Oral History with Dr. LaVerne (Freddie) Hairston Higgins, September 28, 2000 (Ms1995-026)

Tamara Kennelly: You came to Virginia Tech from Roanoke. Were you born in Roanoke?

Dr. LaVerne Hairston Higgins: No, I was born in North Carolina.

Kennelly: Where in North Carolina?

Higgins: Actually in Rockingham County so not really in a town.

Kennelly: Did you grow up in Rockingham?

Higgins: No, I grew up in Roanoke. I think I was two when I moved to Roanoke. We

lived in Roanoke until I came here.

Kennelly: Where you were growing up? Was your family on a farm?

Higgins: No. My grandfather lived on a farm. I don't think my parents lived on a

farm because at that point my father came back from World War II on the GI bill

and went to trade school. 00:01:00I don't think they were farming. They came to Virginia

to follow that. I'm not very rural. If you saw my list of allergies, you would

know I'm not very rural. [Laughter] In fact, everything that grows.

Kennelly: Could you give us your father's and mother's names?

Higgins: My father is Fred D. Hairston, Jr., and my mother is May Hampton Hairston.

Kennelly: Why did your father come to Roanoke?

Higgins: I have no idea. I think it was basically that's where the jobs were at

that time.

Kennelly: What does your father do?

Higgins: Well, at that time he was a plasterer. He is retired now, and actually

when I graduated from high school in 1966, he graduated a few months later and

went to Roanoke College. Then he worked for the Park Services in Roanoke

managing parks for awhile after that 00:02:00as a second career.

Kennelly: Did he do a GED program?

Higgins: I think he actually graduated from high school. When he was young,

there was no high school where they were in North Carolina that would accept blacks.

Kennelly: So he actually went to classes?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: That would seem like a difficult thing to do, kind of courageous. What

about your mother's education?

Higgins: I think she went to junior high school, and then she worked in Roanoke

Hospital. She worked in Intensive Care for awhile. She also worked for a dry 00:03:00cleaners for a long time.

Kennelly: What did she do when she was working at the hospital?

Higgins: It was in Intensive Care mostly.

Kennelly: Do you know what her position was?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: Are there other children in your family?

Higgins: My brother.

Kennelly: Is he older or younger?

Higgins: A lot older. Before my father went to war and after he came back.

That's us!

Kennelly: Another life sort of--

Higgins: In some ways, but we get along really well together. We like to kid

each other a lot. But basically he was gone when I got to high school. He

graduated six years before me from high school. We are different in terms of

what we went through.

Kennelly: Did he go to college?

Higgins: Yes, part-time but not really. He took some classes.

Kennelly: Did you have a job as a young person growing up?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: When you were in high school, did you work at all?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: I wondered about the community you were living in Roanoke. Was it an

integrated community?

Higgins: No. Well, yes and no. We lived on Gilmore 00:04:00Avenue when I was really

little. When I was six, we moved to a house on Mercer Avenue, and I know that

was an integrated neighborhood, very much so. I still remember one of the things

was that one of my friends down the street being taunted and people asking her

why she was playing with that nigger. I remember that very well.

Kennelly: When she was playing with you?

Higgins: Yes, I remember that when I was about six.

Kennelly: That must have been painful!

Higgins: Yes, actually I didn't understand it because I didn't know what was

going on, but I remember her being very angry with the other kids in the neighborhood.

Kennelly: Did she stop playing with you?

Higgins: Nope!

Kennelly: So, she was one of your good friends when you were little, and she 00:05:00 was

white, and you were friends for a while?

Higgins: For a while, and then her family moved away. Her mother was ill, and

then they moved away. I think out of the area.

Kennelly: Was your elementary school integrated?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: What elementary school did you go to?

Higgins: Harrison. I think it was called Harrison, and then to Booker T.

Washington Junior High School. And Lucy Addison High School for two years, and

then I went to Fleming, William Fleming for the last two years of high school,

and that was integrated.

Kennelly: Up until that point the other schools--

Higgins: Were all segregated.

Kennelly: Up until that point before the last two years of high school, did you

have much contact with white people in your neighborhood or friends socially?

Higgins: I had particularly my mother's friends more so than anyone else, and I

had some friends who were white. I also used to go visit my aunt in New York 00:06:00 all

the time when I was a kid. My cousins had friends in New Rochelle, New York. But

I remember the Colored Only and White Only signs over fountains and over stores

when I was a kid.

Kennelly: In Roanoke?

Higgins: Yes, in Roanoke, but at the same time I don't remember being totally isolated.

Kennelly: Were those memories of painful things that happened to you?

Higgins: 00:07:00I told you about the one incident that was really painful for me. Other

than that I don't think so because my family has a really strong sense of who

they are. So I never really felt it. I felt that was other people's problem, not

my problem.

Kennelly: Somehow your family was able to give you the sense of who you are.

Higgins: So if other people define you that way, that's their loss.

Kennelly: What happened when you went to an integrated high school? Did that

seem like a big change?

Higgins: Actually it was a big change for me for the better. I never really fit

in anywhere. I was like this little weird kid [laughter] all my life. 00:08:00I wasn't

expected to fit in, so it made it easier for me. Actually, I did have some good

friends in high school at Fleming, and some of the teachers were really great.

So I had a great two years. I got to experiment a lot more than previously, and

that was good.

Kennelly: In what way?

Higgins: Academically. I took a Greek drama class and a Shakespeare class and

lots of math. In my senior year, there were nine people in my math class, the

advanced math.

Kennelly: The advanced?

Higgins: Yeah that was a good group. I hated Phys Ed. I wasn't really in the

social clubs or anything like that, so that didn't bother me.

Kennelly: Did you go to the school dances?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: When you say you didn't fit in, what way do you mean?

Higgins: I always felt like I was an oddball.

Kennelly: Was it because your interests were different?

Higgins: 00:09:00Yeah. Not just the interests. It was how I defined myself which at some

point I'm not sure I ever really defined myself. I'm into reinventing myself

[laughter]. I've been through a lot of careers. When I think about it, I think,

God, I've been around a long time.

Like when I was little--I'll give you an example--when I was little, we'd come

back from New York. I have no linguistic integrity, so I would go to New York,

and I would sound like I was from Western 00:10:00Virginia, and I had never lived

anyplace else in my life. I'd come back after two weeks, and I'd sound like I'd

never lived anywhere else but Westchester County, New York!

In fact, my husband used to laugh because he'd say, "You sound like

Midwestern--flat, and I'd get on the phone with my mother, and then I'd back in

the hills of Virginia. [laughter]

So I still remember people thinking I put on airs when I came back from New

York. I don't remember doing that because my voice would be different. I can do

that. I move in and out. I just came back from Japan. I realized when I came

back, I was speaking English very weird. But that was just because I was in

another mode and it was just a transition period.

Kennelly: Were you going to Japan to do research?

Higgins: To do research. I was doing research.

Kennelly: On what topic?

Higgins: Labor markets, the tightening labor market in developing countries.

Kennelly: Did you date much in high school?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: Did you have male and female friends, both black and white?

Higgins: Yes, as a matter of fact, when it came to Tech there were kids, 00:11:00guys I

had gone to school with at Addison who were here, and there were also three

people from Fleming that were here, including my math teacher. He came to

graduate school. We all came together. So I knew people when I came.

Kennelly: Why did you decide to come to Virginia Tech?

Higgins: I think my parents were reluctant for me to head off half way across

the country, which was my inclination. I really wanted to go to Mount Holyoke. I

wanted to go to a girls' school, but it was too far away. It had a good math

department, and I was a math 00:12:00major. At ten I decided I wanted to be a

mathematician. That was mainly it.

Kennelly: Were you encouraged to pursue mathematics as a child by your teachers?

Higgins: Yes, beginning in seventh grade, I think more so by my family than by

teachers. At home I grew up in a household where my brother and I really were

told that anything we wanted to do, we could do it. All you have to do is work

for it.

I used to watch Sputnik, the early Mercury and Apollo stuff, and I thought that

was neat stuff, and we would talk about it. That was interesting to me, maybe

the background trajectory stuff. I always 00:13:00knew I would at least get a master's

degree. That was never out of my mind.

Kennelly: Did you feel prepared for when you came here from your high school?

Higgins: Yes, psychologically I thought I was prepared. I had a lot of

confidence in me. It wasn't arrogance, but I guess it could be perceived as

arrogant. The belief in yourself that you could do it. I don t think it was

bordering on I'm capable of anything in the world, but sort of within certain

limits I could do it.

Kennelly: Was your family politically active?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: In what way?

Higgins: In state politics, my 00:14:00father in the union, NAACP, church, all that.

Kennelly: In what way in state politics?

Higgins: My father was very active in the Democratic Party when I was a kid. I

remember that a lot. I had relatives who were involved in earlier stages of CORE

down in North Carolina. Very active.

Kennelly: What about NAACP?

Higgins: My father and my mother but mostly I remember my father because he was

much more outgoing than my mother was

Kennelly: Did they attend any demonstrations? In what way were they active?

Higgins: Yes, they attended demonstrations. Actually, I did, too.

Kennelly: You did? Like, for example--

Higgins: God, I can't even remember. It 00:15:00was--I must have been thirteen,

somewhere around there. There were some demonstrations in Roanoke, and I

remember doing stuff with that. Also working, I remember a group of women from

Hollins too. That's another reason why I was isolated racially because I was

very young, and they were in their early twenties, and I was thirteen or fourteen.

Kennelly: What was the situation?

Higgins: I can't even remember now. But I know it had to do with the movement

and CORE. A long time ago, in 1961 or 1962.

Kennelly: 00:16:00Was your family involved?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Was that something you grew up with where things were discussed at home?

Higgins: Oh yes, a lot.

Kennelly: There was a lot of discussion about current issues?

Higgins: A lot of current issues particularly Sundays around the dinner table

and I'd say I remember having some of the discussions even in the 1950s. I

remember all sorts of discussions about racial inequality because of the civil

rights movement.

Kennelly: Did you think that you felt you had to make a special commitment in

that 00:17:00 area?

Higgins: Yes. I remember a letter to the editor that was published in the

Roanoke Times when I was fourteen or fifteen.

Kennelly: I'd love to see that. Do you think anyone has it?

Higgins: I don't know. I was very young.

Kennelly: What was the topic?

Higgins: It had to do with integration and why people were pressuring for

changes. You know, I started school the fall after Brown vs. Topeka, and I

remember Virginia had at the time what was called a student placement test which

was a test that black students had to take if they wanted to go to an integrated

school, and you had to pass the test. I remember discussions in my house that

that was degrading, and I never had to take such a test. That was one of the

reasons I was in a segregated school 00:18:00even though Roanoke had integrated schools.

Kennelly: But you had to take this test to get into the school?

Higgins: Yes, and my family viewed that as unacceptable.

Kennelly: Why should you have to do that?

Higgins: It's something that one needed to stand up against. That's right. A

stand, which I understand, and I don't devalue at all.

Kennelly: You were aware of that from quite a young age?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Were there some of your friends taking that test?

Higgins: There were people I knew 00:19:00who were going to integrated schools from my

neighborhood and church, but I never did.

Kennelly: Did you have a sense that you wanted to, or was it fine what you were doing?

Higgins: It was just fine.

Kennelly: What church was your family involved in?

Higgins: Sweet Union Baptist Church in Roanoke.

Kennelly: Was that important? Church involvement? Was that a strong force in

your family?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: When you say of the Sunday dinner your family would have and the

discussions, would that be extended family, too?

Higgins: Sometimes.

Kennelly: You might have a lot of people talking about it?

Higgins: Oh, yeah. You might have a lot of people talking about all sorts of

things. My father is the twelfth, and my mother is the seventh. Almost everyone

lived in North Carolina, but a lot of times people would come up for the day. It

was only 75 miles just across the border. We'd be down there, or especially when

my aunt came from New York, there'd be lots of people gathered together. Lots of

people talking all at the time, a lot of different conversations. So even as a

child if you weren't involved in the conversations, you heard them. I don't

think there were very many shy people on either side of my family. Very 00:20:00 strong

people, particularly my mother and her sisters, and her mother was very strong,

and my maternal grandmother lived with us until she died in 1960.

Kennelly: What was her name?

Higgins: Cora Hampton. She was a strong figure. Quiet in some ways but very

strong. You knew where the borders were in terms of personal integrity. There

are lines where you did not proceed. A very strong code of ethics and conduct.

Kennelly: 00:21:00So you grew up with a strong sense of all those things? Were you

actively recruited to come to Virginia Tech?

Higgins: I don't think so. A little bit, but not so strenuously. Not like now.

But it's a different time, too, in terms of college recruitment. It might have

been big then, but I don't remember.

Kennelly: Did you get a scholarship?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Had you been over to Virginia Tech before?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: Did you apply to other schools, too?

Higgins: I'm sorry. Yes. I know Mount Holyoke. I know there were others, too,

but I can't remember.

Kennelly: That's okay. It's a lot of questions. Did you feel that when you were

coming here that you would be a pioneer?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: Did you know that you were the first group of--

Higgins: No, didn't know 'til I got here.

Kennelly: 00:22:00If you could take yourself back to when you first came over, did your

parents take you over?

Higgins: Oh, yes. They brought me over.

Kennelly: Can you remember any of your first impressions when you came?

Higgins: It was very pretty. We lived at Hillcrest Hall. I don't know if it's

still here.

Kennelly: Yes.

Higgins: Okay. Well, I understand it became a jock dorm. It was a very nice

dorm. It may still be a very nice dorm. The furniture in the commons room

downstairs was very nice. The rooms were very large, much larger than I

expected, and I think there was a bathroom between two rooms. 00:23:00That was really

physically nice, and the guys in the cafeteria were great 'cause the first

November I was here, right after I came, I played touch football right out on

the quad with a whole bunch of friends from the dorm and some guys and stuff.

Got my teeth knocked out and had to have them wired back in.

I still remember there was this dentist on campus, and he was leaving, and it

was two minutes before he left the office, but they got me over there, and he

shoved them back in and wired them in.

The reason I brought that up is because the guys over in Hillcrest made some

food for me so I could eat because I couldn't use them to bite anything. It was

really nice of them, nice to have that 'cause my diet was really bad there for a

couple months while the teeth mended.

Kennelly: Do you think they were looking after you because these were black

cooks in the dorm?

Higgins: Yes. I remember this guy named 00:24:00Charlie. "What do you need honey?" There

wouldn't be mashed potatoes, but I'd have mashed potatoes. I couldn't bite anything.

Kennelly: So they were kind of looking after you?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: How were the girls in the dorm?

Higgins: For the most part, they were good. Some of them were a little strange

when their parents were around because their parents were much more concerned

that we were around. There were people that didn't want anything to do with us,

Linda and I. Linda and I were the only two blacks in that dorm. Everybody else

was down in Eggleston, the black students.

Kennelly: I think Linda mentioned that sometimes the parents would treat you and

her almost as if you were housekeeping staff, saying like, where were the paper towels?

Higgins: It was very interesting because Linda's reaction and my reaction were

very different. Because mine was, why the hell should I notice? She was much

more offended personally. I was like, that's your problem. So that's a little 00:25:00 different.

I loved Linda. Linda's a great woman. But I suppose she was much shyer than I

was. At the time I didn't think of myself as not being shy. I always thought I

was kind of quiet. As I think back and think maybe I wasn't as quiet as I

thought I was. She was just more likely to be hurt.

Kennelly: She thought you were more cosmopolitan. I was 00:26:00wondering, maybe coming

out of Roanoke, which isn't terribly cosmopolitan, but maybe would that be

because of New York and your family being active in a certain sense?

Higgins: Yes, and I would do things in New York. I remember going to plays and

doing stuff in New York, stuff I didn't have a chance to do in Roanoke. Going to

concerts with my cousins. My cousins are two years and seven years older than I

am. Particularly my cousin Emma who is two years older than me. We were good

buddies. Maybe it did change my outlook on life.

Kennelly: You were exposed to a lot of things before you even came to college?

Well, that might have made a big difference.

Higgins: I didn't feel intimidated.

Kennelly: Did you feel that some of your fellow students treated you like you

were invisible?

Higgins: Possibly but I don't remember thinking very much about it 00:27:00because I

also can be a very tunnel vision person. If it doesn't matter to me, I can

ignore it. In some ways it's a good survival tool. It can make you oblivious to

other things. I'm still a little bit that way.

Kennelly: What did you come here to study?

Higgins: Math.

Kennelly: How did you find that department? The professors?

Higgins: Well, Linda found mentors in Home Economics and in Chemistry. I

remember a Chemistry professor. But I didn't, and I do remember, I don't even

remember his name, but I remember sitting in Biology class and basically the

first day him saying, "You people won't pass this 00:28:00class," and he was looking at

me. I remember thinking it was useless, and why waste my energy.

I didn't feel strongly pulled one way or the other. I was politically more

active, so I felt three schisms that made me disconnect here. It eventually led

to leaving. The year we came, I think we counted up at one point, a whole bunch

of us, there were forty-two blacks on campus. That's counting the ones from

Africa, which I remembered outnumbered the ones from the United States, males

and females.

Kennelly: Interesting!

Higgins: There were only 350 females out of 12,000 students, and I was

definitely anti-military. The Corps was really 00:29:00strong. I was like, how can you

do this? This is politically the wrong place to be. That's the group as time

went on. I was real active in opposing Vietnam.

Kennelly: In what way were you active?

Higgins: Demonstrations, writing articles. I wrote for the student newspaper,

but I also wrote for Alice, which was an underground newspaper.

Kennelly: Oh, you wrote for Alice, too? I'll have to find those because we have Alice.

Higgins: Oh, you do?

Kennelly: And you wrote under your own name in those?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Okay, I didn't realize that.

Higgins: Yes. So those were my friends. We were the fringe people. So in a lot

of ways I was the different person in more ways than one way.

Kennelly: So did you go to some demonstrations against the war beyond things locally?

Higgins: 00:30:00In D.C.

Kennelly: Was it while you were in college?

Higgins: Yes, and after I left.

Kennelly: Would a busload of people go or a van?

Higgins: Or a car. I had a car to go to demonstrations. I can't remember. I went

to someplace else. I think the person I remember most from here is B. Lloyd. He

was the Episcopal minister on campus.

Kennelly: In what way?

Higgins: Because he was politically active and socially active. He did a lot of

work with the mineworkers in West Virginia. I remember that it was much more a

kinship for me politically. And Tech United Ministries was a home away from

home. That really was the 00:31:00shelter for most people who were the anti-war fringe

people when I was here.

Kennelly: Through the church groups?

Higgins: Yes, so in a lot of places, the anti-war movement was around drugs,

sex, violence, and all that stuff. Here it actually came out of the religious

community. So it had a lot to do with ethics and faith and belief about how

things should be.

Kennelly: Were you involved in one of the churches?

Higgins: Episcopal.

Kennelly: Episcopal Church here?

Higgins: Mostly.

Kennelly: Did he go to demonstrations?

Higgins: We talked a lot about politics. The Methodist guy, I can't think of his

name. There was an apartment above the theatre in town. Methodist and

Presbyterian together, I think. They referred to it as The Apartment.

Kennelly: Above the Lyric?

Higgins: 00:32:00Yes. On Fridays and Saturdays we'd take turns cooking, and people would

pay fifty cents to have a meal away from the dorm and listen to music and talk

about political events and things like that going on. It was also a place to go

and study off campus and sit and play cards. The minister, it was part of the ministry.

Kennelly: Were there other black students going to that besides yourself?

Higgins: Cecil Pettus from Covington. I think we were the only two.

Kennelly: Did you feel comfortable and accepted in that room? It just didn't matter?

Higgins: The most accepted that I felt.

Kennelly: In that group?

Higgins: Yes. Lot of discussions about issues and things. It was very

politically centered.

Kennelly: 00:33:00Well, I wondered because you wrote that very interesting column, "Back

Talk," which you were writing when you were on the news staff at the student

newspaper. You and a white student, Larry Billion, had this pro and con "Back

Talk," and several issues were addressed: unions, Vietnam War, and

miscegenation. I wondered. It was a very interesting series, I thought, and I

wondered how that happened.

Higgins: I'm not sure how it really got started. It was fun to do different

perspectives. That was easy for me.

Kennelly: A lot of students come to college, and they haven't decided what their

ideas are yet, but it seems like you had a sense of what you believed at that 00:34:00 point.

Higgins: Yes, I think that I was encouraged at home to do that, to think about

issues very young. We always discussed what was going on in the world. More on

the weekends and Sundays than during the week because my father as a plasterer

would often travel with construction jobs, and he would often go someplace late

on Sunday night. Or early on Sunday morning, he'd leave and go off to a

construction site. But he'd come home on Friday evening. So he was home on the

weekends and gone during the week a lot of times.

Kennelly: When your father was home, he was the person who would give the discussion?

Higgins: Bring us up to date. It was also during the week. It was kind of crazy.

Everything going on-going to 00:35:00school, working, things with the house.

Kennelly: In one of the "Back Talks," it was called "The Pros and Cons of Mixed

Dating and Miscegenation," you mentioned Dr. Samuel Proctor, president of the

Institute for Service to Education, emphasizing that the only way for a minority

to infiltrate into the mainstream of society is through assimilation. You say

amalgamation is a necessary step to progress. I wondered at this stage of your

life if you had any reflections on assimilation for minorities?

Higgins: Assimilation/amalgamation. The way I meant it is very different than

the way it's come to mean. Assimilation has come to mean denial of who you are

and taking on something else. Assimilation as I meant it and viewed it at the

time was being able to function. And I 00:36:00think most minority peoples do that.

Mostly minority people function in more than one society. They are bicultural at

minimum. Some are even more multicultural because there are cultural practices

that are accepted in one venue, and even people do it across classes. People who

change classes, who are born into a lower class and wind up moving into a

different class, they become bicultural in a sense that they've learned to

function in another. They've assimilated. That's what I mean by assimilation,

not in terms of denial.

Now I think in the late 1970s, assimilation became synonymous with, okay, you're

going to repaint yourself a different color and you're going to forget who you

are. That's not what assimilation originally meant. It meant being able to

function. To be part of the stream and not necessarily mixed in with it totally.

I still believe that you have to be able to function in the main culture of

society. If you want to change the main culture of the society, 00:37:00that's something

different, but you need to understand it before you can function in it. I don't

think you can do that by saying I'm this and you're that and never the two twain

shall meet. There has to be someplace where there is understanding about what

the differences are.

It's really interesting because I have had people say to me in the past that

they thought I thought I was white. And I would say, why would I think that,

look at me! You've got to be crazy.

I'm a stickler for my English, for the diction I use. Just to give you an

example. This is really funny. I remember the first year I was here there was a

girl named Susan Cash down the hall, redhead from 00:38:00D.C. area, and I remember she

and I were walking somewhere, and two guys--black guys--walked towards us, and

they said something. I didn't understand a word they said. She responded and

talked to them. They looked aghast. The reason is they were speaking street

slang. I had never heard street slang. I was eighteen years old. I'd never

really been exposed to street slang. But she had where she grew up in suburban

D.C. She was used to it. She went to an integrated high school. She knew a lot

of people who used slang all the time, and it was one of those cases where she

was better assimilated into that part of black culture than I 00:39:00was. It didn't

mean she thought she was black.

And that's what I meant by assimilation being really important. You've got to

understand. But, you know, there are things I don't understand. I don't

understand what it's like to be brought up urban poor in this country and black.

I have no knowledge of that. I don't believe my family was very rich. I'm sure

there were times when we were poor when I was a kid. But psychologically we were

never poor. So we were never on public assistance, so I don't have a clue what

that does to you. I don't have that experience. That's an alien experience to me.

Kennelly: Were you kind of protected growing up, do you think? Were there street gangs?

Higgins: I don't 00:40:00remember street gangs.

Kennelly: So it wasn't like your parents were protecting you from what was

there? It was just that wasn't the world in which you were moving?

Higgins: I have a friend who is white and grew up in Warren, Ohio. It's funny

because Tom and I have this big chuckle because our lives are in some ways very

parallel. He talks about his high school, and I look at him like, my God. I mean

he graduated from high school in 1968, so he is a little younger than I am, but

he talks about cutting from high school and going drinking and the gang fights,

and I'm going, what planet are you on? Basically, we were in high school at the

same time, but we were in two different worlds. His is much more stereotypical

of what people think about as having been the experience of black people in

school than mine is, and he's Irish American on both 00:41:00 sides.

Kennelly: So kids drinking and all that wasn't part of your experience?

Higgins: I knew kids who drank, but you know it wasn't like getting in fights

and weapons. He talks about weapons and kids bringing guns to school in the

sixties. I'm just flabbergasted.

Kennelly: It wasn't like that in the schools you went to?

Higgins: No. You know, I went to schools where people all said, no, sir, and

yes, sir, and yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am. Ones where you thought the teachers

cared if you got something or learned something. They were there to help you,

and that was real important. I felt that all the way back at school. Even though

I was a little bit of a snot then.

Kennelly: You were what?

Higgins: I was a little bit of a snot then. [laughter]

Kennelly: Who said that to you, that you thought you were white? Were those

black people 00:42:00saying that to you or white people?

Higgins: Black people saying that to me, but I think some whites thought it.

Kennelly: I wondered if there was resentment in the black community here,

especially because there were so few women. I guess there was one young black

man hanging out with this group over above the Lyric, but if there was

resentment because you were moving into a white community, dating a white boy?

Higgins: I don't think so. There might have been a couple people but not

especially, not overwhelmingly, at all. I got that more as I got older. I think

people have found me--as I said, I've always been a little bit 00:43:00 odd.

Kennelly: The Dean of Women Students at the time, Martha Harder, remembers

students doing pranks in the dorms like putting "white" and "colored," some of

the black woman students were doing that on the water fountains. Were you

involved with any of that?

Higgins: No. I would have never have done that because it would have appalled me

that someone would do that.

Kennelly: Do you recall anyone doing that?

Higgins: They may have because I was only here two years.

Kennelly: Were you and Larry Billion friends?

Higgins: Yes, but not close.

Kennelly: Do you think he ever got convinced by your arguments?

Higgins: I don't know. I'm not sure he was always convinced by his own either. [laughter]

Kennelly: 00:44:00Was there much feedback on those columns?

Higgins: Yes, there was. I think that was the reason why I was willing to do

them, and I think he was willing to do them. I guess I really can't speak for

him, but at the time I remember thinking these are things people don't really

talk about, and we need to talk about them. They're out there. At least we can

get people to talk about them.

Kennelly: It was remarkable. I mean the topic of miscegenation to have--

Higgins: Well in 1967? I think it was illegal until 1960. The mid-sixties it was

illegal. Interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia until sometime in the

sixties. I'm sure that came out of that.

Kennelly: Back to that column that you wrote. Another 00:45:00quote, you say

"involvement with someone who is different takes more than just a desire to

experience something new." You dated and then married Robert Clegg, a fellow

student at Virginia Tech, and I wonder if that involvement was difficult because

of the difference in race?

Higgins: Not really. Difference in background mostly. Other people were more

concerned about the difference in race than we were. As again I'd say I don't

know. I don't care what your problem is, that's your hang up. We were married

about seven years.

Kennelly: So that was a while. What about 00:46:00your families?

Higgins: Oh, my family was very upset.

Kennelly: Your family was?

Higgins: Yes. At first. No, I think because I dropped out of school and got

married. So it's like, it's sort of hard to sort out what was going on. I think

what brought us together was our political and social beliefs and our ethical

beliefs. That's what brought us together.

Kennelly: Was he in that group of students?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Was that how you met him in the first place?

Higgins: Through friends and activities--through Tech United Ministries.

Kennelly: Because there is an image in the newspaper, the student newspaper, of

him at a demonstration when Dr. King died.

Higgins: Actually, that's the wrong person.

Kennelly: Oh, the wrong person is identified!

Higgins: You can't see his face.

Kennelly: Oh, that's not him!

Higgins: Well, he's in the picture, but he is identified as the wrong person.

Kennelly: Were 00:47:00you involved in that demonstration?

Higgins: No, and the reason is, I'll tell you, I remember the night. That's

actually what led me to leave Tech.

Higgins: Actually a bunch of us went to the apartment above the Lyric, and we

were talking about what had happened and stuff, and I still remember a guy. I

don't remember his name. It's really bad. He was a black cadet who came over

because kids were celebrating in the dorms. I felt like I couldn't deal with

this anymore. I needed to get out.

Kennelly: What about during the time that you were a student? There was also the

whole thing where they used to bring the Confederate flag before 00:48:00football games.

Some of the students were involved in that.

Higgins: I didn't go to football games. Yes, I remember protesting that, but I

also didn't go to football games.

Kennelly: Because of that?

Higgins: Oh, yes.

Kennelly: Because it was so offensive? The playing of "Dixie"? One of the other

women students has mentioned how the playing of "Dixie" was very upsetting. Was

that upsetting for you, too?

Higgins: Yes, but not to the same extent because I saw it as a futile attempt to

hold on to something that had been gone a long time and needed to be gone. But

you can't move forward, unless you can't forget about the past, but you can't

just keep holding on to it. You got go-keep going forward. 00:49:00"Dixie" could be and

should be just an old song but isn't because of the baggage that goes with it.

The baggage that goes with it is because of what people attach to it, not just a

song about a time that used to be but about how we want to keep those things,

and that's what got in the way of the song. The whole controversy in South

Carolina now has to do with the feeling that this is a symbol of oppression, and

the oppression continues, and maybe we have to get rid of the symbols before we

can start talking about getting rid of the baggage and start changes in people's behavior.

Kennelly: Were the other black women 00:50:00students interested in getting actively

involved in the same way you were?

Higgins: I don't think they were as radical as I was in some ways. I was really

multi-cause, because I was really very upset about our involvement in Vietnam

and very involved in the anti-war movement. I still remember being appalled at

the conditions of miners.

Kennelly: The coal miners?

Higgins: Oh, yes, and issues around responsibilities for black lung disease.

Those were all issues I saw interwoven for me. You couldn't separate civil

rights from oppression of the poor and the working class, and you couldn't

separate that from what was happening in terms of international 00:51:00conflict. It all

went together in my mind. It still does.

Kennelly: One of the other students, Marguerite Harper, who is now Scott, was

involved in the Human Rights Committee, and they did things like had a date

which she said in effect was a test date where a boy would come and call her.

There were problems for him to even come to the door and ask the person down at

the desk for her to come out. Did you get involved in any of those kinds of

things? I think you were a member of the Human Rights Committee.

Higgins: I might have been.

Kennelly: I mean, you're listed down--

Higgins: That was a long time ago. I think so because 00:52:00I do know that Bob came to

the dorm for me. It was always kind of weird. That was after I moved down to

Eggleston, and I think in some ways they didn't pay attention or people didn't

react as much to me because they saw me with a lot of different people. People I

went to high school with. I don't know. I do remember that though. I do remember

that very much. They would go on nice dates. I would always wear my jeans. I was

really very hippie. So l think a lot of time people would think I was more

casual, and I really do think I was an oddball. I was just really weird.

Kennelly: When he 00:53:00came to have you go out, was it uncomfortable?

Higgins: I just thought that was their problem. As I said, maybe that's an

advantage and maybe not an advantage. I felt a lot of that at the time. In some

ways I thought, you know, get over it people. People would stare. People would

stare a lot. I would smile back.

Kennelly: When you were out together?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Were there any unpleasant incidences? Any overt--

Higgins: It's too hard to remember. The most unpleasant didn't happen here.

Kennelly: What was that?

Higgins: That was actually after we left, and it was in 00:54:00Washington, D.C. A

policeman drew a gun. We were standing in a park. That was really scary.

Kennelly: He drew his gun? Why?

Higgins: We were sitting in a park watching a sunset, and he drew his gun. He

looked at me, and I was a black woman sitting with four white people-1969-and I

looked at this guy, and he said, what are you doing here?! I said, we're

watching the sunset. One of the other people we were with, older, said, what's

the problem, officer? He looks at them, you know this person?! We're standing

together! You know that overshadowed everything else, in terms of memories of

racial incidences. That was really scary. Someone could have died.

Kennelly: Oh my gosh! Terrible! Really upsetting!

Higgins: 00:55:00 Yes.

Kennelly: Did you have children, you and Bob? Because one of the comments you

made in "Back Talk," I wondered about. You said, "The children of interracial

marriage are the only victims of miscegenation. This is solely because of the

hypocrisy and cruelty of man." I wonder if you would comment on that statement.

Higgins: I think that is less of an issue now. I have two children now with my

present husband. I married a Minnesotean.

Kennelly: A Minnesotean?

Higgins: Yes. I moved to Minnesota. Actually Bob and I moved to Minnesota, and

he is still there. I met a Minnesotean after we were divorced, and we have two sons.

Kennelly: Your 00:56:00second husband is white as well?

Higgins: Yes, and we have two sons. If anything, they are much better adjusted

than any of us. We made a real conscious effort with them. The daycare they

originally went to had a variety of kids from all different areas, and they went

to a school in Minnesota where the kids were from Indian, Native American, and

South Asian, Chinese, Japanese, Irish, German, Swedish, everything, black,

everything in the school. Lots of different religions in the school. We tried to

expose them to a variety.

Kennelly: When you see your children, are there painful incidences for them

because of race? Are they just able to freely move?

Higgins: That's interesting because my oldest son last year was telling me, he

said there was a fight at school that some people said was racially motivated.

It was 00:57:00between some Asians and some blacks. He came home and said, those are the

kids that like to fight, both sides! It didn't have anything to do with that. He

played in the band. There are whites and Asians. He moves back and forth between

all sorts of groups, and so does his brother.

Kennelly: As far as dancing or going with black or white or Asian, it wouldn't

matter as far as who they were hanging out with or who they might take to a dance?

Higgins: More has to do with behavior, conduct, and values than anything else as

far as I'm concerned and as far as their dad's concerned. That they have friends

with high moral standards and high behavior standards, that's much more

important. I do 00:58:00know they have lots of different friends.

Kennelly: How old are your sons now?

Higgins: They're going to be sixteen and eighteen in a couple of months.

Kennelly: I've seen some pictures of you in dance dresses. It looks like you

were going to school here. Were you going with Robert, or were you going with a

black student?

Higgins: I think that was before that. I don't think that was then. I think that

was before I met him. I think it was freshman year, and I can't remember where

who I went with. My God, that's terrible, and he was in the Corps of Cadets, too.

Kennelly: Did you feel comfortable at the dances and enjoy them?

Higgins: Okay. I just wasn't very into that anyway. But I decided to do it. I

thought it was important to 00:59:00show up, to be a part of the community. There was so

few of us, we needed to. I honestly believe that there was a sense that not only

do we have to do what we need to do for ourselves but so that the doors don't

slam shut, so people don't have excuses to continue things the way they used to

be. So there were things I did, much more formal stuff, than I ordinarily have.

Kennelly: Was the Groove Phi Groove house going then?

Higgins: The?

Kennelly: Groove Phi Groove. The men had a social fraternity.

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: I think maybe that was a couple of years later when they established

that. When you were in math, were you a minority as far as being a woman, too?

Higgins: Both. I remember the first math class. I walked into the 01:00:00class, and I

was the only female and the only person who wasn't white. There weren't even any

Asian students in there. That was Calculus class. I remember that.

Kennelly: So did that feel strange?

Higgins: You know in some ways it didn't feel strange because the two years in

high school, a lot of times I would be the only black in class. There were six

blacks in my high school graduating class.

Kennelly: So, very small?

Higgins: Very small, out of about 400 students.

Kennelly: You kind of had been through that whole thing of feeling--

Higgins: That's what I meant in saying I feel different than everyone else

because I didn't have a lot of that shock that they hadn't had. They were

experiencing it. I had already been there.

Kennelly: Were you bussed to a school or was that the school closest to where

you were living?

Higgins: Yes, Fleming was the school closest to where I lived.

Kennelly: So it just happened that the neighborhood you were 01:01:00living in the high

school was mostly white?

Higgins: It was transitional when we moved in. Right now I think that

neighborhood is probably all black. But when I moved in there it was not during

my high school years

Kennelly: I wondered how you felt being chosen as papermate of the week?

Higgins: Okay. [laughter] Embarrassed. Well embarrassed and saying this is good

at the same time.

Kennelly: Well it did seem a step.

Higgins: On a personal level, embarrassed. However, on a political, 01:02:00 social

consciousness levels, great.

Kennelly: Was the newspaper staff fairly open to things?

Higgins: Oh, yes. I had a good time with the newspaper staff.

Kennelly: I didn't ask you, but who did you room with your second year?

Higgins: You would ask me that.

Kennelly: Was it a black student?

Higgins: No. I have to remember. I'm getting years confused.

Kennelly: Because you were with Linda at first.

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Well that's okay. If it comes to you, you can mention it. You

mentioned the drill field as one of your pet peeves as well as the food at Owens.

Higgins: Oh, it was awful. [laughter]

Kennelly: Was it because of the military presence? Was that why it was a pet peeve?

Higgins: Oh, yes! There were times you couldn't cross it because you'd have to

walk all the way around because they were having military exercises. I 01:03:00 kept

going, is this really core to college education? I think if I remember right it

was sometime in the sixties before Tech stopped being an official military. It

was an official U. S. military academy for a long time into the sixties. And so

that carried with it, do we really need to train people to fight? And that was a

philosophical mission. Is violence core to education?

Kennelly: Pardon me?

Higgins: Is violence core to education. And that's why it was a pet peeve. But

the food in Owens was God-awful! Oh! I couldn't believe it. [laughter].

Kennelly: I think Dr. Hahn had 01:04:00some forums at the time. I think some of the

issues that were dealt with were racial issues. There might have been other

issues as well. Did you attend any of the forums?

Higgins: Yes, I did. And I also remember walking down the hill in my freshman

year from Hillcrest with him a couple of times and talking to him as we walked

down the hill.

Kennelly: Personally talking to him?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Can you elaborate on that?

Higgins: About things that were going on campus and how the campus environment was.

Kennelly: Was he interested in what you had to say?

Higgins: Yes. I remember thinking at the time, I wondered if he's really

interested or if he is politically motivated. But anyway--

Kennelly: But he listened anyway?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Did you think he was trying to make things welcoming?

Higgins: Yes. I thought he had a really strong, hard job to do so, to change the 01:05:00 culture.

Kennelly: Can you say a little more about that?

Higgins: Because not only was it the fact that there were blacks on campus, but

there were women on campus in significant numbers for the first time. I think

there'd never been. 1966 was the first year there were really women on campus.

The women before that, it was my understanding, had often been wives of male

students or daughters or some relatives of people connected with the

institution, but not really women on campus just primarily without another

connection. That was a major cultural change, too. It was a major time of

transition. Well, VT when I came here, it really was Engineering and

Agriculture, Home 01:06:00Ec. The Arts school and the Business school were fledging. So

it was a major transition to make it more full because it wasn't Virginia Tech

and State University. That came later.

Kennelly: Did you say you got a partial scholarship when you came here?

Higgins: Yes, from the Ford Foundation.

Kennelly: But your parents also had to pay for part of it, too?

Higgins: Yes, it wasn't very much because it wasn't very expensive.

Kennelly: One of the students said you had a hippie wedding when you were here.

Higgins: Yes. [laughter]

Kennelly: So those were your activist friends and your other friends in the community?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: That might be kind of fun to see those. 01:07:00Were there things that

bothered you or disappointed you when you came to Tech?

Higgins: Yeah. I had two really great years in high school, and in some ways I

thought that Tech was much more oppressive. My two years at Fleming were much

more liberating. So I felt more strangulated in terms of ideas. It was a more

conservative school, and that was really hard for me, and I think in some ways

this was really the place I encountered racism more inadvertently than any place

else in my life up to that point, on a day-to-day basis.

Kennelly: In what way?

Higgins: In classrooms and stuff, people who really didn't want to be near you.

People who overtly would move 01:08:00 away.

Kennelly: They would move away?

Higgins: Yes, or if you were in class, you would see professors look at you in

sort of exasperation. What are you doing here? The unspoken question would be

that more so than anything else would. That was it.

Kennelly: Even if you had the attitude that's their problem, it would still be

painful to go through that on a day-to-day basis.

Higgins: Oh, sure. In a sense of that's your problem. It doesn't mean--what I

mean by that--it's not that you are not aware of what's going on and it doesn't

have an impact on you. It's just that you're not going to let it impede you.

Their problem isn't going to become my problem in the sense that I'm not going

to let 01:09:00this person's narrow-mindedness change what I need to do and what I'm

doing. Instead of being devastated you get mad and more determined. [laughter]

Kennelly: Did you feel excluded from any experiences that the normal Virginia

Tech student would have at that time?

Higgins: Probably, but I'm not sure I wanted to be included. Yeah, but it took

me a while to find my community. When I found my community, I was fine with my community.

Kennelly: The group you found through church?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Were there any experiences as far as being in Blacksburg as a town,

not as much as a university?

Higgins: 01:10:00Going to the Episcopal Church in town was very interesting [laughter].

I don't think they had ever seen a black Episcopalian before. So that was very

interesting. I do remember there was a Greek restaurant that used to be right at

the end of College Street, and that was actually a great place. We used to go

there, a bunch of us, and eat. That was sort of a second home in some ways after

the Apartment. We would go there and eat a lot and talk, and you could sit there

over a cup of coffee and the people were really nice. I remember that

restaurant. I don't remember the name.

Kennelly: It might have been called Greeks.

Higgins: Okay, Greeks. Salads and french fries. I lived on salads and french fries.

Kennelly: You 01:11:00decided to leave pretty much that April.

Higgins: I actually didn't leave right away.

Kennelly: But that was a turning point?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Did you get married before you left?

Higgins: No, right after.

Kennelly: Your husband, what year was he?

Higgins: A junior. No, a senior.

Kennelly: Was he graduated then?

Higgins: No, he didn't then, but we both went back a year and a half later. Not

here, but in Minnesota. We went to a friend's wedding. She got married to

another friend of ours.

Kennelly: It gets complicated. [laughter]

Higgins: Yes, it gets very complicated in 01:12:00Minnesota, and we went to her wedding.

We both wound up going to University of Minnesota.

Kennelly: To continue your education?

Higgins: We both got an undergraduate degree there. Later after we split up, I

got my M.B.A. there and later did my doctorate in Oregon.

Kennelly: So did you go from Blacksburg to-- Where did you go first?

Higgins: Maryland, suburban D.C.

Kennelly: D.C.? Did you work there a while?

Higgins: For about nine months.

Kennelly: What did you do?

Higgins: I worked for International Group Plans. I remember it was an insurance

management company. I remember we did--that's what I did most of the time--I was

an administrative assistant, and what the company did was one of the clients was

the Retired Officer's Association. I always thought this was a 01:13:00kick. The Retired

Officer's Association would say we want to offer our members discounted health

insurance or discounted auto insurance. They'd hire our company who would tailor

the policy to their needs and then find an underwriter and then do all the

administrative stuff. So I did that for a while.

Kennelly: It was military in a way?

Higgins: There were other clients, but that was a real big one. Before that I

worked a lot of temp jobs and stuff before I found a permanent job. He taught in

a school for retarded children, and we did that for awhile before we went to

Minnesota. He was a CO, a conscientious objector. I think he may still be the

only 01:14:00one to come out of his draft board in eastern Ohio. While we were at the

wedding, his father called because he had gotten a letter telling him to report

the Monday after the wedding for alternative service in Ohio. We got on the

phone to the selective service in St. Paul and said we can t possibly get back

to Ohio in less than twenty-four hours. He got a placement in Minnesota, so we

ended up staying there. Actually I always tell people, I went to Minnesota for a

wedding and left twenty-two years later. [laughter] So I have spent most of my

life there, near St. Paul.

Kennelly: Did he end up getting drafted?

Higgins: No, he did alternative service. It was a call to service. He worked in

a mental 01:15:00 hospital.

Kennelly: Was he a Friend or a Quaker, or was he an Episcopalian?

Higgins: Yes, Episcopalian.

Kennelly: So they accepted him as a conscientious objector. How did you find--

You ended up going to University of Minnesota. How did you find the climate

there as compared to the climate here? It was three years later.

Higgins: Totally different. I started there in February 1970. Totally different.

It's really interesting because I would say the percentage of black students in

Minnesota is very low. Minnesota as a state is 90 percent white, but it was a

large international student, a large campus. When I was there, there were 45,000 01:16:00students. It was just-- If you could think about it, you could study it. I loved

Minnesota a lot. I had a very good experience there. I wound up-- It took me

longer to graduate because I couldn't make up my mind what to do. I didn't want

to be a mathematician anymore, and I sampled all sorts of things.

Kennelly: What did you?

Higgins: I have an undergraduate degree in child psychology. I went to the

Institute of Child Development in Minnesota. Then I got a Master's, an M.B.A. I

ran a children's mental health agency in Minneapolis for a while, working a lot

with 01:17:00developmentally delayed children. I did the business side and worked with

two psychologists. It did a lot of the treatment, with the psychologist as

consultations, for children who had developmental delay, parents who had to

relearn parenting skills. From birth to 14 was the age range--after school

programs, before school programs. I did a lot of fundraisers, a lot of that

stuff. That was very early in my present marriage when my kids were little. I

quit that. I tried to be a stay at home mom and failed miserably. I lasted six

weeks. [laughter.] I figure it was to my kids' advantage that they go to the

daycare center. They had a lot more things to do. It was a lot better for them.

They had a lot more stable 01:18:00environment. I was a much nicer person. I could talk

to adults. I went to work part-time at the University of Minnesota for a guy

named Travis Thompson who was a child psychologist who was in the process of

trying to establish a developmental disability center at the University of

Minnesota. Actually we eventually got it off the ground. I helped him get that

off the ground, helping with the administrative side of that. That was really a

lot of fun. I did that for two years and in the process decided I really wanted

to go back and get my doctorate. At one point right after my M.B.A., I worked

for the dean of the Business School in Minnesota at the time when it doubled in

size and started to gain some national prestige, 01:19:00and I had sat on some

scholarship committees. One of the things that I remember hearing a lot was from

both women and minority students. You'd meet a student who had exceptional

abilities, and you'd try to encourage them to continue their education. A lot of

them would say, where would I get a job, anyone who looks like me? So I said,

what the hell, I really like going to school. My favorite thing in the world is

to read. If you're a professor, you get paid to read. I also thought if I could

do that, I could be a role model to tell people that it is possible. You don't

have to come from generations back to be an academic. You can be black, you can

be female, you can be in an area where there aren't many of either. You can do

that 01:20:00and do it well. At the same time, do something I really like to do. That's

when I decided. I talked to my husband, and we moved out to Oregon because I

wanted a particular program.

Kennelly: So you moved essentially because of what you wanted to do?

Higgins: To do my doctorate. So we spent five years in Oregon for me to do my doctorate.

Kennelly: What did you do your doctorate on?

Higgins: International human resources.

Kennelly: What was your husband doing at the time?

Higgins: He worked most of the time for Lane County in Oregon, where he worked

in I.T. area. He's an electrical engineer. I like to tell him he was in computer

science before it had a name. [laughter]

Kennelly: Information Technology you mean when you say I.T.?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Did he get his doctorate, too?

Higgins: No

Kennelly: 01:21:00But he has his master's?

Higgins: No, not interested in going to school. I was thinking about all the

classes he's taken. I mean he has his degree in terms of continuing education

and all the certification and conference stuff. He's done the equivalent of a

couple of master's. But he's not interested in sitting down formally for it.

Kennelly: Where were you in Oregon?

Higgins: Eugene, University of Oregon.

Kennelly: Afterwards what did you decide?

Higgins: Then I looked for a job. Actually I had quite a few job offers when I

graduated, and I decided to take the job in New York at the only Jesuit school

that was founded coeducational. It was the opportunity to be in a community and

a department that 01:22:00has commitment, political community that was aligned with me.

It was also a community that I thought my children would be nurtured. We talked

about that. I had job offers in Boston and other major cities, in California and

stuff. We didn't think the climate was good to bring up kids. It just worked out

well. Last year I went through the tenure process, and last year I became the

first black woman to be tenured at my institution.

Kennelly: What is your actual title there?

Higgins: Associate professor.

Kennelly: Of?

Higgins: Industrial Relations and Human 01:23:00Resource Management.

Kennelly: Okay.

Higgins: It's a separate department from the business department, although I

teach in the M.B.A. program, too.

Kennelly: Did you find race made any difference for you as far as progressing there?

Higgins: I don't think so. I think it may have made some difference in the

initial contact because the gentleman who was chair of the department was very

interested in someone different from he and his colleagues--male, white male,

either Jewish or Catholic. Gotta get someone different. I think he was more

committed to a female, but I think it was really interesting because when we met

we really liked each other, 01:24:00all of us. It's been a very good department to be in

because it's one of the few academic departments where people like each other.

We talk to each other outside, and department meetings are not a chore. It's a

conversation. And I think that was another big deciding factor for me. Not only

was it a community that we thought would be supportive of our children, a good

environment to grow up in, but also the fact that I was really comfortable with

these guys. And that I think in a way goes sort of back to Tech. I've always

been very comfortable around a lot of men, so in a lot of cases coming to Tech 01:25:00for some people it was an all-male school. You know, I wasn't thinking of it in

terms as a lot of guys to date because I do know girls in the dorm who thought

that when I came. But it was just like guys are fun guys, are interesting, and

maybe that was because I was really interested. I was a kind of nerdy kid as a

teenager. I was real interested in science and math.

Kennelly: In that sense of nerdy that you liked science and math?

Higgins: Yes. That's sort of my generation's stand of a nerd.

Kennelly: But it's interesting that you said you wanted to go to an all women's

college and that was your first choice.

Higgins: Well that's because, and I think it still holds, that some of the most

successful women in this country went to all female schools, undergraduate

schools provide a very nurturing environment.

Kennelly: You were aware of that?

Higgins: Oh, yes.

Kennelly: 01:26:00Which says something, too. Do you find yourself acting as a mentor for

students, too?

Higgins: Oh yes, in surprising ways. The school I teach at is predominantly

white and Catholic, but I find, and I didn't realize it so much. I remember

after the first semester I taught at Oregon, the end of the semester quarter, a

student came and knocked on the door. He was an older black man, not older than

I was, but not traditional age. I remember him coming to me, and he said, I

really enjoyed the class. 01:27:00But the first day when I walked into class, he

thought, oh, she must have been bringing some equipment into class. He told me I

was the first black person he'd ever had as a teacher. He was a junior in

college. Also he said I made him feel really good that I was teaching a class

and that I did it professionally well. What that gave me was a sense of one of

the roles I think is important. He also said that he was really glad to have his

fellow students see me in that position. I find in my office now a lot of the

students who I wind up mentoring are not just black students. They are often shy

females. They are 01:28:00often Philipinos or Hispanic. They are students who don't see

themselves. I am the closest they can come to seeing themselves. Although at my

institution, there are more white female faculty members than there used to be.

I remember there was an Asian graduate assistant who taught a class when I was

here. But the first time I saw someone who was on tenure track who was a

professor of color was a Japanese American professor of psychology in my

doctoral program.

Kennelly: In your doctoral program? Wow, so that was the first person you had seen?

Higgins: I think my first female professor outside of the 01:29:00arts and sciences was

actually my M.B.A. program.

Kennelly: All different steps.

Higgins: Yes, so I feel like I know I surprise people in a lot of ways. I got a

teacher of the year award from some of my students a couple of years ago. So

that really made me happy.

Kennelly: Really!

Higgins: I think at times I'm very demanding, and I emphasize some things that I

don't think other people do, but I think I'm doing my job. I'm letting other

people know that there are differences out 01:30:00 there.

Kennelly: Now I can ask you about the Japan thing. Was that for your own

personal research or consulting?

Higgins: My own personal research.

Kennelly: What is your own research?

Higgins: All the developed countries in the world are aging in population. All

have a lower population birth growth rate than they did previously. All

employment practices are geared toward the young. What do we do with that

reality? The reality that there aren't as many young people as previously. There

is a tightening labor market because people are retiring, and also a lot of the

people retiring are of middle age. For example, 01:31:00what does that mean for

employment practices for the Japanese and foreign firms operating in Japan? What

are they doing in response to changing labor market issues? Demographics and

labor market change, how are companies responding to it? What do they see? Are

demographics the most important thing facing corporations regarding workforce

issues? I'm also doing an American side to that. I'm traveling in the United States--

Kennelly: Yes, you mentioned that taking your son to see colleges but also

traveling for your own research.

Higgins: I think I've got some interesting stuff from Japan. Actually, I'm

talking to someone about 01:32:00looking at the issues from Europe.

Kennelly: Looking at what?

Higgins: Talking to people in Europe. Looking at changing labor/workforce issues

in Europe.

Kennelly: Do you ever come back over to Virginia Tech?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: Have you been back since you left?

Higgins: Once in the seventies.

Kennelly: So you don't feel a connection here?

Higgins: No.

Kennelly: What do think are the greatest challenges or opportunities a

university faces?

Higgins: I think it's a challenge society faces. This is a very political

statement because almost everything I say is political. I think a change

happened in this country in 01:33:001980, and I don't like it. The change that happened

is divisiveness, and I would say even before that, even in the sixties, there

were people on one side of the issue or the other side having to do with race

relations or activities of the military or social issues. But I always felt like

even though people may have disagreed, they seemed to have the interest of the

country in mind. They may have disagreed on what was the best interest, but it

was still there. I think beginning in 1980 we became a country that had "me" in

mind. The whole idea of public good--there being something that you can

contribute to, that you as an individual may not gain anything from, but as a

society, we all gain--which in turn in the long 01:34:00run, maybe not as directly, was

a great service. That seems to have disappeared, and that to me is really very

terrible. I think that is something that will be our downfall unless we get some

of it back because we can't have a bunch of "me, me, me's" running around with

no idea that the government or individuals or groups of individuals have a

responsibility to society. That we don't just go for our own personal interests.

I think that's a terrible place we've gone. For me, I'm one of these people who

really hated Richard Nixon as a president in terms of his politics and his

stance on a lot of issues, but I still believe that he was a man who thought

what he did he did for his country. He still believed in the public good. I

think that it's an economic concept I think we aren't even teaching to people 01:35:00 anymore.

Kennelly: That's very interesting! Do you think it makes a difference that I'm

not a black interviewer interviewing you? Do you think you would have been able

to say more if I was black?

Higgins: Not to me!

Kennelly: Are there other things you'd like to bring up, you'd like to mention?

Higgins: I think I was really lucky in the family I grew up in. I had a really

solid footing, and I never experienced what I know other blacks and non-black

women of my generation who felt that they had limitations put on them because of

what they were biologically. I 01:36:00never felt that, and I owe that to my family. I

think that is something that has really shaped my life a lot. I've tried real

hard to give that to my kids too. I've tried to give it not only to my kids but

also the kids I see in school. I call them kids because I'm old enough to call

them kids now. But to the people I encounter that that is something they do. You

know, those years in Minnesota I did a lot of work with United Way, women

shelters, and stuff and that empowerment was one of the things I think that

people need. There is a difference between freedom and license. Freedom is being

empowered to believe in yourself and try. If you fail at one thing, to get up

and try something else. We often talk about the freedom in this country to do

anything you are able to do. Too many people confuse freedom and 01:37:00 license.

License means you can do exactly what you want to do. I don't believe in

license. I believe in freedom, the opportunity. I think I saw the civil rights

movement as opportunity, as opening doors and allowing people to have the

freedom to try. And I still see it as there's a need for there to be places for

that. People need the opportunity to give it their best, to give it a try. As

long as it doesn't hurt or injure anyone else. That is a strong conviction I have.

Kennelly: Are you politically active now?

Higgins: Not really, not in the sense of a political party or anything like

that. I mean it wasn't so in 01:38:00Minnesota, and one of the reasons I think I stayed

in Minnesota so long was because Minnesota is a very hard state. I don't know if

you've ever been there. [laughter] The only way for the Democratic Party to

survive in Minnesota was to align itself with the Socialist. It has the only

Democratic Farmer Labor party in the country. Okay and the Republican Party

there is much more middle of the road than anyplace else. So politics there is

much closer to the middle. I know that when I was here I was often seen as a

radical, and I think in terms of what I find ironic about that is I always think

my politics have been more moderate. But that was radical then, and it's even

more radical now. Which is another thing I have a problem with.

Kennelly: What is more radical now?

Higgins: Being a person of moderation as opposed to an extremist.

Kennelly: To be a person of 01:39:00moderation instead of extremist?

Higgins: Everything is so--the radical title fits me more today than it did

thirty years ago.

Kennelly: In that kind of context?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: In Minnesota-when you found things more repressive, were they more

open there?

Higgins: Yes, and it was very interesting because they were not without issues.

The first apartment I moved in, in Minneapolis, I remember the parents of a

friend telling me they didn't think it was a great neighborhood, and it was

because it was four blocks from what eventually became the headquarters for the

American Indian Movement. So those same kinds of issues were up there, but they

were in a different context. And also I think because not only could you be

politically active in those kinds of issues but it was a private arts community.

Arts have always been very important to me. I like a lot of theatre, music.

Music and theatre are very important. I like the culture and art a lot. That

stuff is really there along with the social climate, so that's why I stayed for

twenty years. Winters are terrible? Anything you've heard about the weather is

not to be underestimated. [laughter]

Kennelly: Have you done much writing, journalism, or writing later on because in

those "Backtalk" articles I wondered if you did any writing or published? Is

that something you've pursued?

Higgins: No, no. Academic stuff.

Kennelly: So I assume you've done research articles. Do you have a book out yet?

Higgins: No, not likely.

Kennelly: More articles and research type thing?

Higgins: I liked writing, but sometimes I did it, and sometimes not. You know, I

wrote a lot of poetry, and I achieved that. I paint, too.

Kennelly: I think you had a little comment you had in that Papermate thing that

you enjoyed the architecture students when you were here. I wondered if that was

because they were closer to the arts in a sense?

Higgins: Yes, a little dichotomy.

Kennelly: You have two sons now?

Higgins: Yes.

Kennelly: Is there anything else you wanted to add that I haven't asked you

about that comes to your mind that you feel is important to mention?

Higgins: No, just that I think that I was the weird one.

Kennelly: Very diverse group. Somebody commented that all six of you brought

here together and everyone expected you to be--

Higgins: We weren't.

Kennelly: Very different people. That's a small group. Of course there's all the

other women students. Did you make any friendships with other women students

that were lasting friendships?

Higgins: For a while. Most of my real lasting friendships came later in my life

because I really did a lot of changing, and I dropped my first name. Anyone who

met me in the last thirty years doesn't even know it's there. Even my passport

hasn't got it. I'm La Verne and have been for a long time.

Kennelly: Was La Verne part of your original name?

Higgins: Yes, the passport people decided there wasn't any problem. So my

passport, my social security card, my driver's license, everything is F. La

Verne Higgins. My professionally La Verne Hairston Higgins.

Kennelly: People here might forget. I want to explain while we're still on tape

about these release forms. There are two of them. You have an option. What will

happen is the tape will be transcribed, and there's one way of making it on

paper. You can edit it if you wish. We ask people not to go overboard on

editing. but if you felt something was a mistake we do like you to review it and

also for names and stuff. This one will be signing this to allow us to make it

available to researchers coming in to Special Collections or the university. The

other release form is to make it available in the World Wide Web. We like to

make it a separate one because that's just a different kind of level. You could

either sign it now or if you'd like to wait when I send you the transcripts, I

could send the form then.

Higgins: Send me the forms with the transcript. A lot easier.

[end of tape]