00:00:04.160 - 00:00:17.820

The date is October 23rd, 2023. It's 4 p.m. The North Carolina collection of the Durham County Library. The interviewer is Carter B. Cue

00:00:18.560 - 00:00:27.780

and the interviewee is Norman E. Pendergraft. For the record, could you state your name? Norman E.

00:00:28.300 - 00:00:33.320

Pendergraft. And what does that E stand for? Elvis. Elvis, alright.

00:00:34.260 - 00:01:03.980

Could you say something about where you were born and your family and your early life? I was born on Watts Street at the corner of Watts and Demerius. Demerious comes into, coming west, ends at Watts, so the corner on the left as Demerius ends is where the cottage is. It's still there, believe it or not, and across the street from it is the Watts Street grocery, a little tiny thing.

00:01:04.340 - 00:01:32.000

I think there's a lawyer in there now, and the person that owns the house today has doubled it in size, but you can still see the cottage. I was born there March 4, 1934. Dr. Norman Bowles delivered me, and of course he was a very popular doctor, and many of the mothers named their son after him. I should be Harvey Jr., but I didn't make it.

00:01:32.540 - 00:01:43.680

My father's name was Harvey. And did you have any brothers or sisters? I have a brother who is no longer with us. He's two years younger than I.

00:01:44.520 - 00:02:14.130

Ronald Wilson Pendergraft and my sister Betty Jean Pendergraft King, she's very much with us. We just had a wonderful trip to Hickory and went to the art museum there, which is quite beautiful. What were your parents' names and what were their occupations? My father was Harvey Wilson Pendergraft, and when I was born, he worked at Golden Belt.

00:02:14.820 - 00:02:34.300

He was making, I guess, silk stockings. I think that's what they were doing at that time, 1934. But over the beginning of my life, he was changing and ultimately became an auto mechanic. At that time, it was easy.

00:02:34.720 - 00:03:05.520

You could pretty much correct a T-model Ford with a piece of bailing wire. When the war came along, he was full time keeping cars going. With the rationing, there were no parts, so the cars had to be kept up with whatever you could collect that would make them work. My mother, on the other hand, was a housewife.

00:03:06.320 - 00:03:20.660

Her name is Essie May Wilson Pendergraft. She was a twin. My grandmother had two girls, Essie and Bessie. Were they identical twins or fraternal twins?

00:03:20.680 - 00:03:27.340

Identical. They were identical. They were the only children she had. My father had five sisters.

00:03:28.060 - 00:03:49.600

He was the oldest, and he had five sisters. There was Geraldine, who was next to Dad, then Christine, then Amanda, and Sarah, and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was the youngest. Were they natives of Durham as well?

00:03:49.600 - 00:04:03.740

Oh, yes. Well, I say yes. They were in Durham after I was born, but they lived in Warrington at one point. I don't know how long they were there.

00:04:04.260 - 00:04:23.840

I know my father became a gardener there. He enjoyed working with this wealthy woman's garden, keeping her roses. He always enjoyed gardening, and I inherited that love from him. Mother liked flowers, too, but I truly enjoy it.

00:04:25.060 - 00:04:45.820

I read in a newspaper article that you were a descendant of the Stone family, and you lived on the Stagville plantation in Durham. What year was that, and what was that experience like? Well, my grandmother married Walter Stone. He was not my grandfather.

00:04:46.480 - 00:05:10.860

I never knew my grandfather. He was a Wilson, and he left my grandmother and my mother and my aunt when they were infants. He was a person non grata, and when he was ill in the rest home here in Durham, I was going to go see him, and my mother said, you better not go. You'll nail nails in your grandmother's coffin.

00:05:12.200 - 00:05:24.920

So I didn't go, and I regret it. I would like to have met him. But you never had a chance to meet him. I never did, but my grandfather Stone is the grandfather I knew and grew up with.

00:05:24.920 - 00:05:53.180

In 1939, they were living in Burlington, and they were tenant farmers. They came to Durham. Bell Cameron, the Cameron estate had fallen to Mrs. LaBoise and Bell Cameron. They were sisters, and Mrs. LaBoise's maiden name, I don't remember her first name, but she lived in Fairntosh.

00:05:53.800 - 00:06:19.520

And Bell inherited Stagville, and I assume Horton Grove as well, as you know today. They're both historic sites. But Stagville had not been lived in for a while, and in 1939, and I was born in 34, so I was still a child, and I was sure that that house was full of ghosts. I did not want to be by myself.

00:06:20.380 - 00:06:49.440

And so when my grandparents moved there, Horton Grove was there, and farming was by the hand job then. You really had, very few people had equipment, so you needed little hands for worming tobacco, for suckering tobacco, for throwing soda to corn and all these things, and I did it. Sounds like you were a pretty good primer. No, I did not.

00:06:49.600 - 00:06:59.220

I was not old enough to prime. You had to be a little stronger than that. And by the time I was old enough to prime, I was allergic to tobacco. Thank God.

00:06:59.240 - 00:07:04.420

Lucky for you. I hated it. Oh, it's awful. Try to get it off your hands.

00:07:04.440 - 00:07:13.300

Oh, I know, I know, I know. Handing leaves. I loved it. It was beautiful out in Stagville.

00:07:14.520 - 00:07:31.420

And Uncle Will Veazey, we called, in those days, we weren't allowed to say, Mr., you know, I would call you Uncle, you'd be my uncle. I had a lot of black uncles. Uncles and aunts, yeah. But Uncle Will had been born a slave.

00:07:31.780 - 00:07:45.920

His name was Will Veazey, I found out later, but I only knew him as Uncle Will. And he lived down, there was an old slave house that was still standing. Was that the Hart House? I don't know what it was.

00:07:46.280 - 00:07:58.300

At the time, it didn't have a name. But it had lots and lots of cracks. And my uncle worked for Liggett & Myers. I think it was Liggett & Myers.

00:07:58.400 - 00:08:11.440

One of the big tobacco firms. And he got those large posters. And Uncle Will put them on the walls. And it was decorative, and it also insulated.

00:08:12.280 - 00:08:23.240

He was an interesting man. And he had lots of nieces. Now, do you remember Uncle Will's last name? Veazey.

00:08:23.640 - 00:08:30.560

Okay, Will Veazey. I did not know that until later. V-E-A-S-Y, I guess. I think it is, I'm not sure.

00:08:31.440 - 00:08:54.620

I knew Mr. Matty Peak. He was over toward Horton Grove, but not in that area. He was to the Durham side of the road that goes out to Bahama. And he gave my grandparents garlic.

00:08:55.040 - 00:09:10.260

I don't think they had ever grown garlic. So that was the first time I saw garlic growing was in his garden. He had a wonderful vegetable garden. And at Central, when I was teaching at Central, I met a number of his descendants that were working there.

00:09:11.660 - 00:09:32.440

So there at the Stagville Plantation, how often did you stay there with your grandparents? Almost every summer. Because that's when we were needed. And a couple of times, my parents moved constantly during the war.

00:09:33.740 - 00:09:57.720

Dad would go from, I don't know where all he went, but he was never drafted because of his occupation. So many times when they would move, we would stay, my brother and I would stay with our grandparents. So I think I went to Mangum School first in the third grade, briefly. And then I went again in the fifth grade.

00:09:57.960 - 00:10:23.840

But that was because we were moving back to Durham, having lived in Norlina, then Warrenton, and Henderson. We came back to Durham. And at that time, if you bought a house, my parents bought a house at 9th and Englewood. And you had to give people six months to find a place to move to, because housing was so bad.

00:10:24.740 - 00:10:40.160

You know, the post-war years were very difficult. All these servicemen came home, got married, and wanted to start families and needed a place to live. So we lived out in the country near Dink Roberts. That was on the old, old Oxford Highway.

00:10:40.420 - 00:10:59.220

As you go out the Oxford Highway, Horton Grove is here, and the river is down here. And Dink's service station was there by the river. And that's where the library van, a truck, came. So my grandmother would go and get the library books there.

00:11:01.080 - 00:11:13.020

Stagville was not, yeah, there was a bookmobile from Durham Library. And Stagville was not electrified. There was no water, there was no electricity. Everything had to be carried in.

00:11:14.400 - 00:11:31.800

Candles, and we had one Aladdin lamp. And the Aladdin lamp had a silk screen in it, and it gave off a wonderful natural light. And so she would sit with the Aladdin lamp and read to us at night. And, of course, the house was heated with fireplaces.

00:11:33.240 - 00:12:00.800

And your front would burn up if you were near the fire, and your back would not burn up. Anyway, I've gotten off the subject. So how did your early life, your K-12 schooling, and your later matriculation from college shape your later accomplishments in life? I mean, because you had such a very rich upbringing as a child.

00:12:01.460 - 00:12:18.940

Well, my parents were very religious. And so I was very quiet, and I don't suppose I was all that religious. But I was very active. Anytime there was a play to be given, I would be there.

00:12:19.040 - 00:12:38.860

I loved to play the devil. Especially after I got into junior high and high school. Because I was active in the theater grill at Durham High and so forth. So I had wonderful art teachers.

00:12:39.440 - 00:12:57.360

Actually, I know almost all of my teachers from the public schools. We lived on Driver Avenue. And I don't know when Driver Avenue became Driver Street. But when I lived there, when I was six years old, I went to Wye Smith School.

00:12:57.640 - 00:13:12.480

And the building still stands on Driver. And it's a beautiful building. And across the street, diagonally from it, was the Methodist Church. And it was Car Methodist.

00:13:12.780 - 00:13:32.100

And of course, since Car has become a disreputable name for public buildings, it's no longer called that. But they had a wonderful organ and fabulous choir. And my cousin sang in that choir when he got married and lived there. And was buried from that church.

00:13:32.820 - 00:13:48.580

And I've been there recently. One of my classmates at Carolina, Cecil Gale, was an organist there for many years. And he was much loved. I hear wonderful stories about him from my cousin.

00:13:49.200 - 00:14:02.860

Anyway, I started liking the theater. I loved to play. I remember, as I said, we moved a lot. In the second grade, something happened.

00:14:02.960 - 00:14:13.440

I don't know. That's when my sister was born. And I think mother had some sort of psychiatric situation because no one talked about that. And they would never talk about it.

00:14:13.460 - 00:14:25.000

So I will never know. But she was often away. And so we lived in Bethesda for a while. First, I started in Greensboro, of all places.

00:14:25.000 - 00:14:38.600

My great-grandmother lived in Greensboro. And so we were in Greensboro. I had a week in school in the second grade in Greensboro at the beginning of the year. We moved to Bethesda.

00:14:38.900 - 00:14:52.340

The school had not begun yet. So I didn't miss any school at Bethesda. And then we moved to Catsburg, where the old Catsburg store was. Yeah.

00:14:55.660 - 00:15:12.100

Cat Belvin, Sarah Belvin, lived in his house here. And the store was in the forks because the old Oxford Road goes this way. And the road that goes down here goes off to a modern school, which I don't know. Horton Road.

00:15:12.200 - 00:15:26.040

No, I can't remember. Anyway, so I went to school there. And I was there at Christmastime. And the teacher, Miss Nichols, had me do paintings to go in.

00:15:26.100 - 00:15:35.260

We had a big box. And you drop a sheet of paper down in. So it was a kind of motion picture or slideshow. But it was the actual object, you know.

00:15:35.600 - 00:15:48.580

So that was fun. And starting in the second grade, I started drawing. And I always got my teachers to know, let them know that I liked to draw. And I'd often do chalkboard things and so forth.

00:15:49.640 - 00:16:10.420

And it wasn't uncommon in those days. As a matter of fact, later on, when I was teaching at Central and I learned about Isaac Scott Hathaway, who did the first two coins that are minted by the U.S. Mint. He was in Kentucky. And he lived with his sister.

00:16:11.100 - 00:16:23.420

And for entertainment, they had a boarding house for entertainment. She would play the piano. And he would do drawings on the chalkboard. Now, did you ever have the opportunity to meet Scott Hathaway?

00:16:23.720 - 00:16:35.140

No, he had died before I was in. I didn't get to that part of my life until 1966. But his widow is still alive. I talked to her.

00:16:35.360 - 00:16:49.420

Oh, wow. Did you know that there is a bust of C.C. Spaulding that's down at C.C. Spaulding Elementary? Yes. As a matter of fact, I showed it in this exhibition, which I organized for the library.

00:16:50.540 - 00:17:03.240

Durham Chautauqua, The Black Man in Art. And that was August the 28th to September the 21st, 1974. At Stanford in the lower level. In the lower level.

00:17:03.300 - 00:17:06.340

In the basement. Before the restoration. That's right. In addition.

00:17:07.440 - 00:17:15.160

Were you there? I was around. That Stanford one was my branch. And I would go there.

00:17:15.340 - 00:17:25.260

Well, Mrs. White was in charge of it. I was going there in the 5th grade, and the 4th grade, and the 6th grade. I remember it quite well. Edna Mills lived next door.

00:17:25.620 - 00:17:32.540

Dr. Mills had died by then. Dr. Mills, that is right. And I see they're restoring that house. I'm so grateful.

00:17:32.780 - 00:17:37.680

It's such a beautiful house. It really is. I'm looking forward to the rest of that restoration. Same here.

00:17:37.980 - 00:17:55.480

I'm sorry, I got off the subject. Well, let me go back to 1st grade. My teacher, Owen, Draws Avenue, had, in between the sidewalk and the curb, pomegranates. I had never seen anything more beautiful.

00:17:55.780 - 00:18:07.900

All of those wonderful pomegranates with those orange blossoms. And, of course, I don't know what happened to them. I guess the winter has killed them long ago. But the school was a beautiful school.

00:18:07.900 - 00:18:19.900

And Ms. House was my 1st grade teacher. And she was truly impressive. She had a platform. There were three levels.

00:18:20.300 - 00:18:37.560

So to get to her desk, you had to walk up three levels. She was something. And I do remember Ms. Nichols at Bethesda. I cannot...

00:18:37.560 - 00:18:56.040

What grades were at when you went out to Bethesda? At Bethesda? It was kindergarten through, well, I don't think kindergarten, but 1st grade through 11th. Because when I started, there were only 11 grades.

00:18:56.340 - 00:19:09.380

By the time I got to high school, we had to go 12th. But no. When I first went to Bragtown, it was only 11 grades. And we had interesting entertainment.

00:19:09.760 - 00:19:27.040

Again, I got to do my acting business. Tom Thumb weddings were weddings that kids put on and people paid to come and see them. And it was one way the PTA made money. They'd have Tom Thumb weddings and womanless weddings.

00:19:27.520 - 00:19:43.040

And they'd get a football player with the hairiest legs they could find. And he would play the bride. Well, it had to be fun. You did not get a pretty young man.

00:19:45.720 - 00:19:58.380

You would never be cast. So now, and then of course, by the time... Where did you go to junior high school? That's the first time I went to school for a long while.

00:19:58.380 - 00:20:15.980

We came back to Durham, as I told you, and lived on the old Oxford Highway. And that was when I came back to Durham. We couldn't get into the house on 9th Street. So we lived up from Dink service station.

00:20:16.600 - 00:20:29.060

And I went to Mangum School in the 5th grade. And I'm trying to remember... Her name will probably come to me before we leave. But I...

00:20:29.060 - 00:20:44.280

There were only two of us in the 5th grade. So Pearl, Duke, and myself were the 5th grade. So we were in my brother's homeroom, who was in the 4th grade, for the morning. And then after lunch, we went to Miss Nichols.

00:20:44.760 - 00:20:59.320

You got a lot of one-on-one attention if you had two students in the class. Well, the other class got their attention. Pearl and I had to sort of teach ourselves. But we survived that year.

00:20:59.440 - 00:21:12.720

And then I moved from the old Oxford Highway into our house at 9th and Inglewood. And the house is still there. And it's one end of that block. And the other end is the fire station.

00:21:13.160 - 00:21:22.300

And across Knox Street is EK Powe. And that's where I went in the 6th grade. And I had Mrs. Ivy. Isaac.

00:21:22.540 - 00:21:35.120

Mrs. Isaac. Her husband was a doctor. And I am afraid the year she was my teacher, her husband left her. But she was an excellent teacher.

00:21:35.640 - 00:21:53.180

And then we crossed through a breezeway when we went to the 7th grade. That was a junior high. And some years later they tore it down and made it first grade through 6th, I think. Something like that.

00:21:54.020 - 00:22:09.760

And the new school over on Leon Street. Brogdon. The junior high moved to Brogdon. So you went from an outhouse and no amenities in Stagville.

00:22:10.300 - 00:22:22.900

Oh and water. We lugged. Because the well at the house at old Oxford Highway had surface water. So we couldn't use it.

00:22:22.940 - 00:22:34.980

We couldn't use it for bathing. So my brother and I would go up to the Dukes who lived at the entrance to Butner. Because that was the back entrance to Butner. Camp Butner of course came during the war.

00:22:35.460 - 00:22:47.700

And it had been closed by then. But we'd have to lug that water down. And wash day was terrible. But we were bussed to school and went to Mangum.

00:22:47.700 - 00:23:04.420

And one day I learned that we were poor. This girl was saying to her friend sitting next to her, that's where the poor people live. And I got off the bus and went there. And so what was that like?

00:23:04.480 - 00:23:17.040

So then you moved to your house in Inglewood, which I would assume had the indoor plumbing and all the amenities. It had everything. It was great. We had indoor plumbing most of the time when we were in Henderson.

00:23:18.020 - 00:23:28.480

I think in one house we didn't have. And in Norlina we did not. But we had a magnificent cherry tree. Which we had a ladder to get into.

00:23:28.680 - 00:23:38.980

My brother and I would climb up in it and eat until we were almost sick. Big hefty bean cherries. It was wonderful. I had a lovely childhood.

00:23:40.300 - 00:24:04.260

Now I came across some documentation that said that you sang with the male quartet in high school in a 1952 vocal contest. You sang, Give a Man a Horse, He Can Ride, by Jeffrey O'Hara. I know that's one of the staples in the baritone repertoire. Do you recall those experiences?

00:24:04.900 - 00:24:17.320

Oh yes. At Durham High I was very active in the theater. I'd already become active with the Durham Theater as well. I belonged to one of the dramatic clubs.

00:24:18.040 - 00:24:38.800

When we celebrated our centennial in 1953 Durham I couldn't grow a beard because my sideburns and my beard would not meet. They still don't meet very well. But I just never had a beard. It was an interesting time.

00:24:38.800 - 00:24:49.320

We had a big celebration. A major pageant that was done in the Duke football stadium. Wallace Wade? Wallace Wade, yeah.

00:24:49.740 - 00:25:04.340

I guess it had been named for him by then. But that's where it was held. I was with a group that did square dancing because we had colonial days and all of that. People wore bonnets.

00:25:04.520 - 00:25:15.500

Women wore bonnets. Men wore beards. It was a dress up time to celebrate our 100th anniversary. I belonged to the quartet.

00:25:16.240 - 00:25:28.260

I'm trying to think who was... There were four of us of course. Maybe I'll remember their names. Right now I can't remember their names.

00:25:28.660 - 00:25:52.360

The chorus Mr. Starnes was the choir director for the Durham High Chorus. I was in the chorus. He directed the music and helped us in setting up our repertoire and so forth. Of course in Durham at that time the schools were segregated.

00:25:53.040 - 00:26:06.780

Absolutely. There wasn't a black face in sight. Did you have any... Did your quartet have any interactions or engagement with the students over at Hillside?

00:26:07.120 - 00:26:23.540

No. None whatsoever. I sang in the choir at Blacknell Memorial Presbyterian which is in West Durham. At one point we were going to sing with the choir from the Presbyterian church over in near Central.

00:26:25.820 - 00:26:51.480

Apparently I was a young person so I wasn't involved in the discussions but apparently enough of the members of the church did not want it to happen and it didn't happen. We never did. We were going to do There is a Balm in Gilead which we did often as an anthem but we never got to sing. I was sad about that.

00:26:51.680 - 00:27:11.880

Now my parents because they were not Presbyterians. Mother had been a Presbyterian but when my sister was born she went berserk I think. She became a fundamentalist. So I grew up in the church of God which everything was a sin.

00:27:12.580 - 00:27:24.160

I couldn't look at anyone without saying it. And I love sin. No. I shouldn't say that.

00:27:24.720 - 00:27:46.860

We would go and I remember we didn't go to White Rock but we went to the church that is where the expressway goes. Is that not St. Joseph? Not St. Joseph, no. St. Joseph was up the hill but it was the Baptist church and it's still there.

00:27:47.000 - 00:28:05.900

It's on South Roxborough just before you go under 40. I mean the expressway. That's not, now St. Mark It is, I guess it is. It's right there and across the street they've built in that hole some storage units.

00:28:06.680 - 00:28:20.760

Oh, okay. I can't remember the churches. It has changed. It has changed and I think that I think that White Rock may have, I don't know, one of those churches was down, was that Pine Street I believe it was.

00:28:21.920 - 00:28:32.860

No, it was Roxborough then. And of course it backs onto that small pocket mall. And not Mount Vernon. Is that Mount Vernon?

00:28:33.580 - 00:28:54.460

Mount Vernon is just up the hill just a bit. So maybe it's Mount Vernon. Well, anyway, we would go and my father played the guitar and so we would go and we were always welcomed. So I guess my parents had a different view from some of their White relatives.

00:28:55.400 - 00:29:13.160

But we frequently went to Black churches. We went to one Duke's Chapel which is on the old, old Oxford Highway. And it was by a Duke, built by a Duke. And there was a Black church over across from it that we would go to.

00:29:13.940 - 00:29:27.460

We went to several of them churches. And we were always welcomed. So you grew up, you were exposed to the spiritual? Well, I had all of the traditional White stuff.

00:29:27.940 - 00:29:47.440

Uncles and aunts. No, I remember one of our mother's helpers she was, she made the most wonderful pies. She taught my mother how to make them too. And I met her.

00:29:48.240 - 00:30:04.680

I didn't learn to drive until I was 40. As an undergraduate you couldn't get grants if you had money, I mean had a car. And they didn't want you to have a car. And I liked to walk and I loved my bicycle.

00:30:05.300 - 00:30:22.020

So when I started teaching at Central I rode over on my bicycle. And I think it's part of the reason that's kept me up alive now at 90. That exercise was good for me. And I wish I would do it now but I'm not.

00:30:23.080 - 00:30:47.340

But no, I was exposed to all of the racism. I remember seeing colored water fountains and white water fountains and so forth. And I worked at Belks. And I don't recall having any black, and that's when I was in high school, cause you had to be 14 to go to work.

00:30:48.540 - 00:30:59.900

Get a workers permit. And I don't remember having any black colleagues at Belks. So, you know. That was it.

00:31:00.040 - 00:31:18.540

That was part of life. And when I took my first teaching job at Northwest High School in Greensboro it was not an integrated school. And that was 1962 to 63 that I taught there. And you went to, you went there after you graduated from Carolina?

00:31:18.800 - 00:31:37.900

Yeah, and after I served in the Navy. Now when I went in the Navy, that was integrated. Truman had integrated the service. So when I graduated from high school on June the 9th the next day I had already taken the test and everything back in December.

00:31:38.040 - 00:31:57.220

Now what year was that again? That would have been 1954. And of course the Korean War was going on. So I did not want to be drafted, so I went over in December and did the pre-test and all that to go in the Navy, but to finish the high school.

00:31:57.780 - 00:32:16.900

And so the day after I graduated I went to Raleigh and was sworn in. And there were eight of us that were sworn in at the same time. And two of us were black. Miller, and I can't remember the other guy's name, they were both from Greensboro.

00:32:18.520 - 00:32:40.500

And Miller died early, and the other one I don't know whether he's still alive or not. But when we went, it was five days on the train from North Carolina to San Diego. Because we shunted here and there and so forth. And I had a horrible experience in Alabama.

00:32:41.860 - 00:33:25.560

We had a voucher, and Ben Lloyd, who lives in Eflin, he's still alive, he's 95 I think now, but Ben had done a couple of years at State as a ROT guy. So he had military training, and he was given our papers, and he was in charge. He would be the recruit in charge. And so we all got off the train, because we had a couple of hours there I guess before our car was attached to another train going west.

00:33:26.000 - 00:33:41.440

And we went into this restaurant. And it wasn't a fancy restaurant. And I thought we were doing them an honor by going in. But we got there and started to sit down and they said, You can't eat in here!

00:33:42.000 - 00:33:55.260

And told the two guys to get out. And we were all getting ready to sit. I was so proud of my group that we got up and left. And that guy lost a pretty penny there.

00:33:55.920 - 00:34:11.300

But racism was doing that. And it doesn't work. Thank God. So now, so after, now how long was your stint there in the Navy?

00:34:11.560 - 00:34:31.580

Four years. If you went in the Army, I think it would be two years if you were drafted. But if you volunteered for the Marine Corps and for the Navy or for the Air Force, I think you had to volunteer for four. And I don't understand why I had an eight-year obligation.

00:34:32.020 - 00:34:53.740

Even after I did my four years, I had four years of inactive reserve. So I got my Carolina diploma and my discharge the same day. Practically. So now where were some of the places that you were stationed while in the Navy?

00:34:54.700 - 00:35:05.520

Oh, I never got on the ship. Thank God. You know, liberty is not very good when you're at sea. I was in hog heaven.

00:35:06.080 - 00:35:17.960

I learned to eat avocados. I'd never heard of such a thing. But I was trained as a hospital corpsman. So I served in hospitals all the four years.

00:35:18.600 - 00:35:38.620

And I first was at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego as a student. And then I went to Camp Pendleton which is a Marine Corps base. It's larger than I think it's larger than Fort Liberty. Oh, formerly Fort Liberty.

00:35:39.820 - 00:36:11.540

But I went there to Santa Margarita Ranch Hospital and did my war duty. And I worked with contagious patients and that was an interesting experience. I learned a lot of Hispanic names because on one side of the ward I had Jesus with the mumps and on the other side Jesus with the measles. But I had never heard someone named Jesus before.

00:36:11.540 - 00:36:22.540

Was it Jesus? They said I guess they said Jesus. I translated I translated. I didn't speak Spanish.

00:36:23.200 - 00:36:34.060

That's right. No, I hadn't studied Spanish yet. That was later on. But that was an interesting experience there.

00:36:34.300 - 00:36:52.220

And then from there I went to Camp Horno which was Commandant Pate's pet project. By then Korea was cooling down. You know it still not ended. We still are not at peace with them.

00:36:52.980 - 00:37:16.960

With North Korea. They're rattling the chains all the time. But he had this idea of a group that would do in a helicopter an attack about a 20 man team, something like that. We would attack do the duty and then retrograde.

00:37:17.500 - 00:37:33.000

The Marines don't retreat, you retrograde. So we would retrograde. But we only had a few helicopters. Because after the war started cooling down the government kept cutting down, cutting, cutting down.

00:37:33.400 - 00:37:57.540

And it was very difficult to get a new this sun has come to my face. There I'm better. Anyway the we'd have a big tarmat that represent the carrier. Because the planes would be taken on a carrier.

00:37:59.060 - 00:38:17.620

Move in make their attack and retrograde back to the ship. So I had many 20 mile hike that simulated flight. Occasionally I got to ride on the helicopter, but usually I didn't. But I've had enough helicopters for the rest of my life.

00:38:18.060 - 00:38:27.300

And enough Marines. No, I enjoyed it actually. The hikes were very, I love walking. And hiking was fun.

00:38:27.740 - 00:38:48.620

And I was in good shape. Well now and so you go to So then I came out of the Navy and went to Carolina. Okay, so you leave from leave from military life and then you become a civilian again. And you go there to Carolina.

00:38:49.480 - 00:39:10.520

And so did you know what you wanted to major in when you went to Carolina, when you got there? I thought I did. But I came back and started in summer school and almost flunked out. Because four years with no academic experience and I really am not a linguist.

00:39:10.840 - 00:39:26.500

And my advisor advised me to take Spanish. And so it nearly killed me. So after that first session I just dropped out and went to Virginia Beach. And took pictures on the beach for Now was that for the semester?

00:39:26.920 - 00:39:42.500

It was just the summer. There were two summer sessions. I was going to go to both and I knew I better not. So I went to Virginia Beach and I worked at Hamburger Haven serving hamburgers.

00:39:43.100 - 00:39:52.820

And it was a good time. And I got another job taking pictures on the beach. And you put them in those little things you could see. The little thing on camera?

00:39:53.900 - 00:40:13.540

No, the end product was you looked through it and saw yourself in the picture. Oh, yes. Anyway, I cut off a lot of heads. But I did much better at the hamburger business.

00:40:14.080 - 00:40:33.080

So I would assume that after those experiences that you knew you were ready to go back to school. Oh, I knew I was going to school. School had always been my salvation. Whenever I didn't feel like I was loved at home, I knew I was loved by my teachers.

00:40:34.160 - 00:40:51.620

And it turned out that I was. Even at the university I had teachers who were very concerned about my well being and so forth. And I think they were concerned about that. That sun is in my face.

00:40:53.780 - 00:41:15.740

Do you mind moving? I did. It was a good time. 1954 to 58.

00:41:16.020 - 00:41:24.520

No, no. 58 to 62. I got out of the Navy in June of 54. 58.

00:41:25.180 - 00:41:43.460

So I did four years at Carolina. But I should never have entered into some school. But I survived it. My advisor at one point said I should consider going to Campbell for a year or so to get back into the habit of academia.

00:41:43.880 - 00:41:53.060

But I was determined I was going to go to Carolina. And I did. And survived. And did not focus on language.

00:41:53.900 - 00:42:03.820

I wish I were a linguist. But I'm not. I speak Italian but that's because I was a student in Italy. And I had to speak Italian.

00:42:07.620 - 00:42:22.960

You majored in theater. No, I majored in music. I've always been toned between art, music, and drama. And of course, opera is combined arts because you have all of it.

00:42:23.360 - 00:42:30.800

And I tried to do all of it. I tried to paint. I tried to act. I tried to sing.

00:42:31.580 - 00:42:41.740

And I tried to perform. I did all of it. I became a music major. The first year I wasn't sure.

00:42:41.980 - 00:42:55.620

I thought I'd be a history major because history has always been one of my loves. But it turned out that music was what I went into. And Dr. Joel Carter was my voice teacher at Central. I mean at UNC.

00:42:56.520 - 00:43:08.660

And I had seen him when I was in high school. I went to Memorial Auditorium to see Kiss Me Kate. And he had done Petruchio. And he was fabulous.

00:43:08.860 - 00:43:26.000

It was just fantastic. And I'm trying to think of the woman who did it was, she was fantastic. And I wanted to do that. Of course, I listened to the Saturday afternoon broadcast of The Metropolitan.

00:43:26.760 - 00:43:36.780

I think I may have started that out to irritate my parents. But I fell in love with opera. I don't know. I probably loved opera from the beginning.

00:43:37.380 - 00:43:53.520

And so I wanted to be an opera singer. And when I finished up at Carolina, I taught at Greensboro. And I was hired as a music teacher. This was a high school?

00:43:53.740 - 00:44:14.380

Yes, I taught at Northwest High School. And it was a newly consolidated school. And this was 1962. And that academic year of 62, 63, I lived on Spring Garden, near Spring Garden, right across from Women's College.

00:44:14.680 - 00:44:25.140

It was still Women's College. And so I was in hog heaven. I was a playmaker, of course. I acted a lot at the Playmakers in Chapel Hill.

00:44:25.700 - 00:44:45.540

And I had studied with Foster Fitzsimmons and Kai Juergensen. And it was his wife, Jo Juergensen, who had impressed me in high school when she did Kate in Kiss Me, Kate. It was fantastic. She was a fabulous lady.

00:44:46.140 - 00:45:13.020

But anyway, back to the high school. I was hired as a music teacher. But in addition to teaching the music, which was a group of ninth grade girls, I had to teach speech and dramatic, junior English, senior English, and visual arts. So I had five preparations.

00:45:13.720 - 00:45:37.060

And I was a new teacher, and I had a straight A.D. I did not have an education degree. Fortunately, several of the teachers were very kind and steered me in directions that made it possible for me to get through it. And I had a wonderful year, and the students were fabulous. Unfortunately, it was still a segregated school.

00:45:37.940 - 00:46:03.900

That was 1962, 63. And from there, I went to Italy, and I studied in Italy for two years at the Conservatory of Rossini in Pesaro. Rossini had been born in Pesaro, and when he died, he left a good endowment for the Conservatory. And so I studied there for two years.

00:46:04.520 - 00:46:26.400

The second year I was there, I was running out of money. I had bought savings bonds while I was in the military, so I was using that money and what I'd saved as a teacher in Greensboro. They didn't pay very much, so I didn't save very much. But I had to get a job.

00:46:26.400 - 00:46:43.620

So I took on a job of teaching English as a foreign language. And so I moved from Pesaro, where the Conservatory was, to Ancona. Ancona is south about an hour's ride on the train. But the train service was excellent in Italy.

00:46:43.900 - 00:47:04.500

It still is, but it was really better there. And so I could take the train to Pesaro, have my lessons, and practice. I had a piano in a family's house that I could use. And then I could go back and at 2 o'clock, I would teach from 2 o'clock to 8 o'clock at night.

00:47:05.840 - 00:47:22.180

And it was the direct method. So I was, when I was saying on the table, I'd get on the table. But I was very athletic then. And I had a wonderful group of peers.

00:47:22.600 - 00:47:38.220

But my favorite class was a group of 5-year-olds who had never been to school in Italy yet. And they would say, Oh! Professore, dottore, noren, pendegraff, io chiamo London Bridge. Let's play London Bridge.

00:47:39.300 - 00:47:51.560

And the secretary would come and say, Professore, you're very loud. Of course, she said it in Italian. But I got the message. But they were great.

00:47:51.940 - 00:48:13.720

That little group, I'd take them downtown and I made appointments with the we were right there in a major port, Ancona. It's a big port. And I made an appointment with one of the naval guys to bring my little group on the ship. And they gave us all a picture of the ship and treated us with refreshment and so forth.

00:48:14.940 - 00:48:26.760

And the kids just loved it. But I don't think they learned much English. Well, it sounds as though they were learning English and you were learning Italian. Oh, heaven yes.

00:48:27.120 - 00:48:54.140

I did not practice Italian with any of my students, including them. But it was the direct method where they would have to get it. And, of course, when we were out of the school, I often had to resort to Italian so that I didn't let them get in the traffic. But I had wonderful groups and I thoroughly enjoyed that teaching.

00:48:55.280 - 00:49:17.640

And I performed in Urbino with a group and in Ancona. There was a baritone wonderful voice who, unfortunately, had a prosthesis. He'd lost one of his legs. And I did get to hear him sing in Milan at Piccolo.

00:49:21.420 - 00:49:35.860

What is the name of the big opera? La Scala. Piccolo Scala, which is a smaller theater. And he did the Ambassador in Madam Butterfly.

00:49:36.240 - 00:49:48.920

He was very good. But we did an aria, a duet from Rigoletto, and I did Sparacuchile. No, no, no. It's way down.

00:49:49.420 - 00:50:08.900

Of course, my voice is gone completely, unfortunately. Yes, I was a bass baritone. They called it basso brillante, a bright bass. Bass baritone in English.

00:50:09.600 - 00:50:28.120

And so that was a wonderful two years and I learned Italian. And I did, in those days, I hitchhiked. It was still safe. I hitchhiked from Pesaro to Rome the first Christmas and spent Christmas in Rome.

00:50:28.620 - 00:50:53.260

And I stayed in a sports situation that was built for the 1939 World's Fair that never occurred because of the war. The fascists began the war. And so I stayed there. A friend from Urbino taught Latin there and he gave me a letter of introduction and set it up so that I didn't have to rent a room.

00:50:53.460 - 00:51:07.340

I was there and I enjoyed Rome. Then I went back again another time. But Florence was my favorite city while I was there. Florence was so beautiful then.

00:51:07.720 - 00:51:27.280

Today, all of Italy is just so crowded. It's so beautiful and it's so rich in art and the culture, the food. I was just there this past summer and everything. It's hard to get in.

00:51:27.580 - 00:51:40.360

We were able to get into the Accademia. We could not get into the Uffizi. It's just terrible. Too crowded.

00:51:40.680 - 00:51:56.880

You have to buy a tour and get in. And we couldn't get into St. Peter's. The crowd was just awful. Now with terrorism, now you have to go through the metal things.

00:51:57.660 - 00:52:11.800

That happened under John Paul II when he was shot. After that, they started it. It's very difficult now. I don't think there's a low season.

00:52:12.180 - 00:52:38.500

I guess February, because the days in February are very short, but it's so much further north than we are. I would say that we are sort of on the parallel with North Africa whereas Italy is up with New York and Canada. You have become thoroughly immersed in Italian culture. You have come from Italy.

00:52:39.120 - 00:52:55.380

I tried. Why come back to the United States? It's home. I not only came back to the United States, I came back to North Carolina and to Durham actually because all of my relatives live in the Triangle.

00:52:55.380 - 00:53:11.840

Most of them. Now, fortunately for me, a number of them live on Topsail Island. You decided not to pursue your dream of becoming an opera singer. It wasn't that.

00:53:12.180 - 00:53:34.920

Health got in the way. To be an opera singer, you've got to have the health of a boxer, the strength of a boxer, the health of a horse. I developed Pesaro is in a horseshoe. The Adriatic Sea is here, the coast, the beach, and then these mountains all around it.

00:53:35.560 - 00:53:57.220

A wind blows the fog in from former Yugoslavia and it's called the Bora. It comes in and in December it got so foggy you could hardly see your hand in your face and it stays until March. So my birthday was the day that the fog lifted. More or less.

00:53:57.740 - 00:54:17.160

I got sinusitis and that's a death to bail too. I continued to sing but I knew I could not make it professionally. I'm not sure that I didn't have the confidence either. I could probably have made it as a compromario.

00:54:17.160 - 00:55:10.260

A compromario is a singer who sings brief things like Tutto e in fronto Posterita Those several arias I had at Carolina in graduate school in Madam Butterfly Posterita is what the priest says to Pinkerton and he says Ti provebra but that's not singing. I did do Benoit that's another compromario role and a much more substantial one. Something like the sacristan in Tosca would be a wonderful role that I would love to have done. I did do Benoit.

00:55:11.520 - 00:55:27.960

And I sang of course in church and at some weddings. I couldn't sing at funerals. I cried. If I see someone crying I can't help but cry.

00:55:31.260 - 00:56:26.500

So when did you leave Italy and what's next in Well I had kept in touch with my advisor Wilton Mason and he became a voice teacher when I came back. I kept in touch with him while I was there and he informed me, I told him what was happening with me health wise because I'd lost, the doctor informed me that I'd lost my acuity which is a high pitch and today I didn't wear my hearing aids but I have hearing aids for children's voices and women with high voices. I have trouble hearing the highs. So I told Dr. Mason what was going on and he said I think there's a wonderful program for you.

00:56:26.720 - 00:57:13.020

He knew how sprayed out I was in art, music and drama. I was never, I couldn't focus on one, I had to be digging my hand in one or the other. But it was called a Master of Arts in College Teaching because the state was developing an extensive community college program and we have a community college in almost every county and it's a very fine system. So Yale and Harvard had developed this and it was a terminal degree for teachers in universities or in colleges and of course when I went to Central it was a college, not a university.

00:57:13.680 - 00:57:32.440

It was North Carolina College in 1966. So I came home with a fellowship to go to, into that program and I did that. It was a two year program. I graduated in those days.

00:57:33.320 - 00:57:52.580

School started later and ended. You had to come back after Christmas and have another couple of weeks, which was stupid. you took all that work on that Christmas, you didn't look at it. I guess there was a quarter system.

00:57:52.700 - 00:58:10.980

No, no, it was a semester system. Oh, the quarter system was even worse. I hate the quarter system, but that's another story. The semester system, you'd go to school, you'd get out and go home for Christmas and come back and have several weeks and the final exams.

00:58:12.000 - 00:58:37.880

And of course now you do a semester before you go home for Christmas. Then you start a new semester and it makes much more sense. The quarter system, when I went to Ohio University in Athens, it was on the quarter system. I had never been on the quarter system because most of the universities in the North Carolina system had long since gone on to the semester system.

00:58:38.860 - 00:59:01.040

I think the quarter system is only good for the book salesman because you're constantly having to buy books. I did not like it, but I went to Ohio to work on a PhD and compared it for it. Okay. And you went there to Ohio after you had finished your master's degree?

00:59:01.200 - 00:59:20.520

Oh yes, and after I taught at Central for let's see, I went in 1969, so I had been at Central for a good four years or five years. I had tenure. So what was it like when you got there? So how did you find out about North Carolina State University?

00:59:21.640 - 00:59:48.740

I did the Master of Arts in College Teaching. Instead of doing a written thesis, you have to teach a supervised course. And so Dr. Carter was my supervisor and I taught music appreciation at Central in the fall of 1966. And he would come and sit in my class periodically and he would talk with my students and so forth.

00:59:48.740 - 01:00:07.340

And he would give me some advice on this or that. And he was very good. A wonderful professor. And so that, I started at Central in 66, but I was only temporary and for the next couple of years I was temporary.

01:00:08.160 - 01:00:42.760

The spring semester, of course, I was looking for a full-time job because I had finished my MA with that thesis. So I got a fairly full schedule teaching in the music department. And the next academic year, the academic year of 67, 68, there wasn't enough for me. So they needed someone to teach some of the classes, introductory classes in art, visual art, in the art department.

01:00:42.940 - 01:00:56.160

So I taught across departments. Music Appreciation, Arbitration. And I loved it. They had an opening full-time and so I said bye-bye.

01:00:56.540 - 01:01:14.420

Because music was very hard up then. A lot of people with PhDs in musicology were actually driving taxis because they couldn't find work. And so the rest is history. I became a member of the art department.

01:01:16.740 - 01:01:36.480

Who were some of the, do you recall some of your colleagues that were in the art department, the music department at that time? In the music department was Gene Strassler. And Gene and I had performed together in La Traviata. He did the lead with Phyllis Curtin from the Metropolitan doing Violetta.

01:01:36.800 - 01:02:07.120

And I was her server. And I did several other little small parts in there. And so there was you know I don't use these names and they slip your mind. I had in the music department there was Earl Sanders who taught violin.

01:02:08.100 - 01:02:19.900

And Earl stayed there until of course he retired. And his wife taught in the English department. I'm trying to think. Lillian Pruitt taught there.

01:02:20.300 - 01:02:32.940

Her husband taught at UNC. So for nepotism she couldn't teach. She got her PhD before he did. And she actually taught me in graduate school she taught musicology.

01:02:32.940 - 01:02:53.140

Because Dr. Hayden became ill and she took over his class. I'm sorry. Barbara Cook. Dr. Cook was a famous medical doctor in the community and came down with MLS and it took him forever to suffer death because of that horrible disease.

01:02:53.620 - 01:03:09.100

But Barbara was taught piano. there were a number of people there. In the art department Len Igo Robert F. Kennedy who was from Chicago not Massachusetts.

01:03:11.560 - 01:03:33.100

Rosie Thompson Rosie Thompson comes later. Lana Thompson became Lana Henderson. And Lana I just talked to recently is doing well, thank God. I'm having trouble with names.

01:03:37.940 - 01:04:03.760

So your experiences there the students that you had you had very good students there. Oh did I? Yes. I'm thinking of oh goodness one who went and became a faculty member at Howard What was his name?

01:04:04.580 - 01:04:20.540

He was an interesting undergraduate student. He was married and he worked at something like Wal-Mart. It wasn't Wal-Mart in those days. Winston Kennedy.

01:04:21.520 - 01:04:45.600

The printmaker. Winston was a very fine printmaker. And he went on to Chapel Hill and then he ended up actually joining the faculty at Howard. Bobby Jones who organized a lot of exhibitions and pageants and so forth in Raleigh.

01:04:46.360 - 01:05:03.640

He was an art maker. A number of teachers in Durham O'Farrell, William O'Farrell William O'Farrell, yeah. William, I think William probably has retired. I don't know.

01:05:05.100 - 01:05:16.180

Do you know him? Oh yeah, I'm familiar with O'Farrell. I'm not really sure where he is these days but I do remember O'Farrell. William had the most wonderful fro.

01:05:16.640 - 01:05:27.920

I always was so tempted to touch. I never did. But every time he'd go home his grandmother would say cut your hair! Cut your hair!

01:05:28.700 - 01:05:53.620

And so I gave him a copy of a photograph of the great writer. He had his own newspaper and he paid off after he ran away from slavery. His house is in Washington DC. Now you got to talk about Frederick Douglass.

01:05:54.540 - 01:06:16.220

So I gave him a photograph of Frederick Douglass and I said show her his hair. It didn't do any good. So now you're there at Central and you're in the art department and was there a museum at that time? Yes.

01:06:16.840 - 01:06:40.200

When Dr. Whiting came I came before Whiting. I joined the faculty in 1966 and Helen Edmonds and Bill Jones and Dr. Brown that I don't know. It was not the Walter Brown. But the three of them were running the university.

01:06:40.300 - 01:06:49.060

Was that Rosa Butler Brown? I don't know. I came and I didn't know him. I was teaching my one course and going back to chapel.

01:06:49.840 - 01:07:03.960

But Helen I knew and was very fond of and she was fond of me. She would say Norman just calm down. Just calm down. This too will pass.

01:07:05.360 - 01:07:23.800

For a good Republican she was very good. Anyway we didn't talk about politics. But Helen was and Bill Jones was Vice President of Financial Affairs. And so they ran the university.

01:07:24.820 - 01:07:59.340

And then the next year Al Whiting came and for his inauguration he asked to have an art exhibition. And so Len Igo and Bob Kennedy worked on pulling together an exhibition that was shown in the old library. And remember then the library had not been extended. That whole facade that we see moving out toward Fayetteville Street is added to the old library.

01:07:59.620 - 01:08:31.720

The library at that time the reading room was turned into an exhibition hall and Bob created panels and they selected work from the schools within the university system. So in addition to Bennett because what's his name the artist from Bennett James C. Macmillan? Yes.

01:08:32.080 - 01:08:42.440

Macmillan was teaching I think just at Bennett then. Eventually he was teaching across campuses. Over at Guilford. And also at A&T.

01:08:43.640 - 01:08:57.880

Because he worked but Miller what was Miller's first name? I forget her name. Oh, Eva Miller. Eva Miller was represented and from Bennett what's his name you just told me?

01:08:57.880 - 01:09:01.980

James C. Macmillan. Macmillan. I have trouble with names.

01:09:02.100 - 01:09:37.120

I'm sorry. It's my age. They were represented and from UNCW Claude Howell from there were a group of artists from the public universities all North Carolina except for A.B. Jackson. A.B. Jackson and it was a wonderful exhibition and there was money from I think it was the Doris Duke Fund.

01:09:37.320 - 01:09:59.200

I wasn't involved you see because I was just a beginner. I was on temporary contract so I really did not, I wasn't I didn't hear gossip or any of that. I would love to have heard the gossip. But they bought a collection from that so we got two A.B. Jackson's from it.

01:09:59.320 - 01:10:09.640

A Claude Howell and Eva Miller and a wonderful I keep remembering having trouble with the guy from Bennett. James C. Macmillan. Macmillan.

01:10:09.920 - 01:10:14.220

Macmillan. He's such a nice man. I hope he's still with us. No.

01:10:14.480 - 01:10:20.920

Mr. Macmillan passed last year. I had the opportunity to do his eulogy actually. Oh. He was such a sweet man.

01:10:20.940 - 01:10:34.320

He really was. Well he did a fantastic painting called Tenement Voices and it was the crucifixion of a family. Yeah I've seen it. So that was purchased for the university from them.

01:10:34.420 - 01:11:27.280

So that was that became a part of the university collection. So we had no museum and Len Igoe took advantage of this interest from Dr. Whiting and proposed that we have a museum project and he approved it. So I was teaching in room 206 which was the art gallery that Ed Wilson who was in charge of the department before he left and went to Binghamton in New York. I never got to meet him and none of us did because Bob Kennedy was hired to replace him and Ed left unhappy because Zorak had been chosen to do the sculpture of Dr. Shepard rather than him.

01:11:27.920 - 01:11:37.100

Oh. I mean that was one of the things. There were a number of things. Also he had some marital problems.

01:11:37.880 - 01:12:06.470

There's a book that I've never read that tells all so I'm told. he left North Carolina not happy. But then I met him at the Art Association meeting and we became friends and he came back a lot because he had a lot of friends in Durham and Fannie Patton who wrote Good Morning Miss Dove that was made into a movie. You're too young to have seen it.

01:12:06.970 - 01:12:32.770

You have a copy of it in the North Carolina collection of the book but Jennifer Jones played Miss Dove and it was a fabulous movie. It is a good movie. I haven't seen it in years but he and his wife were very popular. They were very light skinned and they were invited out to a number of parties.

01:12:33.930 - 01:13:07.230

It was interesting I'm outside I'm not inside but I hear about this later like Josephine and Bill Clement were often invited to parties. Even though Durham was very strictly segregated there were some inroads taking place at things like that. In terms of various interracial gatherings and parties. Dinner parties and things like that.

01:13:09.090 - 01:14:03.270

Ed was very popular. He was I used to call him Santa Claus because he had this great later on he had this great white beard but when he was here he had no beard. Beards would have been out of the question in those days. I remember seeing and I think it was there was a book that I had come across and I think it was I think it was with the American Negro artist and there's a quote that when they're talking to Ed Wilson and he's essentially saying that Negro colleges did not receive were not receiving support from the administrators in terms of developing good art programs.

01:14:04.370 - 01:14:44.910

That's the truth. It was sad but you think about many of these colleges were just on the brink of going under. Mary Seamans, Mary Seamans told me that she often saw Dr. Shepard coming to talk to her grandfather because she would spend a lot of time with him in Durham and she said that they were constantly struggling to get funds to keep the doors open and the visual arts are the things that go first. It's sad but that's the truth.

01:14:47.870 - 01:15:50.370

No, and I got off about the museum so Lynn Igoe got this project going and she became the first acting director of the museum and then she went on leave. She and I both went on leave the same year. She went to France and I went to OU to go to graduate school and the PhD program there and Nancy Gillespie came and Nancy came to teach my classes but Lynn left after I left and so she took over Lynn's job as the museum director and she continued and when Lynn came back from France she was not offered her chair so she wasn't happy with that so she didn't come back. Lynn Igoe.

01:15:50.950 - 01:16:08.370

So she did not come back to Central and Nancy Gillespie stayed and they brought in Phillip what's Phillip's last name? Phillip, a very fine artist and he became chair of the department and Nancy was not

01:16:09.650 - 01:16:16.290

consulted and she was furious so she quit in the middle of the year and that was the

01:16:17.130 - 01:16:26.330

December 1965 and no

01:16:26.330 - 01:16:33.050

1975 1975 and so I wrote a letter immediately I had done this exhibition

01:16:34.030 - 01:16:41.030

Durham Chautauqua The Black Man in Art for the library so I had had a course at Chapel Hill

01:16:41.030 - 01:16:49.130

in museology and worked with Schlager and that so I felt qualified to ask

01:16:49.130 - 01:16:56.250

for the position and Dr. Whiting made me acting director in the middle of the year

01:16:56.250 - 01:17:04.850

so I became acting director in 1966 76 I'll get it right in a minute

01:17:04.850 - 01:17:12.710

1976 and at the end of that semester he made me director and so I was there

01:17:12.710 - 01:17:21.030

as director for 20 years and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience So now of course

01:17:21.030 - 01:17:29.150

now the NCCU Museum seems to have a very strong emphasis relative to African American artists did you institute

01:17:29.150 - 01:17:35.090

that particular acquisition philosophy? Yes you can imagine I was

01:17:35.090 - 01:17:42.430

learning on the job when I started I had the museum museology course a graduate course at Chapel Hill

01:17:42.770 - 01:17:51.190

but I didn't know about collecting, how to focus and all of that and I became very active in the North Carolina Museums

01:17:51.750 - 01:17:59.090

Council and there I learned from colleagues who were in the same field that I was

01:17:59.090 - 01:18:07.030

and struggling with the same situations and so I learned that you need to have a focus at the beginning

01:18:07.030 - 01:18:15.050

I was just accepting anything and of course we had a mixture of things but if you

01:18:15.050 - 01:18:22.510

think about where we are in Durham we are between the Ackland in Chapel Hill

01:18:23.070 - 01:18:30.730

and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh and the the Nashua Duke

01:18:30.730 - 01:18:38.250

the Nashua Duke and also the UNCG Women's College

01:18:38.250 - 01:18:45.570

The Witherspoon The Witherspoon so all of these have the Ackland

01:18:46.510 - 01:18:53.430

at that time their focus was to collect things that would give their graduate

01:18:53.430 - 01:19:01.070

students something to work on so you'll find that they've got a wonderful Baroque piece

01:19:01.070 - 01:19:09.430

that is a piece of a painting that burned but they were able to salvage this corner with this

01:19:09.430 - 01:19:19.290

wonderful infant God, I forget which God it was, not a Christian God but a Greek God and it's a fabulous

01:19:19.290 - 01:19:27.110

piece, they've got Rubens portraits and so one of my favorite teachers as a student

01:19:27.110 - 01:19:35.370

did her dissertation on it so that is was a focus then I'm not sure what the focus is now

01:19:35.370 - 01:19:43.330

but it seems to be pretty encyclopedic it has become and of course when Lee, Sherman Lee

01:19:43.330 - 01:19:51.090

who was the head of the Cleveland the Cleveland, Ohio

01:19:51.090 - 01:19:59.590

the Cleveland Museum retired to North Carolina, he gave a big focus to it on Asians

01:19:59.590 - 01:20:07.130

and he gave a lot of work and he helped build up that section of the collection so that's a big part now

01:20:07.130 - 01:20:15.310

but again, it's universal as you say and so is the one in Raleigh and the one in Duke now

01:20:15.310 - 01:20:23.170

has a very good permanent collection that has a universal focus it's basically a gallery

01:20:23.170 - 01:20:32.070

May I have your attention please Majesty Royal Jackson No, no, no, no, no, no So one of the things

01:20:32.070 - 01:20:39.770

now I've heard from some of your former peers and some of your museum director peers

01:20:39.770 - 01:20:47.890

they said it's very tough to be at a

01:20:47.890 - 01:20:55.110

historic black college university as a result of sometimes a lack of fiscal support lack of institutional support

01:20:55.110 - 01:21:04.050

but in this 1981 article in the Durham Herald newspaper, the art journalist your good friend Blue Greenberg

01:21:04.050 - 01:21:11.370

said your job description you were quoted as saying your job description was staggered superman

01:21:12.930 - 01:21:29.850

was that true? It was and I have to say I was so fortunate of people like Marsha Matthews who wrote the first biography of Henry O. Tanner and

01:21:29.850 - 01:21:37.810

it was edited by John Hope Franklin so I got to know Marsha she taught at Duke for a while

01:21:37.810 - 01:21:46.030

but she also taught at what's the big school in Atlanta for men Morehouse, she taught at

01:21:46.030 - 01:21:53.690

Morehouse and she died in Atlanta no she died in Durham but anyway she came to Durham and

01:21:53.690 - 01:22:00.190

we became good friends and I had used her book a lot and so

01:22:01.590 - 01:22:09.170

she gave me a Bannister and a oh god

01:22:09.170 - 01:22:15.870

what's his name Bannister no contemporary

01:22:18.310 - 01:22:25.250

they named a boulevard for him in Pasadena a sculptor oh Barthe

01:22:25.950 - 01:22:34.190

Richmond Barthe, self portrait so and other things, people like that

01:22:34.190 - 01:22:42.470

were just generous to me so that meant that not only we were able to buy a Duncanson because when we

01:22:42.470 - 01:22:50.270

celebrated the Roanoke Voyages in 1984 which was celebrating

01:22:50.270 - 01:22:57.770

the 15th, 54th 50th anyway I

01:22:58.270 - 01:23:06.410

did an exhibition of the British and American connection, the only way I could figure to put a black artist in it

01:23:06.410 - 01:23:14.590

was to use Duncanson who was supported by the Duchess of Sutherland she was the mistress of the Queen's

01:23:14.590 - 01:23:20.530

bedchamber which is the highest thing a woman could do in the court of Queen Victoria

01:23:20.530 - 01:23:30.110

she was a noble woman from Scotland and Bannister's father was Scottish

01:23:30.110 - 01:23:38.230

his mother was Afro-American and he was born in Cincinnati so she invited him, she the Duchess of

01:23:38.230 - 01:23:45.550

Sutherland invited him to come and visit and she also wrote from

01:23:45.550 - 01:23:52.770

Whitehall which is the head of the government to Abraham Lincoln asking him to abolish slavery

01:23:53.550 - 01:24:00.690

the Queen never did that as far as I know but she did it and she was right next to the Queen

01:24:01.390 - 01:24:09.290

Alfred Lord Tennyson invited Duncanson to the Isle of Wight to his house and he

01:24:09.290 - 01:24:17.710

Duncanson did a painting of the Lotus Eagers which was very popular and was bought by one of the

01:24:17.710 - 01:24:25.570

Scandinavian kings so it made sense that I'd do something on him

01:24:25.570 - 01:24:33.070

and I may have the catalogue that I did I'm hesitant to give these away because I'm so

01:24:33.070 - 01:24:40.490

short handed on these things anymore but I want it to go into a public collection oh

01:24:41.590 - 01:24:49.590

Duncanson means that we have Duncanson then Bannister and then Tanner

01:24:49.590 - 01:24:59.510

if we had a Cleopatra she did Cleopatra

01:24:59.510 - 01:25:07.390

the death of Cleopatra and Edmonia Lewis we'd have a good historical

01:25:07.390 - 01:25:14.250

oh yeah oh well and a very expensive one that too I mean

01:25:14.250 - 01:25:23.050

you look at the auction costs these days no when I got into it

01:25:23.050 - 01:25:30.510

things were still fairly reasonable but now not only are they not reasonable but they're being

01:25:32.290 - 01:25:37.410

when you copy so much a lot of forgeries they're being forged

01:25:37.870 - 01:25:46.110

may I have that book this work, this artist's work was recently forged

01:25:46.110 - 01:25:54.290

someone, I haven't seen it but someone called me and told me that the head by William Artis was not a William Artis

01:25:54.290 - 01:26:01.490

oh my now do you think that is because many of the

01:26:01.490 - 01:26:08.110

many of the dealers and many of the curators who are at the

01:26:08.990 - 01:26:16.670

predominantly white museum spaces are not as familiar with these artists

01:26:16.670 - 01:26:24.130

and so it's very much it's easy to fool them or I really don't know but I think

01:26:24.130 - 01:26:32.310

I think the thing is that there's a market that's it if there's no market why fake it

01:26:32.970 - 01:26:40.470

but if there's a market and I've been worried about that I was afraid if you take something

01:26:41.290 - 01:26:49.150

someone like Clementine Hunter who is a folk artist and a brilliant folk artist but she could be faked

01:26:49.150 - 01:26:57.530

oh absolutely I mean anybody can be faked you think about Vermeer who is one of the great artists of all time

01:26:57.530 - 01:27:05.050

there were a whole batch of Vermeers that were faked because it was at the beginning of the second world war

01:27:05.050 - 01:27:12.870

and it was things were turbulent but the market was there everybody wanted a Vermeer

01:27:13.530 - 01:27:21.330

well now going back to your time there at the museum there was one article

01:27:22.370 - 01:27:27.870

where you were quoted as saying that you begged and borrowed begged and borrowed

01:27:28.570 - 01:27:34.450

and was that how you raised money Absolutely at the museum Oh yes

01:27:34.450 - 01:27:44.210

I had a very good support group and we did what we called the treasures auction

01:27:44.210 - 01:27:50.870

and they were things that you would like to collect somebody would like to collect they weren't junk

01:27:50.870 - 01:27:59.650

and with those funds we could match a grant I was fortunate to get a number of grants

01:27:59.650 - 01:28:06.930

the Jacob Lawrence was bought with a grant Jacob Lawrence when he came to lecture at the museum

01:28:06.930 - 01:28:15.650

in Raleigh afterwards he and John Hope Franklin and I came over so we could see the Palm Sunday

01:28:15.650 - 01:28:46.590

Was that a gouache? It's a gouache He worked mostly in gouache later on he did other media but gouache was one of his big media and that I was able to get that from Terry Dentonfoss he had been his big supporter but mostly I had to get things that were given and sometimes it was just a fluke. I was in Paris

01:28:46.590 - 01:28:55.790

I travel as much as I can and I was on a 9 month contract the whole time

01:28:55.790 - 01:29:04.050

my whole 30 years So in the summer I was not on duty I often was on duty but I didn't

01:29:04.050 - 01:29:12.010

officially wasn't there I was in Paris and Mrs. Richmond called me, her husband was the Chancellor at that time

01:29:12.010 - 01:29:19.770

and she said there's a man in Virginia who wants to give us some works of art on paper and I said

01:29:19.770 - 01:29:27.450

take them because she named some names and so forth and we got our Blackburn in that

01:29:27.450 - 01:29:35.690

Bill Blackburn was Bob Blackburn the printmaker brilliant printmaker and teacher

01:29:35.690 - 01:29:43.250

but what had happened is Augusta Savage when she took leave

01:29:43.250 - 01:29:50.710

she was in charge of the Harlem studio WPA thing in New York

01:29:50.710 - 01:29:59.510

and in 1939 she created Lift Every Voice and Sing which was a large sculpture and she had to take off

01:29:59.510 - 01:30:07.290

to make it so she did it and the lady that took over while she was gone

01:30:08.710 - 01:30:14.590

received a lot of gifts from artists including Bob Blackburn

01:30:15.470 - 01:30:23.290

and Bannard and Norman Lewis I can't remember all the names were all

01:30:23.290 - 01:30:31.530

Harlem Renaissance and so oh and Elizabeth Catlett anyway I said take

01:30:31.530 - 01:30:38.590

them and what had happened is this man was in Danville I believe and

01:30:39.450 - 01:30:47.370

in this junk store and apparently the woman who had taken and I cannot remember her name now

01:30:47.370 - 01:30:54.430

you'll have to look at Romy Bearden and Henderson's book to find out there's a good article about her in that

01:30:54.430 - 01:31:03.050

good section anyway the she was given all these things I'm sure

01:31:03.050 - 01:31:10.950

and when she died her relatives didn't know what they had and they sold them for the frames

01:31:10.950 - 01:31:18.590

to this junk shop and the junk people took the works out and put them in a pile and sold them

01:31:18.590 - 01:31:26.590

and we got them and Sugarman, Ms. Sugarman from Greensboro, brilliant

01:31:26.590 - 01:31:32.050

conservative conserved them all Dan Sugarman yes

01:31:32.050 - 01:31:38.730

is she still alive? I hope she is she's very good and she

01:31:38.730 - 01:31:45.790

had done work for a number of people that stood about for her and she did a fabulous job for her

01:31:45.790 - 01:31:54.590

those were little things that happened I just get things like that and of course

01:31:55.010 - 01:32:02.190

now after me I retired after 20 years as director and I was 30 years at the university, 10 years before

01:32:02.190 - 01:32:10.350

director and then 20 years in the directorship and teaching and Kenneth Rogers and Kenneth and I

01:32:10.350 - 01:32:18.110

met in Rome I received he was not he was not at North Carolina Central

01:32:18.110 - 01:32:22.730

at the time was he? No he was at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore ok

01:32:24.150 - 01:32:29.990

I we were both scholars national scholars that

01:32:30.750 - 01:32:38.890

a workshop studying color in Renaissance painting and to study color you have to see

01:32:38.890 - 01:32:46.370

the object I don't care how good your reproduction is it is not going to be the color

01:32:46.370 - 01:32:53.810

there is something either there's too much blue, too little blue too much red, too little red too little whatever

01:32:54.330 - 01:33:02.270

anyway so we were studying for two months and I thought we were staying in Montorio and I thought

01:33:02.270 - 01:33:09.830

oh my god I'm going to have to listen to hillbilly music because the Kenny Rogers that came to mind was a hillbilly musician

01:33:10.370 - 01:33:18.250

it turned out it was the Kenneth Rogers from Eastern North Carolina and African America and so we became good friends

01:33:18.970 - 01:33:24.990

and I I I had taught his wife when she was at Central

01:33:24.990 - 01:33:34.190

because she did her undergraduate nursing degree at Central and so when I retired

01:33:34.190 - 01:33:40.230

he was chosen as director and he has retired so

01:33:41.590 - 01:33:49.670

well you mentioned you mentioned William Artis earlier and you and I'm looking at this wonderful book

01:33:49.670 - 01:33:57.590

that you have with Uncovering Uncle William A Search for Meaning in Art by his niece Dr. Shirley Davis Jones now you did an

01:33:57.590 - 01:34:05.190

exhibition on William Artis my first major exhibition was

01:34:05.190 - 01:34:13.510

supported by an endowment for the humanities grant and I did Heralds of Life

01:34:13.510 - 01:35:02.790

Artis, Bearden, and Burke. There were three North Carolina born Artis African American Artis who were Harlem Renaissance and I was able to get the University to give them honorary doctorates and it was the first time that any any Artis had been recognized. Later on I got Cab Calloway and Anna Moten Barnett and Ernie Barnes to be recognized by the University and I understand that Ernie is about to be recognized again.

01:35:03.790 - 01:35:34.510

I don't know whether I can talk about it or not. Well I hope that I hope that comes about very very soon. Yeah he definitely deserves it. Anyway Dean Jones has she gave us one of her pots that her uncle had made and he she also sold us a head that she owned and it came with a stand that his nephew made.

01:35:35.410 - 01:36:27.130

So that's in the collection and Mrs. Elder gave me a head. It turns out that William Artis was given a grant to go to historically black colleges and do sessions on how to work in terracotta and in at Central he made a head and I'm sure that the head that Dr. and Mrs. Elder had was from that particular section because Dr. Elder then was vice president under Dr. Shepard. And I can just imagine because Artis was very generous with his work. I know your good friend Haywood Overy talked about William Artis as well.

01:36:27.790 - 01:37:01.390

Now I assume was Artis, was he in Minnesota? Was he still in Minnesota at that time? Yes, but he developed the cancer and it Winifred Stelting did a dissertation in part on him and she went to visit him and he was having trouble hearing and she said get a hearing aid and he said I've got one and she said get another one because he was afraid he was going to lose his job. And he obviously lost his life.

01:37:02.590 - 01:38:13.190

Dean Jones got her class to go and visit him and he enjoyed that and I would talk to his nurse. I knew he was dying and I appealed to the whoever I had to appeal to it was federal grant but I was able to get Dean Jones' father who at that time lived in Fayetteville and he was Artis' brother and he came and accepted the honor for his brother. The honorary doctorate at that time. So you know it's just amazing to me that here you are, you come in from definitely international experiences, you have your experiences there at Carolina but then you're coming to North Carolina State University and then you're also learning about, in addition to learning about African American artistry but you're also putting on exhibitions of a high standard at that time.

01:38:13.710 - 01:38:24.650

I was lucky. I was lucky. When Len Igoe said, Norman you've got to teach a course in black art I said what is it? I had no idea.

01:38:26.610 - 01:39:00.590

I didn't know and she said African American and so I knew I could do that. I mean I thought I could. African would have been another thing because you have to know all of the religions and the zones and so forth and I was very interested because I wanted to say at least an introductory thing to my students but I just would not have that language. I'd have to learn French and all those other languages.

01:39:01.670 - 01:39:22.650

So no, I was so grateful and a lot of the Harlem Renaissance artists were still alive and I got to meet them. So I know you met Bearden, you met Catlett, you met Jacob Lawrence. Oh did I? Oh Jacob Lawrence was delightful.

01:39:24.110 - 01:39:31.750

He really was. Well everybody was. Selma was one. Selma Burke was a real card.

01:39:32.190 - 01:39:46.990

Oh she was. She lived in Pennsylvania. Bucks County. And she had several husbands but that was her favorite husband.

01:39:46.990 - 01:40:09.490

He was a relative of the Duponts. She did well there. And he had given her a lovely little ring and she lost it at some point. And he died and so she turned part of the barn into her studio and part of it into her house.

01:40:09.770 - 01:40:24.350

So she lived in the barn and she rented the house. Oh wow. And a group of hippies rented it. They were so nice and they walked around barefoot all the time and one of them stepped on the ring and gave her her ring.

01:40:24.730 - 01:40:43.970

So she was pleased about that. But then when they left she found they had put all the trash into the basement. So she had to hire an exterminator. She gave me the church panels from her church in Morrisville.

01:40:44.170 - 01:41:00.230

She was born in Morrisville. At the Episcopal church. And it was bring all the children unto me and Christ is in the middle and so forth and so on. And I placed it at Not Holy Cross?

01:41:00.430 - 01:41:08.430

No, no, no. She was an Episcopalian. St. Titus? What's in St. Joseph's?

01:41:08.470 - 01:41:16.710

Old St. Joseph's? Haytai Heritage Center. And it was there. I don't know what has happened to it but I brought it down here.

01:41:16.830 - 01:41:28.810

I went to Bucks County and brought it in a truck. Oh wow. Because I had to go and check all the things that I was going to do for the exhibition. But she wanted to place it somewhere.

01:41:29.310 - 01:41:41.410

And I hope it has survived. Well, I better check into that then. That would be good. The thing was the children were white.

01:41:42.910 - 01:41:57.190

And they told her she was painting them black. This was not when she first did it but later. And she said I will not. And I'll take my painting and take it home.

01:41:57.430 - 01:42:14.990

And she took it to Bucks County. She was a character. A delightful character. Now in 2023 the African-American or black artists of the diaspora, they're receiving a great deal of recognition by collectors and museum circles.

01:42:15.610 - 01:42:33.750

But in a 1990 article mentioning your colleague Lynn Igoe's book, 250 Years of Afro-American Art, you said if I were a woman or I were black, I'd be furious. What did you mean by that? You said in that penograph. I'm not sure.

01:42:34.170 - 01:42:49.370

I really am not. Now I assume you were probably talking maybe I was talking about as a result of the lack of attention that they had received by probably within the museum world maybe. By the world. Not just the museum.

01:42:49.990 - 01:43:13.150

I mean we all have a mother and they don't, you know for centuries they haven't gotten you go to the man, not to the woman. I know. I don't know. I can't answer that.

01:43:13.390 - 01:43:34.810

Okay. Alright. Now what's interesting to me how were you able to get support from oh here's a picture of you and Elizabeth Catlett, here's Gwendolyn Brooks. Oh Gwendolyn Brooks at North Carolina Central University.

01:43:34.970 - 01:43:41.370

That's her. Wow. I was so lucky. So lucky.

01:43:41.770 - 01:44:00.450

Now is this picture of you and Mrs. Catlett or you had her apartment in New York. That's in her house in New York and it was not damaged. You know it's not too far from the World Trade Center but she was not there thank God. Wow.

01:44:00.670 - 01:44:07.330

Oh wow. Here's another picture of Mrs. Catlett. And that's her husband. Who was also there.

01:44:07.970 - 01:44:35.230

Was a very fine print maker at the print making atelier there in Mexico. Did you ever meet Vivian and John Hewitt. Mrs. Hewitt used to come to Winston-Salem quite a bit and a lot of work that they did there at the Del Toro Center. And I know that you I think that you and Mrs. Hewitt.

01:44:35.610 - 01:44:48.710

You and Mrs. Hewitt and also Mrs. Ellen. Mrs. Ellen. Did a lot of collaborating. She has died.

01:44:48.710 - 01:44:54.130

She has died. Yes she has. Simona. Simona Atkins Allen.

01:44:55.050 - 01:45:10.710

Of course her father was the head of the Winston-Salem State. Yep and her grandfather was the founder. Selma Burke went to it when it was Slater State. Slater Industrial Academy.

01:45:11.130 - 01:45:52.410

Yeah. And her mother said you have to have a you can be a sculptor but you have to have a profession. And so she went to Shaw or St. Oaks and got her nursing degree. And when she was in New York as an artist she worked for an heir to the Otis Elevator people and this lady needed a nurse attendant and she was very wealthy of course and so she had a box at the Met and Selma would go with her to the Met and she'd go to sleep and Selma would see the opera.

01:45:54.410 - 01:46:21.410

She had some fascinating experience. She took a bucket and went to she was hired by the Quakers to teach in black institutions kids and she taught sculpture. And I have a feeling that William Artis who also studied with Augusta Savage and Selma taught to Augusta. I have a feeling he probably worked with her.

01:46:21.870 - 01:46:41.390

Because he taught at the YMCA in Harlem. But later because he was born in 1914 I believe. And Selma was born in 1900. And Bearden the date keeps changing but it's somewhere around 1910.

01:46:43.450 - 01:47:22.090

Well now so you've become the director of the museum and the curator and every other position that you need to have to run a museum. So how did you go about getting the local community to come out for your exhibitions or how did you promote the exhibitions that you were doing to get the support, community support that you need to have? I wasn't that successful. I was very concerned because I had to go right by the housing development what did they call that?

01:47:23.510 - 01:47:39.970

Right there by old St. Joseph. That community that's been destroyed. Well Hayti didn't go down that far but I know that community there off of Fayetteville Street right down the street from no it was right there by old St. Joseph not new St. Joseph. Fayetteville Street.

01:47:40.190 - 01:47:51.570

That was Fayetteville Street Projects. The project. I had to go by the project and I had different ideas but I was never able you know you can only do so much. I had to teach as well.

01:47:52.130 - 01:48:30.290

So I was teaching and you know you have to get your class ready. You can't just go in and talk. Well I can obviously but no. Well but I think though however that you do bring up a very interesting point and I think that from a and I have long suspected even with the best of museums that there is a certain class orientation that often times comes into the visual arts and performing arts and this cuts across ethnic boundaries.

01:48:30.290 - 01:49:00.550

But there is this elitist idea that museums are elitist. This was an attempt and you know I did this with the support of the library system. They printed this and it went to everybody that went there and it you know it's got Isaac Scott Hathaway in here and his C.C. Spaulding sculpture. I borrowed the sculpture.

01:49:00.890 - 01:49:07.170

It was there in the exhibition. Wow. It's a pretty large sculpture too. It's a big it was a heavy one.

01:49:08.070 - 01:49:53.770

And so in terms of that particular exhibition that you did at Stanford and Warren Branch Library turned out was pretty good. It was and I went to the stamp whatever the group is called the national one and they gave me big posters of the Tanner stamps. So I had sheets of Tanner stamps and that because that was one of the early black stamps that was made and our stamps were very attractive then too. It seems like you did pretty well in terms of your community engagement.

01:49:54.450 - 01:50:18.850

You had I thought it was very interesting you were talking about you said that you really realized in one of the articles that I come across that you knew that you were being accepted within the African American community when Mrs. Scarborough called you Putin. When she called me Putin I knew I made it. That's right. And this was Daisy Scarborough I assume.

01:50:19.710 - 01:50:39.470

Was it Daisy Scarborough? Well it was Mickey's not Mickey Not Skippy Scarborough's mother? Who is the older Scarborough man now? Oh okay so that was Skippy but it may have been Daisy.

01:50:39.650 - 01:50:47.670

It was Skippy. He went to OU in Athens Ohio. Okay. That's where I did my PhD work.

01:50:47.830 - 01:51:09.430

Right. That that she called I think she couldn't remember our names but she liked us. And if she didn't she'd call us Putin and I didn't mind I was glad to be accepted. Well I remember Mrs. Scarborough she ran the when I went to Scarborough Nursery.

01:51:09.730 - 01:51:20.190

And so she very well may have called everybody Putin if she didn't remember the children's names. Well I that couldn't have been the same lady. So was it well. No.

01:51:20.790 - 01:51:30.490

Mrs. Scarborough that I'm talking about was the purchasing agent for the University. Oh okay. Now that wasn't Skippy's wife was it? No no no.

01:51:30.870 - 01:51:40.610

That was his mother. And I hope that house is being saved. It keeps changing. It is.

01:51:40.870 - 01:52:09.050

From what the last thing that I've heard about the Scarborough house is that the same person who currently I think his gentleman's name is Marcus Green he owns the Mills house that was qualified but I understand that he will be the developer for they're going to turn the Scarborough the old Scarborough house down Fayetteville Street they plan to turn it into a small bed and breakfast. I think that was the last thing. Oh fabulous. I think that was the last thing that I heard.

01:52:09.810 - 01:52:25.370

And so but can you imagine going through the doorway and they say Putin came through. So Pentagraph it's well known that you were a contributing writer

01:52:25.370 - 01:52:33.930

to many art magazines and publications and as much then I've read your writings so I would

01:52:33.930 - 01:52:41.630

definitely consider you to be a very brilliant art critic but what were do you recall some of the publications that you wrote for

01:52:41.630 - 01:52:49.330

and I think the other thing that is very very intriguing to me was you know how you were able

01:52:49.330 - 01:52:57.510

to really so quickly master these various the historical aspects and these various constructs

01:52:57.510 - 01:53:05.770

when it came to African American art aesthetic I mean it's just amazing to me that you were able to do it. I mean and so I'm just really blown away by that.

01:53:06.210 - 01:53:18.010

But what were so how did you get into writing you know to writing being this critic and doing various things. I can't spell. Oh well there was no spell check at the time. No spell check.

01:53:18.410 - 01:53:42.350

Oh I've been so lucky. I have truly been lucky in many respects but I've always had secretaries who were really good spellers. Ah that's the but the ideas were yours but the spellings were the secretaries okay. And I know we didn't have to worry about grammar because Pat Jones I'd say Pat how do you spell cat.

01:53:44.370 - 01:54:14.650

No it's what I've been very lucky there. And I was told by John Schnarenberg at UNC who was one of my favorite professors there that when I came back from OU I knew I was never going to go back because I was called a racist and I'm not a racist. And so I said forget you. And so I did not finish the PhD.

01:54:15.030 - 01:54:38.190

So you were ABD. Yeah and I told I was told by John he said write write. And so at the time Durham paper was not doing art reviews and I didn't go to the morning paper I went to the Herald Sun. Which was the afternoon paper.

01:54:38.870 - 01:55:19.590

And I started writing for them. sometime later Blue went to Blue Greenberg and Blue wrote for them until just recently when the paper just really has sort of disappeared. So they've stopped anything to do with art. So I wrote for them and then I wrote for Art Papers in Atlanta and I wrote for Art Voices South which this was an article.

01:55:19.870 - 01:55:54.010

I would do these articles for that publication and of course I wrote the catalogs for the exhibition the essays that would go with those. I tried always to have a little something even if it's just a simple folder of some sort. So there'd be a historical record because otherwise it's there and it's gone. I think you did a wonderful job I mean in terms of your documenting many of your activities and many exhibitions you did at North Carolina Central University.

01:55:54.610 - 01:56:30.550

Now in terms of some of the artists, other artists that you exhibited for and you wrote for, you was very interested to learn about your engagement, interaction with Jim Moon, the artist. So how did you come in contact with Jim Moon? I've Jim was from Graham but I met him probably when I was doing an article on Winston-Salem for American artists. No, I met him earlier than that I'm sure.

01:56:32.530 - 01:57:11.090

I knew of his love for Italy because he had a studio in Oslo and he was the founder of the art program at the School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. So I met him there and I did an exhibition at Central and I used this for my catalog. This was an article from Art Voices South but I bought extras and made a folder for it and had that as a catalog. And I forget who gave me the money for that but somebody did and that was great.

01:57:11.490 - 01:57:44.730

And we continued over the years to work together. The last exhibition I did was the one in the Palazzo Cortez for him. It was from as a curator I was representing the Central University at the Palazzo Cortez in Mexico, in Cuernavaca. The exhibition was there.

01:57:45.070 - 01:58:23.550

Elizabeth Catlett had her house there. Every time I went, I don't speak Spanish and so I would call her house and she would be somewhere else and no one spoke English that answered the phone and so they couldn't figure out what this sluggish accent was. But I really had a wonderful time carrying groups to Europe in the summer. I was on the nine month contract so my summer was mine and I would organize a trip to Europe and I would take people over and fly them home.

01:58:23.810 - 01:58:36.230

I would stay and do my own studies. Now were you able to take any of your colleagues from North Carolina Central University over? Oh yes. We went to Mexico and we went to France.

01:58:38.810 - 01:59:05.170

This is one of my groups. This is two sets of architects. Frank DePasquale and Muriel and George Pine and Mary Pine and two nurses and this is what is her name? Evelyn Lambert and that's in near Viterbo and it's the country for Palladio.

01:59:05.330 - 01:59:53.290

It's a Palladian villa and she invited us to come to lunch and I we had a wonderful time. There's a stream that goes around in the garden and there were two swans but they never liked one another so they would not stay together. They were at different parts of the thing but she shortly after that sold her villa to the Japanese when the Japanese were big before they had to drop out financially and they bought that and she went to Cuernavaca and bought a Palazzo next to the Palazzo Cortez and this was taken in December the 15th when the exhibition opened. 1995 okay.

01:59:53.670 - 02:00:18.070

So now 1995 so I know Moon founded the Auxiliary. Oh yes. Yeah the Fine Arts Academy so did you have any participation with that in any kind of way? I did some writing for him you know I did a catalogue for that which was published by the Mexican government that was there and I did things for the Ocelando.

02:00:19.450 - 02:00:56.110

Ocelo is where the Brownings had a house and he did an Ocelando suite of poems and that's why he uses the Ocelando. Now you and of course he's dead you know. Oh okay. So now Bill and Hillary Clinton when they added, I think they were the I think Bill Clinton was the first president to add a work by an African American artist to the White House collection and he added the landscape added a landscape by Henry O'Tanner.

02:00:58.050 - 02:01:21.170

It's a big painting and he bought it from Alexander Minter who is a great great niece of Tanner. Ah okay. And about that time I was giving this lecture and so it was perfect for me to have the White House that was for the Rotary in Rome where I gave that lecture. And

02:01:22.590 - 02:01:29.530

at the same time in Washington at the National what is now SAM Smithsonian

02:01:30.190 - 02:01:38.290

American Art Museum they had the Edmonia Lewis Cleopatra and had cleared it

02:01:38.290 - 02:01:46.430

you know it went through it had been lost for years and was in with the junk cars in Chicago

02:01:46.430 - 02:01:53.130

I think and the Boy Scouts had painted it but it's cleaned up and you can see it now

02:01:53.130 - 02:02:01.050

it's in the storage collection that's on view they can't show everything obviously

02:02:01.050 - 02:02:09.190

in a collection so if you go to the Smithsonian American Art Museum it may not

02:02:09.190 - 02:02:15.950

be on view in a special big place but it will be on view in the

02:02:16.830 - 02:03:21.210

where they've stored paintings so it's close but you can still see it. Well you know what's interesting is that so you know Bill and Hillary you know that's that took place you know what in 1996 but you had exhibited you had exhibited the Duncanson and the Tanner and the Edward Bannister much earlier I mean why did you think it was so important to to really exhibit those particular artists well before the White House? Well you know I wasn't worried about the White House but I wanted my students to know that African Americans had been contributing as in spite of the situation of slavery they were doing things now there are earlier artists and I wasn't able to add all of those I'm trying to think who did Phyllis Wheatley's portrait I can't remember his name right now.

02:03:21.630 - 02:03:36.090

I've been retired for almost 30 years and I'm 90 years old so things do not Well you're doing a pretty good job You're doing a very good job. I can figure something out. Well now with one other person

02:03:36.090 - 02:03:43.950

I know you had a very very good relationship with and I know you exhibited Jeffrey Holder the dancer

02:03:43.950 - 02:03:51.210

Oh yeah Jeffrey was something else He called me Little Norman Little Norman How did you

02:03:51.770 - 02:03:59.550

So how did you first come into contact with Holder Well I met Jeffrey through Jim Moon because they were big friends

02:03:59.550 - 02:04:07.970

and so I was able to get the University to give Jeffrey an honorary doctorate and it's the only honorary

02:04:07.970 - 02:04:16.110

doctorate he got Now he was recognized in Winston-Salem by the, what is the theater group that meets the African American

02:04:16.110 - 02:04:23.650

He and Larry Hamlin who was the director of the Oh I'm trying to think

02:04:23.650 - 02:04:31.950

Not Maya Angelou because I know she was involved I'm trying to think of Jeffrey's wife's name She's such a beauty

02:04:31.950 - 02:04:46.330

She's still a magnificent woman Carmen DeLavalade. Carmen yes So I got to know Carmen and Jeffrey through Jim and I did a wonderful show of his work. Did you see it?

02:04:46.770 - 02:05:52.190

I did not see it And we got a painting from it Carmen gave it for us and then I did other shows of his work in other sites and Jesse Kearney who was at the time I did this was the head of the arts in Durham school system, Jesse Kearney and Jesse was a Diggs. She was one of the Diggs girls and her sister Yeah her sister is there in Winston-Salem Not Gloria Diggs Her other sister who was Diggs Atkins She was Secretary of State of Oklahoma Secretary of State and so she had asked me to do a Jeffrey Holder show in Oklahoma and I did What was her first name? Anyway, she was one of the Diggs and of course T. Diggs was their brother and the Not Rachel Diggs Wilkinson, no it was the other sister No, T.

02:05:53.330 - 02:06:33.270

It'll come to me, but T. Diggs is the name given to the gallery at Winston-Salem State and that was unfortunate not because he didn't deserve it, but because Selma deserved it first and Selma's collection was there and Ubrey had done a fabulous job of exhibiting it and so they were going to put her collection in somewhere in the Diggs gallery and she said no you're not and she took her collection back. Well I understand that from one of the things that her driver

02:06:33.270 - 02:06:41.370

had said to me and also Ubrey had said it he said that in regards to what happened to the exhibition

02:06:41.370 - 02:06:48.410

was to her her collection was that the

02:06:49.010 - 02:06:56.730

Gordon Haynes who was I've heard that same thing He said that Mr. Haynes had said that

02:06:57.150 - 02:07:03.710

it wasn't proper that a collection stay up forever because

02:07:04.610 - 02:07:11.590

she did state that it would be up so that school children could see it

02:07:12.790 - 02:07:20.270

so apparently I think that had something to do with it and also at the time I recall when the Diggs gallery

02:07:20.670 - 02:07:27.530

not the Diggs gallery, but the Selma Burke gallery was in the basement of Carolina Hall there on the campus and

02:07:28.270 - 02:07:36.010

she and that was the old historic building and it looked great there and they had a lot of leaks in the roof

02:07:36.010 - 02:08:00.930

etc. and so I think in one of the interviews that I had done well one of the interviews that I had put up online was that Mr. Ubrey and the then Chancellor at the time Cleon Thompson they were talking with Mrs. Burke and he's telling her Mrs. Burke, the new Burke gallery will be here in the basement of the C. G. O.

02:08:00.930 - 02:08:08.030

Kelly library that was being renovated at the time but of course the university ran out of money to

02:08:08.950 - 02:08:15.430

finish the building and they had to go to Mr. Haynes and apparently according to Mr. Ubrey that you know

02:08:15.430 - 02:08:22.310

since they had to go to him and Selma Burke had already said some pretty nasty words to him so

02:08:22.970 - 02:08:30.690

there was no love lost between the two of them that's right I think also in fairness

02:08:31.750 - 02:08:38.950

and it's not an excuse but it often happens when someone has a collection they don't want

02:08:38.950 - 02:08:46.670

they really in their heart of hearts don't want to get rid of it and so I think Selma

02:08:46.670 - 02:08:55.250

was happy to have an excuse to pull it back and she moved it from there to Livingston College

02:08:55.250 - 02:09:01.090

yeah and I think it went to Johnson C. Smith I don't know the order

02:09:01.090 - 02:09:08.930

but it went to several places and unfortunately it ended up being broken up yeah well I mean I saw a lot of it

02:09:08.930 - 02:09:16.710

in Maya Angelou's backyard I mean because she tells a story when Elizabeth Catlett had come

02:09:16.710 - 02:09:24.790

to do a retrospective it was a 30 year retrospective that she did for the Delta Arts Center and we were

02:09:24.790 - 02:09:31.410

sitting there in Maya Angelou's kitchen as a matter of fact and so Mrs. Catlett

02:09:31.410 - 02:09:39.010

she says Maya how did you get this work from Ms. Burke

02:09:39.010 - 02:09:47.530

and so Dr. Angelou tells the story and she says well I received a call from Selma

02:09:47.530 - 02:09:55.110

and she said I have something for you and apparently it was all of this artwork and that she sent it

02:09:55.110 - 02:10:03.210

she said she sent her driver Mr. Miles in a U-Haul truck up to Bucks County and they come back with it

02:10:03.210 - 02:10:11.330

but apparently I think that she did give some to Bennett I think some of the work also went to they had a few pieces of very nice sculpture

02:10:11.330 - 02:10:19.350

that go on to Winston-Salem State and I think I don't know if some went to A&T or not but I do know

02:10:19.350 - 02:10:27.110

there was quite a bit of it that was in her backyard and she had almost like a sculpture garden and I know there were some works by Selma Burke

02:10:27.110 - 02:10:33.490

that were there. Well the original of the falling angel it's not fallen but falling angel

02:10:33.490 - 02:10:41.190

is coming down holding the snake controlling evil and that I bought that

02:10:41.190 - 02:10:49.630

from Selma and it's cast from a pear tree that was killed destroyed by Hurricane Hazel

02:10:49.630 - 02:10:58.770

and you can see the what is it the grain of the wood

02:10:59.170 - 02:11:06.650

in certain parts of the sculpture so she worked with that piece of tree and made that sculpture

02:11:06.650 - 02:11:14.530

and that's there and I wonder where the original the wooden thing is because see this was cast in bronze

02:11:15.270 - 02:11:22.090

now you were talking about some other people you come in contact with I know that you had rapport with

02:11:22.380 - 02:11:30.470

Professor James Herring who started the art department there at Howard University could you say something about

02:11:30.470 - 02:11:37.290

how you came into contact with Professor Herring and also understand that you were supposed to have been getting the Herring collection

02:11:40.270 - 02:11:48.170

Professor Herring was fun he was a character I met him first at Hampton Institute

02:11:48.170 - 02:11:56.050

before it became him and there was a traditional African show that Richard Long because Richard was

02:11:56.050 - 02:12:03.150

teaching there then and this was long before it became him it was probably 1967

02:12:03.790 - 02:12:11.710

or 68 because I was going everywhere I could to learn because I didn't know I didn't know any women

02:12:11.710 - 02:12:18.690

I knew who did all the clouds from Arizona

02:12:19.560 - 02:12:26.390

oh that's she ended up going out she was married to Alfred Stieglitz

02:12:26.390 - 02:12:34.370

I knew her and I knew Rosa Bonheur those were the two women artists I knew

02:12:34.370 - 02:12:41.830

because I had traditional training who is that her name will come up anyway

02:12:43.530 - 02:12:49.610

I had to learn I was rushing and the only books that were available

02:12:49.610 - 02:12:58.490

there was no history that was available at the time James Porter's book had been printed

02:12:58.490 - 02:13:06.810

in 1943 so it was out of print I pulled all the copies that the library had at Central together

02:13:06.810 - 02:13:14.350

and put them on reserve so they'd have something to go to and there was a Cedric Dover book called

02:13:14.350 - 02:13:22.690

Modern Negro Art which he was an anthropologist at Fisk and so I that book had say

02:13:22.690 - 02:13:29.290

a photograph of the artist and a piece of his work and maybe some comment on the artist

02:13:29.290 - 02:13:38.930

so it was the closest thing I could get to a text and trying to get slides of work it was not

02:13:38.930 - 02:13:46.210

easy because they didn't exist so you obviously you were

02:13:46.500 - 02:13:54.670

in good company you were there with Richard Long did you have the opportunity to meet David Driscoll during that period of time oh David came to Central a number

02:13:54.670 - 02:14:01.930

of times because he had lived in North Carolina a lot and he had taught at Winston-Salem State as well but

02:14:02.590 - 02:14:10.350

Mr. Fisk Hayward Obrey the art gallery

02:14:10.350 - 02:14:20.230

at Howard University the old man oh now you mean

02:14:20.230 - 02:14:28.130

the artist you mean the one we were talking about from the beginning at the beginning oh I'm so

02:14:28.130 - 02:14:36.330

embarrassed by not being able to pull it up he gave us two paintings that he did

02:14:36.330 - 02:14:44.330

when he was at Syracuse oh James MacMillan not MacMillan the head of

02:14:44.330 - 02:14:50.350

the founder of the art department at Howard oh James Herring James Herring

02:14:50.350 - 02:14:59.710

came to Central we were fortunate at that time there were federal grants that allowed

02:14:59.710 - 02:15:06.450

scholars to be sent to different schools and we got him he came and

02:15:07.590 - 02:15:15.830

Lynn picked him up at the airport and he was very light he could have been my brother but he came

02:15:15.830 - 02:15:23.690

walking down with his cane and walked right by her she didn't know who it was and he turned around

02:15:23.690 - 02:15:30.630

are you looking at me but he was great fun and

02:15:32.090 - 02:15:38.630

Winston Kennedy no no his wife was a nurse

02:15:39.630 - 02:15:46.690

Wilson this was student he did a lot of

02:15:48.190 - 02:15:54.630

western scenes painted in Durham oh what is his name

02:15:55.510 - 02:16:02.590

Willie Nash Willie Nash and Frida his wife dear Frida she was a nurse and they lived

02:16:02.590 - 02:16:11.070

in the project MacDougall Terrace and Mr. Herring was here and so the students wanted to have a party for him

02:16:11.070 - 02:16:18.830

and so we went to MacDougall Terrace and we had you had a party in the project for this very

02:16:18.830 - 02:16:27.110

formal class and he loved it we had Ripple I never

02:16:27.110 - 02:16:34.610

had Ripple James Herring drinking Ripple I know Fred Sanford always talked about drinking Ripple but James Herring

02:16:34.610 - 02:16:41.690

drinking Ripple well you know James Herring was born either in North Carolina or South Carolina

02:16:41.690 - 02:16:50.210

I think it was in South Carolina most of the time it was sometimes it wasn't but he grew up at Bennett

02:16:51.370 - 02:16:59.010

wow and when he went to Syracuse he was under a special scholarship from a very wealthy white woman

02:16:59.010 - 02:17:06.190

and once a year she had him to dinner and her maid

02:17:06.190 - 02:17:13.770

cook who answered the door looked at him and she wouldn't greet him

02:17:13.770 - 02:17:21.630

she would just but the lady was very gracious to him and he enjoyed dinner with her

02:17:21.630 - 02:17:29.610

but in Washington they had trouble going he had a major gallery that a lot of whites went to

02:17:29.610 - 02:17:38.190

the Barnett Aid Gallery Mrs. Roosevelt went there a number of times but where could they go

02:17:38.190 - 02:17:44.810

to eat but they could go to Union Station they could eat at Union Station the restaurant was integrated

02:17:44.810 - 02:17:54.270

so because of your friendship that you had developed with James Herring so after he leaves

02:17:54.270 - 02:18:01.790

North Carolina Central in his will to get these paintings or no it wasn't he was very much alive

02:18:01.790 - 02:18:09.310

he invited us to buy the collection and Dr. Whiting sent Bob Kennedy

02:18:09.310 - 02:18:16.390

and Len Igoe and they went and he Herring warns Bob

02:18:16.390 - 02:18:25.790

don't stay at my place Len is going to stay here because it's not safe and there were

02:18:25.790 - 02:18:33.150

lots of burnings and so forth it was a bad time but Bob wanted to stay somewhere

02:18:33.150 - 02:18:41.370

he knew somebody anyway they selected the works and the works were shipped to Central and they were

02:18:41.370 - 02:18:49.790

in the old cafeteria in the front of the old cafeteria in Grace because see the museum hadn't been built yet

02:18:49.790 - 02:18:57.410

we were there because they were building the music department the music department and the museum are additions

02:18:57.410 - 02:19:05.410

they are not buildings they are additions by law they were legislated and funded

02:19:05.410 - 02:19:13.070

as additions and that's why they had those weird connections unfortunately they ran out of money and they couldn't

02:19:13.070 - 02:19:20.230

close the connection that put the museum and the music department so you opened right outdoors

02:19:21.110 - 02:19:31.650

I got a Ford Foundation grant and closed that off but anyway Harry's things were there

02:19:31.650 - 02:19:39.590

we didn't take the whole collection but it was a major thing and he died, he had a heart attack

02:19:39.590 - 02:19:47.250

and died and no one at the university was willing to fight it

02:19:47.250 - 02:19:54.870

we had, it was August that they had been selected, he had approved it because it was in our place it was on our property

02:19:54.870 - 02:20:02.390

and so you had a contract we could have gotten it but you know I had no voice

02:20:02.390 - 02:20:11.210

I wasn't a museum director I was just a lowly teacher and so that's what happened do you recall some of the works that were in that

02:20:11.210 - 02:20:27.090

collection? Oh god yes see I was he liked me and I liked him he loved Winston-Salem State by the way because he lived in a little house on campus. I know he went there I know he was, well Timber

02:20:27.090 - 02:20:35.010

before Mr. Obrey came he was an art chair for it was 1961 I think it was he truly enjoyed that

02:20:35.010 - 02:20:43.190

and he'd come out of retirement to do it but he wanted me to see his collection

02:20:43.190 - 02:20:50.650

and so he invited me because I was going to Europe and so I went to Washington and went over

02:20:50.650 - 02:21:03.190

but he died before I could get there and so the person who inherited the collection invited me over and took me

02:21:03.190 - 02:21:10.190

through the house and I saw it so I saw the collection before it was disappeared. Now

02:21:10.870 - 02:21:17.610

the Elizabeth Catlett of the woman playing the guitar that he had

02:21:17.610 - 02:21:25.190

given to us he'd also given us two small paintings that he did and they were

02:21:25.990 - 02:21:32.450

I think both paintings were in Conserve a Legacy those are the landscapes I think

02:21:32.450 - 02:21:40.870

they are little landscapes and he was a nice man I'd like to have known him better

02:21:41.550 - 02:21:48.550

but he was a big supporter of the person you asked her earlier who wrote

02:21:50.050 - 02:21:58.210

advised the the I have trouble remembering

02:22:00.230 - 02:22:05.910

the conspirators Oh David Rusco David, he was a big supporter of David.

02:22:06.170 - 02:22:12.810

David was one of his prodigies but he was very good and he

02:22:12.810 - 02:22:20.650

and who wrote The New Negro Oh Porter, James Porter

02:22:20.650 - 02:22:28.610

No Oh Elaine Locke Elaine Locke They hated one another

02:22:28.610 - 02:22:36.750

and when Elaine Locke died he wore a white suit and sat on

02:22:36.750 - 02:22:44.670

the front row at the funeral and in those days you always wore black

02:22:44.670 - 02:22:52.090

to funerals He was decked out in white at his funeral and so

02:22:52.310 - 02:23:00.510

I could imagine what he was saying I can too I won't repeat it

02:23:02.690 - 02:23:10.910

but they were both on the faculty Well so now I met Porter, he was delightful

02:23:10.910 - 02:23:16.970

John Hope had a number of his paintings Wow Well

02:23:18.370 - 02:23:28.750

looking back on your career as a professor, curator, museum director would you say that there were some things that you wish you could have accomplished

02:23:28.750 - 02:23:34.590

that you didn't accomplish or is it just you know, I did the best I could and c'est la vie

02:23:35.530 - 02:23:43.310

Well, of course you always wish you could have done better I would love to have had the museum in the old cafeteria

02:23:43.310 - 02:23:50.730

where we were temporarily and have that whole building because it's a major building it really is

02:23:51.170 - 02:23:58.670

and when I first went there it was the student union and down below was the student union

02:23:58.670 - 02:24:06.310

and up above was the cafeteria it would have made a wonderful museum because you could go back save that wonderful facade

02:24:06.310 - 02:24:14.510

with the Palladian windows looking over the bowl toward the administration building and go up, you could have gone up above it

02:24:14.510 - 02:24:22.010

Have you had any since you left from the university have you had any contact

02:24:22.520 - 02:24:49.590

with the current director or with anybody there at North Carolina Central University? Well, Kenneth as you know and I were friends so I did when I retired I went to Italy for a year because I didn't want to interfere and I don't know how to shut up if somebody called me something and said, Kenneth's doing this how would you do it?

02:24:49.750 - 02:24:55.970

I'd say how I'd do it and so I did not want to do that to him because he was trying to get in there

02:24:55.970 - 02:25:04.270

and certainly he did not need my help and if he did he'd call me and he didn't

02:25:04.990 - 02:25:12.890

and now Brenda has not called me either Well, I tell you I'd like to know

02:25:12.890 - 02:25:18.410

your list of donors or some of their family members that's always

02:25:18.410 - 02:25:26.610

you have that trajectory that goes from one generation to the next of museum curators and directors

02:25:26.610 - 02:25:34.410

Well, the sad thing is that the budget is not there Now, Kenneth was very fortunate

02:25:35.570 - 02:25:42.750

the one chancellor that was so good to him provided a new lighting system new walls and so forth

02:25:43.390 - 02:25:51.350

and was very supportive I guess that makes all the difference in terms of who your chancellor is

02:25:51.350 - 02:25:58.770

because you had Dr. Whiting he was a renaissance man He really was

02:25:59.650 - 02:26:07.030

and an art collector so what better chancellor to have who could understand what you were trying to accomplish

02:26:08.050 - 02:26:13.970

So, is there anything else that you would like to say about your life or your career

02:26:13.970 - 02:26:21.910

or anything Just keep enjoying Now, how would you say that in Italian?

02:26:22.990 - 02:26:35.830

Godere Godere Have fun Have fun Thank you so much Thank you