Shelby Ward: Well that goes to our first part, our first question. Is if each
of you could say your name and when you were born--
Marguerite Laurette Harper Scott: [Laughter] I thought that was going to be confidential!
Shelby: Or we could just skip that part!
Marguerite: Already, already broke the rule!
LaVerne Hairston Higgins: I don't care at this point! I mean, I'm glad--
[Overlapping clamor]
Marguerite: In fact I have two birthdays--
LaVerne: I said you don't have to lie [laughs].
Shelby: You do get a copy of the transcript so you could always request like,
please just black that part out.
LaVerne: It's just that everytime that I write it down I go, oh my God
[laughter]. It's not that I--because people ask me how old I am and I always say
sixty-seven, sometimes I tell them I'm older than I am.
Marguerite: Cause it's almost time, right? It's almost their time. Okay we can
do that.
Shelby: Okay, and also what years did you go to school here?
Marguerite: Is this thing running already?
Shelby: It is!
Marguerite: Oh, okay I'm sorry. My name is Marguerite Laurette Harper Scott, my
nickname was "Chick" which is what most people knew me as
00:01:00when I was here. Mybirthday is May 5th, 1948.
LaVerne: And I'm LaVerne Hairston Higgins, most people know me as "Freddie", I
was here from 1966 to [19]68, I was born also in 1948, in September 10th. So,
let's see, what else?
Linda Edmonds Turner: I'm Linda Edmonds Turner, born July 12, 1948. I was here,
got my BS in 1970, came back here and did an MBA in [19]76 and a PhD in [19]79.
Marguerite: And by the way, I was here from [19]66 to [19]70.
Shelby:
00:02:00I understand when I was looking at your information, you guys were partof an oral history report earlier too, right?
Marguerite: Yes.
LaVerne: Mm-hmm.
Linda: Right.
Shelby: This will be, I think, slightly shorter than what you guys did before.
Since it's a group one I would love it to be conversational. Don't feel like you
have to take turns. It's okay to talk over.
LaVerne: Good
Shelby: Or talk over me, or tell me to hush, and we're talking now!
Marguerite: We tend to do that [laughter].
Shelby: If you guys could also tell me where and how you were raised, and tell
me about your family and home life.
Linda: Okay I'll start. I'm from Halifax County, Virginia. I grew up on a farm,
a tobacco farm, first generation college. My father went through the eighth
grade and had to drop out to help care for his mother and three
00:03:00sisters. Mymother is a high school graduate, always wanted to go to college, but could
never go to college. She had four children and from the time we were born, we
were all born within five years. We knew we were going to college because of her
and her convincing my dad that, my babies are going to college. My babies are
going to college. You know it was at the time nothing about Virginia Tech, it
was that they are going to college.
Shelby: What would she have studied?
Linda: English. She wanted to be an English teacher.
Shelby: That's what I got my degree in, is English.
Linda : That's what she wanted to do.
LaVerne: I grew up in Roanoke.
Shelby: Not too far.
LaVerne: Just down the road. Neither one of my parents went to college. Neither
one of them finished high school. And particularly,
00:04:00my parents grew up in asection of North Carolina where there was no high schools for Blacks when they
were going through school, so that was not even an option for them. I was born
in North Carolina, but moved to Roanoke before I was two. But I always knew that
the expectation was that I would go to school and I would get at least a
master's degree. That was just the way it was. My maternal grandmother lived
with us and she was a great influence on me as well, because she always said
that, you're going to do well. You're going to do well. You're going to finish
school, you're going to do great things. I have only one brother who's older, a
lot older. He's pre-World War II, I'm post-World War II.
Shelby: Oh wow.
LaVerne: So we're the bookends for World War II. My brother used to read history
books to me instead of nursery rhymes, so I didn't know very many kids stories,
but I knew history books because he would babysit and that was his . [Laughter]
Woman: [Door opens] Hello, are any of you Lorraine, by chance?
Linda: No
LaVerne: No
Marguerite: No
LaVerne: And I was a math major here, [door closes] and I'm the college dropout.
Marguerite:
00:05:00I couldn't remember what your major was, somebody asked me.LaVerne: I was a dropout.
Shelby: I'm surprised it wasn't history.
LaVerne: No, because I was fascinated by Sputnik as a child and I wanted to go
to work for NASA. That was my dream, that I'd go to NASA at that point. And I
didn't want to be the person in the spacesuit, because I figured they were only
taking pilots in those days and women weren't pilots. And you couldn't be a
pilot if you wore glasses and I've been wearing glasses since I was five, so
that was out. [Laughter] But I could be the person on the ground that prodded
00:06:00trajectories and stuff like that.Marguerite: Okay. I was born in Norfolk, Virginia and moved to Virginia Beach
when I was about seven years old. Both my parents went to college and my
grandmother went to college, so it was always expected that I was going to
college. The only difference was where I was going, and my assumption was that I
was going where my father and my mother, her brother, his sisters went to
school. But things changed when someone came to my high school which was a
segregated one.
Linda: Where did they go to school?
LaVerne: Virginia State?
Marguerite: I wanted to go to Virginia State. I mean that was my assumption that
I was going.
Linda: Oh okay. I could remember it was either Hampton or Virginia State.
Marguerite: No it was Virginia State, everybody in my family went to Virginia
State, so I just knew that's where I was going. But someone came to my high
school, which was a segregated high school and wanted to talk to students who
might be interested in going to Virginia Tech, so that got me out of class [Laughter].
Shelby: That's smart recruiting!
Marguerite: So of course I-- anybody is coming, sign me up for that! And the
rest is
00:07:00history, because I took those papers home and my father immediatelysaid, well this is where you're going.
LaVerne: See, and I came here because my math teacher was coming here. I went to
an integrated high school in Roanoke, and I was in the advanced math class in
high school. There were nine students and the instructor and four of the
students besides myself and the instructor all came to Virginia Tech the same
year, and he was coming back to get his doctorate.
Linda: And I ended up coming here, my junior year in high school the College of
Home Economics here had some sort of scholarship luncheon and I was in a
segregated high school, Mary Bethune High School. My Home Ec teacher said, well
Linda you should go to this luncheon. So I got here. I've forgotten now how, but
it was another girl from another county and we stayed in the Blacksburg Motel or
some--
00:08:00We go to this luncheon and I remember the trees with the weeping willowtrees and stuff. Long story short I didn't get the scholarship and the next
year, somehow I ended up coming here and applying to be admitted, going through
the Rockefeller Foundation. But the thing I originally thought I was going to do
didn't come through.
LaVerne: I don't even remember applying to Virginia Tech! I can't remember it at
all, but I got a couple of admissions that I didn't even apply to, because the
only school I really applied to was Mount Holyoke, and my mother was dead set
against me going that far away. But I wanted to go to a girls school. I didn't
want to go to the co-ed school, I wanted to go to girls school [laughs].
Linda: A funny story for you. My mother and my aunt drove me up here to meet
this other girl for this scholarship. Well on their way, these two country
00:09:00 womenin little rural churches and I have to go to a tea, and they started talking to
each other, she's got to go to a tea. And they said, well what would she wear to
this tea? and decided that I needed to wear a hat because that's what Jackie
Kennedy would do [laughter]. And so we went into town, the little Roses
department store? They went in and bought me this little white pillbox hat and I
had some little white gloves, I remember. I went to the tea, and I'm the only
person sitting up in there with a hat! [Laughter]
Shelby: But I bet everyone else was like, I should've worn a hat! [Laughter]
Linda: But they just wanted me to be appropriately
00:10:00 dressed.Marguerite: And you were!
Linda: And I was. I wore my hat with style!
LaVerne: Especially in those days! Yes!
Linda: Because you always wore hats.
LaVerne: That's right and gloves.
Linda: Yes, which is probably why I don't wear either one now.
Marguerite: Exactly, a ball cap. [Laughing] That's funny.
Shelby: When you showed your dad the paperwork for Virginia Tech what about it
made him change his mind that you weren't going to the family school anymore?
Marguerite: Well one thing was that scholarship. That appealed to him greatly
because that would've been less money out of his pocket, so that was certainly
one of the driving forces. But he and I both had some reservations about what
the scholarship was for, and what it said was that it was for--
LaVerne: Disadvantaged.
Marguerite: Disadvantaged, and wait a minute, something about
00:11:00 culture.LaVerne: Yeah, economically and culturally disadvantaged! I remember because I
went, what?!
Marguerite: It was culturally deprived. The culturally deprived. And so my
father, we took exception to that, because we certainly did not think we were
culturally deprived. We were solidly a middle class family. I had been to
museums before. I had flown on an airplane even.
LaVerne: My grandmother used to take me to the Met. [Laughter]
Marguerite: What is this culturally deprived, even though I had been to the
parlor? So what is this? My father said, well this is what we will do. He said,
you'll go and you have a job now. And your job is to teach them that because
you're Black, you're not culturally deprived, and that their assumptions right
off the bat are incorrect. And so that's your job is to show them that that's
not true. He says, you're going to have a learning experience and they're going
to have a learning experience. I think this is the time and the place for you to
have that learning experience. And of course to
00:12:00me, I'm getting ready tograduate from high school and be independent. I wanted to be independent at
Virginia State where my friends were going to school and where there was an
active party life and sorority life and all of that, and you're sending me to a
place, honestly, I had never heard of Virginia Tech. I had no idea. I mean I'm
from Tidewater, Virginia, Old Dominion Norfolk State, Hampton, William & Mary.
Virginia Tech? I hadn't even heard of it. Yeah, I knew about UVA, but Virginia
Tech was like somewhere over the mountain somewhere, you know.
LaVerne: And there was no "and State University" in those days.
Marguerite: Oh no, absolutely.
LaVerne: It was Polytechnic Institute.
Marguerite: That's right.
LaVerne: So it was agriculture, home economics. There wasn't a business school
or anything.
Linda: Huge engineering.
Marguerite: There was a department for liberal arts, it was like a department,
not even a school yet.
Linda: One thing I remember coming from a Black high school, you would be
talking to people and people would say,
00:13:00well where did you go to school? MaryBethune. People look at you like you're gone to the moon, like it just wasn't on
their radar screen too because the schools had been segregated. You went to
Jefferson or Patrick Henry?
LaVerne: No, I went to Fleming, Fleming High School and that's a story in its
own self, because I only finished my last two years there, but I was the only
person in my graduating class who had not taken a state placement test who was
Black, because Black students had to take a student placement test to go to
integrated schools. Something happened between my sophomore year and my junior
year and I wound up being transferred, and I remember my father had said, none
of my kids are taking that test. That's an insult. And I didn't have a clue what
that meant, but I remember that somehow I wound up getting transferred into
Fleming, and it was actually closer to my high school too to where I lived.
Linda: Where did you go before you went to Fleming?
LaVerne: Addison.
Linda: You went to Addison? Okay.
LaVerne: I went to Addison.
Marguerite: Which is where I
00:14:00 student-taught.LaVerne: It's where my brother went to school, so I went to Addison first, but I
started there in eighth grade, and so I spent my last two years at Fleming. But
I wound up, my father basically said, okay, it's your job now. Yeah.
Shelby: So you didn't know anybody when you came here?
Marguerite: I knew of Chiquita Hudson, because her cousin was dating my best
friend, and so I knew about her, so we both knew we were going to meet each
other when we got here, and that is the only person that I knew. And I had no
idea that when I got here I would have a roommate that looked like me.
LaVerne: I didn't either!
Marguerite: And everybody else would have a roommate that looked like them.
00:15:00 Thenthe math finally hit. Six. Two, two and two. Except they messed up with Chiquita
and Linda Adams.
LaVerne: I kind of threw you for a loop, because they gave you your name and
address of your roommate and I was going like okay, how do I put this so I don't
freak this person and her family out? So I said that I was tawny.
Linda: Tawny! Well I get this letter--
LaVerne: Which is a shade of brown. [Laughter]
Linda: Which is a shade of brown! Well--
Marguerite: Cause you didn't know if she was gonna be White!
Linda: So they send me this letter, and I'm with my two sisters and brothers.
And I remember this letter, I got a letter from my roommate who is going to be
at Virginia Tech. And the term, they said she's tawny. Tawny, I think I know
what it is, so we pulled out the dictionary just to make sure, and so we're
trying to figure is she Black or White. [Laughter] We said she's Black because
if she was White she would never give
00:16:00any impression that she was not WhiteWhite. [Laughter]
LaVerne: That's right. That's right.
Linda: It really was funny.
Marguerite: I imagine that maybe Jackie and I wrote to each other too, I just
don't recall.
Linda: Yeah, but I remember getting a letter from her.
LaVerne: And I was going like okay, how do I put this? Because I don't want to
ask right out. But I figured your reaction would tell me. But one of the guys
who came that year was a guy named Keith Pullen, who we went to the same church.
Our families go to the same church so I knew him.
Linda: When I came I was the only one from my high school coming to Virginia
Tech, so I thought.
00:17:00Leading up a week or so before to come, have you ever justall of a sudden it really hits you? It was almost like that term cold feet, and
I'm sitting on the front porch with my dad and I said, dad, what if I get up
here and I just fail flat-out? I remember he never told me that I would always
succeed or anything and he said in this very just down to earth kind of thing,
well, if you fail you've got a whole semester fully paid! [Laughter] And what
SOBs around here can say that they went to college for free? [Laughter]
Marguerite: One of my classmates from my high school did come here in my
freshman year, Jimmy Wade.
Linda: When I got here, when we're registering and stuff went to go in Burruss
Hall, I look coming down the walk. Steven Pyle, went to high school with me.
I've never been so happy in my life.
00:18:00And he applied later and Steve was verygood in math and engineering. I think he majored in engineering. I don't
remember. Oh that was good.
LaVerne: Well the thing that was surprising to me is that I didn't realize when
we came that was the first year there were really women on campus.
Marguerite: Right.
Linda: Right, I didn't know that until I got here.
Marguerite: And I didn't know we were going to be the first Black women either.
Shelby: Oh you guys didn't know?
LaVerne: No.
Linda: I didn't know.
Marguerite: My mother did read in Jet Magazine and let me know, you all are the
first Black women at Virginia Tech. And I said, oh really?
LaVerne: I didn't realize it until after we had been here a while [laughter].
Marguerite: Yeah. After you'd look around you'd say, we're it!
Linda: Wait a minute--
LaVerne: I do remember one time, and I
00:19:00cannot remember who it was. It could'vebeen you [chuckles]. Somebody and I figured out, we counted up all the Black
people on campus and were forty-two of us including the ones from Africa. It was
you I thought?
Marguerite: Right right. So that meant there were like 20 from Africa, right? [Laughter]
LaVerne: That's male and female.
Linda: Male and female altogether.
LaVerne: I thought that was you but I didn't want to put it on you. [Laughs]
Linda: You know our rooms for the women we were in 318 and you guys were I think
in 218 or something.
Marguerite: Something like that. I'm glad you remember though.
Linda: The room numbers were the same. It was like the 18 was on there and we
said, oh that's how they keep track of us.
Marguerite: And maybe Linda and Chiquita are in 118.
Linda: Right, it was something
00:20:00 18.LaVerne: We were in Hillcrest and you were guys were down in Eggleston?
Marguerite: Yeah.
LaVerne: And it turned out that Hillcrest was the best place for me, because
remember I got my teeth busted?
Linda: Yeah. What happened?
LaVerne: I played the only game of touch football I've never played in my life,
and I was a tomboy. I played with guys. I played tackle football since I was
little, never got hurt, and I got an elbow intercepting a pass in my mouth on
the Drillfield the first semester I was here and got my teeth knocked out. These
are still my teeth, they shoved them back in.
Linda: They were wired or something like that.
Marguerite: I do remember that.
LaVerne: The dentist on campus, wearing them all back then, he wasn't sure they
were going to last, but since nothing was broken, he thought we would give it a
try. And because we were in Hillcrest we had our own dining facility and the
guys there made special meals for me.
Linda: Charlie and--
LaVerne: Because I was on a soft diet only, and I was going, oh my God, and they
took care of us, they really did.
Linda: There were two or three Black guys that worked in the cafeteria at
Hillcrest
00:21:00and they were the best two. I remember one day being really down about something.LaVerne: And they were always encouraging.
Linda: Listen baby you gonna make this. You gonna make it through this, don't--
In Hillcrest it looks like to me one of the old-fashioned kind of sorority
houses inside. You go through the line--
LaVerne: A grand piano on the first floor in the lobby. It was gorgeous.
Marguerite: We didn't have that. We had bathrooms with urinals.
Linda: Right and somebody put flowers in the urinals, remember [laughter]? When
the women took over, they put flowers in the urinals.
Marguerite: I don't know how you all got to be special at Hillcrest.
LaVerne: Yeah, a few years later when they moved the athletes up there, I went
oh God, the place is going to be trashed.
Marguerite: Yes, I'm sure it did.
Linda: When we go through the line if they knew you liked banana pudding or
whatever, there was always plenty of food, but sometimes they would run out of
certain things. You would go
00:22:00through and you come through, well Ms. Evans I'vegot something for you, and it would be the banana pudding or whatever [laughter].
Marguerite: I feel cheated! I feel cheated!
Linda: But you know it was like yeah, somehow--
LaVerne: They were so proud of us being there.
Marguerite: I missed out on this.
Linda: They were so proud of us, and we were treated special by them in a
positive way and the rest of campus, not so much at that time.
LaVerne: But they were always encouraging.
Linda: Encouraging, that's what I remember.
LaVerne: Yeah. But I tell you, being on a soft diet and you know you can't bite
anything, it was like I had some stuff and they gave me food that wasn't on the
menu and it was good. [Laughter]
Linda: But you've always been accident prone. I remember you telling about going
on a field trip or
00:23:00something in high school and somebody threw a bottle out ofthe window and hit you on the head in New York City or somewhere.
LaVerne: Oh yeah, everything--
Shelby: That's just bad luck.
LaVerne: When I was twenty-one I had lived in Minneapolis for a year and a half
and I went on a--there had been a forest fire in Wisconsin and a whole bunch of
us went replanting a forest on a Sunday afternoon. Well I turned my ankle. Well,
so we were riding the bus back to Minneapolis and I get off and I go in the
Student Health Center and I go in and I said, I think I sprained my ankle. And
they say, yeah, it's a sprained ankle, and they wrap it up and stuff and the
intern looks at me and he says, here, take these crutches. Don't bring them
back. They are yours. You have rented them enough in the last year that--
00:24:00[Laughter] It's just the epitome of how clumsy I am. Yeah. And I continued tohave those kind of problems. I was in grad school in Oregon in the [19]90s and
they have a sport clinic because track and field is real big there and the guys
taught me how to buy shoes, and I haven't had a sprained ankle since, so that's
why I don't need the crutches anymore.
Linda: Back then we had a-- A dean of women students.
Marguerite: Martha Harder.
LaVerne: But she wasn't there when we first came was she?
Marguerite: Yes.
LaVerne: Because I kept remembering that we didn't have a dean of women.
Marguerite: Yes, we did. I remember that woman, yes.
LaVerne: Okay, well she didn't know--
Linda: I remember her too.
Marguerite: She and I had quite a few personal tiffs.
LaVerne: Okay, but I thought she came like after a couple of years because I
just ignored her.
Marguerite: No, before we left I think she was not dean of
00:25:00women and we just hada dean of students. Dean Dean became Dean of Students, but when we first got
there she was new too I think, because women were new to this campus, and so
they figured they had to have somebody to keep us under control.
Linda: To manage these women.
LaVerne: But they failed [laughs]. I'm sorry.
Linda: I remember we had to wait until the radio announced whether or not you
could wear pants.
Marguerite: Wear pants, that's right.
Linda: When the weather, a certain temperature you could wear pants.
Marguerite: You know like ten feet of snow maybe you could wear pants.
Shelby: You listened to the radio?
Linda: It was a campus radio.
Marguerite: That's how we got our information.
LaVerne: Well let me tell you that I was the one who was definitely a rebel,
because I wore jeans from day one to class. [Laughs]
Marguerite: And so your name was Freddie, they been treating you like a guy.
LaVerne: From day one, I just ignored them.
Marguerite: And even on those days when we could wear pants to class, if we went
to the library or to the cafeteria, see you all had it in your own dorm, we
still had to dress.
Linda: Oh, you had to switch. Oh.
Marguerite: But guys could come
00:26:00 in--LaVerne: In short-shorts.
Marguerite: Not only that, they could come in from playing rugby, bloodied and
bowed and eating in the cafeteria, but I had to have on a dress.
LaVerne: Uh-uh.
Marguerite: So after that year we got rid of that rule. I mean you know Dear
Dean Harter. [Laughs]
LaVerne: I remember; do you remember a President Hahn?
Marguerite: Yes, T. Marshall.
LaVerne: Because I remember walking down the hill, because the President's house
was the other side of Hillcrest.
Marguerite: Right, right.
LaVerne: Walking down the hill with him several mornings and stuff. My father
was very involved in politics and he had political aspirations I understood. So
I remember walking down, talking to him a lot and he would say, how are things
going? You know, it's okay, but I would give him a long list of stuff--
Linda: Of stuff that you--
LaVerne: Yeah. And I would go, why come guys get to do this and girls don't?
That was mostly what it was.
Linda: There used to be
00:27:00a male dean here, his last name was Dean.Marguerite: Dean Dean.
Linda: Dean Dean.
Marguerite: Yeah. He was the Dean of men before he became Dean of Students.
Linda: Remember we used to have those German balls and the Cotillions.
Marguerite: Yeah.
Linda: It must have been fall semester--
Marguerite: Of freshman year?
Linda: They weren't semesters, they were quarters. We went to this dance or
something and he asked me for a dance. He started telling me about, he said, do
you know so and so and so? I said, yeah. He said, do you know so and so and so?
He was from my county, right up the road from where I-- And honest to God, I
didn't know when he was talking that he was originally from there or his
relatives. I thought he had done some surveillance, [laughs] which highway I
lived on and how does this man know all this stuff about me?
00:28:00 [Laughs]Marguerite: Kind of scary, right?
Linda: Yeah, it was scary. Right down the road where the Rutherfords live and so
and so. Yes sir [laughter].
Marguerite: Yeah, I remember T. Marshall Hahn and having a big meeting we all
went to and we could air all of our grievances.
LaVerne: He was the President.
Marguerite: He was the President of the University, T. Marshall Hahn.
Linda: Years later when I was interviewing for jobs I remember I was going to
Atlanta. He was at Georgia Pacific. He was CEO or whatever, and I was going to
Atlanta, he invited me to his office. I had graduated from Virginia Tech by then
too, and he had a subcommittee of a board of trustees or something and he had me
right in with those people. He said, Linda,
00:29:00if you ever need me or anything forinterviewing, and he was always there, always. If I called him, I'm interviewing
here, can I use you for a reference? And I think he, over the years, learned as
we learned on some of the stuff.
Marguerite: Yeah, yeah.
Shelby: Did you guys have any notable professors that either positively or
negatively you can remember? How was the time in the classroom?
[Laughter]
Shelby: Laughs.
Marguerite: I can tell you who my favorite one was, and that Bud Robinson who is
still known around here, my Civil War professor, and we got along famously or
infamously, however one might want to say it. But at the same time that we were
in the process of trying to get the Dixie Flag down and put a stop to the
singing of "Dixie"-- the Confederate Flag, I'm sorry.
Shelby: Is that like the prep rallies and stuff?
LaVerne: Oh everything.
Marguerite: It was at games, anywhere. The first football game we went to I have
never seen such a humongous Confederate Flag in my life. The cheerleaders came out.
LaVerne: Yes, yes.
Marguerite: It took like three people to even
00:30:00hold that thing, and I'm saying,where the heck am I?
LaVerne: Me too and I only live forty miles away.
Marguerite: Where am I? My mother, apparently one of those games was televised,
and you know my very first week here I kept calling home, I really need to get
off this mountain. You need to come and get me. I would call the next day, I
really need to get-- And so for them that was like too many miles to come, you
just had to stick with it. But with that flag and that song, I'm taking the
Civil War when all that controversy with it, and so he would ask questions like,
well today--I remember this one specifically--Miss Harper, and I was the only
Black student in my Civil War class, and this was like a lecture class so there
were like
00:31:00a hundred people in that class, and so I would always sit near theback you know and he would say, Miss Harper? I'm here, and he said, well today
I'm going to play some music from the Civil War and it will include "Dixie". Now
if I play "Dixie" in here, are you going to walk out or anything? He said,
because I'm going to play the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as well. [Laughter]
And I would say, we got a deal, that's fine. Play that music. [Laughs] Although
I didn't agree with everything he had to say about the Civil War, but I did like
him as a professor. Yeah.
Linda: Well for me Laura Jane
00:32:00Harper who was the Dean of College of HomeEconomics. I worked in her office. In fact, my freshman first quarter I didn't
have a work study job, but spring semester I had-- My brother was at Howard a
year ahead of me. I had two sisters that were coming right behind me and I
needed a job, you know. So I went to her, I said, can I get a--? I had heard
about these work study jobs and so I got a work study job in the Dean's office,
and she just opened my eyes to a lot of things. She was there. It was almost
when I was over in the College of Home Economics, it was more of a sense of
family to a certain degree, but not totally. When you go back to the rest of
campus, I mean there were two-- And at the same time, even within Home Economics
there were
00:33:00professors that you always knew the only reason they were talking toyou is they had to or they would lose their jobs. But then there were a few that
to me were just very supportive and she was one of those.
LaVerne: I had nobody I could remember positively, [laughter] not one word.
Shelby: I did say negatively.
LaVerne: And I try very hard to forget peoples' names. I have this very bad
habit of just killing them off in my mind.
Linda: Yep.
LaVerne: But I'll tell you one example. I remember going to sit for an exam, a
physics exam, and I was doing very well in physics, in class and in the lab, and
the exam consisted of all information about a car engine. Now if you didn't know
how a car engine worked you were up shit's creek, and I remember looking at that
thing going what the--frick? [Laughter] Of course I was the only female in the
00:34:00class. I never had a class here where there was another female in the room.Linda: Wow.
LaVerne: Much less another Black, because a female was better odds, never had
one. And so I remember that and going, well.
Marguerite: Is this a gotcha?
LaVerne: A gotcha. It wasn't necessarily, you know-- And I remember there were a
couple of guys--
Linda: Were you were the only one sitting for the exam?
LaVerne: No, it was a whole class, and I remember there were two guys in the
class who looked at the exam too and went--sort of like, okay, so there were
three of us our of thirty who didn't know what car engines were about, but it
was like oh, those kind of things. And I did have a teacher who just basically
said that women didn't pass his class.
Marguerite: Right.
Linda: But you know, another thing, I just felt on campus a lot of people
thought we were just here because we had to be here,
00:35:00and also they are notreally that smart, you know. I remember you had a class one time, I don't know
what this class was and you were saying how hard this class was, and I said,
Fred, how did that exam go in that class? And she said, oh it was a killer. I
said, what was the score, the highest grade? She said, a 4. I said, a 4 out of
100? She said, yes. And I said, well who got the 4? She says, I did. [Laughs] So
my point is we weren't dumb and you know there were a lot of very intelligent
smart people of color on this campus, but there was a feeling that we were not
that smart as the White kids on campus.
LaVerne: Which was actually quite a shock to me because having gone to Fleming I
didn't get that as much. Even though I was the kid who like came in the back
door, the Black kid who came in the back door
00:36:00there, I had teachers there whowere just absolutely incredible, particularly my math professor. They were
wonderful and they challenged you and they wanted you to do well and they
congratulated you, but they would treat the students the same, so it was a real
shock for me.
Linda: And I also remember in Hillcrest students would be polite and nice, but
around exam time, particularly math, they would be lined up outside of our door
for Freddie to tutor them. [Laughs] During the rest of the semester we
hardly--and she always, no matter what, she would stop and explain how you did
this equation. And Freddie had this big afro out to here and she had a pencil
that she stuck up here--
LaVerne: It's easy!
Linda:
00:37:00And she would be sitting on the bed tutoring somebody on some math orscience or something, and she would say, okay, and she would push that pencil in
and she would write that-- I wish I could just go back and take pictures.
LaVerne: Well it came in handy years later. I was a volunteer math tutor at the
University of Minnesota years later. They had a tutoring program for women, math
for women because so many women did poorly in math and said, I can't do well in
math, they had a special program for women, so I took that--
Linda: I also remember, and some of the girls were very friendly, don't get me
wrong, but we used to use a term back home called two-faced where, okay, mama
and daddy and auntie and so and so would come up for the weekend, okay. And here
go Freddie and I trotting up down the hall, and that girl that would speak to
you during the week when mom and dad, or sometimes mom and dad would
00:38:00say, excuseme honey, but where can we get more bathroom toilet paper? They thought we were
the maids.
LaVerne: And I go, I don't know! [Laughs]
Marguerite: Well you know what my answer was, I would play Nina Simone's
"Mississippi Goddam" open the door and the windows and let everybody hear it all
the time.
Linda: And then some of the girls whose parents did that were very embarrassed,
because I guess that's how they grew up, but then they had become enlightened
and here's mama and daddy saying, look, go over there and tell us where the
toilet paper is.
Marguerite: Yeah.
Linda: And just the assumption that we were not students. We were--
Marguerite: You didn't belong.
Linda: We were hired.
LaVerne: There are some students I remember really well.
00:39:00I remember Brenda Kibler.Linda: Kibler, yeah.
LaVerne: Brenda Kibler she was so nice. And Minogue--
Linda: Minogue, Jenny.
Marguerite: Jenny Minogue.
Linda: And Ginny had a sister, Lucy and Jenny Minogue.
Marguerite: That's it. Right. I remember them too.
LaVerne: And then Sue Cash. I remember Sue Cash because Sue and I went to-- This
is funny. Sue and I went to D.C. one weekend because I had a car. I had a 1962
Ford Falcon that had a manual choke, so that tells you how far along--
Marguerite: You should have known that answer. [Laughter and clamor] You should
have known the answer to that.
Linda: And that car was always broken down.
[Interposing voices
LaVerne: It was always breaking down. But you know, I just had my brother and my
father take care of it. I didn't do that. But anyway, she and I went to D.C. one
time and we were walking down, and this is to just show you how stereotypes go,
we are walking down the
00:40:00street and these three brothers walk by us and they saysomething, and I go, what the hell did they say? She turns around and talks to
them in street dialect and their mouths were down on the ground [laughter].
Because she grew up in the city, so she knew street dialect. I didn't know any
of it, and here's this redhead! I remember that really funny because one of the
things I remember thinking about that--yes, we all have our assumptions that we
make about each other and that was one real example to me of how we all make
assumptions and we have to think about what we're doing when we do that.
Marguerite: Well I even had a white roommate and will say her name for the
record, her name was Tally Hoenigmann or 'Hoenigmann'. I wanted to get it
00:41:00 rightbecause apparently it was wrong somewhere and she took issue with that, so
H-o-e-n-i-g-m-a-n-n, Hoenigmann.
Shelby: That's official now. [Laughs]
Marguerite: Hopefully she'll see this one day and be pleased. But she was my
roommate and I adored her. We got along so well.
Linda: She was fun. She was a fun person.
Marguerite: She really was.
Linda: She was real fun person.
LaVerne: It wasn't all bad.
Marguerite: No.
Shelby: What is during that time that everyone had to live on campus the whole
time that you were here?
LaVerne: Actually, it was either a year or two--
Marguerite: No, you did not have to because Tally moved into an apartment.
LaVerne: I thought it was junior year you could, but freshman and sophomore you
had to live on campus in those days. And a year or two before we came, I think
all the guys had to be in the Corps. That was mandatory, but the first two years--
Marguerite: But the year we came they didn't have to.
LaVerne:
00:42:00Yeah, it wasn't mandatory, so yeah, it was a time of flux. I hung outwith radicals on campus, the anti-war people on a military campus, that's who I
hung out with, so I was pretty weird. [Laughs]
Shelby: Well that was an interesting time to be on a college campus too.
Linda: Yep.
LaVerne: And I was known for being quiet and never saying anything.
Marguerite: That is not true.
Shelby: Where is that red sign?
Marguerite: Liar liar pants on fire.
Linda: During that time I felt like when we started we were called colored, when
we left we were Black.
Marguerite: And beautiful! [Laughter]
Linda: And beautiful! Vietnam, women's rights, all this stuff--
Marguerite: Civil Rights Movement still going on. I mean when we came here that
1967 ruling came during our freshman year or maybe the beginning of our
sophomore year they ended miscegenation laws.
LaVerne: Yeah, it was the Loving case.
Marguerite: Yeah, the Loving case, so you know, the year we came is when I found
out that White girls had to have a letter from home saying whether or not they
could date inter-racially or internationally--
Linda: Oh really?
Marguerite:
00:43:00Yeah. I went straight to Martha Hardin on that one, and I said, wellI never got such a letter. Nobody said my parents-- but the assumption being we
didn't need any of that, and so that just ticked me off to no end. And so I
belonged to a subversive organization at that time, it was called the Human
Relations Council.
Linda: Right, right.
Marguerite: And that was consider a subversive organization by Virginia Tech,
and we put on a demonstration where I went with this White guy to a, I don't
know if it was a concert or a game at the coliseum, is that where we played basketball?
LaVerne: Yeah, the coliseum.
Marguerite: And we went and we sat on the side where alumni would sit. We didn't
sit in the student section. We wanted to be seen for that purpose. Dean Harden
called me in.
Linda: You got called in.
Marguerite: I got called
00:44:00in and this is what she said, because this is now youknow a little later after we've already said there's something wrong with this
picture, and she says, one of the alumni said, did you see that colored girl
with that White boy? We were still colored and she said, what about it? This is
what she's saying to me, and I said, what what! [Laughter] And so she said, they
were together and what are you going to do about it? Dean Harden said, I told
her that here at Virginia Tech you could date anyone you wanted to date. I think
by that time though that Loving had been decided by the Supreme Court and so
that became a moot thing anyway.
LaVerne: Yeah, yeah. I was wondering why she never screamed at me, because when
I came here, as I said, other than Keith, I
00:45:00knew five White guys and I wouldwalk around campus with them because I went to high school with them. We were
always someplace together.
Marguerite: Because I went to a segregated high school I didn't know except
Jimmy who came here.
LaVerne: When I played football that day I was the only Black person on the
field and the only guys I knew were from high school.
Linda: There was a letter, I remember they sent my parents on if you would leave
campus on the weekend you had to have parental permission.
Marguerite: That is correct, and what conveyance that you could take.
Linda: And my mom and dad says, you guys sign whatever you want to do because
we're not up
00:46:00there, you are, and so we signed our own letters. [Laughs] I giveme permission to be off the grounds.
Marguerite: Right. I do remember a letter like that too.
LaVerne: I remember that and my dad said, What the--?
Marguerite: Well my daddy didn't.
LaVerne: My dad is nice. He didn't say what I would say. He didn't say what I
would tell them. He said, what the heck is this?
Marguerite: My dad looked at the letter that said you can stay out all night,
that you were giving your permission to be out all night, whatever whatever. And
my dad said, well I don't know if I want to sign this. And I said, what do you
mean you won't sign this? And so then I think he just always wanted to spar, you
know, and so I had to talk him into that you know. Because he was saying, you
don't need to be out after midnight. You can get into all kinds of trouble. And
so I said, well let me tell you--
LaVerne: In Blacksburg?
Marguerite: No, he was talking about possibly the men.
LaVerne: I know, I know.
Marguerite: And I said, well dad let me just say that whatever I can do between
midnight and seven o'clock in the morning I can do from seven o'clock until
midnight. And I said, and that's when I should be in class and studying, so your
choice [laughter].
Shelby: He's like, "Touché'."
Marguerite: Sign that
00:47:00 letter.LaVerne: I remember that thing going like-- I said, well you know if you sign
that I can't just make the decision to come home. It was like an hour because 81
wasn't done, so it took an hour to get to--
Linda: Right, through Shawsville or all the little winding roads.
LaVerne: There was a bypass from Christiansburg where the road was this wide,
but yeah, it would take me an hour to get home, so gave me a car so you could
come and go.
Linda: There was a professor when we were here, the Star Trek was really big on
TV and there was a professor that had a house out in the mountains.
LaVerne: And he would let people go.
Linda: And we would go out there. I thought it was the coolest thing.
Linda: He was from Canada. He was from Simon Fraser University in Canada and he
was here teaching. I don't know whether he was on sabbatical or whether he had
just changed, but I remember going out there to
00:48:00see and he had a dog, a St.Bernard I remember, and the St. Bernard dog's name was Rosie and you could say,
Rosie fetch, and she would go to the refrigerator, get you a beer and bring it
to you [laughter].
Marguerite: I vaguely remember that.
Linda: I loved going out there.
Marguerite: You all have great memory, you do. He had a lovely house.
LaVerne: And the color TV? Nobody had color TVs.
Linda: It was so cool.
LaVerne: It was so cool, yeah, so students would come to his house and stuff and
it was very nice. That was very pleasant. But I hung out mostly with Tech United
Ministries. I don't know if they are around anymore, but it was a group of
radical Christians.
Linda: Yep, yep, very liberal.
LaVerne: Very liberal and they rented an apartment above the Lyric Theater
downtown and we used to hang out there. Students could just
00:49:00come and go as theywanted there and you could just sit there and read. I played chess and played
bridge all through the night a couple of times. We would eat and there was a
little kitchen and we could eat there and there were dinners where students
would pay fifty cents. One group of students would cook, alternate cooking and
everybody would chip in fifty cents to buy supplies, and then the back room was
tables and everybody would sit and eat or watch movies, and then after dinner
maybe dance or something, listen to music. It was just really-- And they
sponsored community projects and stuff, but that was my home.
Linda: Do you remember when, I don't know if it was the Groove Phi Groove that
had an apartment at Draper's Meadow and we would go to parties there. That was fun.
LaVerne: Right.
Marguerite: Yeah.
Linda: That was a lot of fun. And I was telling my son, who is now twenty-four,
that there was one
00:50:00weekend, now I wasn't at this particular thing, but MohamedAli was here and he missed his flight or something.
Marguerite: And he ended up coming to that.
Linda: He stayed very late with the guys talking and stuff. I remember them
having pictures and my son said, that's really cool. And he said to me, well why
would he want to hang out with them? Because they are cool guys, right. [Laughs]
Marguerite: And they had a place to hang out. [Laughs]
LaVerne: And there was some couple--
Marguerite: The Valentines.
LaVerne: A couple who used to work there at Books, Strings, & Things.
Marguerite: Oh I don't know. I worked at Books, Strings & Things, I thought you
were talking about a Black couple.
LaVerne: I used to know the name of the couple who owned it.
Marguerite: Oh I have no idea.
LaVerne: It's gone a long time ago.
Marguerite: Yeah.
LaVerne: But it was a sort of like moving from the [19]50s into the [19]60s,
bookstore coffee shop tea shop and you could go and sit and read in a little
00:51:00corner with your cup of tea. No alcohol.Marguerite: And I remember all my friends coming to get something and not
tipping me. I do remember that.
Shelby: Your memory is really good there!
LaVerne: I used to go to clubs--
Marguerite: And wanted a hookup you know.
LaVerne: I used to go to clubs in New York in Greenwich Village that were coffee
shops, non-alcoholic where poets and stuff would be, and this was the closest we
had to that.
Marguerite: Exactly. It was a cool place to be, our little niche. Our little New York.
LaVerne: You could be in this corner in a comfortable chair surrounded by books
and it was like ooh!
Linda: For like the last month or two I'm seeing a lot of old movies, The Graduate.
Marguerite: Yeah.
Linda: And I remember seeing The Graduate in the Lyric Theater.
Marguerite: You know which movie I remember?
Linda: What?
Marguerite: Dr. Zhivago. That
00:52:00became my favorite movie of all time, but I lovedDr. Zhivago.
LaVerne: We're going to get to interesting things because the movie I remember
is In Like Flint. [Laughs] Which is like a comic take on the James Bond movies.
In the beginning of it he is supposed to be a graduate of Roanoke High School
and I remember the whole place was just kind of like laughing. Because there's
no such high school.
Marguerite: But that was the only movie theater that was here. There was nowhere
else to go to see one.
Linda: It was big time for me, sound with a movie theater, because where I lived
you had to go ten or fifteen miles.
LaVerne: Well somebody mentioned in the original set of interviews about there
being an upstairs in the Lyric and I'm going I never remembered being in the
upstairs of the Lyric.
Marguerite: Well, there might have been a balcony but we didn't have to do it.
We did not, but most
00:53:00places in the South had upstairs.Linda: In my hometown there was an upstairs.
Shelby: At the Lyric now they still have the plaque. Like before you go up the
balcony they have it as like a memorial thing.
LaVerne: I don't remember that, but I remember going in the Lyric a lot because
I like movies. And then the Greek that was a restaurant right across Main
Street, and I don't know what it was called, but it was called The Greek, or
something like that.
Linda: The Greek's. The Greek's Cellar, right.
LaVerne: That's it, and I remember going there a lot and eating there a lot.
Those were really nice people.
Linda: They were.
LaVerne: You wanted to get away from the campus you could walk there and it was
reasonably priced.
Linda: Well I remember every year the big committee to be on was the ring
committee or the ring dance, and the year we graduated the
00:54:00women we got a dinnerring and the regular class ring. Well on these class rings--
Marguerite: A Dixie Flag.
Linda: A Dixie Flag and they were originally designed. I think Virginia Tech
used to have the largest class ring order in the U.S.
Marguerite: Somebody was telling me last night that between VMI and VPI they
always were trying to be the one that had the heaviest ring, because that ring
is just like one little step down from a brass knuckle, you know.
Linda: In this ring design--
Marguerite: And I didn't get my ring because of that.
Linda: Well I got mine, but I took a chisel.
Marguerite: Did you?
Linda: You could see maybe one, and the women's was so small, but it was the
same design as the men, you could see one little star and I chiseled that star
out. I smoothed it out. There's no star on my ring.
Marguerite: I didn't even bother. I didn't want it.
00:55:00I didn't bother with it, yeah.Shelby: Do you still have the ring?
Linda: Yeah, I still have it. I still have that ring, yeah.
Shelby: Thankfully now they have like options. They have different rings, but
that's still a big deal is to be on the ring committee. I wasn't on the ring committee.
Linda: I wasn't either, but I just remember in the ring dance that was
considered the dance, the ring dance and stuff.
Marguerite: Did you go to ring dance?
Linda: Hmm, yeah I did.
Marguerite: Okay. I started out to go to ring dance, but you know they had a
Friday night one and a Saturday night and the one with the big white dress or
whatever, and I got there but the line was so long to get in that we decided we
would go play a few hands of cards, a little Pinochle. And about three o'clock
that morning we said, oh my gosh, we have missed it! [Laughter] And I'm still in
the big white dress and the
00:56:00guys still have on their tuxedos and we're stilldealing cards. [Laughs] So we said well, we'll forget that tonight. Maybe we can
make it tomorrow. [Laughs] I wasn't getting a ring anyway.
Shelby: You probably had just as good of a time.
Marguerite: I did, I had a great time. I like playing cards you know.
Shelby: I don't want to keep you guys too much longer, but what changes have you
seen at Virginia Tech over the time since you've been here, and what changes
would you still like to see?
Marguerite: Oh I'll be glad to start that one off. The one thing that I've seen
has changed is that you have a Black student union here. You have Black people
on the faculty
00:57:00 here.Linda: On the faculty, yeah.
Marguerite: Because neither of those existed. When we were here we didn't even
have a student union building at all, any kind because they were constructing
it. So we didn't even have a place like that to go to hangout, so those changes
have been there. There are obviously more Black students here now, a lot more
Black women than six, but from what I understand in terms of statistically
speaking there's still less than 10 percent of the population here that's Black.
And so I would like to see something change to that effect, you know, that
there's got to be some way of recruiting and retaining people.
Shelby: I was reading a statistic that in 2014 it was less than 5 percent.
Marguerite: See that's ridiculous. That's not much different than when we were
here, yeah.
LaVerne: Which is really kind of sad because I went to the University of
Minnesota and University of Oregon, you talk about White states, okay. You've
got over
00:58:0085 percent of the population in both states is White and they havelarger Black population in their universities than we do here, and they actively
recruit students. I guess the biggest changes for me, this is the first time
I've been back in fifty-eight years.
Shelby: Oh wow.
LaVerne: So it's really a long, plus I never expected to come back at all; it's
her fault.
Linda: I'm glad you came.
LaVerne: Because I was angry when I left. That's putting it nicely. Hopefully
because there are more Black students and hopefully the environment will improve
so they feel more comfortable and more included. One of my last memories was
people celebrating that Martin Luther
00:59:00King had been assassinated, and thatpissed the hell out of me. I was, and I think that was like one of the last
straws I could take. But anything to make it where people feel like they can
have conversation and interact with people and treat people humanely, that is a
goal I think we all need to take everywhere, but particularly on a college
campus. It needs to be really-- If we're going to have any future as a country
or as a world society, people need to appreciate each other's values. We may not
agree with everything, but appreciate everybody's value.
Linda: For me, it's good to see more faculty and staff of color. You can get
more students, but it needs to be reflected on both ends.
LaVerne: That's right, exactly.
Linda: That was to me so difficult never having others in responsible positions
on campus that you could identify with, so I would like to see even more of that.
Marguerite: And they had a hard time identifying with us.
Linda: Yeah.
Marguerite: I
01:00:00remember an English professor I had who was from another country,but he was my English professor, so go figure. And we had to write an expository
paper and I wrote about a neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia where I grew up and
he believed nothing that I wrote. He said, this is America. This does not exist
in America. I was talking about the urine smells and the rat-infested apartments
that were on Church Street and Daddy Grace's Church, and just, gave me a bad
grade, you know. Gave me a C for turning in a paper. Because he didn't believe anything.
Linda: That's what I'm talking about.
Marguerite: And so you know I tried to have a conversation with him about that,
but he was not hearing it. And then when they finally decided they were going to
let us have a Black lit class and a Black history class
01:01:00he ended up being theEnglish professor. And I said how in the heck can he be when he didn't believe anything?
LaVerne: Was he from India?
Marguerite: He was from India.
LaVerne: That's probably why. That's right.
Marguerite: 'Cause he's a little brown? Yeah, he was our Black faculty member,
right. He didn't believe anything about Black people here, so you know. And of
course it ended up we taught the class. He sat there. He was just the figurehead.
Linda: I also think on some campuses here it's like oh, well we need some
Blacks, let's just get some Blacks. It's no one size fits all. We have
differences and the more--
Marguerite: Just like us all being put together in a room.
Linda: They want all schools to be alike, like every experience is supposed to
be alike, like I can speak for all Black
01:02:00 people.Marguerite: Yeah.
LaVerne: Right.
Linda: And that's why I think it's so good to have mixed and Freddie said it so
well, where everybody gets to put your cards on the table and discussion
discussion discussion.
Marguerite: And like I said, if not on a college campus where people are
supposed to be educated then where?
Linda: Where? I found it interesting today when we had the luncheon, all the
different Black sororities and all this stuff none of that was here.
LaVerne: Sorority?
Linda: None of that was here. There were no options. There were no sororities.
LaVerne: There were no sororities Black or White.
Marguerite: Not recognizable by the University. There were White sororities and
there were White male
01:03:00 fraternities.LaVerne: Yeah, and they were ex-cadets. And the sororities were actually Radford-based.
Marguerite: Yeah whatever.
LaVerne: The sororities were Radford-based because Radford used to be the
women's college at Virginia Tech.
Marguerite: That's right.
LaVerne: I remember that very much, but yeah. I think the other thing besides
not having any Black faculty when we were here, we didn't have any women. You
had some in Home Ec.
Linda: Hmm, right.
LaVerne: I didn't have any women.
Linda: She didn't have any women or anything, right.
Marguerite: I didn't either.
Linda: And you were a history--?
Marguerite: History and sociology. There were no women. It was a male-dominated institution.
LaVerne: Yeah, and an old male too.
Linda: That's right.
Marguerite: In fact I had an English professor, there's something about that
English department, but anyway I had an English professor who would not start
class
01:04:00without, one Corpsman that was in the class, because that's how old he wasand there had been nothing but Cadets at the school, and there was this one
sloppy Cadet that would come in late every time we had class. But when he came
in then he would start class.
Linda: Are you serious? So the rest of you--
Marguerite: Just sat there waiting for him to come in, and he would come in with
his shirt half in hanging out.
LaVerne: I don't remember who she was, I can't remember the name, but one of the
women who was a freshman with us up in Hillcrest had been a model for Vogue. She
had been a teen model -- 16 Magazine, she was a model and she was a chemistry
major, and I remember one time at one of the meals she said she walked in
chemistry class and the guy said, what are you doing here? To her. And so, it
wasn't we-- I think the
01:05:00women, the six of us faced a little different than theguys. The guys had it bad enough, but the fact that you were a female and you
were Black, oh God, what the hell are you doing here?
Linda: Yeah, what are you doing here?
Marguerite: And I used to ask myself on a daily basis, what are you doing here? [Laughs]
Shelby: Is there anything you would want people to know about you that you
haven't been able to touch on?
Marguerite: At this juncture I can't think of anything anybody doesn't already know.
Linda: I can't either, yeah.
Marguerite: That I can even say publicly.
LaVerne: Well, I was a college dropout.
Marguerite: You keep saying that.
LaVerne: I was, because I spent a year and a half out of college, and I went
back and I succeeded and I made decisions that some decisions were good and some
decisions were bad, but all in
01:06:00all if I hadn't made the good ones and the badones I would not be where I am today, which is really really happy with where I
am. So I would say to anyone else: go with what you feel and try and make
yourself happy in your life, but work hard. That's what I would say.
Linda: I'm still standing. [Laughs]
Marguerite: I will say that my experiences here at Virginia Tech did make me a
more radicalized person and someone who has fought for social justice since the
days I was here. If I had gone to Virginia State I'd have been a sorority girl,
found a husband, you know, and that would have been it. But because you know we
had to fight so much here that I've just taken that fight from here for the rest
of my life.
01:07:00I've been fighting, advocating for children, advocating for peoplewho don't have--you know, just been an advocate as best as I could you know with
my limited resources.
LaVerne: But I think that's something we've all done in a sense you know.
Marguerite: Right. And I think it's because I was here. If I hadn't been here I
might not have.
LaVerne: And maybe have been more willing to stick my neck out in some ways.
Marguerite: Exactly, exactly. When I was in high school I was a good little
girl, a rule follower, and here it was like, which rule can I break now? [Laughs]
LaVerne: I was always a big mouth, [laughter] so I can't say that.
Marguerite: I was a sad dreamer, a little bit.
Linda: I felt since [Virginia] Tech you know when I get to very difficult things
I say you think this is tough, remember when. It like gave me
01:08:00a steel about mein some things, and now that can be interpreted as good or bad, but it was
something that helped set the foundation.
Marguerite: It was part of our development.
LaVerne: And it helped me define what is acceptable and not acceptable for me.
Linda: And it's all right to take a different path, because I switched majors
along the way, just completely went to something different
LaVerne: Yeah. And also when I had the opportunity to teach in China I went,
what the hell not? [Laughs] And my Chinese consists of Běijīng dàxué
[北京大学], and xiè xiè [谢谢]. Which one is West Gate Peking University
and the other one is thank you. [Laughs]. And I think that's helped a lot,
because particularly where I am
01:09:00now, I'm at a very multi-racial multi-religiousmulti-everything university in Michigan, and it has made it very easy for
students to relate to people. And what I want to reiterate what Linda said
about--and Chick--the faculty, because I think that's one of the reasons that
Eastern is the way it is is because they have faculty from all over and students
can find a home. And they can see somebody like them who succeeded, and I think
that's still important today, and people don't think it but it is.
Linda: It is, it's very important.
LaVerne: People don't see anybody like themselves who has made it or who has
managed to go somewhere, to go beyond where they are. They don't see it as a
possibility sometimes.
Shelby: Thank you guys so
01:10:00 much.Linda: Thank you.
Shelby: I can't thank you enough for doing this and taking your time.
Marguerite: Thank you.
Shelby: If you have any questions please email. David Cline is the person who is
in charge of the program, but whoever contacted you about it will be able to get
you in touch with him if you need you, and they will be sending you a copy of
the transcript and recording. We won't put it in anything until you guys look
for it, and we can blackout birthdays too. [Laughter]
Marguerite: Well actually I don't care. I've never been one to hide it, so it
doesn't matter to me.
LaVerne: You know there was a point there where I thought I was two years older
than I was. People would ask--
Linda: Oh I've given the wrong date.
LaVerne: It wasn't that I didn't know when I was born--
Linda: I forgot! I forgot!
LaVerne: It's just they would ask me how old you are and I would add two years
because my friends were two years older than me
01:11:00 [laughter].[End of interview]
01:12:00