Thelma Colston interview recording, 1993 June 05
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Transcript
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Thelma McKnight Colston | The Black teachers were very close knit. They had their own organization. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | What type of organization? | 0:05 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Teachers organization, which was all Black and they had their regular yearly meeting once a year where they would have the regular meeting of the Black Teachers Association. And everybody knew everybody. I mean, you just knew who was teaching the other schools, the faculties and all, and they were very close knit. But now they scattered. They all scattered now, you don't know. | 0:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of goals were or the teachers' association, what kind of goals do they have or activities? | 0:40 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Well, one thing they pushed at one while White teachers made more money than Black teachers, but the teachers' organization always pushed to get the salaries equalized. They worked on that. That's one thing. They worked hard to get salaries equalized so that Black teachers, any teacher who taught in a certain area would get the same salary. You work on the same scale. | 0:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Talked about your husband was an athletic coach, was sports a big part of your family and things like that, and a big part of your social life? | 1:21 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | (tapping for emphasis) If I never see another football game, (stops tapping), I wouldn't care. I have been to so many football games because besides being a coach and he also refereed football games and that was a big social thing to go with him. When you had to referee a game, like at Central or at A&T or wherever or Florida A&M or wherever, it was nice to go on the trips with him. | 1:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your daughter participate in any sports? | 2:03 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | No. Well, no, no, she liked the physical education. That was her major, but I think she never played on any of the basketball teams. Although they had a fine girls' basketball team at West Charlotte where she graduated, where she went to West Charlotte and while her daddy was there, but she didn't take basketball serious. She worked on the yearbook with the English teacher, things like that. | 2:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said— (doorbell rings) | 2:45 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Who's that? Somebody for Kevin. | 2:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | You talked about your educational experience— | 2:51 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Hi Gary, Kevin is in there. | 2:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | How do you think your education experience grow in Charlotte compared to your daughters would compare to your daughters growing educational experience in West Charlotte? You think anything changed from the different generations? | 2:57 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Yes. I would say that, let me see. I guess I would say that a good bit has changed. What changed from one generation to the next, although it would not be all that apparent, but there were definitely changes. There were changes in, for instance, when I came along, we didn't have any yearbooks or anything like that, and the social setting was different I think. I think that young people coming along and Connie's age group had much more freedom than young people coming along. In my age group, we didn't have that kind of freedom. | 3:13 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | And social activities were, like I say, when I was coming along, a young person, the church, your social activities were centered around the church and the YWCA and that was it. You didn't have a whole lot of other things that you could do other than that, and Connie's age group or generation, they had lots more things that they could participate in and that were available for them to do, but we didn't have those things. It was very limited when we came along, we didn't have that much. | 4:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | You mentioned earlier that your daughter was a student activist and everything. What kind of values did you instill in your daughter to make her have such courage in things? | 5:05 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | I don't know. I don't know that I did anything special except to try to make her appreciate things that would benefit her or that would be the right thing or valuable things to do. Just like—now, my grandson here, he wants a beeper and I said, "Kevin, you do not need a beeper." "Why, oh, I got to be able to got, get in touch with me." I said, "well, you are not—" I said, "Doctors have beepers and people with big jobs where they would miss an appointment or something if they did not have a beeper." I said, "You don't even have a decent job yet!" But he wants me to go and use my credit so that he can get a beeper. I said, "No." "Oh, well, I'll get somebody—" I said, "no, no." You see? Now that's important to him, but it ought not to be. (laughs) | 5:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay— | 6:16 |
Speaker 3 | Girl, what you talking about? | 6:16 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | (laughs) | 6:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I just wanted ask you, I should have probably asked you this before, who were some of your role models when you were growing up? | 6:16 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Let me see. It had to be, well I tell you, I don't know. | 6:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | It's important people that you looked up to in your young age. | 6:57 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | I'm trying to think of someone at our church because those are the people that I came in contact with other than my oldest sister who really was a role model for me. My oldest sister, Lucille, the one who went to Texas, she was much older because she was a first child of 11 and I was down near the end, but I always admired and looked up to her. She was really, I thought she was next to my mother. She was just the greatest person I could know of. | 7:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think I finished all of my questions. Is there anything else you think, think I forgot to ask or would you like to add anything or? | 8:08 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | No, I think we've covered the waterfront. | 8:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. There's a project participant information form and it's just basic questions and some of them involve dates. I know some people don't, usually people don't think about their history around dates, but we like to just ask just to have the information, so whatever you can give me is fine. | 8:20 |
Thelma McKnight Colston | Well, listen, before you go to that, this note that Kevin gave me is from a former teacher at Marie Davis School where we taught together, Mrs. Alexander. | 8:36 |
There is no transcript available for this part.
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