Lena Sammons interview recording, 1993 June 15
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Kara Miles | Where did you grow up? | 0:02 |
Lena Sammons | I grew up in this section of town, on a street which no longer exists. It was Douglas Street. And you could say I grew up in the shadow of Johnson C. Smith University. I got most of my education on Beatties Ford Road. I went to elementary school, and high school, and Johnson C. Smith, all on the same street. | 0:05 |
Kara Miles | What neighborhood was this a part of? | 0:43 |
Lena Sammons | Well, in the early days, my neighborhood was called Biddleville, but later, as development continued out further from where we were, near Beatties Ford Road, the section that I lived in became known as Washington Heights, and it's still called Washington Heights by some people. | 0:45 |
Kara Miles | What other neighborhoods were there when you were growing up? | 1:16 |
Lena Sammons | You mean in town? | 1:21 |
Kara Miles | In Charlotte. | 1:22 |
Lena Sammons | In Charlotte? Black neighborhoods? | 1:23 |
Kara Miles | Yeah. | 1:26 |
Lena Sammons | There was Greenville, not very far from where we are now. There was Double Oaks, which developed around the housing project. There were the Wards, First Ward, Second Ward, Third Ward, and Fourth Ward. There was the Brooklyn neighborhood, the Cherry neighborhood. That's about all I can think of right now. | 1:27 |
Kara Miles | You mentioned the housing project. When was that developed? | 1:59 |
Lena Sammons | I don't have any idea of the year, but I suppose that I may have been in my early teens when the Double Oaks housing project was built, and I'm going to say the forties or the early fifties. I'm really not sure. | 2:03 |
Kara Miles | Did the different neighborhoods have different reputations? | 2:30 |
Lena Sammons | Yes, they did. And basically those reputations were based on our schools. The students in First and Second and Third Ward went to Second Ward High School, and the people in Biddleville, Washington Heights, Greenville, and later Double Oaks went to West Charlotte High School, and there was quite a bit of competition between the two high schools. People who grew up in the Brooklyn area, and who remained in the city, often moved from that section of town, we would say, across town to this section of town, because there was more room, and there were housing developments constantly evolving. | 2:37 |
Lena Sammons | I can remember when the city limits was just a few blocks from where I lived, and I've seen the city limits move further and further out, so that ultimately there were many other Black neighborhoods which developed on this side of town, University Park, Oaklawn Park, Northwood Estates. I'm going further and further out each time. Hyde Park, and in between, there were other neighborhoods I don't remember the names of right off. | 3:47 |
Kara Miles | Were they neighborhoods that were mostly professionals or mostly working class, or— | 4:43 |
Lena Sammons | Well, I would think that because of Johnson C. Smith, I could answer that question in the affirmative. Many of the professors from the university lived on this side of town. On my street, which was basically a two—block street, in my block, there were at one time three university professors and one dean, and so the answer is definitely there were more professional type people on this side of town. That was rather short lived, though. I believe that I would be truthful in saying that as more and more of our Black citizens attended college and maybe came back home to live, that they did not find themselves as bound by the restrictions of neighborhood or going back to their actual home place as they once had been. | 4:51 |
Kara Miles | Were there neighborhoods then that were mostly working class, or— | 6:29 |
Lena Sammons | Mostly working class in this area were mixed in completely with professionals. A good example would be this main thoroughfare, Oaklawn Avenue, which was the home to several Black doctors. Those people might live next door to a working class family. In most instances, they were. I'm trying to think of maybe some other examples that I could give you. I mentioned my street and I mentioned Oaklawn Avenue. I can't think of any others right now. | 6:37 |
Kara Miles | Okay. So on your street, what was your family? Was your family— | 7:45 |
Lena Sammons | My father was a civil servant. He was a custodian at the Charlotte Post Office. And that was rather interesting, because I was born kind of in the Depression, when there were lots of people who did not have jobs. And it didn't strike me, because I guess I was too young to realize what was actually taking place with other people. The fact that my father had a civil service job meant that he had a salary, a definite salary, and he knew what to expect, and was able to use his money for the betterment of his family. He had moved, my family had moved from Brooklyn to Douglas Street, and at that time, it was unusual for a working class man to build a house. | 7:45 |
Lena Sammons | And so it was later in my life, as I talked to other people, some of whom were a little older than I, and who had a more vivid memory of the Depression years, and what they said was that they always felt that we were better off than they. One of the people that I talked to on this subject, in fact, the person who brought it up, said that his father, of course, was a Presbyterian minister. And I guess as a child, I thought that ministers were doing all right financially. And he began to tell me about some of their hardships, and I found it hard to fathom. But then I didn't know. But this was actually what was going on. | 9:04 |
Lena Sammons | My father was not a highly educated person, but he was what I would call a self—made man. He read widely, he kept up with the news, and we of course knew that when the 6:00 news was on the radio, that we had to be silent. But he was very much aware of the world, of the workings of the government, and he taught me quite a bit as a young person. And I feel that his influence on me has been to make me feel that I should be socially conscious, and that I should remain aware of what was going on, not only in my own environment, but in the world at large. | 10:05 |
Lena Sammons | My mother never worked. She was always there. And at that time, most of the kids that I came through school with had mothers at home. Not like it is today. And she had lots of things to do. She kept an immaculate house. She had flowers. Oh, she loved flowers. My parents were gardeners, and on our home place, our lot was long, and so they kind of divided it up. The first part of the backyard really belonged to my mother, and she spent a lot of time in her flowers. | 11:15 |
Lena Sammons | The second part of the yard more or less belonged to daddy. He would have a garden every year, and they would can, and that was the way that they preserved food at that time. We didn't have freezers such as people have today, but they would feel very proud about "putting up," that was the expression that they used, vegetables and fruits. We didn't have any fruit trees, but the vendors would come along up and down the streets in the neighborhood, and they would sell bushels of peaches or apples, or they would sell cantaloupes and watermelon depending on what time of the year it was. And of course they also would sell vegetables, but we didn't have much need for buying vegetables, because they grew their own. I said "we." I've never been good about things like that. That's one thing I did not inherit from my parents. I do not have a green thumb. I think my thumb is black. It kills everything. | 12:26 |
Lena Sammons | Is there anything else you want to know about my family? Oh, yes. I have a brother and a sister. My sister, whose name is Frances, is 14 years older than I am. And we took a long time to become friends, partially because she was jealous, and partially because she was older and soon finished high school after I came along, and left to go to college and to grad school. My brother is seven years older than I am, and being a boy, he did not put in a lot of time with me, although I always knew that he was there, and that he was protective. He never wanted to think that anybody was bothering me or making me unhappy. And I guess in those days, we were closer. He stayed here in Charlotte for a long time, finished high school, went to Johnson C. Smith, and eventually went to the seminary at Johnson C. Smith and became a Presbyterian minister. | 14:00 |
Lena Sammons | So I had a lot of time to be the only one. And I won't say that I was pampered, but I did get an awful lot of attention. Both of my parents were agreed that their children should have an education, and although my father was the only one who earned a salary, he always managed to pay our bills and to encourage us, and that's part of my legacy. | 15:38 |
Lena Sammons | My mother was an excellent cook. She made the best pies. She baked cakes, and just everyday food just seemed that it had a special taste. I never liked to eat at anybody else's house. Just at my mother's house, at home. And I think that was part of the reason that I never felt compelled to go off and do some things that my counterparts, my classmates were doing that might have not been completely acceptable. But I knew that I had a very, very supportive family, and because of that, I did not want to disappoint them, and I walked a rather narrow path. | 16:21 |
Kara Miles | What kind of things were your friends who walked a more crooked path— | 17:26 |
Lena Sammons | Oh, my friends were just great people. Smart people. But they did some experimentation that I did not involve myself in. There used to be a little place a couple of blocks from where I lived on Booker Avenue, and they call that place The Casbah. The reason that I can describe this place for you, let me preface this, is because I went in there one day, but my friends would go after school, and they would have loud music, and they would dance. And I thought, "The Casbah must be a beautiful place." I mean, I just had all kinds of imaginings about what it would look like. And when I went that one day, I realized that the Casbah was not as large as my living room at home. It had one light that hung down from the ceiling. It was dark, and really kind of eerie. | 17:33 |
Lena Sammons | But what happened the day that I went caused me never to return. We were all having a lot of fun at the time, and somebody said, "Here comes such and such a person's mama." And sure enough, she came through the door. I crouched down because I did not want her to tell my parents, but everybody who was standing up got caught, and she called out their names and told them, "I'm going to call your parents." And I walked around on eggshells for days. I wasn't sure that she didn't see me, but she did not call my parents. But it was a lesson for me. I had no business there. Curiosity led me there, and that's how I kept away from getting into trouble. | 18:57 |
Kara Miles | So this place was, was it just a teenage hangout, or was it somewhere people's parents didn't want them to be? | 20:00 |
Lena Sammons | I think adults went there at night, but the proprietor evidently felt that he could have a larger drawing from the community if he allowed the teenagers to come, and they would go. | 20:11 |
Kara Miles | Were there other places like that? Like The Casbah? | 20:32 |
Lena Sammons | No. I can't think of any other place. There was a place that was Black—owned and operated. It was called Sunset Park. And Sunset Park was a big dance hall. And although I didn't go there as a teenager, later in life, in fact, while I was in college, I went to Sunset several times. It was, as I said, it was large, and it had ample room for I would say 200 or 300 people. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it was large. And social clubs, and some of the sororities and fraternities, had dances there. And that was a gathering place. | 20:37 |
Lena Sammons | I guess one reason that I didn't go to a lot of places like that as a youngster was because I was so caught up in school. I was a good student. I studied. I read a lot. I belonged to the school choir, which was called the Detson Chanters. I belonged to the drama club, the West Charlotte Thespians. I was involved whenever I could be involved with public speaking. Well, I won the junior prize contest. That's the contest that takes place when you're in the 11th grade. And for I think three years, I spoke in the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU sponsored a contest each year, and I would speak. Sometimes we had to write our own speeches, but I remember on one occasion, using a speech that someone else had written. I don't recall his name, but I do recall that the title of the speech was Strange Fruit, and it was about the racial problems, particularly in the South. | 21:49 |
Lena Sammons | So I had a lot of things to do. Beside that, I went to Sunday school, I went to church, and I went to BTU sometimes, Baptist Training Union. My church was on the other side of town, which meant that I had to ride the bus, transfer at the square downtown, and take another bus to go to church. And so many of the times when I could go to BTU, it was spring, when the days were longer, or summer. I don't recall ever being at the church by myself or without my parents at night. Whenever there was anything that was going on at night, my parents would come along with me. | 23:38 |
Lena Sammons | They attended the PTA, my father more than my mother. She was such a homebody. But my father would come to PTA, and often we would have some kind of program for the parents. And so we'd go together. If the choir was singing or if there was most any type of program, my father would go with me. And so I didn't have a lot of time to get into trouble. They saw to that. That was a part of their discipline. I understand it now. I didn't understand very much about why my parents wanted me to be a perfect girl. I didn't understand that when I was growing up, but now I understand it. It makes a lot of sense to me. I guess that has spilled over into my own experiences with my children and my grandchildren. | 24:45 |
Lena Sammons | But discipline in my house was very important. I went through a silly stage when I was at West Charlotte, and I got into some difficulty more than once. And my principal always let my parents know when I was being punished at school. And of course that meant that I was punished twice. I tell you, being punished twice really has its own rewards. It teaches you that you can't do that. That it's not right, and you shouldn't. But that's what happens when the people who live around the school— This was one of the advantages to a segregated school system. | 26:06 |
Lena Sammons | I mean that very sincerely. The parents knew the teachers, the teachers knew the parents, and the parents came to the school to support their children. And not only did my parents impose a strict discipline, there were people in my block, and people that I knew in the community, and that my parents knew, and I knew, although I can't think of when it might have happened, but I knew that I dare not go out and behave in an unseemly way because of the neighbors. | 27:15 |
Lena Sammons | They may not say too much. They might just shake their finger or give you that look, which lets you know that you are out of bounds. And I thought that was, as a child, I thought it was awful. But now I think that the old African adage that says, "It takes a community to raise a child," is truly true, and it's too bad that we don't have much of that in our society today. | 28:09 |
Kara Miles | So who were those other people in the community? | 28:49 |
Lena Sammons | Well, in my block, as I said earlier, being the youngest of my parents' children, and one who came rather late, my playmates were the people who lived in my block. And there was one family in particular, the Johnson family, whose mother and father treated me as if I were one of their children, because very often I was at their house. And of course, we played the usual games in the street. We played ball, we jumped ropes, played hopscotch, but a lot of times we were inside the house or the houses, because we had paper dolls, and we liked to look at comics and read good books. | 28:52 |
Lena Sammons | And so Mrs. Johnson was almost like having another mother, and the same was true for the parents of children that I would visit. When I would go, my mother would tell me what time to be back home, and when I got to the house, I would tell the mother or whoever the adult was, "I have to be at home at 4:00." And they would keep watch and see that I at least got started home on time. And this was just the way of life. Children came to visit my children when they were growing up, I asked them what time they had to be at home, they had no time. No time limits on their visitation. And so I had to begin to impose some in order for my family to carry on with the things they had to do. And when they had been here an hour or more, I would say, "I think it's time for you to go home. Come back tomorrow. Chuck has some chores." Or, "Darrell has some chores." And, "We enjoyed your company." And they would leave. | 30:11 |
Lena Sammons | But it was the parents who cooperated so fully with each other that really helped to maintain the discipline that you had at home and the discipline that they had in their homes. And that was all good. That was nothing wrong with that. That was all good. Couldn't tell me that then, but I know it now. | 31:38 |
Lena Sammons | I had a group of girls that were friends of mine. We started out in the same elementary school, and were often in the same classroom, even if there were two or more sections of a particular grade, usually there were no more than two. But we were all usually passed right on to another teacher as a group, which meant that those friendships were very strong, and sometimes excluded other people. When we got to high school, we formed a club. We called ourselves the Royalettes. And I will never forget, we had outfits alike, and a day to wear them. We had black ballerina skirts, we had white blouses, and then we had a little vest, I think you would call that a bolero vest, that was pink and black. Basically black with pink trimming, and a pink collar that laid out from it. And we thought we were somebody, and we were. | 32:09 |
Lena Sammons | We did nice things together, and I would stray off because sometimes I thought that this is not really what we ought to be doing, because it did seem like a clique. And so I developed some other friends that I liked very much who did not live in my section of town, but came from another section. And some of those friendships, I can say I still have, because I would say three quarters of my classmates who still survive still live in Charlotte. Some of them I see on a regular basis. Two or three go to my church. We see each other every Sunday. We may see each other at choir rehearsal or sometime like that. And some of them I don't see very often, but we always are glad to see each other. And that makes it nice, when you know that there is a nucleus group. I think it's important for people to have a sense of belonging. | 33:40 |
Lena Sammons | What we have done is to organize into a class group, which feeds into the National Alumni Association for West Charlotte High School. And when there are reunions, which occur every three years, it's such a grand opportunity to see people, and to hear about their families, and what they are doing, and how some of them have changed over the years, and what some of the influences were in their lives that have caused them maybe to appear older than their years or have obvious physical maladies. But in spite of that, it's the love that generates from these people that makes for a very pleasant situation. | 35:15 |
Kara Miles | So how many Royalettes were there? | 36:39 |
Lena Sammons | Oh, there were 16 of us. 16 Royalettes. 16 Royalettes. And I would say that there probably are — Out of that 16, there are probably six or seven who still live in Charlotte. | 36:42 |
Kara Miles | And how did one get to become a Royalette? | 37:00 |
Lena Sammons | Well, I think you were already a Royalette before the club was organized. We had a young teacher, I will never forget her, because she was pretty, and alert, and just out of college, and it wasn't hard to talk to her. And we had asked her to be our advisor, and so she kind of held us together and helped us to decide what kind of activities we were going to have. But basically the group was already a group. We came up through elementary school together and were often in the same classroom. | 37:04 |
Kara Miles | So what kind of activities did you all do? | 37:56 |
Lena Sammons | Well, we just kind of had parties, little house parties. I suppose the one that sticks in my mind the most was what we called the barn party, a barn dance. And we got all these bales of hay, and set them around. It really was a fall motif. Other decorations that would go along with the season of the year. And that was, it made for a very pretty party. And that's the one I remember best. It was in the garage of one of the fathers. I guess at that time, you had to be ingenious, because there wasn't a lot of things for us to do. Most of us went to Y—Teens, and were fairly closely associated with YWCA activities. | 37:58 |
Lena Sammons | My best recollection of that period of time involved two sisters whose father was an AME Zion minister, who had come to Charlotte to direct the activities of the AME Zion publication house. These two sisters were very talented. One of them played piano, was rather accomplished at her music. The other one played the violin. And I tried my best to emulate her, because I liked violin music, and I did take violin music. My sister played violin, and I thought that this was the thing for me to do. And I had a sweet and darling violin teacher. Not that I learned very much, but I loved to go to her house and take my violin lessons. | 39:22 |
Lena Sammons | My musical background is more in voice. When I first went to college, I thought that I would major in music, but after I got into my college years, there were some changes that went on, and I finally decided that I would major in English. My favorite high school teacher, whom you have met, Elizabeth Schmoke Randolph, exerted a very strong influence on my life. I loved her. I had good English teachers. I had another English teacher whose name was Barbara Wilburn Davis. | 40:44 |
Lena Sammons | And she too had a major influence on my life. And so in trying to decide what I would do, I came to the conclusion that this was my favorite subject, that she was my favorite teacher, and that I should follow along that path. Never regretted it. Still love music. I sing in my church choir, but rather than have a career in music, at some point I decided that it would be better for me to use my music recreationally than try to use it as a vocation. And that's how I ended up with a bachelor's in English. | 41:49 |
Kara Miles | You talked about Elizabeth Randolph as being very, very important. What other teachers were very important in your life and why? | 43:02 |
Lena Sammons | I wish I could say that all of my teachers were, and I would, but occasionally when I'm with my friends, they remind me of things that I have long since forgotten that they still hold onto, that they are not willing to forget. If I had any bad experiences in my schooling, I have chosen to put them aside. So all of my teachers were important to me, but I do remember that some of them were more important than others. | 43:15 |
Lena Sammons | In elementary school, I had a teacher whose name was Schute, Miss Schute. She was gentle, soft spoken, loved children, did not brow beat, and the children liked her. And I think that she set an example for me that might have initiated, outside of my parents' teaching, a desire to follow in her footsteps. I've had a tendency to try to be soft spoken, kind, but I do love children. And that was one of the ways she influenced me. | 44:10 |
Lena Sammons | Another teacher that I had, I remember very kindly as having initiated my love of music. Her name was Edna Stenson Robinson, and it must have been in the sixth grade or the fifth that she started having a little group of children come to her home, and she would teach us, oh, the loveliest music, and we sang in three—part harmony. That was quite an experience, and I learned at that time that my voice fitted second soprano, and I never forgot her. | 45:18 |
Lena Sammons | But of course, as I left elementary school, then I became more involved with other teachers, really teachers who concentrated on public school music and the choirs. The choir director that I felt that I learned the most from was a Mrs. Robinson, and she was excellent. And you might wonder how I know that she was excellent. We participated in music festivals. There were local music festivals, and those who won the various contests would move on to the district, and then to the state. And I had an opportunity, I had many opportunities to engage in those music— | 46:10 |
Lena Sammons | Music and how audiences respond to them, then you begin to know what is good. Most of the instrumental music that was introduced in the public schools at that time was classical. And so I did develop a love for classical music along with the Negro spirituals and folk music and singing at school and singing at church just kind of put all that together for me. And then of course I sang in college choirs. But my church has been the most sustaining musical activity. Occasionally I decide that I want to sit in the congregation for a while, but I always go back because it's so much a part of me that I can't stay away. | 0:01 |
Lena Sammons | My French teacher was an accomplished musician. He played at my church. In fact, his father was my first minister, Dr. John Henry Moore. His son's name was Samuel Aaron. I know all of the names, middle names of that family because we were close to them, and he was wonderful. I learned quite a bit of French from him, but that was not— I didn't hold a foreign language in any esteem at that time. I conjugated the verbs and did them well and went on. But what Samuel Moore did for me was to keep me centered with the music. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He is now deceased. But he was just a person that everybody liked. | 1:07 |
Lena Sammons | And through the years, before his death, of course, he would return to Charlotte often, had a brother here. And he would visit with him, and he would always come to the church and sometimes he would play music, not always when the congregation was there. But when I knew that he was going to be in the church, I made it my business to get there because he could bring tones out of an organ. Let me say something about my church. First Baptist Church West is the oldest Black church in Charlotte. And when they were organized, the site of the church was 1020 South Church Street across town. It had a wonderful pipe organ, the big pipes, and the graduated sizes, and it was just a thrill to hear that music. The church was large and had huge chandeliers and dark red carpets and mahogany seats, and it was just an atmosphere. Time the church has relocated and it's now on Oak Lawn Avenue. And the organ that we now have is such a wonderful instrument. | 2:28 |
Lena Sammons | That kind of music, religious music, just takes me into a different world. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I feel so good inside. Most of the time I feel good inside, but it helps me to go through another week. And when I don't get there on Sunday morning, I'm very disappointed. I miss the music more than anything else. But that all started back in my elementary school days. The drama started when I was in high school, when Elizabeth Randolph came to West Charlotte as an English teacher. She also taught drama, coached the plays, and I loved being in plays. | 4:19 |
Lena Sammons | But the other thing about the drama was that our high school principal, whose name was Clinton Blake, was a great person for encouraging people, students to be active in dramatics. He had been producing plays for some years before. I knew who he was. But he was so supportive. He made sure that we had everything we needed. Would order playbooks, and then we would have rehearsals, and he'd look in on us. And he made sure we had enough building supplies and whatever we needed to do the scenery. He was always right there. | 5:16 |
Lena Sammons | And so I felt pretty much that he gave us some great insights on the drama. People who had opportunities to see Broadway shows. Sometimes see them and say, well, that was nice and leave it there. But he worked in New York during summers, school people weren't being paid very much. And so he would go to New York and lots of people from around here would go to New York. Many of them would go to summer school at Columbia and NYU simply because they could not go to the universities in the state. And they had great experiences with both with Broadway and off Broadway, and would bring back knowledge that we would probably never have had being a segregated school. It was the best education a person could want. That's the way I felt about it. I have never felt that I was cheated. I never felt the sting of segregation as a child because I was sheltered. In fact, my mother was this kind of lady. | 6:25 |
Lena Sammons | If we went downtown and I said, "I have to go to the bathroom." We would get on the bus and come back home. She'd say, "Can you hold it?" And I might say yes. And we would get on the bus and come back home because my mother did not want me to go to a segregated restroom where we went to spend our money. She did not want me to drink out of a Colored water fountain. The water was the same. She would just really almost snatch me up and run away from situations that might have proved unpleasant for me. I was a very sheltered child. I knew that there were some things that came very close to hitting me personally. We sang in choir robes from a White high school. When they got new robes, we would get the old ones. That doesn't make you feel good. But if you have music in it that makes you feel good, you forget about what you're wearing. | 8:19 |
Lena Sammons | We didn't always have new textbooks. Often our textbooks would be the textbooks that had grown dirty, worn from the White high schools, and we would take them and use them. I can remember when we got new books, and I must have been a junior or senior in high school. That's a long time. But I wasn't bitter because I really didn't know what to be bitter about. I saw things happening that made me feel proud of my race. Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, beautiful musicians, Duke Ellington, those were things that really solved the problems. When you saw— Oh, let me tell you this. | 9:37 |
Lena Sammons | My mother was the biggest fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers that they have ever had. And she would say, "Jackie Robinson, that's my boy." And she loved him. And then she loved Julius. I don't remember, Gilliam, another ball player. That was what she liked. And there were enough opportunities for me to have pleasant experiences permeate my life, that I did not give a lot of thought to what other people were doing. I had too much to think about myself. | 11:05 |
Kara Miles | So what did you think when people began protesting? | 11:53 |
Lena Sammons | Well, I thought it was a good thing. By the time people began protesting, I was grown and able to make some rather firm determinations about what I believed. And I was proud of the students who started the sit—ins. I was proud of the Johnson C. Smith students when they did their protests. They were not quite as active as they were on some other campuses. But I never thought that they should not. I felt that it would be good for my children, and my children's children to have someone intercede for them. They weren't old enough at that time to participate. | 12:02 |
Lena Sammons | And although I do remember walking in one march, there weren't a lot of issues. People were just kind of taking in all of the activity in Alabama, the Montgomery situation, the Selma situation, I could not tell myself away from television, although I hated the fact that Bull Connor was using fire hoses and dogs to chase these people down. I thought that was just awful. But it was a little bit removed because I personally was not a part. | 13:11 |
Lena Sammons | I suppose the very first time that I thought I was doing something that might help the cause of desegregation to members of my church. And I went to a lady's circle at another church. It was invitational. It probably came through my pastor. I'm not really sure, I've forgotten that part of it. But several times we went and we talked about what this new movement meant to us and what it might mean to them. They were Christian people. All of us were probably about the same age, or maybe within five years. We had a pleasant discourse. And I really felt that maybe something that I was saying meant something. I don't see many of those people anymore. | 14:06 |
Lena Sammons | But time was that I would run into maybe out shopping or whatever, some of the ladies who were in the circle, and they would always come and we would hug and we'd talk a little bit about what it was like, and what they said, and how it affected me and what I said and how it affected them. And I think in a very quiet way. There were many other people who were doing things like that. Later on, I was a member of the community relations committee and that committee is designed for racial and community interpersonal problems. I enjoyed that. And I was with that community relations committee maybe two years. They still continue, but as your term expires and other people come on, but that was a very rewarding experience for me. | 15:29 |
Kara Miles | So the women's circle was White women? | 16:38 |
Lena Sammons | Yes. White women at St. Andrews Baptist Church. | 16:41 |
Kara Miles | And when approximately did this take place? | 16:47 |
Lena Sammons | I'm going to say very late fifties and early sixties. | 16:52 |
Kara Miles | Do you remember when the NAACP started in Charlotte? | 17:05 |
Lena Sammons | No, I don't remember when it started. I've always been interested in what they do, but I don't have a good sense of when it actually started. | 17:09 |
Kara Miles | Were there any other organizations similar to the NAACP who had those kind of goals that were in Charlotte, like before the Civil Rights Movement? | 17:27 |
Lena Sammons | Before the Civil Rights Movement? I don't think so. | 17:38 |
Kara Miles | Have you ever heard of an organization called COSA? | 17:43 |
Lena Sammons | COSA? | 17:46 |
Kara Miles | I don't know. | 17:47 |
Lena Sammons | No, I haven't. I've heard of CORE. I've heard of SCLC, but those were not organizations that had chapters in Charlotte before the Civil Rights Movement. | 17:48 |
Kara Miles | What kind of things did you discuss with the women's circle? What kind of things came up? | 18:06 |
Lena Sammons | We discussed Jim Crowism desegregation in general, and we talked about our personal experiences. I didn't have many personal experiences, but one of the people who was along was Kathleen Crosby. Have you ever heard of her? I thought you had. And the other person was a doctor's wife. They moved away. I can only remember her first name. I wish I could tell you what her last name was. Her name was Ruth. I may think of it before you go. But anyway, there were just the three of us. And Ruth and Kath were both South Carolinians. Their families had been, I would say, in the public life. And so their experiences were very different from mine. And I enjoyed hearing what they had to say because most of the people that I knew were people I had grown up with, and they lived pretty much like I lived. And so we didn't come in contact with a lot of Whites. | 18:10 |
Lena Sammons | What we were trying to do at that time was to cut down on the strife and the conflict between the two high schools. Competition was very keen. We had a football game every year called the Queen City Classic, and people would get very angry if their team did not win, and sometimes they would fight. And so we had inter club councils, our student government from our school and the student government from Second Ward would have some joint meetings and joint activities trying to bring together the Black children who are from opposite sides of the town. And we would have our parties occasionally when children from this side of town would go there, or they would come here. And that was the major thing that we were concentrating on at the time. Somebody would tell you differently. Do you know what I mean by that? | 19:42 |
Lena Sammons | Even in my group, that there may be people who would tell you differently that the racial problems impinged on them personally. But I can't say that. I was aware, I knew what was happening. But my life was so full of doing, and going back and forth, and trying to be a good student that I really have to say it didn't touch me. In fact, many of my friends say we were poor, but we didn't know we were poor. We always had food on the table. When I had to have my fees for school or if I wanted to buy or participate in something, if you had to have a costume, my mother was an excellent seamstress, she would make things for me. I had no reason to be so touched. But later in life, I was, I was touched by— My first experience was that as a teacher of a local high school, we attempted to even before schools, the schools were desegregated. | 21:05 |
Lena Sammons | We made some attempts to try to get the adults in the schools to function together. There was a White English teachers group and a Black English teachers group. And they had their elections in this particular year. And when they did, there were more Black people in the room than Whites. I don't know why, but they elected me as a chair chairperson. And I was elated. I sat down and got all of the things on the programs together and tried to show in the remarks that I was going to make, how much alike these two groups were, and how the dissimilarities did not count for that much because we were businesslike. We had a good organization. We attended professional meetings, and that kind of thing. And on the day when we were supposed to have our first meeting with me as a chairman, not a living White person came, not a one. | 22:38 |
Lena Sammons | The word spread. I went back to my school. I did talk to my principal, and I don't know that he was the one who spread the word. It could have been a lot of people. But when I knew anything, the superintendent of schools came out. Dr. Elmer Garinger came to my school and apologized for what had happened. And after that time, for a long time, they were just disbanded. I never got to serve. And that hit me. I said, look, you know why this happened. You would've been a good chairperson because you would've worked at it. Those people don't know what they're missing. That's what I said. | 24:08 |
Lena Sammons | And of course, it wasn't too long after that, that I left the high school where I worked and went into speech correction, which meant that I was an itinerant person. I went to as many as three schools a day. Some of them were predominantly Black schools, some of them were predominantly White. And that's when I began to get my trial by fire. There were things that took place, and I never wanted to say they're just doing that because I'm Black. Because my ultimate goal was to be better than the person they'd had before, to be nicer, kinder, more courteous, soft—spoken, all of that. So they never get to say about me that I was a typical anything. And I stayed with that job for about six years. I liked it, but I went on to other things. | 25:01 |
Kara Miles | When was that, that you started doing that? | 26:14 |
Lena Sammons | Early in the sixties. | 26:17 |
Kara Miles | And this interracial group of English teachers, what was this called? | 26:20 |
Lena Sammons | It was called English Teachers Association for the City Schools. | 26:26 |
Kara Miles | And when did this incident take place when you were chairwoman? | 26:40 |
Lena Sammons | Probably about '58 or '59. | 26:48 |
Kara Miles | Do you know how long that organization had been in existence? | 26:52 |
Lena Sammons | I would suppose that it had been in existence since they started having schools at that level. It was customary for people in each subject area to have their own organization. And before the schools were desegregated. The Black English teachers met over here, the White English teachers met over there. The Black history teachers over here, the White history teachers over there. This was just a means of communicating professional goals, and sharing curriculum materials, and that kind of thing. Very worthwhile organizations, simply because the lines of communication were often accomplished through those organizations. | 26:55 |
Lena Sammons | We did not have at that time the kind of structure that our school system now has or that it had a few years ago with area superintendents who met with principals, who met with assistant principals and that kind of thing. And had program specialists who would disseminate curriculum materials and get people informed about changes in the curriculum and suggest resources and that kind of thing. That was not the case at that time, but at that time it was a good way to communicate the goals of the school system to make sure that everybody understood and were tuned to the same key. | 28:01 |
Kara Miles | So this organization though, with Black and White together had started before desegregation— | 28:59 |
Lena Sammons | No. | 29:06 |
Kara Miles | — or this was— Okay. | 29:06 |
Lena Sammons | No. This was not before desegregation. This was after '54. This was after '54. I graduated from college in '54. I taught one year away, '55. And then I came into the Charlotte City school system, and had probably been on that job a couple of years. And that's why I said '58 or '59, somewhere along there. | 29:08 |
Kara Miles | Where had you, you said you worked out of town for a year. | 29:40 |
Lena Sammons | My first teaching job was at Southport, North Carolina. Are you familiar with the state? | 29:44 |
Kara Miles | No. | 29:51 |
Lena Sammons | Where are you from? | 29:51 |
Kara Miles | Virginia. | 29:52 |
Lena Sammons | Virginia, okay. You've heard of Wilmington? | 29:53 |
Kara Miles | Mm—hmm. | 29:56 |
Lena Sammons | Well, Southport is about 30 miles south of Wilmington. And at that time, it was just a little seaport town. Only downtown had paved streets. Other streets had just sand. And I worked in a union school grades 1 through 12. I had not been accustomed to anything like that. In fact, there were a lot of things about Southport that I didn't know about, nor did I understand. When Hazel, one of the first hurricanes that they named with female name struck, I was in Southport. I had never been in that kind of situation. | 29:57 |
Lena Sammons | I went to work. And when I did, I ran into another teacher. The school was closed when I got there. But another teacher who lived in Wilmington drove up and she said, "Come on and go home with me." And we got on the highway. And before we got to Wilmington, there were tree limbs falling. And I was so surprised when I got back to Southport because the fishing boats had come all up into the land. And there were groceries floating in the water. And it just demolished that little town. | 30:59 |
Lena Sammons | That was enough for me. I started making arrangements to come home. It really frightened me. I didn't want to be there. But I find out now that hurricanes come anywhere because we certainly had our share with Hugo. I liked the people in Southport, but it was hot and there were lots of mosquitoes. There were a lot of things that I wasn't accustomed to. I like the children. The children were very nice. But I had to come home. Oh, dear. | 31:39 |
Kara Miles | I wanted to go back to a few things. | 32:23 |
Lena Sammons | Okay. | 32:26 |
Kara Miles | You talked about the competition between Second Ward and West Charlotte. Why do you think that competition was so fierce? | 32:30 |
Lena Sammons | Well, of course, the competition on the field fed into the school's records, the athletic exploits, and both teams wanted to say we won. That was one side of it. Another side of it was that there were some people who felt that the Black students on this side of town who went to West Charlotte thought in quotation marks that they were better than the Black students who came from the other side of town. You know how children are. They imagine things. But I hasten to say that they weren't all children who started the fights. Some of them were adults, people from the neighborhoods and the streets who came to the games. | 32:40 |
Lena Sammons | And some of them brought guns. I didn't say that at first, but there were a couple of instances where someone shot at one of those games. Now, the guns were not as prolific as they are today, but we know that people had guns that just didn't let children carry them out of their houses. And they didn't always go gunning people down, innocent people, and shooting in the crowds and things like that. | 33:47 |
Lena Sammons | But I can remember one year my parents did not let me go to that game because of what had happened the year before. And finally it just kind of died. It just died. The competition was just that fierce. But that kind of competition also took place between the choirs. They didn't fight each other, but they would do things to let you know that they felt that they were better than you, or if their school won more of the first place prizes. They were very willing to flaunt that. | 34:29 |
Lena Sammons | And just antagonize the people who came from West Charlotte. It wasn't easy. But one of the things that I experienced was, first of all, my parents had close friends who still lived in Brooklyn. My mother was a member of the friendly circle at First Baptist Church. And when she had to go to a circle meeting, she of course would take me along. And sometimes I would take my books and sit some other place in the house and read or study while the Sunday after meetings were taking place. | 35:19 |
Lena Sammons | Other times the host or hostess would see that I was introduced to children in their neighborhood. So I'd have someone to talk with or play with while my mother and father were at the circle meeting. I developed through my church, very strong friendships with people on the other side of town. And I was never afraid to go on the other side of town, lots of people were. But invariably, I would see somebody I know. The why was on that side of town, and I just felt pretty good. In fact, I had an uncle, my father's brother and his family lived on that side of town. And so I had enough associations with people in other areas of the city, not to be fearful. | 36:13 |
Kara Miles | But you said there were people who were. | 37:19 |
Lena Sammons | Yeah, there were people who were fearful. | 37:21 |
Kara Miles | Did things happen? Were there reasons for them to be fearful? | 37:23 |
Lena Sammons | I think that the Capital Classic was the basis for most of their fear. What happened at the football games. There were always great games and they would have crowned Miss Queen City, and she would come out with her court. And back during those days, kolinsky scarves, a few people had them. They were the style for the stylish. And often the girl who was the Miss Queen City would have on her teachers kolinsky scarves or maybe a cape, a fur cape, and she would be given a crown. And all of that was just so nice. But at the same time, there was always a little undercurrent, little undercurrent. Of course, you sat on your side and they sat on their side. But people would go back and forth to intimidate. There are always rabel rouses everywhere you go, they were there. They came in big numbers. | 37:27 |
Lena Sammons | Aside from school activities, I'm not sure that I'm the person or that I'm aware of a lot of the things that went on before there was a second high school. My sister attended Second Ward even after my parents moved on this side. All the Black high school students walked to the high school across town, because that was the only Black high school. And even today, she's 75, but she has strong legs. And from all that walking, she's done in her lifetime in her early life. I don't have strong legs, but she does, very strong. | 38:57 |
Lena Sammons | She had a very good high school experience, very similar to mine at Second Ward, I knew there was nothing wrong with that school, my sister had attended there. But think about children who never had friends or family who attended that school or people on the other side of town that they associated. It was a bugaboo. It was like the boogey man in the closet. They were fearful because they didn't know and didn't understand. | 39:45 |
Kara Miles | When you were talking about your teachers, you mentioned that some of your friends remember things differently than you do. Could you talk about that a little bit? | 40:25 |
Lena Sammons | Well, there's a story that they tell that happened, I suppose when we were either seventh grade or eighth, it was probably seventh, but a couple of times I remember the people, but I don't remember these incidents. They say we ran that teacher away. I don't remember running anybody anywhere, but they do. They remember having a new teacher come to the school and not cooperating with him to the point that he left. I have no memory of that. They can remember every disparaging comment that was ever made to them by certain teachers. | 40:36 |
Lena Sammons | I don't remember those things. I remember sitting in the principal's office, but he didn't say anything that was disturbing. I remember having a pretty good, a tussle with a friend at school, but I'm still friendly with her. It wasn't anything that I just carried. I didn't allow myself to carry those things. But some of my classmates have no love whatsoever for their school days. And all they talk about is the negative things that happened at school. I guess it's all in what you look for. If you look for the good things, that's what you will remember. | 41:37 |
Lena Sammons | Sometimes I think they do that though, talk about it and drag it out for entertainment. They get together and they say all these ugly things about people. They do. "But do you remember when such and such a person was our teacher? And do you remember what she did? Remember she had this strap, or she had a paddle and she would line people up?" Well, corporal punishment was legal then. I'm glad it is not legal now. But I don't remember ever being struck in elementary school. | 42:40 |
Lena Sammons | I remember being struck by a gentleman who at the time was my favorite teacher. I cared for him because he had been my coach for one of my oratorical contests. He was a good public speaker. He wanted me to be dynamic. And so I accepted him as my coach. And he was very good. And I had nothing against the man. But I did something that I shouldn't have done. And he hit me. And it took me a while, but he became one of my neighbors. He used to live, he's now deceased, but he lived two houses over from me. | 43:24 |
Lena Sammons | And I visited him in the nursing home. I could not think anything evil about him because he had participated in my education in a very positive way. And I was at fault, and I accepted that. So every time I looked at him, I didn't think, there's that man that hit me. It hurt, but I forgot it. I think a lot of times parents who hang on to things like this, pass negative feelings about school right on down to their children. Hence by the time you get them. My last job was as assistant principal of an elementary school. | 44:19 |
Lena Sammons | And sometimes the children would come in to pre—kindergarten, age four, with the idea that they were not going to stay there. They were not going to like their teachers. They were like little circus animals. That's not a good analogy, but you know what has to be done to a bucking horse, a wild horse that's just bucking and jumping and will throw you off if you tried to climb on. Well, that's the way these children were. And they had to be broken. | 45:13 |
Lena Sammons | And some parents came and contended that they should not be broken, that they would discipline them at home. But we knew where all this negativity was coming from, because often the parents would come into the schools and speak very harshly to the teachers in front of the children. And so as a result of that, I tried in raising my children to instill them with a love of learning that persists until today. And my sons are, what year is this? 42 and 37. And both of them did pretty well and never hated school. | 45:50 |
Kara Miles | What were your years at Johnson C. Smith like? | 47:05 |
Lena Sammons | Oh, my years at Johnson C. Smith were just— | 47:08 |
Lena Sammons | A circle of friends that we saw daily whose company we enjoyed. I had excellent teachers even in math. And math has never been my forte, but I managed to make good grades in math. If I could see a formula and learn it and then add the numbers to it, I could work a problem. But I didn't understand it, never understood it. They tell me that there's a kind of mind that's analytical and all those good things that really understand math. | 0:01 |
Lena Sammons | I understand balancing my checkbook and that's about as far as I go. I did have one week high school teacher in geometry, nicest man, but didn't teach a lot. And I didn't go to college with a lot of strong mathematical training, but in the languages, including my own, I had a very strong— If it was something that I could read, I loved literature and I would always read. I loved history and I would always read, but when it came down to the math, I just learned the formulas, memorized them. | 0:52 |
Lena Sammons | That's not the best way I understand but that's what happened. At Johnson C. Smith, as a student, I felt at that time that there was a very strong faculty. There were numerous activities that I enjoyed with my newly found friends. I was active in a sorority, loved the girls that I was in the chapter with. I haven't done much about that since I left college, but when people say [indistinct 00:02:35], I still turn my head because I think they're talking to me. But I just had a good experience at Smith. | 1:49 |
Lena Sammons | So good in fact, that after I had been away from the college about 13 to 14 years, I went back to Smith and worked. First in a federal project for marginal students and then as the director of public relations. But as with most small schools who are not supported by the state, Smith has always been supported by benefactors. The salaries were not particularly good and my husband and I decided to live separately. And so I had to leave Smith because I had to maintain my home and my children and the roof was leaking and the house needed painting. | 2:46 |
Lena Sammons | And so I went back to the public school system. I tell people that although I have held a number of jobs, I can't say that I didn't like any of them, nor could I say that I was burnt out because I changed often enough to prevent that happening. It was only on my final job when my health became a real bone of contention that I did not face every day, happy to be at school. And I felt that at that time it was better for me to evacuate the premises and to make a way for somebody younger and more able than I. I've been retired two years, I still miss seeing children every day. I still miss having coworkers to talk to and people that would be willing to listen to me and accept my help. I miss those things, but I do not want to go back. I don't want to go back. I feel that there is something ahead of me. I never want to go back. I don't burn my bridges, but I try not to turn around and go back the other way. | 3:57 |
Lena Sammons | It's just my personality, ever forward. I haven't found what I want to do with my waning years. Last year I worked very hard to be the publicity director, write letters, send cards et cetera, et cetera, for my church, which was in the midst of celebrating its 125th anniversary. And I liked that because I knew I had a plan that was given to me. I knew exactly what was expected of me. I knew how much time it would take me to do it. I was not punching a clock when I got ready and stayed as long as I felt I needed to. And some weeks I might go every day, some weeks I might not but I enjoyed that. And so I've come to the conclusion that if I'm ever going to work at something again, even as a volunteer, I will probably look for something with very flexible hours. | 5:52 |
Lena Sammons | Or if I do what my mind leads me to do, I will write. Just haven't gotten started yet. I'm still resting from all those hard years. In actuality, I was in the field of education 35 years, and that's long enough. Ideas change and I tried to keep current, even to the point of going back and re—certifying in administration. I've always had that thirst for knowing that what I believe and what I think are being shared by other people in my field. And so I went back, it was hard, but I did it and I was glad. I was glad I did it. We had, in our school system, a career development program, which was primarily from its inception, for teachers. The state of North Carolina put in 16 pilot programs and Charlotte Mecklenberg was one of the school systems. | 7:10 |
Lena Sammons | And they started out with teachers. And it wasn't very long before the idea of becoming an observer sort of intrigued me. And I had an opportunity to apply for that particular job, and I did and enjoyed that work while I was doing it. But there was a trend that the people who were observers moved on to become principals and assistant principals because they understood what it took to be successful in the program. And in that interim, Charlotte Mecklenberg did not include assistant principals in the ladder, that is receiving training and moving up the ladder with a personal or professional plan that other people carried out, the teachers carried out and ultimately the principals carried out. But it was very late when they accepted the assistant principals. And before I was retired, I had moved up the career ladder to the first level, the first few years being provisional and then career one, that means you're on your way. | 8:42 |
Lena Sammons | And so I did all of those things and I learned new skills. I was not computer literate when I began that job. In fact, I did not type well, but I had to develop skills that would be practical in the work that I was doing. I had to have type written reports to send back to teachers after I observed them. And with my typing skills being poor, I really had to bone up. I got a typing book from a high school teacher. I studied the keyboard. I pecked on an old typewriter just to get myself to the point where I would make fewer mistakes. I was ever so grateful that in the word processing program that we used, mistakes could be erased. And when your final work was done, it was perfect. And so I really enjoyed acquiring new skills and some new knowledge, quite a bit of new knowledge in that job and passing it on to other people. Now you know the story of my life. | 10:26 |
Kara Miles | So I want to take you back in that life a little bit. [indistinct 00:11:54] get some more— Why did you decide to go to Johnson C. Smith? | 11:50 |
Lena Sammons | Well, Johnson C. Smith was not my first college. My first college was what is now North Carolina Central. When I graduated from high school, I had just turned 17 a few days before. As I have told you, I was a very sheltered child. My mother did everything. I did not know how to take care of my own clothes. I could not cook. I could not do anything to maintain myself. So my roommate and I were childhood friends and we made a pact, and this was the pact. | 12:00 |
Lena Sammons | I would write her papers if she ironed my clothes. Before we made this pact, she saw me one day and she jerked me and she said, "Girl, you go back to the room and what are you doing? Wearing that blouse with all those cat faces? Cat faces wrinkles that had not been ironed out." And so she said, "Well, I tell you what, you do my papers, I do your ironing." And that's how I made it through my freshman year. But when I left North Carolina Central, I knew that I would not go back. And I felt that I still needed my family, my parents, because my brother and sister had left home by that time. But I still needed my parents. I still needed my father's strong hand to guide me. I still needed my mother's insistence that I do things in a certain way and I missed her cooking. That's basically why I first considered coming home and going to Smith. I had become unhappy and so moving to Smith was a great thing for me. | 12:54 |
Lena Sammons | I had a number of friends that I already knew who they are. It was fairly close to my house. I walked back and forth each day. I had great teachers, one in particular, who was just wonderful with me. She really guided me in ways that people might not know. But she was one of my English teachers. I like English teachers. Her name was Anez Parker. And she was wonderful. She had a way, I enjoyed her classes because she didn't just lecture like a lot of college professors. She made us think, we would read literature and she would make it so true to life. And things that were going on every day around us that you couldn't help but love her. And even the boys in her class liked her because she would say things to them about their personal lives, about their appearance. She was just like a mother away from home. And I don't know anybody who didn't like her. She was wonderful, but she knew her business and she insisted that you knew yours, if you were going to earn good grades. | 14:37 |
Lena Sammons | I had an English teacher at North Carolina Central who was fierce, brilliant man, but fierce. [Indistinct 00:16:35] was his name, reputed to be the best. But he did not give a single point to anybody. And you never knew whether he liked you or didn't because he treated all students the same. He was very stern with everybody. In the spring of the year, I had been on a choir tour and we went everywhere. We started up the coast and went through Virginia and Washington DC and ended up in New York and I think it must have been about two weeks. So when I came back, I went on to my classes and I could never tell when Dr. [indistinct 00:17:29] was looking at me because he had a problem with one of his eyes. It looked like he had a growth on it. We used to call them a milk eye. What they are, maybe they were cataracts, I don't know. | 16:18 |
Lena Sammons | But I could never tell when he was looking at me and we sat alphabetically in his class. And before he said he uttered a word, he checked the roll, never call anybody's name. And so he looked at me and he said, "Young lady, I want to see you after class." And I looked back, he got his chart. He said, "I'm talking to you Ms. Mills." I said, "Okay." And after class he told me what my average was, lower than any average I had ever had in any subject, much less in English. And when he called the number, I said, "On the basis of what?" He said, "100." So you know what that meant. I had to scuffle mad to bring my grade up. And that was part of the reason that I understood that I was not at the point of self—discipline. That was part of the reason and I accepted it. But I worked like I had never worked before because I knew that I was not going to allow my mother and father to see that grade on a report. But he was good. | 17:47 |
Lena Sammons | I liked him from afar. But going to Johnson C. Smith was something that I probably should have done from the beginning. Not that it hurt me because after I got there, I still worked like a dog and graduated first in my class. A lot of the girls would go downstairs in what was called the City Girls Lounge, a place where you could go between your classes and read or whatever. But they played cards, they played [indistinct 00:20:17] all day and sometimes you would see them running to catch the five o'clock bus to go back across town. But I earned a reputation in that room based on the fact that if they needed somebody and I was around, I would play. But as soon as somebody else came, I would leave. And one day I went in and somebody made the comment that I was a sneaky person, said, "I bet y'all don't know where she goes when she leaves here all the time." And they said, "Where?" And she said, "To the library." I knew what I had to do. | 19:29 |
Lena Sammons | And playing cards was not it, but it was fun. I had a lot of friends at Smith that I really enjoyed. I had a visiting instructor in graduate school when I was at Chapel Hill, and this is what he said, maybe after our first essay examination. He handed me my blue book and he said, "Young lady, where did you go to undergraduate school?" I said, "Johnson C. Smith University." He had not heard of Johnson C. Smith. He was from Illinois. And he asked me where it was and I told him and he said, "What kind of school is that?" I said, "It is a small, Presbyterian, liberal arts college." He said, "Well, when you go back to Johnson C. Smith, you tell them that they did a good job." He said, "You write well." And I thanked him. I kept that in my mind because so many times people say negative things about Black colleges. There are some weaknesses in every college, it all depends on you. If you go with the idea in mind that I'm going to get everything I can get out of this experience, you'll get a lot. | 21:12 |
Lena Sammons | And that was what I was determined to do. I worked very hard at Johnson C. Smith for many years and their alumni association, I held the presidency of the Charlotte Chapter of JCSU alumni at one time. I worked with their general alumni, held several offices in the general, I was never president, but I served as their secretary for more than one term. I was their first vice president at one time. And because of my association with Johnson C. Smith, I did a lot of work with the National Alumni Council of the United Negro College Fund. And I loved that. That was really great because of the people who came and the ideas that we exchanged and the young people who were involved, and I mean very bright young people who had wonderful ideas and who didn't just talk a good game. They were very much involved in that organization. | 23:02 |
Lena Sammons | I think if I had not gone back to the public schools, I might have had an opportunity to be the president of that organization because I was the first vice president when I decided to go back to public school and work to the end of my career. I have not returned to the National Alumni Council except for one of their meetings and that was held in Greensborough. It was close enough for me to go and I had two friends that went over with me. And it was just nice seeing those people. But anytime anybody says United Negro College Fund or the National Alumni Council, my ears go up like that because I am interested in what they're doing and I may eventually get re—involved. I don't know. I think that when you get to be my age, that you are maybe looking for things that won't demand so much of your time or so much of your energy. I have a very low energy level. I'm a diabetic and that makes a difference. But listen, I've had a good life. | 24:25 |
Lena Sammons | I've had a very good life. My children, my oldest son is a graduate of West Charlotte High School and he left West Charlotte. He was an excellent student. He got a scholarship and went to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Finished his degree in engineering and is now an upper level executive in computer communications firm in Chicago, Illinois. My second son, liked school for the social life, was not as smart as his brother, but did pretty well and was Mr. Personality. He loved, loves people. He still does. He's a graduate of Johnson C. Smith University, followed in his mother's footsteps and he is now an insurance auditor and is close enough to me to try to mind my business. Please don't put that in your book. I'm always tempted to say little things about him because he is my mainstay. He checks on his mother every day. Was there anything else you wanted to go back to? | 25:43 |
Kara Miles | I wanted— You said you met your husband at Smith? | 27:27 |
Lena Sammons | Yes, I did. | 27:29 |
Kara Miles | What kind of— When y'all were dating, where did y'all go on dates? What kind of things did you do? | 27:30 |
Lena Sammons | Well, let me say this. He is a much more social minded person than I am. My experience with him was something that I had never gone around a lot and just on the spur of the moment decided to get in the car and drive and things like that. But I saw him before I actually matriculated at Smith and I asked someone what his name was. I picked him out and he introduced me to all of the people he knew, male and female. And it made my transfer to Smith much easier because I was hanging on his coattails. But he was a member of a fraternity, he's a kappa. And he loved to go to dances and parties and picnics and well, he just almost ran me to death. But that is part and a very great part of my memory bank for my college days. I had a lot of fun. And mainly because of him. | 27:36 |
Kara Miles | So once y'all were married and out of school, what kind of things did you do for fun then? You were living here in Charlotte? | 29:11 |
Lena Sammons | Yes. | 29:18 |
Kara Miles | So what kind of things did you do for fun after that? | 29:19 |
Lena Sammons | We did a little traveling. He was very bound to his job and sometimes worked weekends. He had night work and it would just ruin the weekends. And so eventually we just kind of grew apart because he was never available for me and I wasn't available for him. I had a job and I went to work on time and many times when I would go to work, he would have just come in. And so we really just grew apart. Our interests weren't the same. He's still quite a social being. We have a friendship that very few people understand. We talk on the telephone. I see him most weeks, at least once or twice. We are friendly. There's nothing that we won't do for each other. We have a good relationship, 21 years of legal separation. We are not divorced. That's why I say very few people understand our relationship, but we get along really well, with him living in his house across town and me living in mine over here. | 29:26 |
Lena Sammons | But of course when we separated, Chuck, my younger son, was a minor. My oldest son was away in college. And I never wanted to have any breakdown in the relationship between my children and their father. I just didn't want that. We weren't angry when we separated. We just knew it was time to go, time to do something else. And so it's worked out very well. | 31:05 |
Kara Miles | I have one final question. Did you have friends who didn't go to college? | 31:42 |
Lena Sammons | Yes. | 31:51 |
Kara Miles | What did they do? Friends who finished high school? What did they do? | 31:52 |
Lena Sammons | Well, one of them retired recently from a full career in parks and recreations commission in the county, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation committee. I'm trying to think. A lot of us did go to college. I'm trying to think of some others. I ran into one of my high school classmates the other day. She's lived away and she's finally come back to Charlotte to live. And do you know one of the first things she said to me was, "I didn't go to college." And in my mind I really wanted to say it doesn't make any difference. | 31:59 |
Lena Sammons | But we had a nice conversation and I will see her again because she's working in a public place in a department store. And I go there and I expect to see her. But she's taken this job. One of my school friends ran a cleaning service. I'm trying to think about people who did not go to school and that's really not all that easy. And some of them, I really don't know what they did. I have seen them, I've talked with them. But just to tell you what kind of jobs they held, I assume that they were blue collar jobs. That's an assumption. | 32:53 |
Kara Miles | Well that's all the questions I have. If there's anything else, anything I didn't get to that you think is important. | 34:01 |
Lena Sammons | Well, I think I've told you quite a bit. There may be some things that I have omitted, but what I wanted you to have was the sense or to share my perception of my home and my community and my church. These were the things that I centered my life around. I always said my work is not my life. I loved it, I enjoyed it, but I did not wholly depend on my work to give me a balance or satisfaction in my living. So that's why I've talked more about my family and I guess you know by now that I love my church. Our minister is being funeralized on Thursday. He has been my minister since I was 14 years old. You can imagine what a void that would be in my life. | 34:10 |
Lena Sammons | I hated to even mention it, but I'm sure that things will go on. But it just hurts. I will miss him. He was always pleasant, always kind to people, always concerned about how you were doing and how your work was going. And when my parents were alive, both of them had extended illnesses and everybody knew that I was the only person to take care of their business and visit them and that kind of thing from the family because my sister and brother lived far away. My sister lives in Massachusetts. I think I've said my brother lives in Chicago. But it was all left on me. And if it hadn't been for Dr. Humphrey's words of kindness and encouragement, I think I might have flipped. Really, it was very difficult. And he's always been very close to my family. In fact, when he was being considered for the ministry and all the young girls were running around saying the new pastor is going to be here and he's handsome. | 35:35 |
Lena Sammons | That was fun. But the thing that I remember best was that the first Sunday dinner that he had in Charlotte was at my parents' home and the way he talked and the way he carried himself. And he was just a man that was just beyond reproach. That has had great meaning for my life because I still ponder the question that I believe it was [indistinct 00:37:52]. See, I'm losing some of that, can an immoral man tell a moral story? I still feel that I should be able to look up to my minister, that he should live a life that is a cut above mine. And that's what I have really appreciated about him. Just a great guy. I've been in mourning all week. I really have. But I got to pull out of this because Thursday morning I don't want to be emotional in the church. Other people will, I just can't do that because I don't think that's what he would've wanted us to do. He wants us to be strong and carry on. So I'll try. | 37:16 |
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