Dorothy Cousar interview recording, 1993 June 10
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Sonya Ramsey | Where you grew up? | 0:01 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, I grew up in what was called the Old First Ward neighborhood where Earl Village is now. And I guess basically it was just a community, mostly of three room houses. There were on 9th Street and Davidson Street that were homeowners on Caldwell Street that were homeowners. But for the most part it was a rental neighborhood. | 0:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | All right. Was your neighborhood segregated? | 0:28 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh no, no, it was not. | 0:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh. | 0:35 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It's ironic. It was not a block in either direction from where I grew up, there were White families. There were White families on Davidson Street, there were White families in the, I lived, we grew up in the 500 block East 8th Street and the 400 block there were White families. | 0:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | So they were down by streets? | 0:56 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah. Well, no, because really there were Black families and White families both in both blocks. | 0:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did they interact with each other? | 1:04 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We lived together as neighbors and I guess there just wasn't that much. We grew up in a segregated Charlotte and you knew that there were places that Whites could go that Blacks could not go. And I guess everybody was so used to the system that nobody really questioned the system. | 1:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you and your friends do for fun in your neighborhood? | 1:29 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We played a lot of ball. We played a lot of hopscotch. We told a lot of stories to each other. We pretended to be big name singers and we did our own programs and whatever. We did a lot of window shopping on the weekends, where just groups of you went up downtown and walked and looked in the windows, had no money. When we did have money, what we would do, ride the bus from one end of the bus line to the other. There was a popular spot on 2nd Street called Queen City Pharmacy and that was where we kind of congregated on Sunday afternoons. But that was basically what we did. | 1:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you describe some of your neighbors that you remember? | 2:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, I had, there were quite a few characters in my neighborhood and it's ironic because people talk about people drinking and whatever now, but there were lots of what they call bootlegger houses in our neighborhood. And of course I guess that was probably part of our entertainment too, because people were forever falling out and fighting and they would get out and they'd curse were loud and whatever. And of course everybody looked. | 2:20 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I can remember this one lady and I knew that lady from the time I was able to know anybody until I was grown and married and I never knew her last name. With all the children, everybody in the neighborhood called her Ms. Annie on the corner. And she was quite a character. She lived by herself and she had this house that had vines around the house and she did not allow anybody in her front yard. And if the ball went in her yard, we had to listen to her and if she ever got started on us, it started today, it would not end for two or three days. I mean, she'd walk and she would tell us exactly what she thought about us two or three days without ceasing. She was just one of the characters of the neighborhood. You know? | 2:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you would take the bus ride into the town. What was that experience? | 3:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, it was like we would go, now you have to realize that nobody had cars. Well I won't say nobody. Very few people had cars. So our existence was limited to walking to school, walking to church and where you could walk to. So a bus ride was a treat. And what we would do, we'd ride the bus to Myers Park, we ride the bus to Biddleville, because remember now we lived in First Ward, so out where Beatties Ford Road and Johnson C Smith is and whatever that was end of the world for us. So these are basically the places that we rode the bus to. | 3:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you interact with children from other neighborhoods or people from other neighborhoods? | 4:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It's funny because we grew up in First Ward and during the time of my childhood, if you lived in First Ward, you basically stayed in First Ward other than to go to school. Now there were two Black high schools in Charlotte at the time inside the city of Charlotte, Second Ward and West Charlotte. We went to Second Ward. So you were free to go to Brooklyn in the daytime to go to school. You were free to go to Brooklyn on the nights they had basketball or football games or whatever. But any other time you were not free to go to Brooklyn. So you stayed in First Ward where you belong, once the sun went down and the people who lived in Brooklyn stayed in Brooklyn Third Ward, same. | 4:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What do you mean, you weren't free? What would happen? | 5:25 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It meant that if you went over there, then you ran the risk of somebody jumping on you, this type of thing. | 5:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So after you, I guess could you describe, I guess it's going into your own family life. Do you have any remembrances of your grandparents? | 5:35 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh yes. I have beautiful memories of my grandparents and I grew up in a family until I was married, there were six generations of us on each side of my family. My great-grandmother died at the age of 97 in the early '80s. One great one great-grandmother died at the age of 99 in the '70s. My own grandmothers, one has only been dead. She was dead a year Thanksgiving pass and she was age 97 when she died. The other one has been dead two years and she was age 99. I have a grandfather living who is 99 years old. So I have beautiful memories of my grandparents. | 5:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any highlights that you'd like to share? | 6:43 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | That take for instance that chair sitting there, that chair's over 200 years old and it belonged to my great great grandmother mother, my great, great grandmother who was a slave and the White family that owned her, that was a piece of furniture that came out of their house. We have a Bible, my sister has it, that belonged to that particular great great grandmother and their bills of sales for slaves and all of the house slaves, and she happened to have been one of them, that were owned by that particular slave owner. My grandparents could tell you stories that were unreal. My grandmother's father, owned one of the first automobiles in Lancaster County, he happened to have been the family that owned them, gave them, I couldn't begin to tell you how many acres of land. And he was a big farmer in South Carolina in Lancaster County, South Carolina. | 6:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And so when automobile came in to be in, he bought one, he had one of the first cars down in that area. But my grandmother knows, my grandfather is 99 years old, his mind's as clear as a bell and he talks to me constantly and tells me things. And my children have had that experience of being able to talk to them and have them tell them stories about, they all remembered before the days of cars and before the days of airplanes. And my maternal grandmother, my maternal great-grandmother was born the year that slavery was abolished. So they, we've heard quite a few stories. | 7:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Would you like to tell any? | 8:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I'm trying to think of some story. I'll tell you one story that my grandfather likes to tell of when he was, and he's 99, and he likes to tell of the time when he and a first cousin had decided that they were going to run away from home. And so they jumped on a freight train and they were going to hobo their way to wherever it was they had planned to go to. And they got somewhere and they were hungry and they went to this farmhouse and they knocked on the door and asked the people if they could work for food. And in the meantime their parents were, I guess you'd call them sharecropper farmers. And the White owners of the farm had put out this bulletin thing, I guess that they had run off home. Now they were not slaves, mind you, but they were treated just like slaves. | 8:44 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | He said they were thrown in jail, they had a description of them, they were thrown in jail and they were brought back to Kannapolis, North Carolina in leg irons just because they had decided to run off from home. He said but the whole thing in a nutshell was that they were the two older boys in the family and without them to help farm, their grandmother knows, could not have made the shares that they needed to make that year. And the farmer knew this and that's why he wanted them back there. And he kept them there until they finally just ran off from home period. | 9:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'm sorry, I wanted to go back to the neighborhoods question. I wanted to ask you, when you were on the bus, could you describe the other Black neighborhoods in Charlotte? | 10:35 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, Brooklyn of course. And see the thing and now, and I guess my opinion of the Black neighborhoods going to be biased because I didn't realize we live in slums. Nobody told us that. We didn't know that because we lived in a neighborhood where next door was my grandmother. We lived here and around the corner was another grandmother. Across the street was an aunt. And so there was always plenty food, everybody shared. In the neighborhoods we grew up in, people shared stuff. So that if I decided I wanted to go across the street and eat dinner at the neighbor's house, all had to dos go and sit at the table and be there when she fed the kids. So we did not realize that we did not have, because we did have, we had family love. | 10:43 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | But I guess basically all the neighborhoods were pretty much the same bunches of rundown houses. We didn't have plumbing in our house until I was already in elementary school. 'Cause I can remember when they put electricity and plumbing in the house that we lived in and nobody else's house around there had plumbing, electricity. There were very, very few telephones in the neighborhoods. If something happened to somebody, you'd have to go to the corner grocery store and use the phone to call somebody. And I guess basically all of the Black neighborhoods were similar to that except for Biddleville, what was called Biddleville. And after I got grown, I realized that they had some of the same kind of housing that we had, but they had more Black homeowners in that area than we did. | 11:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of people lived in these neighborhoods? | 12:24 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I can remember that several of my elementary school teachers lived in the block either above us or below us on, I grew up on East 8th Street in the 500 block of East 9th Street in the 600 block of East 9th Street, there were lots of Black doctors. So I guess you would say it was a mixture. It was a mixture of professionals and nonprofessionals. 'Cause my father worked at Barnhart's Mill, my granddaddy worked at Barnhart's Mill. My mother was a presser and a dry cleaners. There were lots of women in my neighborhood who were housemaids. And then there were lots of women in my neighborhood who didn't work. So you had a mixture of professionals and nonprofessionals. | 12:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Where did you go to shop and things like that? | 13:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | When I was a child you mean? I think most of the shopping was done at corner neighborhood grocery stores. There was at, oh, I'm trying to think, I guess in the block where the public library, the public library backs up to College Street. It probably was either in that block of the next block over there was a store called the Big Star, which was a colonial store and I think it's the forerunner of AMP or something of that nature. | 13:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | But that was the big grocery store, and there was an AMP on the corner of Tryon and 11th Streets and you walked to those stores and then there were men who had cars or you got a cab to bring you and your grocery home. But for the most part, most women shopped at. Now remember there were no refrigerators because you didn't have electricity. So most people had ice boxes and the iceman came, summertime iceman came twice a day. But people bought enough to cook today and then they'd go back the next day. | 13:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did you get your hair done and things like that? | 14:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Where did I get my hair done? There were lots of beauticians. It surprised now I thank on it. There were lots of beauticians. There was a beautician two blocks from us who did our hair. She did my hair, my mother, my two sisters. But there were lots of Black beauticians even at that time. And they were part of the professional working class at the time because most Black beauticians were in business for themselves. | 14:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you go there or did your mom do your hair and things like that? | 15:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, my mother did not do hair at all. We always got our hair washed and pressed at the beauticians until we were big girls. And then we got washed, press, and curls. | 15:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay, I wanted, now we can go on back to your own family. You talked to some about your grandparents. Could you talk some about your parents? | 15:24 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay, my parents, my father was, like I say, he grew up on a farm. My father, I don't think my dad, I don't think he completed even the first grade. If he did, he was doing good. But he had a marvelous sense of being able to build things. And my dad was a brick mason and he helped build, he worked. Now, one of the last projects he worked on before he got killing a car wreck was Earl Village. My dad could be a furniture. He was a very common sense, person could reason things out, he had no education. My mother was a high school graduate, loved to read. She crocheted beautifully. She made all of our clothes when we were growing up. But that was basically the way my parents were. | 15:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did they come. Where were they from Charlotte also? | 16:25 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My father was born in what is Cabarrus County. My mother was born here in Charlotte. | 16:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you remember how they met? | 16:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I think probably as teenagers in the neighborhood because both sets of grandparents, now remember one set of grandparents lived here and the other set, lived two doors down. I'm going to let it ring. | 16:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. What was your home like, how many people lived with you in your home? | 16:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | There were three of us. My mother, my father and I, my mother had been married previously, and so I had a brother who was older than the rest of us. And periodically he came. He lived with his dad's mother most of the time. But like the summertime, he would come and he would live with us. So there were basically three girls, a boy and my parents. | 17:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have to do any chores around? | 17:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh yeah. I was the oldest girl and I always was responsible for getting up in the mornings, putting water on the heat because we had no hot water at the time. So you put water on to heat so everybody could have bath, whatever, cook breakfast. We shared the chores of cooking dinner in the afternoons. The three girls, we'd have, it was if it was my week to, we had three room house, it was my week to cook, then it was somebody else's week to do the living room. Somebody else's week to do to middle room. And we rotated. We were responsible for, we did all of the washing, the cleaning, and basically all the cooking. My mother had rheumatic fever when she was a child. And so periodically she was unable to work all day. She never did housework, 'cause she could not handle work and housework. So we always did the housework. We definitely had responsibilities. | 17:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were your brothers and sisters like? Can you talk about? | 18:27 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh my brothers and sisters were, I guess we were a fun group. We get together now, we get together, we laugh about some of the things that we did. I can remember my brother and I decided one day to see if my dad bought coal by the ton. And folk during that time had what they call coal houses, which was a little shed thing that you kind of built onto your house. And dad always had coal by the ton put in for the winter. And my brother and I decided to see if it would burn in the coal house like it would in the heater. So we set a whole ton of coal on fire. We did things like that. | 18:29 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My sister threw a snowball one day and broke the window out in the front. So we took a stick and broke all the glass out and pulled a shade down so my momma couldn't see it. We did, this was the kind of stuff we did. We got into big time trouble all the time. 'Cause whatever we did, we did it together. And then everybody sit around and didn't know anything. | 19:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | That brings me to my next question. How were you disciplined as a child? | 19:27 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, we got lots of whippings, lots of them. 'Cause we were always doing something. We got lots of them, but we had lots of love too. See, the thing of it is I can remember my dad used to really, I mean he would just really lay into you. But then I can also remember that I as a child always had a tendency to say whatever it was I thought. And knowing what the punishment would be, I'd still say it. And everybody would be looking. They knew that I was going to, the minute something was said, I was going to give my opinion and they didn't always want to hear what I had to say and I'd say it anyway. And I knew I was going to get punished for it, but I was willing take consequences. | 19:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there other people in the neighborhood that disciplined you also? | 20:15 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, none of our neighbors actually spanked us or whipped us. But now if they told you to do something, you knew to do it. And it was like if we were wrong and a neighbor corrected us, you took the correction and went on and you did not respond verbally to it. Even if you didn't like what they said or even if you weren't going to do what they said, you didn't tell them that you weren't going to do it or you didn't tell them you didn't like them saying it and then you hoped that they wouldn't tell your parents what you had done. That's the way that went. But we were often corrected by neighbors. If they saw us doing something wrong, they would tell you to stop it. | 20:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were they anybody in the neighborhood that you looked up to? | 21:03 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, the most certain was. I can remember a lady, she was an elderly lady. Her name was Miss Annie Hubbard and she didn't have any children our own, but she raised a girl and this girl was, she was probably maybe five, six years older than me, because I can remember when I was an elementary school child, she was a teenager dating and she called a social club and it was made up of just children in the neighborhood and we would pay 5 cents a meeting or if you didn't have five cents, she'd always ask you if you just pay a penny or two. And what she did at the end of the year, she'd give us this money back and that would be our Christmas shopping money. And sometimes, you probably would have saved a whole dollar and a half or something during the year. But a dollar and a half at that time went a long way. | 21:07 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | You buy everybody in the family something with a dollar and a half, which we would not have had. And then she would take us on little trips I remember like I say now, if you can imagine where First Ward is now and about two blocks down the street is Reid Park. I remember one of my funnest memories of Miss Annie Hubbard is she took us on a picnic at Reids Park. And at the time the bus stopped. | 22:05 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | The bus line stopped at Remount Road and it was about 20 of us and we had picnic baskets and whatever and we walked from Remount Road to Reids Park with the picnic baskets and had a big picnic out there in the field down in Reids Park. Somebody that she knew told us we could use it. And I always remember that picnic, because it was out in the country really. But that was the type of thing, we always had a little Christmas party. She always had a little Halloween party, these types of things she did for the kids in there. And I loved Miss Annie Hubbard. | 22:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | How often did you meet? | 23:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I think we met once a week. | 23:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh okay. Did you join, did she go out and— | 23:13 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | She would kind of call in gather in the little kids and the thing of it is you had to be six years old to join, all the kids in the neighborhood couldn't wait until you got to be six years old, so you could join the club. | 23:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Great. Okay. Well were there any other clubs that you were involved or activities? | 23:31 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, now mostly we were involved. We were involved in church of course we had a lot. And at that time we did a lot of things in church. We were on the youth usher board and then the little children's choir and it's teenage choir and whatever. And we had something, I belonged to the AME Zion church and of course AME Zion at the time you had what they called Christian endeavors on Sunday afternoons. And so that kind of kept us busy. | 23:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were they, Christian? | 24:00 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was actually, it was a study type of thing. It was like an extension of Sunday school but it was more about your church doctrine and this type of thing. But it was really an extension. And I've noticed that in the last couple of years they are reviving it in our church and it's something that's kind of been dead for about 20 years now. | 24:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Does the whole family involved in church going? | 24:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Our church, our family? As I was growing up, yeah. | 24:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | What were the holidays like? | 24:28 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, we had beautiful holidays. I can remember my dad loved to hunt and fish and he always went, his birthday usually fell on Thanksgiving or either the day before, the day after, something like that. But he'd always go hunting on Thanksgiving and my mother would always cook big turkey and have the family. Christmas was the same way because I can remember when we were growing up, the thing to have on Christmas was skates. | 24:32 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And my mother would start baking the week before Christmas and we'd take the dresser drawer, the clothes out of the chest of drawers and they would fill, she'd fill them up with cakes and pies and stuff and for two solid weeks you'd have all the cake and pie and stuff you could eat. | 24:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of cake? | 25:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My mother made all kinds of cakes. I remember one cake, she called it a Christmas cake and it was seven layers and each layer was different. Like a chocolate vanilla spice and fruit layer and whatever. And then it had this red, and I have the recipe for it somewhere. It had this raisin type cooked filling. Then the whole thing was covered with a white seven minute frosting. It was absolutely delicious. But that was the Christmas cake, 'cause we had coconut cake, chocolate cake. But you always look forward, you only got that one at Christmas time. But we had beautiful holidays, we really did. | 25:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of gifts did you get? | 25:58 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We got, like I said, you always got a pair of skates every year. I can remember one special Christmas, we all got bicycles. That was very special. But usually you got maybe a doll and a tea set. The boys got cap pistols and a cowboy hat and that was a big Christmas as far as we were concerned. | 26:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you and your sister share the doll from your toys? | 26:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We did to an extent. But I think what it was, I'm four years older than my next sister and then there's just a year between the two of them. So I think the two of them probably did more sharing with each other than I did because the four years difference in our ages. | 26:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | How were decisions made in your family? | 26:43 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My parents made the decisions and we abided by them. We didn't have family meetings, we had to make decisions and we abided by them, I mean it's pure and simple. It was like my mother, my father said we will do this and that was the end of it. Now how they came upon those decisions? We don't know because they didn't discuss it in front of us. They didn't ask us what our opinion was. Most of the time we got to express an opinion, we were already grown people. | 26:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of values or attitudes about life did your parents instill? | 27:12 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My mother was very big on education, very big on education and reading. My mother read all the time and I think probably she read probably more than most folk because she was sick so much and spent a lot of time in the bed. My dad's thing was he did not have an education and so therefore he was very insistent that all of us do well in school. That was the attitude. Their attitude also was that you knew right from wrong and that you knew what, they had limits, they had curfews, they had house rules and you had to abide by them. | 27:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | You talked about your mother being ill. What was medical care like in your neighborhood. | 28:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mother probably—Now usually if somebody got sick, the doctors came out your house because very few folk had transportation. I think that was probably because doctors made house calls during that time. My mother probably went to the doctor a lot more than most people did because of her health. And Dr. Green, who only recently retired, was our family doctor. And I would think my mother probably saw him on average maybe every month or so because of her health. But most people did not go to the doctor that much. Most people were treated with home remedies. I can remember falling out of a swing one time when I was in school and I broke a toe and they set it at home. | 28:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you mean—What do you mean? | 29:07 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | They used two popsicle sticks and tied it and set it, and that was it. | 29:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Then it healed? | 29:14 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Tore my left foot. You just didn't go to the doctor a lot with cuts and sprains and things. If you got sick, somebody in the neighborhood treat. Usually there was some older person in the neighborhood who knew folk medicine and they just kind of—My grandparents knew things, they would make these teas and whatever and give you and in a few days you'd be all right. | 29:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know some of those home remedies? | 29:42 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No. Have no idea. I have no idea what they are. My husband, we often laugh about, his grandmother was one of those people that knew folk medicine but she didn't share with anybody. So when they died and died with them. | 29:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your parents teach you about White people? | 30:01 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My mother's attitude about—My mother's attitude about White people was you have to get along with them because basically you have to work for them because very few of us have jobs. Her, I think her attitude was that you try basically to get along with everybody. You treat people the way you want to be treated. | 30:07 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We had a problem, a cousin and I had a problem with White children as we were growing up and I think 'cause we resented the fact that we had to pass by White elementary school to get to the elementary school we were going to. And so she and I built up quite a thing about this and we were kind of ugly to some White children at one time and my mother sat us down and told us that they weren't bothering—they really weren't, they weren't bothering us. And one of the little girls was trying so hard—because she lived a block from me. She's trying so hard to be friends with us. And my mother said that, you know, "You have to treat people the way—" she said, "now what if you were trying to be friends with her and she was treating you that way?" So I think I grew up with that kind of attitude about. | 30:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Really, now I'll be truthful about it. I don't know whether it was like we grew up with our heads in the sand about it or what. The only time that I basically did not like White people was when I went downtown to the store and they could sit at the counter and eat and you had to stand and eat a hotdog if you bought one or if you wanted to go to the bathroom, there was no bathroom for you to go to because they didn't have a bathroom that Black women could go to. I think that was the only time that I really ever had any resentment. The other times it just didn't bother me. | 31:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | How was it traveling on the buses? | 32:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | On the buses? You got on the bus and you got on the back of the bus, there was an invisible line on the bus and you knew that you went beyond that line and sat down sometimes when the bus was basically full of Black people and you got on and there were no White folk on there. You sat down where you wanted to, but if you got on the bus and there White folk on the bus, you went beyond that invisible line and sat down. | 32:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were there any neighborhoods and when you were getting a little older that you couldn't go to and things like that? Besides the rivalry between the neighborhoods? | 32:42 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I would. Now listen, I wouldn't say you couldn't go to them, but I think there were very few Black folk who went to what was called North Charlotte at the time because it was a milltown full of redneck White folk who did not like Black people. They didn't like you any better than you liked them and they would make your life miserable if they caught you over in that area. So I think basically Black folk avoided North Charlotte. | 32:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, we heard about this neighborhood. Is there, did you ever hear about Blue Heaven? | 33:22 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Blue Heaven was Black. It was just beyond Brooklyn. | 33:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever go there? | 33:31 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I had a couple friends that lived in Blue Heaven and I'll be truthful about it. I don't ever remember being in Blue Heaven at night. We always went to daytime. | 33:31 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it dangerous? | 33:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We were told it was. We never hung around to find out. But I understand that the world could be quite dangerous to be in Blue Heaven when it got dark. We were never over there at dark. When it got dark we were always out of there. | 33:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | Right. I guess we could go on to your school. Could you describe what school did you, elementary school? | 34:03 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I went to Alexander Street, which is the little, it's something down just in front of the bus place now. | 34:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of school was it? | 34:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Real nice, clean elementary school. Segregated, of course. We had, our principal was named Janie Tyson I believe. And Ms. Tyson was a very strict disciplinarian. She kept that school—her name was Blanche Tyson, that's what. She kept that school, I mean you kept the school spotless. She did not tolerate any behavior that was not straight down the middle. So it was one of the best elementary schools in the city because of the principal that we had. We had good teachers. I've often wished that my children could have had the experience of having, I realize that in order to do that, you have to go back to a segregated system. But sometimes I almost wish they had had the experience of having had all Black and all Black teaching staff who were truly interested in them. | 34:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you have any remembrances of any of your teachers? | 35:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah. Oh I remember my teachers vividly. My first grade teacher, I remember her name was Miss Gibbons and I thought she was the prettiest lady that ever was. I can remember my second grade teacher and I can picture the little classroom because she had a model playhouse in that classroom. And on up the line, my third and fourth grade teacher lived a block above me. My fifth grade teacher, she's still living, my sixth and seventh grade teacher was my cousin. So I could remember most of the teachers in that school at the time. And they were good teachers and they were very interested in us. If I did something I didn't have any business doing, I could better know my mother was going to know about it before the sun went down. They didn't have telephones either, but somehow it always got back to mother what I had done. I was not the world's best child, I can tell you that. | 35:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your teachers ever play favorites? | 36:26 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I think that sometimes they did. I think that sometimes they did. And it would be unreal to say that they did not have favorites. I know that they had favorites, but basically I think that they were interested in all of us getting a good start and getting a good education. | 36:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you notice, were there ever any favorites based on skin color? | 36:48 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Very definitely. So. | 36:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of favorites? | 36:53 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh there was a family, and I won't call their names. There was a family that lived a block down the street from me, and all of the family were very light and all of the girls had pretty long hair. | 36:54 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And I'd hate to tell you this, but if they had been blondes, they would have been the classic dumb blondes, you know. But they were always teachers pets and it had to be purely for looks, because it could not have been anything else. But then that was the way, that was the system then. | 37:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Among your fellow students, were there any favoritism or tensions because of skin color, anything like that? | 37:26 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, I think that sometimes kids got mad and said little ugly things to other kids about, kids would always call other kids Black. 'Cause they were real dark and they'd say, "Old Black this, and old Black that." Or they would call somebody red but they got over it. I think that basically they got over. It wasn't something that was always there. I think tempers flared and people said things and then they were over it. | 37:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things did you learn in school? Did you learn any Black history? | 38:02 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | You always had—They always concentrated on Black history when I was a child in elementary school because I think this was really important to the teachers because they wanted you to know who these people were. We of course, you had American history, you had world history and whatever, but even into high school there was always that emphasis on Black history and the accomplishments of Black people and the world in America. And even going back to African history, they always tried to make sure that you got some of this along with the prescribed curriculum. | 38:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did they teach you about Africa? | 38:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, we learned, I grew up as a child knowing about the Nile and about the African queens and knowing that all the biblical people were not blondes and blue eyes and all of this stuff. So it was no big thing to me when all of a sudden everybody decided, well, all of the biblical people could not have been White. We grew up knowing that because our teachers taught us that. | 38:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | What high school did you go? | 39:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I went to Second Ward. | 39:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what was that like? | 39:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Second Ward was a great place. It really was. And even to this, I'm sure if you've talked enough Black folk that even to this day there's a Second Ward Foundation. I went to Second Ward in the eighth grade. My elementary school ran first grade through seventh grade and I went to Second Ward in the eighth grade. It was just fascinating. All of a sudden here I was in this great big school and changing classes and all of this stuff. But then I also, I'd have to say the same thing about the teachers in Second Ward. Basically they were very concerned about us. And then you have to realize that most of the teachers that I had in elementary school and in Second Ward, they either lived in your neighborhood or they knew your parents or they knew somebody who knew you. And so they were concerned about you and if there were any concerns at all. They didn't hesitate to let parents know. And parents were appreciative. | 39:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Would they come by your house? | 40:24 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Sure they would. Most certainly would. If things were to that point, they most certainly would make home visits and they'd come out and they'd sit right in front of you and tell the, I mean they would tell your parents exactly what was what. | 40:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | I guess as a teenager, a young teenager. What kind of things did you do outside of school? Work with your friends? | 40:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I guess basically the same things I always did, because sitting there, you have to remember we went to the movies, we played sports, I played baseball and basketball. That's all there was to do. There really wasn't a whole lot to do. There was a skating rink up on West Trade Street, right in that area where the Civic Center is. There was a Black skating rink upstairs and we went up there sometimes, but that was basically all it was to do. | 40:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you went to the movies, did you go, were they Black movie theaters? | 41:17 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | There were Black movie theaters. The Lincoln on Second Street, I can't remember the name of the movie on McDowell Street. And then the one on Beatties Ford Road across from Johnson C. Smith. | 41:22 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have an after school hangout or anything like that? | 41:34 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, we didn't. And the reason why we didn't have one. Now I tell you what, there was an after school hangout on McDowell Street right across the back of Second Ward High School. But we were not allowed there. And the reason why is that most Black places sold beer, and we were not allowed to hang out there. Yeah. So you knew to come home. | 41:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Another interviewer, talked to a person who talked about makeup and how they dressed up for school. | 42:06 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, well we did. Now it wasn't so much dressed up, but you wore your best clothes to school and when you came home you knew you took your school clothes off and you changed into what you played in. You never played in your school clothes because you saved your best stuff for going to school. | 42:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | When we were 13, we were allowed to wear stockings and use makeup. And when I say use makeup, makeup consists of lipstick and maybe some powder, but you kind of save that stuff for going to school too. On the weekends, very few of us used it. You just kind saved it so you could really look good for going to school. | 42:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was sports really important? | 42:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh yeah, sports was really, I because you didn't have anything else to do. The basketball team and the football team were the in thing. And so the guys that played basketball and football were almost worshiped. The band, the cheerleaders and the sports teams were the top people in school. And one of the big things was, I'm sure somebody's probably already told you about the Queen City Classic, which was the football game of the year. | 42:54 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We had a big parade through downtown Charlotte and I mean, it was like that was the end of world. You didn't get to go to Queens City Classic, your whole life was ended. Yeah. And of course some of the people were beauty queens because this was your only chance to do this. Now remember, you didn't have another, if you didn't do this in high school, anything that you did not do in school or church, you didn't do as a Black person because there was no other forum to do them in. | 43:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | How were the beauty queens selected? | 43:59 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was, people decided that they were going to sell tickets and I could have done it if I'd wanted to, but I never chose to. People decided they would sell tickets and it was based on the person that sold them most tickets. | 44:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Was it any favoritism or just whoever had— | 44:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I think. Now you know what, I guess in the back of our minds, we probably decided that it might have been since all the beauty queens were the light-skinned girls. But it probably wasn't, something that was in our minds because none of us ever chose to sell tickets. | 44:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was dating like? | 44:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Dating? Probably, in retrospect. Retrospect it might have been a little bit more intense than it is now. Because now I noticed, I had a niece who stayed here with me from, I mean from November through January. And during the course of time she was here, several young men came to see her and she'd go out with several of them, but during that time, if you dated, you probably just dated one person. So dating relationships probably were real intense because it was like you dated that one person and nobody else. | 44:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Could you go out on dates by yourself or were your parents pretty strict? | 45:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | At first we went, at first our dating was, like I say, one the shopping deals in Queen City Pharmacy. But then as I got older, I was allowed to go out on dates, just me and my date. Then where could you go over? There was no to go but over to the movies. | 45:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did a lot of people get married right after high school? | 45:40 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, a lot of people got married because I think it had to do more with the fact that very few families had money to send people to college. A lot of girls probably got married because without an education, without a college education, what could you do but housework or work in a restaurant and usually if you worked in a restaurant, Black women working in the restaurant was in the kitchen. So a lot of folk probably got married just because there was nothing else to do. | 45:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Well, okay. After your high school years, what did you do after that? | 46:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I went to college. I went to A&T. I'm in Aggie. | 46:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. What did you decide to major it? | 46:30 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I was a chemistry major in college. | 46:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you decide on that? | 46:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I was always, I loved chemistry. I had a chemistry teacher named Mr. Levi in Second Ward, and of course I just thought Mr. Levi was the greatest teacher in the world. And of course I was real interested. And chemistry, now it is so ironic that you would not believe this, but you know what I actually wound up being was a nurse. (laughs) So. | 46:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Had my first three children. And then I hadn't worked in all these years and I decided I—Something happened. My father got killed on a wreck and I just couldn't handle that very well. So my doctor recommended that I needed to get out of the house. My dad got killed the day we moved into this house. And he recommended that I get out of the house and do something. So I went job hunting. Never having worked with no experience whatsoever, I could not find a job in my field. So I got a job working at Memorial Hospital in the operating room as a surgical technician. And ultimately, I went back to school and now I'm a nurse anesthetist. But at the time I went to work I was a surgical technician in the operating room. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I wanted to go back and talk some more about your college experience. Why did you select North Carolina A&T? | 0:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I got a scholarship there. Well, no, I take that back. I had full scholarships, but that was the—It was a full scholarship. And see, I could not have gone to school without a scholarship. My parents would not have been able to send me to—You're talking about people who were making $40 a week if they were making that much. You know? So it was purely based on the fact that I got the biggest scholarship from A&T. | 0:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was A&T when you first got there? | 1:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I thought it was so big. And my daughter is a A&T graduate. And when I went back to A&T 20-some years later to take my child, the campus was triple the size it was when I was a student there. But I thought it was so big. But it was—I think back about it and I would not give anything for the experience of having gone because I can remember all of a sudden you know you were just part of this great big student body, and I was free and away from home and could come as I wanted to, within limits because they had very strict limits for young ladies then. | 1:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | But then we thought they were very liberal. You know? You had to go everywhere you went in twos. If you left the college campus, you had to have parental permission to even come home for the weekend. You had to have parental permission, written permission to come home for holidays and this type of thing. But we thought it was absolute freedom. You know? | 2:02 |
Sonya Ramsey | What time period was that? | 2:22 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | This was in—I went to A&T in the fall of 1958. | 2:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That was after—Was the Civil Rights Movement— | 2:32 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We were a part—I was a part of the original sit-ins at A&T. | 2:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Wow. I guess we can talk. Before we get to that, I wanted to ask you what was the social life like? | 2:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, the social life was great. We had—Did lots and lots of dating. I had—Was very fortunate in as much as I think about—Oh, maybe 15 or 20 people from my graduating high school class went to A&T. | 2:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Wow. Okay. | 3:00 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And then there were like maybe that many more people who had graduated in the class immediately before me. And so I knew lots of people, knew lots of faces when I got there. And we just—You know. We had a good time. We did lots of socializing. Had friends who were on Bennett's campus who came over. You know? We went back and forth. So we did a lot of—It wasn't so much dating as it was just pure socializing. You know? | 3:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you listen to music? | 3:28 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We did. I had a record player and—I'm trying to think. I remember. We laugh sometime about this record; I wore a hole in it. It was Ray Charles'—Oh gosh, what is the name? I can't think of the name of it right now. But anyway, I remember I played it so it wore hole in the record. But we listened to—We had 45—I had a record player that played 45s. And we did a lot of listening to the record player and the radio because that's about all we had to do. | 3:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you make other friends that weren't from Charlotte? | 4:02 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, some of my best friends were from out of town. I remember I met this girl from Boca Raton, Florida, she and I were very good friends, girl from Hickory, girl from New Bern, North Carolina. You know. Just a guy from Asheville. We all got to be real close. In fact, I never roomed with anybody from Charlotte. My roommates were all from out of town. One was from Roxboro, North Carolina; one was from Asheboro. You know. Like that. I never roomed with anybody from Charlotte. | 4:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever join any clubs or sororities? | 4:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Uh-huh. I joined Gamma Sigma Sigma, which is the sisters to the Kappas. And then of course I belong to the professional sorority on campus, but I'm not active in it now. I belong to the nursing sorority now. Chi Eta Phi. | 4:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | What made you decide to join the sorority when you were in college? | 5:04 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was the—I was approached for the Deltas and the AKAs and whatever, but the Gammas were—We were the charter members on that campus because that was the founding year of that sorority on that campus. And I just liked the idea of it. It was a service sorority and we would go to L. Richardson Hospital on Saturdays and do volunteer work and this kind of thing. I just enjoyed doing that. | 5:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did the other sororities and fraternities, did they figure prominently on the campus? | 5:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. The Greeks were very prominent on campus. In fact, I kind of felt like they had better time than most other students did because the—Periodically, all of the sororities and fraternities got together and did things. You know? And of course the brothers would serenade the sisters at night. You know, the moonlight serenades. And I don't know if they still do that on college campuses now, but they did it when we were in—So you would hear them singing from, oh, blocks and blocks away. And they would come and serenade the girls dorms at nights. And they don't do that now? Well, they did it, but you had a kind of—You know. You just kind of had a good time if you belonged to a fraternity or sorority. | 5:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know if they had any hazing rituals back then? | 6:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I'm sure that they did. And I think now on—And I think back on our initiation, it probably—It wasn't hazing, but we did something—You know. Mentally, they played with your mind. You know. More so than physically. I think it was like a thing; you play with their mind enough and make them think that they've done this. If they did, we never heard about it. I won't say that it didn't happen. I just would say we didn't know it. | 6:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | I wanted to ask, what were your classes like? Do you have any teachers you remember? | 6:55 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. I can remember—I was chemistry major and I can remember going—My first chemistry class, my first quantitative chemistry class, I can remember going in and being given a little half of a beaker of white powdered substance and being told that my entire grade for that quarter would be determined by me being able to tell the instructor what it was and how much of each element was in it at the end of the semester. And you spent the whole semester trying to find—you did chemically. And you dare not use but a little tiny bit. It had to last you all semester because you couldn't have anymore. | 7:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:07:43]. | 7:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And [indistinct 00:07:44]. That was your entire class. You know? And she did lectures. She did lectures, but your grade was determined by that. She didn't give another exam the whole semester. | 7:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you meet your husband? | 7:59 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My husband and I met in high school. | 8:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 8:02 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We met in high school. We met—We started dating the year he was a senior and I was a junior. | 8:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did he go into A&T also? | 8:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, my husband did not go to school. He was going to go into serve; he was going to go into the Army. He and a friend had signed up to go into the Army on the buddy system that existed at that time. And his mother died the night before he was supposed to go in and he just—He got a deferment. And he had lots of younger brothers and sisters, so somebody had to be responsible for them. And so he did not go into service. | 8:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess before we get—Well, I guess we'll keep on with this. What was—So when did you—You got married after school? | 8:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 8:44 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Well, I'll go back and ask you about—You said you were a member of the sit-ins? | 8:45 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah. | 8:49 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you get involved in that? | 8:50 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, it was like—The first group went up there that first day, these guys went the first day. And then they came back and they organized everybody on campus. You know? "We're going to go back." And they told us what had happened and all this. You know? It was so funny. Sometimes people have asked me, "Did you realize the significance?" And we said no because we had no idea that it would be as far-reaching as it would've been and it would've changed the course of history almost. You know? | 8:53 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We just did it as something to do because we shopped up there all the time, and they going to tell us we can't sit and eat, and we decided we were going to sit. And I can remember we went to on the way up town and on the way back, these White folk in the hotels were throwing water bombs down on us and whatever. But it was like big lark with us. It was. It was not something that any of us would've considered to have been as serious as it was. | 9:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you ever afraid when you were there? | 9:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-mm. I wasn't afraid, but my mother was scared to death at home. | 9:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did she say to you to do? | 9:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | She told me to come home. She told me to come—I had to come home. My mother made me come home. A lot of—Lots of students' parents made them come home because they were afraid we were going to go to jail. | 9:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long did you stay at home? | 10:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, I just came home that weekend and stayed home that weekend. And then I went back. | 10:12 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you continue with it? | 10:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. But I didn't let my mother know I was continuing with it. Actually, what happened was the group became more closely organized after that first week. You know? First, it was kind of a loose-knit thing. You know? And then they really got down to business, organized and set some objectives, purposes and objectives and whatever, and then start bringing in the Greensboro community, the Black Greensboro community. And they started boycotting the major stores and whatever and stopped buying from people who were segregating them. So it really did become a real hardcore organized thing. | 10:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have any help from older adults and things like that? | 11:05 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | In Greensboro? | 11:09 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. | 11:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Later on in it, like, say, a week or so after the original sit-down—The original stuff was all college student. No adults were involved in— | 11:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you know why they decided just to do that that day? | 11:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I don't—Now, you know, I do—I did hear, and over the years I have forgotten why they just decided to do that on that particular day. I guess it might have been one of those Rosa Parks things. You know? Just got tired that day and decided we're going to do this. You know? | 11:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you actually do the sit-ins with them— | 11:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, we went and sat in. Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 11:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | What happened? Any other— | 11:44 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And they came in and we sat in the floor, and they came in and threatened to beat us and they threatened to throw us in jail, and we just sat there and looked at them. And finally I think they decided, "Well, they're not going to get up, so we're not going to bother them." Because by then, the TV cameras had gotten in on this, and I think that they realized that they're going to get a whole lot of coverage and publicity out of this and we bother them. And they didn't—Now, they did not bother us. They just—We sat there. They didn't serve us. They closed the counter down. They did not serve us, but they didn't bother us. | 11:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long did you participate? | 12:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, we did it all that week. We did it. Remember, like I said, my mother made me come home towards the end of the week. But then we went back. And I think after then we didn't sit in anymore. We didn't sit in anymore. But there were other students who did because it was all being done on a rotating basis. I never went back and sat in anymore, but we did pamphlets in the neighborhoods and whatever. We did that. | 12:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you ever arrested? | 12:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-mm. | 12:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you balance your schoolwork? It would seem to be quite ordinary compared to— | 12:53 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, you just decided what class was most important and cut a class. You know? | 12:57 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your teachers think about it? | 13:04 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Some of the teachers were 100% for us, and some of them were scared to death and 100% against it. And the chancellor of the school at the time was middle of the road. You know? He could not very well denounce it, but then he didn't give you a lot of support either. | 13:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were your younger sisters and brother, what did they think about you [crosstalk 00:13:33]— | 13:29 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | They were at home and I don't really know what they thought about it. | 13:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | They didn't hear it was [crosstalk 00:13:37]— | 13:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, because—Now remember, we didn't have a telephone. So I couldn't communicate with them that much. You know? And I think that it didn't really—At the time, it didn't really register with them either what was going on. | 13:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was your friend, was he at Charlotte then or— | 13:53 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Who? | 13:55 |
Sonya Ramsey | Your future husband. Was he in— | 13:55 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | He was here in Charlotte. Uh-huh. Yeah. | 13:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Did he know about what was happening? | 13:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah. Mm-hmm. | 13:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was he— | 13:59 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | But like I said, I don't really think that any of them really thought that this thing was that significant. I think they saw it mostly as a college student's lark. You know. Nothing real big. But then it spread to Charlotte, and then I think that's when they begin to see that this thing does have some merit to it. Because the same thing came to Charlotte too. | 14:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have to speak to people and did you go out in the community and talk to- | 14:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, we just—Now, like I said, we put out flyers and we kind of knocked on doors and talked to people. But as far as public speaking, no. | 14:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | So how long did you participate? Throughout college? | 14:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, until I left. And then we just stopped going downtown to shop. | 14:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did you go buy your clothes? | 14:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, see, we would shop—We were doing a lot—You know. We didn't have a lot of money, so we did a lot of shopping at Woolworths and Belks and places like that downtown. But we stopped shopping. They organized the boycotts and we just stopped going. | 14:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you get the things you needed there— | 15:05 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, basically the things you had to have like paper and pencils and stuff like that, they sold it on campus. So you could always buy it at the campus store. | 15:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you buy your clothes and did you— | 15:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, my mother made most of my clothes. And then I had an aunt who was in Spain at the time and she would send me clothes and whatever. So I didn't really need to buy any clothes, but I'd buy stuff. But then I stopped buying anything. | 15:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | What's the reaction of the stores? | 15:33 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I think the stores at first thought that this thing would not last. And I think that at first they didn't give it a lot of thought, that they thought that fly by night and they'll be gone and it'll all be over. But then after it was sustained for so long, I think they realized they had lost so much money because, let's face it, a lot of their charge account business with Black folk, a lot of their credit account, lendware account business was with Black folk. And when the Black folks stopped buying, they lost tremendous amounts of money. | 15:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I guess, is there something else you'd like to add about— | 16:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-mm. | 16:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll go right into your—Did you get married right after graduation? | 16:22 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I got married maybe a year after. | 16:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. So what did you do after graduating? | 16:30 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Nothing. I didn't. I really didn't. I came home, my youngest sister was in her last year of high school, and I basically kept house for my daddy. And didn't really work. | 16:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you looking for jobs? [crosstalk 00:16:50]— | 16:48 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I cannot really say that I actively looked for a job because I really didn't. | 16:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | So when did you—I mean, you got married a year after? | 16:56 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 16:59 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was your wedding like? | 16:59 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I didn't have a wedding. We just went to York, South Carolina and got married, and my husband's sister gave us a reception in her house. It was more of a reception dinner. We didn't have a wedding. We couldn't afford one. | 17:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why did you go to York? | 17:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was just the place to go. Lots of people used to get married in York, South Carolina. It was like you could get a license, go down and get married that day. | 17:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 17:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | See, there was no waiting period. | 17:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. What was your reception like? | 17:24 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was just a dinner. It was family. Mostly my husband's family, my sisters. She had cooked a big dinner and it wasn't like a reception food. This was like soul food, like potato salad and chicken and barbecued ribs and that kind of stuff. It was out in her backyard and we just had a big dinner, just sat around and ate and talked and whatever. And that's all. | 17:28 |
Sonya Ramsey | Where did you live after? | 17:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We lived—We had an apartment on North Brevard Street and we stayed there for probably a year. And then we moved out of that apartment with my husband's father because we were trying to get into the government projects in the Southside homes. And we stayed there until we saved enough money to buy a house. | 17:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your husband do? | 18:15 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | At the time we got married? | 18:18 |
Sonya Ramsey | Yeah. | 18:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Now, you know what? I'm trying to remember. Where was he? I think he worked at Standard Crankshaft at the time we got married. | 18:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | And so what—You first moved to North Brevard Street. What neighborhood? | 18:26 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | That was still First Ward. | 18:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 18:31 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | That was still First Ward. On the edges of First Ward. It was still First Ward. | 18:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | And when you moved to live with his father, what neighborhood was that? | 18:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Still First Ward. | 18:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 18:42 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Still First Ward. | 18:43 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. So you didn't start working then after— | 18:45 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I did not. I did not start working until 1969. | 18:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you continue with your Civil Rights activities? | 18:59 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, I did. I stayed very active in politics and in the Civil Rights Movement. And I don't know if anybody has told you about George Leake or not. He was very active. He ran for mayor of Charlotte at one time. He's a very active minister of Little Rock A.M.E. Zion Church. He organized the march of the Black Panthers and the Black folk in Charlotte through the streets of Charlotte. Now, we were right out there in the middle of it with him. You know? Yeah, I did stay very active in that. In fact, I'm not nothing as active now as I once was. | 19:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did your husband think about that? | 19:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, he just kind of always—He supports me. He doesn't get that much involved, but he does support me. If I want to get involved, he's behind me 100%. | 19:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | How long were you married before you started having your children? | 19:49 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Had the first one almost a year afterwards. | 19:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. | 19:58 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Almost a year after we were married. In fact, I think it might have been little less than a year she was born. And then one, two, three. It was like the first three children were born one right behind the other one. Then there's four years between the next, and four years between the other one. | 19:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have a lot of help with your children and things like that? | 20:17 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, my grandmothers were still in there. Health and strength at the time. And of course if I needed somebody to keep the children, they were always there. My sister would keep the children for me and whatever. | 20:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever feel like you had to work for financial reasons? | 20:34 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I did. Essentially, that's not what I first went to work for. Like I said, I first went to work because I needed to get out of the house. But then we decided that in order for them to be able to go to college, we really would need two incomes. And so this was when I decided to go back to school. | 20:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did your husband not mind you not working or— | 20:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, he didn't. He did not mind because he would rather have I had been here with the children. And it was my decision to go and find a job. But then when I did find a job, now I decided that if I was going to work then I needed to really have a job where I made enough money to do something with. So he did find—He paid for me to go back to school. | 21:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Aside from your Civil Rights work, what other organizations were you involved in? | 21:28 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I'm a very active church person. And I belong to several organizations at church. And of course like I said, I belong to the Chi Eta Phi nursing sorority. And I'm an Eastern Star. And right now I'm supervisor of the Gleaners for my particular chapter. And that's enough. | 21:35 |
Sonya Ramsey | Back then in the '60s, were you involved in any other organization during that time? | 21:55 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Not really other than church. Other than church, not really. | 22:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | After you had your children, were they involved in any organizations? | 22:06 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, my oldest son belongs to the Kappas. My children are probably more church orientated than anything else. They active church people, but other than church and jobs, I don't think they are really. | 22:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | And did you attend the same church as you did prior? You said you were A.M.E. Zion. What church? | 22:27 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. I'm still in. I still belong to Little Rock. Uh-huh. | 22:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | To Little Rock? What was that church service, church like? | 22:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, it was like the center of the community at the time. When I was growing up in First Ward, there were, what, maybe eight Black churches in the community. Mt. Sinai was in First Ward, Little Rock, Gilfield, Mount Moriah, all those churches were concentrating in that area over there. And everything practically was centered in a church. You know? All of the activities, all of everything was either at the church or at the school. | 22:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | And did you make a lot of friends at church and things like that? | 23:20 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Yeah. Lasting friends down through the years from church. I often tell people I grew up knowing almost everybody from Trade Street to 12th Street and from Long Street to Brevard Street. Because of the fact that everything was school or church orientated, you knew of all of these people. You know? | 23:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things as a young married couple did you and your husband do for fun? | 23:49 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We used to take—We'd laugh about it that we didn't have any money. And we'd take the kids on rides and long rides through the city. We'd fix a picnic and go to Freedom Paul or we'd go out to the lake and have a picnic. The young men would all play basketball on Sunday evenings. We'd go over to Lincoln Heights School and sit on the grass and watch our husbands play basketball, and take picnics up and the kids eat supper out there on the grass. Types of things we did because we wouldn't have any money. We played a lot of cards. | 23:53 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of games, card games? | 24:29 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We played bid whist and we played a lot of spades but mostly bid whist. | 24:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you ever in any bridge clubs or anything? | 24:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I couldn't play bridge. I've never been in a bridge club, but I can play bridge and pinochle, but I don't belong to a bridge club or a pinochle club. | 24:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you in any of the women's associations and things like that? | 24:44 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-mm. No. Other than, like I said, other than the church organizations that I belong to and what I already told you, no. | 24:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | When did you join Eastern Star? | 25:01 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh gosh. I can't remember how long ago it's been. I've been an Eastern Star probably maybe six or seven years ago. | 25:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. How are their members selected and things like that? | 25:13 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Up until about two years ago, you had to be related to a mason. Either the mother, wife, daughter of a mason. But couple of years ago, they relaxed the restrictions and any woman could come in. But then that's no longer. And now you have to be related to a mason or an Eastern Star. | 25:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Was your husband a mason? | 25:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. My husband has been a mason for up 10 years. | 25:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of other—Well, did he ever describe any of those experience? What did he do as a part of that organization? | 25:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | As a mason? They do a lot of community things. I went last Saturday. I spent last Saturday up in Oxford, North Carolina at the Central Children's Home. The masons sponsor that. When I say sponsor, they put a lot of money, like $100,000 a year into that children's home up there. And it's an orphanage it's what it is. They do a lot of helping to feed the hungry in Charlotte. They work with boys groups. And like I said, I'm working right now for girls group. Our girls are called Gleaners and boys are called Knights. That kind of thing. They do a lot of that kind of work. It's not always known what they do, but they do a lot of it. | 25:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | How are members selected for the masons? | 26:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I think that basically any man who wants to become a mason can become a mason. They are investigated, they cannot have police records, they have to belong to church, they have to be registered to vote and this type of thing. They have to go through the process and be voting in. But any man can apply and become a mason. | 26:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Was he ever in any other organizations? | 27:05 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My husband is—He's also very church orientated person. Now, he belongs to a men's group, a church called the Men of Varick. And they do a lot of work with young boys. | 27:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I guess let's go back to your Civil Rights activities. What other different types of things did you do after you were married with him? | 27:20 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, basically I didn't do a whole lot except raise children. (laughs) I really didn't. | 27:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | [indistinct 00:27:31]. | 27:30 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I really didn't. I really didn't do a whole lot but raise children during that time. You know? And then I went to work and that's about it. | 27:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of values did you try to instill in your kids? | 27:43 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I tried really to do the same things that my parents did with us. You know? Give them some good moral things to hang onto and hold onto. And I've often told them, "You've been taught right and wrong and so it's up to you what you do with it." And I'm very proud of them. I can look at them as young adults and see a lot of what they've been taught and they stick to it. You know? | 27:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said you first started working at 1969. What was that like returning to this? | 28:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was—I don't know. It was a wonderful world of work out there. You know? Here I was, I had spent all these years with little people at home, and then all of a sudden I was out there with adults. It was—I think back on it now and it was quite an experience. I went to work at Memorial Hospital, which is Carolina's Medical Center now, and there was one Black person in the operating room who was not identifiable as a Black person because I didn't realize she was Black. And they were getting Hill-Burton money, which is, I don't know if you're familiar with the Hill-Burton Act, it's federal money to build hospitals and whatever and expansions of hospitals. | 28:26 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | But anyway, they had to integrate certain areas of that hospital that had not here before been integrated. And it was explained to me that the person who was a supervisor, explained to me what was what, and that basically I would be integrating that place. And so that's what—I went in there like that. And of course it was not always easy because there I was working with older White doctors who were having integration pushed down their throats. And so it took a few years for them to get used to me being there. And then gradually they hired more Black people. | 29:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Were you nervous about this role you had to play? | 29:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, I don't know. I think back on it now, if I had had to do it all over again, I don't know if I would. I really don't. I enjoyed the experience and I wouldn't take anything for it. And being as outspoken as I was, I think that's the only way I got through it, was— | 30:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Can you remember any specific experience? | 30:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, there were doctors who—There were Black—There were White doctors who would turn their back to me and put their hand out for insurance and never look at me. You know. This type of thing. | 30:21 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you do about them? | 30:33 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, I just act like they weren't there too. | 30:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have anybody you could address? | 30:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | The supervisor who was White, I could always talk to her because she understood what was going on. She explained to me to start off with what was going on and I could always go to her when I had problems. And then gradually, like I said, they hired some more Black people and therefore I had somebody I could identify with. You know? | 30:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | You said that there was another Black person there, but you didn't know she was. | 31:00 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 31:05 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was it a woman? | 31:05 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 31:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did she ever make any overtures towards you? | 31:06 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, she did. She was always very friendly with me, but I did not realize why because, see, I could not look at her and know that she was Black. | 31:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | So did she face any problems that you faced? | 31:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Not as much as I did because, see, they didn't know that she was—She wasn't passing herself off. | 31:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh she didn't. She wasn't passing as White. It was just that most folk could not look at her and know that she was White. So they treated her differently. | 31:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Do you think that she got—Did her supervisors know that she was Black? | 31:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 31:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 31:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | See, she came from the old Good Samaritan Hospital. | 31:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Okay. So then you worked there and then you went back to school again? | 31:44 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 31:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 31:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, see, I worked while I was in school. I still stayed, then worked while I was in school. But I went to Central Piedmont's nursing school. And of course it was fully integrated at the time. And I guess it was—As an adult student, I didn't have time to really be involved in a whole lot going on because I had a family at home, had a job to go to. So it was like go to school, go to work, come home. | 31:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | How old were your children at that time? | 32:14 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | The first three of them were already in elementary school. And I had a Deborah, who was my youngest child, and then I got pregnant when I was in nursing school, and I had a baby while I was in nursing school. So that's the ages that they were. | 32:17 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. And then you became a nurse anesthesiologist? | 32:33 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Uh-huh. Nurse anesthetist. | 32:36 |
Sonya Ramsey | Anesthetist. | 32:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Uh-huh. Yeah. | 32:37 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'm sorry. | 32:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | That's all right. | 32:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that like? | 32:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, see now, remember I was already a part of this operating room. And the nursing anesthesia school that I went to was at Memorial Hospital. So it was just a transition from the operating room staff to the anesthesia school. | 32:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was it like being back in school after so long? | 33:00 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, it was not easy, but then you set your goals and you just work real hard on it. You know? | 33:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did you find time for studying and stuff? | 33:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My husband's awfully a good person. He did a lot of housework, cooking, getting the children to the nursery home and whatever so that I could study. | 33:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | And so that's what your current—doing now? | 33:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. | 33:25 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Let's see. Are you— | 33:25 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I'm thinking retirement. | 33:29 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Did you notice the change and the effects of the Civil Rights Movement in the workplace since you've been there? | 33:33 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Yeah, very much so. Very much so. I currently work for a group of plastic surgeons and I do the anesthesia for their office surgery. And one of the scrub nurses is Black. And I remember plastic surgery is a White world because, let's face it, very few Black folk have plastic surgery. 30 years ago, I could not have worked at that office. 30 years ago, I could not have been a nurse anesthetist because I could not have gone to that anesthesia school. Because the Black folk who were doing anesthesia 30 years ago were people who had on-the-job training. Some doctor told them how to do it. You know? They had no didactic, they had no real feel for the work. Yeah, times have very much so changed. | 33:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | How would you think your children's educations experiences is different from yours? | 34:31 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I have a son who is an engineer who travels all over the world. He got his education in North Carolina State, which he could not have done in an integrated—I mean, in a segregated North Carolina. There's no way. | 34:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Right. Then I think—I'm trying to think of something else. We've gone so fast. You're a lot younger than our other—(laughs) | 35:00 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Jumping on. Now, you just—see you don't know how old I really am. (laughs) | 35:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I think—How did your husband—You said your husband was really helpful. How did he adjust you when you really started working full-time? | 35:14 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, like I say, now, he and I would like—When I was trying to go to school and whatever, we would do the cleaning on the weekends. We would do the washing together. It was a matter of me getting up and going to work. I had to be work at 6:45, so that meant he had to get kids up and get them to the nursery. A lot of times he'd have to, if I worked in the afternoon, he'd have to get them home and get them supper and that type of thing. And he did all of it. You know? | 35:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | How did your children react when they were used to being with Mom? | 35:49 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | They thought it was fun to be in the nursery. And I really thought—I really don't think that it ever really bothered them. You know? I had been a housewife and had been home with them all the time, but I think basically they probably felt a freedom. You know? Here all of a sudden they with these other little kids all day long playing. And I think they liked it. | 35:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | I just wanted to ask you one more question. | 36:18 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 36:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Who were some of the role models in your life? | 36:20 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh, let's see. I think that when I was a child growing up, my aunt—My mother and my aunt were real role models for me. I had an aunt who was—Well, she was a beautician, and she decided she was about 30 years old, she'd go to nursing school. And she did. And I've always admired her for that. My mother, like I said, I always—My mother's a very strong woman. And I always looked up to her. When I went out when I was in high school, I had a teacher named Mrs. Adams who was an algebra teacher. And I thought that there was nobody like Mrs. Adams. You know? That's just the way I felt about her. | 36:23 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Church, I think there was a lady called Margie Morris. Just Ms. Morris was to me what a Christian woman should be. And she had no children of her own, but yet they were always—She was always among children. She was always doing something. She was always giving. Even after I got married and had children, she was always giving my children. You know? People like this. And I said my superheroes are not people who are in the headlines. They're people who I've had personal contact with and who meant something or made some changes in my life. And I guess that, to me, those are the people that I've really looked up to. | 37:11 |
Sonya Ramsey | And oh, one thing more. Have you lived—You've lived in Charlotte all your life— | 37:52 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Basically. I lived in Boston for a year. | 37:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh? Okay. | 37:56 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I was a teenager. | 37:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh? Oh? See? I knew I knew something. What was that experience like? | 38:03 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was a brand new experience for me. All of a sudden I was up in Boston and nothing was segregated. So I thought, you know. It was a freedom I hadn't had before. I could get on the trolley or the bus or the subway and sit where I wanted to. I could go in any store and sit down and eat or whatever. You know? What happened was I went to Boston to visit for the summer and there was a hurricane. I can't remember the exact name of that particular hurricane because it was in 1950 and the late 1950s. But anyway, there was polio epidemic and we were quarantined. And I could not come home to come to school like that. | 38:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. Who were you visiting? | 38:43 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | My mother's sister. | 38:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. | 38:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And so I had to stay. But it was a real—I'd just get on the trolley and the bus and I'd go—I did all of the things that people that live in the city don't do like all of the House of the Seven Gables and all of the—I went to see everything. You know? I'd catch the trolley or the bus and I'd go see everything that was to be seen. The historical things. You know? Because you had that freedom to go do it. | 38:50 |
Sonya Ramsey | When you mean a quarantine, that means they had a quarantine in Charlotte? | 39:15 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, in Boston. You could not— | 39:19 |
Sonya Ramsey | Oh, okay. So— | 39:22 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Nobody was allowed to leave the city because of the polio epidemic then. What happened was the hurricane had—I don't know the particulars of it, but there were large pools of water standing everywhere. And evidently, something happened and folk were just—Because my aunt had it. See, what happened was my aunt had polio symptoms and had to be hospitalized. So the whole house was quarantined. | 39:23 |
Sonya Ramsey | And did you attend school there? | 39:49 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 39:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that like? | 39:51 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was like—Say, it was an integrated school. I found that I probably was maybe a year behind the students in that school, but I basically think I caught up with them. So then when I came here, it put me a little bit ahead of everybody else. But it was a brand new experience because I had gone to segregated schools all my life and all of a sudden here I was in an integrated school. | 39:52 |
Sonya Ramsey | What did you think about your fellow White classmates? | 40:19 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was like, you know. I didn't feel any racism. And I tell you why, because the community that we lived in was basically integrated. So all of these kids you were going to school with, you lived with. | 40:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you make friends with them and play— | 40:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Yeah. | 40:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | —hanging after school? | 40:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Now, I didn't do a lot of hanging out after school. I came in and I had chores to do just like I did at home. And my uncle had—His sister had a large family. I think there must have been about 15 kids in their family. And they live right down the street. So I did most of my socializing with them. | 40:42 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you have White teachers? | 41:06 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. You had White and Black teachers. Yeah. | 41:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | What was that experience like? | 41:09 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It was, like I said, I did not feel a sense of racism in that particular school. Now, I won't say—I've since learned that a lot of times that kind of stuff is hidden and that it's there, but I didn't feel it as a child in that particular situation. | 41:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you feel a responsibility to do well because you were Black? | 41:30 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I didn't feel a responsibility to do well because I was Black. I felt a responsibility to do well because I'd had that indoctrinated into me all my life to do well. | 41:32 |
Sonya Ramsey | What kind of things—Did you attend church there? | 41:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. My aunt belonged to the C.M.E. Church and I sang in the choir when I was there. | 41:48 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was there a difference between your church at home and that church? | 41:54 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Not a whole lot because the C.M.E. Church, the A.M.E. Church, A.M.E. Zion Church are basically all Methodist churches. So it wasn't a lot of difference in the churches. It was like their singing probably was a little bit more gospel music than the church I was used to at home, but basically wasn't a big difference. Yeah. | 41:58 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what did you do with your friends? You said it was your cousins and family? | 42:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | We did. We did. We did things like we went skating in the wintertime, learned to ice skate. We went skating, we'd go to the amusement parks, movies, that kind of thing. | 42:24 |
Sonya Ramsey | And what was your experience when you came back? How was it? | 42:37 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Well, you come back and all of us—All these things. And we went to the beach a lot because Boston is a coastal town. And then I came home, and then there's these same things to do at home that you've always done. You know? So you limited. | 42:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you feel any resentment coming back and seeing the signs and everything? | 42:55 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I didn't. I really didn't feel any resentment. No more, like I say, when things like that happened and it occurred to you that, "Hey, something's wrong with this picture." I came back—The year that I came back to school was the year that they wanted to integrate Old Central High School. And my mother was approached to have me as one of the people to go to integrate the school. And she said no. | 43:00 |
Sonya Ramsey | Why do you think she made that decision? | 43:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I don't know. I don't know whether she had foresight and could see that it was going to be a troublesome picture or what, but she said no. And so I was out of that. | 43:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was there any ramifications to her decision that [crosstalk 00:43:56]? | 43:52 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | She never explained to me why she said no, but she did tell them no. She said it. And she told me what had had transpired and that she had told them no. | 43:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you want to go or— | 44:07 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I really didn't. I really didn't because it would've meant I would've been separated from all of my friends. You're going into a White school where you know they don't want you there and there you are by yourself. And I really didn't—I wasn't championing to do that. If my mother had said do it, I probably would have. You know? I would've gone on and done it. But she said no and I didn't have to worry about whether I would or wouldn't. | 44:08 |
Sonya Ramsey | Was she criticized by the people in the community? | 44:36 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I don't think so because I think it was a private thing. I don't think that—Very few folk in the community knew that she had been approached about it. | 44:38 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Well, were any of your other brothers and sisters—Younger brothers and sisters, they all go to Second Ward also? | 44:48 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Yeah, everybody, we all went to Second Ward. Second Ward wasn't closed down until in the 1960s. | 44:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Did you ever have any friends from West Charlotte? | 45:03 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. Yeah, I had friends from West Charlotte. There was a great rivalry between the two schools, but by the same token we had lots of—You know. There were lots of people that you knew from West Charlotte. We graduated together. The two high schools always had commencement together. | 45:04 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. I guess, is there anything else you'd like to add? | 45:28 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | No, I don't think so. | 45:34 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Probably trying think of stuff. Okay. I think that is all of my questions, so— | 45:38 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | That's all right. | 45:41 |
Sonya Ramsey | I'll write notes about it. | 45:41 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay. | 45:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | What dates, year did you work there? | 45:47 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I went to work for them, like I said, in 1965. And I worked a year and a half. | 45:51 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I'll go back and write that in. Goodness, I would have to take apart—Okay. And do you want to list any other— | 46:04 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay, then I worked at Charlotte Memorial Hospital in the operating room as a surg tech. From about '69—No, it had to be '68. '68 through '69. | 46:06 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 46:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And then I went to nursing school and I worked there as a nurse for two years. Now, I'm not sure what the timeframe was because I went down—I must have worked up until '76 as an RN. I graduated from nursing school in '73, so I must have worked from '73 to '76. And then I went to anesthesia school from '76 to '78 and I worked at Rowan Memorial Hospital. | 46:22 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Starting in 1980, and I worked for Mercy Hospital up until last November. | 0:01 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. | 0:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Now, the group I'm working with now, I've worked for them part time since 1985. | 0:15 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's the plastic surgeon? | 0:21 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 0:27 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Would you like to mention any awards or honors or any offices that you've held? | 0:27 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Oh gosh, no. | 0:40 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's fine. Your current religious, you've been at AME? | 0:45 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | AME Zion. Yeah. | 0:45 |
Sonya Ramsey | Current church is Little Rock? | 0:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 0:46 |
Sonya Ramsey | Would you like to mention any past church memberships at other places? | 0:52 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I've not had any. | 0:56 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Okay. Would you like to list any organizations that you belong to? Civic Community, Education? | 0:57 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay. I am an ACP member. | 1:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:13 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I belong to Chi Eta Phi nursing sorority. | 1:13 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I belong to Christian Workers Chapter number 301, order of the Eastern Star. | 1:20 |
Sonya Ramsey | 301. | 1:30 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 1:30 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:39 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Of course, I belong Little Rock Church AME Zion Church. | 1:39 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 1:47 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That's great. This is all current? | 1:50 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Mm-hmm. | 1:54 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Would you like to listen to any other activities, like some hobbies? | 1:58 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | I love to sew. | 2:03 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:04 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | And I've recently gotten into fabric painting. I like doing that. | 2:07 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. | 2:11 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Those are probably the two things that I like to do most. | 2:14 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. Do you have any comment, or favorite saying or phrase, or quote that you'd like to add? | 2:17 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | It didn't originate with me. A lady told me, but I've just kind of latched onto it, and I think it's one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. It goes that if you need anything, ask God. And if you find that you don't need anything, thank God. | 2:26 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. That is the end of the form. I just wanted to ask, how do you spell the Gleaners? | 2:46 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | G-L-E-A-N-E-R-S. | 3:10 |
Sonya Ramsey | Okay. I just want to make sure that's spelled right. | 3:10 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay. | 3:16 |
Sonya Ramsey | The next part of thing is the interview agreement form. I'd like for you to read both of the forms. We like for people to sign without restrictions, so that students can have access to them. But there is one, there's a form that says basically the same thing, except you can add restrictions down there. | 3:16 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay. | 3:33 |
Sonya Ramsey | But we like for people to read that and sign right there. | 3:34 |
Dorothy Beatty Cousar | Okay. | 3:37 |
Item Info
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