 advertisement of our distinguished lecture series. Today I have the pleasure of introducing a friend of mine who's also a pioneer in social work research and this takes place during Black History Month or African-American History Month. Now just a little bit of trivia for you. African-American history of Black History Month was invented by a person named Carter G. Woodson and Woodson called the father of Black History of Black Studies made it in February because he found that was the month that Black people had did the most in history in the United States. So I wanted to circumvent any rumors about particularly that people had about it was the shortest month and that's why they gave it to Black folks. So that goes away okay. Now let me get on with the introduction. Dr. Iris Carlton-Lenai has over 35 years of social work teaching experience. She has published over 70 articles and book chapters and has several books to her credit. Her professional interests include social welfare history especially African-Americans and the progressive era and rural elderly African-American women and social support. Dr. Carlton-Lenai is a full professor at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. Throughout her career she has advocated for social justice and has served as a mentor to social work scholars throughout the country. She has received several national awards for her work including the Distinguished Recent Contribution to Social Work Education Award from the Council on Social Work Education, the Feminist Scholar Honoree, note recognition from the Council on the Role and Status of Women and the Sisters of the Academy Legacy Award, the Distinguished Achievement and Social Work Education Award presented by the National Association of Black Social Workers and the University of North Carolina Distinguished Teaching Award for post-bachelet instruction. In 2015 she was selected as a social work pioneer by the National Association of Social Workers. Ladies and gentlemen, students and digitaries, I give to you Dr. Iris Carlton-Lenai. Good evening. You know, I'm southern. When we say good evening, thank you. Thank you. We really do expect people to respond. My style, my style is participatory, so I won't be giving you a formal lecture with no space for you. So if you'd like to ask questions of me as I talk, that would be fine. If you'd like to come down a little closer, that too would be fine. You're in your home, so do whatever it is you'd like to do, and I'll accommodate you. So I use photographs as I talk about social work, social welfare pioneers, and I'll show you some of these photographs as I talk, and I'll just provide some information about these folk, their contributions and encourage you to, again, participate, ask questions and add something that I might not include. I primarily talk about progressive error, but not exclusively. I talk mostly about women and their contributions, which are most often ignored, but not exclusively. We'll talk some about victimization, denial of access to resources, the migration or movement of African Americans in this country during the progressive era, and the great migration. So first, I'm going to talk just a little bit about one of your Texas pioneers, and I'm sure you know more about her than I do. Lulabel Madison White, do you know her? Okay, then I might know a little bit more than. But this woman, I think, was from Elmo, is that a place? Texas? Her contributions dealt largely with the NAACP. She was the first paid executive secretary of that organization here in Texas, and she served as the president of the Houston chapter and grew it to the largest chapter in the south. She was also instrumental and involved with the Supreme Court case sweat versus painter. Is that right? So y'all got to help me now. So I want you to participate in this so that it will be a little bit more interesting to you and go a little easier for me if you can. What she did was she presented a case for the NAACP to use in terms of integration, in terms of higher education, primarily graduate education, the University of Texas schools. So what she did with that particular case predates Brown by about six years. Is there anything you'd like to add? Anybody? So this is Margaret Maury Washington. She was Booker T. Washington's third wife. And she was instrumental in establishing settlement houses. And she established the Russell Settlement House at Tuskegee. And the Russell Settlement House was primarily to serve the wives of farmers who came to Tuskegee for training. The Russell Settlement provided services and programs and training for those women so that they could learn how to be self sufficient, how to build their own homes, literally build their own homes, how to maintain their communities. That was primarily her role. She was also like the dean of women at Tuskegee. Any questions? Do you want to add anything? And this is Charlotte Hawkins Brown. Look at her hat. She's very clean. Charlotte Hawkins Brown started a couple of schools in North Carolina. One was Palmer Memorial Institute. And it was sort of a finishing school for middle class young men and women in a town called Sedalia, North Carolina, which is kind of in the middle of the state. And she had, as a main structure on her campus, the Canary Cottage. And that's that yellow house that you see over there. And what she would do each week was she would invite the students to come to the Canary Cottage where she would teach them appropriate manners. And she wrote a book called The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, and to Wear, where she further taught them correct appropriate behavior because she believed that African Americans were more likely to be accepted if their behavior was appropriate. She kind of held on to that belief for a while. The Canary Cottage is a historic site in North Carolina. Some of the other structures on that campus were destroyed when it has been burned. But she used that legacy. She also started what Efflin Home. And Efflin Home was a what's equivalent to a training school or a reform school for girls. The state of North Carolina had a reform school for white boys, white girls and African American boys, but nothing for African American girls. So she started Efflin Home to serve, quote, wayward young girls. These girls were wayward. Not because they did things like rob banks and shoot people. They did things like run away, engage in sexual activities and talk back to their parents. But for those reasons, you couldn't get sent to a reformatory school. And a reformatory school for African American girls meant prison because there were none until she started Efflin Home. But class was clearly an issue here, right? Because she started Efflin Homes for lower class African American girls. But Palmer Memorial Institute was for middle and upper class African American male and female. She was when, like many of these pioneers I'll talk about these women, they were part of the Women's Club movement. And it was through the Women's Clubs that social work, social welfare activities began in these communities. So they didn't start these activities didn't start as part of any state program or town programs, but they really started because of the initiative of Women's Clubs. And then the Greek letter sororities followed the Women's Clubs. So the Women's Clubs predated the sororities in terms of serving the community. And she was a member of the North Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs. So when she tried to develop when she developed Palmer Memorial Institute and Efflin Home, it was with the assistance of women who were in those organizations. Any questions? Is there anything you'd like to add? Do you recognize him? Asa Phillip Randolph? What do you know about him? Absolutely, which is what most people have no clue about. Because he's never mentioned. And actually he tried to organize a Master in Washington a few years earlier. And some other concessions were made so that he would not do that. So when the Master in Washington actually took place, many individuals did thank him because they knew his role. They knew it wouldn't have happened without him. He also studied the brotherhood of sleeping car porters. And the brotherhood of sleeping car porters was a union. And it was for African American men who were porters on the Pullman trains. Many of those men had college degrees. But a porters job was the only job that they could find. And actually a porters job was considered a middle class job. And a very good living for men who could get those jobs. But being a porter was difficult on the Pullman trains. George Pullman wasn't that fond of his African American porters. And there was clearly differential treatment. So George Pullman had Pullman towns. You've heard of the company town, the company store. George Pullman had Pullman towns, but not for the porters. That was just for the white people who worked on the trains. The porters had no real identity. They were all called George. Because that was that was George Pullman's name. So they had no identity except they were an extension of him. They were all called George. There's a movie, something like 10,000 men called George. It's about organizing the Pullman car porters. And he was not a porter, but he was an organizer. So he was sought by the porters to come and organize them. And I don't know about here. But in North Carolina, which is not a union state, it's still kind of dangerous to be a labor organizer. It's not a walk in the park. So when he did it, his life was clearly in danger, as it is now in many places that do not want organized labor. Any comments? Is there anything you'd like to add? With 65. March on Washington. What was the year? Yeah, 65. Was March on Washington in 65? In 1964. So you know, I don't know what else to say, except lots of people came. He did. And as I said, he made an effort to have this March on Washington about 40 years before. And the concessions that were made by the president, the president was essentially saying, let's cannot do something else for you. Like don't do that right now. So some things like integrating armed forces, some of those things were done in lieu of that March. So anything to put it off. And it was it was deferred for that length of time. This one, my favorite people, because she was just bad. She just she don't take anything. She was she was like wild. She was the wild woman. Ida Bell Wells Barnett. Ida Bell Wells Barnett was an activist, a journalist, a newspaper woman, an editor and a suffragist. She also just raised a lot of hell whenever opportunities presented themselves. She essentially said that if if if African Americans had a Winchester rifle and paraphrase in their homes, they'd be a lot less likely to be harassed. So she just kind of encouraged people arm yourselves and be ready. She owned four newspapers. And she owned newspapers because she knew that she needed a print outlet that she couldn't rely on other news outlets to print the truth. So she would start her own newspapers. She started a settlement house in downtown Chicago on State Street, called the Negro Fellowship League and Reading Room. Mostly men went to that settlement house. She really liked men better than she did women. So she organized lots of services to serve those young men who would come to her settlement house. There is a marker on Bill Street in Memphis, where her newspaper one of her newspaper offices was located. That office was bombed. You know, she had a mouth. So she you know, she got on people, you know, it's like, we've heard enough of this woman, let's get rid of her. And so there were always threats against her life. And her newspaper office was bombed. And anytime she attempted to speak what she called truth, she was jeopardizing herself. And what she did, she was an anti lynching crusader. So she attempted to chronicle or keep records of all lynchings that took place in this country. So how would she do that? How would this little black woman, how is she going to even know where the lynchings are and what's going on? But her belief was that these lynchings were taking place and the newspapers in those communities were blaming the victim. They were always saying these people did X Y Z that's why they were lynched. She used her print outlets to counter those stories. But what she also did that was that was unique and fascinating. She hired Pinkerton agents. And you probably remember Alan Pinkerton was a detective. He had a detective agency. And you may have seen security guards in in stores with brown uniforms that say Pinkerton, that comes out of the Alan Pinkerton agency. She hired Pinkerton agents to really be in those places or scout out information about the truth of various lynchings that took place across the country. And she published a book that's called the red record. And you can download the red record from and it chronicles it talks about what happened what really happened in this instance, as opposed to what the local media said happened. She was also one of those women's club women. But she was a really impatient woman. If you just if you didn't act fast enough, then she was done and she just go on to the next the next thing of interest. She was one of the two African American women who answered the call for the formation of the NAACP. The other one was Mary Church Terrell. There were about six white women who answered that call. And those are our pioneers like Florence Kelly and Jane Adamson. I'm not sure about Breckenridge, but those women also answered the call for the formation of that organization. But she didn't remain affiliated with the organization very long, because she didn't think they were moving fast enough. So you know her. So African American women are very familiar with her because she's a hair lady. And I always tell my students, if you see a group of African American women who don't know each other, all congregating and laughing and talking very carefully, they're probably talking about hair. And they're not talking about hair. They're talking about men, but it's usually hair. They're probably talking about hair. So so Madame CJ Walker, whose name was Sarah Breedlove started a company to produce skin and hair care products for African American women. Some people say she invented the straightening calm, but she didn't. She did have it. She did alter the pressing calm. But she didn't invent it. She became a millionaire as a result of her hair care and skincare products. But she was also a philanthropist. And she gave money to Marcus Garvey to the people who wrote the Messenger magazine, she easily gave away her money in support of social causes and social justice for the African American community. But another thing that she did that we don't talk about is she gave African American women employment outside the kitchen and outside the washer woman experience. Because of her, African American women could become independent business women. They took her products and they sold those products door to door. And she had an organization that was called the hair culturist union. And out of that organization, she not only helped those women to become better business women, but she also gave them a political voice. And she helped them to respond to social issues that they otherwise never would have had an avenue to respond to. And that's her, I think great granddaughter, who wrote a biography about her. And it's interesting, her great granddaughter really learned who she was when she did the research for the biography. You know, you have a sense of who family members are, but you don't really understand the extent to which they had an impact. Because they're just like your great grandma, and not this make a social change agent. So she learned all of that as she did that biography. This is Victoria Earl Matthews. Victoria Earl Matthews started the white rose home for working girls. And I always have to add not not working girls, but girls who worked. So you know, it wasn't for for for sex workers, but it was for for women who were and the white rose home provided a space for young women who may not have had a place to go who are migrating from the south to New York. The white rose home provided that space for girls who needed housing temporarily. But there are also women who work as live in maids, personal servants. And those women worked and lived in those homes every day of the month, except one. They may have had one Sunday off. So if you live in somebody else's home and you work for that family, it doesn't make sense for you to have an apartment or other housing. And so they didn't. But the white rose home became that space for them to use that one Sunday. So they could go to the white rose home and just kind of chill and be away from their employers. But they could also receive their mail. That was their mailing address. And she she had an extraordinary collection of books. And those books became part of the New York Public Library system, part of the Schomburg collection. Victoria Earl Matthews. This is George Edmund Haynes. I like Haynes. He looks just a little anal. Because he was he was a rigid person. He's a very rigid person. And he was co founder and first executive director of the National Urban League. It was really the original name was the National League on Urban Conditions among Negroes renamed the National Urban League. And the National Urban League became synonymous with social work in the African American community by about 1916. That was the social work organization. George Haynes was the first African American to graduate from the New York School of Philanthropy, which is Columbia, Columbia School of Social Work. He was a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, as were many of the leaders of the National Urban League. He was a Fiskite. So he was a graduate of Fisk University, as was his wife. And I can tell you a whole lot about George Haynes, but I'll leave him alone, unless you have questions. Okay, no questions. So is George again only because this is his wife, Elizabeth Ross Haynes, affectionately called Rossi. Elizabeth Ross Haynes was an activist. She was a women's club person. She was also a sorority person. She was a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. She was an elected official in New York. And her goal was to enhance the quality of life of the African American community. Now you see this young man there, that is their grandson, Dr. Bruce Haynes. So I did my dissertation on George Haynes. I know a lot about George Haynes. So as I did my dissertation on him, then I learned about Elizabeth Ross Haynes. So because they were urban leaguers, I thought somebody in the Urban League should be able to tell me, give me some information. So for some years, I looked for somebody some old person who was affiliated with the Urban League to give me some information so that I could have more, more clarity and nothing until one summer about two years ago, I'm teaching summer school. And I get a call from Dr. Bruce Haynes. And he said, I understand you write a lot about my family, you know, and I'm going, Oh, Lord, please let it be right. Please don't let me have made a mess of this. And of course, like with with Madam CJ Walker's great granddaughter, he didn't know a lot of what I wrote about his family, because that's not how you know your family. He said he told me about all the papers and the photos that he had. And I'm thinking, I would love to get my hands on those. He did not invite me to come and look at those. And the last thing that I've seen about him is that he's writing a book about his grandfather, which is a good thing. That's why and he actually is an urban sociologist. So it's he the work that he does is a lot like what his grandfather did what George Haynes did. And so Dr. Bruce told me a lot about his family. These two people had one son. And that person did get a master's degree in social work. But their one son had three sons. And Bruce was one of them. And they all grew up in this brownstone in New York. And so Dr. Bruce told me that one of his brothers had been killed. And he didn't know where his other brother was. So it's just him. And then he told me that he had recently sold his grandfather's brownstone in New York. So then of course, you know, I see a lot of things when he tells me that. And I see the loss of a legacy. But I also see a lot of dollar signs. Because it was quite a profit for him to sell that brownstone. Do you know her? Mary Church Terrell. Mary Church Terrell was and again, one of those women's clubs, National Association of Women's Clubs. She was an activist. She was a politician. She's married to a judge in Washington DC. She was elected to the school board in Washington. She was also this elegant lady, this epitome of perfect ladyhood. She always wore gloves. And she spoke several languages. And she was just raised very, very upper middle class. Because both of her parents were very wealthy. Her father owned Bilstry in Memphis. You know, if you've been to Bilstry, so Bilstry didn't look like it looked now. It was really the African American Community Business Hub of Memphis. And when the yellow fever epidemic hit, white people left, African American State, her father purchased lots of property from people who were fleeing the epidemic. So he was able to give her quite a comfortable life. She was a little pampered little girl who went to boarding school. She's a graduate of Oberlin College before Oberlin became segregated. But she was always an activist. And clearly she could pass. And sometimes she did. She would pass when she was tired of being harassed as an African woman. When she was tired of people bothering her, it's like, okay, I'll just be white today, leave me alone. So and that was a lot of times it was in terms of travel on trains and that. So she was just okay. Now, the African American Community has sort of a mixed, I guess, reaction to passing. But what we understood fundamentally was it benefited us for some of us to pass. And so we didn't play outing people, because that get folk killed. Even though we knew, they knew we knew, but we didn't out people. If you're gonna pass, then you just pass. And let's hope that you you in some way serve the community. And that was sort of the way this woman handled her life. And she, I think at age 72, was still picketing a segregated restaurant in Washington DC. Marcus Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, a bad organization. When I look at the UNIA, and I look at the principles of community organizing, I see the UNIA. It's as if the UNIA provided the model for community organizing. This man was able to capture the hearts and the attention and the commitment from far more people than the scholarship tells us. Because you know how you know how when people write stuff, they want to minimize things. And so it's easier to say there weren't very many Garvey ice. I mean, there are Garvey ice today all over this country. You don't have to look really hard to find them who adhere to the very same principles of the UNIA. Marcus Garvey also through the UNIA he started the the black cross nurses. And the scholarship says the the primary papers say the black cross nurses were prepared to serve those individuals who had fallen in battle. So that's a quote, fallen in battle. So when I write or wrote about Garvey, and I said that, I quoted what the primary data said. The reviewers said, This is really harsh. I said, Don't you see quotation marks? Is this not me? This is what he said. But in their minds, I need to change that. But that's what he meant. Had fallen in battle. The black cross nurses was started by one graduate nurse, or rather was headed by a graduate nurse. And there was also the shipping company where he sold stock. And that's what that was the thing that got him in trouble. But he was being watched. So everything he did could have gotten him into trouble. So it was what can we find to get him into trouble. He did something else that was quite unusual for that time or even for today. He started a doll factory, started lots of different companies because he was a community development person. So he started the kinds of services and programs that the community would need. One of them was a black doll factory. Because he said little black girls need to have positive images of themselves in their toys. So in the progressive era, the early 1900s, the UNI eight had a black doll factory. You may have seen on the news yesterday, that the American girl dolls has a new I think it's the Michelle doll. No, that might be wrong. I don't know what her name is. But a new doll that kind of represents African American girls during the civil rights movement. This is 2016. This was this was 1914 1516. When the UNIA started the black doll factory. Think about that a little bit. It'll help you to understand why we're where we are. Now, Garvey was very dark. And African American community has always had a colorism thing. The fairer one is then something better. We've always had this was purely economic. Because people would advertise for you could see in the newspapers, light skin, black boy needed as dishwasher. So so opportunities were presented to people who were lighter. So family members would often say in order to ensure that my kid has a better chance. I don't want my kid to be dark. So this whole colorism issue has always plagued the African American community. Garvey was criticized by his contemporary leaders. He wore plumes. You know, he'd be you know, big purple suits. I mean, some of it was was that. But some of it was the power that he was that he had, and his ability to influence lots of people. That was also part of it. This is Amy Jobs Garvey. This is Marcus Garvey's second wife. His first wife's name was Amy as well. He liked Amy's apparently. And this Amy was the made of honor when he married the first. So the first Amy does claim to be one of the original she co founded the UNIA with him. This Amy really took care of the UNIA when he was exiled. And she also made sure she she published the whatever the newspaper was, was the newspaper, whatever. Whatever the newspaper was for the UNIA, she made certain that it was published while he was in exile. She did the writing for it. When she was not in charge, she wrote what was called the women's page. And the women's page, she had things like recipes, but she primarily had information about women's literacy, and family literacy, and sharing resources like things like newspapers, because newspapers weren't readily available. And she generally talked about how women could empower themselves. And it wasn't like by cooking, but it was, it was in general how women could empower themselves. And this is Janie Porter Barrett. Janie Porter Barrett started the local street settlement, which was a settlement house in Hampton, Virginia. She was also part of this women's club movement. And she started the Virginia Industrial School for Wayward Girls, another one of those training schools in Virginia. Janie Porter Barrett is an interesting person. She could also pass. And she grew up in the, in the Skinner household where her mother was a servant. So she was educated with the Skinner children. So she got a private, very good education in that home. So when it was time for her to go to college, Mrs. Skinner wanted her to go to Bernard, one of the seven sister schools, you know, like Cross Street from Columbia. But her mother said she's going to Hampton. Janie Porter Barrett was not ready for Hampton. So she went to Hampton in a horse-drawn carriage. Everybody else walked to Hampton. Hampton was a working school. I don't know how many working schools there are in Texas, but there, there are few working schools across the nation, which require that all the students work at something, growing food for them to eat or cleaning or gardening or something. And Hampton was a working school. There are fewer of them now because students would riot if they had to attend a working school. But this Hampton required that that work. So Janie Porter Barrett said she was really sick of hearing about what she owed to her race, because that was what students were told all the time, that you are, you know, the town's a tent. You have this given to you. You owe it to those who don't have it. So she protested the whole time, because she didn't have linen in China, you know, didn't eat off China and didn't have linen napkins and because she was spoiled. But she eventually heard the message that Hampton gave. And so through the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, she started this this reformatory school for African American girls. And it really was a model. It was the model that the North Carolina School used and that some others used as well. This is Virginia Burns Hope. She was married to John Hope, that man down there in the corner. And she started the Atlanta Neighborhood Union. The Atlanta Neighborhood Union was unique. It was a community organization kind of designed to identify the needs of the Atlanta community. What she did initially was she did a needs assessment around Morehouse College, using Morehouse students. It wasn't called a needs assessment then, but that's what it was. They went into the community and said, What do you need? And they recognized some things like street lights and garbage pickup and you know, those regular kind of normal living things. But there were other things that the community said they needed like they needed some kind of childcare facilities because women worked. So she listened to the things that the community women said that they needed. But she did not go into the community saying, I've come to take it to help you. I've come to do this for you. But she went into the community and said, How can we together do this? So community members were invested in getting the services that they needed. And the work that was required to get those services. She also established a training established a training program that was used as the foundation for the Atlanta School of Social Work. The courses that she had for her training program was the same general courses used for the Atlanta School of Social Work. But more interestingly, the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee also used her services and programs. The Highlander Folk Center is this training center kind of isolated out in the country in Tennessee that that trains people to do what they need to do in their communities. It was started by this guy named Miles Horton in the 30s around labor issues. And it's kind of evolved over the years. Rosa Parks and her mother went to the Highlander Folk Center before she decided to sit down on the bus. So it was the kind of training that community leaders needed so they'd know how to go home and help to change their communities. And a lot of what they got they got from initially from the Atlanta neighborhood unions and Luginia Burns Hope. This is Eugene Kinkl Jones. And they called him Kinkl. I didn't know that. But I wrote this article about him and some woman wrote me back and said I was so excited to read about that article that you wrote because I knew all those people they were my parents friends. And then she told me they called him Kinkl. So now I know. So Kinkl was one of the seven jewels. So he was one of the founders of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He was also the second executive director of the National Urban League. And he took it in a slightly different direction than George Haines did. But he was a very different person than Haines. He was a lot more comfortable with himself. A lot more middle class. A lot less and and flow easier could mix easier with lots of different kinds of people. So he was able to take it in a slightly different direction. There's a really nice book that's been written by him by a colleague friend named Felix Armfield. Felix was a historian at one of the New York schools. He says passed away. But it's a very nice nice book. Do you know her? Well, she's a Texan. And she was the first female president of Tillerson College and Mary Elizabeth Branch. She initiated the merger of Houston that became Houston Tillerson. She also moved the school to a different level of a better level, a four year institution. And during her tenure, the school was self sufficient and did really well. All right. Want you to meet this woman? Hortense King McClinton. Hortense is still living. She's 97. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. She was the first African American faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And that was in the School Social Work. She was a member of NASW and NAB SW. And this past October, she was inducted into NASW's pioneers. She's named a pioneer. The pioneers kind of are those individuals that the profession acknowledges as having something to do with the evolution and enrichment of the profession. And Miss Hortense is one of those people. She's a delightful person. She never stops talking. She said that her daughter calls her Chattie Cathy. And so when I go visit Miss Hortense, I just kind of prepare to stay a while. You know, if you when you visit elders, you just go in with your agenda and then you put it back in your purse and just sit and wait until they're done. And that's the way Miss Hortense is periodically I can drag her over to campus so that the students can meet her. And whenever I do, I advertise it widely and people do come from all over the campus, undergraduate students particularly who want to see this this this pioneer woman. When when I interviewed her when I told her I wanted to write this article about her, she, you know, when you say you want to write something about people, they think you want to do a biography. But I couldn't do that because I wouldn't get in anybody to publish it. So you got to write a different way in in in our in our scholarship. And so every time I would talk with her, she would talk about Boli, because she grew up in Boli, Oklahoma, which was an all black town. Now, Oklahoma had about 32 all black towns more than any other state in the union. But Boli was supposed to be the most the one of the wealthiest and the most prominent. So her says a place is Boli. So when she talks about where she is now and how she moved through life, Boli always enters into that. So as I wrote this this article about her, I wrote it in terms of how Boli influenced her life, because it was that personal power that she gained from growing up in that town and being surrounded by people who looked like her, and being surrounded by people that she knew had her best interest at heart. So so I'm always always amazed at how people would interview her and not say anything about Boli when I know she mentioned it in almost every other sentence. But people just didn't didn't, you know, that's what I love about my profession. You know, we'll kind of see those things that other people just think why she kept talking about this town is because this town is fundamental to who she is. So as I wrote about her, I had to write about what Boli meant to her. This woman, I also knew this is anime Keenan. Miss Keenan was what was called a jeans teacher. What she was she was a black supervisor of the public schools in the county in which I grew up. So that means that she supervised all the colored schools, and all the teachers in those black schools. And I wrote about her because we don't write enough about ordinary people. And although she was anything but ordinary. But we let too much of our history just go. You know, and many of us are very old people. And so we talk about it, but we never write about it. And if we don't write about it, then we lose it. And so I wanted to write about Miss Keenan, because I thought her contributions were really, really critical to the education of children in rural North Carolina. And then I wrote this African Americans aging in the rural South serves a faith family and community. And that's my mama. Mama was 94. And I wrote about these women, because they held those communities together. And they're the ones who visited the sick. And they're the ones who took food to everybody whether they needed it or not. They were the ones who understood the value and the sense of community. We don't write a lot about them. We just think communities held together. But it was somebody who held communities together. It was women like this. And also, I interviewed 10 women. And I wrote what they said the way they said it, which is really interesting, because they kind of had their own their own way of saying things. And one of the secretaries in my office was helping me to transcribe the tapes. And she kept coming to the door saying, Iris, but what does this mean? And I just said, you don't have to know what it means. Just type what you hear. So these women would say, well, they had kind of their own language, they had some of their own words that they just made, they were there. And one thing they said was, we always hope each other out. This really confused the Secretary. She said, What do they mean they hope each other out? It's the past tense of help. That's all they mean. But they said hope. And I wanted to capture the way they said it because I think it's a pretty I think it's pretty I think it's lyrical is kind of musical. And it really represented them, rather than my standard English interpretation of what they said. There were 10 women that I interviewed, and they they've all passed away. And I would always know when one passed away, because I would hear from their children, who would say, You know that book with mama in it? Do you have any more? And that's when I understood what it meant to the community to have something written about their mother as a powerful contributing person, but not in terms of pathology. And so often in social work, when we talk about members of our groups, we talk about the pathology and not the strengths. Even though we say we talk about the strength. It's hard for us to get to that sometimes. Do you know what home demonstration clubs were? Okay, then I'll skip this. But let me share just about this Carlton town home demonstration club. It came out of the Agriculture Department. And the home demonstration clubs were activities for farm wives. They were segregated by race. And so there were white agents who worked with the white community women and African American agents who worked with the African American women. And you see these women standing around looking at this bed, nobody died. I think they made the bedspread. So they're kind of looking at, you know, a project that they completed. That woman with the baby is my mother. She's holding my sister. And so I showed this picture I found it. I found it. And I showed the picture to my sister and I said, you know, who is that baby mama's holding? She said, I don't know. Who is that? I said, What's the year? She said, 19. That's me. Yeah, I think it's probably you. But you know, when you grow up poor, you'll have pictures of yourself. So we don't have, you know how you take a picture of your baby from the time they pop out, like picture, picture, picture, picture, picture. Well, we have pictures. We have any pictures. So for her to see this big pathetic rendition of herself as an infant is pretty much all we have. And this is African American leadership. This is a book that NSW Press published. And it has information about a lot of the pioneers that I've talked about this evening. It NSW said to me, we don't publish history. Because it doesn't sell. Now I have to tell you, they made a whole lot more money off this book than I have. But they say history doesn't sell. Now this isn't a profession that says that we embrace culture. You can't embrace culture in a historical vacuum. If you don't understand our history, then you don't understand a culture. And we as social workers can be incredibly a historical. I'm sure all of you have done genograms. When you do those genograms, do you ever think about the historical context? You know, families don't just fall apart for no reason. Something was going on. You know, there may have been some mental health issues. What was going on? What crap was going on around that family that influenced the way it meshed or fell apart? You can't really do a genogram in a historical vacuum. That's my speech. And so finally, close to find yes, the Rosenwald schools. So Texas probably had around 500 Rosenwald schools. These were schools that were partially supported by Julius Rosenwald. And Julius Rosenwald owned Ceres Robocking Company. And he gave his blessings and some money to local communities to build colored schools. And the local communities responded because the African American local community was so pleased to have an opportunity to educate their children that they were glad to get the Rosenwald money. The white community was so pleased to maintain segregation, they were glad that the Rosenwald money came. And in Texas, though I know the one in the center is one of the Texas schools, and a couple of others are Texas Rosenwald schools. Some are being preserved. Some have fallen just are gone. They've been used for various things. The Rosenwald schools are like early 1900s to around 1930 or 20. But communities are now realizing that those are very valuable to the community's legacy and the community's history, and are trying to find and renovate those Rosenwald schools. But the interesting thing is Rosenwald gave the money and the part of the money. But people in the community had to match what Rosenwald gave. And the community really the African American community contributed the land on which many of those schools were built. But they weren't just schools, they also built what was called the teacher rich, because there was no place for these teachers to live. So when the schools were built, they had to build some place for teachers to stay. So the Rosenwald schools included Rosenwald teacherages and other kinds of shop buildings. So it was the schools, the teacherage and shop buildings. Alrighty, do you have any questions about anything I've said, would you like to add anything? Yes, my favorite story is probably hard killing day. And it's probably one of my favorite stories because I experienced hard killing day. hard killing day was traumatic. You know, it and it kind of went on and on and on. Didn't just end with hard killing day, because all the stuff from the hog went in the house, it was always cold in the house because people were in and out. hard killing day was always one day in January or February when it was below freezing. And so the work was done outside in below freezing weather, because they need for refrigeration. And that provided the refrigeration. But a vivid memory is the hog brains in the refrigerator. And for some reason, my mother never covered them. But you know, so so the day after hard killing day, there were these brains sitting in there. Because you know, brains are scrambled with eggs and become a breakfast, a breakfast dish for somebody. So that was a hard day. Hard killing day was pretty tough. But I remember it vividly. And all these women remembered it because you know, it happened once a year, it was to feed their families through the winter. And until the next hard killing day, I also remember one year, Mr. AJ shot my uncle, because you know, you had to shoot the idea is you want to quit death so that there's not fear in the meat, because if that's fear in the meat, then fear goes in people. So you want to sneak up on the hog and get this quick. But he shot my uncle. So they had to rush off to the hospital. That was a real memorable hard killing day. Anything else anybody? They had National Federation meetings. So in that way, there were connections made. And these were fairly close knit groups of women. And they, you know, women wrote letters, they didn't text and email and all that stuff that you lose. But they really actually wrote letters to each other. And so we get a real good sense of the history and the relationships if we can get a hold to those letters. The unfortunate thing is we don't save things in the African American community, you know, when somebody dies, and it's time to clean out the house, it's just gone. And that's what happened to some of those letters. So I encourage you, save your family history, figure out a way to save that history. Kind of take it upon yourselves. You know how as social workers, we get to be the chosen person in the family. And you know, when you're the chosen person in the family, when they start telling you secrets, like, you know, like where the papers are. And you know, who gets the China and you know, it's like, Oh, God is me. So you know when you've been that chosen person, but it carries an obligation, obligation to know and maintain and record that family history. Alright, thank you so much.