Interviewee: Joyce Long, 82

Interviewer: Denita Whitfield

Place of Interview: Ms. Long’s Home (Elizabeth City, N.C.)

Date and Time: April 21, 2014 at 2:30 p.m.

Ms. Joyce Long is retired school teacher living here, in Elizabeth City, N.C. with her twin sister Justina Long. Ms. Long graduated from Elizabeth City State Teachers College in 1954. She grew up on Herrington Rd., which is now located close to the University. Growing up, education was very important to her family. Out of her and her other 5 siblings, all 6 went to college. After graduating from Elizabeth City State Teachers College, Ms. Long went on to teach in Henderson, N.C. Ms. Long was able to recall various moments during her childhood and adulthood that continue to stand out to her to this day. For example, in Henderson, the school where she worked had nothing but seats for the children to sit in. Ms. Long and a few other teachers went out and bout things to furnish the school. After leaving North Carolina, she moved to New Jersey to rejoin her twin sister to continue teaching.

Ms. Long remembers a lot about the Civil Rights Movement around the time before and during her attendance at Elizabeth City Teachers College. She and her sister were topics of an article written in the Daily Advance in 2013. Ms. Long was able to recall her trip to the Washington, D.C. to participate in the March on Washington in 1963. She recalled, “I don’t think anyone saw color that day. We all sang ‘We Shall Overcome,’ and crossed arms and it was something to see.” (article Daily Advance) She also recalls her mother participating in a local march with her younger brother while she was in school. Ms. Long, herself, also participated in Civil Rights activities right here in Elizabeth City. She was involved in the student strike of 1954 on the campus of Elizabeth City State University (then known as Elizabeth City State Teachers College). This march was targeted to help student on campus, primarily football player, obtain better meals on campus. She stated that Coach Bobby Vaughn placed a large role in this protest.

As a former educator, Ms. Long is a strong advocate for education in the community. When asked what advice she would give to the younger generations, she stated, “First thing is to get an education. Once you have your education, give back to the school and the surrounding community.” (Long Whitfield Interview) Even in her retirement, she is very involved with the University as well as its surrounding community. She and her sister work very closely with the Museum of the Albemarle to implement African American exhibits as well as Black History Month programs. Ms. Long can be seen walking around campus attending various programs and events on campus. Ms. Long’s latest project in the Legacy Room that is located in the Kermit E. White Building off campus. Legacy Room is the brainchild of Ms. Bischoff, her twin sister, Justina Long, and herself.

Transcript

Whitfield: Tell me how you grew up

Long: I grew up around Herrington Rd. In the area that I grew up in, on the street, as a teenager, everybody on that street had somebody from the family that went to college. There were a few that went to Hampton. During my time everybody went to college. Even now, you can see a bum standing on the street, if they had a few years of college. We walked to school. My parents did not own the home for a long time. And eventually my father bought a lot. The first house we lived in, my father paid 450 a week. There were 6 of us. My sister and I were the oldest, and a brother that was 5 yrs younger than we were. All six of us went to college, but only 4 graduated. There was nothing else to do. All of our teachers lived in the community as a child. In this area, as far as education is concerned, it was high up on the scale. You were encouraged to go to school and to college.

Long: Yes, we could rarely get any textbooks. When we would get the text books, pages would be torn out; they would sometimes have the word “nigga” in them.

Whitfield: So when the white schools received new text books, you all received the old ones?

Long: That’s right, when they got new text books, we got their old ones. When I started teaching, I taught in North Carolina for 2 years, in Henderson, N.C. That’s when they had the concept of separate but equal. We went into the school, it was a beautiful school, brand new, and there was nothing in it but seats for the children.

Whitfield: No books?

Long: We had to buy things for the cafeteria, silverware. There was a stage, auditorium as they call it. We bought the drapery for that. We even had to buy clocks for our classroom. A group of us got together. One person had an account at Sears and we went there and bought about 10 clocks. For those who wished to have a clock in their classroom. This was a farm area in Henderson, N.C. And the children….. I had never seen anything like it never, never, never in my life. They had corn and tobacco, people worked in those fields. Every day, when I first went there, late August, early September, the children jumped up and ran out. And I said ‘Where are you going, you can’t leave the classroom like that.’ ‘The truck is out there’ ‘What truck?’ No one had told me anything. They would come and pick the kids up around 12.

Whitfield: To take them to work?

Long: Yes. They had to work in the fields. The fathers were…. Well the parents, I should say their parents were tenant workers. The children would come and work. Of course the children didn’t get paid. They lived in shacks; I guess you would call them.

Whitfield: Those were the houses that were on the farms, right?

Long: Yes. They didn’t have proper flooring. They didn’t have refrigerators. I would have seen them have food sitting in the window. I would have never seen an area like that. I was 20 years old and had never seen anything like that. There was one black guy he had a little store, and he was of the most prosperous in the area, Mr. Hawkins. We would go over there to get snacks to take to our rooms and we would pay him at the end of the month. He was one of the most prominent in the area. But those kids, when they left school at 12, they would work until 5 or 6 o’clock in the fields, everyday. And this would happen, it would start in late August or early September and would go on until the end of October. And we be in class and we would go around and help other teachers and read stories and what have you. Back then they didn’t have libraries. Now most of the kids left. I think it was from 5^th grade up. The younger kids stayed. Some of them had never had been to movie. We would come home on the weekend, and friend of mine and myself, we would take 3 or 4 kids and take them to the movie. It was a place called Vance County. It was near Henderson, N.C. And the two of us would take 3 or 4 of them to the movies, every weekend. When I got there, you were told when you filled out your application, if you were asked if you belonged to the NAACP, say no. The working conditions were good. The principals at the time were called ‘Uncle Toms’. Recently the principal that I worked for came by here, about 3 years ago. And I said to him, ‘You know, we always thought you all were Uncle Toms.’ He said, ‘We were.” He said, ‘We had to do a lot of things that were unpleasant and that we did not want to do to keep our jobs. We realized that we were helping and hurting our own people, but we had no choice at that time.’

Long: Then when they had the March on Washington, we went to the March on Washington. The churches around here played a big part in it. They would go to one church. The leaders, one was a minister and one was a principal. They did not want the white people to know that they were meeting and they would meet at night. And then there was a Dr. C.B. Jones. They would walk and meet in his office. His office was on Poindexter Street. He was one of the few blacks that had businesses in Elizabeth City. They would meet in secret because they didn’t want, you know because they were supposed to be so called ‘in’ with the white people thought that they were and did not realize that they had a mind of their own and they knew that things were not as they should be and they would have silent marchers. They would be the instigators of these marchers but they were never seen. The University played a big part in this. Those kids were not afraid. They had what I guess you would call ‘guts and gull’. They got out there and fought for what they thought was right. My mother taught school. There were 6 of us. She went back to school at 62 and taught for 17 years. She finished when the university was called ‘State Normal School’ and there was a 2 year program. When she went back for her last years, she and my younger sister marched together. I had a younger brother, mother had started teaching then. She said ‘I was told that they are integrating the schools. And I’m told that if I send Donald,’ that was my younger brother, ‘then I will lose my job.’ She said, ‘Now, what should I do?’ We said, ‘Send him to Northeastern.’

Whitfield: That was the black high school?

Long: No, that was the white high school. Back then the black high school was P.W. Moore. So we told her send him the Northeastern. She said, ‘Well, they are saying that if I may lose my job if I send him.’ That year, I think it was about 5 or 6 of them; their parents let them go to the integrated school. It went smoothly. There were no problems. Of course, Mother did not lose her job. The next year, more blacks went and then they did away with P.W. Moore was a high school and made it an elementary school. I can’t say that there were a lot of strong tensions here. I remember my mother saying that they would try to get the black to not participate in various things. The biggest part of the Civil Rights Movement was through the churches and the University. I can recall someone saying that the University President at that time was not to keen on the students marching.

Whitfield: Really? Why?

Long: Well you have to think, at that time, people were trying to keep their jobs. If the whites thought that your ‘hands were in the pot’ in any way to stir up this movement. They didn’t come out and say it but they knew what was going on. But they survived. When I moved to New Jersey, I can recall them asking me if I ever saw anybody get beaten. I can recall one time when they said a young man was beaten by the police. The young man was delivering groceries to a white lady. I don’t know, they said there was a relationship going on. And they beat him up very badly and received a long jail sentence. But that, I think, is the worst thing that I can recall that happened around here. That was a terrible time. He was in high school. As far as lynching and beating, as I can recall, most of the people that went to jail, it was for minor infractions such as being drunk on the streets. There were bad times and good times, I can say that. There were no school buses. We carried our lunches to school. But the white kids had cafeterias long be for we did. From what I could see blacks and whites got along very well in this area.

Whitfield: Can you tell me about the Strike of 1954

Long: The kids weren’t being fed well. Coach Vaughn was a part of that as well. I was in the class, the Class of 1954. We went on strike, Bobby Vaughn said, ‘you have got to feed these players, they are not being fed enough.’ And the people in the city fed those football players. My mother and others, they baked pies and cakes and had them in their homes. In fact, Bobby Vaughn took the football players off the campus and took them into people’s homes.

Whitfield: To feed them?

Long: Yes to feed them. But that was one of the hidden things round here. They didn’t want that to get out. And we were threatened. We didn’t have yearbooks; we didn’t have anything because we were on strike. We didn’t have any activities or anything because we were on strike. At the time the papers were full “Negro College: Kids Were Not Being Well Fed.” But they tried to keep it quite. The whites help feed them too. They donated food as well. The store keeper that I mentioned before, I can remember him saying to my mother ‘Well, I’m going to put an extra bag of flower in her so you can make some biscuits for those boys. It was peaceful. There was no violence or anything. But like I said we did not have any year books or anything. The president at the time, Sidney D. Williams, was furious, because a lot of those guys in the team and in the class were service fellows. They were 2 or 3 or 4 years older than the regular class. And those guys like to eat, you know. And they protested and told Coach Vaughn that they were not being fed well.

Whitfield: What was campus like back then?

Long: They had a place called the ‘Lighthouse’. They had tables and chairs in there. And we could go and get drinks and things like that. In fact, my mother worked there when she was in school. It was very nice. You could walk all over campus. The nursery was this big building. Over on the far side, there was a row of small white bungalow houses.

Whitfield: I remember those houses. They just tore those down not too long ago?

Long: Yes. That’s where the faculty lived. At first they would stay in the city. Since there were no hotels, they would stay with various families. Then they built those houses. Bobby Vaughn lived in one. Dr. Helen Caudwell lived in another. By the way she is still living. I believe she is 94. She is the oldest living faculty. You could just walk all over campus. We (she and her sister) stayed in the city. Sometimes my mother would fix sandwiches and things like that and we would take them to campus. When they left that campus, they could only go into town one way. That was down Southern Ave. past the water front. And people would look. They would walk 2 by 2 until they got to Main St. And then when it got a certain time, they would meet and walk back to campus. They could not take any side cuts or they were punished. At that time they had the sailors on the base and they were not allowed on the campus. We had Vespa every Sunday.

Whitfield: What is that?

Long: It’s a Christian service. And you had to go because you had a seat number. And your homeroom teacher was there taking role. All the activities on campus we had to attend. I sang in the choir. The relationship between the on campus students and the city people was good. We knew people that did hair I the city and we would go get our hair done. Ask me something else (laugh)

Whitfield: What made you decide to get involved in that strike on campus?

Long: Because we were all friends. And we just didn’t feel that they were being properly fed. We would hear them talk about it.

Whitfield: So was it just the football players or everybody.

Long: It was everybody, but basically the football players. It started with the football players. Like I said they had been in service and everybody supported them. It was nonviolent, very peaceful. The whole community supported them.

Whitfield: What advice would you give to my generation and generations after me?

Long: I would say, first thing is get and education. Once you have your education, give back to the school and the community. Don’t forget where you came from. I would also say that you have to be a mentor for the younger generations. Don’t be afraid to step in and give them advice because a lot of them come from broken homes. And they need you more than you think. Get together and great little groups. We a black library and get books because we could go the white library and there wasn’t one at one time. Stay involved in the community. Encourage the young people to stay in school. Provide classes where they can get help if they need it. Because we have mothers who are kids themselves. Do it through the church. Even meet with the mothers. They need help. The churches, I feel, don’t do what they could do for the kids because I feel that we don’t have anything but the churches.