Morgan Leander interview recording, 1993 August 03
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Chris Stewart | Sir, could I ask you to state your name so I could get a voice level on that? | 0:02 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. Leander Morgan. Leander Morgan. | 0:06 |
Chris Stewart | All right. Thank you sir. Mayor Morgan, have you always lived here in Newburn? | 0:11 |
Leander R. Morgan | No. | 0:18 |
Chris Stewart | Where are you originally from? | 0:18 |
Leander R. Morgan | Originally from Washington DC. | 0:20 |
Chris Stewart | You are? What were the circumstances for your moving here? | 0:22 |
Leander R. Morgan | In 1962 or prior to that, my wife and I decided that there were opportunities in this area. And at that time, I wasn't making the kinds of gains in Washington DC that I felt I should. And her parents were in business and I was in the field of education and decided that we would move south. | 0:28 |
Chris Stewart | Did you grow up in Washington, DC? | 0:51 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yes, I did. | 0:52 |
Chris Stewart | So your family is from the area? | 0:53 |
Leander R. Morgan | Right. That and Virginia area. | 0:55 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. What did your parents do for living? | 0:58 |
Leander R. Morgan | My mother was a domestic and my father operated a store. | 1:02 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of store? | 1:06 |
Leander R. Morgan | It's a general merchandise store, grocery store. | 1:09 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember the neighborhood you grew up in? | 1:13 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, I grew up—yes, grew up in about three different neighborhoods, but I remember in my younger areas of growing up in a community in Arlington, Virginia, which was three miles outside of Washington, DC. | 1:16 |
Chris Stewart | What was the neighborhood like as a young person? | 1:32 |
Leander R. Morgan | It was friendly, warm, segregated, but safe, and just like small rural towns would be, a small community. | 1:34 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of values do you think your parents instilled in you to bring you into an adult—into adulthood? | 1:48 |
Leander R. Morgan | Basically spiritual. One of morality and one of working hard. And of course at that time, was to work hard so that your race can be proud of you. | 1:55 |
Chris Stewart | How would they talk to you about that specifically? | 2:11 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, we didn't—in my growing up, race was not discussed as an issue per se, because I think everyone more or less knew his position and simply tried to be the best that you could make an opportunity. And that's the way it was. Not saying, well, he's White, you're Black and so you got to do this or that, but basically making your race of people proud of you. And of course, I guess at that time that's why you found people named their sons, Joe Louis Smith and Joe Louis this or Theodore Roosevelt Williams, Carver, whatever. So— | 2:14 |
Chris Stewart | Were there any neighborhood leaders or any people in the neighborhood besides your parents that you looked up to that spent a lot of time with you as a child? | 3:08 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, not necessarily spending time. We had time to spend with persons our age. But you certainly looked up to your ministers, you looked up to your teachers, because not only were they the ones who seemed economically set, but they were the ones who were the professionals in the community. And economically you looked up to them. I would say those were—your coach, your recreation director, you looked at them because they were the ones who basically were the leaders. I don't remember civic leaders per se. And until I got in my twenties, I really wasn't part of any civic following or advocating any position of social reform other than to take care of myself. | 3:18 |
Chris Stewart | Was your mother's work live-in work or day work? | 4:25 |
Leander R. Morgan | It was day work. | 4:28 |
Chris Stewart | She did day work? | 4:28 |
Leander R. Morgan | Mm-hmm. | 4:29 |
Chris Stewart | So she was home in the evenings? Is that— | 4:29 |
Leander R. Morgan | Oh, yes. Yeah, right. She was there. | 4:31 |
Chris Stewart | How many children were there in the family? | 4:32 |
Leander R. Morgan | Just one. | 4:32 |
Chris Stewart | Just yourself? | 4:32 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, right. The only child. | 4:37 |
Chris Stewart | How would you reflect upon growing up as an only child? | 4:39 |
Leander R. Morgan | I always wished that I had a sister because I wanted to dress her up and pamper her, and just always wished I had a sister more so than a brother. And I guess there were days that they were lonely, but I was able to pretty much be independent, move around, had good friends in the neighborhood and remember playing hide and seek and playing softball and things of that sort. Had a good growing up in a carefree kind of environment. And I was a key kind of wearing child. I can remember having a key on a string around my neck. | 4:42 |
Chris Stewart | At what point did you feel that people treated you as if you were an adult? | 5:32 |
Leander R. Morgan | I really can't recall. I remember when I first walked into the classroom as an elementary school teacher and the children called me Mr. I remember that. But I can't say when started treating me as an adult. | 5:45 |
Chris Stewart | Where did you first go to school? | 6:03 |
Leander R. Morgan | I went first to a kindergarten school in Washington, DC, which was in the Georgetown area, and then to Phillips Elementary School, Phillips Wormley, one of those two, which was in Georgetown. And then Johnny M. Langston, which was in Arlington, Virginia. Those were the early grades, one through six—one through seven really. | 6:05 |
Chris Stewart | Do you remember anything specific about those schools? Maybe teachers? | 6:35 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yes. I can remember in elementary school, singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. I remember that. And that was in kindergarten really, because I think the word macaroni stuck out. I can remember that aspect of it. I can remember in the first or second grade, showing off and being punished for that, acting like a clown with some pencils stuck in my mouth and my ears. And I can remember the sensitivity of the teachers who were very much concerned, and singing in the hallway where the classes would come out in the hallway and sing. And of course all of the teachers—it was a four room class, and all of those teachers were females. But they were good teachers, they were veteran teachers. And I remember the custodian who kept the grass looking nice, didn't want you to play on the grass, things of that sort. | 6:42 |
Chris Stewart | How did teachers discipline students? | 7:44 |
Leander R. Morgan | You got spanking. And I got my share of spankings. And I didn't tell. I remember once my cousin went home and told that teacher had spanked me and word got back to the teacher, so she spanked my cousin. But there was respect for the discipline of the teachers. | 7:48 |
Chris Stewart | What did you most like about school and then what did you most dislike about school? | 8:10 |
Leander R. Morgan | I guess I just liked being with the teachers and being with the children. And if there was anything I disliked, I would imagine that was getting up, going to school. Because I can remember—excuse me, going to school simply because I had to get up. Because I remember a few times I said I was sick and I didn't feel well, and my mother said, "Okay, then you just stay in bed all day long." But, excuse me, when the children came home at 3:00 o'clock, I was ready to go out and play, but because I was sick, she said I had to stay in the bed. | 8:15 |
Chris Stewart | How involved were your parents in your schooling? | 8:52 |
Leander R. Morgan | I think at that time, perhaps the involvement was simply to get you up, get you dressed, and send you to school, because there was no need for them to be involved unless there was a PTA and a PTO, and I don't recall. But basically, it wasn't, "You need to bring your parent here," kind of thing. | 8:56 |
Chris Stewart | How would you say your children's schooling was different at this stage? Was different from your own or your own was different from— | 9:17 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, with some of them it was situation of trying to make the administration realize that integration was here and that they had no choice in whether it was going to be accepted, but it was the law of the land at that time. And I had one situation I remember where I refused to sign an affidavit that my oldest son was my son to be able to go to school in a neighborhood in which he was just maybe two blocks away. And I was a school teacher within the system of that school telling the superintendent that. So that's why I'm saying that they had difficulty accepting the fact that that was the law of the land. And that was in 1962 when I had already been in an integrated situation when schools were first integrated in 1954, I think it was in Washington, DC. | 9:28 |
Chris Stewart | What made you decide to go into education? | 10:33 |
Leander R. Morgan | I had a lady who was a school teacher who I just had a great deal of respect and admiration for, and knowing the things that she had done and had said, I wanted to work with children, and didn't realize that the downside was pay, for men especially who wanted to raise families. And then after that I decided I need to go into administration in order to be able to have the kinds of monies I needed. Plus I guess to even be able to go outside and sit down with my other buddies and tell them of my school day, of my workday, because many of them were professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects, and I would tell them about my little third grade class and it was a little different. | 10:37 |
Chris Stewart | When you were growing up, did your parents have— is there a certain way that they taught you how to act around adults? | 11:33 |
Leander R. Morgan | I was always an obedient child. My family—I was from a broken home and my mother was an alcoholic, so I was an obedient child because I knew that the teacher should not have to send for my mother to come because she may not come. And I guess quote, I didn't want any trouble. But I had strong grandparents, so— | 11:44 |
Chris Stewart | Were your grandparents living nearby then? | 12:17 |
Leander R. Morgan | In the area, yes. | 12:20 |
Chris Stewart | And were you close with them? | 12:21 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yes, very much so. | 12:24 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of things would you do when you spent time with them? | 12:25 |
Leander R. Morgan | Walk in his shadow. Yeah. It was a step-grandmother who was nice, but I guess I attached the stigma of step. But my grandfather was very—I guess I was one of his favorite or the favorite really, I guess. And I just walked in his shadow. I remember going—he was a painter and when he'd go paint, I'd go with him. I sit around, play around, whatever. But he was popular. Yeah. | 12:30 |
Chris Stewart | Sounds like he was a really important person in your life. | 13:00 |
Leander R. Morgan | Oh, yeah. He was powerful. | 13:00 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Yeah. Which high school did you go to? | 13:07 |
Leander R. Morgan | I went to Dunbar High School. | 13:09 |
Chris Stewart | You did? | 13:09 |
Leander R. Morgan | Mm-hmm. | 13:10 |
Chris Stewart | Wonderful. Can you tell me a little bit about—well, let's start with say the kinds of activities that the— either curriculum or extracurricular activities that the school offered its students? | 13:10 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. Well, Dunbar was what was considered a leading school in academics. And of course it was segregated. It had top teachers and top students who were going on to college. At that time, you only had, I think three or four high schools that were predominant—that were all Black really, in DC, and one was a business school, basically, which was Cardozo High School. You had Dunbar known as the academic school. You had Armstrong known as the trade school, and Phelps known as a Trade School. So those were the four schools you had. | 13:27 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I knew, again, going back, that I wanted to go to college, so I thought you had to go to Dunbar to go to college. The fact that none of my relatives had graduated from college in my immediate family, they really weren't that abreast as to what you needed to do other than to go to school. So it was somewhat of a discipline, I guess, that just either came about or, as they said, the Lord looks out for fools and babies. And I was a baby at that time, I guess. And I just knew that I needed to go to Dunbar and do my best. And that's what happened. | 14:12 |
Chris Stewart | What kinds of extracurricular activities were available at Dunbar? Clubs, either academic clubs, social clubs? | 14:53 |
Leander R. Morgan | The computer science club was probably not available, because they didn't have computers. But you can—you have science, they had football, basketball, all the athletics, French club, the Cadet Corps, the—what is it? Oh, I don't know how many, you just had all different kinds of clubs. A German club, a French club, as I mentioned. There was the paper—I think it was called The Magnet, believe it or not, that you could belong to. I was an athlete, so I participated in the athletic aspect. There was an oratorical club. | 15:01 |
Chris Stewart | How far away was Dunbar from where you live? | 15:54 |
Leander R. Morgan | Dunbar was approximately 25 or 30 blocks. | 15:58 |
Chris Stewart | How would you get there? | 16:04 |
Leander R. Morgan | Walk. | 16:05 |
Chris Stewart | You walked? | 16:05 |
Leander R. Morgan | Mm-hmm. | 16:05 |
Chris Stewart | Was there any bus system or any— | 16:08 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, there was a bus system, but it was—most students walked. Bus tickets cost 3 cents a piece, and you take those and buy some, and you might sell them for 5 cents, or you ride the bus. But you didn't mind walking. You'd walk with your friends or you'd walk with your girlfriend. | 16:10 |
Chris Stewart | What would you do for 30 blocks? Need I ask? | 16:34 |
Leander R. Morgan | We'd walk. We would—you'd get up and you'd walk, you'd go. You can walk 30 blocks at that time in an hour easily. | 16:36 |
Chris Stewart | Were you walking through any White neighborhoods? | 16:47 |
Leander R. Morgan | Not necessarily, no. No. | 16:54 |
Chris Stewart | Did you ever hear of students who were walking through White neighborhoods and perhaps had-- there were incidences of walking through White neighborhoods to get to school? | 16:58 |
Leander R. Morgan | No, because the schools were in predominantly, if not all as I can think of now, in Black neighborhoods. And I think they were more truly neighborhood schools or sectional schools. There were White businesses around, but not residential. Because basically the town, the city of Washington, DC was a segregated residential community. | 17:10 |
Chris Stewart | Well, the reason why I ask that question is that we've had some examples in Charlotte, especially of students having to walk through—because there are Black neighborhoods scattered throughout Charlotte. | 17:44 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. | 17:56 |
Chris Stewart | Whereas that's obviously not the case. | 17:56 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. And see, in Washington that was not true because depending on the school that you were going, if you lived in Southeast, there were no high schools in Southeast. All the schools except Phelps was in Northeast. Well, Phelps was in Northeast. The other schools were in Northwest, which was the early development of the city, the northwest section. So therefore those students in Southeast would have to ride the bus. So it was more students rode than walked I'm sure. | 17:56 |
Chris Stewart | You said your father owned a business? | 18:39 |
Leander R. Morgan | A store business. | 18:41 |
Chris Stewart | A store. Do you remember it being sort of a neighborhood—a place where people would gather? Was it a place where people— | 18:42 |
Leander R. Morgan | No, I did not really know him in my early life. As I said, that was the broken home aspect. | 18:50 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. And where did you go to do your higher education? | 18:56 |
Leander R. Morgan | I went to Howard University and to Miner Teachers College, which is now—I think it's called Federal City College in Washington, DC. | 19:02 |
Chris Stewart | And you began your teaching in— | 19:13 |
Leander R. Morgan | Washington, DC. | 19:15 |
Chris Stewart | DC. | 19:18 |
Chris Stewart | We should have had our Howard alumnus come and talk to you— | 19:18 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. | 19:26 |
Chris Stewart | Yes. She would've been very excited. | 19:26 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, my wife is a graduate of Howard also. And my daughter's a graduate of law school from Howard. | 19:26 |
Chris Stewart | Oh really? Wow. Yeah, well Sonia would've loved it, unfortunately. Oh, well. Can you talk a little bit about, did you live on campus or did you live off campus? | 19:29 |
Leander R. Morgan | I lived off campus. | 19:37 |
Chris Stewart | Can you talk a little bit about campus life as you knew it, as somebody who lived off campus. What was it— | 19:39 |
Leander R. Morgan | You hung on campus and around campus. And being an athlete, you were accepted in circles very easily, and you were one of the guys, the fellas. I liked girls. So that was about it. It was a good atmosphere. It was a good atmosphere. | 19:51 |
Chris Stewart | Did you get involved in any groups or organizations? | 20:19 |
Leander R. Morgan | I've gotten involved in the fraternity. | 20:23 |
Chris Stewart | Which fraternity? | 20:24 |
Leander R. Morgan | Kappa Alpha Psi. | 20:27 |
Chris Stewart | Ah, okay. | 20:28 |
Leander R. Morgan | Which is a—Washington, DC as a Kappa town to an extent. There are others who might say not so. | 20:29 |
Chris Stewart | I've interviewed a couple of men who are Kappa Alpha Psis— | 20:38 |
Leander R. Morgan | Did you? Yeah. | 20:41 |
Chris Stewart | Yes. And they're just very, very strong. In fact, one gentleman who was the—I believe he's in Wilmington, who's one of the—was one of the state organizers— | 20:41 |
Leander R. Morgan | Oh, okay. | 20:57 |
Chris Stewart | What kind of qualities did the organization, the fraternity, look for in a young man in order to join? | 20:59 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, I think number one, you had to have a certain grade point average. I don't know whether that's higher or lower at this point, but you had to have that. And you had to be one that was basically an acceptable kind of guy or fella in terms of being able to be around with. And when I say with, friendly, have a good time, participate. I'm sure being an athlete may have helped the cause a little bit. But there were no other kind of social mores that you had to have. You know, you didn't have to be rich, you didn't have to be light skinned. You didn't have to have wavy hair. None of those qualities that I ran into. | 21:10 |
Leander R. Morgan | Now, some of the ladies may have been a little different because some of them—I remember they had a line, and I won't name the sorority, but they said they had to have moutons at that time, the fur coats, to go on line, which may have not been true. But basically, just an all around kind of guy you had to be. And of course you had to have the grade point average, and you had to get up what little money it was at that time to pay your fees. | 22:10 |
Chris Stewart | How would you distinguish a Kappa man from, say another fraternity, say Omegas? | 22:36 |
Leander R. Morgan | Distinguish when? | 22:46 |
Chris Stewart | How would you distinguish— | 22:48 |
Leander R. Morgan | Now or at that time? | 22:49 |
Chris Stewart | At that time. | 22:50 |
Leander R. Morgan | Just that he was going in the wrong fraternity. He just didn't have good sense or we wouldn't want him, he wouldn't measure up. | 22:56 |
Chris Stewart | Well, why wouldn't he if he was—I mean, what was the difference between the two? Let's put it that way. | 23:08 |
Leander R. Morgan | He just didn't know any better. I guess that's what it is. He just would not know any better, because I have three sons who are Omegas. | 23:14 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. | 23:22 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. And every now and then I'll see someone and say, "You talk about children going astray. Let me name you three." Okay? If I lived in—well, I do live here, but right now if I were not in a chapter, I probably would go Omega, because they have an Omega chapter here from an alumni standpoint, even though we are now trying to get a Kappa chapter here. | 23:26 |
Leander R. Morgan | So at those days it was, hey, this is where my friend is. I know him. He asked me, we get along fine, I like them. I probably looked at the fact was the quarterback a Kappa, and I'm on the football team [indistinct 00:24:10]. "Hey man, let's hang out together." We weren't looking at it from a civic standpoint at that point. I wasn't, you know? Or the smartest guy. And of course nice looking guys maybe. That's— | 23:53 |
Chris Stewart | I've heard that. | 24:24 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. So maybe from that standpoint. | 24:25 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. How did you meet your wife? | 24:25 |
Leander R. Morgan | In the library. Yeah, she was in the library studying and I was in the library, and I just meddled. Yeah, yeah, I meddled, yeah. | 24:27 |
Chris Stewart | How long did you court? | 24:41 |
Leander R. Morgan | About eight months. And we've been married 37 years. | 24:45 |
Chris Stewart | Congratulations. | 24:51 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, thank you. | 24:52 |
Chris Stewart | That's wonderful. | 24:53 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. | 24:53 |
Chris Stewart | Wonderful. Do you recall anybody, either your grandfather or a teacher or somebody that you really looked up to talking to you about what it meant to be a good husband? | 24:57 |
Leander R. Morgan | No. I think that's something that I just more or less took on from my own personal experience of loving my children, loving my wife, never leaving them, opening the door for my daughter, for my wife. That's just something that I just believe in and I still believe in it. And I don't believe in it's cheaper to keep a concept that some guys say. Even though when I ended up with five children, I'm sure it would've been cheaper to keep her. But that's just something I think out of my own experience that I was not going to allow myself to break up from my family. So I think that may have been out of experience. | 25:09 |
Chris Stewart | In Washington, DC, during the time that you were there, you said you were there until '62? | 26:00 |
Leander R. Morgan | Right. | 26:05 |
Chris Stewart | Do you recall seeing Jim Crow signs? | 26:06 |
Leander R. Morgan | I'm not sure. Yes. Yeah, sure. On the bus it was that you had to move to the rear of the bus. And I rode the bus from Virginia to Washington and would get on the bus and try to move as far in the back as I could. And if the bus was crowded, there were some seats up front, I didn't sit up there. I can remember one time—well you knew that you weren't to sit but so far. So those are the signs that I definitely remember, the bus signs. | 26:11 |
Chris Stewart | Do you recall anybody breaking the rules of Jim Crow? | 26:55 |
Leander R. Morgan | I can't— | 26:56 |
Chris Stewart | —Civil Rights Movement. | 26:56 |
Leander R. Morgan | I can't remember. I can't remember per se. I remember picketing Heck's Department Store and Woody's because people could not try on clothes in there. I can remember when they said they were going to close the schools down in Virginia, somewhere in the county. They were closing all of them down in the county, and I really wanted to go and volunteer and teach. But I can't remember now, but they absolutely closed down the entire county schools in Virginia, somewhere outside of Washington, DC. It's been so long, I don't remember now. Oh, this had to been in 1953. | 27:04 |
Chris Stewart | So when did you graduate from Howard? | 27:54 |
Leander R. Morgan | 1954. | 27:54 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. So you were— | 27:54 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. | 28:01 |
Chris Stewart | How old was that, graduating from Howard to become a teacher, the year of Brown v. Board? Do you remember that? | 28:01 |
Leander R. Morgan | Sure, yeah. It was, let's get in here and go ahead and do our job. And I can remember a supervisor, big lady, big White lady, coming into my classroom. And supervisors were welcome to come in, but she came in very in control of everything and sat down at my desk and opened my desk drawer and said, "Your desk drawer is junky. Hey, I'm going to clean it up." And that was the kind of situation that you had at that time. And that was trust not being there. But yet, hey, I'm qualified. I am here. | 28:11 |
Leander R. Morgan | And so, you had situations of people wanting to make it work because it was the law, and giving kids an opportunity to kind of communicate and talk. I remember seeing children at Susa Junior High School, walking out of classrooms, kind of parading. They just weren't—that was the first year of integration in Washington DC, in '54 in September. And I had a White principal and there were some Black teachers on the staff, and everybody wanted to make it work. And so it was just your feelings with your class. | 29:00 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I'm sure we had instances where we discussed and felt that parents were reluctant, but I was teaching in a predominantly white elementary school. And so you just worked at it. You had no fear. You weren't threatened. And you were just trying to make it work. And of course, here was a group of children that—it was love with elementary school teachers, children. | 29:44 |
Leander R. Morgan | I remember one incident where one of the teachers slapped a student and she said she didn't, and she later admitted that she did, and I think he called her a name or something like that. But I think you just kept your control. You knew what the situation was. These were kids. So I never had any problem or trouble. I had a little debate with my teacher, with my principal, but she was my principal. I didn't care for that lady came in there and opened my desk drawer. But I felt I was a good teacher and I enjoyed it. | 30:16 |
Chris Stewart | You mentioned early on that you left DC because you thought that you weren't gaining the opportunities or getting where you wanted to go. | 30:56 |
Leander R. Morgan | Right. | 31:11 |
Chris Stewart | What were the circumstances? | 31:12 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, I wanted to be a principal of a school and the opportunity just wasn't there. This was 1962 and it just wasn't moving fast enough. My father-in-law was in funeral service here, understood that there was going to be a vacancy of a principalship here. I had obtained my Master's, so it was time for me to make a decision and hope that I had the discipline to come south. | 31:14 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I remember getting ready to drive across a bridge, and there was one of my neighbors' [indistinct 00:31:56], I lived in apartment complex, and I pulled over, he jumped in, and this car driven by a White person zoomed around me. And then it turned into two lanes, two lanes going, two lanes coming, and I tried to pass. And they just kept swerving in front of me for the fact that I stopped and let this person get in, and they were ticked off. So the guy says, "Man, catch up with him and let me hit him," or something like that. And I said, "No, man, we don't need to do that." And I'm sure I was ticked off, but hey, let him go. | 31:46 |
Leander R. Morgan | And then later on that afternoon, I was coming out H Street, which is a very busy street in DC, and I saw this Black guy hit this White guy in his nose and blood gushed everywhere. And I said, "Hey, what happened? He said, "Man, he called me a nigger." And there was this lady who was crying and saying to him—and he said, "You shut up or I'm going to hit you." And I said, "Hey, it evens out." | 32:37 |
Leander R. Morgan | And my point being that somebody takes care of something, and maybe for that early part of the day when I was put down and this guy did that, here's a situation where it even out. Now, not that that was right either, but that was my thinking. And I said, "Hey, I'm ready to go south." And we came on, and I consider myself—I can get mad and angry and upset, but it's easy I think to communicate and talk and say, "Okay, well you talk now and I'll talk later, and I'll listen to you kind of thing." And— | 33:11 |
Chris Stewart | You were the principal in Black schools then, when you came here? | 33:47 |
Leander R. Morgan | When I came here, right. | 33:52 |
Chris Stewart | [indistinct 00:33:54]. | 33:52 |
Leander R. Morgan | It was—right, because the school was still segregated, and this was 1962. And that's why I refused to sign that affidavit and told the principal that my son was not going to go to a predominantly Black school that wasn't up to standard. My son had been tested and tested far ahead of his age academically, was doing well. In fact, we had thought of sending him to Sidwell Friends if we had stayed in Washington DC. And here I'm coming here to work in a community. I always felt that teachers were Sunday school teachers, and I was going to get involved that way. And then for him to say that to me, I just wasn't going to do that. | 33:54 |
Chris Stewart | When was that? | 34:36 |
Leander R. Morgan | In '62. | 34:36 |
Chris Stewart | This was in '62. | 34:39 |
Leander R. Morgan | In '62. But down the line, the superintendent no longer was superintendent after a number of years. He retired. And he said many of the things that he and I talked about were just a little too early for a town like Newburn. And he and I—he has respect for me and certainly I have respect for him. | 34:42 |
Chris Stewart | So when your son—you came here— | 35:04 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. | 35:08 |
Chris Stewart | —did your son go to Black schools or White schools? | 35:08 |
Leander R. Morgan | He went to a predominantly Black school first. | 35:11 |
Chris Stewart | West? | 35:13 |
Leander R. Morgan | West Street. And I said, "No, I live right around the corner from Eleanor Marshall School," which was Ghent also. And I said, "This is where he's going to school." | 35:14 |
Chris Stewart | When did he start going to school there? | 35:24 |
Leander R. Morgan | I can't remember now. And they said I have to sign an affidavit. And I said, "No, I'm not going to sign one." So they ignored it. And I ended up putting him in Trent Park School. And I've always wondered to the day, whether that was the right thing to do. And he has said that it has not harmed him. But there were 500 students there and he made the 501, believe it or not. And I remember when my wife and I went to PTA meeting, folk knew who we were because we were the only Black couple there. But we weren't trying to prove any point. We just wanted quality education. And Trent Court was a clean school, good administration, and that's all we wanted. | 35:27 |
Chris Stewart | And the parents at Trent School, I mean, they—there wasn't any— | 36:14 |
Leander R. Morgan | Oh, I don't even remember. If it was, it didn't bother me. And I wasn't a hell raiser to raise the hell if it needed raising. I just remember talking with one of the teachers, she said my son was a disciplinary problem. But Mike was not a disciplinary problem at all. Mike was a good student. But I think he maybe was longing for friendship and that sort of thing. | 36:23 |
Chris Stewart | Sure. Sure. | 36:47 |
Leander R. Morgan | And that's why I wondered to have put him in that situation. But he said, "No, I was fine." | 36:47 |
Chris Stewart | Were you a principal during when the schools were integrated? | 36:54 |
Leander R. Morgan | I became principal. I became a teaching principal. A small school, I think like eight teachers, and I was the principal. And then finally, I got out of teaching. I went to a poverty program for a while and then to a community college there, as a department head. | 36:56 |
Chris Stewart | What made you choose politics finally? | 37:17 |
Leander R. Morgan | There was something—there was a disturbance here, not a riot, where my son called me up from high school and said, "Dad, you need to get out here and pick me up. There's going to be a riot." | 37:24 |
Chris Stewart | About '69? | 37:36 |
Leander R. Morgan | '68, '69. About '69 or '68. | 37:36 |
Leander R. Morgan | '69 maybe. | 37:40 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Let's just say— | 37:46 |
Leander R. Morgan | About '69. So I went out there, and the Blacks, instructors were here, and maybe the White instructors were with them, I don't know. Black students over here and White students over there, and nobody in control. And a sheriff came up, was about to arrest a Black female. And I said, "Hey, what are you going to do?" He said, "Arrest her." I said, "No." She hadn't done anything. So he pulled his gun out and I said, "Man, you got to be crazy," or something like that. So I said—I asked him for a bullhorn. They didn't have one. Police didn't have one at that time. So I just asked all the Black students to come on, let's get on the bus, let's go uptown and let's sit down and talk about it. Because they were just going to get hurt milling around. | 37:46 |
Leander R. Morgan | So finally they got uptown, there was a poverty program, we talked, and then we decided to have a church meeting that night. And then in talking, they asked me if I would represent them as an adult. And I said, "Yeah, fine. Be glad to." And we did. We met the Board of Education and found out that the differences were the same, and that had to do with administration. The leadership of the school wasn't there. Honeycutt. | 38:36 |
Chris Stewart | I heard about him. | 39:06 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, it just was not there. And then there was a guy, a civil rights fellow here, who said, "You need to pick up a brick or something and throw it." And I said, "No, they don't, not at bullets," kind of thing. And so they, as I said, asked me. And then there was a guy named Stalins here who was an influential businessman. And he had been—I don't know whether Stalins had been Mayor. I don't think he had, but he was influential. And they said, "You ought to run for Alderman." And that was in '71. | 39:08 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I remember telling my wife, I said, "I've only been to one civic meeting, and that was a community meeting and I was just a part of it." And so I'd always felt that Barbara's, that's my wife, her uncle could have been the person elected. So I said, "Okay, why not?" So I ran against a guy who they said was bootlegger. He was White. And maybe he got 700 votes and I forget how many I got, but it was enough to be the Assistant Mayor, because whoever gets the highest number of votes would become the Assistant Mayor. | 39:43 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I remember what I simply said was—I don't know, representation, something, just representation for everybody, something like that. But I remember when the board met prior to the meeting that night, there was a guy on the board who had been there like 12 years and had been the Assistant Mayor. And somebody said, "Okay, well we need to have an Assistant Mayor." Well, I'd already been told by a civil rights activist who's dead now, Willy Bales, that if you get the highest number of votes, then you become Mayor pro tem. | 40:21 |
Leander R. Morgan | So in the meeting they asked this guy Tommy Davis, if he would like to be the Assistant Mayor, and I said, "Wait a minute." I said, "It's my understanding, whoever gets the highest number of votes—" Because I knew that that would be an opportunity to bring about communications and so forth. So then somebody said, "Okay, if you want to be." So I became the Assistant Mayor. And the mayor at that time loved to travel, so a lot of times I got to be Mayor. And things worked real well. And I had been active on a lot of committees. | 41:02 |
Leander R. Morgan | And I felt it was a way to bring communications about, it was a way to speak and not carry the chip on your shoulder, so to speak. And if it was an issue, you just face right up to it, whether it was Black or White. And if blacks were the fault of it, you say, "Hey, look, this is our problem. We created it," kind of thing. And so did those two years, and that's how I got into politics. | 41:39 |
Chris Stewart | Can you think of—we're sort of running into our 45 minute time— | 42:07 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. Okay, yeah. | 42:11 |
Chris Stewart | Can you think of anything that— | 42:13 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, I need to be gone by 4:15 really? | 42:14 |
Chris Stewart | Okay. Then I can think of two more questions— | 42:16 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. | 42:19 |
Chris Stewart | —I'd like to ask you. Can you think of anything that I haven't asked you about your life that you feel is important, that would be an important contribution to this collection? | 42:20 |
Leander R. Morgan | I think since I have been in political life, I've learned to face up to the issue and simply try to get people to communicate and deal with the issue and say, "Okay, who caused the issue?" A few minutes ago, there was a police officer in here and he was saying that they're bringing basketball teams in from across—from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and some other places, and they want to go into this area where this center is. He said, "But you know, that area's had a bad rep." And I said, "Well, how did it get that? Who caused it to have it?" And he said, "Well, this just been happening." I said, "Did we cause it? Did we who live in that area? We caused it, and we haven't dealt with it, and we've allowed it to fester with all of these ugly aspects of life. And so we need to clean it up." | 42:34 |
Leander R. Morgan | And so when we can face those kind of issues and become partners with each other, and when my fraternity can become a partner with other fraternities and other sororities, I've tried to do that. And I think that has helped. And the other thing is, is just to give impartial leadership and I tried to do that. | 43:35 |
Leander R. Morgan | One thing that I can remember in 1962 was—no, it was '63. I wanted to go to a leading chain hotel that had, "Welcome teachers," and I was going to get some breakfast. And I went in and the lady said, "I'm sorry, we can't serve you." And I said, "But you got a sign outside says welcome teachers." Because the White Teachers Association was meeting here. And then when they passed the Civil Rights Act, the same lady was the same host, and I went in and I ate. | 43:59 |
Leander R. Morgan | And the same thing happened with the bowling alley. I went to go bowling. They said, "We're from up north. We don't control this. I'm sorry." I said, "Well, I got my bowling ball. You've got the lanes." And I couldn't bowl. And when they passed the Civil Rights Act, I remember a fella and I went in there and I think he bowled 178 and I bowled 185 or something. | 44:39 |
Leander R. Morgan | So those kinds of things. And then what is funny sometimes is to go places—and I remember going to another city not far from here, and I was with the City Manager and two board members, and the City Manager at that town said, "I'm sorry your Mayor couldn't make it." And then he said, "This is our Mayor." And then I get another handshake. So that part—but you know, you enjoy that. | 45:03 |
Chris Stewart | If you could give advice to young people based on your life experience, what kind of advice would you give them? | 45:40 |
Leander R. Morgan | Be prepared. Try to make your opportunities happen. And whatever it is that they themselves want to do, put themselves in a position to be prepared for it and create the discipline within themselves to work at it. An example would be if they wanted to be a principal of a school and yet they had to work—the only job open was a teacher's aide and yet they had a degree in teaching, is just to work at that. And while they were working at that— | 45:55 |
Leander R. Morgan | —is to keep the spiritual aspect of self-motivation. But sometimes maybe you look around and you're by yourself or you're the only one that you can count on and have some strong inner feelings with yourself, some good strong guts, and say, "I'm going to hang in there and be fair," and stand up with it if you believe it. In other words—and I guess too, realize that racism does exist, but don't hang up your hat on that and say, "Because I didn't get this, it was racism." No. No. | 0:01 |
Chris Stewart | Well sir, the other thing that I need to do so that I can let you go to your wherever is in order to place this tape in the collection, we need to get your permission— | 0:45 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah, that's fine. | 1:01 |
Chris Stewart | —basically, to do that. We actually have written a document that—it's an interview agreement form, and what it does is it gives the rights to this tape to Duke University— | 1:02 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay, that's fine. | 1:14 |
Chris Stewart | —for educational purposes, basically. | 1:14 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. | 1:17 |
Chris Stewart | We have two forms. There's one that you can place restrictions on the tape if you'd like and there's another one that doesn't have any restrictions. Which would you— | 1:17 |
Leander R. Morgan | I guess the only restrictions is simply that it's not used for any financial purposes unless you turn it into scholarships or something like that. I don't what—I don't know of any restrictions. | 1:27 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I can place to be used only for educational purposes or academic purposes. | 1:45 |
Leander R. Morgan | Well, yeah, whatever. I'll stand up on the rooftop and screaming—that doesn't mean it's free. It's free. | 1:52 |
Chris Stewart | Right. But it's always good to have it in— | 2:04 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. | 2:05 |
Chris Stewart | In fact, the purpose of this is to— | 2:07 |
Leander R. Morgan | I want to use politically. | 2:09 |
Chris Stewart | Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean educational purposes. That is probably— | 2:11 |
Leander R. Morgan | Yeah. I don't want whoever might run for mayor to use it. Yeah. | 2:15 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I'm going to— | 2:20 |
Leander R. Morgan | Whatever. I have no problem. There's nothing in it that's confidential. | 2:21 |
Chris Stewart | Well, I'm going to put down to be used for academic slash educational purposes. | 2:30 |
Leander R. Morgan | Okay. And my wife said I should give you this. She talked with someone who was trying to get up with Mike Morgan. I don't know who that was. In Raleigh they said that they would want to talk with him. I thought I had it. Maybe I left it because he is from here. I don't have it, but she would have it. But it's his office. | 2:35 |
Leander R. Morgan | I don't know who she talked with, but she's the one who had one of these. | 3:03 |
Chris Stewart | Oh, you're— | 3:06 |
Leander R. Morgan | Her name was Barbara Morgan. And she said some way they said they wanted to talk with him. He's a— | 3:07 |
Chris Stewart | Who got in contact with him? | 3:15 |
Leander R. Morgan | I have no idea. He is a— | 3:16 |
Item Info
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