Zelma Watson George

S = Jim Standifer
Z = Zelma Watson George

S We're at Dr. Zelma George's home Dr. Zelma George Watson that is
Z Zelma Watson George

S ah...Dr. Zelma Watson George...
Z My maiden name is George...

S I see, in Cleveland Ohio on Monday, November the twenty-third, or am I a day late, I believe today is the twenty-third I do have a tendency to get one day or two days late, in any case we're in Shaker Towers in room 308 and eleven o'clock in the morning with Dr. Zelma Watson George. Good morning Dr George...
Z Good morning Jim...

S How are you today?
Z Well the weather looks beautiful compared to what we had yesterday and I feel fine.

S Yes with all that snow yesterday, I understand you went to a concert last night. Could you tell us a little about that?
Z I did, it was the Ohio chamber of Orchestra, which is ten years old this year, and they commissioned Leslie Adams, a young composer who happens to be black and great credentials for, to write several songs for their soloist, and he chose to write three songs from Dunbar poems, these non-dialect poem and they were playing them last night, world premier and it was just beautiful.

S Tell us the instrumentation again...
Z Hum...

S What was the instrumentation...
Z ah chamber orchestra...

S Chamber Orchestra, I see and this young man is a local talent
Z Yes he was born in Cleveland, his mother was there, he's finished the Cleveland schools and then went Overland and he has his PHD in music...

S ah
Z And he taught for quite sometime at the University of Kansas...

S I see...
Z And as a matter of fact just this year severed his ah relationship in the staff, because he wants to write full time, and he would have to go back every year and spend some time to keep himself to keep himself active on the factor.

S I see...
Z So this year I think he went for the last time because he's doing very well as a writer. This commission was important because they could have chosen any number of people around here and I was so happy that they chose him, he did a remarkable good job, the soloist, Miss Conrad was on the facility at the institute, is singing the same songs on the fourth of December with a piano, and I wanted to try to go because I would like to hear; he played them for me here, but it was so different with the orchestra there, for me ...

S Well I wish him all the luck and I hope I get a chance to hear him, and certainly we should get him in Michigan, in our concert series there.
Z He is a pianist but ah what he does is good programs of um Leslie Adams composition, he has a lot of good recordings...

S uh ha...
Z And they've been done last year and the year before last he was commissioned by the Community Collage to right a small work for the Orchestra that she did, it was very good...

S Let's talk about Dr Zelma George, ah; we'll start right at the beginning, where were you born?
Z I was born in Hearn Texas...

S Hearn Texas, I know where Hearn Texas is...
Z Do you really...

S Well I'm from Itasca Texas, and I've been down in Hearn and Hempstead and all...
Z I haven't been there since we left when I was a child. My father was, had just finished collage and got his advanced degree at Virginia Union, and ah married my mother who he'd met at Bishop and ah his first job was president of Hearn Academy and it's really remarkable when you think back to 1902, when he married ah, that we had black middle class people, enough of them who were dissatisfied with schools, to send their children off to boarding school for Academy...

S Right...
Z You know, we just don't think that...

S That's incredible...it was nineteen what?
Z hum...

S Nineteen what... what was the year...
Z 1902 was when he ... cause I was born in 1903 and a year and three months after they married...

S What month were you born?
Z December...my birthday's next month...

S Oh well happy birthday before it comes then...
Z Thank you ...

S What's the date, December 1st...
Z Eighth...December the 8th...

S 1903, December the 8th, I shall remember that with something very special...and Hearn Texas... the only thing that I can remember about Hearn is that people used to pick an awful lot of cotton down in that area...at least when I was a boy, and we used to come through there, ebon cotton picks we used to call them.
Z Oh really...what part of Texas did you live in...

S I'm near Fort Worth Dallas area...
Z Oh ah, my father was born in Dallas County...

S Okay...
Z And my mother was born in Ennis ...3

S Oh Ennis, I know Ennis very well also...
Z Yes and they didn't meet until they went to collage, and they were about thirty-five miles apart ...

S Well my parents are still in a place called Itasca, which is about thirty minutes from Fort Worth...
Z Oh really...

S And it's a very small town, but now, what about your parents...were they both Texans?
Z Yes I said; my mother was born I Ennis and my father was born in Dallas County ...

S What about your grandparents,
Z Well no, my mother's parents were born in Texas...right there in Ennis, but my fathers people came form North Carolina ...

S I see, now how did you happen to get interested in, or involved with music...did you do this at an early age.
Z I don't remember a time when it wasn't a part of my life, my environment...my mother taught music in the house for the first years until she got several children, my father was a, had a trained voice and um played the cornet...very well...I remember all my life when we always had good music in his church, he left the education field and went to the ministry, this was a Baptist school anyway, and so he decided he wanted to pastor, to reach more people. We always had such good music, I remember in Chicago where he died, and pastor of the Pilgrim Baptist church, that ah when Edward Venue was the head of the music department, we had ah do a lot of congressional singing and my father would reach down under pulpit and get his cornet and play the descants, you know...

S Right uh-huh ...
Z With the hymns, it was always very inspiring and was always a good descant, because he had training...

S How many children were there...you said?
Z Six, mother had seven but she raised six ...

S How many girls...of those, how many girls...
Z Oh five girls and one boy...

S Oh.
Z I'm the oldest

S I see...of those are there any of them living?
Z Yes... all of them are living...

S I see...and did any of those go into music besides yourself?
Z Well we all had some music, we had a little orchestra in the family, my mother would play the piano and my father would play the cornet and then the rest of us would play various instruments, the most peculiar combination of interment you've ever heard, but we ah had fun together with music cause nobody...it wasn't their idea to try to make professionals out of us. They just wanted us to enjoy the music, to understand it and ah be intelligent audiences, and have music in our homes, which we did. We all played the piano basicly and then except one sister that just refused.

S I see...
Z She wanted to play the harp and if she couldn't have her harp she wasn't going to play anything.

S And your parents were unable to get a harp for her...
Z No, we just couldn't afford a harp, we had a grand piano and ah these instruments and I think mother reacted more to her stubbornness more than anything else.

S Did you attend school there in Hearn and if so for how long?
Z No, we left there when I was a child, a very small child, a baby only and left and went to Palestine Texas.

S Ah, I know where Palestine is...
Z I guess I was about five, and we lived in Palestine and ah then my mother would gather two or three children in each her children's grades and she taught us privately at home and I never went to public school, because my father was so unhappy about the truth for black...we were Negroes then, and so she taught private school just for the grades her children were in and just three of four children to give us composition, very smart when she would pick _______

S Well how long did that go on...
Z I was in sixth grade before I ever went to public schools.

S I see and then you went there in Palestine...
Z In Dallas Texas

S Oh Dallas Texas...
Z See, we left Palestine and went to Dallas and then we left Dallas and went to Topeka Kansas...

S Did you graduate from high school in Dallas ...
Z In Topeka Kansas ...

S In Topeka Kan... so you really were quite nomadic then
Z uh-huh

S What were the reasons for these rather numerous moves...
Z Ah, out grow their churches and go to a bigger more challenging church...

S Now were these self initiated moves or did your church, like they do in the Methodist church...
Z No, self initiated

S I see...
Z The Baptist church doesn't ah do that...

S Moved them around...
Z uh-huh...

S Well how long were you in Topeka Kansa
Z Just two years...ah we were run out of Texas by the Kleu-clux Klan

S Oh you were...
Z And that was the only church he had...we were given so many hours to get out of town, because of my father's stand on an issue, and ah they threatened me and they threatened him a long time before they threatened me, and gave him 48 hours to get out of town. We didn't move we left and went to Enus to stay with my grandma until my father packed and moved us to Topeka where he had a call, you know...

S What was this issue, was it a racial issue...
Z Oh yes, my father had a big church and he was constantly making complaints about the way things were going in out community and he was just to powerful and was getting people worked up too much to take action...

S Right...
Z For instance he had a legal fund in the church for the defense of blacks who were in jail

S Oh he was a Martin Luther King before Martin Luther King became popular.
Z Oh my goodness yes, yes...and his church was always a place where all the black leaders came, because he would, there'd be a shooting and a crime and he would sell their books, but Devours and Booker T. Washington daughter ah Porsche Pittman was the organist in my fathers church in Dallas...

S Oh really...
Z And ah, and Mouton and ah Clarence Canelwhite and all the leaders would come to our church.

S Was Etta is from Texas also isn't she? Etta Mouton
Z Oh yes, and she also in Kansas...

S Did you know her as a girl?
Z Oh yes, I knew her right, she was one of my brides maids

S Really...
Z When I got married, ah Etta father and my, he was Methodist, but he and my father were friends...

S I see...
Z I knew her both in Texas and Kansas...

S Now how did you know her in Kansas, did she move?
Z Well she went to the University on Kansas

S Oh that's right...
Z And ah, but I don't know, it seems to me, but I don't remember weather her father pastor there somewhere in the mean time I think he was in Kansas City, I'm not sure about that.

S uh-huh...well she always said that her father had been a minister and he always insisted that she speak well...that her speech and her mother too insisted that...
Z Yeah...

S I notice your speech, which I should expect from a woman with a P.H.D. but was your mother or father very emphatic about you speaking properly as a child...
Z Oh yes, and we used to have people to come to the church ah, oh, Harrison what was his name...you know... he was in Green Pastures ...

S Oh, I think I know who your talking about...
Z Well anyway he used to come and do recitals of poetry and potations and we had ah I just can't think of the names of the people these days, ah I never was any good at names, but there was a woman that used to come and ah give allocution blessings to my family, to children and others in the church that my parents felt were ambitious and could profit from it. And then I'm trying to think of the name of the lady from ah River force who used to come around and ah give us a little singing things you know: A aw u...

S I see...right...vocally they ...
Z And we would practice this and ah, we had just about as many advantages as black people could muster in those days

S Right...
Z And my parents were collage educated people and ah used good English and insisted that we do it and that we had conversation at the dinner table, it was a very formal meal, everyday, what have you done today, what have you been doing and we never had chastisement or anything unpleasant at the table, you may think it's coming later but it wouldn't be at the table...

S It wouldn't be at the table...I see
Z And so our table conversation was to give us experience with expressing ourselves, by telling what we'd been...reporting to my father, what we'd been doing that day.

S Oh I see, when you left Topeka Kansas obviously you had graduated from ah High school
Z Yeah...

S And then did you leave there to go to collage or did you go in Kansas...
Z Well, my father moved to Chicago, he took a church so that I could go to the university of Chicago.

S Oh, I see...
Z Because I had applied and had been excepted, then they would not let me stay in the dormitory, because Negroes didn't stay in the dormitory, and I was not quite sixteen and my father felt the sheltered family in the little town of Topeka, that he was not going to send his daughter to the great big bad city of Chicago to live in the city and go to school, if I could get in the dormitory, alright, but I couldn't. So I wanted to go so badly to the university of Chicago, primarily my counselor in high school told me I couldn't make it there, it was too big of school, she wanted me to go to the school there in Topeka, what was the name of it... ah and that challenged me you know and my father, well we had been there two years and it had served it's purpose, as giving us a place to go when we had to get out of Texas...

S I see...
Z And it was a very fine small church, but it really wasn't big enough to sustain my father and his family for much longer.

S When was this when you were in Chicago then, what was the year?
Z I moved in twenty, to the university of Chicago.

S In twenty...well this is interesting...during that, how long were you at the university of Chicago.
Z I was there four years...

S And your father and parents were in Chicago at that time of course, during those years...
Z They did what...

S Your parents were in Chicago...
Z Well you see the family moved to Chicago...

S Were you familiar with or did you hear about Mr. Thomas Dorsey in those days
Z Yes, Thomas Dorsey came to be the head of the gospel choir in my father's church after he died, my father would not permit gospel music, he thought it was Baptist ragtime, and he didn't like it. So Mahayana Jackson and ah Thomas Dorsey and those people didn't get a chance till my father left, died in 1925...

S You know Mr. Dorsey says as such, its interesting you should mention it, because he pointed out that in the early days many of the preachers simply would not permit him to come in the churches with that type of reason...
Z Yeah and my father was one of them...

S I see...

S Did you hear also at that time about Mr. Dorsey performing or playing jazz or blues piano for people like Maw Rainy ...
Z I didn't know it till later, but I do know that's the way he got his start, and when I found out, when I was doing my research my first suspicion about was when I found the music to many of to many of his songs copy write many years before the gospel songs...

S Right...
Z And I traced, went to the copy write office in the library of congress where I was working, in researching and found this original tune in some cases had been obliterated.

S oh...ha-ha...I see...ha-ha
Z And he didn't change the copy write of the music you see,

S Oh they weren't...the copy write just remained the same even though
Z Yeah and he changed the words and he recopy write it as a gospel song, but I discovered several of them that were originally blues...

S Blues tunes...in your research...
Z He changed very little, I knew, then I first got interested in his background and ah...

S Did you know Sally Martin,
Z No...

S Well she later on became his partner in gospel music...
Z No, I didn't keep up with them, at that time I shared my fathers views about gospel music, and it's only been in recent years that I've been able to realize that some of it is good. When I discovered the great hypocrisy in his precious lord, I ah...I really had conformed all my feelings about it.

S When we say the great hypocrisy, could you explain that to us?
Z Well ah it is nothing but my seasons course along exactly tune by tune; precious lord my ________ _______ it's from that song.

S So you don't really think that...
Z Well its plagiary and I didn't think he...I think he should have said after tune, but you see what they did with it is what black people have done with all music and that was transformed it ...

S Well that's what I was...
Z It wasn't borrowed, it wasn't a borrowing because it was a complete takeover every note in Precious Lord. You can sing must Jesus wear the cross, I've done it many times with audiences and groups, and its exactly the same tune, and when I discovered that I, you know I had to ...well my respect for him as a composer was decreased.ha-ha...

S But it was interesting that you should say that, about the ah adaptation, the continuity and change that occurs in black music, because I assumed that while this is something that blacks have always done by taking something that already existed in music and transformed it into something else.
Z Well we've borrowed and people have borrowed from us.

S Exactly...
Z It's an issue of borrowing and ah it's nothing, there is nothing wrong about it, Shakespeare borrowed an awful lot but ah many didn't acknowledge it either. But the point was to take this old hymn and ah do that to it without, it offended me as girl, it doesn't defend me anymore.

S I see...
Z Because I see it as part of the process, because what he did with it was entirely different, nobody ever knows it until I tell them.

S Ha-ha.
Z And then they recognize it immediately, but they don't think of it, it's just the same thing that Michaela Jackson did to Brahmas Lullaby or God Bless America or anything else... because when she gets through with it it's a new creation...

S Exactly...
Z Yeah...

S Well we're going to leave that for a moment, we'll come back to this. The years at Chicago, what was your major?
Z Sociology...

S And ah, how, again did you have an opportunity to study music continuously while you were at the University of Chicago?
Z No, I didn't study music until after I was graduated from the University of Chicago. I always wanted to be a musician and my father who believed in basic ah sciences and ah philosophy and who was a great Greek scholar himself and spoke Greek very fluently and red Hebrew ah insisted that I get a basic education and then talk about vocation.

S I see...
Z And so I went to the university of Chicago, I took Greek to satisfy him and hated it and ah did not take it. The first time I remember really rebelling against my father was to refuse to take Greek the second year because I hadn't done anything with it the first year, I just barely passed it, and that was not my kind of grading, because I wasn't interested, but he said if you finish collage and work one year I'll send you to Europe and study for the opera, which is what I wanted to do.

S Well how were you going to that and not being able to take some form of training in the interim?
Z Well I was getting pretty good training from my father, I sang in choirs and I played with people like Edward Boatner, and I was the organist when I was listening to him teach and ah I sang solo's I mean duets with my father, from the time I was a child.

S I see...
Z We were famous as a duet...

S So your father was perhaps the greatest influence in your life certainly in terms of your mother verses your father.
Z Well I, I have to admit that, ah you see my father wanted a boy and expected their first child to be a boy, hopefully, and when I came as a girl my father was very disappointed but we became very good pals and the second child was a girl so by the time the boy came I had established myself with my father as a companion and we did a lot of things together, like hunting and ah fishing and things like that.

S I see...
Z And just plain conversation and talking, I had a pretty good mechanical mind. I could fix most things around the house, because I worked with my father. That was what he did around the house, he didn't do anything inside other than repairs, he took care of the yard, that was a mans job you know.

S I see...
Z But he let, me help him...

S After you left and moved to Chicago, where was your further study undertaken? Was this when you went to NYU, New York University?
Z I took a years graduate work at the University of Chicago as social services administrator and I got a job in the Juvenal Court as ah, well I work in the family welfare agency to get a years experience and took the examination which we had to take in those days to be probation officers in the Juvenal Court, and I work there for five years and then ah went to Tennessee State University because of being a woman in Nashville, my father had died you see the year after I finished collage.

S Did they send...where was he buried?
Z In Chicago...

S In Chicago so neither of your parents were buried back in Texas in their...
Z Oh no, no we have a family plot in Chicago...

S I see...
Z My mothers there too now...uh-huh...

S But anyway, you were Tennessee University...
Z I didn't get...I went immediately and registered at the American Conservatory of music, in which I finished with a certificate endorsed. It was my first job and looking forward to going to Europe someday, but my father died and I took over the responsibilities of educating my sisters. I didn't get married till the last one finished collage.

S Oh I see, so the mantel of the first child fell to you.
Z So that had completely changed my... and there ah I was doing a... I did lecture recitals for a long, long time about black composers, black lyricist. I used to do programs of all Langston youth corps, _________ __________ with white and black composers using his theory and lecture about it. I got a chance to travel and ah and recitals because my heritage back, a pride in my heritage had been instilled in me by my father, and mother.

S How long were you at Tennessee State?
Z Five years...

S And what motivated you to leave and...I'm...
Z Well I had these sisters in collage and I just couldn't afford to keep up a household in Chicago and ah them in collage so I went to a collage ________.

S I see, well did you...I guess I'm trying to get to when you got to Tennessee...ah New York University.
Z Well when I was in school... ah working in Tennessee State I got a Rose Mall a couple of summers and went to New York U, because I couldn't do graduate work in Nashville at that time, at Peabody I was ah and at a big universities they gave graduate degrees, and so I'd have to go in the summer and I had a Rose mall scholarship a couple of summers and I went to New York U and did my masters.

S How did that scholarship come, did you apply or did you get nominated or ...
Z No you just applied...

S uh-huh...and you went through the competition and...
Z Yeah...uh-huh...

S Did ah...what was the amount of the grant was it a money charity or was it a scholarship or ...
Z No, this was tuition as I remember it, it's been so long ago, in 1933 is a long time ago and I don't remember exactly if there was enough to supplement what I had and I didn't have too much because I had these sisters in school.

S I see...
Z And ah see ah I don't really remember how much it was, something like $500.00 or something like that you know which took care of transportation ...

S In your studies at NYU if there is a single or two people that you might say was most influential in helping you decide your studies there, who were they, or who was he or she?
Z Well Hammond Hamel Horn who taught physiology of education was the most influential person in my life at New York University, and Henry Pratt Fairchild who was the head of sociology was the other one. There was also Dan Dobson who was ah head of the department of education I think it was, and who was quite a pioneer in black studies ah Dan Dobson, those three people are outstanding for me at New York U.

S Now what year's are we talking about now?
Z I'm talking about 1933 and 1935 and then I went back on this Rockefeller grant ah in 1942 to work on my doctorate, I was really extensively making a study for the, I was a Rockefeller fall and I was doing a study for them about black music, ah which they permitted me to use for my doctorate.

S That's very interesting, we think black studies are recent phenomena but obviously even in the thirties you're saying that you were pioneering and there was other pioneers in black studies...
Z Oh yes, I was doing lectures about Negro music ah I came across a program, maybe I can find it to show you, in 1935...I was still in Los Angles cause Paul Johnson wrote the program notes...

S I see...
Z For me, for one of lecture recitals I did of black music.

S What if any do you see, in differences of approach, both on the part of the black and on the part of those persons who were the research then and now in terms of black studies?
Z Well your all out there by yourself and you didn't have anything any precedence to follow even your concerns you had to define for the first time, when you talk about Negro music, we weren't blacks then, Negro music, what are you talking about, and when you talk about ah to me it was music by Negro musicians and ah trying to define it idiomatically or in terms of any musical ah African survivals or anything like that anything that a black or Negro wrote was Negro music I still think that.

S I think we're coming to that definition...
Z Yeah, I don't think there's any way, other way to really get at it, because there's so many different shades of black, and we've got different shades of black...

S Right...
Z In the music, but it's black, because you can't live in this country and be black and not have a black experience...

S During that would you have run across people like Jester Harrison who was also studying in New York...
Z Oh I knew Jester Harrison very well, the whole Johnson choir rehearsed in my community center in Los Angles, where I worked for five years, and ah I organized this community center, and they practiced in and of course Jester did most of the training of the choir...

S Well when I interviewed him in Los Angles he mentioned in I guess the 30's and 40's when he was in New York working with Paul Johnson and others they're ah his experiences in New York and I suspected evidently you were there maybe...
Z When I was in Los Angles from 37-42 and he was in Los Angles...

S At that time, well maybe this was earlier, because he had gone to Tuff's university...
Z Oh yes, they were in New York before they came out there to do a picture...

S Right...exactly
Z Several of his choir members were also in my choir...

S Have you performed in film, or have you done any film or television
Z I have... I have done a lot of television as a lecturer or as an interviewee and I did The Medium on television the whole opera ah I did ah...

S Where was the premier of The Medium and were you...
Z Me...

S Yes...
Z I did it at Karamu

S That was the premier performance...
Z Yes for me, but it was done originally on Broadway with a...

S Right...what year did you premier it at Karamu
Z Forty-nine...

S How would you define for us, just what is Karamu, as a student...
Z Karamu is a center for ah...the word Karamu means center for activities. It's a swa-helee word...by the way when Russell Julep died not long ago, one of the founders, his wife asked me to participate in the memorial service with my definition of what is Karamu and I'd like to give you a copy of that...

S Oh thank-you ...
Z Ah it ah was more or less philosophical, but never the less it's what I think Karamu is all about. Now Karamu is... was started by the Russell and Marina Julep in an effort to provide the black community with services they were not getting other wise.

S These were not black people that started it...
Z Artistic aspects of their lives...

S These were not blacks who started Karamu ______
Z Oh no, they were white, residence of Overland, but the story goes back further than that because there was this very fine church down town in an area that had become black and they wanted to move to a neighborhood that was a better neighborhood and in the region of the University Western Reserve...

S Oh I see...
Z And ah it is now called the church of the covenant, and it's right across the street from the Western Reserve. But one of the men said; I'm not... who was a great finance, I mean he had a lot of money, and they were depending on him in making this move said; I will not give one penny for this move unless you leave something here to take to service, continue to serve this community.

S I'm going to stop you right there Dr. George and ah....

S We're back with Dr. George, we were talking about Karamu and its meaning and some of the experiences that you've had with Karamu...
Z Well I'm...I think I was telling you that I had been asked to make a comment on what I that Karamu was for the memorial service when Russell Julep died, and I told you that it had been started by these two white...this young couple because this man who ah refused to move his church from that neighborhood unless they left some on going influence there and he suggested that they go to Overland and ah try to find somebody who had been trained for this kind of thing. When they went there, the community we were told about this couple that would, had graduated the year before and married and were in Chicago doing graduate work. They went to Chicago to see them and found that they would be very interested in coming and helping start this center. So they started Karamu and administered first to immigrants blacks who didn't speak English well enough really to communicate for new jobs in the north...

S Oh...
Z You know they had such a ______. You see this was before radio and television where most people learn English, black and white, particularly those from the minority and ethnic groups, they hear English on the television you know.

S That's an important point, because many of out young people today who are studying have various ideas about Black English in the old days...
Z uh-huh...

S And I think that they ignore the fact that many of the Americans perhaps had imperfect English, because they didn't have this model radio and television and all weren't educated of course, so I guess the blacks the black dialect was perpetuated until they began to see more and more models.
Z Well they felt that these people needed help with the English and they started, they found it was much easier to correct them if they had ah were reading poetry. Then to correct them in conversation, and say that's not the way you pronounce that. But if they were reading poetry they could say...correction, so they started them off with books and they found out that they were acting when they were reading poetry, so this started a playgroup. That's where the drama department at Karamu got started, and it was Gillprin who came here one time and saw them doing a play and was so impressed with them he gave them one hundred dollars and that was a lot of money in those days, and so they named themselves the Gillprin Players. Cause they had really been started in the effort on the part of the Juleps to help new Negroes, new to the urban community learn how to speak ah English well enough to get jobs.

S Well where did they get the funds to do it did the Juleps have ah...
Z Oh no...the money came from this church you see, that had left and left them there to carry on, and then they later got other moneys from foundations and finally the community chest, but originally it was a project of this group of people that this one man challenged and said; I'll not give you any money for the new place until, unless you leave somebody here to service this community. It just shows you what the influence of one person, what it can be if it's right.

S I was glad that...
Z Then of course they added other departments to the ______ and nursery school, trying to give them all kinds of exposures to art and so forth. They administered to these people not food and clothing but cultural things.

S uh-huh...
Z And there was no other institution doing that, and the black community was just hungry for it, grabbed it. They had brought in whites to be a part of it. It was always interracial, and the white people were getting something...one set of values out of it and black to another. But it was a very important interracial venture in this community.

S Who are some of the blacks that you can recall that were produced by...through that experience at Karamu. Could you name a few?
Z Well of course Langston Hughes, was the only place that his things could be done early, and they did everything almost that he wrote. There was Minnie Gentry who's playing in New York now...I was the first from Karamu that went to Broadway directly from Karamu.

S Oh...I didn't know that...
Z Yeah, I went...I did The Medium here and then did it directly on Broadway after, and a number have gone from here since then.

S I ran into a woman by the name of Green in New York City, who does shows and doing commercials now, I can't think of her first name but she came through Karamu. This was just a couple of weeks ago. Green was the last name but I just can't again...
Z I don't know who that is but Minnie Gentry is ah has played in a lot of things in and off Broadway, she keeps pretty busy and she's done some commercials. There are several others, I don't remember the names of all of them. There's Ruhl Abdul who is now the music critic for the Amsterdam news and the only black music in the national society of music critics what ever that is, and he is from Karamu and...

S Where was Ruhl originally from...
Z He lived on 22nd street...

S Was he in New York originally?
Z What's that...

S Roil, does he originate from New York?
Z Oh no...he's a Cleveland boy, and then he went and finished from Karamu and then went to Vienna and studied voice and then came back and ah...

S With that name I thought he was from ah...
Z No, his father Indian and his mother was black.

S Now he taught also at Kent State for a while didn't he?
Z No...

S Who do I mean then...
Z No he's not a acamadician he's written several books, black poetry, 3000 years of Black Poetry. His most recent book of Blacks and classical music...

S Oh...yeah I have that...
Z But he isn't a collage product...

S I see...
Z He just keeps taught himself very well a lot and listens well and remembers, and he's just good in his career.

S You mentioned you were the first to go Broadway from Karamu, was that much of a culture shock for you to get from...directly from Cleveland into Broadway and if so in what way was it different, culturally different in terms of seeing her and...
Z Well they had minority...well I'll go back. When first...Ben no Frank was the man who did the first musicals things of Karamu, and Ben no Frank had been a famous conductor in Germany and all the people in New York knew him. So when Metropolitan Opera came here that year in its annual trip they wanted to see what Ben no Frank, on their off nights, what is Ben no Frank doing in that little Negro theater in Cleveland, he ought to be on Broadway. So they came out, and the night they came out I was singing and they were so impressed they called _______ and told him that they had seen The Medium in Cleveland and they thought it was better that the Broadway show. He planned to come three times and the last time was two nights before we were to close, and every time something interfered, the last time he was a pawl bearer for Kurt Wild's funeral. But he sent two people, his angle on Broadway and somebody from Schemers the copy write people, Schemers. They were so impressed with us as they arranged for me to go to New York for an audition, and I'd never auditioned for anything, I had no auditions for Broadway. But it was exciting, I went and __________ the version of it that Camel head produced, he said Broadway has to see this because this is not what we did before at all, and I didn't see this in my own play. You see he writes music and words all at the same time and then he produces it, and everybody else does his production when they repeat it. Now here was something that completely different an entirely different Madam Floyd, a completely different, and I did it in a wheelchair when I didn't need one.

S You do have to give it something unique different in Broadway that you didn't get to here in Cleveland?
Z Did I do anything different, they ... he called me the assistant director because they did the Camel version on Broadway, and the difference was it was an arena theater and that calls for a different kind of perspective for acting but other wise it was the same character. It was an exciting experience for me...

S How long did it run...
Z Thirteen weeks... it was announced for four weeks only. We could have gone longer except the theater had been rented out for a Shakespeare production.

S Were your reviews good...
Z huh...

S Your reviews...were they good...
Z Very good they were unanimously good ah it was ... I'll show you my scrap book from Broadway and from Karamu...it was very wonderful you know usually critics don't show their reactions to a play they want you to get the paper to find out how they feel about it, and so in commenting on this after the opening somebody in the column said...their not supposed to clap and nobody told me you shouldn't stop your feet. It was a very, very exciting experience...

S How old were you then...
Z 1949 I was well 3 form 9...forty- six ...

S Now at forty-six was this what you might call one of the pentacles in your career achievement or it was just one of the many things that was happening to you at the time.
Z Well you see my life has been so multifaceted that when I had to change for me to get on my fathers and sister said, no matter what you do especially in the arts and music you need a good solid background of experience with people and literature and so forth my interest spread and I'm trained as a sociologist and a social worker I have training in music but then I've made a 6 month lecture tour around the world for the state department, at which time I talked about black music primarily that was my main subject and sociology of the Negro spiritual and had people singing spirituals all over the world in all kinds of language background. And add delegable to the United Nations and one of my prime interests and for a number of years lecturing in collages was about the United Nations. But you see that's people, it's communication and the theater to me was just another form of communication. Using music as the Negro had always done...

S So like a new platform to do what you always do...
Z Yeah, and you could...and there are a lot of things that you can say more effectively indirectly than directly...

S Who appointed you to United Nation...Roosevelt?
Z President Eisenhower...

S Eisenhower...see I'm getting my dated mixed up...
Z 1960...president Eisenhower...

S Okay...that was more recent than I had imagined, was that, again, did that change anything the way you were doing in terms of getting out of one environment to another?
Z No you see my common denominator and my focus of interest is people, in what ever way I can reach them. And if its in personal contact or whether its on a stage or whether its making a speech or whether its singing or whether it's just a social worker whether its working with people who are asking for some help in rehabilitating their lives or talented young people just needing a hearing just someone to listen to a shoulder to lean every now and then which was the way I was directing my life now. The common denominator is people and I get more personal from people than I can give but I am trying to share all the multi-faceted experiences like been good enough to give...

S Let's pinpoint some of these...I know many of these who have ______ but also for the camera. I do know that you were the director of the Job Corp Center for Girls at certain times...
Z Yes, well let me just quickly say, I started out as a social worker or a family caseworker in Chicago and then I became a probation officer in the Juvenal Court

S That's in Chicago...
Z In Chicago, then I went to the dean of women or the director of personal administration at Tennessee State University in Nashville. I was there until my baby sister finished collage and then I went to Los Angles California organizing and director a community center, they had thirteen racial groups and ethnic groups in it. What it was moving toward black and they wanted somebody to come in, black, to give leadership to the change, and that's what I did.

S oh...
Z I left there on a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to go to New York to do my doctorate and do this piece of research for them. When that was finished on the 30th of September ah of August, on the 2nd of September I married and moved to Cleveland...

S And what was the year...
Z 1944...

S Okay...
Z ah... I came here with everything done but the dissertation, my comprehensive had been past and the outline for my dissertation had been approved, and I looked forward to leisure to write it, but I married a very prominent man who ah who needed a wife, his wife had been dead for two years, and I entered into an entirely new role. And I got involved on every board almost; at least it looked like they were just ready for a black. I mean in places I was the first free woman or order counsel of humanization, counsel of world affairs, things like that, and girl scouts board, ____ ____ ____ board and I just got top heavy with responsibilities, trying to drag other blacks into these places. Then I... the year we married was the year the United Nations was forming ah we were forming the United Nations, in 45 it was born, and we...I first studied together, the first thing we did together was to study the U. N. We went to all the workshops and we read everything we could get our hands on. We were tremendously interested in the whole concept of the United Nation, so we were sort of in on the birth of it and out interest continued in Cleveland. Well then some people thought I should be a delegate to the United Nations and in the mean time I was sent on this six-month lecture around the world for the State Department.

S Six months...
Z Six months, lecturing two or three times a day, and ah I started out in Southeast Asia and went to Europe and to Finland to France Italy, Cicely and then to West Africa. But when I came back I immediately as a delegate to the U. N. and that was in 1960 the year... in the mean time I've done The Medium at Karamu and then on Broadway, and how I got involved in that is another story, but then I came out of that experience and as _______ visiting lecturer in collage and lectured between 60-65 collages a year.

S And this was mostly in the United Stated...
Z Full time all over the United States...big ten and other collages...

S And what was the year date of this then...in the beginning, what year was this that you're talking about?
Z From 1960 I started with the United Nations until 1966 when my husband took ill, and I came home...I had a whole booking for the...66,67 and I ah had to cancel it because I was not going to travel with my husband ill, he had never been ill, and all of a sudden...took ill for 5 years. Then he died, so I took the job of director of job coring in the mean time, to be home.

S Now was this over on eighty- ninth it's been such a long time for me I was...
Z What, what...

S The job coring, when I came to visit you once...the center, was the center on eighty-ninth ...
Z It was on Addsell road...

S Addsell, you lived on eighty-ninth maybe...
Z I lived on, no... I lived on Eighty-first Street...

S Eighty-first Street...okay...
Z Yeah, you see right off of...

S You see my memory ...
Z Yeah and that was ah... that was the family home and I stayed there a year after my husband died, but it was too much house too many memories and the neighborhood had chanced so that it was not safe for me to come in late at night from job coring, two or three o'clock in the morning. I had had one or two incidents and I decided to move.

S Yeah the Job Corp Center finally moved didn't it...
Z Oh yes I moved it to the Hundred and seventh and Carnady...

S Right...
Z Yeah I would tutor ________ and more familiar names as we could.

S Right... I remember the last time I came I was there.
Z It was quite an experience, but in the mean time you see I had ah went lecturing about ______ about black music, so sound the Negro spiritual about race relations which was in the sixties...fifty and sixties, quite a subject

S I'll say...
Z And ah I don't know, where were you at the point I said let me go back and tell you? Well those are the jobs I've had in my life...then Job Corp I retired from that after eight and a half years. That's _____ _____ _____. I was seventy and I decided to ah write, which I haven't gotten to do yet, because I 'm on every board again, and not getting out of it because they know I don't work and they just put jobs on me, and I don't have sense enough to say know...

S To say no...
Z And I get still requested for speeches, and I said if people think that at this age I can still have something to give anyone to pay me, I'm too flattered to HA, HA...

S Oh here's something interesting... I remember seeing you on television, judging a Miss America Pageant....
Z oh yes...

S When was that...
Z Well I was the first black ever on any of the Judges panels and I was a judge of Miss America for three years...

S Ah I see...
Z Which is the longest, you can serve.

S Oh, then after that you...
Z Then they get new judges... some of them only one year but the longest you can serve, as a judge is three years.

S You weren't that panel when Miss Ohio was voted Miss America were you...
Z No, she wasn't elected, well there was a Miss Ohio every year,

S Right...
Z But ah there was one particular that everybody thought was going to win but she didn't. She had a nervous break down... she used to come and see me here...

S Oh really...
Z Yeah, and I think I helped her out of it...

S Where do they usually meet ah when the ______ are there...
Z Oh Miss America is always in Atlantic City...

S Atlantic City...I see...
Z It's changed quite a bit since those days you know, it's ah ...well some...I don't know quite a bit...but in terms of objectives and goals it became, once it was thought by some women that it was sort of an empty headed type of thing, now they're emphasizing more...

Z No it was not empty headed ever, I don't think, it was... I think, the way it was portrayed on television is a commercial thing that gets them the money to do it, Revlon, or who ever it is, but it's the largest scholarship appointment in the world, for women. And after that nights performance and we've had that same performance every night for a week to ah eliminate down to the ones that become the final ones for the judges to judge with, but on Sunday morning at least $75,000.00, most scholarships are given to those who didn't qualify at all, of Miss America.

S And that's not generally not even known I think...
Z Nobody does, that's the thing that I kept telling them when I was there, the true story of Miss America must be told, because the women's movement was against it for selling sex, or selling your sex or what ever it is, and we had all kinds of things going on outside sometimes you know, these braless people would take off their bras and run all around, petitioning against this kind of thing. But you see they didn't even know what was going on. These girls, we have documents of involvement of community activities as well as their academic records and participation on campus, and an amazing high percentage of them are ministers daughters, who for some reason think they have something to prove, or that their trying to prove about themselves. It...we interview everyone of them for at least an hour, separately because in the days I was there, there was these tremendous issues, these girls travel all over the world, representing us and in they're interviewed by everybody, all kinds of people, and we have to find out how their going to act or how they're going to respond to the question. What kind of answers are they going to give to questions?

S Were there blacks competing when you were a judge?
Z The first one that ever made it to New York, was the last year I was there. You see, they have to go through a whole net work of things in their county and their state to get to be Miss - what ever the state is, that's the only way they can get there, they don't have black composition or we just sent somebody, they have to get in the main stream and compete to get there, and the first one, I think she was from Iowa, was the last year I was there. They had several blacks then...

S Do you thing that not having blacks at that time was a commentary on what America thought was beautiful or simply blacks didn't try to...
Z No I don't think they though we had a chance, and there was Miss Black America so I'll go for that, there's no use of me going in there and there is no chance of me winning. I think that's the attitude many women had, so they didn't even try. When they finally got to the point where they saw a black judge, and they figured, well maybe their attitudes are different and they started trying. But it took two years before we got one there.

S Why do you think it took so long to get a black judge even?
Z Well, it was the same as everything else, ah it just takes time for people to find... it was the Danfield Foundation that recommended me, to them, they wanted somebody in the field of education, and went to the Danfield and they recommended me and they took me with out any questions. But you see it was the papers and everybody else that played this up for instance, they would ask me ah, in a press conference that was set up for me the first year I was there, one of the questions was; do you have some special concept of black beauty? And I said black beauty, that's a horse, and they didn't get it at first and then finally I said; Beauty, there's several hundred definitions of beauty, some of it's black and some of it's white and some of it's other colors, but I don't see...no I don't have any definition that's different, I said; that's like the first day I was at the United Nations, and I was being interviewed for a tape to be taken back to Germany, and after this elaborate introduction into the tape, the man tells me, he says; so you're the only Negro delegate to the United Nations, and I said; no I'm not and he said oh excuses me I thought you were a Negro, I said; I am so he said well I don't understand this, I said I'm a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations I am a woman I am black...well I'm a Negro, we weren't black then, and I'm over weight...I'm what you'd call, fat.

S Ha, Ha...
Z Now I said...he didn't call me the woman delegate, and he didn't call me the fat delegate so why label me at all?

S Ha, Ha, Ha...
Z You see I'm a delegate, and I happen to be all of those three things and neither one of them has ever stood in my way to accomplish what I wanted. Well, then he went on into it then he was curious, and he played it back to ________ he played it back that night on N BC and when they played mine back...all of that was cut out, and that was the best part of the interview in my book...

S Ha, Ha, right...
Z But I feel the same way about...well I don't want to be characterized, because you see your definition of black is not mine, the white mans definition or maybe another blacks definition even. I just feel that I'm willing to except your definition of...because you've got an entirely different one from me if I'm black, if I'm a judge and I'm a black judge, your not willing to just call me a judge, if your white, you've got to make it something different, and so you make it black...

S Black, yeah
Z And that means to everybody that it just isn't the same.

S What do you think about this whole black movement that we, in my age category, began and went through in the sixties and seventies.
Z Well, I have difficulty with it because I think everybody needs it, to know his heritage. I started learning mine so young you see by having Booker T. Washington, The Duke Boys and all these people in our homes, for dinner right before they'd speak at the church, and hearing adult conversations that my father had me sit in on, I wasn't supposed to talk but I could sit. And listening to them speak sitting in the front of my fathers church all the time to hear them speak, and sometimes get me out of the front row because these people were coming, and my fathers love for Negroes spirituals and Negro music and the literature I have learned my heritage early, but, and I think that whole black movement started, was started by people that didn't know their heritage and they discovered it, that there was one and they were ashamed that they didn't know it and wanted to learn it as quickly as they could all by themselves. And I used to say to people you know I will support this because I think you aught to have it, but don't drag me through it again, I've been through it, you see, I'm out on the other side of that thing now, trying to do something about it and ah I think you need it and I will help you get it, but don't think you've got to make me one of them again.

S What do you think about the woman's liberation movement in connection with that. Many white women said black women were very reluctant for some reason about wanting to become actively a part of ERA and the women's liberation movement.
Z Well the women's movement...you see I can't...there are many shades of black and there are many shades of feminism, now I believe that women ought to get equal pay for equal work, I think women should be allowed to do the kinds of things because they think their qualified to do it, but I do see a difference between a man and a woman, we've got different glands we've got entirely different kind of biological sells and I like the difference, and I want to perpetuate the difference I don't want a unisex thing and I don't want to say I don't the same that men have. I want equality you see, it s like the old story my father used to tell, about the fox and the stork, now if you give them the same feeding situation its unequal, because you have got to set up entirely different kinds, and put the food out in different ways for them to get equality, and I think that's the same about men and women, I just don't think their the same.

S One woman that I interviewed, in the eighties, pointed out to me that...she thinks that black women have always been liberated, do you agree with that?
Z Well I ... no I think that black women have been more liberated than men,

S Yeah, I think she was comparing us to...
Z But I don't know how you'd define, how she defines liberation. Now, I was liberated by my father health. When I discovered I was always going to be stout, and I wanted to be that slim pretty thing and I wasn't going to be that and had to fight an inferiority complex in competition with other women, and my father just said well we're going to learn how to do ______ ______ _____ not supposed to see. And when you get in a situation you going to be able to do anything they can do better, because you're going to work on it. So I worked a task and in emancipating myself, this biological condition of being over weight, which I'd been all my life, I was diving champ at the University of Chicago two years. I have done tumbling and played basketball and things like that. When I emancipated myself on that then I was emancipated for everything.

S Hi we're back again, and we're talking about the black woman and women's liberation. I had mentioned that I had talked with one of the interviewees and they had to point out to me that a, black women have always been liberated principally because when black men couldn't get jobs and couldn't go out and do things, black women could, from slavery up into even the most recent times. So that was her motivation in saying about this difference about...
Z I understand the rational behind it but I don't except it, because I think the definition of liberated is different from theirs. I would say they are more liberated than the black man, but I wouldn't say they are liberated because until they have equality of opportunity with other women they can't say their liberated, and we certainly don't have that. And by the way I just came from a meeting of the United Nations association board in New York City and some of the literature that I picked up and always go to these meetings because they expose speakers and opportunities for questions and literature that you can't get anywhere else, especially if you've been a delegate before. Well one of the pieces I have had a chance to read since I've been home is defining a fifth world; you know we have the third world...

S Third world...
Z Which means that, infers that we have a first and a second world, which most people don't stop to think about. And the forth world, now, the poorest of the underdeveloped nations, it's the fifth world, the women of the world. And they're pulling them out of all of the countries to make a world because they are discriminated against as women, and their need...the international year of the woman is what started this, and this is the form it's taking right now, conceptualize in this way. Well I would say that if you look at the woman of the world you look at the third world woman and they are in much worse shape than the first and second world woman, and among those third world women are black women. Now they are better off than most third world women but they are certainly not equal and emancipated to the point where they have equality with others, and I think that one of the reasons that black women have not been too supportive of the women's movement is because they don't feel that the women of the ERA, what do we call them?

S ERA uh-huh...
Z That they recognize that becomes a problem, in making special provisions for them to catch up... Their too busy working on their problems that they don't see this, its like Harriet Kleverman, who used to go and go to all the, she supported women's liberation way back then, but they didn't want her there because she complicated their issues, with the slave issue, and the black women's issue if she spoke, and they didn't want their issue for their own freedom of woman complicated.

S When you said catch up on them some white women think that why should they have to be held back until black women are caught up.
Z Nobody asked them to be held back, just give us a pathway to move ourselves. Who to say anything about blacks in general, I don't think, I don't ask anybody to be held back for me.

S But isn't this the general perception once you begin to integrate ...
Z Well that's the general, that's why they don't want busing, they think you're going to bring their school down, so I don't want you over here, and I don't want to move over there because theirs are down. You've got to find, you have to pay penalties, society has to for things they have done wrong against people, and sometimes its making you aware that you are discriminating and you wouldn't see it if I didn't bring you down here to see it or if I didn't point it out to you, you wouldn't pay any attention to it because you're just so satisfied with your own condition so concerned with your own problems. I think that many individual black women have been extremely emancipated and I think about the mothers of the children in Little Rock, who before we knew any such thing as a movement you see, have their children ready. It had to be mothers and fathers but it was primarily mothers who'd done it, and we haven't given those mothers the credit they should have. You take Mrs. Parks, who started the whole thing and got lost, and the Martin Luther King are, but it was started by a woman who was a black mother. I think that there isn't any doubt that the black woman is more emancipated than the black man but I don't think that she is emancipated.

S Oh I see... what about aging...ageism is also a kind of a movement of catching up, we talk about blacks we talk about handicaps and now we talk about gray power. Ageism
Z Yeah...oh age...

S Yes now, you are considered a, what you might hate a senior citizen or you are an elderly person. Has your age and the things...
Z I'm aged but I'm not old, I mean in the since of my attitude toward things. I think old people are those who've given up and have sort of excepted societies definition of what they ought to be doing. I spoke the year before last to groups of golden ages, one is, those of who are in homes or in residences for older people and their sitting there saying come and get me someplace or get me a program or do this for me, and the other's called RSVP, retired service volunteer something, and these are people who haven't excepted the societies definition of them as being incapable anymore, and they are giving voluntary services of their skills and I had to make two entirely different to those two people in their annual meetings, because their not, the same age chronologically but their not the same kind of people at all, in the same city.

S You mentioned except...do you think...what is the best word? Adjust what...adjust to age, ones age.
Z I think it depends on how you live those other years what skills you've developed, to what concerns and interests and involvement you've had. Using the word involvement a physiatrist way. If you've been involved and you have insights into whets going on and you have concerns about it and you get a certain age you don't stop all that. But if you've just been doing a job a routine thing and just surviving and doing what you had to do, but not stretching yourself at all your not going to stretch when you don't have to.

S So you're saying, you must prepare when your younger...
Z Oh yes...you've got to prepare, prepare to retire and in your preparation, it means you've got to get yourself informed and concerned and involved in the issues that effect your life and the life of other people. Develop some skills...

S Well what about the infirmities that seem to be inevitable. Are those skills...are you going to pursue those skills at a same...
Z I'm lame and I'm supposed to sit with my legs up, I just bought a machine that will take me where ever I want to go, and I don't have to wait for someone to push me. You have to supplement, your teeth give out you have to buy some teeth to fill in. you don't hear so well you get a hearing aid, and you don't have to be old to need them, either one of them. I've been wearing a bra a long time and because certain parts of our body move down and I needed it. I think you find ways to supplement your regular god given body or your healthy self to make up for these deficiencies. Now there's a difference between disabled and handicapped, and we use those words indiscriminately and they're not. I am handicapped because I have a bad knee and I have an artificial knee joint that isn't working right, in this knee. It's working all right in this one. I'm in a wheelchair or I use crutches, but I get there. Now if I get to a...go to a parking lot and I want to go to the library across the street, which is the situation here. I can't get up the curb, I'm handicapped, but that's not me. My concern is my personal physical disability and making the maximum use of what I have left. Other skills are supplementing that one so I can make it. But when I can't...I went to a building last night; there was no provision for me to get in that building at all. They had to come and help me you know, and do special things. They didn't expect me, they sold me a ticket but they didn't expect me. Now that's a handicap, but that's societies fault not mine. Society's put that handicap...and when we don't... when science itself doesn't use its skills to provide the kind of help that people need when their disabled, the same kind of help they provided the people when they went up in space, when they had no weight anymore, then they had to devise all kinds of contraptions to make those men functional, in an atmosphere where you had no weight and he was floating around. That's an awful lot of help that was given to those fellows by the scientists and when they get to the point where they can use that help people augment what things have happened to them down on earth, then their not handicapped anymore. If I don't have any barrier and I have impetus to do what I want to do and make maximum use of what I have and I can do it, I'm not handicapped.

S You also said something else in terms of creativity. If you don't use that creativity, those skills you were talking about, they probably die don't they.
Z Oh they do in everybody, no matter what age you are. These are not things that just happen to you when you get older.

S So you think...you mentioned also.
Z I opened the international year for the disabled downtown, Public Auditorium and there were many more people there much younger than I am who were disabled, it isn't necessarily age...

S But I was thinking about, it seems to be easier to give those things up or stop practicing things when your older than when your younger, because you do have some associated infirmities a problem or the society note retires you.
Z Yeah, with society that disabled people incapable, when you get disabled you're no longer an efficient functioning citizen, and so they just write you out of the script, you're not even in there. There ought to be...every time somebody writes a play about society in general, there ought to be some disabled people in there somewhere, some wheelchairs cause they're in society, don't ignore them.

S Have you known...
Z And write them out of the script...

S So since you've mentioned the script, have you noticed television doesn't really have too many old people in it.
Z No, a lot of them have figured I've done my part, I worked and I don't...they're lazy and they don't want to get up in the morning and do things. They're chronically ill, I told a group not long ago, all your life when you were younger there were mornings that you wish you could sleep, you don't feel good, I don't feel like going to work, but you went to work. And after a while you've lost it, you found you have the energy, and you're not... the aliment you thought you had you don't have because you worked it off. But if you don't have to get up and you don't force yourself to get up, if you stay in there you're going to be sick. It's a matter of attitude on the part of the people, its attitude about society; society doesn't expect you to do any better.

S So what would you tell the elderly then, you've______ that you've told them directly, but you're saying too, hey look, the lowness is on you as an individual, you can't wait expecting your sister, your mother, or the social worker to get you out and doing things.
Z No, and if you do then you probably had to be awakened by your mother or somebody in the family everyday, even before you got old. Somebody, a friend of mine who's blind, said blindness doesn't create the problem, it accentuates exacerbates you have.

Z If you were dependent or now you can't do anything for yourself, you always were partially dependent, it exacerbated the thing, and I think age does that. Of course there are something's you get along with when you get older. Some of the things you can get help with, drugs all kinds of appliances and so forth, and society needs to spend more time in research to devise those things that will make it easier for people who are handicapped, not necessarily old but handicapped.

S Well your also though, your on the periphery or you were certainly in theater and as you get older you do gradually move out of the center or the periphery if you will, Catherine Dunham said it best I guess she said; it's kind of hard to tell a young person growing up that they're going to have problems when you get older, because you don't think about it. You know when your young you don't think about getting old.
Z Like the man who said; if I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken much better care of myself.

S Ah...okay...
Z Yeah, that's true, that's true. But we have a responsibility to tell these young people that they are going to get old, they might as well get ready for it and get some skills, get some insights, get some knowledge and concerns and ah awareness's that will carry over and keep you alive.

S You are whole...right...
Z I still go to the theater, I have six season tickets. The Opera, Playhouse, Karamu, the ballet, chamber orchestra where I went last night, and what is the sixth one. Ah I can't remember but I have six, and I... season tickets. That makes me go, because I don't want to put that money out and not go, and I've got two for some of them and I take some young person or somebody who might not go otherwise. It's expensive, it's a big part of my budget, but I think it's worth it. Well which one is that I left out, the ballet the chamber orchestra, oh the symphony orchestra.

S ah...
Z And the playhouse in Camel that's six.

S Chester also said...he's eighty and he still goes to, what do you call.... Cattle Calls, these are roll calls when there's a part that needs to be auditioned for. Chester Harrison, and he played all those Tarzan's he played in all those, Lillie's of the Field he sang, was the voice for Sydney Porter` of course in... with that Amen. Anyway he was saying that there is a time to move off stage too, and ah he said the problem with older actresses, as you've been daunted you say with movie stars all along that you hate to let go sometimes.
Z Well, I know what he's talking about because I have friends in an origination and she had all the answers and she never lets the other ones make any mistakes, that she had and I had made to learn how to do this thing. And we used to talk about these things and used to disagree on them, I know what you're talking about, I think you have to pass, I have two or three interns that I take with me to places, because I'm trying to pass on some experiences and I give over to, I picking one up tomorrow to interview a man who's the head of one of the big foundations, and he's seen me because he knows me but I'm taking her and he doesn't know I'm bringing her. So she can be there, meet him, him meet her and this is what I think you have to do, your not getting off the stage, you see, but your playing a different role, your coaching somebody else, or helping somebody else get in. so I don't agree that you have to get off the stage, I think you play a different role and that role you see, all the people that get old don't get wisdom but you don't get wisdom without getting old. And I think that if you've gotten some wisdom in some aspects you have responsibilities in trying to communicate it to others and pass it on to somebody else ah help somebody else to get it. When I retired I worked with the disadvantaged in quotes, all my life, and I decided now I've given all I have, but what am I going to do now? I'm not going to sit down and twiddle my thumbs. Well I decided I was going to make myself available to some of the young people who are motivated, involved, are trying, who feel they need somebody, a listening ear, or a shoulder to weep on or just to help introduce them to somebody. Now last night when I went to hear Leslie Adams, numbers being done a tenth anniversary by the Chamber Orchestra, I was very proud. And I wore the same dress I wore to a party when I introduced him to the people who got this commission for him. And I have followed through on that. I was saying that when I retired I decided that what ever talents or skills or insights I might have come up with at this age that I would dedicate it to young people who were already motivated already have a plan for their lives, already involved in perusing, but some how or other occasionally find need for a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on or somebody that could just help them to meet the right person or say the right thing for them and give them some encouragement and so that's what I've done. And I have several such people that I am helping and working with and it's a very great satisfaction to be able to see the results, you know, in some of the other youngsters I've worked with through the years, it takes years for them sometimes to see what you're trying to do to show any advancement, and it's been very rewarding to find that you can be helpful to young people who look like their doing alright and really need a mature person that they can trust ah their secrets with ah come in and trust your judgment and you don't expect them to follow it as instructions but you put your input and leave it to them to make the decision. It's been very rewarding...

S now at this point in your life, such incredible accomplishments in your background, what are some things that you would like to do between now and ______ so to speak, is there something that you want to do and if you intend to get started or complete.
Z well I started three things that I will never finish I'm sure. One is I wanted my pilots license and I had lessons and was just about ready to do my solo when my husband took sick, I was going to buy a plane instead of an automobile, to make short trips in and I...somehow it nags me not to have finished to get my pilots license but I really don't have any need for it now. I wanted to learn how to ice-skate. I have never... roller skate I mean; I had not learned as a child and I wanted to ice skate, did I say roller skate? And I lived in areas where there wasn't outdoor places, not even indoor those days you had to wait till it got cold enough, and go on the lake or something. And I didn't learn to ice skate and I just wanted to do like Old Smoothie and waltz around with somebody I didn't want to do anything acrobatic, but I just new all my life I wanted to skate. And the other thing wasn't important.... But, play the guitar...but I can still do that. I just wanted to be able to play the guitar and sing for my self some night and I may still do that, that's one I can do. But the things left that were in me that need to be done, a documentation of all these things you see in my apartment ah everything on that knick-knack shelf has a story behind it and I need to tape or do something with, where I got it and what the story is and what I'd like have happen to it you know when I'm gone. I have a book that's been, which was a rewriting of my dissertation and ah the annotation of the bibliography, which a publisher has been waiting for from me for six years, and I just haven't gotten around to it. And my autobiography I think, I didn't realize there were things that people might be interested in, until Radcliff came here for five days to do this intense interview for the oral history and they have read everything, and done their homework very well indeed and they had read everything they could and they were just looking for the insights and subjective reasons, aspects of why I did it and what came out of it and why. What it had moved me into, and I realized that there are something's that are part of my life experience that started way before there was a movement and ________ to help to make the movement possible. Not just me alone but people like me who'd done things ah on a self-motivation had confrontations that were very important as young people without any organization or movement pushing you to do it, you know. I thing a lot of young people today think they invented the whole concept of protest and I would like to document some of the things that I've been a part of and have become a part of me. I would like to find someway to say to young people, that you live as full a life as you can and you reach out for as many kinds of experiences and skills as you can get. Somebody asked me once how I got to Broadway in a meeting and I said; because I can swim the crawl, and of course it needs an explanation, it means I did this in a wheelchair. The thirteen weeks I was on Broadway I couldn't have an understudy, everybody with their little parts had understudies but I couldn't, because the girl who had done it a hundred times or more, ________ on Broadway, could not sing and wheel the chair at the same time. And this character had to be done in a wheelchair, and she could not do it. But I had to swim the quall and I could move my shoulders and propel myself without destroying the position my chair stood, my breathing apparatus and I could do it, and I could only do it because I had learned to do the crawl, when I was younger. So you learn to do all the things you can, you get as many exposures and as many experiences because you never know when that one thing will make the difference.

S That's very interesting, Chester Harrison pointed out the same thing. He pointed out little brief stories while we were on the boat. He learned how to speak some dialects of the West Indians and here it was twenty-five years later they wanted a black who could speak with a West Indian dialect and he was ready.
Z And he was ready...you just don't know when you're going to use it, I told them about imploring hundreds and hundreds of people in the job corps and if you find two people who are the same qualifications but one of them can do some other something you know, can... knows how to type or knows how to run a machine or knows how to operate a movie machine or camera or something, just that little extra thing will make you heir them over the other people when their equal in qualifications. So you just live as full a life as you can and you learn to love what your doing and if you can't love what you're doing then quit and get another job that you can be ha.... Excited about, because if you can't be excited about what you're doing then you're not doing it well and you're not doing yourself or anybody else any service. So I'm a strong believer that you have got to either find a way to like what you're doing or get out. I first...when I was married, I just hated washing dished. And there was just the two of us, and I found myself paying the little girl across the street to come over and wash the dishes, and it was ridicules, so I went down town, I just gave my dishes away and went down town and I bought some dishes that were Danish and a shape to them, it wasn't usual you know the plates weren't exactly round or kind of oval, and I could ______enjoy playing with those plates in the dish water. Now that was ridicules but I made myself learn to at least enjoy washing dishes.

S You had to adjust to a necessity...
Z Yes, and adjust myself to necessity, and I think that you have to work at this business of living you have to work at this business of becoming what ever you want to be, you have to be resilient enough to recognize that your going to change and as you get new experiences and meet new people and reach out for new ideas and new events and get involved in them not just sitting there going through it, that you are going to become a different person, and your whole perspective is going to change. I had a saying that somebody reminded me, one of the graduates of Job Corp, at the alumni organization the other night told me that it had helped them so much, and I was so grateful that she remembered this. Go as far as you can see, and then see how far you can go, and this is what you have to do. In young people who, the thing looks dark and you can't see, you get discouraged; well just go as far as you can see.

S Is it good enough to be good...
Z huh...

S Is it good enough to be good at what you do...
Z Is good enough, enough.

S Yes
Z No, you see I came up in the time when we were told; you were black, and you've got to be better. You have to be better than any white person because you.... to be seen to get a chance, so don't... Mediocrity or that's good enough, we weren't allowed to even think about that, I mean you've got to think to be better, the best you can be and that's not going to be good enough, or wouldn't be good enough for my father, he always find a but to add on there. But what do you expect you've got every book in the world, you've got every encyclopedia you've got parents to help you, and I didn't expect to end up with A or one hundred.

S Well finally, I'm going to ask you one last question and then I would like to look around your apartment a bit, with the camera, You do have quite... your place here is literally stocked, I would say crammed with your life, and books and programs and so forth. What do you intend to do with it? Have you made plans to do something with it?
Z Well I have had several propositions brought to me and I'm considering them. There are a group of citizens, local citizens who'd come to me recently, want to buy back the house my husband and I had and make it into a federal museum for the community, they've just built a garden park. Cleveland Clinic gave it to the community and the community decided to name it after my husband, down at ninetieth and Cedar. And that's in the neighbor hood in which we lived, and so this inspired some of the people to say, why don't we get that house and rehabilitate it and put all of your things there and make it a neighborhood library. Well I've got that to think about, because you've got to have assurances that's where it's going to stay and then you've got money to keep it going and that kind of thing. An endowment and I don't feel like going through that, but if it comes up and they assured me I might consider it. I've thought a lot about it, I've thought of giving my things to various of my nephews and nieces, ah but I'm not so sure that they would have that much value to them, and I have a lot of children that my husband and I helped to grow up in to very fine adult citizens, with their own children, who this and than and the other ones was telling me they want my dishes. I have unclearly made those decisions, that's the reason I... my theme song right now is a spiritual, I Ain't got time to die. I've got too much to do, so lord just let me alone a while; I ain't got time to die. No, I haven't made that decision yet, and it's a very important one, because some of these things, they're not _______ valuable but their valuable in the story they tell. And I have a little sole fish on my table that will tell the story of how important. I was in Malign and they were planning to send me to Cecile, Sardinia. The citizens in Florence and Rome said to me; I don't know why they waste you on those people in Cecile and Sardinia, they won't even know what you're talking about. Their just peasants and we would like to schedule you more in this area. Well of course I was scheduled and that wouldn't have been an argument to convince me anyway, but I went. In Cecile no in Sardinia, the great composer, one of Italy's great composers was there, he had a summer place there, and he came to hear me, and he had heard, a friend of his had told him to be sure to hear me. So he'd planned a dinner for me afterwards at his summer place and a few friends. And when I finished speaking...by the way the state department sent instant interprets with me everywhere and the mechanics to set up the earphones and so forth because they didn't want me to cut my speech at all. So when it was over and there was a little reception and I was in the receiving line, and there was a woman standing over in the corner with her boots on and her babushka and her big skirt and blouse, just standing up there waiting trying to shake_____ and she stood there so long I said to the man next to me, the interpreter; do you think she is waiting to see me, and they said yes. I said well get her into the line and they said that she wants to wait until she can talk to you, but they finally got her in the line and when she got to me she shook my hand, and she could speak a little bit of English. She said, I go home you stay here, I be back. So I said okay, I thought she lived around the corner. She had a little cart, you know like they carry their vegetables in...

S Yeah, right...
Z And a little donkey, I saw her going, walking down. Well we waited and the thing was over and we waited and this man was waiting for me to come to the party, and they were waiting to take me to the party. And this man was ready for me to come to the party, and they were waiting to take me to the party and for dinner. I said; no I told that lady I was going to wait, and I mean I'm going to wait. And they said; oh, she's just a peasant, you know, oh she probably got home and found something to do, and we can't wait for her. I said I'll wait, you go to the dinner.

END OF INTERVIEW