SRC 17
Page 8
 the flag of a country for which he dies. Land of the free, to thee we cry shall our
 fond hopes forever die? Shall our stripes of celestial white be dipped in blood
 and [tape interrupted]. When Negroes and I had burst its prison and I would
 admire the black man's wisdom. When deeds are done no tongue can tell these
 that were shamed extremist hell. Flag of the free, does though still wave in the
 land of the free and home of the brave? Then she says, no flag of the free,
 though dost not still wave o'er the land of the free, but the home of the brave.
 You say the Negro man is free and yet drag him to a tree. I could go on, but
 anyway.

W: That's written at the tale end of WWI, 1918.

S: 1918 right, she was a student over at Virginia State there.

W: I've asked you for a copy of that poem, that's very powerful.

S: Yeah, it is, it really is. I have a think called "This is Your Life Virginia." It could
 tell you all that you need to know about Virginia from 1619 on.

W: Having established that there is this long lineage and a constant struggle, I think
 it's still true to say that it has peaks and troughs, or at least that there are
 distinctive phases to that struggle. I guess what I want to do is move us on to
 the late 1950s and early 1960s, and to ask you about when you became and
 how you became involved in what we might think of as civil rights activism for
 want of a bigger umbrella phrase.

S: As I have said to people concerned with this, I have no idea how I just moved to
 it. I was teaching at Virginia Union University. I had been teaching at Virginia
 State University in the 1960s. When I finished my masters there in 1964 I was
 driving back and forth to Petersburg. Therefore, it took me out of the community,
 but when I came home in 1968, came to Virginia Union, right away I just began
 working in the community again. In 1958 I was president of my sorority, Alpha
 Kappa Alpha Sorority, 200 women. I had just come out of school in 1948, so I
 was president very young. That was during the time we were marching around
 and picketing.

W: You were involved in that sort of direct action protest.

S: I was involved in that direct action, yes.

W: Who organized those protests, which organization? It wasn't NAACP was it?

S: It was this organization, I'm losing names of things, that Dr. Ranson organized
 earlier. They did the human relations part while up to the 1950s. They were