be such an impact of color on a person's life. And that was one of my first experiences with that type of concept, and I'll remember that all my life. | 10:32 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And I remember some of the skills that they had. I remember that one man was a watchmaker and repairer, and took such pride in his work. And I remember another woman who was a seamstress, did beautiful work and took such tremendous pride, and she was taught by some of the slaves, I guess, in the south. When she came north she retained those skills, and used them. And I remember some of the families that had such a very close tie, and some of the families that had said that they would never seek out their relatives, because once having left the south, they would be afraid to go back. And they were really cut off from their relatives, I remember that too. And I remember wondering how on earth it would be to have to leave your family behind never to see them again, and that impressed me as a child. | 11:25 |
Chris Stewart | Do you recall the place that you lived, where you lived in— | 12:17 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, I lived on McMillan Street and it was on a hill. It was on a hill, and I remember that because I was very tomboyish and I was the youngest in the family. My oldest sister was a very studious person and didn't enjoy the sports and things that we did, my other sister and brother. And I remember one Christmas, she was given roller skates along with my sister and other sister and brother, and she didn't use them because she was too busy reading, and I was supposed to be too young to get roller skates. And I remember very vividly putting those roller skates on and going down this steep hill that we lived on, and having my mother run down the hill after me. And I was turning and coming back up the hill when she met me. I remember that very well. | 12:21 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And I remember some of the boat races, and I can't remember the name of the river that was near our house that we could see. And they had some of the most beautiful sailboats, and they had races on that river. I can't think of the name of that to save my life. They had a lot of rivers in that area, but it was a beautiful city, and I remember a lot of the experiences that we had there, growing up there, some of the parks and just places of interest to go. My mother and father were adventurous, and they loved to be out of doors, so we took advantage of that. We used to fish and it was a lovely place to be. | 13:03 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember neighbors? | 13:35 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It's hard for me to remember names. I remember some families that we used to visit the Franklins that were there, our family for about 10 or 12. And I remember that they had a big sprawling house, and that they grew a lot of their own vegetables and fruits, and that we used to get together for picnics and family outings. And I remember how the older members of the family always took care of all the young ones, so that the parents could sit down and chat and enjoy. And the parties were always all together, all the family, the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents and the aunts and uncles. And it was a job trying to get all those names straight, and remember all of them. But I remember very vividly some of the families that were there. I remember one family, Rutherford family, that one of the members of that family ended up here in North Carolina. | 13:39 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And he had come to California after we moved down there and stayed with us for a while, while he was working on his masters at UC. And he was my babysitter sometime, Alan Rutherford. And he came to Statesville, and became a principal of the school there in Statesville when they were still segregated. And we used to see him, he used to drive up here to see us after we moved here. He died about—He died in 1978. And yeah, we kept our ties, and my brother, especially because he was a bit older, still corresponds with some of the people that were there. And I was a bit young to do that, but he had friends that he could keep more readily than I could because he was older. And so we never really broke our ties with the west. | 14:28 |
Chris Stewart | Was Portland, was the city segregated so there was a Black neighborhood? | 15:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No. No, it wasn't. Not at all. We were the only Black family in our neighborhood, and we lived in the parsonage next to the church. And I remember it was a beautiful little church. It was on a corner, on McMillan Street, and none of the neighborhoods were segregated. And as I said before, there were only 3000 Blacks in the whole state. So that we were so few, in such a—We didn't pose a threat to anyone, I guess. So it was very well integrated and people seemed to have a healthy curiosity about you. There wasn't a negative response to you, it was a healthy curiosity about you, and people were very warm. It was a big country town. Interesting. | 15:15 |
Chris Stewart | And so you moved to Berkeley, did you, after that? | 16:00 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. We lived in Oakland for a while, but then in Berkeley, we bought our own home in Berkeley. | 16:03 |
Chris Stewart | How was that different from Portland? | 16:07 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, the whole area is much more populous, and it was much more cosmopolitan. My mother and father were very much interested in the arts, but they were both musicians too. And so we were able to take advantage of the museums, the concert halls, and imagine having a pass, a student pass, to the San Francisco Opera. And this was the life, I mean, I didn't realize how fortunate I was, but this was the way you lived. And to be able to go over to San Francisco, and spend the day, part of the day at Chinatown. | 16:09 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Even went to the Chinese opera with my sisters and brother, had to sit on the benches with no backs for hours. But it was fun, and it was quite different in that it did have a lot more to offer. And there were, well, population wise, insofar as Blacks were concerned, there were few in numbers compared to the southern part of the state, and compared to the south. But it was an interesting place to live at that time. And you didn't feel the wrath of segregation, or racism, you just didn't feel it. I grew up without that burden, thank goodness. | 16:41 |
Chris Stewart | Again, what do you remember about, first of all, how long did you live in Berkeley? | 17:21 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Let me see now. It's hard for me to remember these dates just off the top of my head. I guess from about 1931 until 1943. Until '43, then we moved to Denver from that time, during the war. | 17:27 |
Chris Stewart | So you lived in Berkeley for quite a while. | 17:46 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, we did. | 17:49 |
Chris Stewart | Your teenage years, for most of your teenage years. | 17:49 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. Right, exactly. And it was interesting because we lived again in integrated neighborhoods, and my father's church was even integrated, which was unusual at that time, I guess. And as I said before, you didn't feel the burden of racism. It was there, it was talked about. There weren't, at that time, before I got into my teens there, I don't think there was a Black teacher in the whole Bay Area in the school system. But at the same time, our teachers were open and warm and friendly, and you didn't get a feeling of hostility, by and large. There might have been a few who were, and there were, but they were very few in number at that time. | 17:52 |
Doris Hill Cochran | So there were Blacks in other professions. There were Black dentists and doctors, and we knew them very well because when a minister comes to a community, they welcome him and you find you get to know people very quickly. And so it's a little bit different than just an independent family going to a new community. So it gives you a little bit different aspect, and a little bit different entrée to a community. It does. | 18:41 |
Chris Stewart | You mentioned school just briefly, did you begin school then in Berkeley? | 19:09 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, in Portland. | 19:12 |
Chris Stewart | You began in Portland? | 19:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Uh-huh. They had the platoon system, the school system there, which is unusual. And even in kindergarten, the platoon system is where when you go into class, you move from one teacher to the other for each subject. It was an experimental school called Holiday School. That was the name of it, Holiday School. And they started a platoon system even in kindergarten, and for each subject you went to a different classroom. And I thought that was great, because here I had a sister who was nine or 10 years older than I was, and I could do what they were doing. | 19:15 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I was the youngest one in the family, so I thought I was quite grown up to start school that way. And my sister set a terrible example for us because she was an all A student in everything she did. So it made us have to work like mad to keep up with Jean. And we did pretty well, all things considered because our parents took an interest in our schoolwork, and we were just expected to do well, so we did. And we made a lot of friends. Friends used to come over, we used to go to their homes, and it was just a very good life. We enjoyed it. | 19:46 |
Chris Stewart | Now are you speaking in California as well? Was it the same system? | 20:20 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, let me see if I—The same in what aspect? | 20:27 |
Chris Stewart | The platoon? The same platoon system? | 20:29 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, it was not, it was a normal school set up there. This was just in Portland. But at that time, my father and mother believed in really getting to know teachers, and to make their presence known in school. So that helped, I'm sure, to make it more interesting for us. And I enjoyed school, because it was adventurous. We had craft classes, everyone took crafts, working with clay, working with all kinds of—We had music, from the time we started school. And this was where my interest in music started. I became a violinist. But I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we were exposed to so much, in school and out of school, and art was emphasized, along with all your academic studies. | 20:31 |
Chris Stewart | Did you have favorite teachers? Somebody that— | 21:20 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. Yes, I did. I did. I had Mrs. Martin, who was one of my favorite teachers, I think in the fifth or sixth grade, and a Mr. Ebert. And I think I liked Mr. Ebert because he was so handsome. He was a joy to look at every day, a very debonair guy. And Mrs. Martin was a very loving person. She seemed to have endless patience and time, and if you had an interest in something, she would really take an interest with you to make it flourish. And my mother knew her, and she was just a very loving person. Then I had the most beautiful violin teacher, her name was Natalie Bigelow, and I took violin at the Jewish Center in Oakland. And I got to know a lot of people at the center, and our concerts were given there. And she was a lovely person, Natalie Bigelow was. And she taught me from the time I was a little girl, until I left there. | 21:26 |
Chris Stewart | That's a long relationship. | 22:21 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, it was. It really was. | 22:24 |
Chris Stewart | Who made decisions in your family about disciplining your brothers and sisters, or just household decisions? | 22:28 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Both my mother and father. There was never a time when there was any dissension about that. My father was a very strong person, but he also believed in regarding what my mother said. She was a career woman and she pulled her own weight, and he recognized that. And so they made their decisions together. | 22:37 |
Chris Stewart | How did they go do this? Just in discussion, or away from the children? | 22:56 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. Well, not always away from the children, we had dinnertime. Our meal times were very important. You were never late to a meal, breakfast or dinner. It was the worst thing you could do to be late to a meal, because this was a time when we talked about each other, about what was happening in our lives, and what was important, what our schedules were, what was going to be going on, and our problems, and everything else. And so at meal times, things were thrashed out, things that were not real serious. We had serious discussions, that would be after dinner, or on the weekends when people were more free. But if there was a problem that was not real serious or deep, it was thrashed out at the dinner table. And you were always on time. | 22:59 |
Chris Stewart | Were there people in your life as a child and even into your teenage years, who you really looked up to besides your parents? | 23:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, yes, I think. Yeah, I can say definitely so. And I think the reason I can say that is because we were fortunate enough to be able to meet and get to know my mother and father's friends. And they were Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, people of that caliber. And I have a book inscribed by Langston Hughes "To Doris," and you can't look any farther than that for friends. And so yes, I looked up to them. I did. Paul Robeson was an imposing figure anyway, with a beautiful speaking voice. And it was just a thrill to be in their presence. And when my mother and father had friends in like that, the family was always together, and the children always served the adults. If we had them to dinner, we helped to serve. And then we all sat down afterwards for discussions. And so yeah, I had a lot of people to look up to. | 24:06 |
Chris Stewart | What an overwhelming honor. | 25:04 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize it then, of course. But they were fun. They were interesting. Paul, I don't know whether you knew Howard Thurman, who was— | 25:04 |
Chris Stewart | Mm-hmm. | 25:17 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, Howard Thurman was a very dear friend of my mother and father's, he and his wife, the mystic he was. And when they came, it was just a ball because he had such a tremendous sense of humor, and he seemed to enjoy young people as much as he did the adults. And the same was true with Paul, with Langston Hughes. He had a tremendous sense of humor, and had the most winsome smile you've ever seen. And just to be in their company—And I'll tell you something else that impressed me. At the University of California, at I House, the International House, they had quite a few African students. And my mother and father, they would always bring the students over to the house. | 25:17 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And my oldest sister was in college at that time too, when I was still in my teens, and she would make friends from all parts of the world, and then would bring them over to the house. And my mother and father took a great interest in Africa, and they'd bring African students over to have dinner with us. And they'd also bring visiting people from Africa to eat with us. And one's name was Dr. Steady from, I think he was from Liberia. And he was so interesting to hear, to explain what Africa was about at that time. His country in Africa. These were interesting experiences for us too. | 25:56 |
Chris Stewart | What time period are we talking about? | 26:32 |
Doris Hill Cochran | We're talking about the late '30s and early '40s. Late '30s, mostly the '30s. | 26:36 |
Chris Stewart | So African students would still be talking about colonization? | 26:44 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh yes. Oh yes. Health problems and everything. And one of the things that used to amuse us as children was that my mother was a good cook, but she believed in natural things. She was, "you are what you eat." She really believed in that Gayelord Hauser, "you are what you eat," and she used to make a marvelous sherbet, but it was like a sorbet, and lemon. And she would serve this quite often, especially in the warmer months. In California, it's warmer most of the time, but especially in the warmer months. And quite often, the African students would not have been acquainted with ice cream and cold things, and we would sit there anxiously just waiting for them to put that first spoon in their mouths. As kids, it was just amusing to us to see the reaction, and then to talk about it. That was a lot of fun. I remember that very well. | 26:51 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like your parents really made a huge effort to expose you to— | 27:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh, they did. They certainly didn't see—My mother worked as a social worker, and so being a career woman, she kept up with everything that was going on. And my father was so proud of that. And she was not real active in the church because she did not believe in limiting yourself to things religious. And my father understood that. So as a result, she was very well versed in everything, in world history, and in current affairs, as he was. And so these were the things that we shared. And my mother and father did not insist that we go to church. They insisted that we learn the religions of the world. But we enjoyed hearing my father speak, because he was an inspiration, he was a very positive man. And so we enjoyed it. And especially as we got older, it gave you something to hold on to, as young people | 27:48 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It was sort of like, that's why I had to hesitate when you asked me if I was influenced greatly by anyone. And I think all of us were greatly influenced by him, because in all the years that I knew him, and he died when he was 83, I never heard him raise his voice. Never, in all those years. And at the same time, he was always there to be able to help when there was a crisis, or a problem. So he was like the old Rock of Gibraltar. And when you are in the presence of someone like that, there's something that inspires you, I think, to be your better self. And that was a feeling I think that we got from him. And that's why I think none of us really, except during some of our more rambunctious years in our teens, didn't want to go to church. This is old stuff, old hat. But most of the time it was a very positive feeling that we got in his presence. So he was there, so it was a joy to be there too, that type of thing. | 28:45 |
Chris Stewart | This question may seem redundant because of what you've been talking about, but what sorts of values do you think your mother and father instilled in you that you took with you into adulthood? | 29:40 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh gosh. There are many. And a lot of it has to do with honesty, and trying to look at things objectively, which is very hard to do at times. But they emphasized this, stepping back and getting a clear picture of things, and trying to remain honest with yourself and to yourself. Always allowing yourself to reflect, not make fast judgements and not—My mother used to say, and she got her master's from University of California in social work, and she said one of the most important lessons that she ever learned, and she used to share these things with us while she was in school, was that when you see someone, for instance, she'd give us an example. | 29:53 |
Doris Hill Cochran | If you saw someone staggering down the street, first thing you might want to say is that person was inebriated, was drunk. She said, you don't do that. You wait to find out if that person's sick. It could be that. And so this was the example that they'd bring home to us, to not jump to conclusions, to be more open minded than that. And I think that those were some of the most clear lessons that we learned from them. And I think unconditional love was another one. I don't like what you're doing, but I'll always love you, that type of thing. And they brought that very clearly home to us. And I think we try to share that with our children as a result. Yeah. | 30:41 |
Chris Stewart | You left California when you were 16? | 31:23 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. | 31:26 |
Chris Stewart | So you were in high school then? | 31:28 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, I was. | 31:29 |
Chris Stewart | And you went back to Denver? | 31:31 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right. | 31:31 |
Chris Stewart | How was moving in the middle of high school? | 31:31 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It wasn't too bad. I don't know whether you have ever heard of an Edwin C. Hill, who was a radio announcer way back in the '30s and '40s. His father was a principal of the school at that time, at East Denver High School when I transferred. And when I first moved, I don't know whether—I didn't feel as if I was losing all my friends and I'd never have friends again, because we were brought up to feel that you are your strongest ally. And if you've left a place, you will go to a place where there's something new will happen, and if you make it so, it can be good. So I didn't go with the feeling of, oh my goodness, I've lost everything, and here I am all by myself. I went there feeling well, I'll meet some new people and find out what's happening in Denver. | 31:39 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And he made me feel very welcome when he said, "Well, we share the same name." And he was a very warm, very nice type of guy, the principal. And so my first experiences there were pretty good. I had a couple of teachers there that I had some questions about, insofar as racism was concerned. And that bothered me some, but still, the old rock was still there, my father, and my mother. So we were able to thrash out things pretty well. I made some friends, there wasn't as much integration in Denver as there had been out in the West. There was a feeling of your belonging to your own community, and that's pretty much the way it has to be. There were a few Whites who felt differently, and they made that known to me. When I lived in California, Orientals and Whites and Blacks seemed not to have any negative feelings about themselves and each other. | 32:31 |
Doris Hill Cochran | So it was a different sort of an atmosphere, and I recognized that. And I guess in talking as much as we did about race problems and all through the years, because my father and father made it clear to us that they had come from segregation in Washington, and my father was born in Annapolis, Maryland, and nothing could be more segregated, and cruelly segregated, than that area. And so it was not as if we were shielded from this. It is just that we hadn't experienced it. We'd certainly talked about it. So we continued to talk about it. And one of the worst moves, and I'm getting ahead of you maybe here, that I ever made, was going from Denver to Washington, DC. Trauma was what I felt then. | 33:33 |
Chris Stewart | Feeling— | 34:16 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right. I really felt traumatized going from Colorado to Washington, and that was the first time I had ever been taught by Blacks. I was very proud of that at Howard University. I'd never had a Black teacher. And I felt very proud, I felt very interested in what was going on, on that campus. And at the same time, a lot of things had intervened. My mother had contracted cancer in Denver, and—No, in California, just before we left there to come to Denver. So I felt very tied. I felt very responsible to family, more so than I would have, I guess. And so in moving, I was watching out for my mother. | 34:16 |
Doris Hill Cochran | By being the youngest, I was the only one left at home then. So the trio, my father, my mother, and I, I felt that I had to be supportive of her as my father had been. And so that made a difference too, it had quite an impact. But I didn't realize until I got to Washington what the impact of a segregated city would have on me. And I didn't come to understand why the Black community was so different in Washington than it had been in other places that I'd lived. And it's a legacy of segregation that has a terrible impact, and something that we're not going to overcome for generations. | 34:59 |
Chris Stewart | What was the impact on you? Can you describe— | 35:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I felt as if I were no longer free. I felt imposed upon. And I couldn't go where I wanted to go, I couldn't just—When we lived in California, there were so many beautiful little shops, and the library, and anywhere you wanted to be, you could go. And in Denver, it was the same. But when I got to Washington, and people were saying, well, you can't go so and so, and I had to stop and think about this, it just was such an impact on me. I'm not free any longer. I'm in a place where I can't go where, and I can't be where, I want to be. And people don't look at you the same way. It was just a tremendous change for me in my life, and how I looked at things when I moved to Washington. | 35:47 |
Chris Stewart | You also say that the Black community was very different? | 36:38 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, it was. | 36:41 |
Chris Stewart | Explain that. | 36:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, because the Black community had been segregated, and had not interacted, I guess, with people from all parts of the world, their lives were circumspect. Their own culture was a lot different from anything that I had ever seen. Even their language was a lot different. I had to learn some of the vernacular of the Black community because I didn't know it. I had heard snatches of it here and there, but I had never really been immersed in it as I was at Howard, and in Washington. And it was like a new beginning for me, an education, an eye-opener. And at the same time, I had a tremendous sense of pride in the scholars at Howard. I'm trying to think of the guy who was a philosopher that died years ago, that I was lucky enough to be able to meet and talk with. Some of the sociologists, Mordecai Johnson. | 36:45 |
Doris Hill Cochran | That to me was just a revelation too, and it was beautiful. But at the same time, I felt as if I had lost my freedom. And it was a strange feeling, really a strange situation for me. It was. And I'm trying to recall right now some of the feelings that I had. And it's not easy to recall, because I think you tend to want to blot out the negatives. And I was busy in school, too, but there was a difference in the outlook of the people there. And at the same time, there were quite a few students that were from other places. And because you were in a protected situation on campus, it's not as if you were just all of a sudden immersed in the community, you're protecting a great deal by being on campus. But at the same time, there was a difference that I felt and I never will forget first coming to Washington. | 37:54 |
Chris Stewart | Can you talk a little bit about campus life at Howard? Did you live on campus? | 38:50 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, I didn't. I lived with my mother and father. | 38:56 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, your mother and father moved back? | 38:59 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh yes. See, we moved back to Washington when my father was appointed to teach at Howard, and that was the year that I graduated from high school. I was ready to go into college, and I went on to Howard. I don't know where to begin on this. As I said before, it was an education for me because I was in a different setting than I'd ever been in before. And it was interesting to me to get to know how Washington evolved, how it—I'm trying to—Well, campus you said. How it functioned, it was interesting to me to find out that there was a lot of prejudice among Black people, and I hadn't felt that before. And I'd ask about it, why do you feel that way about it? And some of the questions that I got were a revelation because people had been hurt by prejudice, and they were expressing their hurt, their anger. | 39:00 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And then there were those students who had never really experienced that so much, and they would counter. So it was an interesting place to be for me. It was right after the war, too, and a lot of veterans were coming back, and their attitudes were—They were more mature, they were more competitive. So classwork was intense, and it was a little different situation than it would've been in normal times, because this was right after World War II. And so I experienced that more mature aspect of college than I would have otherwise. I was not a party animal, and I played with the orchestra, and so I was constantly in rehearsals, and that type of thing. And I played with some of the string quartets, and the smaller string trios and things. So I wasn't able to really, and I wasn't interested in being a party animal. So that part, I'm not aware of what was going on there. | 40:10 |
Chris Stewart | It sounds though, that time at Howard for you, I don't know if I should say really changed your life, but it sounds like it had a great impact. | 41:06 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, in many ways it did, because I thought about the fact that so many very strong Black leaders came from there. And certainly they must have insulated themselves against the impact of segregation and racism. And I said to myself then, well, if they can do it, I can too. I mean, it was a challenge to be able to rise above that, and still feel like a person, and as if you were free, in fact. So it was a challenge to me, I guess in many ways. And I talked with my parents about this, and certainly they felt the same way. And they had been reared in prejudice, in segregation and racism. So they were evolved, and they were healthy, and so I felt as if I really could be too. But it was just a puzzle to me, after being a more free spirit before. | 41:19 |
Chris Stewart | You mentioned that your parents, that you had had discussions about segregation, and that they made sure that although you might not have lived that earlier, that they wanted to make sure that you knew. | 42:10 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. | 42:23 |
Chris Stewart | What they had lived. | 42:24 |
Doris Hill Cochran | They did. | 42:24 |
Chris Stewart | Could you talk about that? | 42:26 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. My father and my mother were serious musicians. My father played piano beautifully, and organ, pipe organ. My mother played piano beautifully, and both of them sang too. And they studied all the classics, they studied Bach and Beethoven and everything else. And my mother loved Chopin, and played Chopin. But anyway, my father, in order to go to concerts, had to go up into what was called the crow's nest into these movie houses. He'd have to go up all these flights of steps way, way up in the atmosphere to be able to see concerts. And so he talked about that, and he talked about the fact that it hurt him to have to do that, but he wasn't going to let it keep him from being able to see these things that he wanted to see. | 42:26 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And at the same time, they talked about the fact that in Washington, they couldn't go into stores that they wanted to go into. And the same thing was true, of course, with my father in Baltimore. And so how it impacted them was in these restrictions being imposed upon them, but not letting those restrictions keep them from being as strong as they wanted to be, you see. He would go in detail, he was a great storyteller, my father, and my mother too, about what their experiences were. And my father had worked every summer up in the mountains, I think maybe up in the Poconos and areas like that, to help to save money for his sister's education. And he spoke about the fact that his father had talked with him in great detail about his demeanor in these hotels, because of the fact that Black men were in jeopardy. Young men were in jeopardy. | 43:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And that while he was there, he was not to ever, if he entered a room and there was a woman there, not to ever look at her, and not to ever stay any longer than he had to. These were the details that they used to share with us about his actions. That he had to put on a different face when he was in that situation, because he said that his father had told him about Black fellows who had been lynched because of their demeanor, and what they had supposedly gotten into as a result of working in these places. And all these stories were very graphically told to us, because they wanted us to know what they had experienced. And so those were the kinds of stories that they told us. And not stories, but histories that they told us. Yeah. | 44:18 |
Chris Stewart | At what point in your life do you feel like people treated you like an adult, like an adult woman, or that you had become an adult woman? | 45:05 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, I think I felt that way with my parents when I was in my mid-teens because they saw to it that we assumed responsibility. And then when my mother got ill, I was 15 or 16, and my father had said at that time, "Well, we are not going to let this take May away. We're going to fight this," when they found out she had cancer of the throat. And he told her, "You are going to get well, you're not going to leave us." And at that time it impacted me that my mother was sick, and I had no recourse but to be strong, and to do what I had to do to make her well, and to make her feel good about herself. And I think it was at that moment that I felt like I was an adult, and I think I was either 15 or 16. | 45:17 |
Chris Stewart | A young adult. | 46:00 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. Yeah. | 46:00 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to go back to Howard, or go forward, I guess. Did you join the Delta sorority when you were there? | 46:08 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. Yes, I did. | 46:16 |
Chris Stewart | Your mother was a Delta? | 46:24 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. And my sisters, yes. Because I really wasn't interested in joining. And my mother was a Delta. Her sister was a Delta, her sister was a medical doctor, she was a Delta. And my sister is—Don't you need some more light? | 46:25 |
Chris Stewart | If you'd like, I mean, I'm recording, so I'm not—yeah. | 46:39 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Are you all right? Okay, okay. Because I can open up the shutters if you need some more light. But I became a Delta because of family tradition. I really was not going to join. | 46:39 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 46:54 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I wasn't. And my mother said, "Please do Doris, because your—my sister—" My aunt, her sister, and my sisters, both of them were Deltas. | 46:55 |
Chris Stewart | Why was it so important to her that you chose to— | 47:05 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It wasn't that important. It wasn't a mandate. She just said please. And if I had said no, she would've said okay. (laughs) It was one of those things. It wasn't a mandate, it was just, since we're all Deltas, we'll be Deltas— | 47:07 |
Doris Cochran | It's all right. | 0:03 |
Chris Stewart | If you want to. | 0:03 |
Doris Cochran | No, it's for your sake. | 0:04 |
Chris Stewart | But I don't need to— | 0:05 |
Doris Cochran | —Okay. | 0:07 |
Chris Stewart | Because it's recording. So I don't have to see. | 0:07 |
Doris Cochran | All right. Okay. | 0:09 |
Chris Stewart | Were you active in the Sorority, or? | 0:11 |
Doris Cochran | Yes, I was for a while, but I became inactive because I married while I was in school, and I started doing what they call gigs. I played for soirees and teas and things of that sort because we were trying to make a little extra money, and so I didn't have the time and I was trying to save my pennies too, and I really couldn't afford, my husband and I couldn't afford to put all the money that I would've had to put into the sorority, so I became inactive. And I've been active here and also inactive here, so I have nothing against it. It's just a matter of what was expedient and what wasn't. | 0:16 |
Chris Stewart | One of the students on our team is a Delta. | 0:57 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. | 0:57 |
Chris Stewart | So that's the actual reason why I'm insisting— | 1:00 |
Doris Cochran | —Right. Okay. | 1:01 |
Chris Stewart | Because she would not forgive me. | 1:01 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. All right. All right. Tell her that my mother became a Delta in 1917, either '16 or '17. '16, I think. | 1:04 |
Chris Stewart | She'll appreciate that. | 1:14 |
Doris Cochran | 1916. Yeah. | 1:15 |
Chris Stewart | When did you meet your husband? How did you meet your husband? | 1:18 |
Doris Cochran | I met him on campus, at the cafeteria at Howard University. He spoke to me in the cafeteria and he declares that I wasn't going to converse with him because I thought he was too flamboyant, and it probably is true, but he persisted. And we're very opposite. He and I are extreme opposites, and I think that's what really attracted me to him. And we became very good friends, and I got to know his family and he got to know my family and my father really—his father had died when he was young, and my father really adopted him, so he was like a son more so than a son-in-law. | 1:20 |
Chris Stewart | That must have been nice. | 2:00 |
Doris Cochran | It was. It really was. | 2:01 |
Chris Stewart | So you were married while you were in college? | 2:02 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 2:06 |
Chris Stewart | And then you continued on while you were— | 2:07 |
Doris Cochran | —Right, right. He was in medical school. | 2:08 |
Chris Stewart | That must have been something of a struggle. | 2:11 |
Doris Cochran | It was. He was under the Army Specialized Training Program, so part of his education was taken care of, and I was on a scholarship, so it wasn't as hard as it could have been. But young and aggressive. It worked. | 2:15 |
Chris Stewart | Ready to do anything. | 2:32 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. Yeah, it worked. It was okay. | 2:33 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you live? | 2:36 |
Doris Cochran | We lived with his mother for a while until we moved down here. We married in '47 and we moved here in '50. And we lived with his mother at her home. She was an interesting person. She had been born here in North Carolina, in Scotland Neck, and— | 2:38 |
Chris Stewart | —Oh, sure. | 2:55 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. So it worked out well. Our time was so much taken by his being in medical school, and he worked too. He waited tables. Even on the day he graduated from medical school, he was waiting tables at the Army Navy Club. His stepfather was a assistant manager at the Army Navy Club. So he had a job there. Plus, he worked. Well, he worked full-time in the government at night when he was in college. So your time is just so taken up with responsibilities and all, but it finally worked out okay. | 2:56 |
Chris Stewart | Why did you move to North Carolina? | 3:32 |
Doris Cochran | Well, my mother-in-law, his mother, had very strong feelings about some of the family returning to North Carolina. And her father had been the first Black postmaster in Scotland Neck. And in order to carry his job through, he had to arm himself. And he was also, when they moved from Scotland Neck to Weldon, he was a principal of the school there in Weldon. And they lived quite well for Black people in a segregated town. And I think she felt a very strong feeling of—how can I say this? | 3:35 |
Doris Cochran | I don't know exactly how to put this, but her memories of her childhood in Weldon were, she was very protected and privileged for a Black child, were so positive that she felt that she wanted someone in her family to come back and carry on. And Salter decided that he'd try it. And that was before he was drafted for Korea. And while he was in Korea, he was on the frontline for 13 months. He was not in the bunkers, he was not in the MASH, he was not behind the lines. He was up in the lines for 13 months. And he said, "If I can fight and almost die up here in these bunkers in Korea, I can come back to North Carolina and fight." And that's exactly what our attitude was after he came back in 1953. | 4:25 |
Chris Stewart | What do you think—you've sort of given me a hint as to what were the strength for your husband to come back to fight. | 5:20 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 5:34 |
Chris Stewart | Where do you think it came from in your case? | 5:35 |
Doris Cochran | It came from my parents because, even though there were very few instances of blatant racism when we were growing up, there were times when there was a lot of pressure. My father was the first Black social worker in one of the systems in Alameda County. And when you're Black and you're the only one, the first one, you feel as if you've got to excel. Just as in many instances, I was the only Black child in my school. My brother and I were the only Black children in our whole elementary school. You don't want to have people look at you and say, "She's stupid because she's Black." You don't want to carry through that stereotype. So you excel because you know the pressure is there. And I think that through the years, you either build that strength or else you just fall down without it. | 5:37 |
Doris Cochran | And so I think that because of that, it gave me the strength to be here and to do what we've done. I never will forget when I left Washington to move here, my mother almost died. She had a fit. And she was not a crying woman, but she just went to pieces. She said, "I don't want to see you in that mean little town." And she spoke in those terms because she had lived in Independence for over a year when my brother was born. And she knew what it was like. She had felt the wrath of it, and she didn't want me to have to experience that. And I had never seen her cry. And just, she was so tormented by it. But I told her not to worry that I was going to be okay. And after coming here, it was an education to me. | 6:32 |
Doris Cochran | I think that what I looked at was a fact that I had been liberated my early life. So I could come to this point in this place and see that this is not the only way that Black people could live and could think and could be. And so I was willing to be here for that purpose, to let it be known that this is not the way it has to be. And it's been an education the whole time I've been here. And the only thing about that education is that it revealed to me that the stigma of slavery and of segregation is not easily thrown off. It's going to take generations for it to change and for us to realize changes because it's a mindset. And the mindset is not only in the Black community, it's in the White community, and in some instances never the twain shall meet. | 7:24 |
Doris Cochran | And I don't think it's made me so much pessimistic as it's made me realistic. And I think it made me really mature to what life is. I really have come to grips with that. I came to grips with that a long time ago when my children were growing up. And— | 8:19 |
Chris Stewart | —How did you feel about raising children here? | 8:40 |
Doris Cochran | For a long time, I told Salter, "I don't know whether I can do this or not." I don't know whether I want them to be subjected to this because I didn't grow up that way. What kind of a stigma is this going to leave with them? And how will they overcome it? And then having come from a very closely knit family, I said, "I can't go through life without experiencing this thing that was my—the important thing to me." And so we decided to go ahead and start our family after he came back from Korea. And I think my whole focus had to be on giving them the strength to endure and to outgrow what was here. And we traveled a lot with them as a family so that they would see that there was something else in this world. And luckily my brother, by being in Toronto, had children the same age. So we spent a lot of time together, sharing experiences and letting them see that there was a different way of living, a different way of thinking and being. | 8:43 |
Doris Cochran | I think I was lucky. I think I got a lot of my father's strength because it takes a whole lot to really derail me. And I was willing to fight for that with the kids, and before they came. | 9:47 |
Chris Stewart | What were your goals? You and your husband, did you talk about goals when you came down here? | 10:01 |
Doris Cochran | Yes, we did. We talked about the fact that we wanted his profession to be one that the people could take pride in. Because they hadn't had that. They had a Black doctor here and he was here when we came, but his office was not something to take pride in. It wasn't just that the facade had to be so important, it was just that there were so few things for them to take pride in that we felt that this was very important. So we worked, physically worked ourselves in his first office to try to make it a decent, clean, neat place to be. | 10:06 |
Doris Cochran | And that, plus my husband never, never stopped talking about education to every patient that came in there. He still does. You can't be liberated unless you're educated. This was the plea that he would put on them. "You have to get your education, you have to get your education. There's something else besides this." This was his human cry. And those were some of our goals. And you get so caught up in the busyness of it, you sometimes lose your place. But then when we started, when we were involved in civil rights, we didn't lose our place. We were caught up completely in it. And that carried us on. Our goal was to do as much as we could there. | 10:44 |
Chris Stewart | When you moved here to this area, did you move to Roanoke Rapids? | 11:32 |
Doris Cochran | No, we moved to Weldon, because his office and our house and his family home were right across the street, all together. And that's where my children were reared. And his office was downstairs. We had a large house and our living quarters were upstairs so he could see his children grow up and it made it possible that way. But it was just living in the middle of the most busy intersection you could imagine with the telephone ringing, telephones ringing, and people coming and going all the time. But I think it strengthened our family and our resolve and it strengthened the children, I really think. | 11:36 |
Chris Stewart | When did you start, you and your husband, start getting involved in civil rights activities? | 12:11 |
Doris Cochran | In the early '50s when it was dangerous. | 12:14 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. | 12:18 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. In fact, in 1950 when we moved here, we were threatened many times. I refused to go in back doors. I refused not to go in places because I just wasn't going to do it. And what happened was people started saying, "She's a Polynesian." Anything but Black to make (laughs) an excuse for this weirdo doing what she wasn't supposed to be doing. And I was forever getting into, I guess what somebody would call trouble. Because in grocery store lines, when the clerks would call Black old women, "girl," and Black old men, "boy," I would say, "That is not a girl." And I think in many instances I might have given some of the Black people high blood pressure because they were as upset (laughs) as the White clerks were. But I couldn't let an opportunity like that go by me. And so I guess I got to be known as a weirdo of some sort. I don't know. | 12:20 |
Doris Cochran | But it was a way of life and it was a challenge every day. It was like going out of the safety and comfort of your house into a hostile world every day. And I think I went out of my way at that time to make sure that I read, that I listened to the music that I loved, and that I made our house comfortable. And so that I'd have a place of peace, panacea of some sort for myself and for my children, and of course for my husband. But it was not easy. And our children were the first children to integrate the schools here. | 13:19 |
Chris Stewart | Really? | 13:58 |
Doris Cochran | And that was tough because parents—I said to myself, "I can take this, but I don't know whether my children can or not, being in a hostile world every day." And it was not easy. It was tough. But talking about it and acting on it, responding to it, these were the things that gave us the strength to go on. | 13:59 |
Chris Stewart | And was that in the '60s, the integration? | 14:20 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. Yes. Early '60s. | 14:23 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to try and get through, as specifically as possible, your activities. We're focusing on you because we're talking to you. | 14:26 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. Okay. | 14:28 |
Chris Stewart | But your husband as well. | 14:36 |
Doris Cochran | Right. | 14:36 |
Chris Stewart | It sounds like you were working very closely together. | 14:36 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. We were. We were. | 14:36 |
Chris Stewart | When you were resisting, as you were, it sounds like at every turn. | 14:36 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 14:50 |
Chris Stewart | What were the ramifications? What were the consequences? | 14:52 |
Doris Cochran | Anonymous telephone calls. Notes, if your car windows were cracked, notes in your car, threatening usually. Wrath from some of the Black members of the community for upsetting the scheme of things. Let me see, what else? The lack of acceptance in the community. If you were to see a clerk in the store that you did business with, you saw that clerk on the street, they would not speak to you. And so you were frozen out, you were excluded. And we found that that was the way things were. And how can you change people's mindset? | 14:57 |
Chris Stewart | Well, how did you continue to move forward in that? And I'm talking both psychically and strategically. How did you continue to move if these kinds of things were going on? | 15:43 |
Doris Cochran | Well, first of all, we realized that in most instances, Blacks were not capable of working toward civil rights in any way or becoming socially active because it would jeopardize them so terribly, their livelihood and their safety. And yet my husband, having been through a war, knew that nothing could be any worse. As he said, when he decided to come back. And with me, I think it was just blind hope. I was hoping that I would be able to crack a door someplace, get somebody's attention in a positive way. So I'll just keep on stabbing at it. Persistence. And I think that in many instances, if you have an inner faith, and I'm not a religious person, but if you have an interfaith and that faith is partly seeded in yourself and what you perceive to be your future, you get the strength, you muster it from someplace. | 15:59 |
Doris Cochran | And plus, I think having been an artist, I was a musician, you're a little bit different, I think in some aspects. A creative person tends to—yeah, it makes a difference. And I had that to latch onto. I had that to hold onto. And I think that in many ways, that was my solace. That was a little temple of some sort to me. And it gave me the strength. It empowered me to go on. And I read a lot. I talk with my family constantly. My mother, my father, and my brother, especially because they were so intricately involved in social action. | 17:05 |
Doris Cochran | And they gave me the strength, they really did, to move on. Although, my mother was scared to death. And I never told her, I did after it was over with, but I wouldn't tell her while we were in the midst of it the threats that we got and so forth and so on, because I know it would've paralyzed her. But just talking about your problems and thrashing them out. For instance, one thing that really worried me— | 17:44 |
Doris Cochran | I'm trying to hear—I'm listening for something I'm cooking. | 18:08 |
Doris Cochran | One thing that really worried me was— | 18:12 |
Doris Cochran | What was I getting ready to say? I lost my train of thought. | 18:13 |
Chris Stewart | You didn't tell your mother that—? | 18:22 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. Some of the things that were happening because they were frightening. And I knew that they would frighten her too. I had some other point I was trying to make, but I can't think of it right now. But I think that—oh, I know what I was getting ready to say. One thing that really preyed on my mind was the fact that we were not religiously centered on insofar as belonging to church. We were not members of the church and so forth. So we were not religiously connected, which was unusual for here because for Blacks, that was the Alpha and Omega, that was their strength and their solace and everything else. And I tried that. I tried to be active in the church, but I couldn't because I was not accustomed to the traditions and the culture of the church here and it did not address itself to my needs. | 18:23 |
Doris Cochran | So I realized that I could not be active in that facet of this community. And I wrangled over this thing with my father and I said, "Dad, there is no other institution down there that I can become a part of where I would have access to people and get to know people and interact with them, because those things were just nonexistent here." So I said, "I had hoped that I could become active in the church, but I can't because it does not address itself to what I deem religion." And so he said, "Well, don't compromise yourself. Number one, don't compromise yourself." He said, "Do what you can. If you can make a little inroad every now and then, do what you can." He said, "But for God's sake, don't compromise yourself in that aspect." | 19:12 |
Doris Cochran | So those words really stuck with me and I decided that I wouldn't compromise myself. I thought it was living a lie, so to speak. And so my mother was Unitarian by that time. I decided that I'd become a part of the Greater Unitarian Church, Unitarian Universalist. And that gave me a lot of solace. And I made contact that way. And it helped me a great deal. | 20:03 |
Doris Cochran | At the same time, it also cuts you off in the Black community. So there I was, a pickle in the middle. And so I had no inroads there. But as my father had said, I just could not act in a way that was not going to be true. So that one aspect really worried me for a while, but then I came to realize that I had to make a decision that would work for me. | 20:34 |
Chris Stewart | Did you work in any organizations or—well, let me back up a little bit. We're staying at the Franklinton Center. | 21:03 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 21:11 |
Chris Stewart | Over in Whitakers. | 21:12 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 21:12 |
Chris Stewart | We've heard a lot about a gentleman by the name of Jetson Caine. Did you know him, or? | 21:12 |
Doris Cochran | I knew of him. You don't know Naomi. Salter's mother, Naomi, went to Bricks. | 21:20 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, really? | 21:29 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. She went to Bricks. He can tell you about that. She went to Bricks. | 21:31 |
Chris Stewart | It's a small world. | 21:35 |
Doris Cochran | Yes, it is. So there you are. So we heard a lot about that. Now, when it came to belonging to organizations, there was nothing to belong to. | 21:36 |
Chris Stewart | Sure. | 21:46 |
Doris Cochran | Except that there were a group of us, there was one teacher who had been born and reared in New York, that was a very dear friend of mine, there were a couple of other people. And we had a little pinochle club. Now, I'm not a card player, I hate cards because I can't talk when I'm playing cards and I want to be able to talk. | 21:47 |
Doris Cochran | So I said, "Okay, I'll join," because my friend, this girl I was telling you from New York, and I was very close and we could tell each other our troubles and we could understand each other. So that helped being able to meet with our friends. And even though I wasn't paying attention to the cards, at least I was interacting with somebody that was an adult. And that was important. But when it came to other organizations, I had no contact until we got into civil rights, and then we had organizations that we were intricately involved with then, with SCLC and everything else. | 22:04 |
Chris Stewart | When did you get involved with— | 22:48 |
Doris Cochran | —Those were in the '60s. | 22:48 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 22:48 |
Doris Cochran | Early '60s. | 22:49 |
Chris Stewart | During the period of the '50s it was basically you and your husband. | 22:52 |
Doris Cochran | That's right. | 22:52 |
Chris Stewart | Chipping away? | 22:52 |
Doris Cochran | On our own. Yeah. Because we felt that we couldn't be hurt. And if push came to shove, we could pick up and go, but as other people could not. And nobody was paying us a salary, we were working for our own salary. I, by the way, managed my husband's business. So that kept me going. But we felt free to be able to do that. And I kept reminding my husband, I said, "Salter, other people do not have this freedom." Because he used to get very impatient with people not being able to follow through on the promise of joining us or becoming a part of the fight. And I said, "You have to remember, those people have a heel on their necks. They can't. They're not free to do it." And then he'd understand. But he was so gung-ho about it because he had been through what he had been through that it was hard for him to stop and just recognize the fact that these people were not free to do it. | 22:58 |
Doris Cochran | And so from the '50s to the '60s, I would pick my kids up, put them in the car, go to Washington, go to New York, go to Toronto, go to California. And this would sustain me. It would hold me together. It was a glue that held me together till I got back here. And then as they were growing up, I was so involved. I had four very close together. So I was so involved in nursery care and helping them to learn what the world was all about, that I didn't miss the contacts. In some ways I did, but not as much as I did before, that I might have had with adults and so forth. | 23:49 |
Doris Cochran | But I was involved in drives, the symphony drives, and the cancer fund and all of that kind of thing. That was, at that time you were segregated. You were only to gather your monies from the Black community and so forth and so on. And Black people were poor by and large. And I'd say, "Well, if you have a nickel, that would help." That type of thing. But I was cut off, so to speak, from the community in many ways. But at the same time I was in a catbird seat because I was able to see, having been from someplace else, I think I could see where things were more readily. | 24:33 |
Chris Stewart | At this point, did you either have, or did you sense that you would have once you really got involved with the Civil Rights Movement, allies in the surrounding area? | 25:09 |
Doris Cochran | I always hoped for that, yes. And we did have some allies, but the strange thing about that is that they were all from someplace else. They were transplants too. And they were people who had traveled. They were people who had had the opportunity for education in other places. And their minds and their hearts were open. And so we became very close to those people. And in fact, our doors were open to them so that if they needed the place to sleep, they could sleep there. There weren't any motels that they could go to. And so our house was like a bus stop type situation. And we felt very close to those people that we were involved with because we had a common cause, I guess. | 25:30 |
Chris Stewart | At what point did you begin to get actively involved? Or did the Civil Rights Movement come here? Or did you begin the Civil Rights Movement? | 26:19 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. Well, my husband really started it because he ran for office, public office in 1956, which was a tough time to do that. | 26:32 |
Chris Stewart | What office was he running for? | 26:41 |
Doris Cochran | For Halifax County School Board. | 26:43 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 26:46 |
Doris Cochran | And yeah, '56. | 26:47 |
Chris Stewart | Wow. | 26:52 |
Doris Cochran | In '56. And that was the beginning. Before that time, he was very much interested in changing things for the better. And so he tried to work through the NAACP and tried talking to people in the area, tried working with the church and he experimented with what the possibilities were. He's a very outspoken man. He can be brutally frank when he wants to be. So this didn't help. And it created a lot of barriers in some ways. But at the same time, people knew where he stood. But he continued, he ran for office a number of times. And then I started running for office after my last child was born in '62 and ran several times. But in '56 it was dangerous. And when he was campaigning in '55 and when he had been talking before that time, quite often when he went out into the country to speak, Black people would not come into church because he was considered a threat and they were afraid for themselves. So it wasn't easy to garner any followship because of that. But we— | 26:52 |
Chris Stewart | —Sorry. | 28:14 |
Doris Cochran | Go ahead. | 28:15 |
Chris Stewart | We interviewed—well, we received your names from Gary Grant. | 28:18 |
Doris Cochran | Oh, yeah. | 28:22 |
Chris Stewart | We interviewed much of his family. | 28:23 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 28:26 |
Chris Stewart | On Sunday. And the interviews reflected a lot of what you're talking about now. | 28:26 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. | 28:26 |
Chris Stewart | During the '50s. | 28:26 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. Yes. There was dangerous times. And we had experienced dangerous times. Whenever my husband was sort of overwhelmed, and for instance, if there were flu epidemics and stuff, I used to drive for him before the kids were born. And many times he would go on to farms where you had tenant farmers and the owners would tell him to get off the land and threaten him. And he actually carried a gun with him because he was threatened. His life was threatened. And he was not liked because he never, never backed down from what he believed was right. And he had a big mouth about it. He's a small man with a big mouth. So it's not as if we all of a sudden got into the Civil Rights Movement. It was our nature, I guess, to see that things had to change for the better. And that started in 1950. And those were not easy times. Not at all. | 28:36 |
Chris Stewart | So he ran for office in '56? | 29:32 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 29:34 |
Chris Stewart | And did you also go for a school board? | 29:35 |
Doris Cochran | Yes, I did. And he ran several times and I ran several times. I think I ran three times. He might have run four. Something like that. | 29:38 |
Chris Stewart | And what was the community reaction to that? | 29:47 |
Doris Cochran | Well, the Klan really hated it and they let us know it by—I couldn't let my children answer the telephone because there'd be so many threats. I didn't want them to be frightened because they were still small. | 29:50 |
Doris Cochran | I think I hear my husband now. And I'm going to have to stop and fix dinner, but— | 30:02 |
Chris Stewart | —I can come back too. | 30:07 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. Might have to do it that way because he's diabetic and he has to eat on time. | 30:08 |
Chris Stewart | Yes. | 30:12 |
Doris Cochran | Okay. But anyway, there were so many threats out of the community and there were announcements on the radio, "Don't be fooled by Doris Cochran's voice. She might sound like something else, but she's a Black lady," or, "She's a nigra." One of those things. And we used to get notes in our cars. You'd go to the store in the hot weather, you couldn't close the windows. So you'd come back and there'd be little notes stuck in the car, threatening your life. "You have no business here. Leave." And just various threats. But you get to the point where you don't pay any attention to that. | 30:13 |
Chris Stewart | Right, right. | 30:49 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. | 30:53 |
Chris Stewart | You said that you were also involved in SCLC? | 30:53 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah. And SNCC and Southern Christian Education thing. All of them converged here because of the Willa Johnson case. You're probably familiar with that. And so we were involved with them. John Salter was a very good friend of ours. He was with SCLC. And so we were very much involved with them and worked with them with our Halifax County Voters Movement. And so they at one time were taking depositions for school integration and they had law students from Georgetown, they had nowhere to stay, so we put them in our basement on army cots. So they would help me feed the children, get straight in the mornings and get out. And it was like a bus stop, as I said before. It was interesting. And that was all during those times. | 30:54 |
Chris Stewart | Would you like me to— | 31:45 |
Doris Cochran | Yeah, I think Salter's— [INTERRUPTION 00:31:48] | 31:48 |
Doris Cochran | In regard to voter registration, when we first moved here in 1950, one of the first things that we wanted to do was to register to vote. And the physician who proceeded my husband had been here for several years, Dr. Tinsley, was headed up, I think at that time was even the president of the NAACP, which was not terribly active, but they had a handful of men who were working to keep it organized and had some semblance, I guess, of organization. But he had registered along with a couple of other people, very few teachers, because they feared reprisals. But we registered to vote and were treated with such hostility that this is one of my first experiences of absolute obvious hostility and being spoken to in a very demeaning manner and so forth. But we went ahead and did that and voted from the time that we first moved here. | 31:49 |
Doris Cochran | But it was quite an experience because you were stared down and you were spoken to with such a very negative feeling. So that was our first experience with registration. And I think that started to make us so aware of the fact that we were—Blacks were completely excluded from the system, the political system, to say nothing of their exclusion from any community activities. And these were the things that struck us so blatantly. At that time though, we were so involved in trying to get my husband's business started, there wasn't a place. He had asked around to find out if there was a place that he could rent for an office. And there was only one place near where we were living in his old family home that was available. But the man was asking exorbitant rent and it was not attractive in any sense of the word. | 32:50 |
Doris Cochran | And it would've taken just an arm and a leg to get it started. So instead of trying to reach out, we decided to take an old house that was a part of the family's property that hadn't been lived in in years. And we do it and we did with the help of a contractor. But we did a lot of the work ourselves. Painting and some of the carpentry and everything, the two of us did. It was the upstairs of the two-story house that we later made our home and office. And we physically went in there and got that together. We used an outlet for military supplies in Rocky Mount so that we could save money on paint and all of that. And we took old furniture that had been stored in his mother's property, above their garage, and old mission furniture. | 33:48 |
Doris Cochran | And I remember tearing out—the leather had all cracked and was ruined. So we got plywood and fitted up the seats, and we painted, and sandpapered and painted, and fitted up cushions and did all that ourselves and got it presentable. And that was preceding my husband's being drafted into the military because he was an Army Specialized Training person during medical school. So he owed the military his two years. So in 1952 he was drafted. And that we had just gotten down here in '50. And at that time he was trying to speculate about whether he would be coming back. And I, in the meantime, spent part of my time here. But I spent a good bit of time with my parents and I went up to New York, I went back to Howard to work with my violin teacher some, Louia Vaughn Jones, was a beautiful man and quite a scholar in music. | 34:38 |
Doris Cochran | Anyway, I used that time to sort of explore possibilities and to try to wait and see what my husband's feelings would be about coming back to North Carolina. And then when he did return, we lived at Fort Belvoir for the remaining part of his tour of duty. And I had come back and forth to keep up our property where we had the office because we had bought that from the family. And I had had to pack his instruments up and a lot of things that were metal, I had to pack in oil to keep them from rusting or anything while he was gone. But we decided, he decided to come back, and I think I explained to you he felt that if he could fight there, he could fight here. And at that time the wives were more prone to say, "Yeah, I'll follow you." So there we were. | 35:33 |
Doris Cochran | And when we came back in '54, we came back the very last of '54 because he went in in '52, the fall of '52. We decided that we'd take the house, which had been built in, I think it was built before the Civil War and it had housed a physician's office originally. But anyway, we decided to remodel it. And there was one Black contractor in the area, his name was Richard Boone. And he had never had any large jobs. And we finally talked him into working with us and he did. And he was the contractor for remodeling that house. And at one time we thought in terms of trying to restore it. But we couldn't. We would have gotten no help from the community or the state. So we said we'd have to just go ahead and remodel it according to what would suit our needs. | 36:24 |
Doris Cochran | And we knew at that time too, we wanted to start our family in the near future. So we said, "Well, we'll have the office downstairs, which will be easy access for patients, and then we'll have our living quarters upstairs." And it was a very large place. Rooms were 16 or 18 by 18, and big fireplaces in the rooms. It was an interesting place. I drew the blueprints myself, not to scale or anything, but the format. And then we worked with a man who was a blueprinter and finally got it to our liking. And we were very proud of it and happy about it. And it was strange to us that some of the professionals in the community thought it was ridiculous for us to have put as much labor and money into a situation like that because people wouldn't appreciate it. And we said, "We didn't have that attitude, we didn't feel that way. We felt it was worth doing. And we thought that it would give people a sense of pride to have a Black business that was attractive and accessible." | 37:29 |
Doris Cochran | So anyway, and right after that we started with our family. And from that time on, we were really working hard. My husband at that time was making a lot of house calls as they did at that time. And it took a lot of energy and time to keep up with just what his practice meant in our rearing of family. But we couldn't give up our pursuit of civil rights. We just felt that that was very important. So in 1955—yeah. See, we remodeled the house in '55 and '60, but just before we moved out of that old house, which we were staying in the upstairs part of, we moved across the street to his family home. | 38:30 |
Doris Cochran | And the lawyer, you heard us speak of, James Walker, came to Weldon. A relatively young man. And wanted to know if we would join him in some efforts in civil rights. And we said, "Where have you been?" No lawyers around would even touch that. So we sort of jumped on that bandwagon. And my husband worked with him and started speaking at rural churches, where he could, where they would allow him to, because a lot of the ministers were afraid for good reason, the congregations too. And they'd go out in the country and speak about the responsibility of citizenship, becoming involved in voter registration and so forth. And to let people know that they were serious, my husband ran for office and that was in '56. And we'd distribute posters, and of course this was money out of our pockets because there wasn't an organization that would back us. And so whenever he had the time, usually on a Sunday evening, sometimes on whatever prayer meeting night was, I guess maybe a Thursday or whatever it was, he'd go with James Walker. | 39:14 |
Doris Cochran | They'd get in the car and go to these various churches. And before going, they tried to speak to the ministers. And a lot of them said absolutely no. But those that did, they went right away as quickly as they could before there was any changing of minds and would speak to the fact that we must become involved. In order to have any strength, you have to have some political inroads. So that's how that got started. And my husband ran, I think either three or four times. It's in the archives and we have articles from the papers. And then after I think my last child was born in '62, I started running. My husband had worked himself down and was really ill. He didn't, at one time thought it was rather serious, but it proved to be just complete exhaustion. | 40:28 |
Doris Cochran | And so he said, "Well, if you go ahead and start working, maybe I can, in civil rights, maybe I can sort of take it easy and just concentrate more on my practice. Not so much in that." So that's what we did. We just became a team. And that's when, of course, organizations started coming in and we got help from SCLC and VEP and SNCC and various organizations. At that time, still, NAACP was not free. I guess they felt they were not completely free to get completely involved, because they turned down Willa Johnson and that's how she happened to go with SCLC. And so I'm trying to think now in some chronological order. | 41:18 |
Chris Stewart | I'd like to go back and ask you a question about the earlier days in the '50s attempting to get people to get involved. | 41:59 |
Doris Cochran | Oh, yes. | 42:11 |
Chris Stewart | And voter registration. | 42:11 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. | 42:11 |
Chris Stewart | Can you talk about the danger of doing such a thing? | 42:12 |
Doris Cochran | Yes. Those few professionals, like teachers and all that we knew in the area, spoke about the fact that they would definitely lose their jobs. There was just no such idea. I mean, it was just completely out of their realm to think in terms of becoming involved with politics, because they'd definitely lose their jobs. And so they would say, "We're behind you, but we can't be seen. We can't let it show." And I think at the same time there was some of our friends who were be becoming reluctant to be seen with us because of the fact that it was a detriment to them. And we understood because it was real. And Dr. Tinsley, the same Dr. Tinsley that was here, recalled to us on numerous occasions a couple of lynchings that he had seen as a child. One in Henderson, one outside of Henderson, North Carolina. And I think one, I think in Halifax County, but I'm not positive. | 42:20 |
Doris Cochran | But these stories brought to life the consequences of your becoming involved or uppity. And so people were still reeling from things like that. They were being told these stories by their grandparents and their parents. And so it was real and it was a cause for fear to say nothing of losing their livelihoods. And people who were on farms, that were tenant farmers and whatever, would've been abused more so than they had been had they become involved. But it never stopped my husband. And I think it drove him all the more during those times to just talk about the fact that you've got to become involved. There's no hope for you unless you do it. In many instances it was like being in a third world. I remember in the '50s when my husband would go on house calls. Now, a couple times he had the flu himself and I'd drive for him. | 43:20 |
Doris Cochran | And he found in some electronic store up in Washington, a long light, had about a 20-foot extension cord that you plugged into your cigarette lighter. I had to think, because we didn't smoke. And you'd take the light into a house. Well, there were lots of houses up in Occoneechee Neck in Northampton County that had no electricity. These were tenant farmers. And I would drive him and then put the light, hang the light up in the house. And you would not believe the conditions under which those people lived. To me, it was the most shocking thing I had ever seen in my life. This was 1950, '51. There were little tenant farm houses or houses rather that were—you could see the stars through the roof. Their wallpaper was newspaper on the walls. | 44:18 |
Doris Cochran | And one thing I'll never forget if I live to be 109 was that I went into a house with him on a particular occasion. I always made it a point to sit on a hard, a wooden chair, because I was suspicious of anything else I'd get on. And I noticed that I was trying to talk to a lady that was nearby and the several members of the family were down with the flu. They slept on pallets on the floor. And a lady was sitting next to me and I was trying to make conversation and she was very jovial and very accommodating. And this is at night now. And flies would light on her and her skin would shake like a horse. You've seen a horse quiver? And I'd say, "This is really unreal," to myself. I couldn't believe these things that I was taking in. I had never imagined that people lived like that. I remember seeing children play under houses that were built up on stilts. And in the summer when it was so terribly hot, they'd dig out and play underneath the houses to get cool and have a place out of the sun. | 45:06 |
Doris Cochran | Because I guess by virtue of the tradition of the old slaves, they didn't have shrubbery or trees around their houses. And it was swept, the dirt was swept clean and they'd play underneath the houses. And I would tell Salter, I said, "Salter, is this a nightmare we're in?" Or, "Is this what I'm really seeing?" So we would take in all of these things and realize that the only way that people could overcome this thing was for them to have some type of power somewhere, somehow. And it had to be education and it had to be politics. So that was all it was. I'm sure my husband ran many a patient off because this is what he would preach all the time, especially to young parents in trying to rear their children. See to it, put five cents away, put 10 cents away, see to it that this child has a chance. And he never stopped. It was just like an anthem he was singing all the time. | 46:04 |
Chris Stewart | How did the effort change once the organizations got involved? | 46:56 |
Doris Cochran | People started attending the meetings, but they were mostly old people, elderly people who I guess felt, I haven't got anything to lose. And they— | 47:04 |
Doris Hill Cochran | They met at Cofield Funeral Home, which had been shot up by the Klan a couple times while we were meeting there. And it was remarkable to see these elderly people coming so regularly to the meetings. Every now and then, ministers would come, but they felt very uncomfortable, I think, with us because we were jeopardizing their leadership roles. And so there was a lot of jealousy there, there was a lot of envy, I think, and a lot of insecurity about their position in the community. But at the same time, we still had a solid body of old people who would say very little, except they'd respond to you as you spoke, which is traditional understanding of Black churches in the South. They would respond to you as you spoke, as you said anything. "Yes, we are with you. Yes, amen." So forth and so on. And so you knew that they felt this very strongly. | 0:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And sometimes they'd bring their small grandchildren with them. But you didn't see many young adults there, and they were not in a position to be there. Of course, there was also the fact that many young people just left the community. There was a dearth of young people because there was no employment for them and no future there. But I never will forget just looking around and seeing these white-haired people, just smiling as if to say, "At last. Something's going to happen." And so that was enough, because we knew that in many ways that they would so-called carry the message back. And so we felt that their presence was very important. So as the time went by and nobody was getting murdered, they decided that they, being other people would join in. And that was the mindset at that time. | 0:57 |
Chris Stewart | Well, in the time that you have been actively involved in talking basically about the fifties and sixties out of your life, as you continue to be, what do you consider to be a turning point? Was there a turning point? | 1:59 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, there was a turning point, I think in the sixties, definitely in the mid sixties, because lots of people who were nationally known who were being seen on television, Vivian, quite a few people, came to our community through some of the people that were here helping us with the civil rights effort. And at that time, we had a gentleman named A.I. Dunlap, who was a minister in the Methodist Church who had a lot of friends all over, including Vernon Jordan, and would bring them here so that people could see that these are living people who are trying to do what they can for Blacks, and we wanted to inspire and encourage them. So I think that that drew people out and it made them start thinking. But at the same time, I think that because most of these people were from other places, of course, they were not indigenous, when they left the spirit sort of died—Not sort of, it did. | 2:21 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And those people who were leaders so-called that were still here, and most of them were in the churches, fell back into the old ways of doing and thinking because it was a matter of needing time to really change things, and these people didn't have time to stay in the community and inject it with what was new and what was happening and the strength that the people needed. So there was a reversion, I think, in the latter sixties. And at the same time, there was also the co-opting of people being able to get better jobs, perhaps, and Black teachers getting better salaries for teaching. And they found out that they wanted to be secure. | 3:25 |
Doris Hill Cochran | They wanted to be able to buy what they wanted to buy. And I think that this became more important than any civic responsibility because there had never been, and I couldn't see it when I first came here, but I came to realize that because they were excluded from the community, there was never an allegiance to community. I really don't think that there was, and I see that even now where, because I'm on the outside looking in, I have no obligation to give of my efforts. And I can readily understand that. If you've been excluded for something from the generations, you don't feel like you'll ever be included, and so you just forget it. That's just human nature, I guess. And so I see that even now. I see it in young Black professionals here now. In a lot of places, I'm sure it's not the same, but here it is. | 4:12 |
Chris Stewart | You've talked a lot about the role of Black professionals and the movement in this area. Can you talk about whether or not any such movement could have occurred without Black professionals? | 5:20 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, at the beginning of the movement, I'm sure it could have, because most of the people who were involved were laborers, farmers. And because of the fact that teachers could not become involved, like Willa Johnson losing her job and so forth. And so, the grassroots were really what they say. They were the grassroots, they were the laboring people who were first involved. Definitely. | 5:50 |
Chris Stewart | Could you reflect upon what you feel have been the most important—or not necessarily one, but the most important gains or the most important things that you see that have changed in this area that you feel that you and your husband have contributed to? | 6:27 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well— | 6:47 |
Chris Stewart | And then perhaps the most frustrating? | 6:48 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, I think that one of the most important gains, I guess, has been the fact that we've been able to sort of recapture younger people. I know there are quite a few Black doctors and dentists in this area now. For years, we thought would never be able to get them back here because of—Well, we're aware of that because of my husband's profession. And plus I see more Black women really becoming involved. At one time, it was almost heresy for a Black woman to want to take a role of leadership, and now you see them much stronger outside of the home than you used to. And I think maybe we had something to do with that, I don't know. I think that if you looked upon as a person who's been involved and have been able to succeed in whatever that is in whose ever site, you feel as if, "Well, if they can, maybe we can too." | 6:53 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And plus, because of broadened educational opportunities, you find that more Black professionals have come back with something to give the community insofar as their professions are concerned. But I think that that's been one of the strides, I guess, that we've realized. And insofar as one of the most frustrating things, I think to me, is the fact that there is no coalition here among people, Blacks, Whites, the Native Americans. There is a superficiality that is so stilted, that is so recognizable, an outsider can see it. | 7:55 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And there are very few Whites who are willing to risk true friendship with minorities. We have a few friends who are White, and we hang together because there's a mutual feeling of regard, just as people, without being impacted by what the community might think or say, but there are very, very few instances of that. And to me, that defeats any type of future coalition because you can't get along together unless you learn each other, unless you get to know each other and understand each other as a result. | 8:50 |
Doris Hill Cochran | So that to me, is a big frustration. I see more segregation, and I'm not just talking about Whites, I'm talking about Blacks too, who are afraid to step over the line, so to speak, and who too, there's a superficiality there that is easily recognized. So that to me, is a very big frustration because I think that within my own experiences, I was able to overcome what could have been anger and disappointment and so forth in working in civil rights, because I knew it in my life that it could be different, and that because it was different for me in actuality. | 9:35 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And so this is what fueled me knowing that there was something better and something different. But when you see it going in reverse now and people re-segregating themselves, it is a tremendous frustration. We had a friend during the heat of the civil rights movement, who used to say to us, "Don't worry about a big war coming to our worlds again, like World War II. The next World War is going to be a race war." And he used to say it with aplomb, he'd just throw it out. And in some ways, I think he might've been right. | 10:22 |
Chris Stewart | I just want to follow up on something that you said earlier about how you think that you and your husband might have done some [indistinct 00:11:06] and have, in terms of women, could you talk a little bit about what it was for you with children actively engaged in the civil rights struggle? | 11:00 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, it helped educate us all because I shared with my children those experiences that I was having, and my husband did too. So it was an eye-opener, it was an education, and it was a frustration too, because women in this part of the country usually were regarded as second class. Even if you were a career woman and working, your first allegiance was to your husband, completely insofar as what you made your money was concerned, your vote and so forth. And there was no questioning that. | 11:27 |
Doris Hill Cochran | So to have a mindset that's so very different from that and to espouse it, I think might have made some people really think, and I think Willie Johnson had a lot to do with that too. Another real living, "I can touch this, so I know it must be real," situation. And at the same time, it was frustrating because if you're the only woman, sometimes you're not taken as seriously as you might be. But fortunately, those men who were involved and went along with us and worked with us like John Salter, A.I. Dunlap, and several other people, were not of that mindset. So you weren't fighting within the organization, you were fighting outside of it for the type of recognition or position that you wanted to be valued for. And then I think in many instances, you get so busy that you don't even think about those things. And I think that with me, it might have been that too. | 12:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, you really don't. You can reflect on it and draw your conclusions, but when you are in the middle of it, you don't have much time for that, and you just keep on charging. That's the way it goes. | 13:24 |
Chris Stewart | Can you think of anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to have included on this? | 13:39 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Not directly. I often think about the courage that Black people have had here that were physically at risk and constantly mentally at risk because of the demeaning nature of a society like this, where you are spoken to with such denigration. Just anything that's said to you is said with the idea of cutting you down. And for people to survive that their whole lives to me is courage, it's courageous. To come out of that in one piece with some type of levelheadedness, to me, was more than courage, it was just absolutely phenomenal to me. And that was one of the things that fueled me also, that kept me going, to see that here, people are still living through this thing, and they're able to smile and tell their kids, "You've got to do this. You've got to get strong and go on with your life." That to me, is courage. And I was surprised by it because I never had lived in an area where everything that was said— (phone rings) [INTERRUPTION 00:15:04] | 13:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Now, what was I saying? | 15:04 |
Chris Stewart | The courage of the people— | 15:11 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. There was a particular point I wanted to make. Oh, I know what I wanted to say. To have to face each day with people slamming down your self-esteem, that is tough. And I remember quite vividly waking up in the mornings, this was when I first moved here, and asking myself, "I wonder what insult I'm going to suffer today." Instead of saying, "I'm looking forward to this day, and it's going to be great." You just sort of have to steel yourself up. And I remember reading when we were in the midst of civil rights, skipping to that time, I remember reading James Baldwin to put my teeth on edge because I was not a bellicose person, and I had to get an edge on me to go into these meetings and to fight and to almost insult people when I was justified because I was being insulted. | 15:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And it was not my nature to be that way. So I read James Baldwin because he put me on edge, made me angry, and this is what I had to have to succeed. And I can remember before that, reading Langston Hughes and thinking things like James Baldwin wrote as a result of reading Langston Hughes in some ways when I was here. And it was just such a change of my world to come here and to be in a store and to be insulted for no reason by the way someone spoke to you or ignored you when you were supposed to be waited on. And so that changed my life a great deal, and made me look at things more clearly. And it also made me wonder if I in fact, had lived in some type of weird panacea that was so unreal. | 16:12 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And I started thinking about the fact that most Black people were in the South. The populace was of such a nature that there were a few of us that were in other places. And I wondered, I said, "Well, is this what happens in most places?" And just trying to put the pieces together, trying to find out what the Black psyche was, and if there was such a thing. Thought about the fact that I knew Blacks that were from all walks of life. I knew those Blacks who were Catholic, Protestant, a few Black Jews. And I said, "I can't put us all in one bag." And so it was just a matter of trying to sort things out constantly and trying to figure out why it was necessary for people to think in the ways that they were thinking. These were questions that I was constantly asking myself, whereas I had not had to do this when I was growing up. So it brought a new type of thinking to my life altogether. | 17:10 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah, it's almost like living two lives. | 18:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It is. It truly is. And thank goodness I could take comfort in the life that I had had, and I realized how good it had been for me and for my family. And at the same time, I thought about my parents who had lived in segregation and had none of the rancor that perhaps some other people would've had. But then I thought about the fact that they were in a closed society of Black elite in Washington, where my mother was taught by Blacks who had gone to Europe to be educated. And even in when she was in high school, because they had nowhere else to teach—Alain Locke was a philosopher, I was trying to think of that was a friend of ours and taught my mother and also taught me. | 18:15 |
Chris Stewart | Exciting. | 19:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | But anyway, I came to the conclusion that because they were sealed off from the hurt of segregation, that my mother and father were able to flourish. And that made quite a difference. And then they were adventurous, and when they started moving all over the country and finding out how other people lived and ate and felt and thought, they grew with it. And so there wasn't the same impact on their lives that had been on a very circumspect life here where there were no outlets. The church was the Alpha and Omega, and the leadership in many instances was quite backward, uneducated, and relying only on emotionalism and fear. And so it made sense that people reacted as they did, but still, even if it makes sense, you want to change it. You don't want to see it stay that way. | 19:05 |
Chris Stewart | Well, the next step is to fill out some biographical information that accompanies the tape and the collection. So it's quite a large form, but it only takes usually about 15 minutes. So I'll just ask the questions and we generally like to leave the tape on because sometimes as we're talking about it, memories come. | 20:09 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right, I understand that. | 20:32 |
Chris Stewart | We'll start with your full name. | 20:34 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. Doris May M-A-Y Hill, That's my maiden name, Cochran. | 20:36 |
Chris Stewart | C-O-C-H- | 20:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | R-A-N. No E. | 20:48 |
Chris Stewart | And your current address is? | 20:53 |
Doris Hill Cochran | 101 Deerfield Place. Roanoke Rapids. And that's 27870. We have a mailing address too. I don't know that I need that. | 20:55 |
Chris Stewart | No. | 21:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. | 21:14 |
Chris Stewart | And your home phone number? | 21:15 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Is (919) 535-5445. | 21:16 |
Chris Stewart | And how would you like your name to appear in anything that's written that comes from this? | 21:22 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Doris Hill Cochran. | 21:30 |
Chris Stewart | And your date of birth? | 21:43 |
Doris Hill Cochran | April the 28th, 1927. I'm 66. | 21:44 |
Chris Stewart | You're a lovely 66. | 21:49 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh, thank you. | 21:53 |
Chris Stewart | And your place of birth? | 21:54 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Denver, Colorado. | 21:58 |
Chris Stewart | Your mother's first name? | 22:08 |
Doris Hill Cochran | May. M-A-Y. | 22:10 |
Chris Stewart | Her full name? | 22:11 |
Doris Hill Cochran | May Edwards Hill. | 22:13 |
Chris Stewart | Edwards is her maiden name? | 22:13 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Her maiden name is Edwards. | 22:16 |
Chris Stewart | Her date of birth? | 22:24 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It's December the 7th, 1896. | 22:26 |
Chris Stewart | And is she still alive? | 22:29 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No. She died in 1985. | 22:32 |
Chris Stewart | And her place of birth? | 22:33 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Washington, DC. | 22:38 |
Chris Stewart | And her occupation? | 22:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | She was a social worker. | 22:48 |
Chris Stewart | And your father's full name? | 22:58 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Daniel G. Hill. | 22:59 |
Chris Stewart | Is that A-L or E-L? | 23:01 |
Doris Hill Cochran | E. | 23:01 |
Chris Stewart | And his date of birth? | 23:01 |
Doris Hill Cochran | May the 26th, 1896. May the 26th. | 23:17 |
Chris Stewart | When did he die? | 23:18 |
Doris Hill Cochran | He died in 1979. | 23:21 |
Chris Stewart | And his place of birth? | 23:23 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Annapolis, Maryland. | 23:28 |
Chris Stewart | His occupation, is a minister? | 23:38 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, and social worker. He was trained in both. And teacher, he taught at Howard University. | 23:39 |
Chris Stewart | You have four children in the family? | 23:44 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, four. Okay. Leslie, my oldest. You just want their first names? | 24:02 |
Chris Stewart | This is your brothers and sisters. | 24:08 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh, my brothers and sisters. My siblings. Okay. My oldest sister's Jeanne. Jeanne Hill Flateau, her married name. F-L-A-T-E-A-U. | 24:10 |
Chris Stewart | And her date of birth? | 24:24 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Let me see now, December the 17th, 1919. | 24:25 |
Chris Stewart | And where was she born? | 24:36 |
Doris Hill Cochran | She was born in Philadelphia. And my sister Margaret Martin was born in October 21st and 1921. | 24:37 |
Chris Stewart | And where was she born? | 25:05 |
Doris Hill Cochran | She was born in Baltimore. I gave my other sisters Philadelphia, didn't I? Yes, that's right. I'll stop and think. My brother is Daniel G. Hill III, and he was born in 1923, November the 23rd. And he was born in Independence, Missouri. And I was born in Denver in 1927. | 25:08 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, your children? | 25:50 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. You want their full names? | 25:57 |
Chris Stewart | Full names. | 25:58 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Leslie G Cochran Bobbitt. | 25:59 |
Chris Stewart | Leslie G— | 26:05 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Cochran Bobbitt. | 26:06 |
Chris Stewart | And date of birth? | 26:09 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It was March the 11th, 1956. | 26:13 |
Chris Stewart | And where was she born? | 26:16 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, in Durham, North Carolina, I had to go all the way down there because I was RHO negative. I had to travel all the way down there for the births at the hospital, and I refused to go to the hospital up here, which was segregated. So I had to take that jog, a two hour ride. It was just like being on the Pony Express all the way down there for each one of my kids' birth at Lincoln Hospital in Durham. | 26:21 |
Chris Stewart | Which hospital did you go to? | 26:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Lincoln, which was a Black hospital at that time. And we had friends that were on the staff. And so I had to go down there regularly because I had to have titers at that time, and if you're RHO negative and your husband was positive, you had to go through the titer business. And I had to go down at least once a month to run titers. And then when I had first signs of labor, I'd have to get everything together and jog down to Durham. | 26:47 |
Chris Stewart | Your next child? | 27:10 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Anthony Peyton. He was named for his grandparents. Anthony Peyton Cochran. March the 14th, 1958. Christine Angela Cochran. She's my only single child now. She was born December the—Oh gosh, what am I thinking about now? 12th. December 12th, 1960. | 27:11 |
Chris Stewart | And she's only two years older me. | 27:46 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. | 27:47 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have any grandchildren? | 27:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, we do, but I have another child to put down though. | 27:51 |
Chris Stewart | Please. | 27:53 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, Robin Cochran Quarles. She was born August the 19th, 1962. And I do have grandchildren. I have a granddaughter, Amanda Bobbitt, and she's four and a half. And I have grandson, Zachary Quarles, who was one and a half. And another grandson, Jeremiah Quarles, who is four months old. | 27:53 |
Chris Stewart | Do your children live near? | 28:54 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, they don't. My oldest daughter lives in Woodbridge, which is relatively near considering that we were all the way across country. She lives in Woodbridge, Virginia. Now this is a daughter who lost her sight when she was 13. Well, we were told when she lost the sight that she was going to have to go to school in Raleigh where they had the school for the blind, and I said that would never happen, that she needed me at that time and she needed to be with her family. So we devised methods of helping her to get through. She graduated from high school honor student, and she graduated from college summa cum laude, and I taped for her until she went to college, and this is another reason why my time just flew by those years because I taped at night for her, and I even taped for some of her courses in college and I'd send them to her. | 28:56 |
Doris Hill Cochran | She went to Western Carolina University because they had a good reader system there. And she is now working for the US Department of Treasury as a specialist for adaptive equipment for physically and visually handicapped people. She's a career government person and she's a wiz on computers. So she's done beautiful and can get all over Washington on her own. She has had seeing eye dogs, but she was unlucky with them because one became epileptic, and another one just became wild. It just was not trainable. After she got it, he just would not adhere. And so she had to give them both up. And she took mobility training while she was still in state. We took her down to Butner for summers where she learned braille and mobility training. And so she functioned beautifully. She really does. And she's the one who has a daughter who's four and a half. | 29:43 |
Doris Hill Cochran | She'll be down here to stay with us next week. Looking forward to Amanda. I'm telling you. So anyway, she worked in the private sector for years in adaptive equipment and then she finally got the job with government, career government. So we're very proud of her for having done that. And then you want to know about my son? | 30:38 |
Chris Stewart | Sure. | 31:02 |
Doris Hill Cochran | My Tony went to A&T, which is predominantly Black in Greensboro, and graduated with a degree in history, and had thought about going to law but was not quite hooked on it. So he went into insurance for a while, didn't like that because he just was against that high powered salesmanship business, it wasn't in his scheme of things. So he decided to go into the military and we were surprised at that. This was at a time when employment was tough. And he's in the Air Force, he's career Air Force now and he's down stationed at Langley. | 31:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | He's been in several places including Greenland and Saudi Arabia and down in Texas for years. And he likes what he's doing. He's a fitness specialist and a very good person. Good solid guy. And then my next daughter, Chris is the one who's in Canada, and she is in social work, works for Greater Toronto. She's worked with them for five years. Before that she worked for the Globe & Mail, a newspaper in Toronto. That was a high pressure job, and she likes this one better, even though it's a lot of stress, but she likes it better working with people. | 31:39 |
Chris Stewart | Different kind of of stress. | 32:18 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Different kind. She can deal with this kind. And she's engaged to be married and we're going up to spend some time with her in August. And I just talked to her last night because she and her boyfriend are going out to the Maritimes for a two-week holiday. And I was telling them, "Be careful, be safe and have a good time." | 32:19 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And then Robin graduated from Guilford, which she was the only one of our children went to private school, and she went to school for a year in Germany at University of Munich. And she graduated with a degree in English. But after graduation she found out that she had a thing, she says for computers, and did some work in studying computer science at a couple of community colleges, and also—Where else did she go? She went to school someplace in Greensboro for several months to try to get some more computer skills. And anyway, she decided to finally, she married and then she moved from Virginia. She was in Colonial Heights, Virginia. She moved on up to Pennsylvania with her husband. So she's there now with her two small children. So she had to put her career on the back burner for a little while into this younger baby's old enough for her to get back into the workforce. | 32:36 |
Chris Stewart | It sounds like you have children all over the place. | 33:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. | 33:41 |
Chris Stewart | And they're doing very well. | 33:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh, thank you. They're doing well, and they're not as spread out as they used to be, because at one time my oldest daughter was in St. Louis, Missouri, my son was in Texas and my other daughter was in Germany and the other one in Canada. So I tell them we owned the private telephone company, they owned us really. So they were really spread out thin. But now we feel as if we're much closer because we're all in the east, and so we do get a chance to see each other frequently, and we do. We pack up and visit each other. And after we moved from the other house, which was large, and we moved into this house, it's relatively small. We keep our bed bags, our sleeping bags, because when they come to visit, everybody has a sleeping bag everywhere so that we can be together. | 33:42 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And so when we get to visit them frequently too, because Woodbridge is only about three hours from here, and they come down as frequently as they can. And then my son comes in every so often. He and his father very close, and there's been sort of a reversal of roles there, which is interesting. My son is rather conservative, not in his politics, but in his dress and everything else. His father's flamboyant. And there's been a reversal of roles where my son is more fatherly to him than the other way around, and it just amuses us all. We think it's great. We like it. And my son is very mechanical too, so he sees to it that his father's boat in good working condition and all that. And they come down and help us wash windows and all that kind of thing. So we have a lot of fun. | 34:22 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, that sounds— | 35:10 |
Doris Hill Cochran | We really do. We have a good time. | 35:10 |
Chris Stewart | I have to ask you about your education history. | 35:12 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. | 35:15 |
Chris Stewart | And we'll start from the beginning. | 35:16 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. I started school in Portland, Oregon, Holiday school, which I told you about, which was a platoon system, experimental school. | 35:21 |
Chris Stewart | And for how many grades did you— | 35:31 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I went just to kindergarten there, and then moved to the Oakland school system in Lafayette. My brother and I were the only black children in that whole school. | 35:33 |
Chris Stewart | And that's through what? | 35:50 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I moved to Berkeley when I started junior high school, we moved to Berkeley and went to junior high school and high school there. | 35:54 |
Chris Stewart | What was the name of that junior high? | 36:06 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Junior high school was Willard Junior High. And the high school that I went to was University High. My memory's getting so poor, I have to really stop and think. | 36:09 |
Chris Stewart | You're doing wonderful. | 36:23 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Oh, it's been a long time ago. And I didn't finish there because we moved in the middle of my high school years and went to East Denver High School in Denver. And I was the only Black student in my class. There was another Black student, but he passed for White, Caldwell. And the funny thing about that was I dated his first cousin. But he was the only other Black student in that entire class. | 36:23 |
Chris Stewart | He successfully passed for White? | 36:55 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, he did. And parts of their family just completely went over into the White community. | 36:56 |
Chris Stewart | And to continue? | 37:08 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I went from East Denver where I graduated in 1945 to Howard University, in 1945. And I was there until 1950, and I was in a five-year program in music theory in violin. And I did not get my degree because I left there to come here with my husband who had decided to come here. And I was there from '45 till the beginning of 1950 on music theory, my professors— | 37:10 |
Chris Stewart | Music theory and what else? | 37:45 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Violin minor. Oh boy. Here we go. | 37:46 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. That was university. Did you do any other higher education? | 37:58 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No. Except to go back to Howard to study with my violin teacher in 1953 while my husband was in Korea, Louia Vaughn Jones. I studied with him several months during that time. And then I've been in the community college to get some work in computer stuff, which I enjoy. | 38:03 |
Chris Stewart | Must learn our computers— | 38:32 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, I wanted to become computer literate. And I was encouraged by my daughter and her husband because he's a computer specialist too, he works for the National League of Cities as the manager of their department of computers. | 38:33 |
Chris Stewart | Oh my. Computer junkie. | 38:47 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, it is. So they encouraged me, in fact, he helped me to select my Apple computer and got me all started and set me up. | 38:48 |
Chris Stewart | I'm a firm believer in Apple. | 38:56 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes, he is too. And so my husband took some computer classes way back there when he had to learn the other language, you know. I said, "Nah, that is not for me. I'll never succeed at that." After seeing what he was going through. So I waited until it got became very simple. | 38:58 |
Chris Stewart | The Apple computers— | 39:14 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. | 39:16 |
Chris Stewart | They make them— | 39:16 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Friendly. Yeah, exactly. So I went to the community college and took a couple of courses in that. And I've enjoyed taking some courses in jazz and a lot of things that are offered that my husband and I have taken together. So I have a community college nearby. It's helped a lot. | 39:18 |
Chris Stewart | How about work history? | 39:35 |
Doris Hill Cochran | With the exception of working as a musician, I worked with several groups while I was in Washington, because that helped our income. I worked in trios and then string quartets, and that was in Washington. And then my husband and I decided that because we could not find someone that we felt we could trust to set up his books and get everything started, we decided to educate ourselves, which we did through macro economics courses that you could take with him, and I became his business manager. I've done that ever since he started working. I taught violin for a little while too. When I first came here, I taught violin. | 39:40 |
Chris Stewart | Did you begin doing the business manager position in 1954 then? | 40:49 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It was earlier than that because I actually say his books up from 1950. | 40:56 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 40:58 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And I still do that and still manage his business. | 41:08 |
Chris Stewart | And when are you teaching? | 41:19 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Violin? From 1950 through 1954. It's either four or five, I can't remember which. | 41:22 |
Chris Stewart | Have you ever received any awards or honors or held any offices? | 41:35 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. I don't know where to begin because I've sat on a lot of boards here, and I've worked with international, predominantly Black women's organization Links Incorporated. And I was honored for the length of time I've been in Links and for work I've done with them. And— | 41:43 |
Chris Stewart | We've in fact interviewed several women from Charlotte. | 42:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, I'm still very much involved with them too. And I worked on a lot of projects with them, and it hasn't been too easy because they didn't have a local chapter. And I was with a chapter that was fundamentally based in Wilson Rocky Mount. So I rejected even becoming a part of it until my husband encouraged me to do so, and that was in 1964, I think, when my youngest was two years old, because I knew that whenever I had to meet with them, that would be a day away from home. So at that time I had a pretty trustworthy lady that would help me to babysit. And they met on Saturdays, so my husband could be in and out. So that enabled me to be able to meet with them. And I joined them in about 1964. It was either '64 or '65, somewhere in that time. And I've worked steadily with them ever since in that same chapter of Links. | 42:04 |
Chris Stewart | We also have a section of organizations. | 43:09 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And I've worked with non-profit Social Action Agency, CADO, which is a four county organization. It's Choanoke Area Development Association. I presided over that organization for several years too. Choanoke Area Development Association, covers four counties, Halifax, Northampton, Bertie and Hartford. | 43:14 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of work does— | 43:41 |
Doris Hill Cochran | They're a community action agency. They were funded by the government in part by the state. And for anti-poverty, they called it back then the anti-poverty agencies, when it was first founded. My husband and I were really responsible for that thing getting started because they did not want it in the community. And we fought for it, or we had some terrible battles for that thing, and finally were able to get it started with the help of some other people, of course. And in the seventies, I was president for two terms, and I'm still on that board even now. | 43:44 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Let me see what other organizations I've worked with. I was active with Deltas for a few years, but by virtue of the fact that I was not working away from home except that I was managing my husband's business, the responsibility that I was having when my kids were still young and still at home was too much because it took me away from home along with Links, which I had already belonged to for some years. They finally got an active chapter in our area, but I couldn't stay with them. I had to become inactive because I just didn't have the wherewithal to hang in there. | 44:28 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And so I had to give that up. But then I've worked with things like the Weldon Library Board. I was on there while I was living there. And I was on the hospital board for 10 years when it was first built, the new hospital under the government guidelines, and that was a big fight too. Halifax Memorial Hospital Board. It took my husband 10 years to get on the staff there. So you can imagine what happened when after a lot of pressure and petitioning and so forth, I was finally appointed to that board and stayed on for 10 years. And then I was on the board of the Halifax Community College for 21 years, I think. | 44:59 |
Doris Hill Cochran | And then I'm on the Roanoke Rapids Memorial Library Advisory Board, I think they call it. Roanoke Rapids Library, it's not Memorial Library, it's Roanoke Rapids Library. It's the hospital, it's the Halifax Memorial Hospital. I'm trying to think, what else? Can't think of anything else right at this moment. I know I'll remember something later. | 45:47 |
Chris Stewart | Okay, well if you do, you can let me know. | 46:18 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. | 46:22 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have a current religious denomination? | 46:24 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I'm Unitarian. | 46:26 |
Chris Stewart | Do you have a current church affiliation? | 46:29 |
Doris Hill Cochran | There's no church here. So I belong to the Unitarian Church of a Larger Fellowship, CLF. And you receive all your information through mail and through being able to contact your ministry by phone. And so I've been Unitarian now for almost— | 46:32 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I never had any past church membership. | 0:02 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Are there any activities or hobbies or interests or publications that you'd like us to to include in this portion? | 0:08 |
Doris Hill Cochran | No, and I forgot something when it comes to various things that I belong to, I played with the Chowan Orchestra for years, violin, and accompanied their drama department in various productions that they had and played with a string ensemble that they had there. That's in Murfreesboro, North Carolina. | 0:19 |
Chris Stewart | Are you continuing to play? | 0:48 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I can't because I was stricken with arthritis in my hands, and about 15 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, and I had to stop playing. So that ended my violin—It really was. It really was because I hated giving that up. That meant so much to me. | 0:49 |
Chris Stewart | Anything else you'd like me to include on this? I can add hobbies. | 1:11 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Well, other than reading and music. | 1:18 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:01:21]. | 1:19 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah, by all means. Travel to some extent too. A few very good friends. That's about it. | 1:22 |
Chris Stewart | Well, that's the extent of this form. | 1:37 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. | 1:37 |
Chris Stewart | There's one more step that we need to take and that is to get permission basically from you to use the tape and the collection. We have two options. I explained earlier that the tape is going to be part of a larger collection that will be housed at the Duke University Archives. And so basically we have an interview agreement between yourself and Duke University and there are two options. One option is that you can sign an interview agreement that states that you give Duke University rights to this tape to be used for scholarly academic with no restrictions. | 1:47 |
Chris Stewart | I like to suggest to people that they sign a form with restrictions, which means that you also sign over rights to Duke University, but you do that with certain restrictions to the tape of the transcript. What most people have done, and what is seeming to work out quite well, is that they placed the restriction of anybody who wants to use any part of the tape or transcript or publication will have to get permission from you. | 2:28 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right. | 3:03 |
Chris Stewart | What that does is it allows this transcript or tape to be used in the classroom or for students in college to use the collection, perhaps write papers that wouldn't be published. | 3:03 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right. I understand. | 3:25 |
Chris Stewart | Research papers on the civil rights movement or whatever. But when it goes into publication, they have to contact you— | 3:26 |
Doris Hill Cochran | I see. | 3:37 |
Chris Stewart | —for permission to use it so there's that option. So there are various ways in which you can restrict it as well, and it's basically anything that you would like. | 3:37 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. Well, I like that option. Yeah. | 3:47 |
Chris Stewart | What I'll do then is I will fill out— | 3:50 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. What I wrote is that the restriction is that one must get permission to quote from your tape or transcript for publication from you. | 3:51 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Right. Very good. | 4:53 |
Chris Stewart | Is it the first today? | 4:54 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Mm-hmm. First of July. I can't believe it. I don't know where the summer's gone. | 5:21 |
Chris Stewart | I know, I know. | 5:25 |
Chris Stewart | It is going by— | 5:38 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Fast— | 5:40 |
Chris Stewart | Too fast. | 5:40 |
Doris Hill Cochran | It is. | 5:41 |
Chris Stewart | I mean, I'm really enjoying the time on the road and talking to people and it seems to just all go just too fast and not enough— | 5:42 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yes. So quickly. | 5:50 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. I'm hoping to take the fall to sort of absorb it all. | 5:53 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Okay. Yeah. Yeah. | 5:58 |
Chris Stewart | Reflect. | 5:59 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Take time. Yes. That means a lot. | 5:59 |
Chris Stewart | Reflect. | 6:01 |
Doris Hill Cochran | Yeah. | 6:01 |
Chris Stewart | But we'll see how that—Okay. You can look through this and make sure that— | 6:01 |
Doris Hill Cochran | All right. | 6:06 |
Item Info
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