Questions by Mr. Carrington. Answers by Ms. Smith.
CARRINGTON: Can you role tape. May I have your name, please, and where you are from.
Smith: All right. I am Laverne Byrd Smith, and I was born in south Richmond, Virginia, on Midlothian Pike.
CARRINGTON: And you were a child during segregation, and Jim Crow and massive resistance; what were your experiences with racial segregation?
Smith: Well, if I go back to early, early years, my first experience that I remember is being four years old, and getting on the streetcar going to north side, and crawling up in the seat beside a Caucasian lady who jumped up and acted as if she had been bitten by a snake, and rang the bell, and asked, Mr. Conductor, can I get this little child up from beside me?
Smith: And I really didn't know what was wrong. And as my mother came down the aisle and took me from that seat and took me in the back, I spent a lot of time asking why.
And she said, well because we were Negroes we had to sit in the back. And I wanted to know why. And she told me a lot of things. She worked really hard at trying to explain that to me, and I could not accept it. I just continued to ask, why, why?
And she said it is the law. And I said, well, who made the laws? And then from that point on I was going to be a lawyer and change those laws. So that was my early experience with segregation.
CARRINGTON: What was your neighborhood like, though, in south Richmond? Did you have -- did you see those problems in your neighborhood? What kind of experiences did you have?
SMITH: Actually, we had pretty decent experiences. Our neighborhood was integrated, and we had people, white people who lived on Hull Street. We were on Midlothian Pike and shared the same alley. And we played together after school, but when we got ready to go to school, then they went up and we when went down. We went down to Blackwell. It was done by then. And they went up to Franklin, and we would pass each other on the street.
But in my neighborhood there was a lot of interaction, interplay between the neighbors on those two streets until you got to high school, and the children that we played with then, we didn't play with them very much after we went to high school. And they went to John Marshall, and we went to Armstrong. Of course we rode the same street cars.
And sometimes there was a little difficulty, but all in all it is was just like young people kind of fighting and doing what young people do. But I don't remember that being a big problem. I mean not that we did spend all of our time crying about it or worrying about it or -- because we enjoyed our high school days, and we just thought there was nothing like Armstrong and Walker.
CARRINGTON: What was high school like in Richmond?
SMITH: High school was a wonderful period for us. I finished in '44, and we were -- I think the war had started and a lot of our men went off to -- off to war before we graduated, but we had a wonderful -- we had wonderful teachers because, now, there had come a law, which was supposed to, I guess, hold us back, and it turned out to work for our good because -- because someone wanted to go to the University of Virginia, and rather than let us go to the University of Virginia, they paid the teachers to go wherever they wanted and, therefore, our teachers went all over the country to study at some of the major universities, and we had excellent teachers. We had excellent education. And high school was just really meaningful.
I feel sorry for children today who go to school and they are under tension and stress and so forth. I think our high school days, and with the Armstrong/Walker game, it was just great, and I played in the band.
CARRINGTON: What did you play in the band?
SMITH: The trombone.
CARRINGTON: The trombone?
SMITH: So I could march on the front row. I've always been up front.
CARRINGTON: And how did the teachers treat you? I mean when they saw these beautiful little black kids come in the classroom, what did they in impart on you? What was the not only the verbal message but the non-verbal message?
A You are special people. And I will tell that the teachers in Armstrong, talking about south Richmond, they fought to get the classes from south Richmond because we were considered to be very special. We had an excellent education at Dunbar School before it became Blackwell. And they always understood us and they were our friends. I enjoyed high school. Is there anything more you want me to say about that?
CARRINGTON: When you would go to class, what were some of the things that the teachers would tell you to inspire you to do your best?
SMITH: Well, they just had an open environment. And we did a lot of poetry in our English classes. We had a lot of drama. And very often we could dramatize things, and we just had a very pleasant experience. They were like our friends and, therefore, they didn't have to do anything special. We were there, and they understood us, and took a lot of time with us, and they decided if we didn't learn, it wasn't us. They wanted to know what was it they hadn't done, or what was it they needed to do. And it wasn't unusual for them to stay after school and work with us. And I think most everybody that I know was making it pretty well.
CARRINGTON: Now, you all, when you graduated from high school, did you go to the 12th grade or how far did you have to go to graduate?
SMITH: Oh, we went to the 11th grade, but our friends down at John Marshall and George Wythe had to go to the 12th grade.
CARRINGTON: Why the difference?
SMITH: I don't know. I think we were smarter and we could learn in 11 years what the other kids learned in 12, so that's why I am saying some things that were meant for our ill turned out to be positive because the teachers knew we had to learn everything in 11 years and they worked hard, and we worked hard, and we met these same kids in colleges and universities around the country and we did just fine.
CARRINGTON: Now, you attended Virginia Union?
SMITH: Yes.
CARRINGTON: And when you went to Virginia Union, what did you major in?
SMITH: Majored in history initially, and then I decided I was going to get married, so I majored -- I got a double major in education.
CARRINGTON: Now, when you walked into Virginia Union what was your intention?
SMITH: To be a lawyer. And actually, I was president of the Pre-Law Club, because going from age four when I was going to change the world, and I had all always been about the business of changing the world, and I was going to be a lawyer, and I was majoring in history for that purpose, but I got side tracked a little bit after I met my husband. And I -- I decided I was going to go -- I was going to get married. He didn't know it yet. But I very quickly then took up some education courses.
CARRINGTON: Then you also did some writing, and in the sixties you did an interview with Martin Luther King. Tell me about the reason -- tell me about that event; how did you get to do the interview and the events that led up to you getting that interview.
SMITH: Well, I had written for the Afro most of my life, from the time I was 13 years old. We had a column in the Afro called the "Younger Set," by the Byrds, Elizabeth G. and Laverne C., that's my sister and I. And therefore, I was always interviewing or doing something for the newspaper while I was teaching. And Martin Luther King was coming, and this was the Teachers Association that was bringing him to speak at Virginia Union, and I was asked to interview him. And I thought I was going to the airport to meet him, and it turned out that this was a period when he was in the Birmingham Jail, and we thought we were going to have to find another speaker, and it was at the last minute that he was released from jail and came here on the bus. And I met him at the bus station.
And since the schedule was so tight they asked me if I would interview him for the Afro, really, for the Virginia Teachers Association magazine en route to the campus, because as soon as he got there there were so many other things going on, and so I had someone to drive me to the bus station, and he joined me in my Turnpike Cruiser in the back seat.
And we talked on our way to the campus, and it was very refreshing, enlightening. He's a wonderful person. Such a humble person. I was surprised that he was -- I thought he was larger than life, but he was rather a small person, and I was honored to meet him.
CARRINGTON: Was that one of your initial steps into the whole civil rights movement and chronicling that and being active in politics?
SMITH: It was one step, and I had been working with -- well, the Council on Human Relations, and I wasn't president then, but I had always been active in the community even as a classroom teacher. It really wasn't the positive thing to do to be involved with the NAACP and with the Crusade for Voters, but in our church, our pastor, Dr. W. L. Ransome was in charge of the Richmond Civic League, and he was on the national board of the NAACP, and this organization was the forerunner of the Crusade for Voters.
And then of course, not a forerunner of the NAACP, but this was back in the 1920s, we have an idea that the civil rights movement started in sixties, but he was very active, and in our church we were aware of -- that there were things to be done in the community to make a difference, and some of the things that he did was to go before the school board, to go before the senate and speak, so I was always fascinated by that.
He asked that we have a junior high school, he asked that we would have Negro history in our school before the state legislature, and people do speak before the state legislature now, but during that period that was unheard of and -- but he was very brave, and he would go and speak. And he asked if we could have -- we taught Negro history in high school, and of course our gracious Virginians said they would be glad to do that, but they didn't have anyone qualified to teach it.
But he then gave them his son's qualifications who had gotten a masters from Columbia and was very versed in Negro history from his father who was a professor at Virginia Union, so we were able to have Negro history in our high schools, and that was Joseph Rockman Ransome who taught that.
CARRINGTON: Tell me about the Virginia Council on Human Rights. Tell me about the organization.
SMITH: All right. I was President of the Richmond Council on Human Rights.
CARRINGTON: Okay, well, tell me what --
SMITH: Human Relations. Yes. And also I was Vice President of the Virginia Council. I had been teaching at Virginia State and therefore I wasn't in Richmond, and a lot of people were working with human relations, and when I came from Virginia State to teach at Virginia Union I immediately became active with the Council on Human Relations. And Wally Bless, a wonderful person, was president.
I have no idea how I got to be Vice President within the first year that I was here, which was about '68. And I became -- we were -- at the time I went in as President Elect. We were having one of the early meetings at the John Marshall. They had not been open for integrated sessions. And we -- they were having a conference and made me chairman of that conference. This was a very worthwhile activity because the workshops that we had there were led by Alan Keeper, the Director of Public Safety, the Director of -- or leaders of the community.
And we had sessions on law and justice, on civil concerns, on housing, urban development, urban planning and so forth. And it is one of the things, you go to conferences, and then you go home and say, oh, that was a good conference, but this one, we took home. We took all of the notes, and since I was coming into office, I made sure that whatever came out of that conference we carried on.
And we had action teams, and the Action Team on Civic Concerns, Civil Concerns was headed by Hilda Wardden, and that group met five or six times a week sometimes because we were very concerned about the jail, and then we had the law and justice team headed by Ruby Walker, and they touched bases on things that -- people who had problems, like someone lost their fingers, they were arrested and lost their fingers. And we were moving on several fronts.
And the one was media relations, and we met with all of the media, and somewhere during that period, I won't go into that now, but we unlicensed all of the television stations and radio stations in Richmond for a year until -- because they did not have any blacks on camera, operating the cameras, secretaries, janitors, none of them. So that was one of the things that that committee, the communication committee did, and that was led by Theodore Thornton. Do you know Ted Thornton? He's a marvelous person.
CARRINGTON: No, I don't.
SMITH: And anyway, it was six of those -- actually, there was one on housing was led by Marie Hosagowa, which is a name that's well known in Richmond, and she worked with all these other groups who were making Housing Opportunities Made Equal that was coming into being, and we provided some leadership for that. The Civic Concerns Committee worked with a group to bring Offender Aid and Restoration into being.
So I cannot say I did this or I did that, but I created an environment in which people were in action teams and therefore we had about six really strong leaders, and I coordinated their activities, and this was a very -- it was a great period because we were into massive resistance, this was the seventies, the early seventies, 1971 to '73, and so following that conference we went into just full blast working on all fronts, and putting out brush fires. And that was the period when the country was blowing up with black power, and riots, and we are credited with keeping Richmond from blowing up because we worked very hard to keep -- well, to keep -- to put out brush fires. That's the way I explain it.
And we had a wonderful group of people who worked together. And I was busy trying to establish lines of communication. And I will tell you that once we challenged the media, I didn't even know our pastor then, but he was the one who signed -- he was President of the Ministers Conference, a young man just coming into -- out of school, and we needed someone to sign off on that communications package, and so the Ministers Conference said they would. And of course they had been working with us, too, and since Reverend Jones was the President, he signed, but we had worked all night, we worked night and day to study all of the media, and what they were doing, and what they needed to do, and we took it to the Federal Communications Commission.
And one other group was working on a movie that came in here during that period, and we had moved toward integration. That was the first time we were going to have integration, school integration, and that was in the seventies, and you know, the law was passed in the fifties but we were having our first stages, and we had really had a very fine relationship between whites and blacks because we had a marvelous board and I could name people who really just -- Wally Bless was one, and Marie Hasagowa, and Don Reed and me Linda Worley and these people who also had other leadership roles in the community and we worked together.
Now, I would say that Richmond did not have the revolutionary breakouts that happened in the rest of the country, but I would dare say that we had a better interpersonal relationship between the races in Richmond during that period than maybe anybody else because we opened the lines of communication, but when the lines didn't work, we were able to move in various directions.
And some of those things, like Housing Opportunity Made Equal, and Offender Aid and Restoration are still in process now, and sometimes they may not know how they came about but we have information on all of that.
CARRINGTON: I want to backtrack a little bit.
SMITH: Okay.
CARRINGTON: Can you give me the mission for the Richmond Human Relations and the make-up of people. Were they all one race or was it a mixed situation, so to speak --
SMITH: No. That's
CARRINGTON: And when you start it, name the organization and tell me what the mission is and the people that were in there.
SMITH: I could not tell you the mission of this organization except that we were trying to bring about a better -- I believe we had a slogan that might demonstrate this, making a richer life a reality in Richmond. And therefore we were trying to create -- create dialogue between the races.
And as I said, there was a lot of integrated activity, and we met and worked with each other. And I think it was a marvelous period, and a lot of good things happened. And yet we were addressing serious issues.
And I had started to say something about this Birth of a Nation that was coming in here, and we saw it as something that would affect school integration, and this whole unit worked together of blacks and whites, hand in hand, working to avoid bringing that movie in because it would stir up the community when we were getting ready to go -- when we finally did go into integration, we did not have a lot of problems, but this movie having been brought to the Byrd Theater right at that time was of concern to us. And we went as a group, as a unit -- well, as a group to visit with Morton G. Thalhimer who owned the Byrd at that time.
And we understood that they could not withdraw it because there was a group in town who would not carry their ads -- I don't want to call names, I guess -- the newspaper would not carry their ads if they didn't let the film come on.
And so the final thing they did is, we had an international telephone committee trying to find the owners of the film, and we found him in Europe, and we asked him if he would withdraw the film from Richmond and not have it shown here. And they said then they were going to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the film, and they did, and they claimed that we were to look at the cinematography rather than the content of the film, but it didn't stay in here but three days, and it left when it was supposed to be here for a week or two.
And later, it tried to come back at one of the county theaters, but some of our members saw them putting fliers on cars in the outlying areas, and we were able to go and visit that theater. So we were kind of hands on. And when we saw something getting ready to happen that would affect the community, we tried to address it in a civilized and intelligent way. And we were successful in moving life in Richmond.
CARRINGTON: Does the organization still exist today?
SMITH: No, it doesn't. Here again, you have to go to the national level. The Virginia Council on Human Relations received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. And of course while we were watching and monitoring what was going on with the Civil Rights Bill, Congress passed this law that anybody -- any companies that donated funds to programs that challenged the government in any way would be taxed, they'd lose their tax-exempt status. And this is one of the things that went on at the state level. We went to a state-level meeting in Danville, and we received information that this bill had passed Congress, and the Rockefeller Foundation had to withdraw its funding of the Southern Regional Council.
So the hierarchy was, there was the Southern Regional Council funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Southern Regional Council financed state conferences, councils on human relations, and then the state councils helped the local councils, and that's the way -- so the funding went away. And I think about one more year after I was in office, Ed Peoples was president, and they went on for awhile, but with no funding. It kind of died away.
CARRINGTON: Now, were you involved with the NAACP at all?
SMITH: Yes. I've been on the board of the NAACP at various times.
CARRINGTON: What were some of the activities that you were involved in with the NAACP?
SMITH: I don't know. Just anything that needed to be done. Going to meetings and addressing issues. It's just something you were a part of.
CARRINGTON: And what were some of the issues that you were dealing with?
SMITH: Well, we were dealing with some of the same issues that the council was dealing with, but somehow we maybe were -- because that's a national organization, and they have to meet sort of national requirements, we were able to focus, and they worked with us very closely on just about anything that was a problem in the community.
And at that time Oliver Hill and a group were working with the schools in Prince Edward County, and it is hard to say who was doing what because I remember taking my students from Virginia Union down to Waverly, Virginia, where Garland Gray, we called him Garland Gray's Shanties of Shame, Garland Gray was a member of the Byrd commission or the Byrd Machine, and we went down, we found children living on urban plantations. And they had never been to school because they worked in those -- the logging business down there. And there was a settlement which -- we found a house that 25 people lived in, one house, and we don't mean they had a toilet out doors, they had no toilet. They had a hole in the floor that they could address their needs.
And it seems like when we went down, I know the ceiling of one house fell down the day our students went because they had so much of these -- I think they were oatmeal, flour and so forth, they give you big bags of the -- and with 25 people living in that house it finally -- the ceiling just fell, and they had to clean that up but we went down to -- we addressed the fact that these children had not been to school at all, and there was a mosquito-laden ditch that went through that town and one pump in the middle of the settlement. And now that was one of the things that we were arranging for Martin Luther King to address when he was coming back to Virginia, and that was -- he was coming to Norfolk, and this would have been not just to speak to a group, this was a political entree, he was coming into Norfolk and do a March across the state. And we had set up for them to stop in Waverly and in other places and in Petersburg, and then they would come to Richmond. And we were going to have a rally at Six Mt. Zion Church, but this was the week that he went to Memphis. And we were following his activities in Memphis from our home, and we held onto our flyers and notices, yet the newspaper did carry and you can find in the Times Dispatch a notice that he was coming into Norfolk and would be working his way across the state. And that didn't happen, because on Sunday we got the word that he was going back to Memphis, and this is one reason, he never got in here for -- to organize the State of Virginia. And I think that's one reason why we have kind of a divisiveness.
The divisiveness that we have in Richmond now is not as much white and black as the black community is divided in some ways. I can't say there's not a division between whites and blacks, but there also -- in Atlanta, and Selma and those places who did have uprisings, the communities came together and they -- and they have moved together, the black community has stayed together, they act as one. In Richmond, there is a lot of activity intending to divide the black community, and that keeps us from moving like we should, like we could if we were all together.
CARRINGTON: What would you tell young people today? What would you tell them or advise them on doing in order to keep the civil rights movement going to its ultimate end, which is equality for all? What would advise them to do?
SMITH: I think that -- I don't know what I would tell them. I am working on what I would tell them because I am actually joining forces -- I am on an advisory committee for this Tough School that this young lady is getting ready to start for school drop-outs, and we are talking daily about what we can do with these youngsters who are on the street. And if you look at some of my poetry, you will see I have addressed this, that these kids are working out someone else's plan. Throughout life we tried to be sure and not be what someone described us as being, and we worked to overcome things that would keep us back.
Now, these young people for some reason don't know they are wonderful people, don't know they are some of the most powerful people on earth, because any group who has had as many laws passed about them, as much time spent trying to keep them back, they have to be powerful. And I used to tell my students when you talk about black power, I'm saying we're powerful, because you don't have to work very hard to keep people back who are strong, you have to -- and we have just so much -- so many laws passed to hold us back, and yet this generation somehow has missed the message. And I think we need to gather our children together and try to raise their self esteem.
I have a poem that I wrote about -- well, the dope scene and so forth. I have some poems I call poems of indignation because so much is going on. And I think I would try to bring them together and help them if it's possible to see themselves as worthwhile people, and that what they are doing hurts not only themselves, but they hurt a whole race. And I'm not as together on that as I might be in responding, but I do have ideas that I've been writing down.
CARRINGTON: Very good. Anything? Can you stop tape for a second? Would you like to read your --
SMITH: The issues are not -- and being very concerned about what was going out in the community.
CARRINGTON: Is this a close out?
SMITH: Is this a close -- is this a close out?
CARRINGTON: Yeah. What you are going to do, you are going to look in the camera and tell them about your mother and what you just said, with the tape running, and then you can start back --
SMITH: Okay. My mother -- oh.
CARRINGTON: Right there. Roll tape. Okay. Go ahead.
SMITH: All right. My mother's name was Lina Dickens, and during the 19 -- the early 1900s she went to Virginia State, what is now Virginia State, but it was Virginia Normal and Industrial School. And she was very concerned about things that were happening then after World War I, and she wrote this poem, and it has influenced me a great deal because she was addressing issues back in those days, and I thought she was very brave to do so, and we are still addressing some of those issues now. And her poem, which is A Plea for Freedom, or a Plea to the Flag, and it was written in 1918, and I think it has relevance for today.
She said, when Freedom from her mountain heights Unfurled her standards to the air, It told that men must have a right, And men must be men everywhere.
Flag of the free, To thee is given the power to set the Negro free. Did he not hover in the smoke to ward away the battle stroke, And bid your banner shine afar O'er land like an unbidden star.
Each dying Negro man I see, Looked at once to have heaven and thee And smiled to see thy splendors fly, The flag of the country for which he dies. Flag of the free to thee we cry. Shall our found hopes forever die? Shall thy stripes of celestial white be dipped in blood at morning's light?
Flag of the free, Thy folds still fly, Thy stars still shine, Like the stars on high. The Negroes mind has burst its prison And out of the mire has the black man risen. Shall we not speak from deeds a wrought, Shall free men lock their indignant force. When deeds are done no tongue can tell These that were shown extremist hell.
Flag of the free, Does thoust still wave o'er the land of the free And the home of the brave. No, flag of the free, Thou does not still wave o'er the land of the free But the home of the brave. You say the Negro man is free And yet you hang him to a tree. Give the Negro the right to be a man. He fought for this country, He died for this land. Then why should his color keep him back? The God that made you white made the Negro black.
In your mighty government you give us no part. Where is your freedom for loyal patriarchs? Give the Negro the democracy for which he fought, The democracy we through our children have taught. Oh, for truth on overture the brave, How cast thou great fiefdom rest in thy grave, You fought for freedom and you died, You like our lord you be crucified. Christ died that his blood might atone for sin. You died the Negro race defends. Still out in the midnight cries I heard, But the Negro dares speak not a word.
Flag of the free, does thou still wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Flag of the free, I bid you still wave. The Negro fought that you might be saved. I bid you wave o'er land and sea. I bid you wave for eternity. Supremely let thy folds still flow That freedom ring from shore to shore And as in splendor you unfurl. Let freedom ring around the world. Know ye not race, color or creed. Man to receive justice is all I plead.
CARRINGTON: Thank you. Stop tape.
