- Collection:
- Southern Journey Oral History Collection
- Title:
- North Carolina - Greensboro: Samuel Cooper and Angelina Smith Interviewees
- Contributor to Resource:
- Dent, Thomas C.
- Date of Original:
- 1991-01-30
- Subject:
- African Americans
Segregation
Education
Civil rights demonstrations
Race relations
Civil rights - Location:
- United States, North Carolina, Guilford County, Greensboro, 36.07264, -79.79198
- Medium:
- sound recordings
- Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Tom Dent interviews Angelina Smith in Greensboro, North Carolina. She talks about the reasons she and her husband, Samuel Cooper Smith, decided to participate in the project and relays her experience of being forced to give up her seat on the bus while traveling from Greensboro to Wilson, North Carolina in 1942. Mrs. Smith describes the Warmersville section of Greensboro. Richard B. Harrison lived there and walked to teach at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University [A&T]. An interracial group of citizens came together, including teachers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (known as Woman's College at the time), to create the Interracial Forum. The Community Chest asked the Interracial Forum to withdraw because people were unwilling to donate money due to their funding of the group. Mrs. Smith describes the work the Interracial Forum did to change attitudes in Greensboro in the late 1940s. She talks about racial incidents she experienced at Meyer's Department Store and the struggle she faced when she was sent by Dr. George Simkins as a representative of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority to push for equal facilities at the store in the 1950s. She also discusses her participation in the work to desegregate the Y.W.C.A. and schools. Mrs. Smith talks about the Greensboro Sit-ins and offering moral, spiritual, and financial help to Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond. She could not participate in the Sit-ins, however, because she was teaching at Dudley High School. Mr. Smith interjects comments. They later marched with Jesse Jackson, along with their daughter and granddaughter. Mr. Smith talks about coming to Greensboro and working at A&T. They describe how they met. They give their impressions of Greensboro, contrasting it with Durham and Winston-Salem. They discuss former A&T President Ferdinand Douglass Bluford.
- Metadata URL:
- https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:53908
- Contributing Institution:
- Amistad Research Center
- Rights:
-
