Media

Transcript

Interviewer: Cindy Bennett
Narrator: Rachel Polk
Date: July 15th, 2004
Transcription Notes: (?) following a name indicates phonetic spelling, (?) following a word indicates uncertainty, (inaudible) indicates that the word was not understandable. Clarifications, corrections, notes, and gestures are in brackets.

[Interview begins]
Cindy Bennett (CB): Testing. Testing. Today is July 15th, 2004, and we will be interviewing Rachel Polk. I'm Cindy Bennett and for the past two weeks, I've been participating in the Teaching American History Institute at Salisbury University. I've been working with Annie Brooks and Penny Grandy on a unit dealing with the desegregation of schools in Wicomico County. We are pleased that Mrs. Polk has agreed to talk with us, because she can provide a great deal of information to us since she was personally involved. Okay, Mrs. Polk, would you give us your full name and tell us where and when you were born?

Rachel Polk (RP): Rachel Eure Saunders(?) Polk. I was born October the 21st, 1949, actually, in Salisbury.

CB: Can you tell us a little about your family? Your parents, brothers or sisters?

RP: I come from a very strict Pentecostal background. I have two sisters and one brother. I grew up in a very, very close-knit family, but one that was really based on religion.

CB: Growing up in Salisbury, certainly, you grew up in the period during segregation. What are some of your memories of segregation in this community and as you were growing up, was there any contact with the white community?

RP: I was aware as a child that something was different. Certainly, whenever we traveled—and of course, with my father being a minister, we traveled up and down the East Coast—and I have vivid memories of my mother cooking pans and pans of fried chicken and baking biscuits and taking salads, anything that we could take with us on the road, because I understood that for some reason my father would not stop the car to allow us to eat. Neither would he stop the car to allow us to use the bathroom. So, I was very, very aware that traveling meant some discomfort, that you had to eat in the car and that you really could not use the restroom until you got to your destination. Unless my father stopped along the side of the road to let us use the bathroom, and many times on many occasions he did that. That is a vivid, a very vivid recollection. Another vivid recollection is one of the members of our church, who is now deceased, who was very fair. She was fair to the point that she could pass [as white]. So usually whenever we made long, we had long distance travel, she would go with us because she could go into the restaurants and get food and supplies, or whatever we needed on the journey. So, I remember that she was a very critical part to my travel experience as a child. So, I knew that something was different. Interactions were limited to the sheriff. The sheriff would always call my father whenever anyone was locked up, to see if my father would vouch for them. I remember that during political seasons, politicians would come to my father to elicit his support. But, you know, with the background that I came from, my father was practically apolitical. That's not to say that that was transferred to me, as you very well know, but certainly he was a man, I think, that was respected within the black community and to the extent that we associated with white folks, that respect was the same.

CB: Now, when you started school, can you tell us where you started school in the beginning and can you share any memories of that early experience, such as teachers and the school facilities? And did you like school, was it a positive experience for you?

RP: Absolutely. I did indeed love my elementary school years. I went to Salisbury Elementary School, I found the environment to be [tape distorts and recording becomes low in volume] very different from what I experienced at home because as I said I came from a very, very religious background [recording volume returns to normal] In school, I had freedom of thought and that was, that was good. From the early years on, my teachers encouraged me to think. Excellence was inbred in me from the very first days of my going to school: learning to read, socialization skills, and then the academics, as I continued through the elementary years. Very, very warm memories. You do not—you're not aware that you are missing or lacking something that somebody else has [recording lowers in volume, speech inaudible, then fades back to expected volume] That's what I remember most about the elementary school was actually elementary from—I went to Salisbury Elementary School from first grade to fifth grade, and then in sixth grade I was placed into an accelerated class and that class was placed at Salisbury High School. So, I went to Salisbury High School from sixth grade on. Again, because I met the demands and expectations of the teachers that I had at the time, many of whom are still around today.

CB: Okay, so you went to Salisbury High School and who were some of the teachers there that influenced you the most, and what classes did you especially enjoy?

RP: Well, that's an easy one. The most influence was, I think, given to me by Gladys Goslee. She was (inaudible) at the time, but she was my French teacher, a lady of great character, great dignity and again, one who did not—would not accept anything but best anything, that's just the way that she was. In terms of how to behave—again, socialization skills, how to carry yourself, how to dress—all of that came from Gladys Goslee. The other was Marian Church. Marian Church was that other force. Those of you who know Marian know that she's very, very quiet and she's very, very soft spoken. Well, that's, that's the way she is now that is not how I remember in the church during my high school years. She made sure that I toed the line. I can tell you that my moral upbringing was reinforced by that experience with Mariam Church. I distinctly remember a young man putting three X's on my locker when I was in sixth grade and Marian Church came out, Mrs. Church as we called her, and saw the X's on my locker and she called me out into the hallway and said to me "No decent, respectful of young lady would ever carry herself to the extent that a young man would feel free enough to put X's on her locker!" The X's actually stood for three kisses, and Mariam made me feel less than a cent, you know, there was any denomination of money that was less than a cent, that's how I felt, and she looked at me she said "Imagine, Imagine! If this would become public in the school that this is how you carried yourself." Well, listen, I knew who had done it and when I saw him again, I said to him, "I don't even want you to look at me. We're not talking about speaking! Don't even look at me." So that was the kind of atmosphere in which I grew, in which teachers expected you to come to school and to perform. That's what you would do, and we weren't cautioned about what to expect after we left the comforts of Salisbury High School, the comforts of our segregated community. We were not prepared for that.

CB: In addition to the teachers. Can you tell me about feelings about the facility, the materials that you were using? [audio becomes muted] Was there any awareness that these were not equivalent to white schools? [audio returns to normal]

RP: A time or two, you would hear grumblings from the teachers but on a conscious level no, I was not aware that our facilities were any different. We took such great pride in Salisbury High School. The building of that school was a community effort, and so those of us who went too, to Salisbury High School, carried with us a certain awe, I mean there was a certain pride associated with going to Salisbury High School. So, you know, I never even considered across town, you know, what anybody else was doing. You know, I loved my school. I loved my teachers. I was very happy, very happy attending Salisbury High School. So, I had no, no recollections, no second thoughts, no apprehensions about my receiving an education that was inferior, perhaps, to somebody else who lived on the other side of the tracks. Not at all.

CB: Either in your family or in your classes or among students at school, was there a concern, an awareness about the Civil Rights Movement were people starting to get involved? Or was there really no involvement while you were—little discussion, when you at Salisbury High?

RP: Very little discussion, even in our history classes. Don't let me fail to remember, or to mention Mr. Evans, Bill Evans, because he was also my teacher. He was my history teacher, and the Bill Evans today was not very different from the Bill Evans that I remember back in the sixties. Bill Evans was Bill Evans. Yes, but no, if there were, if there was talk of civil rights or of the black position in society, it was done covertly. We talked about our she-roes and our heroes. That was filtered into the education that we received about general American history. So again, the only thing that I can really recall about that period was the level of expectations that were exact to the (class?). There wasn't a time for talk about civil rights in chemistry and in science and in that kind of thing. I just remember teachers challenging us, and that's my deepest recollection.

CB: Did you want to tell us about Mr. Evans now, or later?

RP: [both laugh] Mr. Evans was, again, a product of his (town?). He believed in students who were honest. He believed in respect. You did not talk back in class, you did not talk in class unless you were spoken to. You always came to class prepared. In fact, we called him hook-nose Evans because Mr. Evans, you know, he has this little hook to his nose, and if he stood over you and you did not have your work prepared, hook-nose could put the paddle on you or put his hands on your shoulder. Again, the feeling that, “I haven't measured up to what is expected of me.” I never had that feeling because I always did my work. I didn't want Mr. Evans to say anything to me, not ever, because he—the thing too, let me let me just backtrack a bit. Where I lived in Salisbury was on Main Street at the time and on the corner of Main and Pearl, 1st Street was the Chipman house, and that is where the majority of teachers, who had not purchased homes or rented apartments and what have you, lived. So, I was in a very, very delicate situation because these teachers went up and down the street and, you know, if I was privileged enough to be on the front porch because my father didn't like that either, I didn't want a teacher stopping by my house. You know, a teacher coming up my walk meant trouble and I had the experience a time or two of a teacher coming to my house because of my older sister, who loved to chatter, she just loved to talk. And in those days, teachers came to your home and they sat down and they had a conference with your parents and so I learned very early on to do exactly what I was told to do, because the consequences would have been severe.

CB: Moving on to your junior year in high school, we know that you were in a group who left Salisbury High and transferred to Wicomico Senior High School. Two questions about that were how many left Salisbury High to go to Wi-high? And was it a choice or how was that decision made?

RP: I recall that there were about five of us that were selected to attend Wicomico Senior High School, and I recall that the selection process was really just based upon academics. I mean, we were told the beginning of our 10th year that at the end of the year, five of us would be selected based upon how well we performed academically. And so, I recall being very anxious to be selected because the teachers just let it be known that only the best and the brightest were going to go over to Wicomico Senior High School—and I didn't care anything about going to Wicomico Senior High School—I did care about being labeled among the best in the brightest itself. I tried very hard, but I'd always made good grades at Salisbury High School.

CB: You said earlier that you weren't prepared for this experience, so no one tried to prepare you for what you might be facing?

RP: No. We were not prepared by our parents and we certainly were not prepared by the school. You might ask yourself, exactly what would you tell a child? How do you prepare a child for that experience, without instilling fear? I mean, how would you do that? My parents, certainly, were not equipped, as I said, the only interaction was the sheriff and an occasional politician. That was it. My father—my father's father was a slave. His mother was a slave. He had that whole background with him as he parented. So, what could he possibly tell me that would prepare me for that experience at Wicomico Senior High School? and I guess the teachers just really felt that if we went and we did our best, that everything would be okay, and so that's exactly what they told us. That was it.

CB: Can you share any of your memories of your first days at Wi-high? Any kind of experiences with teachers, with other students? What did you walk into the first day?

RP: It was horrible. It was probably one of the most, if not the most, traumatic experience of my life. And it was not something that I ever, ever shared with my parents. I was only able to talk about it later, much, much later on in life. I went—I came from an environment that was really nurturing in the school system, to one that had very low expectations of what I could do and what I could be. I recall Ms. [Helen] Warren in trigonometry. Ms. Warren stopped the class when I came in, it was me and one other black student, stopped the class and said to the classroom, "Just look at them. They look like little monkeys, look at them!" and everybody in the classroom turns and looks at us. Ms. Warren was the kind of teacher that if—and this was trigonometry—if I raised my hand to ask a question, "I don't want you to tax your brain, dear," she would tell me, and I would never get an answer. I complained to Mr. [Charles] Cherry, who was the guidance counselor at the time, and his response was that, “You made so many good grades in the colored school that it wouldn't matter what you got at this school.” Well, it mattered to me. I remember I had Mrs. [Constance] Potts for history, and Mrs. Potts was probably the only teacher who gave me the letter grade that I deserved, but in the process, I was alienated from the rest of the students. She put my desk in the back of the classroom, that's where I sat. And she knew that no matter what the question was I was going to be prepared to give her the answer, but she would never call on me until there was nobody else in the class who could answer the question, and then she would call on me, and the response would always be, "You're going to let a colored girl know the answer, and you not know the answer." and so that's where I was in Mrs. Pott's classroom. I remember that in geography, I had a teacher who ignored me the entire year, but did say, at the very end, the person who got the highest score on his final exam would get an A out of the course and I had the high score and he announced in front of the entire class, "You're going to get a B just out of G.P." and that's what I got. I don't have very good memories that I can share from Wicomico Senior High School. I thought it was decadent. Now, you must remember that I told you that Marion Church made me feel like less than a human being for getting three Xs on my locker. I was totally unprepared for coming to school and seeing kids kissing in the hallways, boys with their arms around girls. It looked like everybody was having sex—and my father would have yanked me out if I had said anything like this—and it was frightening to me. It was frightening to me to go into a situation that was totally alien to how I had been—I had been raised. I recall that my geography teacher was dating one of the students in the classroom, and he eventually married her. It was so blatant, and I knew that, you know, I felt like all of my teachers had had set me up for this experience and everything that they told me, or ask me, or required of me to aspire to, I went to a school where everything was the total opposite. You were not rewarded for excellence. Morally speaking, three Xs was nothing compared to what I saw and to what the conversations were. I mean, I always smile today when we talk about teachers dating students, it was blatant when I was going to Wicomico Senior High School, and the young—the young lady is still, is still a representative of one of our senators, here on the shore. But I will never forget Mr. [Michael L.] Murdock and Mr. Murdock's behavior, and Mr. Murdock's total disregard for me as a human being because I did my work. But as he said to the class, "I'm going to give her a B just on G.P.," and that's exactly what he did.

CB: What's G.P.?

RP: General principle, general principle. I didn't know what it meant then, but he explained it and he wanted me to know, "You'll never get an A out of me." On general principle.

CB: And that first year, were the black students able to make any friends with any of the white students, or did you pretty much try to stay together for encouragement and support?

RP: No, we did not stay together for encouragement and support because we were not placed always in the same classes. There was one young lady, who was very fair skinned, Maxine(?), and Maxine seemed to fare better than the rest of us. She was more accepted. She was invited to participate in afterschool clubs and things of that nature. I will tell you, one of my friends had a nervous breakdown. One of the girls who went over to Wi-High with me absolutely, positively could not take it, and by Christmas of that year, had a total break with reality. One other young lady who came, today is a bad lady, and I'm not saying that she's a bad lady because of that experience, but that it was traumatic to be alone—there were just the five of us, completely alone—in a situation with no support. And how do you go back and tell your teachers this? How do you articulate that that is happening to you on a daily basis? How do you do that? How do you do that? My grades suffered, and I do not believe that my grades suffered because I was incapable of doing the work. I was thought of as less than and incapable, particularly in trig, particularly in trig.

CB: You said that earlier you had no way of judging the differences between the schools because you just had that one experience. Having had the benefit of both schools, can you tell us a little bit about the differences in materials, textbooks, sports, extracurricular activities?

RP: Well, I can't tell you anything about extracurricular activities because we were not invited to participate in any extracurricular activities, so. We just went there that first year for studies. I can tell you that I thought that Salisbury High School was far superior to Wicomico Senior High School. Salisbury High School had not only closed-in breezeways, but heated breezeways. Salisbury Hi—Wi-High to this day has the open breezeways. I couldn't fathom getting wet, and wind blowing on you, and that kind of thing. That stuck with me. Food was different as well. The taste of the food was quite different. I preferred the food that was prepared at Salisbury High School. Wicomico High School was a, was a building that I can tell you that I truly hated, and that hatred, I think, came from the experience that I had inside of the walls of that school.

CB: We saw a newspaper clipping of your induction to National Honors Society at Salisbury High School. Were you automatically accepted into the National Honors Society at my Wicomico Senior High School?

RP: No, I was not, and once I got a D—that was the first D in my life, I didn't know what a D looked like until I got a D out of trigonometry, just one—that was a sure way of keeping me out of the National Honor Society.

CB: Wow. Okay, you've already talked about how some of the others there that year, but during your senior year, Salisbury High School was closed?

RP: Yes.

CB: And so, Wi-high, I guess as well as Bennett, became completely integrated. Now, how—what are your memories from that year? How did that go and how were you affected, if in any way, since you had been there the previous year? Did that make any difference? RP: I recall that the young people that came were very, were much more vocal—of course, they could be, they were larger numbers than we were. I remember the sit-ins. I remember the black students taking over the cafeteria and refusing to go to class because of the way that they were treated. I remember the ministers coming to the school. I remember there was a lot of activity that year, there was a consciousness among all of us that this was wrong, that something was terribly wrong. We came, our teachers didn't come with us. Many of our teachers did not come with us. So, the experience, the kinds of things that I had gone through the previous year, these students were beginning to experience the same thing, but their attitude was entirely different. There was no way that you had to make me have—go through this, without protest. So, I remember my senior year being a year of protest. I do not remember being included in senior year activities. I remember at the very end of the year going to the Civic Center to practice for the Baccalaureate and to practice for graduation, but all of the other things that are associated with graduating, I missed.

CB: You mentioned Mrs. Goslee, who'd been so important to you at Salisbury High School, and I know she moved to Wi-high your senior year. Was that helpful to have someone there, someone that you felt that you could go to?

RP: Not really. Everybody looked terrified. Everybody, my teachers who within the walls of Salisbury High School were stoic, full of pride, seemed to be so afraid at Wicomico Senior High School. That wasn't a face that I could look at and receive comfort or receive understanding or receive recognition. Everybody—the staff that came felt as if they had somehow passed some invisible test, you know, to get there, and, you know, I think that black teachers lost as well. They did not—they left an environment in which they were comfortable into one into which they were going to be judged by different standards.

CB: Do you know, in any of your classes I don't know if you had any of those former Salisbury High School faculty members as teachers, at Wi-High?

RP: No, I did not.

CB: Do you do you have any memories of how they were treated by the white students, were there any [trails off]?

RP: I don't, I don't know. I just, I just know that the few, the handful that came to Wicomico Senior High School that year were not the same ones that I remembered at Salisbury High School. They had a different face. You know, I looked at them, I recognized them, but what I saw at Salisbury High School, I did not see at Wicomico Senior High School.

Unidentified Interviewer #1 (INT1): Were they too isolated from one another?

RP: Yes. In terms of where the classrooms were.

INT1: There was no support system?

RP: There was no support system and the expectations, I can only imagine, were quite different from what they had experienced at Salisbury High School.

CB: Can you tell us, all of the faculty members from Salisbury High obviously weren't at Wi-High. Can you tell us what happened? Do you know what happened to some of those faculty members?

RP: I have no idea what happened to them. That was a buzz throughout the black community for a long time. The fact that some of our best teachers were not rehired, at either Wicomico Senior High School or James M. Bennett [High School].

CB: You probably had friends who also went to Bennett High School, that senior year. Do you have any way of knowing what, what was going on at Bennett, how things were going there—was similar to Wi-high?

RP: What my husband actually went to Bennett, and he recalls a very different experience. It seems that Bennett did not have the handful to come over, that was just Wi-high. But Bennett had integration en masse. So, his experience was quite different from my experience. INT1: Of course, Bennett was only one year old by that time. Opened in '65.

CB: and that probably played a big part.

RP: Played a big part, I'm sure.

CB: Do you think that Wicomico County desegregated as early as they could have and what would you have done differently to bring about maybe a smoother transition?

[First recording ends, second recording begins]

CB: Do you think that Wicomico County could have desegregated earlier than they did? And what would you have done differently to bring about a smooth transition?

RP: I will say that I like your choice of words in saying desegregating the schools as opposed to integrating the schools. Wicomico County did not experience integration, and I say that because when you integrate, you take some of mine, some yours, and you mingle it together. We did not have white students coming to Salisbury High School. We had the black students being transferred to the white schools and that being labeled as integration, that was not integration. There was no expectations of whites learning our culture, learning our thought processes. We were expected to go in and take on.

INT1: Assimilation.

RP: Exactly. Assimilation. I mean, that was what was expected of us. And so, I think that that served as a pattern for what we have today in terms of what we see in the school systems. Could Wicomico County have done it earlier? Wicomico County is not a place that is amenable to change. It still isn't. It wasn't then and it is not now. In order for integration to have worked, there would have had to have been an understanding of who black people are, who black people are in Wicomico County, who black people are in the United States of America. The heritage that we bring with us, which did not begin at the point of slavery. None of that was present then, and very little of that is present now. So, could Wicomico County have done it earlier, perhaps in terms of just doing it? Of course! Would the effect have been different? Absolutely not. Again, because this is not a community that is accepting of change. And so, I still do not see the appreciation of the rich African culture that is fused into learning, so that there is balance when a white child and a black child comes to the table. There's not that mutual respect. Again, the black child is expected to take on. The white child is always the agent. The black child is never the agent, except for the brief times that slavery is talked about and of course, that's only a microcosm of black history, but that is the only time that the black child is made the agent, and that therefore the black child doesn't want to be the agent in that particular period of history, but that is the only time that the black child is allowed to be. So, Wicomico County still has a very long way to go in terms of education, because all that's education. The classroom is still—I've raised four children in the school system since I returned back in the '80s. One came at the age of ten, went to Bennett and graduated from Bennett; one to Parkside, and of course, the two younger—youngest ones came up through the elementary school system. And these are not children that will return back to Wicomico County, they have no love for the area. They actually have no love for the schools. So, it's very—you know, I've said to them, you've experienced so much, why don't you go back and just talk. They have no desire to do that because of the experiences that that they had while in the Wicomico County School System, so that's not a good testament in terms of what we're doing in educating, and educating students.

CB: Okay, do either of you have some questions that maybe you thought of as we were talking?

[Muffled voices, tape cuts, resumes]

Unidentified Interviewer #2 (INT2): You talked about your husband and how he was at Bennett, and I just wanted to have you maybe elaborate about how his experience was different from yours.

RP: One of the things that he said to me was that he did not experience isolation, the sense of isolation that we experienced, because when he went to James M. Bennett, all the black kids went to Bennett: rode the busses together, you know, came from the same neighborhoods. So, they were—that kind of camaraderie and the friendship remained intact. It was not that way for me. I rode a bus by myself. I was given the front seat of the bus, and that's where I rode every day that I went to school, alone. He didn't have that experience, and of course, in the classrooms, they were meshed in, I think, very well in terms of balance. So, his experience is quite different from mine.

INT2: Were there any press? or any outside, outside just coverage of the five of you coming in the first year.

RP: Not that I can recall, not that I can recall.

INT2: So, it was really down, underneath.

RP: It was really downplayed.

CB: Thank you so much for your time today.

RP: My pleasure.

CB: One thing that you mentioned earlier, Mrs. Polk was about being paddled, and so was corporal punishment used at Salisbury High?

RP: Absolutely. The teachers normally had a ruler or a yardstick, if they felt that the offense was really egregious, you were sent to the office, and the principal that I recall more than anyone else, more than Mr. Chipman, was Randolph Brooks. Mr. Brooks had a paddle and for— particularly for the young men who thought that they were, you know, too, grown for their britches. Mr. Brooks would go on the P.A. System, the public address system, asked for them to come to the office, and their paddling was on—was over the public address system. This kept a lot of kids in check because all you had to say was that I'm going to send you down to the office to see Mr. Brooks. I was never in Mr. Brook's office, I did not want to be paddled. Now, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I think that this played out in terms of classroom decorum, behavior, what have you when we had the desegregation of schools. Our children, black children came from a system where in they receive corporal punishment both in the classroom and at home. Once at Wicomico Senior High School, I recall that discipline seemed to be lacking all together. There seemed to be no consequences for unacceptable behavior and as time went on, and especially when I came back to the area to hear students talk about putting your name on the blackboard to lose recess, from homes that were still largely practicing corporal punishment. I do recall a discussion when I came to Wicomico Senior High School, there was talk about black teachers coming over and the whole issue of corporal punishment and it was around that time when corporal punishment by the public-school system was abandoned. So, again, you had students who were used to it at school and at home, coming into an environment where there seemed to be no consequences whatsoever. I mean, boys who were told that if you touched a girl, or if you kissed a girl in the hallway, you know, that's grounds for paddling or that's grounds for a suspension. You come into Wicomico Senior High School, and that is acceptable behavior. So, a lot of things that had consequences attached to them at the black school were lost in the transition and kids were exposed to a whole new concept and that concept was, "if you touch me, I'm going to call police on you." And that was alien, that was alien to black thought, black culture. I was permitted to be spanked by anybody on my block. So, I was not just accountable to my mom and my dad. I was accountable to everybody on my block. Anybody in my neighborhood could have corrected me and they would have come to my parents to say, this is what I did. Well, you were guaranteed then one from your parents, what disgrace in the family. But that whole system of accountability was lost, and again, this was not about abuse. This was not about somebody on the block physically abusing you with corporal punishment. This was a spanking that, you know, somebody on the block felt obliged to give you for stepping out of, you know, your boundaries. And, of course, whenever that happens, as I said before, your parents were certainly going to follow up with the same kind of treatment. And, you know, I we often talk about the lack of discipline that is so apparent among many black students today and the correlation between what was then and what is now. A system of accountability that not only translated in the classroom and translated back in the home, because once kids found out that "if you touch me, I'm going to call the police," you know, that became the expressions in the home. Parents were fearful of exacting corporal punishment for fear that law enforcement would come in and charges would be levied, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, parenting took on a different role after desegregation.

CB: Thank you.
[Interview ends]