Ida Cooper interview recording, 1993 July 14
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| Sonya Ramsey | All right. Mrs. Cooper, could you describe the neighborhood where you grew up as a young child? | 0:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. My home community is in rural Sampson, was rural Sampson County on the lower end of Sampson County, close to the Bladen County line. Our post office was Garland. We grew up on a farm. I am the second of four children. We had an older brother, Thomas, who is deceased. I was a second child and my younger sisters are identical twins. Our maiden name was Boykin. Both of our parents were educators. Our father was a school principal. It was an elementary school in Garland, and it was enlarged to a high school in which he lived to work almost one term, and he died in the spring of 1937. All of us were small. | 0:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We continued in school at the Garland School. Our mother, I did not mention earlier, was also a teacher. She was a primary teacher and had taught many of the children in that vicinity as well. After our sisters were born, she did not return to the classroom and continued to work on the farm. Our mother came from a large family. She was reared in Duplin County, an adjoining county to Sampson. And the one thing that she really pounded into us was that you must stay in school, you must get an education. And that was our major focus and goal throughout our development during our childhood years. | 1:46 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Our mother married again, and we were still in the same community, but we continued to go school. Our brother graduated from high school, I believe in 1939, and he went on to college at Shaw University in Raleigh where he was able to get a work aid scholarship and was a rising senior in 1943 when I graduated from high school. But our country was very much in World War II at that time, and he was 1-A in the Army and he was inducted in October of that year, so I went to college. When I reached my senior year at Shaw University in 1946, he was discharged and he returned home and the two of us graduated from college in 1947. | 3:03 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Meanwhile, our sisters had graduated from high school in 1945, but we did not have funds available at that time, loans and grants, et cetera. So mama knew that she could not send three girls to college and they were out of school until we graduated, and then they matriculated at what is now North Carolina Central University and completed their college years. I went to work and my brother went to work. | 4:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, Mrs. Cooper, I wanted to go back and ask you some more questions about growing up. You said your family, your parents were educators and they also had a farm. What kind of crops did they raise on their farm? | 5:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | The basic crops at that time were tobacco. That was the main money crop. Some cotton and corn were the basics. | 5:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have work on the farm too as a young child? | 5:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes, we did. | 5:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you manage working and going to school at the same time? | 6:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, you worked in the afternoons and on Saturdays, but our parents were diehard believers in education. So when many students stayed out of school and went to the berry farms, et cetera, we had to go to school. | 6:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did your parents ever have people that came to help work on the farm [indistinct 00:06:35]? | 6:30 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we lived in a community where we had, during our earlier childhood, we had three uncles who lived in the neighborhood and we helped each other. | 6:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 6:49 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. So that that's how the work was done. And during the war years, male help help with scarce, but then that's when the older men worked together even more closely and that's how the work was done. | 6:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Who were some of the important people in your neighborhood that you looked up to? | 7:09 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we had a cousin. She is still living, she's our elder stepsister too. Actually, she's 87 and she taught me to play the piano. My father was really my first teacher. He was also a musician. Mama played some, but Annie taught me. And even today, she's very special in our lives and has been over the years. She's one of those persons, you might say, who has been the glue to keep a lot of people intact and moving in the right direction. She was a really chic dresser. She went to New York a lot and she wore pretty clothes, and she was a lady. | 7:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you, do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 8:24 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Barely. We had a grandma whose name was Tama, and she must have died when I was maybe three or four. And I recall having led her around in the yard because she was blind and that is the only grandparent I remember. My maternal grandparents died before I was born. | 8:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you about your parents. You said your father was a principal and where did he get his education? | 9:09 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He attended what is now Fayetteville State University. During those years, certification was not on the level that it is today, and they were issued what was known as provisional certificates, which gave one the opportunity to work for a year or two with the understanding that you are to pursue further study toward a degree. And even when he passed away, he did not have a bachelor's degree, but he was working toward one. There were evening classes, they were little different from the evening classes that we have at universities now. And there were summer programs, they would go to summer school. And of course, our mother did the same thing. And I do have some of, I think, I have some of mama's old certificates. | 9:17 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Do you remember how they met? Did they ever tell you? | 10:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They met at Fayetteville. | 10:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 10:39 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | There on the campus at, it was Fayetteville Normal School then, and that's where they met and eventually were married. | 10:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask, what were the holidays like [indistinct 00:10:59]? | 10:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, most things were some of the traditional practices. We had programs at church, we had programs at school. There was a lot of baking, possibly more than there is now. We always went out and found a tree in the woods and we decorated with holly and pine and mistletoe. And of course, we looked for Santa Claus until. But of course, holidays were always a happy time. | 10:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What were some of the other important gatherings in your family, celebrations, aside from the holidays? | 11:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Visits from family members who had moved away. I can recall an aunt who lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and her daughter, whose name is Ida, we were both named for our maternal grandmother. When these folk were coming, oh, that was something to really crow about. Someone was coming from another section of the country. And we had a relative, a cousin who lived in Philadelphia, and we looked forward to her coming and she would tell us about Philadelphia. | 12:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And of course, those were things that you looked forward to seeing. And during my college years when our choir was on tour, we performed in Philadelphia and she was there and it was carryover from that time. And I can recall that she was very proud of being able to say, well, this is my little cousin whom I knew from birth, and here she is accompanying the college choir on tour. But for the most part, we didn't have the extended [indistinct 00:13:48] are very popular nowadays. That's a lot of work. | 12:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you, what kind of things did you and your friends do for fun when you were growing up? | 13:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we played hopscotch and we did a lot of reading. We always had, as long as I can remember, although we were in the country, we always had a daily paper. The Raleigh News and Observer, which I'm sure you're familiar with, was our daily paper. And of course, we didn't get mail on Sunday, but we waited for that Sunday paper on Monday to get the funnies and the extras. My sisters and I grew up, and I guess our brother too, when he wasn't out with the boys, but he was a political science major, so I guess he had to read too. But we did a lot of reading. | 14:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What were some of your favorite books that you read or types of books that you read? | 15:05 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, of course, we read the fairy stories and I frown now when children, you say Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Jack London, the Call of the Wild and the [indistinct 00:15:27] legends, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. And of course, the short stories. | 15:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did they have a library where Blacks to go read books or did your parents just have to get the books for you? | 15:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We had the school library, but I don't recall our having a county library at that time. | 15:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So you could check books out just from the school. Was the library pretty equipped? | 15:52 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | At a minimum level. At a minimum level. | 16:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So if you wanted to read a book, a new book you heard about, how did you go about getting that book? | 16:05 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | My sisters and I bought more books. | 16:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 16:14 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Sorry about that. | 16:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's okay. | 16:23 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We bought a lot of books. I recall, my sister and I were laughing recently about Little Fat. I don't know if you ever saw the Little Fat Brown books. Did you ever see any of those? And we would buy them and we bought Gone When the Wind, came out in the late thirties and we bought Gone With The Wind and we read it. You could get dime store editions, and they weren't expensive as they are now. Life Magazine sold for 10, 15 cents then, so they were affordable. My sisters were buying books and I was buying music, so we treated ourselves to many of the things that we wanted. I recall even before our father passed that we got Readers Digest. Didn't have advertising in it in those days, just the articles. And it was inexpensive, maybe 20 or 25 cents per copy. | 16:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Do you have to ever work part-time after school, aside from your work at home to afford the extra things that you wanted to buy? | 17:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. By the time you did the chores at home and in the fields and got your homework, that was a pretty full day. | 18:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, did your parents ever teach you or tell you things about segregation? Anything growing up? | 18:23 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, yes. We lived in it, so to speak. We knew that there was a barrier. But in spite of that, we were taught that we were no better than anyone else, but we were as good as anyone else. And growing up, being brought up in a Christian, God-fearing home, we just saw everybody with the same perspective. | 18:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever know anyone and heard stories of anyone that broke the rules of segregation, such as drinking at the White water fountain or doing things like that? | 19:27 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Not during my early childhood. And even during my college days, we performed with the girls from Meredith on occasions because their choir director, I believe her name was Geraldine Kates and our choir director, Mildred Thornhill, she was then, were in college together at New York University. So we did things together. | 19:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 20:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we learned the same music and we went to Meredith and performed, gave a small recital for them, and they came to Shaw. And on both occasions, we did some numbers together and I think we performed at the radio station once or twice together. | 20:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did the Meredith students treat the Shaw students? | 20:45 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we were all college girls and nobody's color rubbed off on anybody else, so we didn't have any problems with that, but that was the extent of it. | 20:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to go back and ask you about World War II. You mentioned that your brother fought in the war. Did he ever tell you about his experience fighting in World War II? | 21:04 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He talked about his, he was a sergeant and he did not have overseas duty. Most of his time was spent in training because he was a college senior then. And he, as I recall, he was a master sergeant and he did have some racist experiences, as I recall his mentioning to us when he was at home and that kind of thing. | 21:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Could you describe some of the ones he told you about? | 21:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | As best I recall, there were situations of disrespect and insubordination. | 22:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did he handle those kind of situations around, did he tell you about that? | 22:16 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | As I recall, he simply had to turn them over to the commanding officer. I recall his coming home once to escort a young man who was killed in a fight, I think. He brought this young man to Reidsville. He was in Missouri, it was Fort Leonard Wood at the time. But some ugly things did happen. And of course, seemingly after the war, they escalated into more things. | 22:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Racial incidents? | 23:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well into efforts toward civil rights. And Black soldiers felt that they had fought and served their country and I'm due the same thing that anyone else has. And of course, that even moved into institutions of higher learning because there were those years when I went to graduate school, we could not attend your university. | 23:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill? | 24:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And many of us, of course, my late husband was from New Jersey, and it was convenient for me to go to graduate school in that area. Both of us attended NYU. But southerners who wanted to go to graduate school were given stipends to go to other states where they could go. And while I was attending NYU, there were many people there from North Carolina. I had not moved to Wilmington then. And I met people from here and persons from other southern states who could not attend the universities in their home states. | 24:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to go back and talk some more about school and ask you from the beginning, could you describe your elementary school that you went to and do you have any remembrances of your teachers there? | 25:05 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was a very crude framed building. We didn't have a lot to work with, but we certainly utilized what we had. There were outdoor toilets. We had no running water as I recall. All of those things were included in the new building that was completed in 1936 before my father died. And teachers drew on their own resources. You had to help yourself become a good teacher because we did not have the facilities that we have in schools now, not by far. | 25:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did your school compare to the White schools in the area? | 26:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They had more space. And during my high school years, I don't ever recall going to that school. It was on the other side of the highway. I don't know if they had a lot more than we had or not. | 26:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 27:16 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Maybe yes, maybe no. | 27:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was your school the same elementary through high school? Is it the same school or did you go to a different school? | 27:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was the same school. And as I said, we moved into this new building and that framed building stayed there on the highway. One of the local merchants bought that building from the county, and I think they used it for storage for years because we saw it. | 27:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. We were talking about your school was the same school through elementary to high school. | 27:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. It was still the Garland Elementary School, and then it became the Garland High School. | 28:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And was your father principal of that school? | 28:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, he died 1937, and he was principal there for almost one year. | 28:19 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did your mother teach at that, before? | 28:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. | 28:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did she teach at that school or— | 28:34 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, she never taught in that school. | 28:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 28:38 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | She worked in the other elementary school. | 28:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 28:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you and your brothers and sisters ever feel extra responsibility from being a daughter, the children of educators? | 28:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. That never bothered us. We were just like everybody else. | 28:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did they treat you differently because your parents were educators? No? Okay. | 28:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. Maybe there were one or two who showed their compassion or all of them, I suppose, showed their compassion after our father died in the spring of 1937, was April, but we had to get our work. And of course— | 29:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were they harder on anything? | 29:27 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, I don't really think so. We did our work. And I think you asked me about teachers. I had some really good teachers. They were committed, and as best I recall, did their work very well. I had no trouble in college or graduate school. | 29:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Back in elementary school and high school, what were some of the values that your teachers tried to instill in you and the other students? | 30:04 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They wanted us to work, of course. And they stressed hard work, attendance. You can't do your work if you don't come to school. They stressed cleanliness and which, for many children, was difficult in some situations with rural backgrounds and inadequate facilities. Honesty, we call it plagiarizing now, but children have cheated and sought the easy street as long as I can remember and possibly before my days too. I guess there's some things that just don't change. And of course, the golden rule, in essence, was always stressed. | 30:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And when you were in high school, I remember you mentioning the music was an important part of your life. What did you do with that? And did you do any other extracurricular activities outside of your academic work? | 31:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, there were not a lot of activities to be a part of. There was a 4-H organization and there was a French club. And of course, we had the honor roll. We didn't have the Honor Society as we have in schools now. There were library helpers, we had chorus. | 31:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you participate in the chorus? | 32:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, I did. | 32:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you sing or play or— | 32:34 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I sang. | 32:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 32:37 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And I did some playing. In fact, our chorus participated, we had a very outstanding lady, I thought she was outstanding, who took our chorus to Greensboro for the music festival. And she was an excellent biology teacher. | 32:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, she was a chorus teacher and a Biology. Okay. | 33:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | An unusual combination. But her name was Gladys Robinson Dowdy. She added the Dowdy while she was teaching there. I don't know where they found her, but she was really outstanding as I recall. Then we had an English teacher whom we admired. She's deceased now, but she married a cousin of ours. And her name was Estelle Boykin. She was a Raleigh lady and everyone admired her for her proficiency and poise and dignity and all of the other. | 33:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have quite many extended family that lived near you [indistinct 00:34:19] cousins and things like that? | 34:15 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, in our home neighborhood, we really did. | 34:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I meant to ask you before, when you were growing up in your family, who disciplined the children in your family? | 34:28 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, mama did. And when things really got hot, daddy would make his entrance. | 34:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did other people in the neighborhood, could they discipline you? | 34:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh, yes. You better not show off or get sassy with anyone. You'd hear it again. | 34:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What would your parents do if that happened? | 35:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Maybe give you a warning the first time and you knew what would happen the next time. | 35:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess I want to go back to your high school. What were some of your favorite subjects in high school? | 35:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I enjoyed English and I enjoyed Social Studies and I enjoyed Home Economics. And when we got our Biology teacher, the lady that I was just talking about, I enjoyed her, enjoyed Biology. That really paid off, my physical and biological sciences in college. Freshman college work, you can just more or less, if you have a good high school background, you can more or less walk through it. | 35:20 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you decided to attend Shaw University? | 35:57 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. | 36:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why did you decide that university? | 36:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Because that's where I was able to get a work aid scholarship. | 36:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay, okay. Yeah. Okay. | 36:08 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I really wanted to be a nurse, but mama saw that I had some fine arts potential. | 36:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | With your music? | 36:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. And although I did not major in music, I majored in English and I had no regrets because I could read and I had a good language background. So all of that meant a lot toward doing college level work. | 36:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was Shaw University like when you first got there? Was it— | 36:47 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, a small church-related college. Shaw is a Baptist college and we had students from other denominations at Shaw. Students came from far north and the far south to Shaw. We had a very energetic, enthusiastic president during those years, he was Dr. Robert P. Daniel. And Baptists throughout North Carolina, all over the country, supported Shaw. | 36:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you live in the dormitory? | 37:52 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh, yes. | 37:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like coming from a small town area? | 37:54 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was a real learning experience. | 38:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | In what way? | 38:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Living with people whose backgrounds are different from yours. And maybe you were called "country" sometimes because the way you did things. Well, that's what makes us individuals. But that did not affect me because I knew why I was there. I got my lesson and it really didn't bother me. And because I did not wear my long bushy hair the way some others wore theirs, didn't matter. Mama made many of our clothes. She did a lot of sewing for three girls, and I had some things that were bought. And this cousin of ours, whom I admired a lot, would come to Raleigh on occasions and she would take me shopping. And we just moved along. | 38:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was Shaw, the students, very stylish and things like that? | 39:34 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, some were and some were not. You had it pretty much across the board. | 39:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was the social life like there? | 39:48 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was very simple during those years because all of the A-1 men were in the Army. | 39:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 39:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We had those who were not eligible, who did not qualify physically. I think they called them, they were classified 4-F. And Shaw had seminary, so ministers were usually exempt from military service. We had less than a thousand students, maybe there were six or 700. | 39:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you — Go on, I'm sorry. | 40:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And there were less than a hundred males. | 40:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 40:36 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | But being surrounded by Fort Bragg, not too far from Fort Bragg, not too far from Camp Lejeune, if anybody wanted a boyfriend, they didn't have any difficulty finding one because there was servicemen on the campus. | 40:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 40:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And then we went to the bases a lot too, the choir did. We performed at Fort Bragg and we performed at Camp Lejeune. And those girls who wanted to go for socials, the buses would come from the bases sometimes and take them. | 40:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever participate and go to the socials or anything? | 41:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. When the choir went, I would usually go and when we performed at the USO, they would always have a social for us afterwards. | 41:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was a social like? What kind of things happened there? Was it like a dance? | 41:38 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, and they would feed us. | 41:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What were some of the songs, type of music that they played there? | 41:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, there were a lot of wartime songs. One that I recall that Duke Ellington wrote was, Don't Get Around Much Anymore and I'll Be Around, and of course, a lot of the patriotic music, My Buddy and We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again. | 41:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you ever involved in any clubs or organizations while you were at Shaw, or sororities? | 42:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes. I'm a Delta girl. | 42:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Why did you select Delta above the other sororities? | 42:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I don't know. My sisters are AKAs. They are. They went to Central though. Somehow the Delta girls were a little more genuine. | 42:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | More down to earth? | 43:06 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, I was about to go AKA. | 43:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 43:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We [indistinct 00:43:08] campus. | 43:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 43:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | In World War II, sororities. I became a Delta girl fall of my junior year. That was 1945. And I was competent for the college choir for two years. | 43:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to go back and ask you some more about the sorority. Did you have a long pledge process? | 43:46 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. Of course, it's pretty drawn out now. I worked with the Minerva Circle this year and I won't even go into— | 43:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's fine. That's fine. And I also wanted ask, what were some of the qualities, after you joined the sorority, what were some of the qualities that you and the other members of the sorority looked for in selecting new members? | 44:09 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, scholarship, participation in organizations that would help to develop you into a finer woman. We did projects, I don't recall just offhand what our projects were, but Delta— | 44:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I was going to ask what kind of activities your sorority did? | 44:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We did have opportunity to go into the community and do projects. | 45:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Service projects? | 45:18 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Service projects. Maybe one of our sororals, who was the sister of a founder, Jimmy Bug Middleton, had us help her with a project down at Washington High School. She was a Latin teacher. And I remember that very distinctly because our Dean of Women was a sororal and she gave us permission. The graduate chapters seemingly worked more closely with us than that relationship you have now. We have Theta Iota here at UNCW, and they only had two sororals left, so they had to make some girls. And we did carry them through the initiation process with our chapter. It was a joint effort and it worked very well. It really did. | 45:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Aside from the choir and sorority, were you involved in any other activities? | 46:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, I helped with property. | 46:52 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I was busy learning my compliments for the choir. Choir members would talk about you if you didn't play it right. | 0:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How were you selected to be the accompanist for the— | 0:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I started singing my freshman year and our choir director, I was taking piano. I was studying piano, and she taught me. And she told me during my sophomore year, they tried to keep a student accompanist prepared. And she knew that I was a work aid student. And she told me that, she said, "If you continue and do as well as you're doing, you'll be my next accompanist." | 0:14 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, so you got to be paid for that too. | 0:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. And that helped with my expenses. Surely did. | 1:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Where did you meet your husband? Did you meet your husband at this time or was it later? | 1:08 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. He was a graduate of Winston-Salem Teachers College, it was then. He was a veteran. He was on an athletic scholarship. And I had probably seen him play when Shaw played Winston, but we didn't know each other then. His mother, I don't know if it mattered too much with his father or not, but as I said, Coach Gaines, who recently retired from Winston-Salem State University, was scouting in the New York, New Jersey area for athletes and that was how he came to Winston. I did my first teaching in Cabarrus County in Kannapolis, which is between Charlotte and Salisbury. And he came there maybe the second year I was there to serve as coach and start a football team. And that's where we met. | 1:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. How did you meet? | 2:45 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, he thought he could sing, but he couldn't. And in smaller— Well, not necessarily, Kannapolis was a pretty large town. Still is even larger now. Home of the Cannon Mills. I guess at school too. | 2:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you like him from the start when you first met him? | 3:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, because I had a regular. In fact, the gentleman, the fellow whom I was dating at that time was Carolina's first Black PhD. You may have, he has a son who's teaching at the university now. His name was William Doherty. And he was on the board of trustees at one time. I don't know if he is. | 3:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet him? | 4:04 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He was one of those veterans. He's a Shaw graduate and he was one of those veterans who came back to Shaw after the war. He was there before, but he's done quite well. I think he's in Egypt now on a two year mission for the government. Anyway, he had retired from Boston University. He was head of the public health department there. | 4:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So, you were dating someone else when you met your— | 4:45 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. And they— | 4:48 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Well, how did he win your heart over the other boyfriend? | 4:50 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, what do they say? Absence makes the heart grow yonder. Some say fonder. No, Doherty was a really nice person. He knew my sisters. He was in graduate school at Central when they were students there, but he had that military air. He was an officer. He was a captain, I think, in the Army. And when he called, I was supposed to be in place and that didn't take very well. | 4:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? | 5:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Huh? | 5:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why was that? Why didn't you— | 5:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Why? | 5:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You said that you didn't like that. | 5:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It didn't take very well. No, I think that if you are not in place, then that's your privilege and you have have every right to be where you want to be. I think that's part of being an individual. And my husband and I worked apart for most of the 15 years that we were married. | 5:56 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Really? Did you commute on the weekends or things like that? | 6:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. | 6:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What were the farthest that you were apart? [indistinct 00:06:41] | 6:39 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He was in Hillsborough. You know where that is? It's just outside Chapel Hill and I was in Clinton. And then he was in Rocky Mount. And of course we were together during the summer months in New Jersey, which was his home. And then he went into administration. He was principal of an elementary school in Pender County when he died very suddenly in '65. And our long range plan was to go back to the New Jersey area because he was in his doctoral program at NYU when he passed. And our long range plan was to go back to the New Jersey area. I had completed my master's program and I wanted to do some work in sacred music. | 6:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And I was going to do my piano teaching and church playing as I do now, not on a very large scale. And we were getting into his dissertation, if you notice I said we, because I did take expository writing. Well, having a degree in English, that was good for me too. And I audited the course that was permissible at NYU then without charge. And I took the expository writing and wrote right along with him. It was a requirement for doctoral students. And Dr. Sarah Johnson didn't know I was his wife until the last day of the class. We sat opposite when I was in the class. And she said she had a strange feeling about us one day, but then students always talking to the professor and asking questions and making comments. So, she complimented us for having kept that out of her ears throughout the six weeks. | 7:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Wanted to go back and ask you about after you met your husband how long did you date before you were married? | 9:15 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Almost three years. | 9:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that was a very long courtship. Why did you wait so long? Or just you were working? | 9:28 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I don't know. Well, I think my sisters, my family responsibility maybe had something to do with it. | 9:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You contributed to their [indistinct 00:09:46] | 9:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh, yeah. That was understood that my brother and I were to help with their schooling. And of course, after the four years, they were among the first library students at Central. They were just beginning the library science program and they went into that. | 9:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you then after you were— I wanted to go back a little bit and ask you how you got your first teaching job, your first job. | 10:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, we had a gentleman at Shaw. He was Dr. Nelson Harris, who was head of the education department and teacher placement. And he had a lot of contacts and I had an opportunity to work in Raleigh, but who wanted to stay in Raleigh after going to school there for four years? | 10:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, you wanted to go somewhere different. | 10:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And believe me, Kannapolis was different too. | 10:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | In what ways? | 10:57 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | A mill town and students were constantly coming and going. But the schools were well-equipped. Kannapolis, as I said, was a mill town and was owned by the Cannon Mills. Largest unincorporated town in the world at that time. And of course, you got what you needed. | 10:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You said that the students were coming and going all the time. How did you adjust your teaching to that? | 11:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was difficult. In the fall, you could expect a new crowd. Come Christmastime, somebody was leaving, but you would always have a new group coming in. | 11:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You have a new groups of students coming in. Not the same students who just couldn't come as much, but just new groups of students. | 11:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. And sometimes you got some good ones because their parents were coming to work in the mills. And there were those who had worked in the mills for some two or three generations. | 11:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What grade did you teach? | 12:15 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I taught English. | 12:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | English. In the high school? | 12:16 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. | 12:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | They had a Black high school there? | 12:19 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. G.W. Carver School. It's no longer a high school now. All the high school students go to Charles W. Cannon High. | 12:20 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then now I want to jump ahead and ask you, after you were married, you said you lived in New Jersey. How long did you stay in North Carolina? | 12:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We were back and forth. We were back and forth. Our child was born in New Jersey. And as I said, my husband was torn between remaining there and working in North Carolina. And somehow each time we would find ourselves coming back. He had worked in the post office and his father was an assembly man for Fords. In fact, my father-in-law just died three years ago and he outlived his son almost 25 years. But we would come back, but still pursuing our advanced studies in that area. | 12:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you like New Jersey? | 13:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. East Orange is a lovely residential town of almost, I think about 85,000. It's messed up now though, as many cities are. You aren't comfortable moving around. We were very comfortable there. In fact, my husband died there. We were there when he passed and I buried him there. And he has one sister who lives in Newark. She has been to visit me and we stay in touch with her. | 13:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And you said your husband had gotten a job in Pender County, so that's why you decided to— | 14:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Well, he was principal of a new school there and we lived out there in the community for seven years. So although we were in New Jersey when he passed, somehow my longings were to come back. Well, our mother was here. And of course, this is the only place that my sister has worked. She can give you all the ins and outs of New Hanover County with her 39 years. You'll hear some of what I have told you and you'll hear much more from her. | 14:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. After you taught in Kannapolis, what were some of the other places where you taught? | 15:20 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I came back to our home county and I taught at the high school in Clinton for seven years. | 15:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 15:40 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I'll say it was Sampson High School was a good segregated high school. We turned out good students. | 15:45 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did the children ever question why they had to go to segregated schools and things like that? | 15:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They pretty much knew. They knew where the line was and they accepted that. But they worked and our students went to the better Black institutions. They went to Hampton, they went to Central, they went to Howard, they went to A&T. And our librarian and our charter members of Fayetteville Alumnae Delta Chapter. And we would have the Career Day in Clinton. One year at our school and then the next year we would take our students over to E.E. Smith, which was the Black high school in Fayetteville then. But they worked to excel and very humbly we had good students and good teachers and we produced the products. | 16:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were the teaching salaries equal between the White teachers and the Black teachers and things like that? | 17:20 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | At that time when I began teaching, they were. They were meager of course. | 17:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you have to do any other outside work to help supplement your income? | 17:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, I played in churches on Sunday. My husband told me, "When we get married, no church playing." I said, "Well, you got to give me what I would make playing in church." But it did. If I got $10 or $15 for playing somebody's church on Sunday, that was enough to take care of my groceries or maybe buy a slip or something else that I needed really. | 17:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What churches, what type of denominations did you usually play for? | 18:09 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | All of them. | 18:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | All of them. Did you have to adjust the way you played for the different churches and the different [indistinct 00:18:18] | 18:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, I pretty much, I'm pretty flexible. I'm not sure that I would fit into every situation now. I'm a Presbyterian church organist and I've been at my present post almost 19 years. | 18:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever play for any churches that play gospel music? | 18:40 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh, yes. I can whoop it up. That's not quite my style, but I can. | 18:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you learn? Did your piano teacher teach you how to play that type of music, or did you learn on your own? | 18:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | You sort of pick that up yourself. And in fact, during college days, we had a guy there. He was on the football team, Tiny was from Florida, | 19:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Tiny. | 19:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He weighed 300. And he played two or three instruments. And boy, we'd get a little jam session going. And then he taught me to play cards and it was fun. You sort of branched out and did a lot of things during those lean years. | 19:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever want to play for any secular groups, in bands or things like that? | 19:48 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Not really, but the band teacher who is from Durham, I don't know where Walter Little is now, was quite versatile. And he had little jazz group at the school and then he taught me some things too. So, I picked up quite a bit from him. And then he eventually retired from teaching and had a group in Durham called The Pastels. I don't know if they still operate or not, but he came to Wilmington quite a few times because of our contacts to play for our dance. We used to have a dance for the kids after the Jabberwock. | 19:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was the Jabberwock, it was the type of talent program? | 20:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. Our fundraiser. | 20:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was it one of the most important events? | 20:49 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. | 20:49 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'm wanted to ask him. I'm trying to figure out how you eventually got to Wilmington, so if I skip over some— | 20:49 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Okay. You want to know how I got to Wilmington. After my husband died, '65, many people thought I was going to stay in the New Jersey area, but I didn't. We had worked in the state and you just have long to get back with family. | 21:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And your sister taught in Wilmington. | 21:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, she was here. The other sister was in Greensboro and Mama was here with her. Although we still had, she leased the farm up in the country and this time of the year, mama would go up there with this cousin of ours who looked after the farm. And she would help them and wait to get her share of the money. And then she would come on back to Wilmington. Bertha's children were small then. And after I came back to Wilmington that fall, lived in the rented house over on 15th Street for 13 months. Made up my mind, Clarence was a ninth grader then. | 21:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That's your son? | 22:24 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Our brother lived in Gary. Well, we went to visit him that fall and everybody thought, oh, she's going to Gary. And I wouldn't stay out there for anything. It's too cold out there. | 22:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Too cold. | 22:38 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | See Gary's just outside of Chicago. They on one of those lakes. Oh, it's cold. And Mama was getting up in years. And as it worked out, she lived with me. I was having some adjustment problems and she came to live with me at Christmastime. And then we moved here in October of the next year. Had a lot of problems with a crook contractor, but we got through that too. And Mama was here with me for 10 years. She died in '75. And I went to work and she was the lady of the house. | 22:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You went to work as a teacher teaching? | 23:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, I taught here. I went back to Pender County for a couple years. And then a friend of ours said, "Hey, you built a home here. Why don't you come on here and work? We need an English teacher and somebody to work with the junior high chorus." And he twisted my arm and I said, "Well, I guess that does make sense." So, that was one of the schools on the north side, D.C. Virgo. And taught there. And then there was a massive shift. And there was another junior high, Noble. It was open the next year. So, I asked for change. And there's something exciting about new schools. I had been a part of quite a few. So, I worked at Noble for two years and had begun my third year there. And one day the principal came to my class. It was before noon because I was just couldn't even eat my lunch. I was so flustered when he came and told me that I had a call from the central office. And those were during the turmoil years. | 23:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Segregation time? | 25:10 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. Of the late '60s. All Hades broke loose. And I went to the telephone and it was the assistant superintendent. And this is how they did things in those years. They don't ask you. They didn't ask you if you were interested, they just told you where you were going. And he informed me, he said, "Ida, the board met last night and we are sending you to Sunset Junior High School to be assistant principal." | 25:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Without telling you beforehand or— | 25:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | That day and they met the night before. | 25:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | When did you have to leave? | 26:00 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I went over there that day. | 26:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You had to leave that very day. | 26:05 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I went over there that day and they had another group called The Rights of White People. | 26:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The Rights of White People? | 26:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | ROWP. | 26:14 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh goodness. | 26:14 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Who were picketing across the street. Sheriff deputies were over there because the Black children from south side who were at Williston, I don't know if you've heard the name Williston since you've been here or not, did not want to go over there. See, they were unhappy about Williston Senior High having been closed. And the Black students had to go to Hoggard and Hanover. Laney had not been built then. And over there I went. I even got stuck. That's just how upset I was. It was a lot of sand out there at Noble. It's way out Market Street Road beyond where you turn off to go to the university. I went over there. What am I into? Well, I had no choice. | 26:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What if you had said no? What would've happened? | 27:17 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I don't know. I guess I was scared to say no because I was paying a mortgage and had a child in college. You know I had to go to work. So, I got moved. My principal was very unhappy. And some people thought it was a promotion, but I could have cared less. And I stayed there one year, but I was unhappy that year. | 27:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Now I wanted to ask you about that experience. You were assistant principal so you were over the teachers, some of the White teachers. So, what was that experience like? | 27:54 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Some of those teachers are my friends right now. There's one lady who lives down at Long Beach. There are others whom I see occasionally, got along very well, but that just wasn't my cup of tea. | 28:05 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did your duties change from teacher to assistant principal? What kind of change? | 28:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I was sort of a human relations principal. | 28:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What does that mean? | 28:33 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Trying to keep peace between Black students and White teachers and Black teachers and White students. Those Black children who were defiant and just were not going to listen and vice versa with the men. I recall one incident, I don't know where Patricia Davis is now, but she kicked one of her White teachers. This lady still works at Roland-Grise. And she was— I had gotten her calm, but I think that every time her husband looked at those bruised places on his, and they were bad bruises. | 28:37 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The student kicked the teacher? | 29:33 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah.She was— I don't know what was wrong with Pat. | 29:34 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was she provoked or was it— Did the teacher say something to her? | 29:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I think it was just back and forth and it was maybe a boil that had been building up— | 29:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Because the teachers physically punished the students if they wanted to? | 29:58 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. And of course there were those who sat on a powder keg all the time just waiting for it to explode. This was a little funny problem that I encountered in one of the parents said to me, "They just sent you over here to take up for these nigger children." I said, "Well, you have a right to your opinion, Mrs. Herring, and I know you unhappy about your daughter's hair." I said, "But I know why I was sent here and I know my job. But you still have a right to your opinion." | 30:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What happened to her daughter's hair? | 30:48 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They had a little ugly game. These are Black children are cutting off the White children's hair. I couldn't believe it at first. But she was the first problem that I had. | 30:50 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did you do? How did you sooth tensions? | 31:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | That one dropped out of school. The one that did this child's hair. So Bertha was at Hoggard then. I don't know if she was assistant principal then or in the library because she was librarian when she went to Hoggard after the Williston School was closed. So I said, "Okay, Ida, plant yourself in the bathroom and let's see this thing through." And they would plan it. See, these Williston children were unhappy. | 31:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | That they had to go. | 31:52 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | That they had to go to Sunset Junior High. That school has been closed. It's still Sunset Elementary. It's on Carolina Beach Road, predominantly White. You didn't have any Blacks living in that area. | 31:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So, how did the Blacks get to the school? | 32:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They were bused over there. They were bused over there and they weren't happy. They didn't want to be over there. But anyway, I found out what was happening in the bathroom. I went in there. One girl would have the scissors. The other one was over in the corner by the switch. And as soon as a White child would come in the bathroom, she'd flip the light and the other one would just whack the hair anywhere. I would never have believed that it happened until I went in there. | 32:10 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Now what happened when they found out you were in there? | 32:46 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I grabbed them. I grabbed the child and the one that— I grabbed both of the girls, the one that had the scissors and the one that did the switch. So, I nipped that in the bud. | 32:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did the White students do anything to the Black students? | 33:10 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yeah. | 33:13 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did they do? | 33:14 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Name calling. And what else was that they did? Put bugs in, some children brought their lunch to school. They'd cut garments. | 33:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | So, eventually you were there for a year and the White parents would be protesting. Did the Black parents protest also? | 33:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, there wasn't much protesting they could do because most of these things, they felt better with my being there and knowing that I was fair. And I gained respect from the White parents because I was fair with them. And in the case of Patricia's kicking the teacher, when her and her parents came to school, I talked to them first and I told them about Patricia's attitude and the trouble that I had had. I got her file out. I said, "I got a whole file on Pat." I said, "And I have been working with her." I said, "But this is the climax." And as I said, the husband was ready to press charges and— | 33:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | On the teacher? | 34:50 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | On the child. | 34:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh really? | 34:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | For kicking his wife. And finally Pat, the teacher, her name wasn't Pat, brought him by one evening and we sat right down in the living room and talked. And I told him, I said, "I know just how you feel." I said, "But we're dealing with a lot of things here." And we got him in our corner. But that was hard work. | 34:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was there a lot of stress in that job? | 35:34 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes. I came down with intestinal flu after Christmas and Clarence was home from college. And usually before I could concentrate on enjoying Christmas, I'd want to get my taxes paid and get his certified check to go back to Morehouse. Or maybe we would send it before Christmas for the next semester. And I was sick and part of it was emotional along with the sad streak that loners get during the holidays. And that was one of the times that I didn't want to go back to work. I said, "Chef, you know you got to go to work. You got a mortgage and a child in school." | 35:37 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And this friend of my husband's, they were both into there— He was a Dr. Dodges, he did his doctoral program at Carolina. And my husband was at NYU, but he was a counselor in Pender County, and he was vice president at Cape Fear Community College that's all over the paper right now. I don't know when they're going to get straight down there. And he had offered me two jobs and he said, "Well, as long as you are out of Cooper, I sort of feel responsible for you because we Clarence's were friends." His name is Clarence too. He said, "I'd like to see you come down here to work with us." | 36:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | At the community college? | 37:27 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. I declined twice. I don't want to work all year. | 37:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, did they work— Okay. | 37:33 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I want to work these 10 months and be through. But that year at Sunset, it didn't take much to turn my head. And he sent me a message by a friend of mine whom my husband had encouraged to go into education. And he was already teaching down there. He had left the Williston School and went to Cape Fear. So Jim Fason said, "Ida, have a message for you from Dr. Dodgens." He said, "He asked me to tell you that there is a position in related instruction for an English instructor. And it's yours if you want it." So he said, "Well, I know what—" I said, "Jim, hold up." I said, "We're having South Atlantic Regional Conference here in June, and I am coordinator." | 37:40 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Of the sorority? Okay. | 38:58 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Of the regional conference. I said, "But meanwhile, get an application form to me." I said, "I'm interested now." I said, "Lord knows I am." I said, "I can't take much more of this." And said, "The sun never sets at sunset. There's action over here all the time," especially when you have kids who run away. They had children— | 39:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | They ran away from— This was a junior high school and they'd just run away? | 39:27 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And one morning the phone rang about 3:00 in the morning. "Ms. Cooper, can you come get us?" Two little White girls who had gone off— | 39:31 |
| Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:39:41] | 39:40 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Who had gone off with some Marines and were afraid to go back home and they put them out down there by Hampstead somewhere, between Ogden and Hampstead. I said, "Call the sheriff." "We're about—" I said, "You call the sheriff." I said, "My job, I'm not responsible to you." But they started by, I said, "You should have thought of that when you left home, when you sneaked off." I said, "I'm sorry." I said, "No, I can't come." I said, "Your parents will hold me liable." I said, "But law enforcement is what you need now." A 15 year old, junior high was 7, 8, 9. | 39:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. I wanted to ask you, you mentioned that when you moved, you had problems with the contractor. Did you face any other problems being a woman having to support your son? | 40:32 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yeah. | 40:42 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind? | 40:46 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, with the construction of the house. | 40:46 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did people try to take advantage of you? | 40:48 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, indeed. And I'd come out and ask questions. | 40:52 |
| Sonya Ramsey | They'd ignore you. | 40:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. So finally one day I said, "Well, that's all right." I said, "I can get my information." And finally I told one one day, I said, "It may interest you to know that I'm responsible for you." I said, "I don't give you your pay, but I'm the source of it." And then finally, this our house and that sort of thing. But yes, then had to deal with my contract too because he declared bankruptcy. And I had a lot of people that I had to deal with and my first move was to get an attorney and he saw me through, but it was a grand mess. Oh, I never knew that I knew so much. I learned so many four letter words. But anyway, getting back to the school situation and leaving Sunset, I tendered my resignation in June and I went down and signed my contract at Cape Fear. It was a technical institute then. Later we all, most of us now community colleges. Board of Education wouldn't release me. They made me work until the end of August. Made me work all summer. | 41:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were they upset that you were leaving? | 42:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes. They wanted to know why. And Dr. Alman said, "Well, we'll let you go into any high school that you want to and work. We need strong teachers." And I said, "Well, you didn't seem to need them when you threw me at Sunset." I said, "That was a grand insult." I said, "I've never been so unhappy in all my days." "Yes, but you helped us to get through the school year over there and keeping parents and students calm. And parents told us how fair-minded you were in dealing with the students and helping to create an atmosphere that was conducive for learning." I said, "I appreciate all of those accolades, gentlemen, but my late husband was an administrator, but I was prepared to teach and that's what I want to do." "Well, we'll let you go to any high school that you want to." I said, "I signed a contract this morning and I will begin down there in September." So, that's where I spent my last 10 years of teaching. | 42:36 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did that experience differ, teaching older students than teaching the younger students? | 43:57 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I'll say, as I told the reporter who interviewed me when I was ready to retire, and I'll show you that article. If you know your skills, you can demand respect if you know what you're doing. And I traveled a lot to conferences in Florida and Tennessee and well, I went to Maine for a newspaper and the classroom workshop. That was while I was still in the public schools. The supervisor, that was when I was at Virgo, noticed that I used the newspaper a lot and she was impressed. So, she recommended me for one of the stipends to go to that seminar that year. And that was at Syracuse University, so I could go to Syracuse for three weeks. But I went to Maine one summer for a writer's workshop at Westbrook Community College. And that was— | 44:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was that an integrated group? | 45:28 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. That was a really rewarding four weeks. We worked our bottoms off, but it was meaningful. And I did a lot of things too. There were area conferences for English instructors teaching technical writing and communication skills, the kinds of things that you need. And you really have to sell technical writing to students at that level. First of all, students don't like to write. It's organized thinking and putting it on paper and rewriting. And oh, to say rewrite something, you got to be out of your mind. As long as it took to write this and you asking me to edit it and rewrite it. Oh fuss and cuss. Well, the choice is yours. But I have found, or I did find in my 34 years that students want to be disciplined. And if you know what you're teaching, they listen. | 45:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Students, you have things like that toward learning. | 0:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, the older students had goals and plans, and they knew why they were there and they wanted to do their work. There were those who had reservations about your being Black or Afro American. And I recall this experience with some of the Marine students when I went there. Marine technology was the big program, and very few Blacks at that time were in those programs. In fact, I don't think they had any Black students at all. | 0:06 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Now, they had some in marine lab technology, and for most of these students, I had them for speech and technical writing, the business students, business communications, reading and composition and terminology and vocabulary. This was a class of marine students. So I think there was a little bet as to whether this young man would say this to me. And this was the first day of the class and we were getting the preliminary things done, the signing the slips and checking the roll and the syllabus for the semester, not for the quarter. | 0:54 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And one young man said, we were using classrooms upstairs in the police building, which was across the street. No, you haven't been here long enough to know where police headquarters is located, but it's downtown right across from the college, "Aren't you uncomfortable in here with us?" I said, "No. Are you uncomfortable?" I said, "No, I'm quite comfortable. I'm concerned about your being comfortable and I hope you are." "I just thought you might be uncomfortable in here with us." I said, "No." I said, "Well, let's break this down." I said, "Now granted, I'm the only female in here, but I do know about men. I have a son who is possibly your age, older or younger than some of you, and he's in college. And I had a husband. I was married for 15 years. My husband's deceased, so I do know about men. And I've had a similar setting before, so let's get on with the business of what we are going to do in technical writing." | 1:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And I proceeded to tell them about the paper or project report that the student in each program was required. That was a requirement of the institution. I said, "And if at any time I should become uncomfortable," maybe I had about 30 in that class, I said, "I believe I have a roster here of young men who will come to my rescue and we'll look after each other. Okay?" And they giggle, the other giggle because he had lost his, I don't know what the bet was, but that was the kind of thing. Now, that wasn't the point at all. You know what the point was? | 3:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | He wanted to point the fact out that you were Black. | 4:22 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah, yeah. A Black female. And here you got a whole class of White males. | 4:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did they ever question your grading and things like that? | 4:31 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No. I had no problem with that because there, again, I had developed a reputation of being fair, and if you ever wanted to go over your grades, okay, there's time for that. Not during class time. After class, or whenever I'm in the office, I'll go over your grades with you and whatever is on the course outline is what you're expected to do. | 4:35 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were there that many other Black teachers there at the community college? | 5:08 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | When I went there, no. | 5:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you the only one or? | 5:14 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I was the only one in related instruction when I went there, full-time. | 5:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did the other teachers treat you, interact with you? | 5:20 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | All right. | 5:21 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were there any problems there? | 5:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | There were those, there was one gentleman who did not want technical writing. He was picky about what he wanted to teach, and he wanted to trade courses with me, so I told him, his name was John Young, I said, "No, John." "You mean to tell me you aren't willing to trade nine hours for six hours." I said, "John, I want to teach my own speech classes." I said, "No." I said, "If you understand technical writing, then that's between you and Roger." That was our division director, and I just been trained with him. He won't teach technical writing. That was more work, and the only way you're going to get students to do assignments and perform is to check and correct papers. And really, I developed an eye problem. This is this left one, it's a bad eye, but I've been using antibiotics for the last two weeks and it's something that happens in there, but that was a part of my reason for retiring as early as I did. See, I've been out 11 years, but then we had another lady, she's still down there. | 5:27 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | She was sort of rattle brained, and I say that because she'd gone through three or four marriages and I don't think she's with the—She finally married a Black fellow and I think he works. He's in the Middle East now, but he was a student down there at one time. But anyway, Joe would, "Roger has told me I can have this, this, and this." I said, "Well, I'm not interested in knowing what you're teaching." "Well, it means that you're going to have to take this and this stuff." "Oh," I said, "I'll challenge you." I said, "I'm not going to stand by and take 12 hours of—" | 7:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | They wanted you to do more work than what they was. | 7:54 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I said, "I'm not going to stand by and take 12 hours of technical writing and you have 12 hours of speech." He said, "That makes sense." I said, "I don't have any secrets then. If I can't get results from the division director, I'll go to the dean and the president." I said, "All is fair in love and war and teaching too." So this is the way you have, and once you establish that kind of rapport, nobody's seeking love. We got family and friends to love us and neighbors. | 7:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were the salaries better at the community house than they were in the public schools? | 8:33 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They started me off with what I was getting because I had what, 25 years under my belt, and I was getting, that maximum master salary because when the president talked with me, he said, "Well, I know, Clarence would die if I didn't hire you." He said, "Because he's been trying to get you down here." That was my husband's friend. He said, "And we know you're qualified and we're happy to have you." He said, "But we got to match your salary here." He said, "But we'll be good to you." So we got salary increases and I got to, as I said, go to a lot of meetings. Last big conference that I went to was four Cs conference in Washington. | 8:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What is the four Cs? | 9:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Composition, Communications. What does other two Cs stand for? | 9:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was that for English that you taught? | 10:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. | 10:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 10:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And I really enjoyed that. | 10:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you about, you seemed like you were involved with Delta activities throughout after you graduated and things like that. What kind of activities did you do after you finished school? | 10:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Other than Delta? | 10:23 |
| Sonya Ramsey | No, with Delta, things like that. | 10:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Okay. We had career day. At one time Delta had, one of our strong projects was the library. We had fundraising projects and, of course, the Jabberwock was one. We had May week activities, and I used to speak for May week for quite a few chapters. I went to Goldsborough and I've been back to Fayetteville and we usually had guest artists. | 10:27 |
| Sonya Ramsey | May week, what was May week designed for what happened during that week? | 11:20 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It's activities where sorors assemble to for socializing and recognizing sorors for their participation during the year. And we worship together and we go out to eat after the worship service, that kind of thing. But it's, you might say internal recognition within the chapter. | 11:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever hold any offices or things like that? | 12:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Everything except that related to money. I've never been financial secretary. I've never been treasurer, and at this point I don't expect to be. I have been president, I've been vice president, I've been recording secretary, corresponding secretary, historian, sergeant in arms, and presently I'm chaplain. | 12:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did your chapter or the other chapters you belong to do any activities, civil rights activities or political activities like NAA, work with? | 12:36 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. Social action. We are life members in the ACP and we have had some really dynamic speakers here. And just this year we, well, we did not have Spelman president. What his name? | 12:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:13:06] | 13:05 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Students at the university sponsored her for National Women's Month. But Gloria Scott was our founder's day speaker in January. It cost us a pile of money because she had to fly here that Sunday and leave Monday morning. The fair was outrageous. But over the years had Helen Edmonds and we have a soror who is the only Black optometrist in North Carolina. She's a Carolina graduate, Paula Newsom, and she practices in Charlotte, and she came back, I think it was seventh, fifth anniversary, but she came back to be our founder state speaker. | 13:07 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember any pupil speaking or activities you did during segregation time for social action? | 14:03 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Helen Edmonds was here. And then we had Lynette Taylor one year who was our executive secretary at that time. Lynette came, and that was the same year that we had the regional here. She was really a super lady. I don't know if you remember that name or not, but she was executive director for about 14 years. | 14:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did the Delta Chapters, did they involve themselves in the marches and things like that and work with departments of training and things like that? | 14:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Not on a large scale. No, we have been active participants in the Azalea Festival. In fact, we were the first sorority to have a float in the—Our queens used to ride on the float. And then as the prices of those floats escalated to almost a thousand dollars for a few hours, we decided that we could take that money and take our children to other points. So they have been to—What is it? Kings? | 14:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Dominion? | 15:40 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Dominion. | 15:41 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Amusement Park? | 15:42 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. They went to Washington one year. They have been to Six Flags and spent time in the Atlanta area. And we felt that that was much more meaningful. We took all the Jabberwock participants and the children were given their trip and parents and others who wanted to go. And of course there were sorors who were chaperones. They thought that was more meaningful than paying that astronomical fee for a float for a few hours. | 15:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | The Azalea Festival, what was that? Could you talk about what that was? | 16:24 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, this is a city of, I believe they say a million azaleas. And each year in the spring, about azalea peak time, there was a festival. People come from all over the country. They've had bands from as far away as Pennsylvania, New Jersey. | 16:30 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And this is integrated, or was it? | 16:58 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. | 17:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | But Delta were the first Black people to put— | 17:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | To have a sorority, it had a float there. | 17:04 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What time was that? What time period was that when they started doing that? | 17:07 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh, that was in the early seventies. Yeah. | 17:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Hadn't been any other Black clubs— | 17:08 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Prior to that. But then other groups did have, and frankly, I don't think any of us have them now. There are community groups that have floats now. But I don't believe any of the sororities and fraternities have looked in it. That price just went out of sight. But for a while there, the Zetas and the AKAs and Deltas and the Alphas and the Omegas had floats. I don't think Sigmas have ever had a float, but all of those groups are active in the community. | 17:22 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What are some of the, during segregation times, what chapters were you affiliated with then? | 18:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Chapters? | 18:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were you affiliated in New Jersey? | 18:16 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, I was never affiliated in New Jersey, but I was in the Salisbury area when I taught in Cinepolis. And then when I came back to the state and started working in Clinton in my home county at Sampson High School, that's when the president's wife at Federal State said, "Hey, she and another soror of ours were classmates at Virginia State. Both of them had been made on Virginia State's campus. And that's when 11 of us got Fayetteville alumni started. And we helped to set up the first chapter on that campus too. So they're quite active there now. I'll let you see their program and huge roster, that they have. | 18:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. At Fayetteville, what were some of the service projects that they did? | 19:28 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | They did projects at the Y, and of course they always participated in the Homecoming parade, and we would assist them with their float and they would always participate in the Jabberwock. | 19:33 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did the younger sorors look up to the older sorors and things like that? | 19:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, they did. And it wasn't just an idea of, hey, you got to help us, so we want you to help us, so we have to be nice. I think these were young women who aspired to belong and be like Dorothy Height and Patricia Roberts Harris and Thelma Daley and Lillian Benbow and many of the other sorors. They learned about them. This is the thing that disturbs me somewhat now with our membership intake project. One year at our closed Founder's day, I asked sorors to talk about, I gathered as many copies of I Dream a World. Are you familiar with that compilation? | 20:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. | 21:28 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Ruby Dee was here to do a film for a mini-series. We have a studio here now. And we had a reception for her. | 21:29 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Why did you continue participating in the sorority after college? What did the activities in your sorority mean to you? | 21:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, it was constructive and an opportunity to do service beyond my chosen profession. And as Maya Angelou—Is it Lou? Yeah. Said on Oprah yesterday or the day before that you always learn. There's no end to the learning situation. And I have learned in Delta. | 21:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What are some of the things that you've learned? | 22:34 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, maybe some more skills. And I've learned, I think the interaction with people from different backgrounds is growth. | 22:38 |
| Sonya Ramsey | All right. I wanted to ask, were there any other activities that you—Did you participate in any organizations like the NAACP? | 22:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. | 23:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did you do at that organization? | 23:11 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I haven't done a lot with NAACP beyond membership. I had played for a lot of programs that they had. I remember when the executive director came here once—What was that man's name? Anyway. I've helped with programs that they have sponsored, banquets and fundraisers | 23:12 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were ever involved in any social clubs, your bridge clubs and things like that? | 23:48 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, not really. I guess when other kids were playing cards in college, I was scuffling with my reading in English and a compliment. I was invited to bridge club when I came here, but that just wasn't quite my thing. Between the sorority and church and my Charlotte alumni group, we have a very active alumni group and we're having a little informal gathering here next week. Some folk who are coming in and we're going to do some things. I go to the concert series. I used to go regularly, the community concert series at the university. And I hide out in the theaters a lot. I go to the movies, sometime just to rest. And I suppose my church activities. I told you I have been organist at Chestnut Street now for almost 19 years and had the reputation at one time of being the community funeral and wedding organist, but after becoming stricken with a rare respiratory condition five years ago, I've cut out all of that. | 23:51 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to ask you, I forgot to ask you earlier about your church growing up and now, what role did religion play in your family's life? | 25:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | A very prominent role. You didn't ask about going to Sunday school. | 25:54 |
| Sonya Ramsey | No, I didn't ask about Sunday school. | 26:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | It was understood that you were going to Sunday school and to church. Of course, I was born and read in the Baptist Church. When I came here, my sister and her husband were members of the Presbyterian Church. Our mother was died in the World Baptist. And although I began playing at the Presbyterian Church before she died, out of respect to her, I did not join until she passed away in 75. But I was their active organist. I succeeded a lady who had been there for 40 plus years. I don't plan to be there that long. | 26:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | When you were a child, were you baptized? | 26:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes. | 27:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 27:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, a lot of people in the Baptist Church were baptized in the creeks and the rivers, but they had built a pool in the church. So I remember the occasion and I felt very good about it. That was something that was a physical ritual that I knew required a commitment and things that I was expected to do. And of course, I teased one of my classmates, whom I'm have seen a few times, she lives in Lawrenceburg, and her husband's a retired Presbyterian minister. She was very active on the basketball team. | 27:03 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I said, "Chaney?" She said, "Yes, I know. You didn't stray when we went to college." I said, "I was never so shocked in all my days when I heard that Chaney Walker had married a Presbyterian minister." She said, "You would've thought of doing that yourself?" I said, "No, I wanted no parts of ministers because everything I was hear was that, oh, you can do this in my church and you can do the other in my church." I said, "And Chaney Walker married a minister." She lives in Lawrenceburg. But we teased her about that because Chaney was the devil at school. | 28:08 |
| Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, did your mother give you any advice about how to be a proper wife and things like that? | 28:49 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Not really. She, I guess, had reservations about her rural rear daughter marrying someone who had an urban background. Don't mistreat my daughter. But we had her blessings and she helped us with our little one. And she was quite upset when my husband passed very suddenly in '65. | 29:00 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did your son's educational experience differ from yours? | 29:38 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He came along with that wild, undisciplined crowd of the late sixties and the early seventies. He did very well in college. | 29:44 |
| Sonya Ramsey | He went to Morehouse? | 30:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. | 30:01 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 30:02 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And somehow after he moved in that frat house, he got off on the beaten path. | 30:03 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What fraternity did he go to? | 30:13 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He's an Omega. He wanted to be a Kappa, but he said he would have too much explaining to do to some of his father's friends. | 30:16 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was husband in the grave then? | 30:22 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | So I said, "What do you think Ma said, the choice is yours." I said, "You won't get any questions from me." He said, "Yeah, well, everybody else won't be as tolerant as you are." So he went into bloody sigh, as they call it. But his experiences were quite different from mine. And he played a while and thought I was Fort Knox. But we got over the hurdles. So his wife is from Alabama and he works for the city. In fact, he just got a promotion with the fire department. He was just a paramedic before. But he's a lieutenant now. And he's had a few racist experiences with some of his subordinates who don't quite like the idea. | 30:26 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh no. | 31:43 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. Even now. And he says that after being in the other position for 14 years, he welcomes the change and he feels good about it because he earned it. 276, took the exam. This was back in February, and he ranked 16th. | 31:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's great. | 32:08 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | So he got one of the 34 jobs. | 32:11 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, that's great. Okay. Oh, I wanted to ask about going back and one more question about your experience at NYU. What was that experience like? | 32:12 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I felt uncomfortable for a while. May I get you summarize? | 32:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | No. Okay. | 32:30 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | But there again now, I had taught what, for four years, five years. | 32:32 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You had already started teaching before you went to graduate school? | 32:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, my husband stayed on me. And bless his heart, he bugged me, so it was easier to join him than to fuss with him. And I was happy that I did, because after he passed away, I don't think I would've been in any frame of mind then to go to graduate school. | 32:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And what did you major in in graduate school? | 33:10 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | English education. And I did all of my electives and music and was looking forward, as I said, to pursuing some studies in sacred music or maybe doing a master's program. But I enjoyed my courses. | 33:15 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And then this was the fifties or the sixties? | 33:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | The fifties. Because I completed my master's program in '56. | 33:39 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Were there many other Black students there? | 33:41 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. There were a lot of Southerners there, especially, because we could not attend the Black universities in the South. And many of them got stipends. Now, I think North Carolina had opened its doors because I did not get any out-of-state aid, but it wasn't too expensive then. It was $25 a point. | 33:43 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And your husband paid that your own way? | 34:16 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. | 34:18 |
| Sonya Ramsey | You had White teachers? How did you they interact with you? | 34:21 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Beautifully. | 34:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Really? | 34:24 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | I remember some of the instructors that I had, scholarly men. One was editor of clearinghouse magazine. He was a Dr. Forest Long. And then two of my main English instructors were Dr. Salt, S-A-L-T. And we tease him all the time. We said, "All right, we are ready to be preserved today, George Salt." And a doctor Jay Steven Blower, who was undoubtedly one of the most scholarly instructors that I had ever had. He was just brilliant. And we had our little study groups. | 34:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Within your study groups, were there White students in your study groups? | 35:22 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Of course. | 35:25 |
| Sonya Ramsey | And how was that experience like? | 35:25 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We exchanged, we went over our notes and got them organized. And then we pretty much, what? Maybe if you missed something, I got it. And we would put in a couple of hours after class time whenever it was convenient for all of us. | 35:28 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Was that the first time you ever worked that closely with White student? | 35:44 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes, it was. | 35:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | How did you feel about that? | 35:47 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | All right. I said, "My Black wasn't going to rub off on you, and vice versa." And my husband went with me regularly. We didn't drive to New York every day. We would go over together, get the bus down Penn Station, take the tubes over, get off at West Fourth Street and go on to Washington Square. And he went with me for a week and he said, "Now, we can leave together, but it won't make sense for us to try to wait and find each other, when our schedules were entirely different." So some days I would get a ride. One fellow in my class was from Bloomfield and he was in the study group, so he could put me off on West Main Street, in East Orange. And all I had to do was walk over. And that helped. | 35:52 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did he a White person or a Black person? | 36:53 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | He was White. | 36:55 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. How did you feel about that? Were you apprehensive about that? | 36:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Not really. We were in class together and he had a wife and children, and I had a husband and a child. So it really, and I think our upbringing maybe had something to do with that, because as I told you initially, we weren't brought up feeling that we were better than anybody else, but we were as good as anybody else. And I think that when parents, and those were among the things that mama instilled into us, even treat everybody as you would like to be treated and you're going to treat them right even. Do as you would have them do for you. So I had no problems with that. And I attribute my getting along with the students at Cape Fear. I attribute my experiences and exposure to getting along as well as I did. And the only thing I would have accused of, for the most part, she thinks her course is the only one that we have to prepare for. She gives us too much work, but that's old hat with students. | 36:59 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I've asked all the questions I can think of. Is there anything that I should ask or I didn't ask? | 38:26 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, I think we've pretty much covered it. I will add that my recent years having been very active in the Presbyterian Church, I have had exposure beyond the local church level. I have been very active on the presbytery level. In fact, when the Presbyterian Church was merged back in, we now one body again. And I was vice moderator of our presbytery. And I've gone to a lot of meetings on the Senate and national level. In fact, our Presbyterian women's church-wide gathering and the other church was held at Purdue, and every triannual. And those, along with Delta involvements, I presided at our Atlanta National meeting. I presided in one of our workshops and in the church and in the sorority. | 38:29 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And of course when I was working, I told you about all the professional meetings that I attended. I think it helps one develop when you just expose yourself all the way. And I can relate to what's happening in the Midwest now because we met at, I went to Purdue four times, that over 12 years. And then in '91 we met at our state university in Ames, and we flew into Des Moines and the four of us, I was traveling with three other White ladies and we rented a car. And I have grown with those experiences. I have seen church development all the way to the general assembly or the church-wide gathering. And that has been very meaningful and I've enjoyed it. | 39:52 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever encounter any racism when you were moving out through your church activities and things like that? | 40:56 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Oh yes. I could tell you some stories about, we had our year before last, we had our annual gathering in Fayetteville. And there was one lady who was on the program committee as vice moderator. I was responsible for the program and she gave me a fit so much so. And she saw that since I was in the driver's seat, I was going to call the shots and plan the program. And when we finally—Oh, she talked about me to the moderator, like, "That woman needs help. I don't see how anybody could ever elect her to be vice moderator." I said, "Well, if I need the help, Ellen, she must be looking at whomever she sees in the mirror. And it is she who needs the help." I said, "I don't need Harriet Cromarty because I know my job and I'm going to do it." | 41:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | So when we had to gather and we went up to Fayetteville and planned the meeting, and the minister and their local moderator knew that she had been ugly. And she had probably talked to everybody that she could talk to about that Black woman from Wilmington who's supposed to know and doesn't know. We had a beautiful gathering. I did what I was supposed to do, and I went over and spoke to her. She was in the kitchen. But I went over and spoke to Harriet Cromarty and called her by name and thanked her. I said, "We are grateful to first church in Fayetteville for letting us come here. And we have had a beautiful program. And the thanks goes to all of you." | 42:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What did she say after? | 43:00 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | "Well, we're happy if you've enjoyed yourself." But she gave me a fit. And I guess I was supposed to cop out, but I didn't. But speaking of social life, my husband was quite a night hopper. | 43:06 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What kind of activities did he do? | 43:20 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, he enjoyed dancing. | 43:24 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 43:26 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And he tried to teach me bowling, but he declared, he said, "You're agile at the piano and the organ, but you got two left feet." I said, "It's not so." But I got to go a lot of places that I probably would not have gone. | 43:27 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Do dancing? | 43:45 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yeah. And I enjoyed that. | 43:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Where did you go? Where did couples go to dance? | 43:55 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, there were night spots in Newark. And I remember we used to go, this was before Sara Bum reached stardom. This little nightclub down in Newark that we used to frequent and she used to sing there a lot. And then the right people from New York heard her and she was gone. And during the Birdland days with Charlie Yardbird Parker and some of the others, and anywhere we heard that Nat King Cole was going to perform, we went there. And he loved Nancy Wilson. And of course, we always went to his alumni dances at Winston. They were more exciting than what we had at Charlotte. | 43:58 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, why was that? Why? | 44:51 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Because they always had a named band for that Friday night dance. | 44:53 |
| Sonya Ramsey | What were some of the popular dances then? | 44:58 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, during college days, it was the Jersey Bounce. And the bug, never learned how to do the bug. And of course, ballroom and off time and one step and two step were always the basic dance steps. And then what was that, that silly dance? There's another silly one that we used to do. And of course everybody liked to slow dance. But I think he was in the dance group during his college days. | 45:02 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. When you went out to dance, what kind of clothes did you wear to dance? | 45:54 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, in New York we could wear just about anything you wanted to wear. I would usually, we'd drive to New York on Fridays and maybe I would wear a skirt, and then I just change and put on my fussy blouse that night. That sort of simplified things. But there are clothing. Well, you know how it goes and comes. | 46:09 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever travel on vacations with your husband? | 46:35 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We did get to— | 46:39 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | We're planning a little vacation that summer. We had Clarence was in a church camp up in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania that summer before. And he wanted him to go to a really good camp where they had a lot of things to do. | 0:01 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | So we took him to Clara B's Camp All America up in Cornwall, New York there on the campus of the New York Military Academy. And that's where our son was when he died a week later. And of course I took Clarence out and Clara B. was really compassionate. He was the old Long Island coach and athletic director at Long Island University. | 0:26 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | And we came here. We were here that next year and the house was under construction. And of course, "Ma, I want to go back." He heard from some of his friends during the winter and there were boys who knew that he lost his father and they would write him and he corresponded with them and, "Are you coming to camp next summer? Are you going to be over?" So I said, "Son, we are building a house." I said, "Don't we need that $600 to—" "Well, Ma, can I use my social security check?" "Huh?" I said, "Don't you want to help?" "I don't want to watch the house. I want to go back to camp. Daddy told me I could go for two years." So what are you going to say then? | 0:59 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Well, he had most of his stuff, some of it to get outgrown and they don't need a lot of dress up clothing for campus, shorts and T-shirts and what have you. And I took him to New Jersey and my husband's brother was living there and we hauled him on up to Cornwall. I said, "Now I'm not going to visit you." I said, "Because the house is under construction and I have choosing appliances and what have you, fixtures at seven." So I didn't visit him. His uncle went up to visit him and he had two years at Camp All America. But he enjoyed it. | 1:57 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Didn't your mother came to live with you there? | 2:45 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | Yes. She was the lady of the house here. She died in 75'. So I looked after her for 10 years after my husband passed. | 2:47 |
| Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think, is there anything else? | 3:06 |
| Ida Boykin Cooper | No, I think we've— | 3:06 |
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