Roslyn
Smith
Interviewer:
Dr. Dena Scher
Date Interviewed:
May 12, 2010
Series:
Experiences of the Civil Rights Movement
Summary:
Roslyn Smith was born in Princeton, West Virginia, the fifth of six children.
Her mother was a domestic and her father was a railroad laborer. She was raised
by her mother, grandmother, and aunt, who taught her about the "place" of black
people in the South, for example, never using the public library, sitting in the
back of bus, using the back door of a white family's house, and addressing white
people as 'miss' or 'mister.' Ms. Smith received a Merit Scholarship to attend
Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. and made the move from small town
to big city in 1957. She and other Bennett women became inspired by their
personal experiences and their expanding knowledge of the outside world to join
the fight for civil rights. With the support of their teachers, community
leaders, Dr. Willa Player (then president of Bennett), and fellow students from
nearby A & T University, they targeted Woolworth's in Greensboro as the stage
for the 1961 sit-ins. Looking back on her experiences now, Ms. Smith worries
that Bennett women's involvement is being written out of the official history of
this integral part of the civil rights movement.
Location:
Marygrove Archives
ARC-SP 0100
File #23
Files:
Interview transcript (opens in a new window) - PDF
HTML
Audio
(MP3 format, 61 MB, 65 min.)
You are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) this work under conditions set forth in this Creative Commons license.
Example of proper citation/attribution:
Scher, D. (Interviewer) & Smith, R.
(Interviewee). (2010). Roslyn Smith: Civil Rights Movement [Interview
transcript]. Retrieved from The John Novak Digital Interview Collection of
the Marygrove College Library Web site:
http://research.marygrove.edu/novakinterviews/index.html.