Bertha Todd interview recording, 1993 July 15

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Sonya Ramsey	—the area where you grew up?	0:00
Bertha Todd	Yes. It was in the rural area of Sampson County, not about five miles from a little town called Garland, North Carolina, and maybe about 10 or less from Clinton, North Carolina. It was what one would consider a neighborhood of Whites and Blacks. And for the most part, although some of the individuals in there were educators, the predominant number were carpenters or farmers. We had a very good relationship because most were related, and I will say the Whites were related by Adam and Eve. And we were very conscious of pursuing an education, and we knew the importance of an education. And at that time, the early years that I do remember, my father was the principal of the school in the Garland area, so we were steeped in realizing that education meant a lot and education was the key to moving on.	0:04
Bertha Todd	I enjoyed some of the aspects of the farming area, but I preferred reading books to doing my chores on the farm or in the house or in the field. And that's about all I can tell you about that. We rose early and we went to bed late. I remember staying up all night one night to—And that was in those early years, reading by lamplight, reading The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas. And I can see right now the sun coming up, and I said, "Well, I guess I better get to bed and sleep for about an hour before I get up and have to go back to work."	1:22
Sonya Ramsey	How did you get along being the children of the principal? How did you interact with the other children in the neighborhood?	2:09
Bertha Todd	Well, since all of us were relatives to a great degree, and at that time, some of our first cousins were also educators and everyone was going to school. I didn't really realize that. I didn't feel special. I was just one of the members of the clan. It was a large family, the Boykin family, a lot of brothers and sisters. The brothers remained there, but the sisters moved to a small area, Roseboro, one and another one came down this way, Kelly.	2:17
Bertha Todd	And it wasn't until I really attended North Carolina Central, and on the application blank on several of the application blanks, we were asked to list your father, your father's occupation, and your mother and your mother's occupation, that I began to realize now what does this really mean? And of course, I could recall that I was told my mother taught in the elementary grades until my sister was born, and my father was a principal until he died.	2:58
Bertha Todd	But only then did I realize that we were moving fast into the education arena. I had self-confidence, and maybe that's a part of it, since I have a twin sister. That may have been a part of it too, because we got our overly share of potential there sometimes. Yes.	3:38
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:04:02] identical twins?	4:02
Bertha Todd	Yes, we were identical. And for the most part it made us shy.	4:02
Sonya Ramsey	Were you known as the twins? Or—	4:09
Bertha Todd	Yes, the twins. Never Myrtle or Bertha. It was always the twins. And so really I did not feel—Later on, when I moved to Wilmington, I simply did not feel as if I had an identity. I was not aware of myself as much. I had just simply separated from a part of me, so to speak, because we stayed in Durham five and a half years. And we were together all of that time, same room, talking friend to friend, sister to sister. And when I moved to Wilmington, I simply just felt a part of me was missing. And that was all.	4:10
Sonya Ramsey	How did you adjust to change that or establish your own [indistinct 00:04:56]—	4:52
Bertha Todd	We called every day, almost, and although I never visited her, since I had been selected to work in the larger area, she was in an area near Charlotte, Mooresville, that's where it was, that school was out there a little earlier and she would always visit me. And I had a place for us to live on Red Cross Street. And the lady, a retired teacher, she had five bedrooms, no one there except she and me. And I didn't feel as if she minded that my sister would come, and that is the way I adjusted, until I became totally involved.	4:56
Bertha Todd	I didn't realize it then. I attended many sensitivity training sessions. I came here with a bang. I was determined to—I didn't want to come to Wilmington, because I'd heard of the riots of 1898 all my life. And I simply did not want to come to this area that I considered backward or had heard it from my parents. And that although the Blacks had progressed at one time, the Whites sort of dominated now and I didn't want to come. And I had a master's degree and that was age 24 at that time, which was most unusual 40 years ago. But my sister and I simply enjoyed school and we didn't want to really work. We would've rather stayed in school all of our lives. Because when we graduated in '45, with my sister and my brother attending school, we remained out of school for two years.	5:47
Bertha Todd	So we really did not attend school until '47, and we elected and we wanted to go to Howard University. We had gotten admitted and everything, and of course, my mother didn't have the money for that. So my sister Ida and our mother decided that they were going to enter us into North Carolina Central University without our knowledge, which is what they did. And then they sat down and talked with us, and of course, we had to accept. But because we remained out school, we graduated at 15 and we then turned 16. Well, that was a time when you had grade one through 11 and 12th was just being added on. But we were really too young, as I look back. And we really entered North Carolina Central at 17—	6:48
Sonya Ramsey	Wow, that's—	7:48
Bertha Todd	—and we turned 18 in March, so we were on schedule. But that remaining out of school, and as I said, we grew up being bookworms and we made two grades in one year in those early grades, because we went to school reading, that's what happened. If you read when you went to school during those times, I don't care if you didn't have all the other subjects, they would promote you. I'll never forget that.	7:49
Sonya Ramsey	What do you mean read when you go to—what do you mean by that?	8:16
Bertha Todd	Well, now that they prepare kids in kindergarten sometimes to read and know some of your other subjects and know about some general aspects of what you should know at that age, we learned to read early. We were reading books on top of books at five years old. So by the time we got to the first grade and the other children had not done that, then there were some things that we knew that they didn't know. So by midyear, the teacher moved us to the second grade. And as I look back now, I'm not so sure if that wasn't a mistake, but we won't go through that. I'm out of it now. But that caused us to graduate early from high school, even without the 11th grade. And by the time we got to college, I would say on schedule.	8:19
Sonya Ramsey	What did you do in the two years when you weren't going to school?	9:24
Bertha Todd	Well, that was during the war. It was in 1945, and we wanted to join the Cadets Nursing corps, but the war was ending and we figured—I guess they wouldn't have accepted us because of the age anyway, we didn't think about that. We wanted to learn to type. They didn't have typewriter, and they were just beginning to get typewriter in the schools.	9:24
Bertha Todd	But because of the war, there were no typewriters available. So we spent two years of helping our stepfather on the farm. But reading and learning to sew some, we made some little things and we did a lot of embroidering at that time. And that was about as much as we did. We read and read and read and read.	9:45
Sonya Ramsey	Did your family have a—How big was your family's farm?	10:09
Bertha Todd	Oh, we played the piano. We gave ourselves piano lessons. Our sister was taught formally, and we started out that way, but we stopped. And every day, we had what we call a living room then, we would go to the living room, which was sort of apart from the house in those old houses then, and we would build a fire in the heater and play the piano. She would take turns and I would take turns. And we would give ourselves piano lessons. So between the reading, the working on the farm as much as we could do then during the winter, which wasn't too much, and playing the piano, that sort of kept us going.	10:11
Sonya Ramsey	Did you—	10:54
Bertha Todd	Not much social life.	10:54
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, I was asking did your family have a large farm? Or how big was your family's farm?	10:56
Bertha Todd	My father, who was a principal, didn't have much of a farm. It wasn't much of a farm. I don't remember whether it was 22 acres or more. I cannot remember. I bet my sister could tell you how much there was. But my stepfather had a much larger farm, and that was my father's brother. And of course, he had other helpers. We were sort of the two female helpers. We'd do the little work. And—	11:03
Sonya Ramsey	What kind of things did you do?	11:33
Bertha Todd	Pick peas, when they were dry. It wasn't a cotton season too much then, but if he had any cotton, we did that. We did the peanuts, shake the bushes of peanuts and stack them. And then his sons, he had seven sons, but they all weren't on the farm. There was some then who were—	11:36
Sonya Ramsey	Your stepfather's [indistinct 00:11:59]—	11:58
Bertha Todd	—principals, yes, some doctors, I don't think any of them lawyers. And quite a few of them played the piano, because we did have a piano at the home. What else did we do? We swept the yard. We cleaned the house. Never was much of a cook, my sister and I neither one of us cook very well. I think she does better than I do now. I've simply given it up, and I think that's about all.	12:00
Sonya Ramsey	And you said you didn't have much of a social life. What kind of things did you and your sister do [indistinct 00:12:38]—	12:34
Bertha Todd	We'd go to the movie once in a while, if we could. They had a movie in Garland. It was five miles and they had two movie houses, I believe, in Clinton at the time. Once in a while we'd get there. The biggest social life we had was at the church and the church activities.	12:37
Sonya Ramsey	And what church did you attend?	12:58
Bertha Todd	I attended the Baptist Church then and Ingold Baptist Church, which was another little community. And no, I guess that was around three miles away from where we lived.	12:59
Sonya Ramsey	What role did that church or the church in general play in your community when you were growing up?	13:11
Bertha Todd	The church was the hub along with the school of the Garland area. Well, no, the Ingold area, and they call it the Raleigh town. That's because our great-great-grandfather's name was Raleigh, really. And they were from the Wake County area. That's all I know. I really need to check those roots out. But it served as the social bit, not too much advocate of anything at that time. But from the social and the religious aspect and the implementing and solidifying the values, the church played that role.	13:20
Sonya Ramsey	What was a typical Sunday like for your family?	14:12
Bertha Todd	Typical Sunday, you arose that morning, you'd got your bath, you waited for the breakfast call, and before the breakfast call, you went to what we consider the family bedroom combination, and we had prayer. Each one had to recite a Bible verse, then we would have the prayer by either the mother or the father, never the children. I think we would've cut it short to one sentence. We were ready to eat. And then we went to breakfast.	14:16
Bertha Todd	Now, at one time, the family was so large that only we had two calls to breakfast. First set went, and of course my twin sister and I, being the youngest of the entire family at that time, would always elect to go last. We respected our elders. If you were older or if you had achieved, which was usually you had to be older, then you went first. And after we had finished breakfast, I think we washed up the dishes. I think we cleaned all of those before we went to the rooms to get ready to go to church. And then usually we either had two cars to attend church, no one ever walked. It was a little too far for that.	15:00
Bertha Todd	But I do remember very distinctly, once when, maybe it was a holiday or a special Sunday, we did not have enough room in the one car that we had at that time. The other one, I think, one of the boys had it. So our father hitched up the mule or the horse, we had one horse, one mule, and put us on the wagon and we rode to church. Now, by that time, by the time we got ready to come home, the other car was available. I only think we did that once that I rode, I sort of remember twice, I won't say three times, that was a little too inconvenient for us, because we didn't have one of those pretty wagons.	15:53
Bertha Todd	At that time, there were some individuals who had beautiful wagons and they would hitch those wagons under the tree and hitch the horses under the tree and leave the wagons there, would take the wagon off, and remain until after service. And then I remember, sort of, that we did have some pride by then because our daddy was the only one in the community who had a T-Model Ford before he died. So to ride on that wagon when our dad had this T-Model Ford, before he died, wasn't quite what I considered transportation.	16:45
Bertha Todd	And of course, at that time he was dead. And our mother married our father's brother who was 20 years older than she, you can imagine where we were in that family. He had nine children—	17:33
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay, that's [indistinct 00:17:47]—	17:45
Bertha Todd	—seven boys and two girls. My father had four, three girls and one boy. The oldest son or child of my mother's was not as old as the youngest son of my stepfather.	17:46
Sonya Ramsey	And did some of his children move into the house with—Did y'all join together in the house with the children? Or were they all older, your [indistinct 00:18:17]—	18:08
Bertha Todd	Well, once in a while some of them would return home. By that time, a couple of them had married and built homes of their own in the same community. So they weren't really there. But then some were still in school and most of them had really moved out. About two had moved to the Raleigh area. And then in the year '46 maybe one of the children had moved to the Virginia area, Norfolk, Virginia, and became a principal there. He was a principal before he left here. And another one was a pharmacist. I think eventually he landed in Detroit, Michigan.	18:17
Bertha Todd	Two carpenters, one got killed, another one a tractor ran over. He was in the Navy, but that was the baby of my stepfather's family. And I don't think he ever acclimated himself to coming back home to assist his father in running the farm. That wasn't what he wanted to do. Not a one of them wanted to stay on that farm. It was a large, he had a large farm, much larger than my father.	19:02
Sonya Ramsey	So I guess your father and your stepfather's family, were they mostly educators?	19:31
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm.	19:36
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	19:37
Bertha Todd	They were educators.	19:38
Sonya Ramsey	They were farmers too.	19:41
Bertha Todd	They started out, until the children went to school, being farmers. It wasn't too long before each one got an education and moved on out.	19:41
Sonya Ramsey	How did they get—	19:51
Bertha Todd	College education.	19:52
Sonya Ramsey	Do you know how they achieved getting their land and things like that?	19:53
Bertha Todd	It was passed down from our great-grandfather, and beyond that, I don't know. I have not checked that out. I do wish that I had. I started the genealogy check, and got as far as learning—I had to send to Sampson County. My next step would've been going to Wake County, which I was busy working. This is my first year in retirement, and I didn't get any further. But my father, I think was 10 years old at the time of the proclamation, the Emancipation Proclamation, I think, I'm not sure. Because he married at a late age, really. I didn't know that until I checked records to find out.	19:58
Sonya Ramsey	Could you describe your home? What did it look like?	20:43
Bertha Todd	The first one, because we moved in the neighborhood after my father died, was a big rambling farmhouse with a porch all the way around the house. And it had a big, what you call a living room, but there were two beds in that room. That was the living room/family room combination. That was a bedroom/family room combination. There was a living room off from the house, as you come in, you could go into that door, you would be in the living room. Then you go through another door, you enter into a bedroom. You go to the left, and this is where you would find the large sitting room, which was a bedroom/sitting room combination. Off from that big bedroom was another bedroom.	20:53
Bertha Todd	You come out of there, you go to the right, and you had another bedroom on the side. Further down was the kitchen and a porch, another porch. Going back in my memory as far as I can, there was at one time, before it was torn down, a dairy. We called it a dairy. And what did you keep in that? You kept milk cold. You kept vegetables that you'd canned, and you kept cakes out there when the weather was cold. So it was a large area with shelves, and I don't know, compartments, and that was the dairy, until people stopped using it, tore it down, never built it back.	21:42
Bertha Todd	Then in the back of this house, there was a smokehouse. Now, what was in the smokehouse? Meats. The killing hogs, maybe have wild meats, and sometimes beef. And for the most part it was dried or cured, and it stayed in there all year. Until you pick it out or give it away, and you eat as much as you could eat. And the rest of it, the next year, I really don't know what happened to it.	22:32
Sonya Ramsey	Did your family build their own homes? Or did they move into homes already built?	23:12
Bertha Todd	It was built that particular house and the one my stepfather had. See now, my stepfather lived about a mile down the road from the one that I'm talking about first. That one was where I was born, the one I just described. They were built in the family. But who built them? I have no idea. I don't know. As I said, I don't even remember how the land was gotten, really.	23:18
Sonya Ramsey	Did your family ever have any problems or resentments from Whites in the area?	23:50
Bertha Todd	No.	23:56
Sonya Ramsey	No. Okay.	23:57
Bertha Todd	We were a pretty well knit neighborhood, White and Black. And there were Whites who lived in the neighborhood, and we would share foods, and the time of illness, we would check on each other. And the only difference, and I was mentioning that the other day, my twin sister and I had a whole different outlook than the rest of that big family, the four of us and the nine of them, of my stepfathers. I won't say we were militant, but we questioned quite a bit. And there was an old elderly White couple, Jerry and Maddie, I do not remember their last names, but they too had a T-Model Ford, and they lived not too far, I guess two city blocks from us. Of course, they went to another church.	23:59
Bertha Todd	So for the most part, he would call my stepfather, I never heard him say, "Uncle Thomas," that was my father, but he did call my stepfather, "Uncle Juniors." The wife would bake gingerbread, and of course you can imagine the three of us, my sister over there and my twin sister going to her house to get this gingerbread. It was a good gingerbread. First we had to go around to the back door. Secondly, she would wrap it up and give it to us, and we would thank her. And I didn't call her Mrs. So-and-So, because I don't remember her last name. Her name was Maddie, so we probably called her Ms. Maddie.	25:01
Bertha Todd	But many times, as my sister Myrtle and I were growing up, we said, "Now why does he call our father, Uncle Thomas, or Uncle Ben, that was my brother, two brothers lived in that big house I just described, and they call him Mr. Jerry whatever his name was?" So one day he and his wife came out there for something, it was on a Sunday afternoon, and they drove up in this T-Model Ford. Myrtle and I were on the porch and we said, "Hi, Uncle Jerry."	25:50
Sonya Ramsey	What happened next? What did he say?	26:28
Bertha Todd	Nothing. He took it. He accepted it. Because actually at that time, we didn't know any better. They did not tell us we called someone Mr. So-and-so, because we'd have to question that.	26:29
Sonya Ramsey	I was going to ask, when you asked them that your father that, stepfather that [indistinct 00:26:49]—	26:42
Bertha Todd	Oh, my stepfather would say, "Oh, the White man is in charge of everything, and that's just the way it is." He never really could give a good explanation, "Except we were slaves years ago, and this is the way we grew up. And this was the culture, so this is what we do." And my sister and I challenged it and said, "Well, I don't see why we have to do this. We are all human beings. And what do they have that we don't have? They don't have as much as we have. So why do we do that? Why do we treat them this way?"	26:49
Bertha Todd	And even under tobacco barns, as we had that time, initiated by my sister and me for the most part, we would have some very intense conversations and discussions regarding segregation. What difference did it make? Why the difference?	27:21
Sonya Ramsey	Who were you discussing, your friends or family—	27:42
Bertha Todd	There were some Whites under the barn, because we would work for us one day, we would work for them another day. In other words, around the neighborhood, we sort of had—they would pay us, but it was sort of a round-robin sort of thing. So we had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday filled. Saturday you were off, unless the tobacco became too ripe.	27:42
Bertha Todd	And this is what we talked about. This is where I got my first picture of Birmingham, Alabama, because one young lady under that barn shelter was going to Birmingham. And she had been there before. She talked about this big city and how they had many cars and how the workers did and all of this. And when I grew up and read more about Birmingham, I had an adverse feeling, a negative feeling regarding Birmingham. And to this day, I look at Birmingham and I look at the African Americans who have achieved and who have moved on, and I said, "My, my look what's coming out of Birmingham now? I can't believe this."	28:13
Bertha Todd	Growing up in that area, yet and still, I never really accepted any idea that those Whites in that neighborhood were better than we. I knew we separated when we went to church. I knew that once we had—We'd have barn parties and they would attend.	29:07
Sonya Ramsey	They would?	29:32
Bertha Todd	Yeah, mm-hmm. We had just that kind of relationship. But beyond that, we didn't see them and they didn't see us. And of course, we knew we separated when we went to school.	29:32
Sonya Ramsey	At the dances, did they dance? How did they—	29:43
Bertha Todd	No, we didn't really dance. We listened to the radio and just talk and ate. And that's sort of what we did.	29:46
Sonya Ramsey	But they would eat with you in the same—	29:54
Bertha Todd	Yeah. Under the tobacco barn shelter. Mm-hmm. So I did not get a true picture of racism from my community. There were some things I questioned.	29:56
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever hear stories of any racial violence and things like that?	30:10
Bertha Todd	Yes. The riots of 1898 here in Wilmington, North Carolina, because I have a lot of relatives here that we visited once in a while. And my stepfather knew about that. He knew every bit of that. And as a result of that, I had a negative feeling towards Wilmington. And I did not want to come here to work, except the superintendent would not release me from my contract. And I was supposed to work at Barber-Scotia. I had gotten the job, but it was after I signed the contract here, and the superintendent threatened me and told me that if I broke it, he would see that I didn't get a job anywhere in North Carolina.	30:12
Bertha Todd	Well, that was enough for a young graduate of 24 years old to stay where she was. And of course, when I came here, I was determined. I cried every time I came, almost. My brother had to console me, the one who died in Indiana. And I took Booker T Washington's adage, and I read it somewhere, "Cast down your bucket where you are." And I vowed then that if I was going to stay in Wilmington, either somebody would be happy or somebody would be sad, because I was going to do what I felt should be done in order to make this place a better place for everybody. And that's what I did for 40 years, and still doing it to a degree. I had pretty good self-esteem.	30:53
Sonya Ramsey	Where did you think you received your self-esteem from your parents? Or—	31:58
Bertha Todd	Yes. We were closely knit. We learned in our high school about Negroes. We played the role of Negroes during Negro History Week. We'd get on the stage in Garland on that stage, in that school that my father worked so hard with the Julius Rosenwald fund, and he collected pennies. I wished I could—Once I picked up after he died, his list of contributions from the neighborhood and from people, he was collecting the money, trying to help build the school, because we had to have matching funds.	32:01
Bertha Todd	And from sitting on the porch after we moved—My father died when I was eight, and I guess around nine or 10, we had moved to the other big house about a mile down the road. That was my stepfather's house. And on a Sunday afternoon, a typical Sunday afternoon would be to after you've returned from church, my mother and we were the helpers would get in the kitchen and cook dinner. There we would have some of the family from the other houses converging for Sunday to have dinner, had a big screened in porch. So between the kitchen and the table and the porch and the long table, everybody could sit down.	32:44
Bertha Todd	We would talk about issues of the day that you read in the News and Observer, that you heard on the radio and compare notes. After everyone had talked out, at one Sunday, I'll never forget between the in-laws and the children, there were five principals that Sunday evening talking. So naturally they talked about the school rules and regulations and the State Department and all of that. And there were several teachers sitting around.	33:35
Bertha Todd	So we moved from there and went to the living room. Each one would take his turn playing and we would sing. And later on, that would be the end of the day and everyone goes his merry wait, and we'd go to bed. We'd wake up, we'd go to the fields the next morning or do whatever chores you had to do around that house. And that's sort of what a typical Sunday afternoon would be.	34:10
Bertha Todd	I think from that, we got our self-esteem. I didn't quite know who I was, but I knew I was a human being. And the church. And we heard education, education, education, all of our lives. So as a result of that, even when we went to college, we went there pretty well-read, and feeling pretty good, fairly good about ourselves. And to this day, that has not been knocked out of me.	34:38
Bertha Todd	And I've been trying to do that for my daughter and my son. But in the process of doing this, I have tried to teach them that everyone is special in the sight of God. And beyond the skin color, we all are the same. We feel, our heartbeats, the blood flows, we all have goals and aspirations, and this is what living is all about. My sister and I did, when we were in college—Now, that's when I first danced with a White.	35:16
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, could you talk about that experience? Or [indistinct 00:36:03]—	35:59
Bertha Todd	Yes. We were doing square dancing, round dancing. And the fellows from Duke and the girls came over to North Carolina College and we did the square dancing. And that's been years ago. That was in the years of '48 and '49.	36:02
Sonya Ramsey	Was that a usual practice that they would come over? Or was it special weekend?	36:21
Bertha Todd	No, this was a special—I don't know if the YWCA sponsored that or what, but we had a group of students come over and we did square dancing that evening. I do not remember what the occasion was. I just remember the square dancing. That was my first dancing with a White male or female. I don't even remember the females. I just remember the White males. I don't know if the females came, I guess I did. But we did have some things we did together when I was at North Carolina Central.	36:24
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to go back, before we talk about [indistinct 00:37:04], to talk about your high school.	37:01
Bertha Todd	High school.	37:05
Sonya Ramsey	Do you have any special remembrances of any of your teachers during the school year?	37:06
Bertha Todd	Yes. I'd go back further than that, in elementary school.	37:11
Sonya Ramsey	That's fine. That's fine.	37:22
Bertha Todd	Well, my first grade teacher I remember very well. Her name was Mrs. Brewington, short, chubby, dark skinned. She was about five feet, I guess, maybe not that tall. I'm not sure. But she cuddled us, first, I guess, because we were twins. She was from Clinton, by the way. And she came down, I guess they commuted every day. She taught us all that she knew. But as I reflect, I don't think she knew that much. I don't remember having gotten a very good background in the math areas. The reading, because we could read, I think she just let us go on and read more and more, alphabets and whatnot.	37:23
Bertha Todd	Third grade teacher, I do not remember who that was. When we got to the fifth grade, there was a teacher, Mildred Beeman, I think she's still living, I guess. She was from Clinton too. And that's when she attempted to teach us geography. I found it very difficult to understand about all of these other places, the Tigris and the Euphrates and the Egyptian area and the continents, when we were down there in little old Sampson County, in the rural area. And I couldn't really conceive of all of that. Now whether she did a good job of doing that or we didn't do such a good job of learning, I don't know. I won't even go through that.	38:06
Bertha Todd	But in those grades, fifth and sixth, we managed to do what we were supposed to do. I do not remember the history there. The high school I remember better. We did have a person from Africa, and I found we found him fascinating. He was from that far away place that we learned about in geography in sixth grade.	38:52
Sonya Ramsey	How did he end up—	39:10
Bertha Todd	Who knows how Bope Edmondson got to Garland High School in Samson County. He and his father, I don't know how they migrated here. His name was Bope Edmondson.	39:11
Sonya Ramsey	What did he teach?	39:22
Bertha Todd	What did he teach? I think he taught history. I'm not sure. I don't know what— He taught my sister. He never taught us. But he was just one of those unique individuals there that we all knew.	39:24
Sonya Ramsey	Did he change anybody's stereotypes they had about Africa and things—	39:35
Bertha Todd	Sort of. Yeah, mm-hmm, he did. We had French, physics, math, algebra, rather, and English, literature. There was one teacher, Estelle Stewart, Estelle Boykin, and that was my stepbrother's wife at that time. They divorced and she married again. Who was kindly, who taught us as much as she knew about English refinement. She was a refined person. And who acquainted us first with reading in the library. She set up the first library in that school, a set of books and a checkout system.	39:39
Bertha Todd	She taught English. She also taught algebra, which I don't think she taught very well, but she had to, because there was no one else to teach it. And she was also in charge of graduation. She was one of my favorites. There was Betsy McLean, we called him the principal who was not of the family, who finally came in after my stepbrother left. My father was the first principal. My stepbrother was the second principal.	40:30
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	41:00
Bertha Todd	And then comes William McLean, who was not a family member.	41:01
Sonya Ramsey	You said your stepbrother was the next principal.	41:09
Bertha Todd	That was my stepfather's son.	41:10
Sonya Ramsey	Was he principal? When you attended there?	41:13
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm.	41:15
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever receive any special treatment? Or [indistinct 00:41:20]—	41:17
Bertha Todd	I had difficulty with that, I will never forget. That's when I learned to separate professors, even on college campuses, even now. I did my family the same way growing up, when they were growing up here. At home, we're one thing, but when we get in the area of work, you don't even know the person. I learned that when he was principal of that school. He wanted to make certain, we knew that, and I'll never forget, he was in his office door and we were down there in the home ec room and some girl continued to push me out in the hall. Well, he thought that I was playing with him, and I told her to "stop doing that."	41:20
Bertha Todd	So he called me down to his office and he told me that there was a time—I'll never forget, he got this Bible out and read this, "There's a time for work. There's a time for play. There's a time for—" I will never forget Joe doing that, "A time to do this and a time to do that." And he told me, "And this was a time to work and to be in school. And this was not family time," or something like that? Well, I took it, but I also explained to him that I was not the one who was out in the hall by my own free will. Someone was pushing me out there.	42:02
Bertha Todd	And so I guess he called him. So he said, "Well, I got to go take papa to the store." He said, 'Why don't you come on and go with me?" I guess that was being suspended. I don't know what it was, but I got my books and went right on with them. So we went home.	42:39
Sonya Ramsey	Did the other students ever tease you about being a relative of the principal or anything?	42:57
Bertha Todd	No. No. They were kind, and we weren't arrogant. We were just there. We had never been taught to respond that way.	43:02
Sonya Ramsey	Did sharecroppers and children of sharecroppers attend school with you—	43:14
Bertha Todd	Yes.	43:18
Sonya Ramsey	—like that? And how did they interact with the other people [indistinct 00:43:22]?	43:21
Bertha Todd	Very well. Some of our closest friends were sharecroppers. And—	43:23
Sonya Ramsey	Did the teachers—I know sometimes they couldn't attend school as much as other children.	43:29
Bertha Todd	Well, they were absent quite a bit. After the season was over, they'd returned to school. And of course some of the teachers had to work very hard with them, so that they could make their grade, and some of them didn't make their grades. And then a couple of times, after our father died, we stayed out for the cotton picking season that year, because my father was one of those—We didn't have that much money. And if you needed some money and he had a dollar, he would give you 50 cents of that dollar. So when he died, there was someone owing him 300 or more dollars, but they never paid it. And my mother simply had to struggle with the four of us. So we had the small farm there.	43:33
Sonya Ramsey	I was going to ask how was that adjusting [indistinct 00:44:20]—	44:18
Bertha Todd	And someone, my brother was 15, yes, and he was the one who sort of took over. So he did the plowing, with some help, because papa at that time would permit some of his boys to come over and help us. And we got the crop in. And with that, she paid off the debts that were owed at the time. And that particular year, we didn't go to school until after that cotton was picked.	44:20
Bertha Todd	And I will never forget, Joe, that same principal I was telling you about, driving up one evening because we hadn't been to school and he was coming to see where we were. He was checking on us. And my mother told him that she was trying to get the crop in so it could be sold. But I think we went on back to school that—I think we stayed out two weeks. I don't think it was a month, but we stayed out two weeks.	44:57
Sonya Ramsey	Were you involved in high school in any extracurricular activities?	45:26
Bertha Todd	As much as we had. We had a French club. We had our student council. My twin sister was president of student council, at the time. And we had choral groups. I was a member of the choral group. And I can't remember any other clubs we had. I don't think we had a library club.	45:29
Sonya Ramsey	Did you and your sister ever have a rivalry, sibling rivalry?	45:51
Bertha Todd	We were always competitive. In fact, at that time there was one young lady who was very smart. She had had a baby and dropped out and returned to school.	45:54
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	46:04
Bertha Todd	Dorothy Crenshaw. But Dorothy was very smart. My—	46:07
Sonya Ramsey	Which was unusual, usually they didn't get to return.	46:12
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm. Was very smart, and my sister and I simply were competitive and we worked hard. Well, she was in our class and they were beginning to wonder who was going to be valedictorian and who was going to be salutatorian. Well, I knew that my sister's grades were better than mine, because she did better in her algebra. I think I got a C- in algebra, and I think she got a B or an A, I'm not sure. And she was very—	46:16

Bertha Todd	—impression that she was smarter and would do better than I in school. So they figured that she would be the salutatorian. Well, that really wasn't on my mind. They were thinking and wondering what was going to happen because they knew how close we were. So as the results of that, I had already accepted that. But then I made an A in physics and I think she made a C or something. So when we tallied our grades, I really had the highest average.	0:01
Bertha Todd	But because, and I'll never forget this, but because most people thought that she was the more aggressive of the twins and she was the smarter of the twins, then she was going to be the valedictorian. So although my average was higher, I simply shaved off some points. The teacher let us do our own averages and then she'd call and ask. She told us how to do it, and then each one would call the average into it. I shaved off the points and let her be the valedictorian.	0:35
Sonya Ramsey	Why did you do that?	1:10
Bertha Todd	Why? Because they expected that. And to me, it didn't make that much difference.	1:15
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. You mean it was important to your sister?	1:22
Bertha Todd	Yes, it was important to her and it was important to all of those people around her who just knew she was the one. They considered us both fairly smart. I always said we worked hard, which is what we did. And what happened to the young lady who had returned to school? She got pregnant again and had to drop out. So had it been, she would—Now, whether I would've done that, had there been two positions, valedictorian, salutatorian, I have no idea of knowing. I think I probably would have, I don't know.	1:24
Bertha Todd	You see, my sister was the president of the class, of the student council at that time, so I don't know. But now, the tables turned when we got to college. I knew that I wasn't going to do that anymore. I knew that we were both out there on our own and we made the honor roll when we first went there and we continued to make the honor roll. I graduated with honors from Central and she didn't make it, and she cried all day during graduation. Well, that made her even more determined to go on and get two doctorates. And I just got an EDS. But that's the comparison between twins and the competitiveness. Yes, we were competitive.	2:00
Sonya Ramsey	I was going to change to something, ask what happened, you mentioned Dorothy Crenshaw, the woman that got pregnant. What happened to girls that got pregnant?	3:05
Bertha Todd	They went home and had their babies in returned, if they had the courage.	3:13
Sonya Ramsey	The school let them come back?	3:16
Bertha Todd	Yes.	3:17
Sonya Ramsey	What did the—	3:19
Bertha Todd	Sort of ostracize them. Teachers didn't, because in that close knit high school, the teachers were so determined that each one was going to get a chance. Sure, it was a stigma if you had a baby out of wedlock during those years. But then, education was important, too. And education, the importance of education superseded any feelings you may have had regarding any child, any girl who became pregnant. Yes, she returned and I think she finally finished. I'm not sure, I lost track, but sure, she returned.	3:20
Sonya Ramsey	Where did girls learn about the facts of life? Who taught them those things?	4:03
Bertha Todd	During that time?	4:09
Sonya Ramsey	Yes.	4:10
Bertha Todd	You learned those the best you could from the street and from anybody else who you thought knew. More of the facts of life, I really learned, certainly were not from my mother. They were from my aunt, my mother's youngest sister. You just didn't know and luckily, when I was majoring, I majored in biology when I attended Central. If you don't know the facts of life then, you'll learn them when you're taking your biology and your physiology and your anatomy, you'll learn your facts of life then. Even now, I can tell the difference in my talking about health facts and even sex and what have you, than my sister over there who majored in English. And my twin sister and I majored in biology. There is a difference, you're more open to talk about those facts. And I tried to give my children a bit more than ordinarily, I think they would've gotten.	4:11
Sonya Ramsey	You and your sister both majored?	5:14
Bertha Todd	In biology, we thought we were pre-med students.	5:16
Sonya Ramsey	What was Durham like from moving there from Sampson County?	5:22
Bertha Todd	A larger area, certainly sort of metropolitan. But you must remember that North Carolina Central was fairly small, sort of an elitist area. We told our mother we were not going to attend Shaw. My sister attended Shaw and our brother attended Shaw, and we figured that was enough Shaw ice and we simply were not going to that school. We wanted to go to Howard in the first place and that time, Central was the next best thing to Howard. A&T did not have the reputation that it has now, and certainly not the other schools. And Central was, as I said, the Eagles were flying high then.	5:29
Bertha Todd	Durham in itself, we knew some of, not too much. We learned about Durham city residents by talking with the adults on the campus and by mingling with the adults on the campus. How did they look at us? Two girls who were identical, going to college campus for the first time. They could tell that certainly, we were not refined. They could tell probably, that we were very shy and did not want to be bothered with them either. But that was impossible to do because it had been many years past since Durham NCC had had identical twins on the campus.	6:16
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	7:12
Bertha Todd	So the students gawked at us, the professors gawked at us. They put us in the campus paper. They interviewed us, they wrote about us. They put us on the front when we were majorettes for a couple of years, on the front of the souvenir classic bulletin. We became Kappa Sweethearts. We rode the floats. Everything we did almost was news. NCC was good to us, it helped to make us. It helped to give us even more self-esteem and it helped to bring us out of the shyness that we had. We had to, there was no other way.	7:13
Sonya Ramsey	What did it feel like, having all that attention?	8:09
Bertha Todd	Awful. It felt good in a way, but we were not prepared to answer to all of that attention because we didn't know how, so we really wanted to go into a shell. And what helped to bring us out of that, there were two things, two incidents. One, I went to the post office one morning to get the mail, and I passed by a handsome young man and he said, "Hello, twin." I mean, they didn't know us, one from the other. And I spoke very softly. Most people thought we were snobs because we were shy, but we were not. And I spoke. So he passed, I said, "Hello, twin." And he said, "That's what I say about you twins. You are snobbish and you think you are so much." And oh, he read the riot act. And finally, I said, "I spoke, you just didn't hear me." And I knew then that I'd have to smile and greet and speak louder. The other incident, my sister and I were in a Spanish class. I think there were about 10 in that class and we were the best students.	8:14
Bertha Todd	We should have taken Spanish. NCC had a quarter system then, the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter. We had the nerve to take Spanish first session, second quarter, second session, third quarter. Then we had to wait a whole summer and then we'd take the third session. We just didn't get started with it on time. And we'd taken French in high school, so we figured having been out so long, best thing to do was take Spanish. And so Spanish is easier than French, yet I remember more French now than I do Spanish. But we were pretty good in it. This was a mean professor. I understand he'd had quite a few things happen in his life regarding his daughter, who died in a boating accident. And he just was evil with the world. So as a result of that, he was evil to the classmates, to the students in the class. Well, he swore that one was copying off the other one.	9:32
Sonya Ramsey	That y'all were cheating?	10:35
Bertha Todd	That we were cheating. He separated us in class. We still read and answered the questions. Then he decided to tell one not to come one day. That man was awful with us. I don't think he liked the fact that we wouldn't talk back to him. He was just bearing down on us. We were shy, we would not talk back. And I went to class one day and did my work. And then she went to class the next day and she did her work, and he still couldn't figure out what was happening. I don't know why the man didn't realize identical twins, researchers have said there's only 0.5 difference in their intelligence of twins. And if you apply yourself, then sure, you're going to know what's happening. So finally, he held us back after class.	10:36
Bertha Todd	He let the other class members go and he talked to us and at us as negatively as anybody could. "Look at you, you're shy. You can do the work and you're doing the work, but I still haven't found out who's cheating, one from the other one." He just simply would not accept that. "You just like scared rabbits." And he talked and the tears were just dropping out, but we still didn't say anything. Finally he let us go. And when we got out of there and we went back to the room, we vowed that that was the last time that anybody would do that to us.	11:31
Bertha Todd	And we knew then we had to practice behavior modification. We knew then that we had to change our styles, our personalities. Styles, had to modify them, rather. And that we had to become more outgoing and speak up and take care of ourselves. And I think when we became graduate students, we went to see the president. We told him that he should have a place for graduate students. We just told him all of these things. From then on, I had been out there, never retreating.	12:15
Sonya Ramsey	What did the students think of your change and what was their reaction to you, your sister's change in attitude?	12:53
Bertha Todd	I don't know if they really knew it or not. I guess they did notice it, but we became more outgoing and friendlier, and sort of took care of ourselves a little better than we were.	12:58
Sonya Ramsey	Did y'all resent being called twins?	13:12
Bertha Todd	Yes, because then you don't have an identity. And this is why even today, I resent being called honey, because honey is not my name. My name is Bertha, I prefer being called Bertha, because my name means a little more to me than it would the average person.	13:14
Sonya Ramsey	Did you and your sister try to dress and wear your hair differently so people could tell?	13:31
Bertha Todd	No, unfortunately, we dressed alike until our junior year, hairstyles, clothes, same styles, sometimes different color. And we'd sort of wear them on the same day sometimes. We finally—	13:36
Sonya Ramsey	And you lived together, too?	13:50
Bertha Todd	Yes, it was awful. We didn't have an identity. And it was later that we had to search for that identity.	13:51
Sonya Ramsey	What was dating like then?	13:59
Bertha Todd	Our boyfriends knew our personalities. Once in a while, those who didn't know us as well got us mixed up. A couple of times when I got too far into, I let the fellow think that I was my sister until I got too far into the conversation. I said, "Now, you know you know who I am." But it was a matter of trying to get out of a hole that I'd backed myself into, because he didn't know and I simply could not answer any more questions. He was pressing me for a time that they were going to the movie and when I was available, and I didn't know that.	14:03
Sonya Ramsey	Your sister get mad?	14:39
Bertha Todd	No, no. Because we knew that happened all the time. And these are the kinds of things that we encountered. I'd like to share with you some things that you might read, if you like. I think that will give you some of the background of even family then and why, when I came to Wilmington 40 years ago, as Jesse Jackson says, I knew I was somebody even then. And I knew that White nor Black was going to take that away from me. And this is why even, there were many things that I did that most people wondered, "Well, how would she have the nerve to do that?"	14:40
Bertha Todd	Simply because I had an inner strength. And as I used to say, there's one entity whom I fear and that is God, and the rest of you humans don't really matter. Not even the Queen of England. And that's the way I feel. That doesn't bother, so as a result of that, sure, I could talk with the superintendent. And if he preferred calling me Bertha, I called him Haywood. He was never Dr. Bellamy. And anybody else who chose to call me by my first name. And I fought for that, I thought if that's the level you would like for us to be on, then that's what it's going to be. And I never changed from that.	15:26
Sonya Ramsey	I'd like to ask a few more questions about Central. When you had your spare time, where did you and other students go to shop?	16:05
Bertha Todd	We went downtown on the bus.	16:15
Sonya Ramsey	What was that experience like?	16:17
Bertha Todd	I really don't remember any discrimination as such.	16:22
Sonya Ramsey	Was it a segregated bus, though?	16:27
Bertha Todd	No. I'll tell you. Do you want me to tell you why I didn't realize the segregated bus? Because we were in an all Black part of the Durham area.	16:29
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	16:40
Bertha Todd	So anybody who got on there for the most part was Black. I don't even remember any Whites being on those buses at all.	16:41
Sonya Ramsey	When you went to shop in Durham, how did the stores treat the Black customers?	16:49
Bertha Todd	As far as I can remember, very well, because when my sister and I were selected as Kappa Sweethearts, and at that time we purchased some $50 or $75 dresses, which was a lot of money. How did we get that money, now? I'll tell you what we did. Because we waited so late to go to school, we stayed out two years, we felt as if the world, our family owed us a living. So they owed us, we didn't work. We just simply went to school and participated in activities.	16:56
Bertha Todd	And we felt that they owed us. Our brother was working and our sister was working, teaching. Both of them were teachers. And our mother, of course, still had the form and some money. So anytime we asked for money, we expected them to send it. So they sent us some money, and then we had a good doctor friend, William Merritt. He was a dentist, and we could always go on inside and ask him for some money.	17:29
Sonya Ramsey	A friend of your parents?	17:53
Bertha Todd	He was a friend of the family who lived in Clinton. And we took our room and board for a month, didn't pay it, and the money that they sent us, paid down on these dresses, dresses that were just alike. Beautiful black dresses with a pink stripe across here. And then for a whole month, I would go to lunch or breakfast and Myrtle would bring me something back and she'd go to lunch and then I'd go to dinner, then we'd crisscross. For a whole month, we didn't eat in the cafeteria. And of course, by the time they caught up with us, they called us to the business office.	17:56
Bertha Todd	We said, "Well now, listen, don't you think," and we went on, I think we should have been lawyers, really. We said, "Well, after all, we did not eat in the cafeteria. One of us didn't we didn't have a meal ticket. Now I know we slept, but then why can't you just charge us for the room and forget about the board?" I think they had to make some concessions so we didn't have to pay it all back. And that's the way we paid for the dresses, but I don't remember having been. Maybe I was, I just don't remember that. I called college campuses at that time, sort of superficial societies.	18:35
Sonya Ramsey	Why was that?	19:22
Bertha Todd	Number one, we all were there struggling for an education. Number two, you had a certain caliber of student attending college at that time, and they had a certain sort of refinement. And number three, it didn't represent what I considered the masses, because the masses at that time were still on the farms. And I don't know how much inner city we had then, but they were there unable to go to school. So only your elitist managed to get to school, to college at that time, unless there were one or two scholarships somewhere. It was simply understood that among Blacks at that time, Negroes as we called them, the very able, not the most intelligent, because the young lady who got pregnant twice and didn't get it, she was one of those intelligent ones, but she didn't make it.	19:22
Bertha Todd	There was no financial help for students like that to attend college unless the family did it. And unless the family was educationally oriented, they didn't get there, they didn't attend. They managed maybe to get out of high school, and some even dropped out when they got to high school. But only those who were steeped in the importance of education and only those who had some means, not much but some, to send those children to school, those were the ones who attended. So you more or less at that time, you got the cream of the crop in the Black community.	20:21
Sonya Ramsey	I need to ask you some more about you were a Kappa sweetheart. What did that entail? What did you do with that?	21:12
Bertha Todd	Not a thing, except being recognized by the Kappas, being sung to, being given candy on Valentine's Day and representing them and riding the float and homecoming parade.	21:18
Sonya Ramsey	You said you were a majorette and you and your sister both were?	21:30
Bertha Todd	Yes.	21:37
Sonya Ramsey	How did you join that? Did you have to audition?	21:37
Bertha Todd	Yeah, yeah. But I really think, this is once again, that we were simply accepted because we were twins, because we could not twirl worth a dime and we learned how to march. We had no majorettes in high school. It's something we saw, we liked and we wanted to be, and they simply accepted us. Now, it was always our philosophy that if you find yourself in something and you know don't know how to do this, then you work like mad and you learn. And that's what we did. We spent many evenings in that room, twirling that baton, and many evenings marching until we learned what that was all about.	21:37
Sonya Ramsey	How long were you majorettes?	22:21
Bertha Todd	About a year and a half and then my legs messed up. And we were in the choir, we were in majorettes, we were in pre-med, so we had to go to lab every Tuesdays and Thursdays. We went to choir rehearsal on Monday, on Wednesday nights. And on Mondays and Fridays we had choir rehearsals, so we didn't have any time left. We simply were involved.	22:21
Sonya Ramsey	Did you join any sororities?	22:48
Bertha Todd	Alpha Kappa Alpha. And the only reason we joined Alpha Kappa Alpha is because the Deltas courted us and the AKAs courted us. We knew why, because we were twins. They would come to our room at night, they would talk with us, they would do little things for us. Everybody was vying to get the twins. That made us feel good, but it made us feel too pressured, too. We just wanted be left alone, because we knew that we had to become acclimated to a college campus and we knew that we had to catch up with any courses that in those two years, from high school to college, that we may have forgotten. The AKAs came to the rooms and the adults got into the instructors. And so the deadline for the Delta applications passed. We told them we were going to wait until the next year that was putting off the decision. And the deadline for the AKAs had not passed, and we were going to leave that one alone, too.	22:51
Bertha Todd	But there was a little snippy student who was an Ivy League, ATA branch from New York, upstate New York. Well, now, all of those from the Northeast rather, had a tendency to think they were much better than all of us southerners anyway. And they figured they knew more than we knew and all of that. But strange enough, they did some research about that and they found out those of us who came from the rural areas with the potential, if we worked hard, by the time we got to be sophomores, we had surpassed those who were from those very prepared areas, because either of those students let down or they were too busy partying. I'm not sure which, one of the other. But that was the research that came back and I was really amused because I was one of those who was sort of doing that. I had a boyfriend from New York, Brooklyn.	24:00
Bertha Todd	We went together for about four years, really. Yeah, I thought we were going to get married at one time. That's another story. But I pleaded with him to get his lessons. He was capable, he was a very intelligent person. Pleaded with him to get his lessons and do well. And even when Myrtle and I were the instructor's assistants in the physiology, I believe, I loved physiology, we gave the test to the other students in the class. And he had us there, picking out the muscles and the nerves and naming those and all of this. And so it was I who gave him his final exam, but we were straight with that, we didn't cheat. But coming back to, I lost my point because—	24:50
Sonya Ramsey	Sorority.	25:34
Bertha Todd	Oh, sorority. This young lady came to the dorm room and said, "I want to know, are you twins going to write your letter to become members of the Ivy League?" We told them no, we had made up our minds we were going to wait for another year. "Well, twins, why? What is the problem? You all don't know how to write a letter of application?" Now, that did it. So we told Ada no, we knew how to write a letter of application, we simply had not made up our minds. And if we made up our minds, we would write the letter. We didn't need her assistance.	25:34
Bertha Todd	And I think that just made us mad enough to motivate us to write the whole letter, and that's how we became AKAs. Greek was Greek to us, we didn't know one from the other. We had some brothers, stepbrothers at that time who were Kappas and Sigmas, but we didn't know that much about what they were in. See, those were the older ones who had been through college. When we got on the campus, they were just some sorority.	26:19
Sonya Ramsey	Did you have to go through the pledge process?	26:50
Bertha Todd	Yes.	26:52
Sonya Ramsey	Were you treated favorably or were you treated not as favorably?	26:54
Bertha Todd	Very.	26:57
Sonya Ramsey	Very?	26:57
Bertha Todd	Yeah. There was never a time, seemingly. There were some who thought we were arrogant, stuck up or whatever, which we weren't, but we were sort of kind and humble. And they didn't treat us very harshly, going through the process. Not at all as I remember.	26:58
Sonya Ramsey	How did your fellow [indistinct 00:27:26] treat you?	27:24
Bertha Todd	Some of them got some pretty rough licks. That hazing was very much in at that time.	27:26
Sonya Ramsey	Back then, too?	27:31
Bertha Todd	Yes, they had that hazing then. And those who the girls did not like, they sort of paddled them pretty badly.	27:32
Sonya Ramsey	Did they have large pledge groups? How big was your pledge group?	27:41
Bertha Todd	We had a very large one. We had 16 or 17 at that time, which was a large group. That was a long line that we had at that time. And I think I may have some pictures down there, I can't even remember just how many, but it was one of the larger excuse lines that I remember.	27:44
Sonya Ramsey	After you joined, were you active in the sorority, you and your sister?	28:07
Bertha Todd	I was very active in the sorority. I guess that sort of funneled over into my community bits. I was very active in the sorority. We traveled with the college choir and we worked very closely with the YWCA student group.	28:11
Sonya Ramsey	What kind of things did you do with that community?	28:31
Bertha Todd	That's why I cannot remember if maybe those students came over from the Y. I don't remember how that square dance was sponsored on the campus. We collected items for needy students, about the same things you do for the Y. We would have sometimes, I think Bible studies or discussions for the YWCA. And whether we had any sponsored programs or not, I can't remember that.	28:34
Sonya Ramsey	After you were in the sorority, what qualifications did you look for when you were selecting the members?	28:59
Bertha Todd	Of course, we had to have that two point something. They had to have that, and we had to maintain it so they wouldn't kick you out. Even then, they were, I would say more strict with that then than they are now. I'm not sure. And we had sponsored activities on the campus, we always had that sorority. And we've managed to always get a float in the parade. I can't remember any other things that we may have had. We really attended some of the regionals at the time, the students.	29:06
Sonya Ramsey	Was there a big rivalry between the sororities?	29:45
Bertha Todd	Yes, quite a bit of rivalry between AKAs and Deltas. The others were not significantly known at that time. They knew them, but there weren't too many members. I think we had Zetas on the campus then, but he didn't know the Zetas that well.	29:47
Sonya Ramsey	How did the rivalries manifest themselves?	30:01
Bertha Todd	I don't think it was in name calling, we weren't at that stage. It was a little more refined then. Just having activities, "I wonder what the Deltas are having as opposed to what we planned to have." And having the rush parties and sponsoring little programs or activities on the campus of that nature, or putting up a stone over here or some symbol of the sorority on the lawn of the campus. That's sort of the way it did. And wearing your colors, it wasn't as awful as it is now.	30:08
Bertha Todd	To me, that's not what the essence of it is. I like more of a cohesive group of Greeks who are unified and banding together to fulfill goals for the betterment of society. That's my idea of sororities and fraternities, not the partying, not the downgrading, not the hazing. We don't need anything that will make our self-esteem any lower than it is, we don't need that. And unless those sororities and fraternities can do that, I think they're defeating any purpose that they ever were developed or organized for.	30:46
Sonya Ramsey	Okay, I wanted to ask, is there anything else I should ask about your experience at Central or [indistinct 00:31:40] before we move on?	31:32
Bertha Todd	No, those were some days when I learned leaving my school and community where we had a cohesive set to me of Blacks and Whites, then I hit a campus where I see all Blacks, different strata Blacks, however, but a few Whites who were removed from me because they were professors. Dr. Manasi, who was talked about in one paper. And I don't remember the other professor from Carolina who came over to teach us bacteriology. But I found more of my identity on this campus of all Blacks, and it helped to enhance my self-esteem and my confidence in me. And as a result of that, I also became more aware of Whites and the racism of the Jim Crow that the other students said was out there.	31:39
Bertha Todd	I didn't know it was out there because I didn't encounter that. I didn't encounter it in the stores. We went to all Black churches, we had a few professors who were calm and nice and were not saying disparaging remarks about my race. So my twin sister and I began when we found out, our mothers told us, "You better take education or teacher, yeah education, because I don't have any money to send you to med school." And we didn't have any scholarships. We were afraid that with our types of feelings of what we had learned by the time we went to that campus and stayed five years, five and a half, that we had better learn Whites in another sort of way, because we had not had the opportunity. We were sheltered within first, a small community area.	32:53
Bertha Todd	We had a White family doctor who was very kind, so we didn't get the segregation and discrimination there. How were we going to learn to work in an open society in the world of work in a career if we didn't know how to relate to Whites? So what did we do? We told our parents that we were going to work at Virginia Beach. We didn't know, we just heard about the beach. And my sister was the motivating factor, more or less, my twin. We called an employment agency and we got jobs through the employment agency. You know where you get a job and you have to pay them a percentage? I think we gave them most of the money all summer because we changed jobs. I changed jobs four times in one summer. And we took off to Virginia Beach.	33:58
Sonya Ramsey	That was a very segregated area, wasn't it?	34:58
Bertha Todd	Sure.	35:00
Sonya Ramsey	What did you do there?	35:02
Bertha Todd	We went to work for Whites so that we could learn to get along.	35:03
Sonya Ramsey	And y'all made that choice to do that?	35:08
Bertha Todd	We made that choice. We knew if we went back home, that wouldn't do it. And we were about to get out in the world of work. How were we going to treat people of the other race, now that we are educators? So we made that choice. The first place the man sent my sister for a job, they wouldn't hire her because they said she was too educated. And I think we may have had an air, too. We did. We were juniors then, getting ready to be seniors. The place that I went, I was a salad girl or something. Didn't know how to wait tables, we didn't know how to work. And I was working at Murray's Hilltop on the Strand at Virginia Beach. I was sent there and this lady would say, "Bertha, I want you to go and tell Mr. Jim to come to breakfast."	35:10
Bertha Todd	I've forgotten that lady's name, but when I found Mr. Jim, Mr. Jim was my age or younger and that didn't make sense to me. So I would go and say, "Jim, your mother said," I think she was going with his father, I think she had just met. "Mrs. So-and-So said it is time for you to come to breakfast." And I said it in very glib tone and with a bit of arrogance, I'm sure. I tried to wait tables, I tried to learn, and those other two ladies who were good at that mess pushed me around, they knew. So finally, I was the salad girl and the bread, something.	36:17
Sonya Ramsey	How did the other Black workers who had to—	36:57
Bertha Todd	Well, they took me under—Listen, I was weighing 104, I looked naive. I knew I didn't know anything about waiting tables, so they took me under their wings. But meanwhile, taking me under their wings, those two big, fat Black women simply got all the tables and made their money as they were accustomed to making and just helped me along. Well, since I was working for one, experience and not quite the money, I figured that was okay, too. And finally, I decided that I was going to leave there. Was the lady going to fire me? I'm not sure. It seemed to me she called me in and said that she didn't need my services longer. Well, the people were not coming there as much, and those other two ladies were doing everything. They may have worked behind my back to get rid of me anyway.	36:59
Bertha Todd	And she said she wanted to give me a bit of advice. She said, "Bertha, I noticed you have a chip on your shoulder. And I would say as you go in life, that it might be a good idea to work with that." So I looked at her, I said, "I want to thank you for your advice." I said, "But I guess I must've been born with this chip on my shoulder, but I will work on it." And I remember in essence, that's just about what I said. Well, I know what it was. These others were kowtowing and subservient. And I went there with this air. After all, North Carolina Central had helped me develop that air. I was somebody. So I simply went into her job, being somebody, and she didn't like that air. So I left there and went on and got another job.	38:01
Bertha Todd	And I've forgotten where I left there and went. But I worked as a parlor made in a hotel, The Cavalier. If you ever been to Virginia Beach and go to the Cavalier, I'm sure they'll let you in the front door now and let you have a room. It was an exclusive hotel that had just begun to take Jews, accept Jews. I was a parlor maid. I was cleaning out the ashtrays and just tinker around. I wasn't a waitress, I wasn't a maid. The lady wouldn't give me maid work. So I was interviewed and they told me that the caliber of individuals who worked in those places was not the same calibers coming off the college campuses at that time. So they told me that the lady wasn't going to hire me, and if she hired me, I better not let my hair come down. My hair was down here.	38:54
Sonya Ramsey	Your hair was long?	39:44
Bertha Todd	Yes. And so I took all of that into consideration and she did hire me. And I told her that I was there for the summer. She asked me if I was in school and I told her all of that. I wore my hair in two braids and put it up, and sometimes I'd wear it in balls and put it back, whatever. She never said anything to me. I told her I chose not to live in those dorms that she had there for the helpers. I didn't like the looks of them, I didn't like the people who were staying in them. But Myrtle and I had a little room somewhere and that's where we stayed. And I enjoyed working there.	39:45
Sonya Ramsey	You did, you liked working there? Why did you like it?	40:27
Bertha Todd	I found it fascinating. Why? First, because my job was easy. It was something that I could learn in a hurry, cleaning out the ashtrays, looking around to see if anybody—Picking up the papers, the newspapers that the people would leave in the lobby. Going to the restrooms and making certain they were tidy and looking out for the ladies who went in. And listening to the music in the afternoon, of the violinist and some of the others that they would play in the afternoon, the lobby, I enjoyed that. At that time, South Pacific was very popular and this man was playing Some Enchanted Evening and all of these beautiful numbers. And I was in another world.	40:29
Bertha Todd	In my mind, I think that maybe I internalized that, and I was not a worker. I was there in an area, living a life vicariously through these individuals whom I saw. Maybe, I'm not sure. I simply enjoyed the atmosphere. It was refined, it was cultured. It was something that even I could pick up the papers and do that, that didn't bother me. And I did not encounter individuals who were negative or discriminatory. I didn't quite see that, although I was in a position to have encountered some of that.	41:13
Bertha Todd	I got along very well with the individual that the other Blacks had told me I wouldn't get along with. And she heard me sing and I've forgotten some song. Battle Hymn of the Republic, I'm not sure which one. She asked me if I was a Lutheran and we discussed religions and I never got that treatment from her that I was supposed to have gotten. So I remained there the rest of the summer. It was the next summer, I think I changed jobs for times. I'm not sure if it was four times.	41:58
Sonya Ramsey	Why did you change so many times?	42:29
Bertha Todd	Well, I went to work finally for the Jew, I went to work for Purples. The man told me he didn't know if I was going to stay there because they paid $30 a week, but the job was rough. That was her second husband, I think. That was my first encounter as to what Jews ate. I didn't know that much about Jews at the time, and they didn't eat the bacon. She told me how she wanted this food cooked, and the old man would get up. And of course, he had a son who stayed in camp most of the time. Well, I wasn't the housekeeper, she had another deaf and dumb lady to be the housekeeper. So I simply had to prepare the meals. Well now, I didn't know how to prepare meals, but I said I did. And I learned, I would watch those recipes and do what she asked me to do. So that worked a long, stayed there one week. And she asked me to bake two cakes. She wanted the yolks in one cake, the yellow cake, and she wanted the Whites and another, one of those angel food cakes.	42:31
Bertha Todd	I didn't know how to do those things, so I had to look in that recipe book and find two. And I had these sinks all over the kitchen. So she came in one day and she said, "Bertha, what is this? It looks as if a hurricane has been through here." I looked back at her. I said, "Mrs. Purple, I am baking these two cakes as you ask me to." I would get very, just like I'm getting now. I said, "And you ask me to bake these cakes and this is what I'm doing." I said, "Now, as far as the way the kitchen looks, if you will kindly go out back to your bedroom or back to your room and leave me alone and come back in a couple of hours, things will be cleaned up." Well, that was in essence, my answer, so she went on out.	43:37
Bertha Todd	But I was asked, and my husband teases me about this now, I simply asked the lady out of her kitchen, which she didn't appreciate this little snip doing that. Well, it wasn't too long, I said, "Myrt, I think I messed up." That was my sister, because we were living upstairs in an apartment to their house. I said, "I think I messed up, and I think we better get busy and pack up our bags and get out of here." So we packed up and we were ready to leave. Sure enough, she called me down. Before the husband knew that she was going to release me, he asked me one morning that I was giving him breakfast. He said, "Bertha, how would you like to go up in the mountains?" Well, I've never been up in the mountains before. And I said, "Well, I'd love that."	44:19
Bertha Todd	He said, "Well, I've got to go take my son to camp and I'll take you." And I said, "That would be nice." So I went upstairs that night. I said, "Myrt, do you want to go to the mountains?" She said yes. And then I discovered that that man—Oh, and then his wife, he said, "Well, may not have room for her," or something like that. So I heard the two of them talking about going on this mountain trip, and I discovered that man had simply planned to take me to take his son to camp and bring me back, and he probably would've raped me.	45:05
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, goodness.	45:45
Bertha Todd	And by the conversation that he and his wife had the next morning at breakfast, I knew then that I was not going to the mountains. Innocently, I accepted. But when I discovered his motives were not my motives, I declined. And it was if the lady hadn't put me out the end of the week or told me that she would no longer—And she told me, I asked her out of a kitchen, we had a talk. And this is the way I said this. I said, "Well, Mrs. Purple, if I offended you, then I certainly offer you an apology." But that's not the way she wanted that either. I was simply a little, I think too much. But I was learning. This is the way I thought you had to treat people, but that was not the subservient way that she wanted me to respond. And I wasn't accustomed to responding in a subservient way, and I wasn't about to learn it. And so I told her we would be—	45:49

Bertha Todd	Went to Norfolk where our brother was principal, because we simply did not want to depend on him, and we wanted to spend the night. So we spent the night there until we made some contacts and we went back to Virginia Beach. And we left there again and went back to the beach to get another place to stay and work the summer out. Then I worked for some other Jews. I was the babysitter, and cook and make sandwiches for them.	0:01
Bertha Todd	They lived right on the waterfront of the ocean. So we had a lot of intelligent conversations, in depth discussions about segregation with this Jew, because he had married a White and he had been discriminated against too. In fact, they went somewhere and they wouldn't let Jews in, and he talked about that that night. So he said, "Bertha, come here a minute. I want to ask you how does it feel to be discriminated against?" And so I don't remember my answer to him. I said, "Well, it's not a good feeling," I said, "But if you know who you are, then you simply feel sorry for those individuals who discriminate."	0:35
Bertha Todd	And we talked about that. I don't remember the essence any more of the conversation than that. But they treated me more as of an equal. And I remained there for one summer and went back there for the next summer. And that was a pretty good experience. This White person had a mother who was very crude and not refined. What was her name? Danziger. And by the way, I went back to visit Danziger when I went to Sorority Boule, not a Boule, but a mid-Atlantic regional. And we talked at length. She came down and we had breakfast at the place. I don't know if she's living. She's not much older than I am, so she made be living. I did not realize she was as young as the man was much older. And that was an opportunity for her to marry a rich Jew when she was of little means. And her mother was, I don't know, from the Boondock somewhere, because when I met her mother, she was just crude.	1:21
Sonya Ramsey	What do you mean by crude?	2:29
Bertha Todd	She wasn't articulate. She did not even know how to get along in the area of Virginia Beach. And her daughter was trying to help her become a little more refined so that she could meet the individuals in the circle which she was traveling.	2:34
Sonya Ramsey	Did you feel the Jewish people you worked for were more empathetic?	2:57
Bertha Todd	Yes, uh-huh, much more. These Jews were the other Jews were okay, except I didn't fit the pattern of what they needed. Because as I said, this man, her husband had one goal and I had another goal, and his wife had another goal. I probably could have stayed there all summer. She didn't tell me I had a chip on my shoulder. I just asked her out of the kitchen. I'm sure I must've been a little arrogant student, undergraduate student. One of those times I was a junior, one I was a senior. So I'm pretty sure that—	3:00
Sonya Ramsey	Were you afraid to stay there though, after you realized what her husband wanted to do?	3:37
Bertha Todd	No, because it was a couple of days when I got out of there. I don't think he would've forced himself on me. But had that occasion presented itself, I think that I would've encountered that. Can you imagine going up in the mountains and coming back with him, when he didn't even want my sister to go. So he had other things in mind, and I discovered that immediately. But the Danzigers were young. She was young and he was older than she. But she was nice, I guess, because he was nice. Well, she had to have been tolerant because she married a Jew, and you didn't marry Jews but to do in that time.	3:44
Sonya Ramsey	Did they face a lot of prejudice?	4:30
Bertha Todd	Yes, they did. He did, because I used to hear them talking about it when he'd have other guests and they would visit. And when I met her mother—Oh, this is what I was going to tell you. She would have me call the beauticians to make the appointments for her mother. In fact, I was Mrs. So-and-so, her mother, when I would call to make those appointments. She felt that I had a better voice to talk with the individuals with whom she was working. It was her beautician too. So I really was able to type her very easily, and I didn't mind. She was nice.	4:31
Sonya Ramsey	Her mother was nice to you though?	5:15
Bertha Todd	Well, I met her mother and I didn't really deal with her mother that much, but I'm just saying that Mrs. Danziger was nice and he was a nice, I didn't mind. And we used to have some pretty philosophical conversations. I never forget once she said, "Bertha," she said, "Actually, you don't have that much experience." I said, "I know." I said, "Simply because I spent my time in college and not doing anything else." And she said, "But I like you." And once they had company and I knew how to organize, I was really, and between the two of us, we really put this big meal. She said, "But you know, that was the thing that made me decide that I'd like to have you work for me. So I wanted to let you know that." She didn't know, but I knew. I knew how to organize and get that thing done.	5:17
Bertha Todd	Well, I had learned to set tables in home ec when I was at home. I knew the proper table setting bit for a dinner. I was personable. I treated them nicely. I got the food on the table. And that's what she needed, because she apparently did not have that training. And so she found out that I complimented her in some ways that she was weak in. And as a result of that, we worked very well together.	6:08
Sonya Ramsey	Did she ever tell you any of her personal problems or did she think of you as a confidant, or what was the relationship like?	6:35
Bertha Todd	She used to complain about her husband's first wife a little. She never let own just where she grew up or how she'd been married before, she let me know that. And she was trying to make a good impression with this new husband. They hadn't been married that long, but she was bettering her status, so to speak. But I really don't remember. She picked me clean about my own family at the time, but I don't really remember too much more.	6:44
Sonya Ramsey	Aside from when you were working, what did you and your sister do for social life in Virginia Beach?	7:20
Bertha Todd	We met some fellows who worked there, and we went to the beach. We went to the Black part of the beach, some beach at that time. Certainly it wasn't Virginia Beach. And we'd go to the movie once in a while.	7:26
Sonya Ramsey	Were you still dating your boyfriend you had in school at that time?	7:38
Bertha Todd	Yes. He visited me once there. See, he would always go back to New York in the summer or maybe a camp or something like that. He visited me once on his way to Durham or back from Durham, I'm not sure, just where Robert was going at that time. And there was a Kappa, it wasn't Kappa Delta, it was a Guardsman stance. I don't know if they even have Guardsman now. But my sister and I packed up all of these clothes, you would've thought we were going somewhere to vacation ourselves. And the cab driver laughed at us because we'd never been to work and we didn't know we didn't need all of those clothes. So we had too many. And we had some evening dresses there. And we went to some place with these two fellas. One later became a doctor, and I don't know where the one that I was going with. Myrtle met the fella who later became a doctor. He was in Jet too, had married somebody, Val Wyatt, Val somebody. I don't even remember the fellow that I went with.	7:41
Bertha Todd	But we went to this Guardsman dance and we had a good time. And then we went to my brother-in-law's house in Norfolk. They came over that morning or something like that. But that was about as much social life as I remember. It was just a matter of meeting some folk, going to the movie, having a steady boyfriend, I wasn't really too interested in too many people. And that's sort of the way we spent the summer.	8:46
Sonya Ramsey	And you said you were in Durham five and a half years. Did you stay in school that long or did you graduate?	9:11
Bertha Todd	Well, that's what we did. We graduated on time with a BS in biology, in science. And then we went right back the next year to begin a master's degree. So we got all of that before we went to work. And that's simply because we didn't want to come out to the wide, wide world and work. And I don't think we—We didn't feel comfortable. We didn't know if we'd find a job. We didn't find one. Biology teachers were quite numerous then.	9:17
Sonya Ramsey	Really?	9:51
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm. And nobody wanted a biology teacher, but they did want librarians, because in the state of North Carolina, libraries were beginning to open up in high schools and possibly a small library in the elementary schools. They were beginning to elevate in importance. And as a result of that, we knew that was an area, so we had to switch from that—	9:52
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, you changed to library science.	10:15
Bertha Todd	We changed. We went and got a master's of library science. And then I got two job offers after then, after we graduated. And of course she got one too, and that was the beginning of our careers as librarians.	10:16
Sonya Ramsey	Did you all plan to work in the same area?	10:30
Bertha Todd	Well, we did have one offer in the school for that. But for some reason, I don't know if that was out of state, we elected not to take it. They needed a librarian and assistant, and I don't think we were so sure we wanted to accept that kind of position. One would be the head, one would be the assistant. So we elected not to do that. And I think Myrtle got her job before I got mine.	10:33
Sonya Ramsey	And she got a job in the Charlotte area?	10:57
Bertha Todd	In the Charlotte area. And she left there and really went to Charlotte a few years later to work. And left from there and went to Winston-Salem to work. From there to Bennett teaching. And from there to ANT where she still has not retired, almost. But she moved around. I came here and I stayed. I did not move.	11:00
Sonya Ramsey	Said you were apprehensive or you didn't really want to come to Wilmington?	11:23
Bertha Todd	No, because I had heard so much of the 1898 riots. And I just got the feeling that this was such a racist area that I didn't want to stay here.	11:27
Sonya Ramsey	Could you just talk some about when you first arrived, where you lived and things like that?	11:39
Bertha Todd	When I first came here after my contract, after the superintendent wouldn't release me from a contract, I stayed at what they call a Payne's hotel that was over on Red Cross Street. And it was sort of a big boarding house where they had dinner family style, and you got your own breakfast, or they had breakfast families style. I never went to breakfast there, but I did go to dinner once or twice. And I saw some fellas in one of the rooms that my sister and I had met at that time. They had singers, quartets and whatnot. And we had met those fellas in Durham.	11:43
Bertha Todd	And I heard somebody say, "Hey, twin." I said, "Yes?" They said, "Didn't you go to North Carolina Central?" I said, "North Carolina College." I said, "Yes." And so we had to talk, and I don't know if he asked me for a date or what. I said, "Oh, I got to get out of here. I'll see if I can find a room in a home." And it wasn't too long before my cousin recommended a room, and that's where I moved in on Red Cross Street. I stayed there a month at Payne's, and I moved on Red Cross Street with this retired teacher. And that's where I stayed for 10 years until I moved in this house that we built and been here ever since.	12:25
Bertha Todd	Now, when I came here, I still came here feeling that I was somebody, but I almost felt that I was in an alien area.	13:16
Sonya Ramsey	Why did you feel that?	13:33
Bertha Todd	Number one, people would say that if you didn't come here, if you weren't born here, that you were not a part of Wilmington, old Wilmington Stock, as they call it. And so somebody, "Did you come here on the train?" I said, "No, I came here on the bus." I really came on a car. But that's what they called anybody who came into Wilmington. But I also came here, and they didn't realize it, after having lived in Durham, a more progressive area for five and a half years. And I found this area sleeping. I found this area willing, the Blacks willing to accept what the Whites said, seemingly, and the Whites looking at all Blacks as if they were a lack and not knowing, only being accustomed to the chauffeurs and those who worked in their homes.	13:37
Bertha Todd	I didn't like that at all because I had already tried my stent at Virginia Beach, and I knew that I wasn't going to do that all my life, but I knew that I did not have some pleasant experiences with doing some of that, like the lady who told me I had a chip on my shoulder. And I still refused to give courtesy titles to other Whites unless they gave me one. And I didn't care who it was. And I came here with that look in my eyes, with my head held high, letting you know in the beginning, there are certain things I will accept, and there are certain things I will to. I did not come here to get in the rot of the Blacks that I found here. Because at that time, I think maybe the riots took away all of those who were assertive, and left only those who are willing to kowtow and accept.	14:34
Sonya Ramsey	Was there a lot of fear in the area?	15:31
Bertha Todd	Sort of. I think it left a lot of that feeling here. And as a result of that, my coming in, I didn't have that fear when I came, so I wasn't going to develop it. So I came here and my first big event was sponsoring a countywide book fair in the schools. They never had that before. We were even on TV, we were in the papers, but they were all Black schools, now you remember. But I commandeered that. I chaired it. It was my idea, and I pushed it. And my principal worked along with me. And then we included all of the schools.	15:33
Bertha Todd	Well, when we did this, then the supervisor asked me if I were going to invite the White librarian at the White high school. Well, that librarian never invited me over to her school for me to even, she didn't hold out a welcoming hand. I said, "No, I got the feeling she did not want us to associate with each other. And since she didn't, why should she be interested in attending a book fair that I was sponsoring?" I said, "Now, if you want to invite her, you may." And that's the way I left it. I don't know if she did or she didn't. I didn't bother. I think Martha Bennett, the supervisor at that time, was very surprised that we could have a successful book fair. And my professional confidence was sort of elevated in the Black community as well as the White with that one thing. I continued to move on into other arenas.	16:10
Bertha Todd	The next year, someone else sponsored it, a librarian, and the next year, someone else, when it went around twice.	17:22
Sonya Ramsey	Was that your first year here when you [indistinct 00:17:30]?	17:28
Bertha Todd	No, it took me, it was about my second or third. It wasn't too long. I had moved. I was the one, because I had a master's to move from the old school. I had a counterpart, a librarian in Williston Industrial, Vanna P. White, although she was older, she did not have a master's. I was younger with more ideas. I was selected, superintendent did it, to move to the new Williston Senior High School. That caused a little feeling, and I can understand how it did. But I've worked out a plan to move the books and to set up the library at Williston Senior High School.	17:29
Sonya Ramsey	What year was this when they changed [indistinct 00:18:13]?	18:12
Bertha Todd	I came here '52, '53. We moved about '53, '54. And I guess I had that book fair, it was much later when I had that book fair. I really had that book fair in the '60s. It took me about 6 years to have it.	18:15
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask, when you first came to the schools and became the librarian, and what was your impression of the school?	18:35
Bertha Todd	It was a good school. The teachers worked hard and they were competitive. They were competitive. This was the only Black high school in Wilmington, New Hanover County, and there was New Hanover High. And I fell into that same mode. We wanted to make certain that our school, Williston, was as good or better than the one at New Hanover High. I wanted to make certain the library was very good, better than that one, book for book and student for student. And it wasn't until it was dissolved that I found out it was better. But that's neither here nor there now. But this was a feeling among the Black teachers that—Will you stop that a minute, please. Williston had very competent teachers and their students, the seniors, attended the Ivy League schools, quite a few of them, and usually they made very good academic records at that time.	18:42
Bertha Todd	I learned to acclimate myself, although I had a lot of energy and I moved out into the community. But I must tell you about this supervisor and what I found. Because at that time, they were boycotting the paper, the teachers, well, everybody was boycotting the paper, because they refused to use courtesy titles for Blacks—	19:53
Sonya Ramsey	Which newspaper?	20:16
Bertha Todd	Star News, same Star News. I came here knowing that any White who called me by my first name, I was going to call them by their first name, and I wasn't going to let up on that. So this particular supervisor, the first year that I came, I wasn't married, and she called me Ms. Boykin. That was fine with me. As far as I was concerned, she was Mrs. Bennett. And of course my coworker, who was the other librarian, she called her Panny P. and Panny P. would call her Mrs. Bennett. Well, after my first year and I got married, I am sure that Mrs. Bennett thought that, "Okay, she has settled down into Wilmington now. She has become acclimated, so I will get back into my original mold and call her Bertha."	20:17
Bertha Todd	Well, when she did that the first time, that was my second year. All year long the first year I was Ms. Boykin. And I accepted that. And she was Mrs. Bennett. The second year I was married, she proceeded to call me Bertha. I stood it as long as I could, and one day after I noticed on those boxes, "Bertha Todd Wilson Senior High School." She visited me and I called her to the back where it was just she and I in the room, in the little conference room, a workroom. I said, "Now, Mrs. Bennett, I want to say this to you. I'm a professional and you are a professional.	21:20
Bertha Todd	I noticed that you have begun to put on these boxes, 'Bertha Todd Williston Senior High School.'" I said, "We teach our children here to give us courtesy titles. We think we are due that respect. Now, if you begin to do this, it's going to make it even more difficult for us to teach that one area of respect. So therefore, I'm asking you to simply place Williston Senior High School on those boxes, or you mean to say Librarian Williston Senior High School." I said, "And everybody knows where Williston Senior High School is, and they know the librarian, and it'll get here where there's me or somebody else."	22:11
Bertha Todd	Well, that shocked her. And then she said, "Well, Bertha." I said, "Well, and by the way, Martha, if you would like to have our relationship on a more personal level, a more informal level, then this is fine with me. So from now on, I shall call your Martha." Well, I'm sure she didn't like that, but I didn't care. I was going to save who I was and protect my ego. And I said to myself, "You wouldn't fire me. This county would not release me when I wanted to go. Well, I'm going to do whatever I want to do, and you'll either be sorry or glad that I'm here." I was just that arrogant. And she didn't say anything about that. She took it, from then on it was Martha with me, with her. It was Martha until she died.	22:58
Bertha Todd	But to show me she still, there was a Martha, Black Martha at Williston Junior, and there was a White Martha at New Hanover High. So she would say, "And Martha so-and-so," I said, "Now, are you talking about Martha Cromartie or Martha Bennett?" And see, she wanted to call Ms. Cromartie, who was the White Martha, "Miss," but she wanted to call the Black Martha, "Martha." And every time she'd say it, I would get her. I would just simply stop her again. But nevermore did I call her Mrs. Bennett. And I'd look her straight in the eyes, and that's what I'd say.	23:56
Bertha Todd	And then I'll never forget another time that I had a lot of books on integration and desegregation, because they talked about it, the books talked about it a long time before we realized it in reality. She did not order my book order one year, and I kept waiting for the book order to come, and it never did. Finally, about midyear, I said, "Martha, can you tell me where my book order is?" "Well, Bertha, the super, Mr. Roland, said that there were too many books on there about desegregation and integration." And I did have a lot of them. I just stacked up. Finally, I looked at her, I said, "Well, Martha, will you tell Mr. Roland for me that I simply ordered titles that I saw in the catalogs, now please tell him that if he has any catalogs that don't have those books or those titles, and there are some other titles he would prefer my ordering, then send those catalogs to me and I shall be happy to order." I don't think she did, but she didn't order my books that year either. I never got the books.	24:33
Bertha Todd	Then there was another time that I discovered that they had given New Hanover High all of the money under a particular fund, and Williston got none. And I went to bed about that one. Now you're talking about kicking and screaming. I did, and I let them know that I knew it, and I had documentary information.	25:51
Sonya Ramsey	Was this during the '50s?	26:17
Bertha Todd	Yeah, this was during the fifties. This is when we were still segregated, and I had the information to show them that this is what you did, and if you do it again, I'm going to write somebody. Well, I was bluffing, but I was going to write, so I don't know if I was bluffing or not. I simply didn't like it. We needed the books as well as they needed the books. And they had let them have all of the money, because the other lady who was much older than I, and I guess you let down and you don't have as much energy to do and to dream and to move, and she wasn't. And I was, so consequently—By the way, she became the next supervisor, and then I rebelled against that. I didn't like it. I didn't like it because I felt because of qualifications, I should have had that position, and not she who was simply spent a lot of time in New Hanover County as the librarian to become supervisor of libraries. And I let the superintendent know that, and I let her know that. I didn't like it.	26:17
Bertha Todd	Not that I knew they were going to give it to me. I wasn't the kind they would've wanted it in the first place.	27:15
Sonya Ramsey	Why weren't you the kind that they would've wanted?	27:18
Bertha Todd	I was too outspoken. I was so outspoken that even when I did get a job at the central office, there was one Black principal who made the statement, "Well, as outspoken as she's been, I don't see how they let her get that job." Yes, I was outspoken.	27:22
Sonya Ramsey	You mentioned that your library was better, or you thought it might be it was better than the White library, with all the hardships that you faced in getting books and things, how did you make your library better?	27:39
Bertha Todd	See, that was one time she didn't order my books, only once. By that time, I had let so many of them slip through and the kids were using them. Let's look at this pattern here. I had permitted. So Martha Bennett had permitted so many of those books to slip through without knowing what I was doing, number one. That when I put too many on there and she did check it, she got scared and backed up and wouldn't order my book order. All right. I was permitting those books to be ordered.	27:49
Bertha Todd	William Lowe, a government teacher, was using those books and teaching and having kids write research papers about what the constitution ought to mean to me, a Black or a Negro. I was working very closely with him, with the magazines, ordering everything I could find. Being an avid reader even when I went to school, I continued that. One time, if I hadn't read every book in the library, I felt as if I couldn't put that book on the shelf. I had to finally stop that and get rid of that feeling. I mean, I could skim books like this, and so I knew what was in them. Then I knew how to help the kids. Then I knew I could go to their classes.	28:24
Bertha Todd	I went to a lot of classes and just taught. I take a bunch of books, then I teach from those books. And they would check the books out. It was, "Okay, let's push. This is what's in here. See the resources you have other than your textbook." Oh, we were moving at Williston. And finally the superintendent, the rumor got out that Lowe was being watched because Lowe was teaching what I was ordering. He was teaching government, but just teaching justice for all, equality for all. What is wrong with that?	29:07
Bertha Todd	That's what he was teaching. And I was helping him by serving as a resource, by ordering the most up-to-date books, by knowing what was in the books, by ordering magazines of that type, by knowing what was in them and guiding those students to those books and magazines so that they could write their term papers for WG Lowe, who was teaching his heart out about the rights of all Americans. Well, we heard that he was being monitored and he might lose his job. Well, that was the rumor, but we knew something was coming down the pike.	29:44
Bertha Todd	And on the very day that the superintendent, one of those days, and some other individuals went to Lowe's classroom, and we'd had no observation of teachers then and evaluation of that type. So why would they continue to go to his class or question some of his students? Except his students, were the ones who were going to the public library when they weren't supposed to go, and I was signing the notes so that they could go. And the librarian would call me and tell me, not sign so many, or tell them not to come, and I'd sign them anyway.	30:19
Sonya Ramsey	What do you mean? I'm sorry, to interrupt. What do you mean they couldn't go to the library?	30:54
Bertha Todd	They weren't supposed to go to the public library. We were supposed to have everything we needed at Williston Senior High School, and if we didn't have it there or had it in our homes, then forget it. So I was trying to order what they did need. But coming back to this, the superintendent and his partner, whoever it was, about three of them came. They came to the school that day to visit Lowe's classroom. They found Lowe in the library with his students working on topics and interim papers. And here I am busy as a beaver along with the library assistants, helping them with the research in the government area, because he taught all government. So what does that tell you? We were simply trying to teach them about their rights. We were simply trying to supply the information they needed so that they would know what their rights were as citizens of the United States.	30:55
Sonya Ramsey	What was the result of that? Did he get in any trouble?	32:03
Bertha Todd	No, no, no, we never heard.	32:05
Sonya Ramsey	Did you get in any?	32:07
Bertha Todd	No, but they knew the kind of person I was. My reputation by that time had been talked about. I guess maybe I would've been called a militant then. I wasn't a militant because Hoggard High School, and I'll tell you about that, proved so different. I had to fight for Whites and Blacks. I was simply a person who believed in the equality and the rights of every individual. That's all I was. And they weren't going to take that from me. And I refused to let them take that from me. So as a result of that, then the next time, I think that was when she cut off my book order. It was later. Yeah. So that's the way she tried to curb that.	32:07
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to go back and ask you, before we get further on with your library career, ask you, you said you got married after your first year?	32:56
Bertha Todd	Uh-huh.	33:05
Sonya Ramsey	How did you meet your husband?	33:05
Bertha Todd	I had met him once before. He was here as a coach and a PE teacher. And he was at Williston Junior, and I was at Williston Senior, and that's how I met him.	33:07
Sonya Ramsey	Did you get married here or back in—	33:20
Bertha Todd	I went to Sampson County. I got married in Sampson County.	33:22
Sonya Ramsey	Were you still dating the other boyfriend you had for so long?	33:26
Bertha Todd	When I was in graduate school, we sort of broke up. I wrote him one of those Dear John letters.	33:29
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	33:36
Bertha Todd	And then my first year here, after I was going with my husband, I think he wrote, he was ready to pick up the pieces again. But I wrote and told him that I found somebody else, and that's sort of the way we broke. I think he got married shortly after then. And sort of sent him off in a TSE, and I think he went in service. Because we had been going together all through college, since my sophomore year, my sophomore, junior, senior, part in graduate school. I broke off during graduate school. Well, he was involved with somebody else too at the time.	33:41
Bertha Todd	And I didn't become involved with anybody at the time, but I knew that he was. And when I met him when he was in graduate school, I felt that something was not right, and I said, "Okay, I know distance makes a difference too in the feelings, and so it's time for me to cut this off." So in Slowe Hall at Howard University, I sat down and wrote him a letter, and then I rewrote the letter and I mailed it. That gave me an opportunity to get my perspective. I cried—	34:14
Sonya Ramsey	What were you doing?	34:47
Bertha Todd	We were on a graduate library tour, and we lived on the campus. And that's what I remember. I don't know where, I guess I threw away the original. I wished I hadn't now, but I did. And that was the end of that relationship.	34:47
Sonya Ramsey	After you married your husband, where did you live? Did you move?	35:07
Bertha Todd	With that same lady who died when she was 102.	35:10
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	35:13
Bertha Todd	She had five bedrooms. And we had to run of the house because she was retired, her husband was dead. And it was a pretty nice place. And I began to decorated and sort of fix it up. So we lived as a family.	35:14
Sonya Ramsey	Your husband was a coach, was he also a coach at Williston?	35:27
Bertha Todd	He was a coach at Williston Junior.	35:30
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, junior.	35:30
Bertha Todd	At that time, it was their practice to separate couples. If the wife worked in one place, the husband didn't work there. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.	35:31
Sonya Ramsey	Was he from this area?	35:43
Bertha Todd	He was from the Zebulon, Raleigh, Smithfield area. Daddy was a minister. So they moved from Zebulon to Raleigh. From Raleigh to Smithfield. From Smithfield to Goldsboro. And he was from the Goldsboro area at that time.	35:45
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. So you're both a new couple coming into this area.	35:56
Bertha Todd	Coming in to this area.	36:01
Sonya Ramsey	Did you get involved in the social life here?	36:03
Bertha Todd	Yeah, I was very active in social life here. I became a link shortly after then. And I, of course, I came here as an AKA and I rejoined this group immediately. And we would have the debutante bit and the Miss Cinderella activity, and we would have the fashionetta. We had all sorts of things. And then the Townsman, that was a local group that believed in nothing but having social activities. My husband became a member of that. And they would have the big Christmas activities. They would take their wives out to the beach for a weekend or take them out to dinner.	36:06
Bertha Todd	And we prepared for regionals for the AKAs, mid-Atlantic regionals and southern area regional. I was president of links at the time when we had the one that right after public facilities were open to Blacks. We held ours at the Blockade Run at Wrightsville Beach, and that was the very first one that had been held in a place other than a school or church, and I invited the group. I was in New Orleans at the time, and invited the links of southern area to Wilmington, North Carolina.	36:46
Bertha Todd	And the many Gadsden's and all of the rich blocks from that area came here first because they did not know how to get to Wrightsville Beach. So they came here, and I'll never forget I had to cook breakfast for them. I was trying to get out. I stayed out of school two days. I was trying to get out to get to the beach because we lived at the beach. Now I think I commuted because my husband and kids were small too. My kids were small and my husband was participating. But I took time out to cook breakfast for them, and then we led them onto Wrightsville Beach where they stayed at the Blockade Runner. That was a very beautiful affair. We'd worked on it about a year and a half, two years.	37:18
Sonya Ramsey	Did your outspokenness ever have any ramifications for your friends, your personal life and things like that?	38:02
Bertha Todd	Many times. Since I was in middle of the road there, there were many times I didn't do what the Blacks thought I should have done, and I didn't do what the Whites thought I should have done. But I had my own philosophy. I was sort of an independent thinker. And I simply prayed hard. I stayed on my knees many times to do what I thought would be the Christian way or do what I thought would be best for everybody. There were many times that I sided with Whites if I thought it was discrimination in reverse when I was at Hoggard. And there were many times that I sided with the Blacks, and I'd go straight to the superintendent or the governor for that matter, that was Governor Hunt at the time, and expressed my feelings. And sometimes I thought maybe a cross may have been burned in my yard or my car may have been wrecked or something, or tires may have been cut, but they never were.	38:09
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever face any discrimination because you were a woman and you're outspoken?	39:09
Bertha Todd	If I did, I didn't realize it. I was just that cocky, being short anyway. Well, let me say I was outspoken with a very pleasant bend to it, that could have really, had I been saying negative words, could have been sarcasm. I tried for the most part to be calm. The same way that I'll never forget the superintendent when he came to Williston High School once, and I had begged for additional space because the library was small. And he didn't—	39:17
Sonya Ramsey	Is this during the '50s?	39:55
Bertha Todd	This is during the '50s.	39:57
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	39:57
Bertha Todd	This is during the '50s. And finally I didn't know anywhere else to go. So that end of the year, I boxed up a lot of books. I pulled the books from the shelves, and I boxed them up. And I put them over in a corner. And I'll never forget the same supervisor, Martha Bennett, came and said, "Bertha, what are these?" I said, "Oh, these are books that really should be on the shelf and we count them, but we are not using them." "What are they doing boxed up?" I said, "Martha, because I don't have any place to put them." Well, that really frightened her, so she got busy and she went to the powers that be and got me another room.	39:58
Bertha Todd	And when she got the extra room, then the superintendent came out one day, and asked me, he didn't go upstairs. I came down. He asked me about the room. I told him, "Yes, thank you so much for helping us get this additional room so that we might display these books." Then he began to tell me what to put in the room. So I did it this way. I said, "Hey, have you ever worked in a library?" He said, "Oh, yes, Bertha. I was a page and I worked when old Martha was—" He was just telling me about his experience. He didn't know what I was leading to.	40:36
Bertha Todd	And I said, "Have you ever taken any courses?" He said, "No, I haven't had too many courses. Maybe I had one. Oh, that was the only experience I had." I've forgotten what he said. I said, "Well, let's see now. Although I majored in biology," I said, "I have a master's in Library of Science." I said, "And I have worked X number of years." I says, "Although you think there should be certain books in there, with my experience and my knowledge, I feel as if this room, this extra room, should house these books on this set of books." Well, he left me alone after that. Well, I wasn't ugly. I just simply laid the facts down.	41:22
Sonya Ramsey	I remember you said, you called him by his first name too.	42:09
Bertha Todd	Yes, he called me Bertha. Now then, let me go back, I probably called him Dr. Bellamy then. Why? Because he had just come on board. I was at Williston. We were not desegregated. But when I had to help him run this public school system in the county, and he continued to call me Bertha. I said, "We are meeting too many times and you call me, so I will just call you Hayward." And I asked him, I said, "Well, since you called me Bertha, may I call you Hayward?" "Oh, yes, that's all right. It's fine." From then on. That was after I moved. But I probably called him Dr. Bellamy then. Because he needed us and we needed him. Had he not been the kind of superintendent he was, I don't know, we would've torn down everything. We tore down enough at Wilmington as it was. But that's what I asked him, and he left me alone. And I put the books in there that I thought should have been in there.	42:12
Bertha Todd	Well, these are the kinds of situations that I came here as an educator. I believed in myself. I had confidence in myself. I know experience counts, and I had the experience too. Then why am I going to permit you because of your position to tell me what I know is best? And that's my philosophy. Now, if you know, then I'll follow you. This statement I have: if I'm in the passenger seat, I'll ride, but if I'm in the driver's seat, then I'm going to drive. And that's what I did. And that's always been my philosophy. And I won't let you drive if I'm in the driver's seat. But I can follow and I can lead. I was developed, I was pushed into leadership.	43:15
Sonya Ramsey	What was the relationship between the parents of the students and the librarian?	44:07
Bertha Todd	It was very good. Yes, I had a good relationship. I intended to try to prove to the parents, yes, your children can read. Yes, your children need to develop an appreciation for books. And yes, I'm the librarian who is trying to select the right book for the right child, as librarian used to say at that time. And I believed in that. I was committed to that. And I worked hard at that.	44:10
Sonya Ramsey	And what type of things did you do to interact with the community to try to generate more interest in reading and things like that?	44:37
Bertha Todd	I sent out little newsletters sometimes. I talked to as many parents at PTA as I could. I don't think I sent articles to the journal or whatnot. Certainly didn't send them to Star News, they wouldn't have printed those. But it sort of went by word of mouth. After the book fair, it really flew.	44:47
Sonya Ramsey	What happened at the book Fair. Did you sell books?	45:09
Bertha Todd	We sold books because Belk Beery had a book department at that time, so we contracted with—Now let me say, I had the cooperation of many people. I did not do this alone. It was simply my idea and my determination to implement it, but it took a chairmanship of various committees. That's when I really learned how to organize. I developed the committees and we met often, and each one had a responsibility. So Anna Burnett is the one, she's dead now, is the one who contracted with Belk Berry to get the books to sell. She took care of that area. Various departments had exhibits, and around those exhibits we selected books of interest relating or relevant to that particular exhibit. I had a narration as an introduction that I used on welcoming them to the library book fair and all of that. I did that part. It was on a tape that as you come in—	45:11

Bertha Todd	Story time in one area. We had vocation. Every area of the school, elementary books because the buses bust in the elementary students. It was countywide. It was big. And on that night that we had the culminating activity, that was on a Friday night, and then we wanted the superintendent to speak. Superintendent wasn't there. Associate superintendent came, and he spoke to the parents. We had the parents there and the kids. And we talked about books and the importance of education and the importance of reading. And that lasted the entire week.	0:01
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you a few questions about Wilmington in general during the '50s. Was there a lot of color prejudice, interracial color prejudice, between light-skinned and dark-skinned [indistinct 00:00:52]?	0:41
Bertha Todd	Yeah. Mm-hmm.	0:52
Sonya Ramsey	And what examples—	0:52
Bertha Todd	There were a few White-looking couples here, and they sort of had an elitist feeling.	0:57
Bertha Todd	Those who were very dark skinned resented being called Black, and there was some name-calling at that time, and there were some instances of fights because of that, because of the name-calling.	1:07
Sonya Ramsey	Is this during with children or with adults?	1:28
Bertha Todd	With children. I guess the wives did it in the homes on telephone, but that wasn't as prevalent then.	1:30
Sonya Ramsey	Was it in the adult community—Did they have certain organizations around certain shades of people—	1:40
Bertha Todd	No. They had certain organizations where, if the person was not an educator, it was permissible for that person to join. Wasn't sorority. Links was one of them. That's why Links was formed, in a way. All of those rich ladies who could wear those minks and who could contribute, but they were not high school. They were not college people. They would never be in a sorority.	1:46
Sonya Ramsey	You'd have to be in college.	2:13
Bertha Todd	Yes. We found those people getting together, having parties, and enjoying themselves. And eventually, Links was formed. And that happens even now on the local levels. You find people other than college graduates and this area. They're nurses. They are—I don't know any cosmetologists. It's pretty much whatever they are.	2:16
Sonya Ramsey	Was there a lot of class prejudice and things like that?	2:39
Bertha Todd	Sort of. Some. Not as much as you would find in the larger city.	2:45
Sonya Ramsey	Which group was held—Were educators held higher? Who was held—	2:48
Bertha Todd	Yes.	2:52
Sonya Ramsey	—in the highest esteem?	2:52
Bertha Todd	When I came here, there were four Black doctors. There was Hubert Eaton, Leroy Upperman, Wheeler, Gray, and Rome. There were five. Eaton, Upperman, Wheeler, Gray and Rome.	2:53
Bertha Todd	There was one dentist, Roseman. There was one lawyer, Bond. And now it's just the opposite. Almost one or two doctors and a ton of lawyers. More than I can name.	3:16
Bertha Todd	But those few associated with educators, because they had more educators than anything else—The Atlantic Coastline was here then. Most of the individuals either worked for the coastline and some pretty decent jobs and some not as well paying. Or they're either chauffeured Whites. Or they either served as maids for White households. Or they took care of the children of Whites. That's the way the livelihood—We did not have business and industry here.	3:36
Bertha Todd	The Whites sort of controlled the Blacks, to a great degree, those who worked in their homes and chauffeured for them but to a lesser degree those who were educators. They couldn't control them as well. But we weren't supposed to buy certain cars. Weren't supposed to buy Buicks.	4:20
Sonya Ramsey	Why? Why not? Why—	4:39
Bertha Todd	The superintendent, Roland, really. He was a racist from his heart. He did not feel as if Black educators were supposed to buy Chryslers and Buicks and Cadillacs. You bought a Ford and a Chevrolet. But beyond that, now, I don't know the other cars at that time that you couldn't buy, but beyond that, you weren't supposed to do that.	4:41
Sonya Ramsey	If you did break the rules like that, what would happen to the person?	5:03
Bertha Todd	I don't really know. It was handed down from old teacher to new teacher when you hit the system. Of course, my husband did that because we bought a Chrysler, and the principal said to him, "You better be careful about buying that Chrysler," or something like that. Of course, he was sort of assertive himself and being a coach and a jock. He was a good basketball player in college.	5:08
Bertha Todd	And he said, "Well, what can he do to me? This is my money." It was passed down, but you couldn't join the NACP and let them know that you'd joined.	5:32
Sonya Ramsey	Would you lose your job possibly?	5:42
Bertha Todd	I wouldn't thought you would. I don't know. You see some things you didn't do to find out because you didn't have those assertive Blacks here who would make that effort to find out simply because the riots of 1898, and this was 1950. That's not too long. And by the time you get some hand-me-downs—	5:45
Bertha Todd	Now, I talked with several people at that time who were living about the riots of 1898.	6:03
Sonya Ramsey	What did they say?	6:10
Bertha Todd	Well, they were talking about how some Whites who were friendly to Blacks prepared them and told them what was going to happen and would pass the word along. "Don't bother this family," or, "Leave this family alone." And they were some of those families.	6:11
Bertha Todd	Well, now when they—The McDonald's were some of those. But did that help the masses and the individuals move forward? They simply accepted the status quo. This is what I found when I came to Wilmington. Many Blacks who were nice, who prided themselves into having gotten that far, into having outstanding or superior activities for our own. But those Whites over there— They're people that maybe we know and maybe we don't know. We don't associate with them. They leave us alone. We let them alone unless you worked in their homes, and this is the way I found the education system.	6:31
Bertha Todd	They didn't like being called by first names, didn't like the idea that first names were used in the papers, but they were not willing to stand up and do anything about it. Well, I didn't like it, and I'd simply let them know. I did that for a doctor's office. I did that for Belk-Beery. I did that for a florist, Will Rita's florist. If I didn't like it, I didn't have any better sense than to write you a letter and let you know I didn't like it.	7:16
Sonya Ramsey	What were some of the ramifications of that? Would they ever—What did they say?	7:49
Bertha Todd	Well, that was Belk's and the Azalea Festival, and that was when I was president. Either Jack and Jill, AKA, and Links. I'm not sure. But I had my hands in all of them because I was a member board, and I knew some Deltas. My sister may have been president of Deltas at the time. I'm not sure, but I sort of was able to stay in contact with the fraternities and the sororities and the civic organizations.	7:54
Bertha Todd	When I saw this all-White float of kids in that Azalea Festival parade, and I owed Belk-Beery all of my money, it made me angry. It frustrated me. I said, "Well, to look at Belk-Beery's float, you don't even think we exist." How could they do that to us when I'm paying as much as I'm paying? And I know I'm not the only one.	8:19
Sonya Ramsey	What year was this? Was this later on?	8:44
Bertha Todd	It was later on. I was at Hoggard at the time. It had to be in the '70s. Probably in the '70s. I simply called up the manager, and I had all of the organizations to write letters. I wrote them for Links, Jack and Jill, AKA, and my sister wrote it for Delta. I may have written some for Omega, my husband and all of the others, and just let them sign their names. I wrote the letters differently, and we sent them the letters. They didn't have a float next year.	8:48
Bertha Todd	Then I called the manager and talked with him about it. He said, "Well, we didn't think." I know they thought about it. "We just said, 'Well, we have a float, and all of a sudden we didn't have anybody to put on it, so we just thought we'd use the custom, the salesperson's, children.'" I didn't buy that. I think they took the float out and didn't put it back, but it was one year that I saw it, and that one year was enough for me. Since then, I don't know if they ever put any more back or not. I called them and gave them a good suggestion as to what to put in, but I said, "You can take all of the queens from the high schools." He said, "Well, they were very nice to me." They said that they would consider that. I don't think they ever did that because they didn't ask us.	9:15
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask. During the '50s, is there anything more you wanted to add about your school career? Anything like that that I didn't get to ask you?	9:55
Bertha Todd	My personal school?	10:05
Sonya Ramsey	About any events or experiences before we move to the '60s?	10:05
Bertha Todd	No. In the '50s, as I said, I returned to school. I was ordering books. I came.	10:09
Bertha Todd	That's when I had my first daughter. '57.	10:23
Sonya Ramsey	Did they have a Black hospital?	10:28
Bertha Todd	Yes. Speaking of that, I went to the Black hospital, Community, to have my daughter. But when I went to James Walker, the White hospital for treatment, and someone sent me some flowers, they had Mrs. Bertha Todd on the card and the message. And then when I happened to have been at Community and received some flowers, they had Bertha Todd.	10:30
Sonya Ramsey	Why was that?	10:58
Bertha Todd	Discrimination because they knew everybody that James Walker may—They didn't know whether White or Black, so they didn't want to offend anyone. They put a courtesy title on all of the females. Now, at Community, they knew everybody was Black. They just put the title. When I found this out, I wrote a letter to Will Rita. That's where the flowers came from.	10:59
Bertha Todd	And they wrote me some song and dance story or answer about that. And it so happened wasn't too long before I was back in the hospital again at James Walker, and I was at Community, and whether it was outpatient, overnight, or what have you, and it happened again. Then the man, the Black man who was delivering the flowers, told—I said, "Well, I want to ask you. Is this their policy? Is that what they do?" And I said, "I want the truth," so he told me yes.	11:22
Bertha Todd	Then I wrote a name. I wrote them and told them, "This has happened again," and this seems to have been their policy according to ex-so-and-so, one of the delivery men. I didn't say who it was because they had several, but I didn't want to incriminate him.	11:48
Bertha Todd	And I don't know if I got a response. I got those letters somewhere in storage that, when I clean up this whole house bit by bit, I'm sure I'll find them. But that's what I did. And I don't know—I guess I finally got some results from Will Rita, because that was the one, but I didn't care. I signed my name. I didn't get any repercussions from it. I probably got talked about in the White community, but that was all right. Didn't make any difference.	12:04
Bertha Todd	And I did the same thing with the doctor's office. I've been to Duke then, and I told this doctor. Gynecologist. We would go to him. Blacks sit on one side and Whites on the other. And I told him how—I said, "You know, you need to be mentally well as well as emotionally well as well as physically well, and all of these tie in. They interrelated." I said, "Do you realize how frustrating this is?" And so, I'll never forget. I talk it every time I'd go. And when the old Dr. Johnson turned this business over to new Dr. Weinel at that time years ago, we still began to talk that way. I said, "You know why I went to Duke? Because Duke is a little less prejudice than here." And I said, "In order to get well physically, I need to be straight mentally and emotionally, and I can't take this stuff." I said, "I don't like it."	12:36
Bertha Todd	And so, he said he understood. We would talk when I would go to him for an examination. And then finally he built his office out here near the new hospital, New Hanover Regional Medical Center. And he called me. He said, "Mrs. Todd." He said he was calling me Mrs. Todd because I told him I resented that other stuff. Man called me Mrs. Todd until the day he retired. By that time, he could have been William Weinel, and I could have been Bertha, but we knew where we were coming from.	13:24
Bertha Todd	He said, "How do you like my new offices?" He had integrated them, and he had told his staff that too. Well, I think that—I don't know if he told his staff members some were carryover from the old Dr. Johnson. That I was a culprit, the person who was pushing. And I didn't mind going straight to him to talk about it. When he integrated his waiting rooms, then I noticed some of the nurses would say, "Ms. So-and-so." Ms. So-and-so happened to be White. I was at Hoggard then in the '60s in a White high school. Predominantly White and versatile.	13:50
Bertha Todd	He and I had another talk. I said, "Dr. Weinel." I said, "Let me tell you one thing." I said, "I deal with some of these young people who in your office. They attend Hoggard High School." I said, "And here I am, a professional, and I consider middle-class Black." I said, "I've earned a title by this time, and I resent those nurses calling me Bertha, and yet calling someone who's much younger than I —Calling them Miss simply because their faces are White." I said, "I resent it."	14:33
Bertha Todd	He said, "Well, I guess they do that because there's so many of the Black young teenagers come here, and they're pregnant." I said—I don't know whether I said, "I don't give a damn." I said, "I don't care." I said, "If they're Black and they're teenagers and they like to have these babies when they're young, then they deserve to be called by their first name as far as I'm concerned." I said, "But I think the middle class Black has earned the right. The professional has earned the right to a courtesy title. And I resent it."	15:03
Bertha Todd	The next time I went up to that office, I said, "I'm Mrs. Todd, and I have an appointment to talk to Weinel at 3:45."	15:36
Bertha Todd	"Oh, you Bertha Todd. I know you, Bertha Todd." That was one of—Well, I knew then that maybe the word had gotten around who was doing this because I'm sure he went back to his staff members, and it is a staff of several doctors and nurses.	15:44
Bertha Todd	And so, one of the younger Whites said, "Mrs. Todd, I'll take care of this." And so, she called me over to work with her. Well, I knew then that my story was out that they considered me one of the culprits of trying to modify their prejudice behavior, but I didn't care. I still go to that same office.	16:05
Sonya Ramsey	I need to ask you. Back in the '50s, what was the difference between Community and the other James Walker hospital? Was there a discrepancy in care or any differences?	16:31
Sonya Ramsey	And how were the Blacks treated when they went to the White doctor?	16:43
Bertha Todd	Blacks were treated over in a little area where they would take some Blacks where there some—Most White doctors didn't go to Community. Some White doctors would go, but if you happened to go to a White doctor and he was on the staff at James Walker, you simply went to James Walker and stayed in that little cubby holder, segregated area, or you didn't get treated.	16:47
Bertha Todd	I consider them both competent staff because you would not expect sometimes—I would have pitied the nurses at Community.	17:09
Sonya Ramsey	Why is that? Why was that?	17:23
Bertha Todd	Well, why would I say that I'm comparing the nurses at Community to the ones that James Walker? I think they was just as competent because of the kind of treatment I received. And there were some Black nurses at James Walker.	17:23
Sonya Ramsey	There were?	17:33
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm. But at least you didn't have to encounter the prejudice at Community. The atmosphere was much more positive.	17:37
Sonya Ramsey	Were there enough Black doctors to treat all the Black people in Wilmington?	17:44
Bertha Todd	Maybe, maybe not, because they had to take the surrounding areas, and there were no doctors in the surrounding areas in the other counties. I would say no, almost. I really would say no. And you were sort of entering into the area of specialization, and of course—	17:51
Sonya Ramsey	Were most of the Black doctors in general practice? Or did they have a specialty?	18:06
Bertha Todd	They did all areas of practice for the most part. They did the surgery. They did the gynecology. They did the obstetrician part. And, of course, the heart was not in them, but they did just about everything that you needed to the best of their ability.	18:11
Sonya Ramsey	I guess we can move on. Is there anything else about the—	18:30
Bertha Todd	The '50s? No, I can't think of anything else about the '50s.	18:34
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, I have one question about—When you first had your child, how did you manage childcare and teaching?	18:34
Bertha Todd	My mother and the old lady with whom I was living at the time. She babysat a lot. My mother would come down from Samson County to Wilmington. And then the first year, I think my daughter stayed up in the country with her, but I didn't let that happen anymore. I felt too guilty. And that's sort of the way we did it. And if I were to go out somewhere in the community, my husband would babysit. Or if he'd go, I'd keep the kids. That's the way we'd juggle that. It was a juggle.	18:40
Sonya Ramsey	Is there anything else I should—	19:09
Bertha Todd	For the '50s? No. I can't think of anything for the '50s.	19:12
Sonya Ramsey	Just going to move on to the 1960s. How did your job change? How do these change from the '50s to the '60s?	19:13
Bertha Todd	All right. This is—You see I'm looking on this too, don't you?	19:13
Bertha Todd	I was librarian at Wilson Senior High School from 1953 to '68. And during that time was when that book fair was. That was the '60s. Eight years later or later than that, we were in the process of preparing our students for a possible desegregation because, at the time, they had freedom of choice in those '60s. And this is also, I think, in those '60s when we had the superintendent monitoring what we were doing, and the public librarian resented my sending students from Williston Senior High school to the public library. I had to give them permission slips. The weight was on me.	19:33
Bertha Todd	I had to determine who attended. Now, who went there—I'd give them a pep talk and tell them how to act and how to respond but to go on and get what they needed.	20:25
Bertha Todd	And I simply refused. I'd question them about what they needed and whether we had it in the library or not, but that was a responsibility that I did not like. I did not like having to sign those slips because I thought they should go simply because it was a public library.	20:37
Bertha Todd	And a couple of times the lady called me and either said that she wanted a few students. Or why did I sign so many. Or, "Didn't we have those books in our library?" And then I'd probably have to tell her, "We had a few of those books on that topic, but we had a lot of students who were doing research on those topics." Something. Whatever I told her. Anyway, she never called me down or reported me, apparently, because no one else ever said anything about it.	20:54
Bertha Todd	The '60s also was the time that the superintendent and his staff was monitoring William Lowe. And I was ordering the books that they didn't want me to order. And by the way, it was Joseph McNeil, who was under William Lowe, who was required to write those papers who was told about his rights according to the Constitution and the government books, who was the one who suggested to the fellows. "Listen, they can't move us because this constitution says this, this, this, and this." He knew his government. He was taught by William Lowe, and the others followed suit. He knew what he was about when he went there. And he had talked and encouraged the others to do the same. And when I saw that, I said, "Well, thank God all of this persistence was not in vain." That is really something good.	21:25
Bertha Todd	As you think about—Why am I being not belligerent but certainly not going to kowtow and not going to give in to what I know it's not right? It's not fair. It's not equal. It's not just.	22:22
Bertha Todd	And so, when I look at those times and I think about them, I become very amused and satisfied inwardly to know that all of the pushing, being assertive, all of the fighting for equal rights, all of the attempts to keep your own self-esteem—All were not in vain. That was during that same time.	22:37
Bertha Todd	In the '60s, we found our students becoming restless. They were restless because they did not feel as if the principal of Williston Senior High School was relating to the times, was not permitting them to do as much for their heritage as they thought they should do. This was also a time of freedom of choice in New Hanover County. And if you wanted to go to another school, you applied, and maybe you were accepted. And that's high school and elementary school.	23:06
Sonya Ramsey	Did many Black students apply to Delta—	23:41
Bertha Todd	Yes. Hubert Eaton and his family. LM Newsom. Those were leaders. A few Black leaders were beginning to surface encouraging their kids to go and be the Guinea pigs. And they went. And it was much later that my own daughter went to Forest Hill School, and this is an exclusive area back here. Exclusive historical White area. We on the fringes, really.	23:42
Bertha Todd	And in the third grade, our daughter attended. Our neighbor's daughter attended school there. Our neighbor across the street's daughter—Three little girls integrated Forest Hills. When we attended the first PTA, those parents looked at us and acted as if we were from Mars.	24:19
Bertha Todd	And I will never forget that because some salesman, the manager of Belk Beery, had been extremely nice in helping me locate my little boy in the store one day. And he was at that meeting because he had some kids there too. But to know us, he knew not. And I sent the message back to him because, at that time, we had also developed a YWCA nucleus group because the national theme of YWCA was to eliminate racism. And—	24:50
Sonya Ramsey	This is during the early—	25:31
Bertha Todd	This is the '60s. This is around '67. '66, '67, 68, maybe. And in that group we had some Whites, because I was working on the board of trustees, the board of directors for the Y, Phillis Wheatley Y. And this is when they built the new Y. They were getting ready to merge those two Ys. The old White Y was on Market Street.	25:32
Bertha Todd	And I met Betty Cameron. Dan Cameron's one of the wealthy. He's wealthy. He's not rich. He's wealthy. Persons here in Wilmington. And his wife, Betty. All lived in Forest Hills.	26:04
Bertha Todd	Well, we met as a nucleus group to try to prepare for desegregation that we knew was coming, that we had heard from central office that they were going to dissolve Williston, and that we knew the students and the adults needed to be prepared. We would have discussion sessions every week to learn to talk with each other and to learn the cultures of each other. And I'll never forget. I would be in charge of the discussion session once, and Betty Cameron Pickett Hale on and on, and then sometimes I used to bring the kids, some of the high school kids, but I proceeded to tell them that Blacks knew more about Whites than Whites knew about Blacks.	26:19
Bertha Todd	They didn't believe that. I said, "All right. Let's take it this way. You have us working in your kitchens. You have us driving your cars. And as far as you are concerned, we are invisible to you. You talk about your personal business. You don't see us." I said, "We have one discussion for you, and we have another discussion, but we get to all Black groups, so you really see a face we want you to see. You don't see the real face."	27:12
Bertha Todd	And I said, "For the most part, you folk have not talked with educated Blacks." I said, "All you're accustomed to are those individuals. 'Well, did you drive the car today? Did you get the car serviced?' Or, 'What are we having for dinner today?'" I said, "But ask for philosophy and intelligent or intellectual discussions." I said, "You don't have those with us because you don't know us."	27:43
Bertha Todd	And so, they were fascinated by that. Even the White kids at Hoggard when I went there were fascinated to hear someone discuss with them and tell them more than they really knew because they thought we all were dumb in the first place. I spent half my time really serving as discussion group leader or facilitator rather than helping them find their books in the library, but we'll get to that later.	28:05
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you a question about your daughter going to that school. Did you ever receive any threats about that? Or—	28:29
Bertha Todd	No, we didn't because many had gone to different—Not many but some had gone to different areas. No, they just ostracized us. But luckily, her first teacher was a Yankee who was transplanted here, and she knew what we were up against. And I'll never forget. There was one teacher. Rita adjusted as well as she could. I had not told her about prejudice and racism. I couldn't bring my heart to tell her. When we would come home from Sunday school or church, and we'd see the pools out there by the motels, those two right there, they would want to stop and swim because we were accustomed to going to the beach, the Black beaches. I wouldn't tell her we can't go there because I did not want to stifle her self-esteem.	28:36
Bertha Todd	When she went there, I would hope that she thought she was just as good as the others, yet she did not see the colors that she saw in the all-Black school. But I worked with her on her homework. And she was very protective when her brother started going to school. He was four years younger. And the principal placed him in a room that this lady was about to retire. This White lady, a teacher, said that, if every Black child was placed in her room, that she was going to retire. She was going to quit on the spot. Well, why would they put my son? They had some more first grades. Subject him to this lady.	29:28
Bertha Todd	And the ironic thing about this—Brian being in the first grade. Brian being sort of fair. Brian thinking this teacher looked like his grandmother who was fair. He took on to the lady. He liked her, and then she began to love him, and they would see Brian holding her hand while she's leading him around somewhere. Well, she took him as an oddity, but she wasn't capable of teaching him very much. She didn't teach him very much, and my child almost had a reading problem. That was amusing, and I think that the principal did that so the lady would quit. She probably wanted the lady to retire, but the lady didn't retire immediately as she said she was going to, but at least Brian thinking the lady was his grandmother. And she'd taken a liking to Brian. He managed to get through that first year. I don't know how much he was taught.	30:22
Bertha Todd	On the way home one day, little White fella threw some spokes in Brian's bicycle, and Rita beat the little boy up. She was a big girl in elementary school. Well, the lady called in the White parent and the child, but never—She knew we were professionals. We were working in the school system but never called me nor my husband to be present. Here Rita was in the office of the principal talking about a fight where she beat the fellow up, because she had to beat him up, with the parent and the son and the principal. And here she was having to fend for herself. They didn't suspend her. I don't know if they even punished her. I don't know whether they were afraid to punish her or whether she doesn't recall having been punished. She recalls having told the principal that this young White boy threw some spokes into his bicycle. He fell off the bike and cut his face, and she simply beat him. And beyond that, I don't know what happened.	31:31
Sonya Ramsey	I was going to ask how did they—What relationships did they have with other White students?	32:42
Bertha Todd	Who, Brian and Rita? And the other girls? They developed a good relationship with some of them. They weren't in numbers, so I guess they didn't see— Apparently, they didn't feel the prejudice. They made friends. They talked with a lot of those friends.	32:46
Sonya Ramsey	Did they go to slower parties at Whites' houses?	33:05
Bertha Todd	No, they didn't do that now. They didn't do any of that. Rita had some girls come here to the house to visit and play. Brian had quite a few fellows to visit him and play. It was only when they got to junior high school and high school because they had a very positive feeling about all groups. I'm out here battling White and Black now, but we kept it away from them and their settings if we could.	33:09
Bertha Todd	But as a result of that, they developed a positive feeling towards Blacks and Whites. But when they got to junior high school and high school, to give you a good example of what happened to Brian, the Black fellows, especially those from the projects, are those who did not feel good about the situation of desegregation. Said, "Man, okay, what side are you on?" Because Brian was associating with Whites and Blacks. And then when he wore some shoes, "Man, what are you doing with those White fellow shoes on?"	33:40
Bertha Todd	Well, he came back then naive and told me about it. I said, "Brian, next time they ask you, 'What side are you on?' you just tell him you're on God's side." That may not have been a good answer. That was all I could think about. And I said, "There's nothing wrong with your shoes." He may have stopped wearing them. I'm not sure. They were black and white shoes or something, and they became more conscious of race. They did not drop their White friends. They simply were more aware of the race and the separation of the races, which means that then we had to—I'll never forget when Black became in vogue. I told them. I said, "Listen, you are Black." Well, they knew they were brown, and I had to go through that. I said, "Well, regardless of what color your skin is, you are from Black descendants."	34:14
Bertha Todd	And so, I just ingrained that Black in them as well as I could to let them know, "Listen, you have a heritage. Your ancestors, for the most part, were Black." I didn't go through all that Indian and that White stuff. I did do that in the '60s at a church. I have to tell you about that. That was my community bit.	35:14
Bertha Todd	And at the same time, at the time that Martin Luther King was assassinated, and I was pushed into a role of leadership to help quell the frustrated and angry feelings of the Blacks at Williston in the late '60s, my kids did not suffer because my name was a household name in the community and White community and Black community. I don't think they did.	35:37
Bertha Todd	Rita did encounter some Blacks from the projects who wanted to beat her up. She associated with Blacks and Whites. During that time, we were—I hate to say it this way, but we were about the only Black family except the Eatons who traveled extensively. And the only reason we traveled, the four of us, is because at one time I was president of Jack and Jill three years. I was president of Links three years. I was president of AKA three years, and they would give me delegates money to attend meetings in Boston, meetings in Florida, meetings in Colorado, meetings—You name it.	36:08
Sonya Ramsey	Jack and Jill was a children's organization?	36:51
Bertha Todd	That's right. We formed—We didn't form. The organization was chartered by Hubert Eaton's wife. Dr. Hubert Eaton. You know about him, I'm sure. His wife was more or less responsible for Links being formed here and for Jack and Jill being formed here. She was on a statewide national plane moving around with her husband. She would come back and try to get enough adults together to develop those same chapters. I give all of that credit to her. Others were involved, but it came from her primarily. And of course, we were members of those groups.	36:53
Bertha Todd	Now, when we would travel, I would simply borrow some more money, and we all would go. Father, mother, and the two kids. We were exposed. I don't think maybe some of those Black girls liked Rita's hair. I don't know what they didn't like about her, but they just nagged her. And one day she asked me if I minded if she would fight. I said, "Yes, I do." I said, "Now, what do you plan to fight about on that campus?" And I really had to work with her on that. She suffered a little from that.	37:38
Sonya Ramsey	Is this when she was in high school?	38:12
Bertha Todd	Middle school.	38:12
Sonya Ramsey	Middle school.	38:13
Bertha Todd	In high school, she learned to relate almost better to the Whites than she did with the Blacks. She's now going through her awareness in multicultural education. And I looked. I said, "Rita, you have been all of these years." Now, she's in her thirties. She's 36. I said, "And I have taught you to respect a person on the basis of the character, not the color. I said, "Don't come here with that stuff now." And she's having to go through a cycle of readjusting some of her feelings, but she'll get over it.	38:15
Bertha Todd	And I had her move from one school to another because she was having difficulty. From one junior high school. Well, then I got talked about in the community because we were assigned, according to districts, to a particular school. When I got her moved from one junior high to another junior high by going to the board members, and they helped me do this, and the superintendent, did I get talked about. I paid for that one. When she got ready to go to high school, she went to school where she was supposed to go. One year. That was enough for me.	38:50
Bertha Todd	And that was being privileged. That didn't set too well. That didn't set too well with some Whites and some Blacks.	39:27
Sonya Ramsey	You said, after Dr. King's assassination, you got pushed—	39:33
Bertha Todd	Into a leadership role.	39:39
Sonya Ramsey	Right. Could you talk about that in what way you—	39:40
Bertha Todd	I had to stand on the stage and make a speech. At first, I tried to guide the principal because he was of the old school. I called the White principal at New Hanover High and tried to tell him to lower the flag half-mast because the Black students had threatened to go over there and tear up that school. I said, "Now, which do you prefer?"	39:43
Bertha Todd	I persuaded the two teachers, Clemons, and I've forgotten the name of the other child, who were young, who were of the forward moving group at that time, who sort of under-currently and suddenly were responsible for getting those kids to do what they did, come out of classes and say they were going to walk downtown and do all of this stuff. I had to persuade them to go back out and talk with these riotous kids when we got them in the auditorium because they weren't—Teachers couldn't teach. They were moving out of the classroom. They didn't know what they were going to do.	40:07
Bertha Todd	In a subtle sort of way, I pleaded with the principal to let them do this. I went to those two teachers that I knew could influence them and begged them to talk with these kids. Tell them don't riot. This is not the way you handle this.	40:44
Sonya Ramsey	By this time, were you still a librarian at this time or—	40:59
Bertha Todd	Yes. I was a librarian, but I got thrown into that. Well, I knew somebody had to do something and strategize by chairing a lot of things at that time. By that time, I had been—I wasn't even president. I had been president of Links. By that time, I had learned to organize and strategize quite a bit in dealing with a bunch of women in all these organizations. And when you deal and you're president of women's groups, you have something on your hands.	41:05
Bertha Todd	Well, I don't know where I got the strategize, except I was active in college, and I learned. And being a librarian, you are many administrator simply because you have to have library assistants, and you tell them what to do, and you guide them, and you supervise them. Any librarian is a many administrator on the high school level. Then you have to work with all the teachers. You have to be diplomatic if you want the teachers to use the library.	41:31
Bertha Todd	I went to those two teachers and pleaded with them and begged them to talk with those students and tell them not to riot. Then I got on the stage and talked with them, and finally we got a march straight. And we marched downtown. And we sang "We Shall Overcome". And we stood at the front of the courthouse and sang. That's when, and I was pushed into a rule of— Nobody else was doing it. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to influence those two teachers. And the principal was simply—He knew what was happening almost.	41:58
Sonya Ramsey	You meant hat all the principals of the elementary school, the—	42:35
Bertha Todd	Well, this was a high school.	42:38
Sonya Ramsey	The business leaders. You were the only one that they could pick from to choose—	42:40
Bertha Todd	They who? This was within Williston.	42:44
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:42:47].	42:46
Bertha Todd	No, this was in Williston Senior High School at that time.	42:47
Sonya Ramsey	That was just the [indistinct 00:42:51] high school—	42:49
Bertha Todd	This was a high school.	42:49
Sonya Ramsey	—was so important to the [indistinct 00:42:52].	42:49
Bertha Todd	Right. This is where I was beginning to be pushed into a civic school-oriented leadership role.	42:54
Sonya Ramsey	Did some of the males there at the school resent you being pushed into—	43:00
Bertha Todd	No, they followed.	43:04
Sonya Ramsey	You didn't have any problems with them?	43:08
Bertha Todd	There was one person, now, Fisher, who was a coach, but he was more militant. See, I considered myself a militant moderate, a moderate militant, because I was of age. I had been there a long time. I had worked at that school 16 years. And I've had my family. And I was older.	43:09
Bertha Todd	I did not feel as if things could be accomplished by rioting. I felt that you could discuss. I felt that you could have a heated discussion. You could use threats if you wanted to, but then you don't have to get there and tear things down. Really, my way was almost my way versus Ben Jameson's way when Ben Jameson came here, too, because I was still out there.	43:31
Bertha Todd	That is the way I did this, but yet we had upcoming Clemons, Black male, and upcoming—I cannot think of that child's name who were of the other—They didn't care if the kids went out there and rioted. That was their style. That was the new thinking and the new style, but here I am being a product of the old school, knowing something had to be done, so we do what we had to do. And of course, there were some other Black teachers there who—I don't remember their getting up talking, but I do remember their following, getting in line and helping, because I was not the only one walking.	43:55
Bertha Todd	And we all marched down there. And after we came back, no, we dispersed them. We persuaded the principals to disperse the students after then. Then the principal caught Hell because he dispersed them before he was told from the central office. Right after then, the whole community blew up anyway.	44:33
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:44:48].	44:47
Bertha Todd	Sure did.	44:51
Sonya Ramsey	Was this directly after Dr. King?	44:52
Bertha Todd	Mm-hmm. This was directly after then, and it was horrible. I'm sure you've heard that from many individuals. And then all of a sudden the Whites—"Well, what did we do wrong? What is wrong?" You see, not being together, they had no idea what was happening.	44:55
Bertha Todd	And I don't know how long we stayed out. They had the tanks and everything here. It was horrible. Finally, things calmed down. The chief of police worked. And I don't remember. I haven't talked with that chief much, but that was also the beginning of the Human Relations Commission of the council at that time. And I was on that.	45:15
Bertha Todd	But coming back to that particular right, the YWCA nucleus, integrated nucleus, was working then, and Pickett Hale, a Betty Cameron sister, asked me if I would attend St. Andrew's Covenant Presbyterian Church.	45:35
Sonya Ramsey	Is that a White church?	45:51
Bertha Todd	Yes, it is very White and very big. First Presbyterian Church. All of the elites. St. Andrew's Covenant. Most of the elites and the wealthy. And then you go on to some of the other Presbyterian churches.	45:53
Bertha Todd	They were having—It was in November. And Pickett said, "Bertha, Pickett and I—	46:08

Bertha Todd	The YWCA's activity, a national goal to eliminate racism and what we were working on in the period.	0:00
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:00:24].	0:14
Bertha Todd	Now, we were talking about the desegregation and going through the church. Pickett Taylor and I were supposed to attend this large family or banquet dinner that was being held at St. Andrew's Covenant that night. It was a Thanksgiving meal, so it had to be in November. I kept saying to Pickett, I said, "Pickett, those individuals there are going to ask about the Y and what we're trying to do in the community to prepare the community for desegregation. I said, but eventually that is going to narrow down to them and me." "Oh no, it won't, Bertha." So I wrote what Pickett was supposed to say, and then Pickett introduced me and I had my little spiel. I said, "Okay, we'll see now." I'll never forget the Reverend Connet. We were going through a dark area sort of hallway, and he said, "Bertha," he said, "do you know your way out of here?"	1:01
Bertha Todd	I said, "No, I don't, but I'd like to let you know." He said, "Well," to show you how tense it was during that time. It was right after all of this devastation. But he said, "Well, I'll tell you what, just in case we have to run out of here." I said, "Well, I need to know because if I have to leave here in a hurry, I want to make certain I can get out of this church." It's a very large church. He said, "Well, Bertha, please don't stumble and fall because I might be right behind you." That shows the kind of meeting I was attending. We opened the meeting after we had all eaten dinner. The meeting was opened, the program, and Pickett introduced me and said some things about the YWCA and what the Y stood for and the fact that we had a new building and we were going to eliminate racism and all of that.	2:12
Bertha Todd	Then she introduced me and I talked. Then we had a question and answer session. They began to ask me about the riots after Martin Luther King was assassinated, and they asked me, can you tell me why the Blacks wanted to riot or what the feelings were at that time? Because we thought everything was all right and what do the Blacks want? I answered them. I said, "Well, the Blacks want the same things that you want and respect, a good education, a home and a family." And I said, "The values are very similar." I said, "We are just people." And one of the most challenging questions, and I knew was coming eventually, they said, "Well, how do you feel about interracial dating or interracial marriages?" I stood and looked at them. I was standing up all the wall and the questions were hot and heavy and I could have cared.	3:05
Bertha Todd	I didn't know who was in the audience. All I could see were I sea of White faces. I'm the only individual of distinction, meaning that I'm Black. That's my word for saying I'm the only Black. I get tired of that. I say, "I'm the only individual of distinction." I said, "Well, now let's see if we can trace this and talk about this interracial marriage or interracial dating." I said, "Number one." I said, "Have you ever looked at all of us?" I said, "I have some cousins who as White as you." I said, "I am Brown." I said, "I have some cousins who are very dark." I said, "And we find this in most of the families." I said, "In fact, that's why you call us Colored people. We all colors."	4:06
Bertha Todd	I said, "And whether we had interracial dating or marriages," I said, "I wonder how we got to be all colors." And I don't think they pursued that any further. I don't remember, but I just let them have it back. I said, "So as far as my feelings on interracial dating or interracial marriages," I say, if you find families that are mixed up already, why bother about mixing it up a bit more? It doesn't make any difference with me." And that's what I said. I remembered everything getting very quiet. I did get some feedback on that. My neighbor's doctor at that time came over to their house to purchase some vegetables and they said, "Oh, by the way, do you know Bertha Todd?" And they said, "Yeah, she lives right next the door." But he said, "She is some lady." And that was all he said.	4:55
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you, I'll change the subject a little bit and ask you about when did you first move into your home here?	5:59
Bertha Todd	32 years ago. In the year of '62.	6:06
Sonya Ramsey	Was it an integrated?	6:10
Bertha Todd	The neighborhood was, no, it wasn't all Black. In fact, I'll never forget, a bunch of White fellows rode down the road, said, "Get your ass out of this White neighborhood." I guess now, although these houses are brick and a few are not, down further they were very small, but very neat, medium-sized houses, but they were mostly filled by Whites. This family over here, Black, the family down there Black, but the neighborhood was about as much White, more White than it was Black.	6:12
Sonya Ramsey	Why did you and your husband decide to move into this neighborhood?	6:51
Bertha Todd	We really were looking for a lot. We didn't know where we were moving at the time. We had not surveyed the place. We didn't even know Forest Hills was back there at the time. It's amazing. All you got to do is leave the street. You need to ride back there and ride back in there. You're in another world almost. But we really didn't know. We had a lot on 15th Street at first, and it was a big ditch by that area. Our neighbors over here were trying to persuade us to come out here and not go to Castlewood as a little Black area. Yeah, we were offered a lot there too. Our friends out there wanted us to move out there, and the neighbors here were trying to build up this area and persuaded us to move here. And this was closer at the time.	6:55
Bertha Todd	It wasn't as well built up out there. In fact, this was in the country to me. When we moved out here, the city limits sign was less than a block. It was a few feet beyond. We had this piers, that's where the city limits stopped. We were just within the city limits. It really wasn't much of a decision. There was no exclusive Black neighborhood. There were not very many decent Black houses, brick houses. We were some of the first to build. There were one or two, and the inner city Millette who had made it, I expect a million dollars by the time, he was a window washing firm, but he had made his money. He has a brick house in town and there were one or two others, but not very many at that time. Can you imagine being put in the journal, these are these people's homes or the family homes and all of this on the front page of the paper somewhere or in the paper or something. I have the article somewhere, but it was not the run of the mill houses at that time.	7:45
Sonya Ramsey	You said you bought a lot. Did your family build your—	8:58
Bertha Todd	We built this.	9:01
Sonya Ramsey	Was that a common practice to build homes?	9:02
Bertha Todd	Yeah, it was.	9:05
Sonya Ramsey	How did you decide how you wanted your home to look?	9:08
Bertha Todd	I looked in the papers. I'd look at floor plans. I'd look and look and study and study. We bought books and we just studied. Finally I saw a house that I thought I would like, and it was called French Provincial, and I decided on that one. We made a few changes, not very many. We had to push it in because our lot was not very large. See, at one time we owned all of the land up to the fence over there. We sold a part of it to the lady right here, but the lot was not big enough. It was deep enough, but it wasn't wide enough to spread this French provincial house out enough. When the contractor discovered that he had to push it in some, but as I said later, we bought the other land, but who's going to rebuild the house on the same lot or tear it up or widen it? We didn't do that.	9:10
Bertha Todd	Then they built, it was Castlewood. Then on Kerr Avenue, there were Blacks beginning to build houses, nice homes.	10:08
Sonya Ramsey	This was the late sixties?	10:16
Bertha Todd	This was the early sixties.	10:16
Sonya Ramsey	Early sixties.	10:17
Bertha Todd	You mean on Kerr? That was about middle sixties. We built this house in '62. Brian was a year old. And then much later, Gordon Road and Weaver's Acres was developed. At the time, Castlewood was being developed. We built here. There were no other places then there Kerr Avenue was being developed to a degree. Kerr Avenue and Mercy Avenue were being developed around the same time. They were trying to get an established neighborhood of Blacks out in Castlewood at that time. It was not built up as much. Then later was Weaver's Acres that began to develop, and now they're here and there and everywhere.	10:19
Bertha Todd	Then came, I've forgotten that. Not Barkley Hills. Barkley Hills came much later. I can not remember where Floyd lives, but that area, it's one other area that I'm talking about. They still don't have any paved streets out there, I don't think. This was sort of centrally located, and this is where we built and didn't have much money. We had two kids. Rita was four, and Brian was one year old. We had saved up some money, and I'll never forget going to Sutton council and getting the furniture. Mack was going to pay the house bill.	11:07
Sonya Ramsey	Yeah, the furniture.	11:51
Bertha Todd	That's the one out of 132 now.	11:53
Sonya Ramsey	Okay.	11:54
Bertha Todd	They were downtown. We bought furniture for every room. I don't know why we thought all the rooms had to be furnished as if you were living in it for a long time, but that's what we did. Furniture bill was very high, and I paid one of two and found out I didn't have any money left for anything else so I had to refinance and we paid it off. We continued to move on, paying bills. Sometimes I bought very few clothes. I'd have a jumper and many blouses. You change the blouse, you don't change the jumper. This is the way we sort of scrambled and sort of got on our feet. As we continued to work in the system and the salaries became a little higher, we had a little more money to work with. That we didn't work with, we borrowed in the summer and paid back in the winter. That was the general plan or procedure that most teachers had at that time if you didn't have a year-round job.	11:55
Sonya Ramsey	What did you and your husband do during the summer?	12:56
Bertha Todd	We went on picnics. We'd go to the beach, Atlantic Beach, Myrtle Beach, whatever. We'd go to Jones Lake—then we'd go to Wrightsville and Carolina. They were segregated. We didn't feel comfortable there, so we didn't go.	13:01
Sonya Ramsey	You didn't go to the segregated beaches?	13:14
Bertha Todd	We had a Freeman's Beach on that end, we would go to that. Shell Island, or I've forgotten what else they call that place, Bop City or whatever it was down to Sea Breeze. You need to check with somebody better than I can tell you about Sea Breeze. That was the hangout, the social hangout for Blacks. Later on we went to Cherokee.	13:17
Sonya Ramsey	Is that a beach?	13:44
Bertha Todd	No, that's way across the state. It's on the coast near Maggie Valley and Cherokee. I'd like to get a map sometimes and just look on it, but we lived on the reservation. That was a vacation we had. Indians reservation.	13:44
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay. Why did you select to go there?	14:03
Bertha Todd	Somebody had told us about Boundary Tree Lodge, and they didn't discriminate because they were Indians on the Indian reservation. We went there. We didn't want to encounter the discrimination. They were Indians. That's when I met my first full-blown Indians who were as militant as any Blacks ever could be. I was looking in the artifacts and the museum there, and weren't many Blacks there then. I didn't see many Blacks. I saw Indians, and I heard this person about talking about our ancestors and what we did, and the White man took this from us. I said, "Now how did that Black get all the way over here in Cherokee talking about these artifacts?" He was an Indian. He was as militant as any militant Black could ever be talking about his culture and his ancestors, and that was a revelation to me.	14:06
Sonya Ramsey	How did the Indians treat you?	14:58
Bertha Todd	Fine, fine. We had good quarters at Boundary Tree and we took pictures with the Indian chief and all. I don't know where those pictures are. I'd like to see them. Then we went to the Tweetsie Railroad. We enjoyed it up in that area for a long time that summer. I think we stayed about 10 days. These are the kind of vacations that we took. Living in hotels and all of that, no, that was only after 60 something that we began to travel and live in the hotels. Of course, we did quite a bit of that traveling at that time. I was the delegate and I'd borrow enough money so all of us could go.	15:00
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever encounter any racism while you were traveling?	15:48
Bertha Todd	Not really. I don't recall any. Maybe we were just not in the right places at the right time. I don't know, but I did not. I'm trying hard to think. I know that when we used to travel by car, well, we lived in hotels then. I don't even remember calling any in the restaurants after they were opened.	15:53
Sonya Ramsey	What were some of the, you said Sea Breeze was the entertainment area. Were there any Black restaurants?	16:24
Bertha Todd	Yes, they were nice, good seafood restaurants. That was really a nice area at one time. They had little cabins that you could stay overnight if you wanted to, but all of that's gone now. Same thing was at Myrtle Beach. I don't think they have any rooms. I don't know what they have in Myrtle Beach. I haven't been there in a long time. During those years, we developed and we sponsored our own social life and we had a good social life, but we had gotten to the place where a certain group of Blacks discriminated against the other groups and would not let them partake unless you were invited to the dances or whatnot. This is the way Wilmington, we were the socialites. We were the social activity. I tried during those years to get my club members to come out into the community with me.	16:26
Bertha Todd	I'll never forget, Dr. Gray's wife, Gwen Gray laughed and said, "Bertha, let those people just stay out there and fend for themselves. I fended for myself long enough." But she was always living in a world of an exalted opinion sort of thing. Here I am, having been brought up in Sampson County on the farm, realizing education is the key, participating. I'm not going to look down on anybody, these people are people striving to get either where I am or pass me. It was my commitment to lift your brother or your sister up. What did I do when I was at Williston?	17:40
Bertha Todd	I simply, if I got a salary in the summer, those last years in the early sixties, I simply shared my salary with two girls from poor families who lived in dilapidated houses and encouraging them to go to school. One went to Fayetteville State and the other one went to Winston-Salem. I think one evidently finished. I gave them clothes. I gave them money. I talked with them. I was their mentor, and I tried to send them to school because that's my philosophy, but there for the grace of God, go I.	18:26
Bertha Todd	Then there was, when I was at Hoggard, a young boy, 15, I took him in. I supported him financially. His mother died when he was 15 and he was at Hoggard, he was 16. He didn't know where his daddy was, if he knew daddy wasn't looking after him. I helped him get through high school. I was sort of his in local parentis, I was his mother, surrogate mother. I helped to send him to college at UNCW, and he made it there. He went on to, I think he got a master's, and he's a major, I think in the Air Force. I don't hear from him as much. One last one I took from Hoggard by that time before I left there, I took another young boy whose parents were dead. He was illegitimate too, but both parents were dead and he was living with an alcoholic aunt, and the aunt and the boyfriend abused him, and he had a good math mind.	19:06
Bertha Todd	I got him through Hoggard High School and I really had to bear down and sent him to college. I sent him money. I sort of had a fund that some other teachers and people helped me with, got him through college. He has his master's. He's teaching at A&T, remedial math. Hopefully he's going to work on his doctorate after next year. But I have spent a lot of money and time and tender love and care with many more, most of them from the projects or from broken homes, trying to pull those kids up and let them realize if you want to do something badly enough, you can do it. Giving them tender, love and care along with financial assistance, trying to motivate them to do the very best that they can do.	20:12
Bertha Todd	I've gotten kicked for that, and I really sacrificed, well, I started sacrificing with the old lady who was 102 when she died. The lady that I lived with before I came here, I had to borrow money, almost went bankrupt, declared bankruptcy because she didn't have any money when she died. I had to bear her. I had to take care of her.	21:07
Sonya Ramsey	She didn't have any family?	21:27
Bertha Todd	She didn't have any close family. She had people who would come in who were cousins who wanted what she had, but when she was sick, they weren't willing to bear down and look after her. I wasn't going to let her go wanting and needing. I took it upon myself to look after her. I have no regrets for having spent money that way. Sometimes I don't have enough to pay my bills, but I know in my heart that I have helped someone else along. Some you send scholarships to, even the Wilmington 10, I knew 7 of those. I went to Governor Hunt as a member of his council, Human Relations Council. I served on that for his full term at the pleasure of the governor. I went to him. I told him I knew 7 of those. I told him that I thought it would be in his best interest to commute those sentences.	21:29
Bertha Todd	There were two men and I who represented the North Carolina Council and talked with the governor, and I told him the backgrounds of those boys. I didn't know the one female, the White female, and how they were aspiring to be somebody and to do something too. He commuted the sentences after then. I'm sure others were talking too, but I don't think anybody knew 7 of the 10. I knew seven of them because they attended the school where I was assistant principal and I simply was talking on their behalf. I wrote them letters. I sent them money when they were in prison. I sent them letters to boost their self-esteem and tried to make them feel better about themselves. This is sort of my life history. I think that there before the grace of God go I. People have been good to me. They were good when I was growing up. I felt good about myself, and I simply wanted others to be good about themselves and do the same thing.	22:25
Sonya Ramsey	I don't have many more questions. I just wanted to make sure I covered your experiences. How do you pronounce it, Hoggard?	23:36
Bertha Todd	Hoggard.	23:42
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. You left there after you were after Williston closed? What happened?	23:43
Bertha Todd	I left Williston after it was closed, and that was in the late sixties, '68. It was only about a week before school was to open that I found out where I was going. By that time, my reputation was far and wide, so it wasn't until a few years later that I found out why I did not know where I was going. The teachers had been assigned, but you must remember that there were only then two schools, high schools in Wilmington, New Hanover County. New Hanover High, and they had a Black librarian to go along with the White one there, and they had a White librarian out at Hoggard. Well, I just thought that surely they would just send me there. I wondered why it took them so long. Just the week before I got a letter saying that I would be assigned at Hoggard.	23:48
Sonya Ramsey	How do you spell that?	24:39
Bertha Todd	H-O-G-G-A-R-D, Hoggard.	24:40
Sonya Ramsey	Hoggard, oh okay.	24:40
Bertha Todd	Some people call it Hoggerd, but it's not Hoggerd, it's Hoggard. Later on, I found out they had contracted a White librarian to go to be assigned to Hoggard, to go along with the other White librarian. They knew from my reputation that they had to send me to a high school. They knew that I would not accept a junior high. I probably would've gone to court. I was just that a assertive. I had a master's, so they couldn't say I didn't have a master's and I wasn't prepared. I'd had a master's for 16 years that I'd worked at Williston anyway. I'd had book fairs. My reputation had gone far and wide anyway. They had to send that White librarian to another school that they had pulled in here from Sampson County to go to Hoggard. They had to send her to another school, send her somewhere so that poor Black Bertha could be assigned to Hoggard High School.	24:45
Bertha Todd	It was amusing, but they simply knew that probably knew there were certain things I would accept and certain things I would not accept. That would've been one of them. How dare them take me from a school where I had set up and had worked for 16 years and it was a good library to send me to a junior high school, when I never worked at a junior high school. I simply would not have accepted it. I was assigned to Hoggard eventually.	25:56
Sonya Ramsey	What did you think about that school and the adjustment?	26:30
Bertha Todd	When I went to Hoggard, I was a little angry at the Black kids for having rioted, and I considered what they did after Martin Luther King was assassinated being responsible for closing Williston in the first place.	26:34
Sonya Ramsey	Why was that?	26:51
Bertha Todd	Because there was no White who would be principal of Williston then. There was no Black who would be principal of Williston as a high school. There were certain people they wanted because they were determined to retire, put the other principal in early retirement. He was not relating, they said, to the younger students and their ideas.	26:52
Sonya Ramsey	The Blacks didn't think the Black principal was relating to the ideas and there wasn't a White—	27:15
Bertha Todd	This was a White board of education with one appointed Black on there, L. M. Newsom. This was their reason and I found out later they wouldn't even give that man an opportunity. They had to close the school then. Since they were going to close the school, it was closed almost overnight. I was in the hospital and I had to go out and get my things, my personal things from that library on a Sunday morning after I'd just gotten out of the hospital. It was almost like this.	27:20
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:27:53].	27:51
Bertha Todd	Without any preparation. When half of the students from Williston went to Hoggard and the other half went to New Hanover, they separated us. Didn't teach the same way. Then, we didn't want to go. I had been asked a year earlier if I would go to a White high school, predominantly White to work. I said, "No, and let me tell you why. It's not that I don't want to work with Whites, but I set up the library here and I simply would rather continue to work with it." That was my reasoning. We went to Hoggard knowing that the teachers and the students didn't want us there. They didn't want us there. Very few did. We went to Hoggard, were sent to Hoggard without very much planning. Since there was no planning, at least we didn't know about any planning much.	27:52
Bertha Todd	First, I'll never forget asking the librarian there if I could have this little area. She had the office. She had had one year of experience being a librarian, maybe one and a half. Here I am with 16 years of experience under my belt. Here she is having just gotten a degree in library of science. She was the top person. Well, wasn't too long before the White students, the Black students knew it before the White students began to realize that this person with Black skin is the one who seemingly has all the knowledge and knows how to find what we need. This lady over here, Hoggard had just been open a year. This lady doesn't quite know how to help us.	28:57
Bertha Todd	Of course, by that time, because the person didn't know how to help very well, she had gotten the reputation of being a White witch. That's what they called her. Whites did. I don't know what the Blacks—The Blacks weren't there, so the Whites did that. More and more when I attempted, I knew there were some Whites who maybe didn't want me to help them because I am Black. But those students had on their minds, we want to get A's, I never heard too much emphasis placed on A's in all my life, and we want to do our best. They were willing to accept anybody regardless of the color of the skin. If you can help me with this paper, if you can help me with this outline, if you can help me find these materials, then I will accept you. That I knew how to do and I enjoyed.	29:57
Bertha Todd	I continued to do that. And then when I would sit down to catalog books at a round table, invariably all of these Whites who found out that I could be their friend, that I could listen, that I could offer them words of wisdom, that they had now found a Black that they considered halfway intelligent or learned other than something they were accustomed to in the kitchen on the cars, they were sort of fascinated.	30:50
Bertha Todd	They were fascinated with me and I was fascinated with them. What did I have to do all day long? I had to accept them around that table where I was working. Half the time, I didn't get my work done because they were talking. They were eager to learn about somebody else with a different color of skin. So much so until the White librarian complained to the principal about the fact that these students, now listen to this, these students wouldn't leave me alone and let me do my work.	31:18
Sonya Ramsey	But you weren't complaining?	31:49
Bertha Todd	No, I wasn't complaining. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the give and take of a different culture and the give and take of showing them, listen, I'm educated. I can think better than you because you're young. You don't have the experience under your belt that I have. I want to show you an educated Black. They enjoyed it and so did I. I had no complaints.	31:51
Sonya Ramsey	Did you feel you served as a type of role model?	32:13
Bertha Todd	Yes, I did. I acquainted them with an educated Black that they did not know that they had not met. They were fascinated with that. I also kept an eye, because the whole side of the library was glass that I could look out and work at the same time. The Blacks took pride in the fact that I could help them too. They resented, almost, my helping the Whites because they felt as if they were not wanted. They were discriminated against. They didn't want me to help them much. I'll never forget, and I befriended them too, I talked with them and I helped everybody.	32:15
Bertha Todd	Once when I was helping to quell or trying to stop some students from starting a riot, and one girl just broke out and cried and say, "Well, Mrs. Todd, you belong to us. You don't belong to them, and they take your time all of the time." I told her, I said, "Well, I'm here to help everybody, and I have not denied you, and I have not denied helping you. I help you and I will continue to help you and anyone else who asks." That's where I had to solidify a philosophy. As far as I was concerned, I had to become gray if this child over here needed me and this child happened to be White, then I have just as much commitment to helping that child as I have over here with this one, with the skin of another color. I had to develop my own philosophy then, and I had to stick to it.	33:00
Sonya Ramsey	How was that accepted by everybody?	33:59
Bertha Todd	In some instances it was not, but I was strong and I was very convincing, and I was determined to impress upon them my philosophy. I did, because I managed to stay there until I got ready to leave. I stayed there 17 years. I stayed at Hoggard longer than I stayed at Williston.	34:02
Sonya Ramsey	You mentioned that you became assistant principal.	34:29
Bertha Todd	I became then after a year and a half, an administrative assistant in human relations. That's what it was called. Some big name. But the bottom line was the board members pushed me into this job and the central office staff, I did not apply for it. They got a grant of federal money because Blacks and Whites were not getting along and tearing up all of the schools. They appointed one at Hoggard, Black, me. They appointed one at Hanover, White, Mayo, because they didn't want to have two Blacks, I guess, or maybe they couldn't find a Black. I don't know. It's just that my reputation was Bert Todd, Librarian at Hoggard High School is good at human relations, interpersonal relations, and Bert Todd will help keep the peace.	34:31
Bertha Todd	I was also in the community doing the same thing with the YWCA and the Nucleus group. When the superintendent, I went to the hospital. When I came out, superintendent came to—No superintendent didn't come to my house, principal, and begged me to take this new position. I said, "Well, what am I supposed to do with that new position? He said, well, no guidelines. It's a new position." That's the principal. I said, "I don't think I want that. Let me recommend to you this person, this person, Black, this person, this person, White." I recommended four individuals.	35:22
Bertha Todd	He went back to the board and superintendent. "No, they said they wanted you." Well, I was in a dilemma. I was getting pushed into something that I was doing because I believed in that. There was a sign of Mother Nature, I'll never forget that picture, and I wished I had it now, I don't know where it is of all these little babies, different colors, and they say, "We are all on God's Earth together." I've forgotten what the other part read.	35:54
Bertha Todd	I had that picture up, and I liked that picture, and that's what I believed in. I said, "We can learn to coexist. We can learn to get along. This is the way I think we have to do it." When I told him I didn't know, I said, "Well, let me think about it." They gave me a week, a week and a half, and I called our family doctor here, Upperman, and asked him what he thought about it. The one thing that he said that made me make up a mind, my husband knew that I was out there in the community. My mother and sister were taking care of the kids, and he would take care of them, I'm out there just battling.	36:22
Bertha Todd	He said, "Now, Bertha, let's look at it like this. Suppose you don't take that position. Suppose whoever takes that position will come to you and ask your advice on how to do what they're supposed to be doing." He said, "You might as well have taken the position then." I said, "You got a point there because if I don't take it, then I'm going to have to tell somebody else how to do what I've been doing." Oh, I was being responsible for lunch period speak outs, rap sessions, pulling the Blacks and the Whites together during lunch period. I was taking then my—	36:58
Sonya Ramsey	While you were the librarian?	37:36
Bertha Todd	Yes.	37:37
Sonya Ramsey	Gosh. [indistinct 00:37:42].	37:37
Bertha Todd	Yes, I know. My coworker was mad about it going to everybody and they would say, "Leave her alone. Let her do this. This is the only way we can keep the school together." And getting teachers in, White and Black, so we can have these rap sessions. Being responsible for student council, being the co-sponsor, advisor for student council. Going downtown to communicate with the board members, telling them what I thought they should do and what we should do. Staying up at 12 o'clock at the school working on ballots so we make certain we had the Black and Whites on, that we hadn't left anybody off.	37:41
Bertha Todd	I did that for many years, a year and a half. First, I was doing all of this as a librarian, so that's why they were trying to push me into a job that had no defined responsibilities and I didn't want to define them. I was simply helping to keep the peace so we could get about the business of learning academics, because I was academician and that's all I wanted. Well, after he told me that, I told them I would take the position. Midyear now, a little less than midyear, they took me out of the library, gave me a room upstairs, the old teacher's lounge, well teacher's lounge that turned into my office by the teacher's restroom and told me to go to it.	38:17
Sonya Ramsey	Did you have any work? Did you go to any seminars or workshops or issues like that?	39:10
Bertha Todd	Not then. I had been going to seminars for myself, sensitivity training and working in the community and reading books and getting books. But no, they just simply said, "We want you to do more of what you're doing in order to keep the peace so the teachers can teach." But then I had to sit back then and say, "Now, what am I really doing? What can I put on paper to determine, to help focus this school—" And the other school, because that fellow was calling me every many times a day because he didn't know what to do over there. After all, he was a young White male. He is one of my dear friends who lives in Atlanta now, he and his wife. He was calling me to get help. Well, they let him go the next year and they appointed someone else over there.	39:12
Bertha Todd	They let the whole staff go over there. But I had to start getting books. I had to start going to workshops on my own. I had to start putting on paper, this is what I need to do every day. I learned by experience. I had to learn riot control too. I kept those kids, those Black kids in that gym for four hours straight after they got themselves out of the classrooms so that they wouldn't disrupt the other part of the school. You're talking about some strategy and riot talk and everything. I had it. I held them down, and then as soon as I could finish talking, I said, "Okay, will you come up?" Because the teachers White and Black were coming to me and say, "Bert, what can we do to help?" Because I told Hebby, I must tell you that. Then I'll go back to where I was and well, I might as well tell you that first.	40:04
Bertha Todd	I sat up there and finally it dawned on me, if we give these kids a single focus, then we can keep them in control so that they will concentrate on accomplishing these goals and objectives. I decided to devise an activity period, and if you'll remind me of activity period, I'll tell you that. Let me tell you what happened because I think I was in the gym. I was. I was in the library at this time. These kids said that if the committee did not get a Black majorette, no, not a Black majorette. I was in charge of majorettes over there by the way, since I was a majorette, I had to go back to all that stuff. Oh my stars. If they did not get a Black cheerleader selected that they were going to riot.	40:59
Bertha Todd	See, being that I could see groups of Whites and Blacks or groups of Blacks talking, and they would come to the library on an informal basis, I pretty much knew what they were talking about. If I thought it was worthy to tell the principal, I'd tell the principal so he would be prepared. They had already said that if they did not get some White, Black cheerleader selected, they were going to riot the next day. I tried to tell the principal that, and sure enough, those advisors did not get any Black cheerleaders. They discussed it on the bus that morning. They went on to their classes and they decided the strategists, the leaders, the Black Leaders, they went around every classroom and if you can imagine some very angry students going down the hall, and I saw them, and by this time they knew my strategy. Let's be positive, let's talk it out, let's do this. But that didn't help them get a Black cheerleader so they didn't care what I said.	41:49
Bertha Todd	They made some statement about Mrs. Todd or something, we ain't listening this lady this time. They rumbled on down the first hall, library was on the first hall. They went on upstairs. They went from room to room, pulling out as many as they could. Those teachers who didn't lock the doors, the Black kids. I was indignant. I said, "Well, you're not going to make fun of me. I'm going to see if I can outsmart you." I started thinking, I saw Spike Corbin, a coach somewhere. I said, "Listen, tell Coach Hebby," Coach Hebby was White, "for him to be prepared to accept some Black students who are beginning to get to riotous proportions." Excuse me. I think that person went onto the gym and told them that.	42:59
Bertha Todd	I went upstairs and peeped and saw all of these Black students coming out of these classrooms. I waited downstairs. I went on back downstairs in front of the library where I was supposed to be working, cataloging books, and here they come rumbling, just walking, jogging almost, "Oh, where are we going? Where are we going?" I said, "I know where you can go. Go to the gym." In riot control, the strongest voice and the most confident voice is the people who are not thinking in the first place. If they'd been thinking it would've stayed in the classrooms, but they let those leaders who were not thinking out of the classroom lead them, and they rumbled to the gym.	43:59
Bertha Todd	I'm right behind them. When I got there, I said, "Coach Hebby, move these bleachers back and dismiss your class. Take them to a classroom anywhere." They rumbled up the bleachers and the whole side, and here I'm looking at a sea of Black faces. Somebody said, "Do you need a bullhorn?" Well, they were so happy that I had them, "Do you need a bullhorn?" I said, "Give me something." I proceeded to talk with them. I said, "Now, number one, can you tell me why you here?" I said, "One person articulate at the time, who's going to be the spokesman?" And I did that. Then some White teachers started to come in and some Black teachers. When I got tired of talking, I ran out of steam. They asked some questions. I said, "Well, let me go get Mr. Booker." Mr. Booker was a White assistant principal then.	44:42
Bertha Todd	I got him to answer these questions. He said, "Bert, don't let them ask you why Azaela Parade folk pulled them out of something." But see, then I knew there was some hanky pank regarding that. That made me angry. I said myself, now I want to deal with honesty and openness. I didn't want to deal with something that hasn't been answered. Sure enough, that was one of their questions, and I had to put that one down. I said, give me a pencil, some piece of paper. I'm just writing these questions down. As each person came in and talked, they would listen.	45:27
Bertha Todd	We did that for four hours. Meanwhile, the principals back in his office and the other people didn't even know what was happening. They were in their classrooms teaching, but those who had left, they didn't know where the kids went. The principal was busy calling the superintendent to see if they wanted to send them home. They said, "Yes, let them go home." They got the buses ready. So I said, all right, the buses are ready for all of those who want to go home. You know what they said?	45:59

Bertha Todd	—we want these questions answered. I said, "Well, let's get a nucleus committee." And I kept them under control because they didn't break any windows, they didn't tear down anything this time. And our cafeteria windows were broken almost every day. I took their questions, and the bell rang for fourth period lunch, and that's when we let them disperse. They were getting hungry. And we let them disperse and go to lunch. Well, after then, they went back to their classes, but they were satisfied to know that there was something we were trying to do. We were trying to help them satisfy their concerns. And I'll never forget—Who was that? Somebody came up to me and said, "A good job," and that was all I needed. I burst into tears, but I held my own until—	0:01
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:01:05].	0:52
Bertha Todd	My physical energy had just gone.	1:05
Sonya Ramsey	What gave you the courage to keep on going through that time period?	1:08
Bertha Todd	I went to church every Sunday. I just went to meditate. And I prayed. And I was determined to try to prove to Whites and Blacks the way to get along is through understanding the culture of another. We're all on this earth together, and we don't need to fight it out. And I believe that very strongly because I had been through speak outs; four or five years of that. First, they were speak outs. I named them; every day at lunchtime. Then there were rap sessions. We named them, named something else the next year. Then there were communication somethings; I forgot. But each year, I'd rename it, really, the same old thing. You must learn to understand another person and be respectful of that other person.	1:13
Bertha Todd	And I did this, I led it, I led it. I wrote out the ideas, and then I developed what we call an activity period. I guess we were some of the first ones to ever develop one. And I worked out a chart where each class would go and ask each teacher, most teachers, to sponsor or serve as an advisor for a club group or an interest group. And from that interest group, we would have those students go to that person, do an activity period. We'd lop off some of the time from a particular period. And every week—One time, we had them almost every day because that was the way we kept them going. They wouldn't fight then. And that was a part of a job that I had to create because I didn't know what I was doing, I just knew that if we had enough goals and objectives and Whites and Blacks followed those goals and objectives, then we could keep them from fighting each other.	2:26
Sonya Ramsey	Did you ever feel any danger going to the school that things might erupt?	3:38
Bertha Todd	Yeah. Uh-huh. There were many times I didn't want to go, but I was scared not to go. And if I stayed home, the principal would call me. And a couple of times when I was sick, he just asked me if I could come to school, and I went. That time, that's when I was assistant principal. I knew that if I permitted anything to happen and I was out sick, that if it happened and they rioted, then when I went back to school, I'd have to clean up the pieces. I felt totally responsible for having to clean up those pieces.	3:43
Sonya Ramsey	Were the tensions just general every day, or were they based on certain issues? Issues would come up and—	4:22
Bertha Todd	In the beginning, it was every day. The tension was high sometimes than other times. And of course when it was very volatile, the school just simply erupted. A coworker and I would always work together. Student council, we tried to develop student leaders and make certain that they were the ones who would go out and serve as a nucleus of trying to help keep the peace.	4:28
Sonya Ramsey	When did things start getting better? And why did things start getting better?	4:58
Bertha Todd	Well, one thing, they changed principles. C.D. was flexible but not strong. He was an idealist, and he did not really know how to handle it. He didn't move fast enough. He couldn't see. "Berth, I can't see why we all can't get along."	5:01
Bertha Todd	Well, I tried to tell him, "Over here, you have a group of Blacks who don't feel as if they are wanted over here, and they want their place in the sun. And over, here you have a group of Whites who feel as if they don't want you over here. And they have their place in the sun; they don't want to give it up." And he couldn't see that.	5:21
Bertha Todd	And then I had to deal with Whites who would come to me when they were president of student council, complaining about a White clique running the school. You see, we had the wealthy there, those who came back from Cape Fear Academy. We had the rich Whites, we had the home-owning Whites, then we had the poor Whites, and we had the project Whites, and then we had the home-owning Blacks.	5:40
Sonya Ramsey	They had conflicts between them?	6:04
Bertha Todd	Oh, we had so many different—	6:05
Sonya Ramsey	[indistinct 00:06:07].	6:06
Bertha Todd	Right.	6:07
Sonya Ramsey	—within the races themselves.	6:07
Bertha Todd	Uh-huh. I'll never forget many times some of those students, those White students would come to me and complain vehemently about the Whites taking over, a certain group of Whites. And here I am Black. And the Blacks would complain about the Whites taking over. They saw all the Whites as being together, but the Whites came, poor Whites sometimes, saying that, "These upper class Whites, so these cliques are taken over, and we don't like that." Well, see, I was a sounding board by that time. That job sent me right up there on that second floor listening to everybody: teachers, parents, White, Black, red students.	6:09
Sonya Ramsey	Was it frustrating sometimes?	6:48
Bertha Todd	Yes. Uh-huh. That's probably why I had heart surgery, I guess. I don't know. Yes, it was frustrating because with that particular job, the administration was almost saying, "Bert Todd will handle it." And the teachers had their complaints, "Bert Todd will handle it," and the students, "Bert Todd will handle it." I'm only one person. How can I handle all of these things? But I tried.	6:50
Sonya Ramsey	Were your children attending these schools? What schools—	7:16
Bertha Todd	No, my daughter was over at New Hanover High, and my son was at New Hanover High. They attended—Thank God they weren't there.	7:18
Sonya Ramsey	Was it a better situation over there? Better [indistinct 00:07:30]?	7:27
Bertha Todd	Not really, because I was coordinating very closely with the other high school, telling them some things. Well, they were taking my lead. Now why were they taking my lead? Tell you what happened. When I got this job and I finally wrote—The central office asked me to write some things down on paper that I was doing. Well, I was reading and doing trial and error, and I was writing down what I was doing. So with the next year, they got a bigger grant, because we were having so much trouble in Wilmington that they gave them many more thousands, millions of dollars, I guess. And they got eight people in all. They got six more, making eight in all.	7:32
Bertha Todd	And they told them to do what I had written up as a report to give to them. It was a new job. I had to pave the way. I had to tell them what I was doing. And then they took that same information and regurgitated it and gave it to the six other people. "Okay, you all do this and anything else you can develop." So that's the way those jobs—They were extra, they were above and beyond. They were not really called assistant principals. They were administrative assistants. And what we were supposed to do was develop interpersonal relations, human relations, keep the peace, so the teachers could teach.	8:14
Sonya Ramsey	Was it hard for the teachers to try to teach?	8:48
Bertha Todd	Yeah, because you'd have riots every day; they couldn't teach. You lock your door, you lose half the students and you come back and those students are coming back very belligerently.	8:51
Bertha Todd	And so I coordinated most of what I was trying to do with New Hanover High and the junior high schools. My husband was appointed to one of those positions. My sister was appointed to one of those positions. And you know what? After then I was supposed to be going with the superintendent. That was the rumor that got out, simply because three people in my family—And that I had to encounter. Well, that soon died down. Well, the only logic that I can figure with that was they figured that if I was as good at doing what I was doing in interpersonal human relations, just maybe, just maybe my husband had some of it, and just maybe, just maybe my sister did.	9:01
Bertha Todd	Now, my sister stayed in her position one year, then she went Cape Fear Community College, simply because administration and keeping at peace, those things were not, should I say, not in her personality makeup. She wasn't as accustomed to that as I was. She couldn't cope with it. And so she left it.	9:50
Bertha Todd	My husband remained in that position until he retired because those jobs eventually evolved into assistant principals. So before I left Hoggard, and to show you how you really had to work with it, the Rights of White People, a student group came to me one day, the representative, and he was complaining about the Blacks and what the superintendent board of education members were doing. And they didn't have their just do either. So I said, "You go back and you write down your concerns and then you come back to me."	10:11
Bertha Todd	So he wrote down his concerns and brought them to me for me to run off. And he said, "Well, Mrs. Todd, we'll give you a copy, but we don't want anybody else to see this." And see, as far as I was concerned, I was gray to him then. I had a job to do and I had to do it.	10:45
Bertha Todd	So I called superintendent and read off every one of those concerns, I had somebody take it down there one, so that when they met with the board, the board members would be appraised of what these concerns were and could answer these students. So sure enough, I called Hayward and I told him about them, sent him a copy, he checked it with the board. And when the time was set up for the board members to meet with the Rights of White People student group, and they came in and then they came up and said, "Mrs. Todd, we want you to go with us." I said, "Okay, I don't mind going."	11:03
Bertha Todd	And they told me not to let those papers out there anybody except I could keep a copy. I didn't want anybody else to know it, didn't want Black students to know it either.	11:41
Bertha Todd	So we had our day with the board. The board members came out to the school and I went in, I was the only individual of distinction there. And I listened and they presented their case. And that is one of the first times I was not a board member, although I got called a board member most of the time because I really met with the board in the secret sessions and everything else a lot. And that was one of the first times that I had an opportunity to hear this all-White board defend Blacks in some areas to this young group, because there was nobody else to do it. And this is what they did. And some of them did it beautifully. But that was an interesting experience. And I had to fend for the Whites and fend for the Blacks, whatever cause there was, that was the cause that I worked with.	11:51
Sonya Ramsey	Did you get criticism from working with the group, like The Rights of White People from the Black students?	12:55
Bertha Todd	I don't even know how much they knew it. If I got—Well, I was out there fending for them, so why should I be criticized when they knew that my role was a dual role? That's why I was put there in the first place, to keep the peace. So what does it take to keep the peace? You do what you have to do.	13:02
Bertha Todd	And I'll never forget, that's the way I got minority cultures into the school, the system.	13:19
Sonya Ramsey	That was the class?	13:27
Bertha Todd	Yes, they wanted Black Studies. That was one of their concerns in those early years, because we had lost a part of our heritage. We had lost learning about us.	13:29
Sonya Ramsey	When their schools desegregated?	13:38
Bertha Todd	Yes, right. So since we lost it, here we are going to a predominantly White school, and what are we going to know about us? When all of the thousands of dollars that were left from Williston being dissolved were given to me to spend, I spent them on books about Blacks and for blocks.	13:41
Bertha Todd	And at the end of the year and the library, when I took inventory, all the books were gone. The kids had taken the books, the Black kids had taken the books. I was so embarrassed. But they wanted to know about them. They didn't know. And it took me two or three years to spend that money because even after I became assistant principal, I still spent that money, and we continued to get books.	14:02
Bertha Todd	And when after all of these killings had happened, "Oh, Ben Chavis is coming into town," and I was in this position, now pretty much thinking I knew what I was doing, keeping the peace. Ben Chavis came to town—No, they had—The students at Hanover weren't getting the same kind of treatment as the kids were getting at Hoggard because we were working harder and they had to change the administrations at Hanover.	14:26
Bertha Todd	So the administration wasn't as experienced in dealing with this. So they still weren't getting some of the things that we were doing at Hoggard. So I decided to boycott, and they went to the congregational church. And when they went to the congregational church, I called the superintendent. I said, "Haywood the Black students—" I waited until that Monday to see if our Black students were going to leave. And I got the report from the principal, Mike Saston, different principal, that our students were not in class, in the classes. So I called the superintendent and I said, "Haywood, the Black students at Hoggard are boycotting with the Black students at Hanover."	14:54
Bertha Todd	So he said, "He's a brother, can you go to that church?" I said, "I know where they're going. They going in the Gregory Congregational."	15:36
Bertha Todd	And he said, "Can you go there?"	15:43
Bertha Todd	I said, "Yes."	15:44
Bertha Todd	He said, "Well, see if you can get somebody to go with you."	15:45
Bertha Todd	I called around. I called every Black minister that I knew, and everybody had something to do. They didn't want to go. No, a Black minister would let them go to their churches. The White minister, who was minister at this Black church, is the one who let them in, Eugene Templeton.	15:48
Bertha Todd	And I called a Black coworker, I called Ruthie Davis. Ruthie said she had something to do. So I called Hayward back. I said, "Hayward can't find anybody to go with me. So I'll go alone." I got in my car and I told the principal where I was going, and I went and sat in the back of the church. Well, the students started looking at me then, and I sat there until about 12 o'clock and I said, "What in the world are they doing here?" They weren't getting anywhere. They weren't making any progress. Then two adults up there were busy arguing about something that had happened between leadership or something, just infighting.	16:07
Bertha Todd	So finally, it was close to 12:00, and I left from where I was sitting in the back of the church, and I walked up to the front. I said, "May I say something?" They said, "Yes." I said, "Number one, I did not spend half my day here almost to come here to find out who's absent from Hoggard or New Hanover." I said, "I did not come here to see who's burning school today." I said, "I came here because as a concerned Black educator, I feel as if it's my duty to know what your concerns are." I said, "But I've sat here all morning and I hear mostly infighting. You haven't accomplished one thing this morning, as far as I'm concerned." I said, "Now, do you really have some concerns?"	16:58
Bertha Todd	"Oh, yes, ma'am, Mrs. Todd, we got some concerns. We got some concerns."	17:52
Bertha Todd	I said, "What are they?" I said, "Now I want to say this, if you have concerns, then you are committed to first or articulating them. Secondly, you are committed to writing or signing your name by your concern, because we are going to have somebody take notes." I said, "And if you have those commitments, then you really do have some concerns." I was giving them a challenge. So I said, "All right, who will take notes?"	17:58
Bertha Todd	"I'll take notes, I'll take notes."	18:25
Bertha Todd	I said, "Get a pencil and a piece of paper." But what had happened is I had propelled myself in a leadership role when I didn't need to be in a leadership role in that capacity, because I didn't tell them to boycott. I was simply there to supervise, or monitor to see what they were doing, because they were doing nothing. I was wasting my time away from my work at school. Then I thought I'd better push them on and motivate them to get out what they were going to say.	18:27
Bertha Todd	So they began to articulate their concerns, and they let me know if they were from Hoggard or New Hanover High, whether they were adult in the community, and they would go over as they articulated that concern, and I took them by show of hands, and they would go over and give that information to the person who was taking the notes and sign it or whatever.	18:54
Bertha Todd	We did that I know for a couple of hours, it was getting in the afternoon then, and I don't think I had—I didn't want my lunch. And then they were so happy. Gene Templeton came up to me, he said, "Bertha, I'm so glad you came." He said, "Because I didn't know what to do with his students." And he said, "No other minister, the Black ministers would not permit them to meet in their churches. I know they have some concerns."	19:22
Bertha Todd	I said, well, "Gene, I'm glad you permitted them to come in." I said, "But I'm not going to be here with you all a week now." That was on a Monday, I think. I'm not even sure what day it was on. And they were so happy over what they had done, they called the news media, they called the reporters, and when they called the reporters, then I'm going to push myself back out of this leadership role.	19:51
Bertha Todd	And so I said, "Gene, you are going to have to call them," before I realized they'd called them, I was going to say, "No, you don't call these people." But they wanted news media to know what they had done. They were proud of what they had done. I wasn't so proud of what they had done because I was the one who motivated them to do it.	20:15
Bertha Todd	And so I said, "Gene, you're going to have to be the spokesman." I said, "I am not going to be the spokesman on TV." And then I found myself talking with a journalist from Carolina Beach, and he had a paper at Carolina Beach, and I'm just talking away to the man, when I found out that he was at, and he was taping what I said. I said, "Listen, you cannot put that in the paper." I said, "I am here working with the Board of Education, the superintendent of Central office. I was not here to lead this group. I was simply trying to help them articulate their concerns so that we could get on back to school."	20:32
Bertha Todd	So he promised me, and he didn't put it in there. I got a paper and I read it, and he just alluded to something very indirectly. So I told him I would take these concerns back to the board, and in the paper with this big spread about Bertha Todd meeting with the students, and she said she'd take these back to the board. And then some person got on me about taking it back to the board and said, "Well, isn't the chain of command taking it back to the principals, then taking it back to central office?"	21:06
Bertha Todd	I didn't mean the board, I was trying to protect Haywood Bellamy too. And I said, "I'll take it back to them." I figured I'll say, "I'll take it back to the board," then they would all be lumped together. That was my rationale. Well, I got kicked for that, but that's all right.	21:36
Bertha Todd	So the next day, I knew I was not going to be there as a representative from Hoggard administrative assistant without taking my counterpart White male from New Hanover High. I called John. I said, "John, this is what I did today." He said, "Bertha, may I go back with you? A lot of those students are, most of them are mine."	21:52
Bertha Todd	I said, "Yeah." I said, "Now, how am I going to handle this?" So I went to the door and they didn't want to really let him in. I said, "If you want my answer," and I told Hayward I had to get some answers too, I said, "I promise him I'd give him some answers today," or maybe I can go back the next day, maybe it was the next day, I'm not sure. But everything we did, we moved fast. We knew we had to move fast in order to quell the riots.	22:11
Bertha Todd	And I said, "Well, if you cannot let my counterpart in from New Hanover High, then you don't want me to come back and give you these answers that I have for you." And so they let him in reluctantly. So we both sat in the back, and I think I ended up giving them some sort of answers.	22:33
Bertha Todd	Well, those two days we spent there and the next day, Gene Templeton told me he had sent for Ben Chavis. Because I told Gene, I said, "Gene, I can't lead this group. That is not my responsibility."	22:53
Bertha Todd	And he said, "Bertha, I understand."	23:05
Bertha Todd	So Gene, out of frustration and having no leaders in the Black community in the community who would take up and propel these students' concerns to the forefront—And here I'm working against myself, working for the school system, working in the community, being all to everybody. And he said, "For Ben Chavis." And Ben Chavis came in the next day, and I did not go back. And then it went from bad to worse. And of course, Ben Chavis was young. Ben Chavis was not able to—I knew he wasn't going to be able to handle that group, and Gene Templeton, White, could not handle that group.	23:07
Bertha Todd	But I wasn't going back either. I was too happy to be back in the confines of my office at Hoggard High School trying to wait for these Black students to come back. I had done for them or that I could do unless I had jumped the side of the fence and going into the community against my job and everything else to try to propel them to get violent or to have more—I tried to tell them, "Come on back. Come on back, and let's have some more discussion."	23:49
Bertha Todd	And at the time, the negative—Now, the academic Black students stayed, came on back to school. Those who were not so good in school, but who had leadership possibilities stayed out there in that church. And when they did, they influenced Ben Chavis, who was young, and we had one teacher, Florence Warren was out there at the time. She's back in the system. I helped her get back in the system, and I bet she will never get out anymore.	24:19
Bertha Todd	She worked with them all that she could. But with that many young Black adults, Black dropouts, Black students who were so concerned, profoundly concerned about the injustices that they were encountering in the schools, it would've taken a seasoned Black adult and a courageous, committed Black adult to handle those students. And Ben Chavis was not the one. He was not the one. So it led to more violence and more violence with his, I'm sure, trying to pull them back, as Wayne Moore said, and I had that article that he wrote, he was one of the Wilmington 10, but they were going about their merry way, and he was simply trying to do his job, but was too young and inexperienced with too volatile a group to do—	24:53
Sonya Ramsey	And none of the ministers wanted to help with that?	25:44
Bertha Todd	No, no, they did not.	25:48
Sonya Ramsey	Did they take an active role in—	25:49
Bertha Todd	Not then, no, not that active. Not to the place that they were trying to pull these students in and talk with them. No, they did not.	25:51
Sonya Ramsey	Were the students' demands, were they reasonable or were they—	26:01
Bertha Todd	Yes, they were reasonable. They wanted more Black counselors. They wanted minority cultures in the system. They wanted to be treated equally and with justice and stop being suspended because anytime they would get frustrated and angry, they'd probably hit somebody. Well, I even had an argument with superintendent.	26:03
Bertha Todd	I kept telling him, I said, "If somebody calls you a Black bitch, what are you going to do? You going to stand there and take it?" I said, "If you report it to the White teacher and she doesn't do anything, what good is that going to do?" I said, "So your next human reaction is to fight back." And he and I had an argument over that because that's what the girls were doing, and that's what the fellows were doing. They were being called, "nigger," they were being called any derogatory remark that they could be called, and nothing was being done about it. So when finally, they were frustrated to the point that they would fight, who got sent home? The Black kids; they were provoked into it, but they weren't the ones who passed the first lip. So anything they did after that, they were defending themselves.	26:21
Sonya Ramsey	Who was working on the administration side to try to help them try to meet some of those demands? If the demands were reasonable, why didn't they just try to do them instead of letting people riot and things like that?	27:07
Bertha Todd	You mean the Black administration or—	27:21
Sonya Ramsey	No, the White administration.	27:22
Bertha Todd	—the White administration?	27:22
Sonya Ramsey	The school administration in general.	27:26
Bertha Todd	They put it all on the few of us who were willing and had the courage to get out there and do it. And meanwhile this same nucleus group—Oh, a Human Relations Commission was formed then, and we had an education committee, and they were doing it. That education committee of the Human Relations Commission, the nucleus integrated Y group, adults, Betty Cameron, Picker Taylor, Bertha Todd, and so forth, and the groups within the schools themselves. One time I just simply felt that I at Hoggard was carrying the entire Hoggard and the community on my back, and I didn't like that feeling. I did not like that feeling at all.	27:29
Bertha Todd	And by the time I left Hoggard, I was as happy to get rid of human relations title as I could be. I wanted out. And so this is all we had. We didn't have that much. I was here badgering the Chamber of Commerce members, telling them that when I came to Wilmington, leadership, Black and White was nil. I said, "Why don't you folks stand up and be counted?" And they finally stood up to be counted, and I would just try to shame them into doing what I thought should be done.	28:14
Bertha Todd	And I told them I thought they were cowards, and then they finally had a sensitivity training session with the Chamber of Commerce, and they promised to invite me, and they figured they needed it so badly, and I found out somebody who told me they finally added White person, but they just found out that so many of their members needed it so badly it would've been embarrassing to have had a Black person there. So they didn't invite me. They had it, but they didn't invite me as they promised. But meanwhile, I was going to this White church up here on—No, I was going to many sensitivity sessions, I don't think I could have made it without church prayer and sensitivity sessions, and the well-meaning Whites who worked with me who had compassion and an interest in what I had an interest in, equality and justice for all.	28:50
Sonya Ramsey	Who did you seek advice from [indistinct 00:29:41]?	29:37
Bertha Todd	No one. That's why the superintendent and I got so close, and got accused otherwise. He would say, "Bertha, let me throw this out to you. What do you think about this?" I had no one. I certainly didn't have my principal. I talked about as much as I could here at home. My husband and I had same kind of jobs, and he understood, but my job was bigger and heavier than his because he was in a junior high school. And here I had 2,300 kids to deal with, along with over 110 teachers. And then trying to battle in the community too.	29:42
Bertha Todd	I honestly don't know, no one person—I was spouted off at—I had a counselor, a friend that I would talk with, Connie O'Dell a lot, one of my friends, who is the godmother of my son. But I had to get my solace in my meditation, and church, and I'd talk it out with my sisters. I'd complain, I'd cry, and I had a coworker at school. I could do a lot of hashing out, the co-advisor of student council, White, and we got very close. In fact, she was here about two weeks ago. She still works at Hoggard. So I had her after she came there.	30:25
Bertha Todd	And before I had her, I had the White teacher, I call a soul sister almost, who married the counterpart at Hanover, and he's an attorney now, and they live in Atlanta with their daughter. I had her, Nancy Thompson, and that's about all I had because most people were wondering, "What is she trying to prove? Why is she out?"	31:14
Bertha Todd	Some of them laughed at me, I guess. Charlie Bryant that you interviewed said, "Yeah, Berth, for a long time we wondered what is she trying to prove?" They were wondering what made Suzy run. I didn't even know what made Suzy run sometimes. I just knew that I had to fight for what I believed in, that we could get along, that we as African-Americans or Black Americans were just as intelligent. That was one of the things I was trying to prove.	31:42
Bertha Todd	There were about three things as I reflect now, one, that we can get along with each other and we don't have to tear each other down to do it, that we can come to a meeting of the minds. I believe in a meeting of the minds.	32:11
Bertha Todd	Two, that there are some Blacks who are just as intelligent and more intelligent than you, and we can think as well as you can. I'll forever try to prove that one. I'm forever until I die, I will forever be doing that one. I have a commitment to that as long as I'm Black, and that's for a lifetime. So I haven't stopped that one.	32:26
Bertha Todd	And the third one that I found out by accident, because I'm an identical twin, because twins are competitive, because we were looked on a college campus as the twins, "Which is which? Myrt or Bert? How do you tell each other apart?" I did not really have an identity. So when I came to Wilmington unaware, I began to work on my identity. I'm Bertha Todd, I was Bertha Boykin then. A year later, I became Bertha Todd.	32:48
Bertha Todd	"Who is Bertha Todd?" She's an educator. "Who is Bertha Todd?" She's a mother, she's a wife, she's a civic worker. And when I went after those goals with them vim and vitality, maybe that's why I did the book there. Maybe that's why I sang in the choir. Maybe that's why I help the kids, I don't know. But I was simply carving out a niche to identify this identical twin who never knew who she was.	33:35
Bertha Todd	And the only thing that I, as I reflect I could really understand now, is when we were getting those sensitivity sessions, and I would blurt out, and I'd say it without—I said, "Oh Lord, here, I'm saying this again, I know who I am." And it wasn't, "I'm a Black individual." I had to go back further. "I am Bertha Todd, a part of a twin." Then I became all of the other things.	34:05
Bertha Todd	So I guess I was fighting a personal battle, and that battle sort of propelled me out there doing things well, and the more you do, the more you ask to do. I served on so many boards in which I was the only individual of distinction, and at the pleasure of the governor on the state level for eight years, traveling throughout North Carolina, Family Service, eight years, helping to conduct a workshop in California for a minority, being given the money to go there, going to Atlanta every year as a delegate at large. Why do you have delegates at large? Because Black delegates on the regional level never get elected. So we have a delegate at large, which makes it easier to send a Black.	34:33
Sonya Ramsey	And what organization was this?	35:22
Bertha Todd	Family Service.	35:23
Sonya Ramsey	Family Service?	35:23
Bertha Todd	Yeah. That was Family Service. I went to the biennial in California for workshop. It was Family Service that I edited the newsletter, I got some of those copies somewhere. I don't know where they are. I was the editor of the regional newsletter. It was Family Service that I traveled to Atlanta once a year, all expenses paid, to serve as the delegated large. It was on the—I served on the Red Cross board eight years and served for the, what was another one of those? Department of Social Services came much later.	35:25
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. I just have really one more question to ask. Looking back what were of the—We know some of the negatives of segregation. What were, do you think, some of the positives of segregation?	36:03
Bertha Todd	I call it desegregation, but I don't—Oh, the positives. Oh, of segregation.	36:16
Sonya Ramsey	Before—	36:21
Bertha Todd	The positives of segregation, we had more students and more teachers who had good self-esteem and felt good about themselves. It gave us the confidence to go out in the bigger society and meet Blacks knowing who we were. We had a better awareness, a deeper awareness of our heritage. We had fewer dropouts, I would say, because we have so many Blacks now who can cope with the desegregation in the schools. We were willing to take more challenging subjects. More of us were more willing, more students were more willing to take more challenging subjects. These were some of the positives. I really cannot think of any more positives because it didn't teach us to cope with the bigger world then, we had the confidence—	36:22
Sonya Ramsey	What were some of the negatives, do you think some of the negatives?	37:32
Bertha Todd	The negatives, we felt as if we were second class citizens. We were treated as second class citizens. We did not have the freedom to eat where we wanted to eat or stay where we wanted to stay. We were not given as much money to work within the education system as the Whites. We had secondhand books. We were not given as much money. We did not know if as many of our students were being exposed enough to a wider world in order to cope with the overall general society being in a segregated school. Later we found out we were, because the self-esteem will help you cope better if you have something. But that was hindsight.	37:33
Bertha Todd	And as Golden Frank said, when he came to Wilmington that time, "We brothers and sisters have got to come back into ourselves, among ourselves." Well, at that time, I had been out there so long. I knew what he was talking about. Listen, we are losing an identity. We are losing who we are. We are losing our self-esteem, and with a few here and a few there, unless we have that confidence and self-esteem, we cannot cope in a predominantly White society with confidence. And our kids were not getting that kind of confidence in the homes at that time.	38:30
Sonya Ramsey	I wanted to ask you, what do you think some of your greatest achievements have been, and some of the not the greatest achievements?	39:11
Bertha Todd	In my career?	39:18
Sonya Ramsey	Mm-hmm. Or personal life [indistinct 00:39:22].	39:20
Bertha Todd	I have a lovely family and I'm proud of them. I have a daughter who will not ever follow in my footsteps, she says, but she is a good teacher here in New Hanover County. She's been in Greensboro and then Chapel Hill and back here. She is a graduate of Carolina. I sent her to a school that—If she wanted to go to Carolina, then sometimes I wonder now, and I ask her that, "Would you have rather gone to a predominantly Black school?"	39:22
Bertha Todd	And of course, as she has the hindsight now, she says, no, she doesn't think so, it made her better able to cope. But she had a strong family unit in which to take off from.	39:51
Bertha Todd	I have a son who's a pilot who is in a White, White world for the most part, and he is able to relate to Blacks and Whites. So as a wife and a mother, I think we've read our children to look beyond the color of the skin and relate to individuals on the basis of the character. I'm proud of that. I'm proud that we were able to remain a family as a family for 40 years, my husband and I, in spite of all of my activities in the community and in the school system.	40:03
Bertha Todd	Did that ever put a strain on your marriage?	40:36
Bertha Todd	Yes, it did. It really did. But I had an understanding, supportive group, my mother, my sister down there, and my husband and some friends. I feel good about that.	40:38
Bertha Todd	I feel good about coming to Wilmington, although I did not want to come, and giving it my very best of my training and my experience and propelling the school, I would say, into a community-wide book fair. I am really proud of that. I'm happy I could do that.	40:51
Bertha Todd	I'm happy that I had the courage to venture out there and say some things to Whites in a very pleasant way that many Blacks who live here didn't have the courage to do. I'm happy about that.	41:13
Bertha Todd	I am happy about serving as a representative on boards when I was the only individual of distinction, and I contributed to those boards. I will not serve on a board if I have to sit up there and keep my mouth shut or not do anything, which many of us at that time were prone to do. We'd sit on the boards, we gave the color to the boards, but we didn't offer anything else. I can name some of those, I will not do that. I never served on boards without doing that.	41:28
Bertha Todd	I was happy that I was the first female, and as the Board of Education member Anne King, when I retired, said, "Do you mean the first Black female?" I said, "No, I mean the first female to serve as principal of secondary summer school." I was proud of that and put, at that time, summer school on a higher plane. When before then, all Whites males had served as principal of secondary summer school, no Blacks, and—	41:57
Sonya Ramsey	When was this? The seventies, or the eighties?	42:27
Bertha Todd	It was in the seventies.	42:29
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. [indistinct 00:42:32]—	42:31
Bertha Todd	Uh-huh. It was in the seventies. It's somewhere on here.	42:33
Bertha Todd	That made me feel good. After then, White females and White males followed, and then White females. But I was a forerunner in that.	42:38
Bertha Todd	I, as I reflect now, was proud that the members of the Board of Education had enough respect for my accomplishments and me to railroad and push me into a position that I didn't want. I didn't ask for and I didn't want to accept. But I accepted that position, and I think I made a success of it for us to get more money the next year to hire six more administrative assistants.	42:46
Bertha Todd	I was happy to be selected, after I stayed at Hoggard 17 years, to be selected as a career development coordinator for a pilot program that 16 educational units in the state, North Carolina sponsored, and that was a career development program. I remained in that position for five years until that program was terminated to a degree, and then I became director of staff development at the central office and published the first staff development handbook that in all of my 39 years, the county had not had and managed to propel New Hanover County into an academic-oriented staff development projection, or, I guess, I don't know how to say this. I directed the staff development in such a way that we began to have a unified focus among the supervisors, the assistant superintendent in charge of instruction, that we were all going in the same direction without a faction over here and a a faction over there. I felt good about leaving the system and doing what I had done for it.	43:20
Sonya Ramsey	Were there any downsides or things that you would've changed looking back? Things you would have done different?	45:00
Bertha Todd	I really cannot think of any. I think that maybe I would've gone on to and accepted some of the principalships I was offered. I was offered a principal of a junior high school. I was offered a principalship in an elementary school, but because I didn't get what I wanted, I had applied for, I told superintendent I didn't want it, and I wouldn't take it. I was offered several principalships, one for College Park, one for Trask Elementary School, one for Peabody. I was offered the extended day principalship, and since I didn't get what I wanted, I was even offered the supervisor of libraries.	45:09
Sonya Ramsey	What position did you want when you say you didn't get what you wanted?	45:47
Bertha Todd	Oh, I applied for a principalship in a predominantly White neighborhood, Alderman—	45:51
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, okay.	45:54
Bertha Todd	—that I knew I wasn't going to get, but I—Oh, and I applied for director of instruction. That was a position that I wanted. So all of a sudden, at first, I was pretty sure it was politics. I was pretty sure I had the position. Even the assistant superintendent told me that the superintendent asked him how did he think that—	45:55

Bertha Todd	I have no idea. I was prepared for it, I thought. And that's when I was offered the principalship of Blair Elementary School. Blair, yes. But I did not feel that I could be principal of that school and give it my all, feeling, developing the negativism that I had developed, because I was not selected for that position. I went on to get a second master's. I had to do something to work with my self-esteem. My self-esteem had dropped during that time.	0:01
Sonya Ramsey	Was this still the seventies?	0:49
Bertha Todd	This was in the seventies and early eighties. This was in the eighties, early eighties. My principal and I began to have problems. His philosophy, he was more athletic-oriented and not academic-oriented. I was more academic-oriented and not so much athletic-oriented. And we clashed in our philosophies. And although he needed me, I did not need him at that school anymore. He came when I was there, and he sort of resented a Black female who aspired towards academics and who aspired towards an educational specialist degree, and sort of stepped on me because of those things.	0:51
Bertha Todd	Well, I didn't see anywhere else I wanted to go. I began to apply for principalships of schools, and I'd apply for the wrong ones, I guess. I was afraid to apply for the right ones. I'd probably get it. I never wanted to be a junior high school principal. So when I was offered that job, I didn't take it because I didn't want that. But that time I asked the superintendent to permit me to do an internship on the elementary level because there were no high schools being built. I would've readily applied for one of those because I felt comfortable and confident.	1:37
Bertha Todd	So I took a year to do an internship, learn more about elementary schools, and by that time I wrote superintendent on my findings and presented to him what I had. But meanwhile, the board members were giving him a fit. It wasn't too long after then he left. He simply retired. So I had no mentor in the central office to offer me anything. And the principal who didn't care for me too much, of Hanover at that time, was down to central office and was beginning to become the interim superintendent. So he didn't like me worth a dime, and I had no way of getting anything else until they got a new superintendent.	2:08
Bertha Todd	And I would've maybe gone on to accept the principalship in elementary school. Maybe. That's the downside. I would've gone on and completed my doctorate after doing the six-year program. I would've finished that, I think, and maybe moved on to other things. Otherwise, since I gave this county the very best that I have, I had no regrets.	2:52
Sonya Ramsey	Okay. Well, I think I've asked all my questions. Is there anything that I left out that I should ask?	3:25
Bertha Todd	No. I really cannot think of anything. I have sort of pulled back from the community because of my husband's illness, not mine. I've had heart surgery. It's been five months now.	3:30
Sonya Ramsey	Oh, wow. I'm sorry. You look so healthy.	3:48
Bertha Todd	Well, I really am. I never had a heart attack. I simply found out that I had a heart condition.	3:56

Item Info

Title:

Bertha Todd interview recording, 1993 July 15

Date:

July 15, 1993

Creator:

Todd, Bertha Boykin

Contributor:

Ramsey, Sonya Yvette

Description:

Name: Bertha Boykin Todd; Date of Birth: 1923-01-10; Place of Birth: Sampson, Co., NC; Occupation(s): educator; Residence: Wilmington, NC
Informant ID: 216; Interviewed by: Sonya Ramsey.

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Educator

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Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

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

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

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Limited Re-Use

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

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Interview number: 1226
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Bertha Todd interview recording, 1993 July 15

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1. Bertha Todd administrative file, 1993

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Bertha Todd interview recording, 1993 July 15

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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