Oral History Interview with Iola Harding

BETSY BRINSON: Today is August eighth the year two thousand. This is an interview with Iola Harding, the interviewer is Betsy Brinson; and we are doing this interview in Lexington, Kentucky. Would you just give me your complete name, so we can get a voice level?

IOLA HARDING: Iola Willhite Harding.

BRINSON: And how do you spell your middle name for the transcriptionist?

HARDING: W I L L H I T E.

BRINSON: Well thank you very much for agreeing to do this. As I understand it, you are here visiting your family from New Mexico, where you live now. Is that correct?

HARDING: That is correct, yes. I’m visiting with, I’m staying with my daughter, but I have sisters, brothers, mother, cousins, nieces.

BRINSON: Well, as I said to you, the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Historical Society are very eager to do oral histories with some of their first graduates of the university, and you are one of ten. And we were wondering how we were going to get to you in New Mexico to do this, so it worked beautifully, thank you.

HARDING: Well, thank you.

BRINSON: Let’s begin, what shall I call you? Ms. Harding?

HARDING: Iola’s fine.

BRINSON: Iola, okay, thank you. Let’s start at the very beginning, if you would tell me where and when you were born.

HARDING: I was born in Yosemite, small town about seventy, seventy-five miles, southwest of here, on a farm. And that’s where I grew up and I was born in 1931.

BRINSON: Nineteen thirty-one, so that makes you?

HARDING: Sixty-nine.

BRINSON: Sixty-nine, okay.

HARDING: April 2, 1931.

BRINSON: Okay. Right. Tell me a little bit, if you would, about your growing up, who was in your family; anything you might know about your ancestors; what life was like in a rural area on a farm; your early education.

HARDING: I was the oldest of a family, which eventually became twelve children; and my mother and father, were the mother and father of all twelve of the children. (Laughing) And we lived with a grandmother and grandfather on the family farm, that had been in the family for a number of years. And I can’t speak to how long that had been. It went back considerably. We, because we were black, the last black family I should say, that remained in that sort of isolated community, we were not permitted to go to school at the school which was just less than a half mile from our house. So we went to school at Mount Salem, and that’s where I did my elementary education, was at Mount Salem.

BRINSON: And that was in an all black school?

HARDING: And that was in an all black school that was situated there. And so all of the children from black families from miles around came to that school. And at some point...

BRINSON: How far away was that school?

HARDING: Well in those years, it was considerable, because it was probably ten miles, now it isn’t much at all. But it was ten or twelve miles.

BRINSON: And how did you get there each day?

HARDING: It was interesting, the first year, I stayed with my grandmother, who lived in Mount Salem, and attempted going to school during the week; but I got homesick and like most children, I wanted to stay home. And my father was one of the few people who owned an automobile in those days, and so he simply drove me to school every day. And then as the other children came to school age, he drove all of us to school. He was a firm believer in education. And while he was educated sufficiently for his time, he wouldn’t be considered educated now. But he wasn’t an illiterate man. But he encouraged all of us to go to school and made great efforts to get us there. And if we had a flood--there was a creek that was between us and where we were going (Laughing) And sometimes when that creek would flood, he would spend considerable time estimating the current and everything so he could get his car across, so we wouldn’t miss a day of school. He made sure that we got there. And then, the school moved to Hustonville, and at that point a bus picked us up at some point in Mount Salem, where it picked up all the other children and we were transported to Hustonville by bus. And so he continued to take us to meet that bus every day. And as years went on, somebody suggested to him, you know you ought to go down and apply for bus driver, because actually you are driving children to school. So he applied and they made him a bus driver for us. But that didn’t last long, because somebody else bid or wanted it. I don’t remember the details. And so then somebody else was given the bus driving route which was, seemed kind of sad, since he had done it for so many years on his own, that...

BRINSON: Did the new bus driver have a bus?

HARDING: No, it was the same kind of thing, they were using a personal automobile. Everybody used a personal automobile, except for the school bus that transported the students from Lincoln county, I mean from Mount Salem to Hustonville.

BRINSON: What do you know, if anything, about your ancestors and how far back have they been in Kentucky?

HARDING: Well, I have ancestors from different groups. My grandmother’s side is where the farm was situated, and that goes back to, grandmother, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, I think that I recall, that, that’s who he was, was either Billy Burdett or...Can’t think of the other name, it was a Burdett. And--Enoch, that’s the name, Enoch Burdett. Billy was his brother. Those two men owned several thousand acres in that area, and this was during slave time, of course. And they owned several thousand acres. And Enoch Burdett married a woman of color, and there were children, and my grandmother’s father was one of those children; and he had a sister that was born from that woman. And when that father died he gave half of his property that was in Casey county, to the son, and the other half went to his daughter, which was up on Indian Creek. So those two families, the daughter is the beginning of the group on Indian Creek, from my grandmother’s side. And my great-grandfather had the Casey county group. But because the family was black, when the entire thing went through probate, they were only given a few hundred acres, and I suppose the rest was just taken by who knows whom. I don’t know, it is part of the Casey county legacy. (Laughing) So, the great aunt in Indian Creek, married, I think it was a Patton from up there, who had a similar background, in that, that father or great-grandfather of those children had married a woman of color. And so you have two sets of families that have similar backgrounds, and they also shared some relatives way back there somewhere. So that is essentially what I can remember about that.

BRINSON: Well your family’s been in Kentucky a long time.

HARDING: A long, long time, yes. I think The Casey Countian did some kind of little study on that grandfather that I’m relating to...

BRINSON: Is that the newspaper? The Casey...what did you call it?

HARDING: I think it was The Casey Countian. It was a magazine if I remember. They did some kind of little research and there is some information about him in that story.

BRINSON: Now, you were the oldest?

HARDING: I was the oldest of twelve children.

BRINSON: And did you, how did your family make their living?

HARDING: Well, they were farmers. Everybody was subsistent in those levels, in those years, rather. This was Depression time. And I remember people who didn’t own farms or didn’t have homes, just walking--whole families--just walking down the road together. And sometimes they would stop by our farm and just do little odd jobs and things for the right to have a place to stay. And they would stay in the barn, or sort of a campground they put together right near a little creek that went through our property. And then they’d all move on and go somewhere else. These were some really hungry people, and I remember that very vividly; because my grandfather always raised a huge garden. And he would pull up green onions and hand them over the fence to the people, and they would eat the onions, dirt and all. (Laughing) But it was interesting that people just took what you gave them, they didn’t attempt to take from you. It was different.

BRINSON: What cash crop did your family grow on their farm? Do you remember?

HARDING: Well cash crops were all most animals in those days. You raised hogs, you know, you always had a huge bunch of hogs that got sold. We didn’t raise many calves, but some calves were sold. As far as I know those were--we didn’t have a tobacco allotment, never did; but we did raise lots of corn, which was used in bartering, you know, you could let somebody have corn and they’d let you have something else that you needed. And we had a huge orchard when I was a child and so we did cider; just different kinds of things like that. And so, I suppose those were the things that brought in cash. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Okay, right. Do you have any recollection of when you first realized that Kentucky was a segregated society racially?

HARDING: Oh, from the time of a small child, because we lived in a white community, because all the black families had left. We were the last family there. And so you were called names by people. And you just knew, you didn’t even, it wasn’t a question of what is going on here, it just was. And so you knew that those are they and we are we. While children played together, don’t misunderstand me, children played together and there were people who were close friends, you know. My grandmother had a lady that would come and they would sit on the porch and sew and talk together. And my grandmother would go to her house. But outside of those intimate relationships, there were certain things that people didn’t do. But we, my father had a strange kind of pride, in that he said although we were black, we were never to behave that way. We were never to behave in the way that we were expected to behave. And so we all were brought up to behave as we chose and take the consequences. And usually nothing really happened, somebody would get angry and make sounds and so forth.

BRINSON: You said that you knew that there were things that you couldn’t do. What were some of those things?

HARDING: Well, you knew you couldn’t go to school down the way, you knew that; and other than that particular thing. You just knew. Now there were things you knew, there was no interracial dating and stuff like that, you know, that was just as taboo, you wouldn’t expect the sun to come up in the West. (Laughing) And you wouldn’t expect anybody from your group to relate to people in that group. And a couple of young men that violated, well whether they did or they didn’t, somebody thought that they did. And one was dragged brutally and killed by young men, they were young white men. He thought they were his friends. He’d buddied around with them since they were kids.

BRINSON: Did you know personally any of those people involved in that?

HARDING: I knew the young man, you know, he was much older than I was, because I was just a kid. But he was, I knew him, I’d seen him, you know, that kind of thing. I didn’t know the men who actually did the deed. I didn’t know them, but I knew the man who was killed. Because I remember just feeling so terribly sorry and just shuddering to think what it must be like, to have your friends tie you to the bumper of a car and drag you. I remember thinking how could anybody do that? Because I loved my friends, you know, I couldn’t think of hurting a friend. You know when you are a kid, your friends are very important, and you just assume that’s how all friends are.

BRINSON: Can you recall about how old you were when that happened?

HARDING: I probably was eight, somewhere like that.

BRINSON: Okay, so somewhere around nineteen thirty-nine.

HARDING: Yeah, something like that, because I was attending school by then so.

BRINSON: What about shopping and going to movies and things like that sort?

HARDING: Well, see we were in a rural area, there no movies where we lived, so we had to drive to Stanford to go to the movies. And when we went to the movies, it was just understood, we went upstairs in the crow’s nest and the white people went downstairs. It was just understood, you just didn’t go. And I don’t think anybody ever even tried to go, at that time. It was just so understood. Now in later years, with the Civil Rights movement, people would ask for seats downstairs, you know, for different movies, and make people turn you away. Prior to that you just bought your ticket and that’s where you’d seen everybody go and that’s where you went. (Laughing)

BRINSON: What about restaurants?

HARDING: Restaurants you definitely did not go into, you had to go around to the back door, and they would bring food to you from the back door. But as a consequence of that, most blacks frequent black restaurants. There were a lot of small black businesses like that, you know, restaurants and things. So you bought your food and things there. You did learn kind of a self sufficiency in a way. Now if you set out for a day, you didn’t sit down and say now those people aren’t going to let me do this and those people aren’t going to let me do that, you just knew there were parameters, so you always packed a lunch; you always made sure your car was not going to break down. (Laughing) You always made sure that, you knew where--if you didn’t know where a bathroom was, you were just not going to go to the bathroom that day. So you kind of adjusted on, you know, we may go all day long, if we went to Lexington. Because there might not be a place to go to the bathroom, because we didn’t know a lot of people up here at the time. But as years went on, we knew more people, we’d go to other people, other black people’s bathroom, houses to go to the bathroom. Because if you went over to the Courthouse, where the public bathroom was, you wouldn’t send your dog in there. I mean, it was, I do remember that specifically.

BRINSON: You could use it, it just wasn’t...?

HARDING: No there was a colored bathroom and a white bathroom. I don’t know what the white bathroom was--well that’s not true, I do know what the white bathroom looked like, because I often went to it. Wasn’t supposed to, but I just--if there was nobody around I just went. (Laughing)

BRINSON: I was going to ask you if you ever in any way sort of resisted that segregation. Sounds like you did.

HARDING: Oh yes, you know, the water in the colored fountains was warm, you know, and the fountain was dirty, was never cleaned, so we’d drink out of the white fountains. And many people wouldn’t say anything, you know, they would just look at you like, you should know better than that; but they didn’t say anything. And so you wouldn’t drink if you saw a bunch of hoodlums standing around somewhere that looked like they might enjoy starting something with you.

BRINSON: Well, you’re also very light skinned. Do you think that people who did not know you personally might never have thought of you as anything other than a white child?

HARDING: Well, that was true after I grew up, but when I was a child, they knew I belonged to somebody and there was nobody around. As a child I can’t recall thinking along those lines; except I’ll go over there because I’m not supposed to and I’ll drink and leave. I’ll go to that bathroom. But as I grew older, I just simply went wherever I pleased, and possibly that’s why very few people ever said anything to me, because...

BRINSON: Was there a library in your area, and was it segregated as well?

HARDING: If there was a library, I wasn’t aware of it. The only library that I knew was in the schools. The schools had the libraries.

BRINSON: But in uh, now you mentioned Sanford?

HARDING: Stanford?

BRINSON: Stanford.

HARDING: I don’t know anything about the library in Stanford, again, the only library I used there, was the library from the school. And the teachers would allow us to check out books over the summer. So we could take a stack of books home with us to read over the Summer and bring them back in the Fall. But a public library? I’m sure there was one, but I didn’t know where it was.

BRINSON: You mentioned that most of the blacks in your farm area had left.

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: Where did they go and why did they leave?

HARDING: If you didn’t want to farm, there wasn’t anything else to do, except housework for somebody or work on somebody’s farm; and the pay was, you know, you couldn’t live on it. And it just paid not to get involved in work relationships with Anglos. That’s what we call them out West, Anglos. It just wasn’t worth your while to get into work relationships with them, because nine times out of ten they would cheat you. It was just understood they could do it and get away with it, because you didn’t have a court of law that you could go to. And they disrespected you, so you had to put up with a lot of your--what was considered joking, but, you know, you were the brunt of their jokes. So you just simply, if you could avoid it, you didn’t work for them. Now, people would travel to Lexington, to work in tobacco places, where they, whatever they did with tobacco. I never worked there, so I’m not sure what they did. But they often would come to Lexington to work in those kinds of plants. And there was another place they worked...

BRINSON: But if they came to Lexington to work in the plants, did they then move their residence to Lexington, also?

HARDING: It would start out, it would start out that people would leave, come up and work for a season and come back; but as time went on, they just moved their families. And they would come to Lexington and then move on to Cincinnati. A lot of people went to Cincinnati because the social climate was so much easier there. You didn’t have the extent of segregation that you had in Kentucky, so a lot of people would go to Ohio. They didn’t say Cincinnati, they always said Ohio, but most of them were in Cincinnati. (Laughing) But some went on to other parts of Ohio.

BRINSON: Like Cleveland or..?

HARDING: Akron was one where people went. I remember that name.

BRINSON: How about to Detroit or Chicago?

HARDING: Detroit, they did go to Detroit. They did go to Chicago. There was a lot of movement out of there. And so my father ended up being the last person there. And trying to retain that particular segment of land by buying the shares from the other brothers and sisters, so that he owned all of that. And he did succeed in doing that and kept it until his death.

BRINSON: So, did the family sell the property at some point?

HARDING: At his death, yes, at his death they sold. They sold the property and actually the people who brought the property have just been wonderful. Whenever we want to go down there, they let us come and look and go through and remember.

BRINSON: That’s nice.

HARDING: Last Fall my sisters and I took a picnic and went up where we used to play. They were good friends of ours. Let’s see, the man Gordon Durham and my dad were good friends.

BRINSON: Gordon Durham?

HARDING: Durham, uh hmm.

BRINSON: D U R H A M?

HARDING: Uh hmm. They were good friends, so never had anything, nothing bad to say about them.

BRINSON: Tell me about your first name. I O L A.

HARDING: Interesting name, I’ve heard stories about that name. When I was a little child--because it was a different name--I wanted to know why my name was so different from everybody else’s. And I understand I was named for an aunt, named Aunt Iola, who had moved to Atlanta, Georgia--is where I think they said she’d gone. But when I got older and I looked up the name, I found that there is a town in Missouri named Iola. And I was later told that a lot of Indians in that area had that name, so that it was an Indian name. That’s as much as I know about it. But every Iola that I have encountered had the name of Willhite or Wilson attached to it. (Laughing) I don’t know why that is so.

BRINSON: Have you ever heard stories that maybe there had been some intermarriage with Native Americans of some sort?

HARDING: Oh yes, we were--when I said there was a three prong thing--you know, we have a lot of Native American mixing in the family. There’s my grandfather’s father was African and my grandmother’s grandfather was German, I believe they were, those two brothers, they were German.

BRINSON: Now when you say he was African...

HARDING: He was African.

BRINSON: He came from Africa.

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: Do you know where...

HARDING: Never could really be sure where, because you know the African descent was not kept up with, and people didn’t take the African names. They took the names of the people who owned them, so you can find references to Burdetts and Willhites and things like that; but it is awfully hard to even know what his name was; because he was given the name Willhite. Willhite is the name that he carried.

BRINSON: And he wasn’t a slave though?

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: He was a slave?

HARDING: He was a slave. He was a slave at the beginning of the Civil War, just before the Civil War started, because he ran away and disappeared. That’s always been the stories, that he just...

BRINSON: You weren’t supposed to be buying slaves from Africa ( ).

HARDING: No, not supposed to be, no, but he was supposed to have been from Africa. And he was a slave right there at that time. So the history on this particular man is sketchy, but it’s consistent that he did exist. He had several children. (Laughing) And that he did escape, that seems to be the story, that he just....He went to milk cows and simply disappeared.

BRINSON: Well, I asked you about your name, because I wondered if it had African origin.

HARDING: I have not seen it associated in any way. I’ve only seen it associated with Indian background, so I don’t know. It could be, I don’t know where it came from. There is something similar to it in Greek.

BRINSON: Okay. I’ll have to look it up.

HARDING: Yeah. But I’m not sure where that name came from.

BRINSON: So what year did you finish high school?

HARDING: Hmm. Born in thirty one, add twelve years to that, what would that be?

BRINSON: Somewhere around nineteen forty-eight, forty-nine?

HARDING: No, because I finished college in there, I think.

BRINSON: So, did you go through twelve years of school?

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: Or did you skip any of it along the way?

HARDING: No, I didn’t skip any of it. I was supposed to have, but didn’t. Do you know, I cannot remember what year. I know I finished high school--I was in college in forty-nine.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARDING: So, I would have finished college probably around forty-eight, I mean high school.

BRINSON: Do you remember how large your class was, approximately?

HARDING: Thirteen of us. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Thirteen, wow.

HARDING: There were thirteen of us. I graduated from Lincoln High School, which is in Stanford. And at that time, the schools were segregated, so we were in that small one, and then across the way was the big school, the big Lincoln High School. And we were recipients of all of their cast off athletic equipment, their textbooks, and all those things came over to us. We never got new equipment, new anything. (Laughing) But it was new to us, you know. When it came, you know, we always said we got new this, new that, and new the other, but we all knew that it had come from the other school.

BRINSON: Right. Well, with thirteen people in your class, that must have been a fairly small high school.

HARDING: It was a small high school.

BRINSON: And it was actually called Lincoln, as well as the one, the white school across the street?

HARDING: I think they both were called Lincoln, now the other one may have been called Stanford High.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARDING: It could have been called Stanford High, but ours was Lincoln High. And it was a little grey, brick building, still there. And it had all grades, the high school, the middle school and the elementary. They were all there. Everybody at that time was bussed to Stanford.

BRINSON: With integration...or?

HARDING: No, no, this was before integration.

BRINSON: I see, to the....

HARDING: To this school that, because my little sisters were down in elementary somewhere and we were in the high school. The elementary was on that end and the high school was on the other end, so we didn’t see them very often. They may as well not have been there. I suppose they had recess at a different hour than we had, so that they didn’t have to be in the way of the bigger kids.

BRINSON: Okay, we’ll stop and turn the tape over.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BRINSON: What happened next, after high school graduation for you?

HARDING: After high school graduation, well like a lot of adolescents, I was tired. I was sick of school, traveling so far. And I was a great poet and a great adventuress and there was just so much out there in the world to see, that I did a bunch of dumb things: like going in the window, go in a door and out the window; down the drainpipe and disappear for the day. [Laughing] There was a man-made lake nearby, and I would sit out there and write poetry and draw paintings.

BRINSON: Now was this before or after you graduated from high school?

HARDING: No, this was during high school.

BRINSON: Okay, so you skipped school, is what you are saying.

HARDING: I skipped school.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARDING: And one day I skipped school, and they sent for my parents and they came, or my father did. And they told him I was expelled. Well, I had no idea what they were talking about. And I learned it meant that, well if you don’t like school, you’re just not coming back here. Well, my father was so disappointed, he was just devastated. I can just remember the way he looked, that he had to go in there and be told that his daughter that he thought was so smart, (Laughing) had outsmarted herself and she was no longer in school. So I spent the semester out of school. And teachers would write me letters and you know, said nice things and so forth and so on. And I had to go to work.

BRINSON: And how far along in school were you at this time?

HARDING: This probably was tenth grade which is about typical when kids kind of decide, poof, I’ve had it, you know, with all this stuff. But I had to work, and the only work that was available was housework or farm work, so I chose the farm work. And it didn’t take me very long to realize that I do not want to do this as a career. Although I didn’t use the word career. I do not want to do this for a living. So when time came around, I went back to school and became a model student. And was kind of late, I couldn’t catch up completely, but I did manage to graduate third.

BRINSON: Now you said, you described yourself as a poet and an adventuress. Were you a serious poet? Did you write any poetry?

HARDING: Oh, I wrote volumes of the stuff, just volumes of it. And drew lots, notebooks filled with drawings of nature and things that I saw that I wanted to draw; but I never did anything with that, because I didn’t even associated that kind of thing with making a living. Now, making a living was extremely important, so I knew I was going to go into teaching, education, and do something like that. There was not too many things as a woman that I knew to do. I thought I would be a physician, but I decided that I couldn’t when I got in college. I just knew, I would not be able to pull the resources together. Didn’t mean I couldn’t do it, couldn’t be done. I knew people who could do it, and did do it. I just knew I couldn’t do it. And so, I just said, “I’m not going to be able to do that.” And I don’t blame anybody, except I didn’t take advantage of what resources were there, because I just didn’t see how I could manage them. So anyhow, I didn’t become a physician, but I did become a Ph.D. I decided I would do that instead. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Where did you go to college?

HARDING: I went to Kentucky State.

BRINSON: Okay, and you said that you were there about nineteen forty-nine?

HARDING: Forty-nine, I’m pretty sure that’s when it was.

BRINSON: And did you do four years there, for an undergraduate degree?

HARDING: Yes, because I graduated from there.

BRINSON: And majored in Education?

HARDING: In Education, and I graduated top of my class. And I don’t remember how many there were, but I think there was a hundred and twenty or something like that. I graduated at the top of my class and I worked full time.

BRINSON: What kind of work did you do?

HARDING: I worked at the Narcotic Hospital.

BRINSON: Ohhh, while you were in college?

HARDING: Uh hmm. Yes, I was still in college and a man from Frankfort, I believe he was from Frankfort.....I think that, we lived in Frankfort. I was married part of that time. I don’t remember exactly when I got married, but I had gotten married and both my husband and I had completed the application forms. I got called first and then they cut off, and they weren’t calling anybody else. I had just gotten under the wire. And there was a man there who was very kind and he said, “The very next opening, I’m going to bring your husband on board.” And he did. So the two of us, it wasn’t but about two weeks difference between the time that we started. So we both worked there.

BRINSON: Was your husband a student at Kentucky State also at that time?

HARDING: He w....He had graduated. He was probably over here in Law School by then. It may have been his last year, no it might have been his last year at Kentucky State. Anyway, we lived in Frankfort and commuted up to the Narcotic Hospital.

BRINSON: Which is where?

HARDING: Here in Lexington, out on Leestown Road. We would ride, exchange rides with people. We had a motorcycle, and he would ride the motorcycle up at night and I’d pick it up in the morning and ride it back to Frankfort. And he’d catch a ride home with somebody. We did that until, for I don’t know how long.

BRINSON: What road did you take, because Sixty-four wasn’t there?

HARDING: It was always Leestown Pike, old 421; 421 from Frankfort up to the Narcotic Hospital. And then somewhere along there, he was accepted into Law School and that was a hassle; he’d have to tell you about, because I don’t remember all the details about that one--getting into that Law School. And I got accepted into Graduate School.

BRINSON: At U. K.?

HARDING: At U. K..

BRINSON: Okay, before you tell me that though, I want to ask you a couple of questions. What was your work like? What were your responsibilities at the Narcotic Hospital?

HARDING: I was what was called a--what did they call--Nurse’s something. But we were trained quite differently from what Nurse’s Aides and LPN’s are trained in now. Because actually the training that we got, we did everything that only RN’s do now. I don’t know how in the world they managed to do that. It was a federal complex, but we drew blood, gave medications; I mean just, had responsibility for floors. I often worked on the surgical floor, and assisted with surgeries. I mean, it was quite a responsible job. As time went on, that was changed, and then the job didn’t have the same kind of responsibilities as they had when I first started out there.

BRINSON: Were you doing that kind of work, obviously because you needed the income...

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: ...to go to school. But did you think that it would enhance your own career development in any way?

HARDING: No, because at that time I was in Education, I was pretty solid on the path to Education. It was income. I had once thought I might become a nurse, but I didn’t really like nursing, and so I decided I was going to be a teacher. And I settled in working twelve midnight to eight a.m. in the morning, and I’d leave there and go directly to my classes. And I spent the day in classes or when the time came to do student teaching, I did, you know. So the night shift worked out best for me. And then I would sleep late afternoons until about eleven, get up and get ready to go to work again.

BRINSON: And you two didn’t have any children at that point.

HARDING: No, didn’t have any children at that point.

BRINSON: I think your husband’s name, am I right, is Robert?

HARDING: Robert, uh hmm.

BRINSON: How did you two meet?

HARDING: (Laughs) In class. He used to debate all the time with the Social Studies teacher. And my friend and I sat in the back, and the joke was, we sat back there and read comic books. (Laughing) We would read the stuff...

BRINSON: This was in college?

HARDING: This was in college, now. We knew what the professor was going to ask, I mean, I did anyway. And I knew he didn’t like to be bothered, so I didn’t bother him about anything. I just sat back there. We didn’t always read comic books, we would read whatever else we wanted to read. Or we listened. But my husband would always get into a big debate with him. And he would say, “All right Mr. Harding, don’t eat up all the pie.” And we knew, uh oh, let’s come to attention, because he is going to call on one of us to say something; we better know what’s going on. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Eat up all the pie.

HARDING: All the pie. So...

BRINSON: Who was that teacher, do you remember?

HARDING: Mr. Carmichael.

BRINSON: Okay.

HARDING: And so we sat fairly close together and sometimes I would lean over and say why don’t you ask him such and such and such and such, and that was to get them started going, so I could go on about my business doing whatever I was doing. (Laughing) But he still loves to debate and he kept the class interested; and so that’s how I noticed him, is that he spent a lot of time talking to the professor. You couldn’t miss him.

BRINSON: Well, that’s a trait of a good lawyer.

HARDING: Of a good lawyer, absolutely, absolutely. That was one field I never even thought of going into, not at all.

BRINSON: Why was that?

HARDING: Primarily because I didn’t think of women as going into law. I mean it was just, if you went into Law, you ended up as secretary somewhere for somebody. And I didn’t have any great desire to do that, so I just never thought of it. Even though race was a big factor in which one could and could not do. The other element was always there are certain things you can’t do because you are a woman. Now if somebody said that to me and brought it to my attention, hey you’re not doing that because you are a woman, then I would set out to do it. But it is amazing the number of things that are inside of you that you’re never in touch with as to why you do them. You just assume, this is what women do, I’m a woman, this is what I do. But it never occurred to me, you can’t do it because you’re a woman. Then I would say, oh really then that must mean that I could do it, if I tried it. (Laughing) So I became a pilot, just because women, nobody thought of women as flying, so.

BRINSON: You became a pilot?

HARDING: Yes, I got my license.

BRINSON: How did that come about?

HARDING: My husband had joined a flying club and it took too much time away from Law School. And he said he really didn’t enjoy flying anyway, so I bought his membership. And I did love flying.

BRINSON: And at that point were you still at Kentucky State?

HARDING: No, I was at the University at that time, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. Because we were, we had moved here to Lexington. Because we had originally, we were going to move to Cooperstown, Cooperstown Student Housing. And we were all set up and we had been accepted...

BRINSON: At the University of Kentucky?

HARDING: At the University of Kentucky, because we both were there. I was over in Graduate school and he was in Law school. And so we were going to move from Frankfort up here, so we didn’t have as long a commute; and everything was settled until the day we were to move in and they realized we were black. It never occurred to anybody that we were black, you know, I guess because he was in Law School and I was in Graduate school. It just never occurred to them, integration hadn’t been around that long, anyway. (Laughing) They wouldn’t let us move in.

BRINSON: And this would have been where? About fifty-three or so?

HARDING: Somewhere like that, yes.

BRINSON: Because you would have, you graduated college about fifty-...?

HARDING: Fifty-four, I think, so this might have been around fifty-four, somewhere like that.

BRINSON: So they said no.

HARDING: They said no, so we stayed in Frankfort and commuted a while longer until we found a house in Lexington that we could afford. And we lived there.

BRINSON: With your husband being in Law School did you think about that challenging that “no” in any way at that time?

HARDING: No, because I don’t think I had a serious interest--well I didn’t have a serious interest in law. But it was similar to medicine, in the sense that, I just wasn’t, my mind was not prepared to even attempt to manage what would be necessary to do that. Although I still thought of law as being much more of a man’s field than medicine. I could see myself in medicine. I just couldn’t see myself in Law, I just didn’t.

BRINSON: Right, I think I didn’t ask that clearly enough. When they told you that you couldn’t move into Cooperstown Apartments, did you or your husband think about challenging that in any way?

HARDING: Oh he did. He did.

BRINSON: Appealing it?

HARDING: Oh yes, he did.

BRINSON: Tell me about that.

HARDING: Well what happened was, they said, “Would you want to continue to go to Law School here?” “Yes, I would.” “Well we suggest you forget all about this.” It was very simple. And when you don’t have a lot of money, and you [Laughing], some things you say, “Okay, okay, I hear you. I get what you are saying, it’s not that important.”

BRINSON: And how far up the University administration, if you know,....

HARDING: I don’t know. I don’t know how far, I don’t know how far he went with it. He handled it, and I don’t know how far he actually took that before somebody just simply said, “Do you want to attend Law School here? And if you do, just forget about this.”

BRINSON: So you graduated Kentucky State and did you know that you were going to apply to U. K.?

HARDING: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: So, and it was a consecutive kind of thing?

HARDING: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: And you came, tell me about your application to U. K.. Or your early memories of that experience. This would have been...

HARDING: See, this was so close to the time when blacks were not allowed to go out there, that I had applications in, in Indiana, some university in Indiana, which is where a lot of blacks went; then there was another school in Missouri, I believe. And I don’t remember the names of those two schools, but I had applications in there. And not being sure that I would even be accepted at U. K., because I talked with some man, a man here, who was in Education. I guess it was sort of my advisor or something. At least I talked to them about what I needed to do. And he had just considered himself being very frank, “Your chances of getting in here are pretty slim. You know if I were you, I would pursue the Indiana or the Missouri one.” And so that’s what I was thinking, and then lo and behold I got accepted. They asked me, (Laughing) an embarrassing situation. They asked me to come with a letter of recommendation, so I had gone to somebody at Kentucky State and gotten this glowing letter of recommendation. And I had read it, and I was just--you know, you’re young and you know--I was just flying on Cloud Nine. So I took it in and I showed it to this person and he read it. And he said, “That’s a wonderful letter of recommendation and dah di dah di dah di dah,” and I was supposed to take it somewhere else. So I pick it up and I leave, and when I get somewhere else, I don’t have it. It’s gone! So I dash back over to his office, no you took it with you. Well, now I feel so foolish, you know, here’s this wonderful person, doing all these great things, and she’s lost her letter about her recommendation. (Laughing) I go back outside and there’s a man mowing the lawn and I see little bits of white paper. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Aww.

HARDING: It had gotten, I had dropped it and it had gotten caught up in this lawn mower and was chewed to all these little pieces. (Laughter) Now I have to go back to the original source and say, I lost my letter of recommendation, can you write me another one.

BRINSON: And they weren’t too good about making copies.

HARDING: No, you didn’t make copies of things. Anyway it was kind of embarrassing for someone my tender age. It was very embarrassing.

BRINSON: Can you remember for me, what year you actually started at the University of Kentucky? Was it fifty-four?

HARDING: I think it was fifty-four. I’m almost positive it was fifty-four.

BRINSON: And you enrolled in the College of Education?

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: To do a graduate degree?

HARDING: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: In any particular specialty?

HARDING: Elementary is what I was...

BRINSON: Tell me at that point, how many other people of color were in your program?

HARDING: At that time, I don’t recall seeing anybody other than myself. But before I graduated there were some other people there. But at that time, I don’t recall seeing anybody else. And in the Law School, there was one other person, Arlen Hunt, was there. There had been another man prior to me, but that man, I think had left, and didn’t stay. Arlen was the first to stay and then my husband came shortly after Arlen came.

BRINSON: So, neither you nor your husband lived in a dormitory?

HARDING: Never.

BRINSON: You lived at your house here in Lexington?

HARDING: Right.

BRINSON: So you really didn’t have any experience with students in that way.

HARDING: No, no.

BRINSON: How were students in the classroom setting to you?

HARDING: You know having grown up around where people, you were there, they were here, we don’t interact, you know. You’re in your world, and I’m in my mine. I still have that trait, I can walk into a crowded room anywhere, size it up, and say okay, you’re over there, and I’m over here, and get along just fine. Talk with anybody who needs, or wants, doesn’t mind my talking to them, and the rest of them, I don’t even know they exist. And if they know I exist, that’s fine. But it was sort of like that. They were there. Nobody said anything, or as I recall, did anything. Nobody spoke to you, nobody engaged you and stuff like that. But after I was around there a while, a few people did.

BRINSON: So they didn’t harass you, they left you alone.

HARDING: No, they left me alone, and that was fine with me, you know, because I was working full time, going to school full time and...

BRINSON: You were still at the Narcotic Hospital?

HARDING: Oh yes, I stayed there until I graduated, with a Master’s Degree, I was still there. So that didn’t bother me, because I didn’t have much time anyway. And we didn’t live on campus, so we weren’t involved in any of the student activities. The only thing that I do remember, I think it was President Dickey, I’m almost sure that’s who the President was. What was his name? I’m sure, anyway, there was this huge tea that was being presented, and it was quite an honor to be asked to pour tea in those days, you know. Of course, we wore white gloves and the whole bit. And I was chosen to pour tea. And I remember it was such a fine, elegant affair, with all the silver and crystal and flowers, and all these people, you know, are from all these stations of life. And I don’t know, remember what it was, but they weren’t all young people, so it must have been some kind of faculty thing. Anyway I poured tea at the President’s house. And I thought, well, that’s some kind of recognition. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Were there others who helped you pour tea?

HARDING: Oh yes, there were other young women there, but you know, to be one of the young women chosen to do this.

BRINSON: You felt that was a recognition.

HARDING: Well it was considered a recognition, because all the young ladies considered themselves quite honored to be asked to pour tea at this function, whatever it was. [Laughter]

BRINSON: Do you remember how your teachers reacted to you being there in the early days, especially?

HARDING: One of the things that I do remember is that they discouraged my ever participating in class. If I raised my hand to get involved in a discussion, they just sort of ignored the fact that I had asked permission to comment. And in retrospect, I have thought that they possibly thought they were sparing me being noticed by other people. That if you say something and get something going here, you are going to instigate something that maybe wouldn’t happen if you just keep your mouth shut and sit over there quietly. Maybe that’s what they were doing, I don’t know. But that was one of the things that I noticed, that you were just simply ignored. But there were some professors who--I wish I could remember that man’s name. It started with an E. He always gave me an opportunity and encouraged me to share in that class. And I remember, because I was a bit shy anyway.

BRINSON: Do you remember what the class was? The topic?

HARDING: It was kind of a socio, a psychology type of class. And I got really interested in psychology from that class. But then in another psychology class, I thought I had done outstanding work and I got a B; so I approached the professor and asked him if he would explain to me why I got a B. And he simply looked me in the face and said, “I don’t think your people are capable of making an A, not in my class.” And I said, “Okay, I guess you made it clear. I didn’t ask you if you would change it. I asked you why you gave it to me and you told me.” So that was that. There was no need--well I had learned that any way, there’s no need to argue with most professors about grades--you are just going to alienate them and everybody else. So if they didn’t see fit to give you a grade different from what they gave, unless there was an error, you know. If they said, “Oh let me look, I didn’t think you got that grade, you know, I may have made a mistake in computation.” That’s different. But if they said, “Oh, so and so and so and so,” well you just--I didn’t debate with them, because it wasn’t worth it.

BRINSON: Well you were doing graduate work in education at a pretty important time in the history of integration and education, certainly with the Brown Decision in fifty-four, and the Implementation Decision in fifty-five. And I wonder whether, if our thinking at that point in time of where the Brown Decision was going to take us, whether you had any thoughts about what your career in Education was going to be like? Did your, what did your teachers want for you when you graduated?

HARDING: Well, most of them, the ones that I related to well....And I must say my husband had good relations with his peers. He still knows those guys, they still send word back and forth. And I didn’t make that kind of connection with people. Now I’m going to say, it probably had a lot to do with myself, you know, I probably, I think that had probably more to do with that than anything else. And I do remember some of the people, but not many of them. And I didn’t have a lasting relationship with them. But instructors who were close to me, always advised me to go into administration. And so I did, as time went on, I did do that. But everywhere I’d go to work, they’d always say, “You should be in administration, dah di da di dah.” And I’d say, “Well I like teaching.” But anyway that’s what they usually saw me going in that direction.

BRINSON: Why is that? Why did they encourage you toward administration?

HARDING: They must have thought that I had some characteristics that suited that of an administrator.

BRINSON: So you saw it as a compliment really to your abilities.

HARDING: Yes, well that was the hierarchy. And the hierarchy was that a woman in Education could go into administration. That’s where we will put our talented women. Let’s groom them for administration, because there weren’t that many women in administration.

BRINSON: In your graduate program, how do you think it broke down in terms of gender? Predominantly female?

HARDING: Uh hmm, mostly. Yeah in education, mostly....the men I would encounter in the administration classes, the classes that had to do with that kind of subject level. The women were in the teaching content curriculum type of thing. Some men were in curriculum, but it was the supervision and administration classes where I saw most of the men.

BRINSON: Did any of your training or education at U. K., require you to do like an internship in a public school off campus or visit a public school?

HARDING: Oh yes, yes, very definitely. I did work at, I believe it was Booker T. and Russell, I think, were the two schools that I worked in.

BRINSON: And those were the two black schools at the time?

HARDING: Yes, they were black schools.

BRINSON: So, tell me if I’m reading this correctly, so U. K. made those placements for you? Or did you?

HARDING: You know I can’t recall if they made the placements or if they said find a place, and I found the place. I’m not sure which of those took place, it’s been too long and I don’t remember. I just remember that’s where I did my internship.

BRINSON: But they, however it actually worked out, they directed you or you directed yourself toward the all black schools.

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: What I’m trying to get at here, and I’m not asking it all that well, is I’m just wondering where the thinking was of the faculty at that point in time with you. Because you’re, in a sense, you’re new for them, because of your color. Were they trying to encourage you into integrated systems or were they, you know, basically thinking...

HARDING: To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t think there were any integrated systems. They hadn’t integrated.

BRINSON: That’s right. That’s right, here in Lexington it was much later.

HARDING: Uh hmm, right. So...

BRINSON: Were all of their placements in Lexington though, or were they around the state?

HARDING: I can’t respond to that, I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I would think most of them would be here in Lexington, because just the convenience for the student and for the faculty who would supervise them.

BRINSON: Okay, so you spent how many years doing your graduate, you did a Master’s Degree.

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: And then somewhere along the way, you did a Doctoral Degree.

HARDING: The Doctoral Degree came much later. I left, we left here and went to New York. And I worked there and went into Adult Education, became the Director of Adult Education in Great Neck, New York. And worked for the Department of Education, writing curriculum for Adult Education. And that’s what I did primarily in that, and I had a private practice.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BRINSON: ...in New Mexico...

HARDING: Right. And in New Mexico when we first went there, my husband had transferred from National Labor Relations Board, to the National Labor Relations Board in Albuquerque, New York, I mean Albuquerque, New Mexico. And I was going to be, no a mommy, I had kids then. So I stayed home with the kids for a little while, and then, I can’t remember the details, but anyway, I found myself deciding I’m going to go get my Doctorate. So I went back to the University of New Mexico and started work on my Doctorate. By then I had decided that I liked Counseling and Psychology and I was going to go that direction. But I had put in two applications, one to the School of Psychology and one to the School of Education, Secondary Education; and that one materialized first, so I went in that direction and continued with the psychology on the side. So I somewhere along the way got certified in both of them. And I worked out there in reading, because that was quite big, you know, psycho-linguistics and the whole thing. They all dovetailed together so nicely. And then I worked for the University for a number of years, in reading; teaching classes in Reading, Curriculum and in Counseling.

BRINSON: So you’ve been at all levels.

HARDING: Right, I worked at all different levels.

BRINSON: And you retired, you told me, I believe, seven years ago?

HARDING: In ninety-three I retired, and by then I had established my own private practice in Family, Adolescent and Family Counseling. And so I had spent a number of years doing that, although I had done that on the side, building up a small practice as I was going along. So when I retired, from public schools, I just, I changed over into a private practice full time. And then did that for a few years and then retired completely.

BRINSON: Is your husband retired?

HARDING: He’s been retired for a number of years.

BRINSON: I want to go back to your time at the University of Kentucky, which I believe you finished in May of nineteen fifty-seven.

HARDING: I think that’s correct, yes.

BRINSON: And you did a Master’s in Education with a minor in Psychology and Sociology. And I have a couple of questions, actually. I’m interested in knowing about any of the psychology faculty that you might have come in contact with. How, what was your experience with them? Did you...?

HARDING: Psychology I didn’t get much encouragement from those professors. There was one, as I mentioned, there was one person that was interested in some kind of research project that I did. And I don’t remember what it was now. But it had to do with--it had historical perspective, because I remember trying to get the information. They had no books on the shelves. I had gone to the library to see if there was some kind of interloan system that I could get at some books about African-Americans. And she said, “We have some books upstairs, only graduate students are allowed in the room, and since you are a graduate student, you can go in.” And I was amazed, I got a number of books about African-Americans, hidden way off somewhere, which you couldn’t find (Laughing), unless you were, or didn’t have access to, unless you were in Graduate School. And there weren’t too many people in Graduate School, so they had never seen these books. But I was doing some kind of research project on the psychology of discrimination or segregation, or something like that. It was kind of a combination of sociology and psychology, social psychology. And he was very interested in that and was very encouraging about that. But there was another professor who gave me the B and simply said, you know, “He just didn’t believe my people could earn more than a B;” and so there it was.

BRINSON: I’ve interviewed another Ph.D. student of color, a few years later than you, who actually did her work in psychology.

HARDING: Uh hmm.

BRINSON: And she and several others have referred to this too, that there was, there was an understanding if you were of color that you needn’t bother trying to do a Ph.D. in Psychology at that point in time at U. K., because unless you managed to accumulate all the credits without anybody realizing that you were doing it, that you would never have a dissertation committee in that department that would sign you off as a Ph.D..

BRINSON: I believe that, that could happen, definitely, because there was just so little encouragement. And you do need encouragement, you do need somebody you can go and ask questions of and somebody will say, “Oh yes, you should try this, you should do that, have you talked to Professor So and So, and by the way here are these books.” Or just, you didn’t get any of that, even the minor type of support, you didn’t get anything. They were just coldly there, that’s what most of them were, except for that one person. And I wasn’t pursuing a degree in Psychology, I was just getting a minor in it. But they, it was, if I had to make an assessment (Laughing) I’d say you wouldn’t be welcome in this program. You’d probably have a very difficult time getting through.

BRINSON: How did you handle your finances? Were you on any sort of scholarship at that point in time? Or did you...?

HARDING: I still worked, twelve to eight...

BRINSON: You still worked, paid tuition...

HARDING: ...and went to school in the daytime, paid my own tuition. Yeah. The job at Narco was considered a very nice position, people worked there until they retired, raised families with that position, you know. And so it was considered a nice income. I felt very lucky to have that job. And since people were willing to let me work twelve to eight, since nobody wanted to work twelve to eight, I didn’t have a whole lot of competition for the time. (Laughing) It worked out beautifully. It was just ideal.

BRINSON: Do you remember what your first earnings were at the Narcotics Hospital?

HARDING: I think it was twenty-nine hundred dollars, if I remember correctly.

BRINSON: Younger people today are always amazed when any of us tell them what was a good wage in those days

HARDING: That was a good wage in those days. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Twenty-nine hundred dollars a year, before taxes.

HARDING: Yes, and it was regular, you know, you’d count on that check. It came right in all the time. (Laughter)

BRINSON: How did your family feel about you being at the University of Kentucky? Your family, your friends, were any of them...

HARDING: I was the first person in my family to go into higher education. And so going to the University of Kentucky, was just part of, this is just something Iola does, you know, they just kind of....I’m sure they were proud and stuff like that, but they just kind of associated that, that’s what you do. Because I was the first person that had done that.

BRINSON: So the first person who had gone to undergraduate college.

HARDING: Right.

BRINSON: But the difference there is you went to an all black college, as opposed to, you really were a real minority at the University of Kentucky. And I wonder if any of them had any concern about you being at the University, for your own well-being?

HARDING: To my knowledge, to my knowledge no, because we personally grew up sitting here with a whole milieu of white people all around us, so that was not a new situation. It’s just a continuation of a situation that’s being played out in a little different way over here. But it’s the same thing, you’re all by yourself in what could be a hostile situation, and you know, you just deal with it.

BRINSON: Tell me about your children. I know you have a daughter.

HARDING: Well, I have two daughters, yes.

BRINSON: ...who lives here in Lexington.

HARDING: And bless her heart, she has done for both of us. She is a lawyer, and that’s her father’s profession and she’s a professor, that was her mother’s profession. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Is she a professor here at U. K.?

HARDING: Yes, she’s a professor here at U. K. It is so interesting to walk in that...

BRINSON: In the Law School?

HARDING: In the Law School. It is so interesting to walk down the halls, where her father had such a tough time getting into, and there’s her office sitting down there. And her father’s picture is out there on the wall as one of the graduates.

BRINSON: Tell me her name.

HARDING: Roberta, Roberta Harding.

BRINSON: And how did, how did she get from New Mexico back here to Lexington?

HARDING: Ah, via Rome, via San Francisco. (Laughing) When she first graduated, she graduated from International Finance, a degree in International Finance. She worked in San Francisco in a banking setting. Then she went to Rome, liked it there, stayed a while, came back, decided she wanted to go to Law School. And at this point in time, I’m thinking, “You are just gallivanting around, you didn’t keep that job, you went off to Rome, you didn’t like that, la, la, la, la, la. I’m not going to be bothered with you, you know, if you don’t settle down type of thing, a yah, yah, yah.” But anyway, she calls and says, “I’ve been accepted at Harvard.” Well, what are you going to do if your kid calls and tells you, “I’ve been accepted to Harvard.” Well, you’re going count your resources and put them together and do what you have to do. (Laughing) So she went to Harvard and got her Law degree there and came out. And she was courted by the big firms in San Francisco. So she got hired at one of the very prestigious firms, Pillsbury, Madison and Suture, if I remember the correct one. I’m not sure which one was first, but anyway, she worked at one of these big law firms, and was making considerable money, and worked out there for a while. And she said, “You know, I just don’t have a life. I walk in there and I work all the time on these papers.” She said, “I have no social life.” So she said, “I’m just not happy with this.” She said, “But I’m so ashamed that I studied so hard and I’ve done all this, and now I want to do something else.” And I said, “Look, if you’re willing to live on what you earn, you do whatever you want to.” (Laughing) “I’m with you one hundred percent.” She said, “Well I think I want to teach.” I said, “Well you know you’re not going to earn a whole lot. You’re going to have to learn to live on a whole lot less.” And so she started applying for teaching positions and this one opened up. I mean it was available. And she said, “I think I’m going to take it. It’s Dad’s alma mater and I think that I will take it.” And she did.

BRINSON: Had she ever been on the campus before she came to interview?

HARDING: You know, I don’t think she had. I don’t think she’d ever....We might have driven the kids through there, just to show them, you know, but I don’t recall there was any visiting inside, or anything like that.

BRINSON: And what’s her area of teaching specialty?

HARDING: She is very interested in death penalty work and is becoming quite well renowned in the world, actually. People from all over the country call her about death penalty stuff, because she does a lot of work in that. But she teaches, (Laughing) you’d think I’d know, but I don’t, can’t remember.

BRINSON: Is it Business Law or Constitutional Law?

HARDING: No, it’s not Constitutional Law. It’s Civil Law, tortes and things like that. Uh hmm.

BRINSON: Okay. And she came here, about how long was she...?

HARDING: She came here in ninety-one. She’s been here since ninety-one.

BRINSON: Now she’s lived in some pretty big cities of the world. And been to some pretty big places.

HARDING: Yes, born in New York and grew up there for a long time.

BRINSON: ....and places to be like Harvard. How does she find coming to Lexington?

HARDING: ...she went to school at Harvard. She likes it very much. She really does, she has her house, and her dog, and her garden, and her flowers and things, you know. Things haven’t been absolutely, you know, I could go, we all could go into what goes on now, where there are things are not fair. But when you compare them with back then, it’s quite different, but it’s a long way from being ideal. But she likes it here, and this is where she plans to stay. She seems happy.

BRINSON: Her father actually was here, would that have been almost forty-five years?

HARDING: Yeah, something like that.

BRINSON: Before she came.

HARDING: Before she came.

BRINSON: What a wonderful story.

HARDING: And one of his professors, the Whitesides, have been, you know, every time I would come to town in early years, I’d usually go to lunch with them.

BRINSON: The Whitesides?

HARDING: Uh hmm, usually go to lunch with them. He remembers my husband when he was there in Law School. My husband remembers him as being one of his favorite professors, you know.

BRINSON: There wouldn’t be, probably, any faculty still there, when your daughter arrived that were there when her father was there.

HARDING: No, there were Emeritus faculty there, and Fred Whiteside was one of them. He was there and he, you know, welcomed her and was there--kind of a mentor if you needed to know something, because he still maintained an office. I don’t know if he still does. I think he probably doesn’t go into the office as much now, as he once did; as he did, when she first started coming there.

BRINSON: And you have another daughter, too?

HARDING: I have another daughter Olivia, and she lives in San Francisco and that’s where I’m going tomorrow, to visit her. And she works as a...- boy I can sure keep up with my kids’ job description. (Laughing) She works as a Registrar in a private school, and is responsible for setting up seminars. So she gets to meet people like Sylvia Brown (Laughing) and all these kinds of people, and arranges seminars, people all over the country register and she gets them enrolled and gets them settled in where their classes are and that kind of thing.

BRINSON: So she’s doing well.

HARDING: She’s doing well and she loves San Francisco and she is quite a photographer and a writer. She’s extremely talented as a writer, not as gregarious as her sister. She’s a bit shyer, but she’s extremely talented. I think she will do, she’s about five years younger than my older daughter. She has written a lot of things and she has them. She hasn’t begun to do anything with them yet, because she says, “I’m maturing.” (Laughing) “I’m maturing.” Well go right ahead...

BRINSON: But she’s hoping someday to publish it?

HARDING: Yes, she’s hoping to get her things together to publish.

BRINSON: So you don’t have any grandchildren yet?

HARDING: No, I have no grandchildren. I have two grand-dogs and one grand-cat. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Okay. You mentioned earlier that your husband, I believe when you were in New York, worked for NLRB?

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: And then when you moved to New Mexico, what kind of practice did he have?

HARDING: He continued to work for NLRB.

BRINSON: Okay, and did he do that his entire career?

HARDING: Yes, he’s been in, he retired from NLRB. And he’s done administrative...

BRINSON: And NLRB, for the transcriptionist is National Labor Relations Board.

HARDING: Yes, and he’s been an administrative law judge in labor disputes.

BRINSON: Good field. Have either you or your husband been involved in any alumni activity from the University of Kentucky?

HARDING: Except for monetary support, no, we just make donations.

BRINSON: Right. You’re at such a distance.

HARDING: Such a distance, yeah.

BRINSON: But now you have a reason to come back and visit with your daughter.

HARDING: And I barely can keep going with all the family responsibilities, all the people to be seen. I barely can keep up with it. I have no time for outside. I really have no time for outside activities at all. If I do those, I’ll have to do them when I get back to Albuquerque. (Laughing)

BRINSON: Well I would guess with as many children in your family, you probably have, how many of them, how big is your family still in Kentucky?

HARDING: Oh, it’s just humongous, because they all have children and the children have children and all these nieces. And then I get along with all of the in-laws, so I visit the in-laws. And when they have their homecomings, I go to their homecomings, family reunions and things. So it gets pretty involved, really involved.

BRINSON: I asked you about alumni activities with the University of Kentucky, but what about with Kentucky State University?

HARDING: I attended a couple of their alumni events when I was here during the summer, you know, just like a visitor to go, you know. No old home week type of thing, but I’m not really active in any of that either.

BRINSON: Have you kept up with any of your classmates?

HARDING: Not really, no.

BRINSON: Or has your husband in any way? You mentioned that he had heard....

HARDING: Yes, he keeps up more with people than I do. It is probably because he has a small family and I have a big family. And what time I have, honestly I spend it with people that---nearly all--I just don’t have the time. I would not have time to do anything if I got really involved with....(Laughing) Now I know people, these people. Like this time I have visited and contacted the people that I worked with at Narco, just to see how they are doing, you know; and have lunch with some of them, things like that. But it wouldn’t be an ongoing thing.

BRINSON: Now Narco is...Narcotic...?

HARDING: Narcotic Hospital, right. And you know, found out that most of them are still living, most of them stayed there and retired from Narco; and you know, pictures of their grandchildren and things like that. And then people from the University, I mean, Kentucky State, probably four years ago, I attended one of the home reunion type functions and made contact with a lot of those people, you know; and just caught up with where they were and what they were doing. And went on. I write a letter once in a while, and exchange letters and things like that.

BRINSON: I think I am coming to the end.

HARDING: Okay.

BRINSON: But I wonder, by the sixties, you and your husband both had left Kentucky.

HARDING: Yes.

BRINSON: Were, in the sixties with the sit ins and the demonstrations and whatnot that we had in Kentucky, but certainly they had them in other places. Were either of you involved in any of that activity? That social justice advocacy?

HARDING: Yes, we both were. Just before we left here, we, you know, I remember numerous meetings, and planning things, and marching, and going downtown and sitting at the...

BRINSON: Here in Lexington?

HARDING: Here in Lexington. Going downtown and sitting in the dime store at the counter. That was the big thing. You could go in and buy things, but you couldn’t buy anything to eat and sit at the counter. So you could sit there, and they’d ignore you, stuff like that. Now if I went alone, nine times out of ten, they’d serve me, but I don’t think they really realized. Because it is a University town, I don’t think they really realized, and didn’t want to get involved anyway, making a mistake. So, rather then make a mistake, it’s easier to just serve me my hot dog then it was to make a mistake. (Laughing) But no, we were involved in that whole thing.

BRINSON: So this would have been, what period?

HARDING: Late fifties, very late fifties.

BRINSON: So really before, you know, we think of the sit in as sort of starting in February of nineteen sixty out at Greensboro, when the truth is there were lots of sit ins...

HARDING: Oh yeah, people were already...yes.

BRINSON: It just didn’t make the news.

HARDING: Absolutely, absolutely.

BRINSON: So you think there were sit ins here?

HARDING: There were, yeah, people were planning how to, and another thing we did - there was a woman I worked with at Narco. She was an Anglo woman. We went out one evening and went into every restaurant we could go in, to, uh, just to do it. I joined the, oh what was that?

BRINSON: At one point there was CORE that was here, as well as the NAACP.

HARDING: Yeah, we did our work primarily with the NAACP. And I had joined the University Women, what’s that University...Association..?

BRINSON: Oh, AAU...

HARDING: AAUW...

BRINSON: American Association of University Women?

HARDING: Right. I was one of the few people that was in a position to break that organization, because I had credentials in the background, and so I did. Well, here I am, this young little woman, (Laughing) with these older women, who had all, you know, had entirely different lifestyles. And I have to admit it was the most boring thing I’d ever done in my life. (Laughter) But I did it, for the Cause.

BRINSON: You became a member.

HARDING: I became a member.

BRINSON: And that was here in Lexington?

HARDING: That was here in Lexington, yes. The AUW.

BRINSON: Well tell me, let’s talk about that a little bit. What, what was that like for you?

HARDING: Well the ladies were very nice. I mean they, I mean there was a group that did not want me there. But once it had been settled--however it was settled--that there was no way they could keep me from being there, they were cordial, and just plain...But I am accustomed to that. I am accustomed to being where people don’t want me to be there; just as I was accustomed when I flew, walking into a plane with a group of men, who looked at me like, what is she doing here? But, you know, it didn’t matter, I’m there. I don’t care whether you want me there or not.

BRINSON: Now were you the only woman of color at that time?

HARDING: Oh yes, oh yes, there were no other women of color in that group. And we met at their homes, you know and had coffee and did whatever they did at the meetings. And some of them tried to just ignore me, but if I had something to say, I said it, and you know, that was it. And that’s where, I just stayed in it until I left here.

BRINSON: And your husband, you said was involved.

HARDING: Yes, he was involved in many different things, and you know, I don’t remember what exactly what they all were; because he was doing things that he could do and I was doing things that I could do. But we were involved in the early stages of that.

BRINSON: Were there NAACP meetings that you went to?

HARDING: Uh hmm, yeah.

BRINSON: To sort of plan what the activity was going to be?

HARDING: Yes, yes. The NAACP said, “We need somebody to integrate that AAUW and who do we have that can do that?” “Well, Mrs. Harding over here can do that.” Okay, that was my job, then I had to fill out all the forms, and go to all the, uh, you know, they interviewed you. Go to all the interviews and do all the things and jump through all the hoops, and whatever you have to do, and be ready for the NAACP to back it up legally. Yes, you will admit her, she meets all of your criteria. You don’t have any choice.

BRINSON: Did you continue your membership when you left the area?

HARDING: No. (Laughter) That was just strictly something I did, you know, for the Cause so to speak. No, no, no. (Laughing) I am an adventuress. I love teas, and I love serving teas, but that’s not my focus in life.

BRINSON: I wonder, I want to ask you your perspective as an educator, because a number of people that I have talked to, have said, “You know when we integrated the schools, we thought it was a good idea at the time, but in hindsight we’re not so sure. We feel like we’ve lost a lot of things with integration in the black community. We’ve lost, one, teachers, who really cared about our students.” I just, I don’t know how much from New Mexico you’re following some of what’s happening in Jefferson County with recent litigation to do away with percentages of students, black and white, allowed into schools or not. Have you heard anything about that?

HARDING: Well yes, it’s happened in other places in the country.

BRINSON: I would just be interested in how you see all that.

HARDING: It’s not one of those things that, I don’t think, that you can answer really quickly with a yes or no, good or bad, without looking at all the possibilities. You do not have change without contingencies. And when you pressure for change, it is difficult to anticipate where some of the problems are going to be. And one of the problems was, is that we did lose the connection that we had as a culture, and the support and the caring. Much of that was lost.

BRINSON: I’m going to turn the tape over.

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

HARDING: ...and while the schools were shabby, their equipment was shabby. When I was in school, I have to say that those teachers gave me something. Wherever I went, I was never short. I went to this University. I competed very well with the people out there. I wasn’t short on anything. When I left Kentucky, I went to New York and I went to some schools there. I was not short on anything. So to say that black schools were somehow not adequate or didn’t prepare you, I don’t think was absolutely, totally true. I think what happened is when, in the cities--because I taught in the schools in New York--what happened was you had teachers who didn’t think kids, black kids could learn, didn’t think they had the capacity, did not have that drive that black teachers in the South had. You’re going to make something of yourself. You can do it, you know, and they encouraged you, booted you if necessary. (Laughing) But pushed you along that you can do it, if you just will. And when I arrived in the North, I saw Anglo teachers, of different ethnic backgrounds, with the consensus, these black kids are not capable, therefore we don’t have to do very much with them. And the whole hierarchy was, they’re not capable, we don’t do very much with them. Consequently they did very little with them. And I remember having a class of third graders that were considered to be retarded almost. You know. They were not expected to do anything. They even told me those kids weren’t, you know, I didn’t have to bother too much with them, because they couldn’t. And I’m not just boasting, those kids shot up like you can’t imagine. They, oh we just did marvelous things, marvelous things. Little kids that thought they were stupid and dumb. All they needed was encouragement and the opportunity and structure and expectations. You know, it never occurred to me they couldn’t work because they were black, because that’s not where I came from. I came from black kids worked hard, you know, they were expected to achieve. And they did achieve. We had discipline problems, we had lots of problems. They were poor, I mean, you’d go to some of the homes and it was just really sad. But when you went and sat down and talked with those parents, they wanted their kids educated. The Anglo teachers didn’t....You didn’t have to go talk to a parent, number one. And they didn’t. I never saw so many people who sat and read newspapers and wrote letters and just did everything under the sun except teach the kids. They’d pass out some coloring stuff or some stuff to trace and at the end of the year you haven’t learned anything.

BRINSON: Right. You say that with such energy and passion. I just have to ask you, are still involved in social justice issues of any sort today?

HARDING: No. I did that, the world’s different.

BRINSON: Or your husband?

HARDING: No, no.

BRINSON: We’re all older.

HARDING: We’re all older. Now, I am available for consultation. Any young person who is out there doing these things. I mean, in Albuquerque, they, you know, they know me. So they’ll get on the phone give me a call and we’ll go have lunch and sit and talk about some issue they have. And if there’s anything I can pass on, or ask questions to provide guidance or resources, I’m available to do that. But I really think I would be doing an injustice to move in, because the young people have to pick it up and keep it moving. The longer I’m sitting there, the longer I’m keeping them out of the position of learning. So if I’m back here, supporting them as a mentor or consultant, or whatever you want to call it, I think that’s how I can best be involved.

BRINSON: Is there anything else you’d like to add to this interview today, that we haven’t talked about?

HARDING: No, I can’t think of anything.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you very much.

HARDING: Well thank you.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: We’re going to come back on here, because we turned the tape off too soon. But go ahead, when you gave talks?

HARDING: No, I used to do a lot of lecturing. And one of the things that I would say in a lecture of a mixed crowd. I would say you think of Martin Luther King as having brought Civil Rights to blacks. He freed you too. You can now talk to me if you want to, prior to that you were no more free to talk and associate with me, than I was with you. So that people, who wanted to be decent and honest and treat everybody, didn’t have that option, because they would be penalized or socially ostracized.

BRINSON: Because that was the system.

HARDING: That was the system.

BRINSON: Everybody followed...

HARDING: Everybody followed

BRINSON: ...the system.

HARDING: ...the system, or if you didn’t, it had sanctions.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: I though of two more questions that I wanted to ask you about your time here and your advocacy before you moved on to New York. Do you remember, can you identify any other people by name who were active in those efforts that you were aware of here? It’s been a long time.

HARDING: It’s been a long time, and the people that were active are actually not living, some of them are not living. And I don’t remember their names.

BRINSON: That’s okay.

HARDING: No, I can’t remember, not right off, I can’t. Maybe when I leave here and I’m going down the street, I’ll say, tsk I forgot her.

BRINSON: There was a woman by the name of Julia Lewis, who was a nurse, who was active with the CORE chapter. Now you mentioned...

HARDING: No, I wasn’t, probably so, because CORE had not really advanced to that level when I was here. They were further North.

BRINSON: There was an Episcopal priest, Robert Estill, at the Cathedral here.

HARDING: No, that all came after we left.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you.

[Tape goes off and on]

BRINSON: You were telling me about your brother’s wife.

HARDING: My brother’s wife, Bobby Willhite was extremely active. That’s when the young people were being picked up and carried off to jail, carted off and all that, and locked them up here in Lexington.

BRINSON: That’s was here in Lexington?

HARDING: Yeah, they were locking people up. She was here, but that was after I had gone, had moved to New York.

BRINSON: Okay, thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW