Legacies Project Oral History: Sylvia Nesmith

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 12:24pm

When: 2022

Transcript

• [00:00:20] INTERVIEWER: [NOISE] I'm just going to read you a few announcements before we get started. There's a video tape interview for Legacies Project, which has students gathering oral histories and putting them into an archive for future generations. Just a few pointers for you; just ignore the camera and have a conversation like we were last week. We might pause to change tape, but we'll pick up where we left off. We'll announce that it's time to turn off or silence cell phones or pagers and everything else that makes noise, so do that right now. Everybody come out too.
• [00:01:07] Sylvia Nesmith: I think I left mine in my, but I'll check in my coat pocket, where did I put my coat? Where is it? No. I thought I had my purse right beside me [BACKGROUND]. Thank you,.
• [00:01:24] FEMALE_1: You're welcome. I'm going to [inaudible 00:01:26].
• [00:01:32] Sylvia Nesmith: It's not here. It's in my pocket so let's go on.
• [00:01:36] INTERVIEWER: You can call for a break at anytime you want. If you're feeling like you need to go and excuse yourself, and you can decline to answer any of the questions I ask or end the interview at anytime for any reason. We'll start off with some just background information about you. While these questions may jog memories, just keep the answers brief during this part and you can elaborate later on it.
• [00:02:13] Sylvia Nesmith: Sounds good.
• [00:02:16] INTERVIEWER: Please say and spell your name.
• [00:02:18] Sylvia Nesmith: My name is Sylvia, S-Y-L-V-I-A and Nesmith, N-E-S-M-I-T-H.
• [00:02:26] INTERVIEWER: What is your birthday including the year?
• [00:02:29] Sylvia Nesmith: June 6, 1949.
• [00:02:32] INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your ethnic background?
• [00:02:36] Sylvia Nesmith: African-American or black African-American.
• [00:02:41] INTERVIEWER: What is your religious affiliation, if you have any?
• [00:02:44] Sylvia Nesmith: I'm a Christian.
• [00:02:46] INTERVIEWER: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
• [00:02:51] Sylvia Nesmith: Sixteen college graduate.
• [00:02:54] INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any additional school at college graduate?
• [00:03:00] Sylvia Nesmith: Other than career training and those things, no, other formal.
• [00:03:09] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
• [00:03:11] Sylvia Nesmith: I am single, divorced.
• [00:03:15] INTERVIEWER: Is your former spouse still living?
• [00:03:18] Sylvia Nesmith: No.
• [00:03:19] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
• [00:03:21] Sylvia Nesmith: I have two.
• [00:03:23] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
• [00:03:24] Sylvia Nesmith: I have four.
• [00:03:27] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
• [00:03:31] Sylvia Nesmith: A human resource administrator.
• [00:03:38] INTERVIEWER: For how long were you at this occupation?
• [00:03:41] Sylvia Nesmith: In various capacities, for about 30 years, almost.
• [00:03:51] INTERVIEWER: At what age did you retire?
• [00:03:54] Sylvia Nesmith: You're asking me to do some math [LAUGHTER] I retired when I was 61.
• [00:04:01] INTERVIEWER: Now we can begin the first part of our interview, beginning with some of the things you can recall about your family history. We're beginning with family naming history. By this, we mean any story about your last or first name or family traditions in selecting first name. Do you know any stories about your family name?
• [00:04:34] Sylvia Nesmith: My name is Nesmith. I don't know any big stories about it other than I'm also from a town, my parents are from a town called Nesmith South Carolina. It's a smaller town and there are many of this in that area and I'm sure also that was a name that was held by some of our slave owners way back also. Other than that, I can't and from what I understand is an Irish originated in as in Irish background.
• [00:05:16] INTERVIEWER: For telling more to the first name, are there any naming tradition in your family?
• [00:05:22] Sylvia Nesmith: No other than, at times we name our children after their fathers or a beloved relative.
• [00:05:34] INTERVIEWER: We'll move on the family migration, why did your ancestors leave to come to the United States?
• [00:05:43] Sylvia Nesmith: Because they were, as far as I know, either captured or sold into slavery, so my ancestors are part of the African diaspora.
• [00:06:03] INTERVIEWER: To your knowledge, did they make any effort to preserve any traditions and customs from the country they came?
• [00:06:12] Sylvia Nesmith: I think there was an effort. In fact, there are probably still customs that we have integrated into our culture today, that maybe somewhat different and then there are certain aspects has probably been integrated into the entire American culture, such as music and storytelling. We love those things and also the language, some of the words we use, and I remember talking to my grandparents who lived in South Carolina, which is not that far from the Gulf Islands and so forth and from my understanding, that's a combination of English and African language, and I realized that my grandparents were using some of that. But as my parents migrated a little bit North and, we adapted another language which was closer to the proper English language.
• [00:07:19] INTERVIEWER: In your household as a child, did you use any mix of the African language and English?
• [00:07:27] Sylvia Nesmith: No, I didn't. Other than those things that we made that I didn't really realize if I was, because we just came up learning language the way most of us learn from our surroundings as we converse with people, and watching expressions and reactions from what they say and we say. I wasn't aware that I was specifically trying to learn any other language as a child. Now, as I grew older, I attempted to, and not formally, [LAUGHTER] not seriously, but I enjoyed reading about some of the languages in Africa.
• [00:08:10] FEMALE_1: We are to stop our tea for just a second.
• [00:08:19] INTERVIEWER: Were there traditions that your family may have changed or given off when they migrated to this country?
• [00:08:29] Sylvia Nesmith: To this country?
• [00:08:30] INTERVIEWER: Yes.
• [00:08:34] Sylvia Nesmith: From what I have learned, there was a very high level of respect for elders and parents, and I think that some of that actually in Africa, that's still prevalent in Africa today, that tradition, but I notice as I grew up, we really value respect and honor for older people and our parents, and it was just part of our culture. I think that came directly from Africa. I think many of the foods that we cook and the way we cook them came directly from Africa. Let me see what else can I think of? Community, how we feel about each other, how we try to help each other, and the way we socialize as a community, I think came directly from Africa also.
• [00:09:44] INTERVIEWER: Are there any stories about your parents, grandparents, or even more distant ancestors that have been passed down here?
• [00:10:04] Sylvia Nesmith: I think about that a little bit and we'll address that later on because I really can't think of a special story about my grandparents that was passed down to me. Now, on both sides of my family, they were farmers and both sides of my family owned many acres of land and they farmed and they owned their own land. During that time, there were many sharecroppers also within our family which is fine. But I thought it was significant and I always wonder how my grandparents actually got to own all of this land. But they did own a lot of land and they were self-sufficient. I have a cousin that's starting to do some research and tracing back our history and so forth. So far he's traced us back to the Congo area. My parents were probably maybe 100 years out of slavery. We listen to stories all the time because out of respectful adults and also the adults respect for children, when we socialize, the adults and children did not always socialize together unless it was a family picnic or something like that. The adults would be in a room and they would tell all of these fantastic stories and so forth, but we would have to be in another room because we didn't enter into their conversation without permission. You didn't even ask unless it was very important for you to do that. You heard just lots and lots of stories like that, but to actually give one to use per se right now I'd have to think a little bit about it.
• [00:12:15] INTERVIEWER: Do you know of any courtship stories, how your parents may have met each other and how they got married?
• [00:12:26] Sylvia Nesmith: Just a couple of things. My father like to kid a little bit about, as he was driving, he had come home from the army. He served in the army on World War 2. He liked to say he brought my mother out of the cotton fields because now his family farmed and they did cotton, a little bit everything too, but my mother's family did that. My grandmother on my father's side always, she liked to the mentioned the fact that my father came home to her one day and was really excited and said, he had found the woman that he was going to marry. Other than that, nothing about the dating and so forth.
• [00:13:18] INTERVIEWER: We're going to move on to your earliest memories of your childhood. Even if these questions jog your memory about other times in your life, we'd like you to keep the storytelling, I guess, to pertain more towards the early memories and your childhood.
• [00:13:43] Sylvia Nesmith: I'll do my best. [LAUGHTER].
• [00:13:46] INTERVIEWER: Where did you grow up and what are your strongest memories of this place?
• [00:13:51] Sylvia Nesmith: I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I have several very strong memories. But my first memory is of a house. I think we had two bedrooms and my mother and father and the baby at the time was my sisters slept in one room and the rest of us slept in another room. In a great big bed. We had what we call the warm morning stove. We took a bath in this big tub. We had an outhouse in the back. We had my parents still even though we were in, they had come up from mid south Carolina. They raised pigs. We had a little dog named Blakey. We did things like make our own little go-karts and things out of scrap wood and so forth and I just remember us climbing trees and racing the car with black and running along beside us. Everybody knew everybody else. My uncle lived right next door to us and actually he had a well in his backyard, but in our house we did off of that well too. They owned a cafe called Mary's Grill, that was his wife's name. And so they always had a little bit more than we had and it wasn't really important or anything like that but I just always remember their house was a little bit bigger and a little bit nicer. But, and we used their yard a lot and really all of played outside a lot with the neighborhood kids. We played little circle games where the kids got in a circle, held hands and chanted little rhymes like a little sally walker said in a saucer, Christ alley cry, why people open eyes and you close your eyes to run, then you pull it out somebody else and they get into the center. And so we play just a lot of those, we had just a lot of simple fun with physical activity. Hand clap games, playing with the string, taking a string and making different structures out of just a string with your finger. We did a lot of different things like that. That's I guess early childhood or some of those are some of my first memories.
• [00:16:20] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live in Winston-Salem?
• [00:16:26] Sylvia Nesmith: I think other people in the family had migrated from South Carolina since my father's brother and when my father moved up and they lived with them around and they move to their own house, which was next door. So they did a lot of that also. One person might come up and get settled and stable and then someone else would come and live with them awhile. We had my mother's cousin lived with us for a long time until he saved money. My mother helped him put his money away. Saved it, and then he moved out on his own and today they're doing very well. That's how how people did that.
• [00:17:11] INTERVIEWER: How many people lived in your house and what's their relationship to you?
• [00:17:18] Sylvia Nesmith: The largest number I remember living in my house at any one time was four children and my mother's cousin, Presley and my mother and her father. That's seven at any one given time. My youngest brother hadn't been born yet.
• [00:17:46] INTERVIEWER: What was your family like when you were a child?
• [00:17:50] Sylvia Nesmith: What's my family like?
• [00:17:56] Sylvia Nesmith: I consider myself very, very fortunate because the time I grew up and we have very, very, very loving family, both my mother and father. At that time, whether you were rich or poor, the women didn't work. They took care of the home and the kids. My mother never worked. My father was a barber and so for that period of time, he did very well. I just remember even little things like they were just very loving. Every day he would always bring us home a little bag of candy. He always had a present for the kids when he came home from work. That's another reason we were always excited to see my father. My mother, during the day after we finished all of the work with her and everything, I just remember the ladies that in the community, they might choose somebody's porch and they'd sit on that porch and socialize a little bit before the men came home from work and doing whatever they were doing. We started out very early doing our chores. I remember my brother and I were the oldest. My brother is a couple of years older than I. We were the first ones who started washing dishes and we were trying to do it real quickly. We had discipline. I think we had company that night. We had all these dishes on our hands and we dropped them and broke almost all of them. We didn't get spanked or anything like that. We did get spankings when I was younger and even up to I would say whippings. But she didn't spank us or anything like that for that, I just had a very loving, responsible family like any other. I just remember very happy early childhood.
• [00:19:50] INTERVIEWER: What's a typical day like in your pre-school years or before you started school?
• [00:19:56] Sylvia Nesmith: My mother at home taking care of us and playing with the children. We didn't have pre-schools at that particular time. Most kids didn't even go to kindergarten. We had some friends that went to kindergarten, but they mostly had a little more, we call them well-off. They may not be rich, but they were well-off. Some of them went to kindergarten because they had their own special kindergarten. There's a club even here today called the Jack and Jill club. Well, that's a very, very old club. Some of my parents' friends were members of that and some of the kids I went to school with where members of that with some of them got to go to kindergarten because they had their own kindergartens for their kids. But we didn't. My first day of school was in the first grade.
• [00:20:46] INTERVIEWER: I know you mentioned some games before. Did you have any favorite toy?
• [00:20:57] Sylvia Nesmith: I can't think of a very special. We loved playing Jack rocks. We love what we called, I don't know what you would call it today, but we called it a rick rack. It was the ball attached to a wooden paddle. It was fun to try and control that ball and also see how much you can control the ball with the distance that you could send it away from the paddle. We had baby dolls that we played with and I think a slinky, but I was probably in like the third or fourth grade at that time and I don't consider that my early years, so much I was grown by then. But I loved the slinky. Love the slinky. Yeah, I still have one, by the way. I found one, somebody was selling somewhere in a bar.
• [00:21:54] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any favorite book or books that you read and if so, where did you get them?
• [00:22:03] Sylvia Nesmith: I cannot remember. I cannot go back and remember now the favorite books that I had as a very young child. That's what you're asking about, as a very young child. I'd have to think about that. I know we had books in our house all the time, but to think about that particular book. Now, when I went to first grade and I always loved to read. We had Dick and Jane, of course. Dick and Jane is spot. Run, spot, run, run, that's how we learned to read. A lot of repetition in those characters over and over again.
• [00:22:47] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special days, events or family traditions that you remember from your early childhood?
• [00:22:59] Sylvia Nesmith: One of the events that was special to me is that every summer when we got out of school, my mother would pack us up and we would go to South Carolina to spend time with our grandparents. It was about I think at least three weeks and we would spend a couple of weeks with each grandparent and then we might spend a week with a couple of the aunts and so forth that were down there. I got to know lots of my cousins and a lot of my relatives and I got to do a lot of things that I couldn't do in Winston-Salem because my father was a barber. As I was raised, I knew how to work in a garden and so forth at that point. But as far as picking tobacco and tying tobacco, getting it ready for the market and driving the drapes, which is a little cart that the horse would pull and the pickers would put it in. There's a big long process to all of that. You get to do that and listen to all the stories and eat all of the good food that they would make for lunch. I really loved that time spending it. Then after the day, you went to other farms and you help them after you've finished your work on your family farm, you went helped other people. At the end of the day, there was nice good hot food and company. It was just a big fun time. I really enjoyed that.
• [00:24:31] INTERVIEWER: Were your grandparents or aunts in Winston-Salem?
• [00:24:35] Sylvia Nesmith: They were in Nesmith, South Carolina. That's where my parents are from, Nesmith, South.
• [00:24:46] INTERVIEWER: We'll be moving on to the youth part of the interview, so the grade school. Anything about school attendance in the United States up until you begin your professional career or work life?
• [00:25:08] Sylvia Nesmith: About school attendance?
• [00:25:10] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
• [00:25:16] Sylvia Nesmith: Well, originally, we lived in the outlying areas of Weston. At that particular time it was called, not now. We had blessing, way back then because we didn't really go to the city schools. We went to the county schools which covered the little small areas that we were in, and we rode buses. My cousin was an older cousin who's now a minister. But I remember him being a bus driver because he was one of the older older kids. Even the old or older kids, they were seniors and so forth in high school, they drove school buses too. I remember just our teachers. It just seemed like they were so loving and when my mother would ever whenever she came to like, and she always went to the PTA meetings or whenever they'd have any open house and similar to things they do today. She would always come in. My teachers just always had really nice things to say about me. Even though I was quiet, they said I always talk too much in class. But I just remember that part about my teachers just being so loving. I remember almost all my teachers because of like a connection I had with them, I think. I remember a celebration that we did call a May Day celebration. We used do that every year. The kids will go out at school and they had a made a poll in the hand like ribbon and things coming from dad and we go around the May Day poll we've ever had, and different other activities and so forth on the playground. They even crowned May Day queen and everything, which I got that one time because my dad was a barber. I had an advantage because he had a lot of customers coming in. [LAUGHTER] He could sell a lot of tickets but because that's what he had to do. Another special except you could sell tickets. But anyway, so I remember that as being one of the celebrations in early elementary. By the third grade, we have moved to a brand new house and we moved inside the city. I went to the city schools. Again, I still remember that most of my teachers and my mother was there for everything and I seem to participate in and just a lot of different things when I was in school too, especially up to a certain point in time. Am I answering your question or am I just rambling? Anyway, so I'm in the third grade now and I think we mentioned yesterday about how if you did things at school day, the teachers and the students a lot of times lived in the same community. We had one area that was really poor. As I walked home from school, I would walk through that area. Then right at the top of the hill, it was one of the teachers that live right there. Everybody lived happily together and everybody knew each other. People knew my parents. I couldn't get away with the whole lot, which was because my mother came to school and they got to know her and my father cut hair over near the area around the Teachers College in the area. That's probably about all I can remember. We did things like you kids probably do too. You can't cut your hair or anything like that. You slipping, you do live in playgrounds some way or you do that and or you can't color your hair as well. We would put peroxide, just a little piece of our hair or something like that. We did very good things. We were very good. But once in a while we were mischievous like [LAUGHTER] and we did. Did dances, made up dances on the playground, just great fun with each other?
• [00:29:48] INTERVIEWER: Where did you go to high school?
• [00:29:51] Sylvia Nesmith: My high school was called Atkins high school, the best high school alumnus in St. Louis. Our [inaudible 00:29:59] was the Campbell's, the mighty, mighty Campbell's. At that, well, all during my school we had schools were segregated. All of the Blacks went to certain schools and all the Whites went to certain schools throughout my time in high school. But we really had a good time. I had a good time in high school and we learned a lot. The teachers made sure that you learned and I don't care if they saw any potential in you at all, no matter what your background was for, was about they tried to encourage you and also help guide you towards pursuing a higher degree. In fact, that's probably how I went to college. I had a counselor that, talked to me and led me into taking the different tests and so forth and that I needed to do so. But it was a great time in my day when actually when they integrated schools, Atkins was such a tight knit school. We did, we won most of our games. Every year there was a Christmas parade that was always integrated and everything that Atkins was always last, but they always held every Atkins was always last. I don't know why that was. I don't know if it was because we were the best or because we were Black probably because we were the best. But everybody would wait until Atkins high school came down the street and add band in that parade because they were so good. I have just really good memories of my high school because of the energy from the teachers to the students that was prevalent there. They started to integrate the teaching staff. Before I graduated, I think maybe a couple of years. We had one teacher named Mrs. Sam's. I remember her very well and I had several teachers, but she was also a very tough teacher. Some of the teachers were afraid. I think when they came in, I think we're afraid to really teach well, and some of them actually left. But Mrs. Sam stayed and she taught well. She taught just as well as any of the other teachers that I grew to love, and I grew to love her too because she was about teaching and caring. I guess you see I remember her also. There was one other teacher that did make it though. I don't know why but she was too afraid but she did make it through. She just had to leave. Just in high school and we had as far as advanced classes, which was one of the reasons they wanted to integrate schools so that we can have the same resources. If you went to act as you've got a really good education. But there were some classes and so forth. You could not take at Atkins because they didn't have the resources to offer those classes. If you wanted to pursue that and we had a couple of people that did, you had to go to the White best high school. Those were the Reynolds high school, that was the best White high school. Anyway, you had to go over there and you took those classes, but you just went to take your class and you had to come back. If you wanted to do the advanced classes, super-advanced. Which is now that strikes me because when I went to high school, we had classes that weren't really called advanced, all the way up to calculus in high school. Many kids took that. I think I went up to, I didn't go to calculus. I went to Geometry 2, and now I understand that there can be like a situation where kids aren't even getting algebra or there's a challenge with algebra when that was a common thing. I don't really understand that when I was coming up so many years ago and that was expected. Now it's a big challenge to have the kids take that in junior high school leaver now, I did take algebra in the ninth grade. At that time, ninth grade was considered junior high school. When I first started going to school was elementary. Then you went right on to high school and elementary was first to eighth grade, and then high school was 9th-12th grade. Just as I was coming out. Everybody was just waiting to get over to Atkins in the ninth grade just they built a brand new junior high school and guess what? We had to go over there as nice [LAUGHTER] in that junior high school. But we had fun there too.
• [00:35:28] INTERVIEWER: I know you mentioned you went to college. Where did you go?
• [00:35:33] Sylvia Nesmith: My first year I went to North Carolina Central in Durham, North Carolina. I went there for a year, came out and worked for a few years. Then I went back to a college in my hometown called Winona State University. That's where I graduated from in degree of Business Administration.
• [00:35:56] INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about your college years or those maybe three where two years they talking about?
• [00:36:07] Sylvia Nesmith: What I remember about college years was that I learned a lot in my first year. I learned a lot about disciplining your life socially and in studies. I had decided to major in my first year in home economics, which was a change from what my first dream was actually being a teacher. I want to teach special education. Then I went into home ec, and that was a very hard major. I ended up having classes my freshman year, like molecular biology in my freshman year, first thing in the morning. But I also was enjoying my new freedom without my parents having to tell me what to do or anything, my friends and I. I didn't do a good job in being in the student union, I didn't do a good job in balancing that. I didn't keep my grades up well enough to maintain my financial aid and my parents couldn't afford to send me to school. That's when I came out and I started working. When I could save up enough money, I went back to my home school. But I remember that learning that you really had to have a lot of discipline. The first time in school I probably had maybe not quite a C average, a D+ and you had to have a C to keep your financial aid. The next time I went back to school, I was determined to go back and determined to do better I met the days less and graduated [inaudible 00:37:55], a few other things while I was there. They were both small schools and especially in Winston-Salem State, you could get to really know your instructors. I really enjoyed that you could debate with him and I enjoy debating a lot. I had an economics teacher that we debated so hard that we [LAUGHTER] almost became friends. Even when I moved to work with GM and Illinois, he was still sending me books on economics and things like that. I really like that about the small school. Again, we had a lot of teachers that wanted to see you succeed, and encourage you. I guess as far as I can't compare it to any other school because I just remember that. I remember some teachers being very difficult, but still most of them were encouraging. I remember one she never left my mind. She taught me psychology. I raised my hand to make a comment, I guess on a question and it was about our sheet. They felt our natural fear of heights, that we just have a natural fear of heights. To prove that, I forgot to theory that was but to prove that they sat a baby, a child on this glass. The child would have the perception that if they pat they weren't going to fall off anything. But they had the perception that once you pass a certain point, it felt like you were going from something really high to stand nothing under you, and the child would never go across that line. She felt that proved a point. I raised my hand and said, I don't know how that proves anything if you put somebody on a tall building where they feel they don't have anything under their feet. They're not going to jump off without feeling they have some support. How does it prove anything? I just remember she never would call on me the rest of the semester. [LAUGHTER] But most of my teachers, you know, we enjoy talking and sorting through things together. When I had a question, I didn't quite understand or actually did not accept what they were telling me.
• [00:40:51] INTERVIEWER: That kind of like debate back-and-forth between teachers and students have the war in college and high school that you remember?
• [00:40:59] Sylvia Nesmith: Yes, it did. I don't know if it's just because probably the atmosphere and the age difference, as kids get older, I think they feel more willing to challenge. Probably more even interested. You start to develop a different frame of things you're interested in doing. I always went against the rain, but I had teachers say that they loved me and kept me in line. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:41:34] INTERVIEWER: Do we have time for another question?
• [00:41:37] FEMALE_2: Where are you in a session? You have about five more minutes.
• [00:41:43] INTERVIEWER: We have led to more questions about school experiences before the [inaudible 00:41:50]
• [00:41:53] FEMALE_3: We can get them in, I think, but may not get a culture.
• [00:42:00] INTERVIEWER: So any college, did you play any sports or engage in any extracurricular activities?
• [00:42:09] Sylvia Nesmith: For the most part. Now, when I went back in my second time, I worked while I went to school, I was working at Western Electric actually, that was and I was doing pretty good theater and I was going to go to school and work there. But then I said and more parts and I go to school part-time, but then I decided, you know what, I want to go ahead and finish this up. I'm going to work full-time. I got other part-time jobs and I did work-study on campus too. But I remember I worked with a student government. I was the Director of Judicial Affairs and I was part of the business, Phi, Beta, Lambda, which was our business society. That's what I recall right now as far as formal. Actually, formal things that I did. Now as Phi, Beta, Lambda you've just brought this back to memory too, which is kind of I like to talk about this because it's talked to people I think. But we were from a small school. So Phi, Beta, Lambda held their state conference. People knowing, I guess I like to argue, and so forth. So they came and asked me, Sylvia, we need somebody to compete for business law. I said, okay. So went down and we competed. This little all-black school won first place in most of the categories. And I won first place in business law. People were, and we were the only black school there. We were like, we're wrapping it up and people. How did you do that? What do you mean how did I do it? I took business law and I refreshed, I studied and there we have it, and then after that, I became director of Judicial Affairs for the Student Government. That was nice. That was proud of that because I did something that was totally unexpected by people which had no foundation for what they expected of us. But we proved that we could do as well as anybody else.
• [00:44:25] INTERVIEWER: What about your school experience is different from school as you know it today?
• [00:44:39] Sylvia Nesmith: What's different about school as we know it today, I think that well, we didn't have computers back then. You didn't have to fight to get into advanced classes. If a teacher felt you were in there. I ended up in class. What am I doing here? Because the teachers wanted you, they wanted you to succeed, They wanted you to exercise and work within your full potential. They wanted you to do that and solve, you might end up places because this person can do this. I know they can do this and that's where they're going to be. So I credit a lot to my teachers. just so much. We didn't have computers, we didn't have the great big buildings, with the kids didn't go to school together, the blacks went to one school and then the lights went to other schools.. If I had known you were asked this question, I wondered about my high-school learning or something with me, but from now I don't see one school being better than the other. I see one set of schools having more resources. But that's just from my experience and the experience of others that were into that school system after it was integrated. We could walk to school or we could write the city bus. That's how close it was to last with him, it was we were accustomed to walking into much longer, ways do the kids do today. What else was different? That's about it. It was more personal, smaller. We didn't have as many of the resources. But somehow another miraculously we learned just as much, and I still look at how sometimes my daughter would come home and I even though all of this stuff she had and there were things I was teaching her that she wasn't getting in here. I don't know, like note-taking that we actually had to learn how to take notes, not how to copy him. We had to learn how to listen to somebody and organize notes from that. Anyway, there's a lot of little differences here and there, but I can't think of any major things except technology and the fact that we're in a much larger environment than we used to have in our school buildings and at much larger and diverse. Thanks for asking. It was finally going down memory lane. [LAUGHTER]
• [00:48:00] INTERVIEWER: Do you want to take off your glasses? Today we'll be discussing your time as a young person from about the time school attendance typically began in the United States up until your professional career, we are glad. Just picking up from where we left off last time. We were just talking about high school, and all that, so please describe the popular music of the time.
• [00:48:45] Sylvia Nesmith: While I was in high school, I think there was just a lot of various types of music that was popular at that time, rock and roll became very popular. When I was growing up, we didn't really have a radio station that played a lot of African American or Black music, so we had to listen to the other stations, and they didn't play a lot of our music. I learned to enjoy all types of music. Before I got out of high school though, and actually before Motown, the music that was appealing to Black people became, I think appealing to more, and more people, so more stations started picking it up. But soul music, probably rock, and roll with Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, all those things with blues and jazz influencers. Along with the Beatles, the animals, Mick Jagger, all of that was a time I think for a lot of new initiatives in music from hard rock, and rock to rock and roll to soul, and it was just a lot of things came on the scene, which was a little different from say when I was in elementary school, and we had a program, and I had to sing. We were singing, I think it was the Andrew Sisters, sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening. By the time I got to high school [LAUGHTER], yeah, it was tough bear in the Beatles, and animals and so forth, so a lot of change during my life and that.
• [00:50:39] INTERVIEWER: Did the music, any of the types of music have any particular dances associated with it?
• [00:50:50] Sylvia Nesmith: In high school, are we concentrating on high school now?
• [00:50:55] INTERVIEWER: Yeah mostly.
• [00:50:56] Sylvia Nesmith: Mostly high school. Yes. I think that the chase became very popular then, and they're really still doing it now, variations of that and they call it different hustles now. Well, that started when I was in high school, and we called it the chase. The twist was that I was in elementary school during the twist, we had a dance called the Blue balloon, and there we made it a lot of dances to. Troy and hop, we had a young man that his name is Troy. He had this little move that he did, and we call that the Troy hop. We got to institute that dance all over the city too. That's what I remember, just off the top of my head right now was the Blue balloon, probably because my brother was really good at it [LAUGHTER]
• [00:52:00] INTERVIEWER: What were the popular clothing or hairstyles that you understand?
• [00:52:09] Sylvia Nesmith: Probably the Doris Day flip. If you've, straight with the flip. When I was in high school, by the time I got to college, and the civil rights movement was very well in place, but I think I just started taking on more and more the Black Pride Movement, and the Black Panthers, and Angela Davis and lots of people came on the scene at that time to protest the a lot of injustices and so forth, and along with that came a black pride, and the Afros and the naturals started to become popular right after my high school. But during high school most of us straightened our hair, and wore either curls, and those kind of hairstyles.
• [00:53:06] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other fashion, any other styles from there?
• [00:53:14] Sylvia Nesmith: We had our similar styles, and maybe not as bold as they are today, but and not as clingy as today. But the mini skirt came out when I was in school. The maxi skirts, and maxi coats also came out. If I could still fit some of those clothes, I could probably bring them forth today, and still wear them. I don't know though they might be a little bit too conservative, but I remember wearing not really bear but very short skirts. In one of the first jobs I had, I was a technical illustrator, so we drew diagrams and illustrations on these big board similar to drafting. My spirit was so short that at least for me I thought it was that I would always stand up and raise my board and tilt it to where I was drawing on a blackboard as opposed to bending over my board. The miniskirts, the gogo boots, and that reminds me the swim was another dance because the gogo girls did that a lot if you could look back at some of those. It's just so many chicken, the Bob, a lot of things. I think the styles were similar but just not as boom. I've seen them come and go [LAUGHTER]. Come and go.
• [00:55:07] INTERVIEWER: What were the slang terms or phrases or words that were used that are not that common now?
• [00:55:17] Sylvia Nesmith: That are not that common now? A lot of them that are still common, that's cool. About when we were young, and now back to real, that's another thing.
• [00:55:56] INTERVIEWER: It could be any slang term, it doesn't have to be uncommon today.
• [00:56:06] Sylvia Nesmith: My goodness, I can't think of. Can we come back to that? Maybe something will pop in my mind that I can more readily describe.
• [00:56:17] INTERVIEWER: What was the typical day like in this time period?
• [00:56:21] Sylvia Nesmith: In high school?
• [00:56:22] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
• [00:56:22] Sylvia Nesmith: A typical day was my mother would get up and have breakfast ready and we would have breakfast. We could take the city bus to school or we would walk to school. The school was probably, I guess a couple of miles from where I lived.
• [00:56:57] Sylvia Nesmith: We have student hall monitors. After school, you had your homeroom class just like you do today. Well I don't know if you still do that today, but you have your homeroom class and then you have your monitors. We had to dress a certain way. We could not wear jeans to school or tennis shoes or things like that. Maybe I can remember the next time to bring my high school annual if I can find it, but we basically had to wear hose, and skirts, and sweaters. Some of the young men also had ties and we even had one young man that wore suits every day. He had on his suit and he carried a briefcase. He actually happened to be my business law professor when I went back my second time around in school because he was just that serious about things. He went right on through, he got his Juris Doctorate and came back. He graduated from high school with me and he was teaching me in college. [LAUGHTER] You went to your classes and if you had an active school activity you did that. You got with your friends and you walked home, probably stopped by a couple of stores to get some of the snacks. I remember too that on the corner and I think this is when I first thought I wanted to be a special education teacher because I saw people that weren't making good use of their talents and things that they could do. Part of our day of course everyday we got at school, we had this young man waiting on us. His name was Wendell and he'd be waiting on us to meet the kids and everything. We'd always joke around with him and he had different little sayings and so forth, but Wendell stuck in my mind and he was part of our daily life and I felt I saw too many people like that too and then he had I think a very good support at home. Some of these people were up here to be homeless. Now he definitely wasn't and he knew that because of how he carried himself and the way he was dressed and everything. That was part of my day. Even though we were in this city, some of us rode the school bus and some of us didn't. We had the games. I can't think of anything too much different than what you do today maybe other than the way we dress was a little different. We couldn't have been this casual as you are here when I was in high school. I can't really think of anything to myself, it was so different.
• [01:00:14] INTERVIEWER: Do you think with the dress there were advantages or disadvantages having to be so formal and not being able to be casual around that school?
• [01:00:28] Sylvia Nesmith: I think that sometimes your disposition and your attitude goes inside out and outside in and top to bottom. Sometimes I think along with your stature if you're slouching and so forth I don't think that you may or may not be processing things exactly the same way. The same thing goes for when you dress the way you dress maybe make you feel a little differently depending upon how you're dressed and that might also impact how you approach the things that you're doing. I think that when you dress differently, you feel a little more formal and some things and that goes towards also how we treat each other. Dress is somewhat tied in not that I think is wrong to dress the way you are, is just that it can help or hinder the way I think you process different things. I can't say if that's good or bad. In some cases it might not be as good, in some cases it might be better.
• [01:01:59] INTERVIEWER: During your high school years, what did you and your friends typically do for fun?
• [01:02:10] Sylvia Nesmith: We had house parties. That was very popular during our time. The parents would actually host parties and so forth for the kids. Then some of those social clubs might have parties and if someone had a nice basement or something like that, one of the social clubs might sponsor a party in order to raise money for a charitable event or a charitable cause. After school, you might have track meets. I still can't think of too much, that's a lot different. With friends after school if your parents were at home and if that was allowed, that wasn't necessarily allowed during our time a whole a lot where kids congregated when the parents weren't at home at each other's houses. A similar thing you're just saying is my chore right after school when I got home if there was nothing going on that I had to do at school or activity at school, my first chore was to come home and get all the dishes in the kitchen cleaned up. My mother would start cooking dinner later while we're doing our homework and so forth, and then after dinner we had TV. The one TV we would get together, decide what we're going to watch, and then went to bed after that. It doesn't sound very interesting, but it was a lot of fun. That was a typical after-school day. On the weekends they had some clubs that were geared towards teenagers. We might go there, but a lot of our fun we came from just socializing with each other around that time. I had a couple of friends that we might go and play a little tennis or something like that on a weekend or in just school but a lot of our fun was socializing with each other.
• [01:04:40] INTERVIEWER: Back to the house parties that you mentioned, what kind of things would go on? You'd either listen to music, stuff like that.
• [01:04:52] Sylvia Nesmith: Mostly the music that I described to you basically [NOISE] we were able to listen to more music. We chose mostly the Motown sounds and Sam Cooke sounds and Percy Sledge, people like that. That was part of our our parties too. The Bunny Hop, are you familiar with that thing? I said, don't know if it carried forward but that started in my elementary school years and sometimes when I go to weddings, I see people still doing that dance a little bit. I'm trying to think. We didn't do a lot of spin the bottle games. I think that may have started more in college. I think in high school we basically danced, and talked, and had snacks, and punch, and so forth. As I said all of our parties were supervised and chaperoned by the parents. You weren't going to do this so much. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:06:24] INTERVIEWER: We're going to move on to the section about folkways and family life. This is still going to be within the high school period. Did your family have any special sayings or expressions during this time?
• [01:06:44] Sylvia Nesmith: Special sayings or expressions. I remember my grandmother would call us if she wanted. If she was beckoning us, she might say want to, O-N-A. That was part of the dialect there. I had a very strong Southern accent and I didn't realize how strong it was until I came here, but pint; P-I-N-T, a pint of ice cream. I would call it a pint of ice cream. One of my friends said, what do you mean a pint? [LAUGHTER] She interpreted that as P-A-I-N-T, what I was saying. As far as special sayings, I don't recall any special sayings that we had in the household.
• [01:08:12] INTERVIEWER: Were there any changes in your family life during your school years?
• [01:08:25] Sylvia Nesmith: We grew up with it. [LAUGHTER]. Were there any changes during my school year in my family life? The biggest change I recall is my brother graduated from high school a couple of years before I did. Right as he graduated from high school, he was drafted into the army to fight in Vietnam, the Vietnam War. That was a very somewhat unstable, insecure, but at the same time because we were worried about him. You will sometimes hear stories about what some of the people were going through and we worried a lot about him and sometimes we would get letters from him and sometimes they'd be soiled and so forth. Then actually one of my good friends, his name was Henry Olds. The war was still going on when I graduated and he went to the war. I think he actually went to the Marines, but he was killed in the war. I have a cousin that was also killed in war. But my brother got back safely. In the meantime, another big change I think that came about was my father's businesses started, I think to go down because of some of the social changes too. The way he could hear was normal people were wearing naturals and they weren't getting a haircut as much or even in the same way. At any rate, so his business went down and I remember that was hard on him and it was hard on the family, but my brother always sent the money that he did get from the army. He always sent that home. That was there for my mother to use also. But it was also a disappointment too because I think when he came home, he expected a lot more money but my mother had used some of it to help keep the family going. Those were some difficult times, although good times in our family, but also some difficult times. But even today, whenever there's Veterans Day, I always try to remember to call my brother and thank him because he made a big contribution towards our family.
• [01:11:33] INTERVIEWER: Which holidays did your family celebrate and how are they celebrated?
• [01:11:40] Sylvia Nesmith: We celebrated Christmas basically the same way. One of the things I remember a little different though, is that before we can put up the Christmas tree and we had beautiful hardwood floors today. Then people start covering up those floors. But all of the floors had to be cleaned and stripped and waxed and buffed and everything. The house had to be mackraly before we can even start to put up a Christmas tree. That was almost part of it, the Christmas I call it routine or tradition was just make sure that the house was all spotless and everything before you could put anything. We didn't have all of the lights and so forth that they have now. We had one nice Christmas tree. We all gathered around and we helped, whole family decorated that tree. In fact, when we did see one house during my high school days, there was a house that had all of these likes of Santa Claus and his sleigh on the roof and everything. Now today that's just so common. We thought that was so funny. Some of the times we were just hanging out at the school or at 09:00 and with someone who may have had a car and we was specifically right by the house. [LAUGHTER] Enjoy that house and now that's just a really very common thing, but it wasn't so common to have all of those lights everywhere for Christmas. Many of our major toys we got for Christmas, like when we had a bike and when we got a radio flyer wagon with the wooden size or wood beaver. As I said, we were poor but not poor. Everything we have five of us. When we got a bike, if it was a girl's bike, all the girls had shared that bike. Three of us shared one bike and all of us shared a wagon, all of us shared a sled. I think the only thing I can remember having just by myself was maybe a doll and skates that we would use. I remember once we would get a sled and we had been promised a sled for Christmas when we woke up and there was no sled. [LAUGHTER] Somehow in another way we were caused to look outside and it was snowing and everything and the sled was outside and it snows. That was adding to the excitement and so forth of course for Christmas. This was always different with my kids, but we couldn't wait. I don't know if we got much sleep during Christmas at all, but we couldn't wait to get up in the morning to see. There were a lot of times with my daughter, I would be the one anxious. Why is she getting up? [LAUGHTER] See how these toys are [inaudible 01:14:52] tree. That was a little bit different. Thanksgiving, we always ate together as a family. That was part of our routine. We always ate together as a family. You just had to be there. That was understood. There was hardly any reason that you weren't there. If you were still living at home to be there for dinner. A lot of the things that we never really thought a lot for me to go back and think. I'm just thinking that just happened to be our way of life and I also brought my kids up that way too. Some of the other two traditions. Every year my father belonged to a Barber's Association and they would do things too, family-oriented things. Every year we went to a place called Camp Silverton and that's where they would have a great, big picnic and do a lot of different fun activities. Basically a great, great big picnic in a camp. Then they would also sponsor activities to those special things like Tweetsy, the Railroady or Louisville Caverns, special places. Easter, I think maybe was a little bit different in that. I don't see too much today having as many Easter egg hunt. That was part of what we did every year for our church would have an Easter egg hunt for the kids. They would take us out in this big field that had hills and they look, you don't hide the eggs really good and that was a lot of fun. People don't do that as much as little by little I think is just starting to go away and I'm not sure why. But other than I can't think of any just really special things as I was growing up that we did. Outside of the things, all other Americans basically celebrated.
• [01:17:19] INTERVIEWER: I know you mentioned a little bit when you were just talking about the holidays, but were there any special recipes that have been preserved or past on throughout your family?
• [01:17:33] Sylvia Nesmith: For Christmas my mother did a rich every punch in every year we'd have the rich cherry punch. It was a special Christmas punch. Since she's not here anymore to do that, then I basically tried to do my own rendition of that. I don't put everything in it that she did. She would actually boil the water and sugar that somehow increase the intensity of the flavors. She actually cooked the punch [LAUGHTER] before she made all of it. I don't do that. I just I remember all of our ingredients and I put them altogether. My family, sometimes it looks at me like, you're not cooking it. [LAUGHTER] That was part of a tradition and a special recipe in our family. We always have to have candy yarms. That's another thing that my mother was good at and I count that up made that one of my own thing. Basically, my mother was just a very, very good cook. People would come to her house just to see what we had or my neighbor would, he could smell the food. [LAUGHTER] He'd be overboard. Some of the traditional things that you have for Thanksgiving, basically one of we still try to get together whenever we can. There would be one of us, one of the children would have at least one thing that they have seemingly learned to do very well. Similar to my mother, we'd have those. I have one sister. She always going to make the macaroni and the dressing. I'm always going to do the candy yarms and a punch. I have another sister, as always going to do the the greens and so forth. Each one of us, I think, have adapted different things from my mother that we became good at. Then we put it all together during those special holidays, mostly thanksgiving. It's more convenient for us to get together than Christmas anymore.
• [01:20:04] INTERVIEWER: What was the major social or historical events taking place at that time? How did they personally affect you and your family?
• [01:20:21] Sylvia Nesmith: I think that there was so much that changed during my young days. The first thing that comes to mind is integration. During my life, I knew of the sharecroppers not being able to eat out at restaurants, or stay at hotels and things like that. Blacks and White went to separate schools. When there was busing, though there was busing basically if you lived in the outskirts, it was busing to get you if you live in the county area, and went to how many schools busing there. But by the time I got to high school, it was starting to integrate more. I remember sitting at home watching TV and seeing some of the marches taking place. Not in my hometown as much, but in other places, and watching how the protesters were treated. I remember watching the March on Washington, from TV. I was still young at the time, but I think it was sometime during my high school years, there were some protests in our town, and I asked my mother if I could go, and she was afraid, because of everything we were seeing she would not allow me to go, so I had to do things after I left, [LAUGHTER] to take part in different injustices or protesting in various ways, different injustices. But that was a great big part of the social change and climate that started to take place in my young days. The other thing was just personal freedom. So many personal freedoms: sexual revolution, the women's rights, and just all of it, [LAUGHTER] just the flurry of different things during my time, and during the Sixth Thesis, I think they call it the Turbulent '60s, the hippies, the flower children. Everybody had a song to sing during those days. [LAUGHTER] It's all good, it shaped where we are today. Not that it by itself of course it didn't, because everything builds and builds. But it was just such a time where so many different dynamics and forces came to play. They just changed the world forever during those times. I looked back as I was really fortunate to live, I saw so much evolution and revolution during my time. Some of it was very good. Some of it I look back on and say, "I don't really think that was such a good idea, he really didn't have good results." But that's part of growing too. They go, " You know what, that wasn't good, so let's look back and let's tweak that a little bit." or let's change, throw this out to bring this forward, and so forth. I'm very fortunate to have lived through those times. There's some really serious times, at the same time, very lighthearted, I had very good time during my childhood. I think I remember high school because it was so free, I had the opportunity to be so free after high school. When you really your thought process start going, and you start to take on responsibilities. You start to think about the world, and what it is, and what it's doing to you and others, and what you might be able to do. I don't know if that answered your question, but those were just so many things that we still look at today started during the '60s, which was when I grew up, '60s and '70s. I was born in '40, '49. I think the '50s was when Africa really started to come out of colonialism and stuff like that. We read and heard a lot about that. Then after that it seems like America started to come out from under its colonialism. [LAUGHTER] I've seen a lot. I've been very fortunate to have lived through that era.
• [01:25:50] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:25:50] Thank you.
• [01:25:58] Sylvia Nesmith: I lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which is my hometown. Of course I lived with my parents for a while, save money, and then I moved into my own apartment, and my brother moved with me. After I graduated I went to college in Durham, North Carolina, for a year, then I came back. I went into the workforce, saved my money, moved into an apartment. I've been on my own since then. As far as where I lived, residences from home to own my home, geographic location as far as national or the United States, I moved from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Danville, Illinois. From Danville, Illinois, I moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, which brings us up to date on that. [LAUGHTER]
• [01:27:10] INTERVIEWER: You were married at one point?
• [01:27:14] Sylvia Nesmith: Yes. I got married in Danville, Illinois.
• [01:27:20] INTERVIEWER: This portion will be a little bit about your married life. Tell me about your spouse, like where or when did you meet, and what was it like while you were dating?
• [01:27:37] Sylvia Nesmith: I was around 28 years old when I met my spouse. Or it may have been 29 or 30 actually. To me that's older for starting a family, at least it was at that time. I met him actually through a friend. I was visiting a friend and he was visiting a mutual friend. We met that way and started to date, and eventually we got married.
• [01:28:19] INTERVIEWER: Is there anything you'd like to tell us about your engagement or wedding?
• [01:28:29] Sylvia Nesmith: I can't think of anything other than before we got married at my church, we had to talk to our pastor. That was part of what he did and what he recommended and encourage for his members. I didn't realize that would be part of it, but that was good. I thought that was good. But we had to go through counseling even before we got married.
• [01:29:06] INTERVIEWER: What was life like with your children when they were young and around the house?
• [01:29:11] Sylvia Nesmith: It was a lot of fun for me. I was always very involved in my kid's schooling. I enjoyed that being in the class is getting to know the teachers and also getting to know the other kid. Fortunately, I had a job where I could do that and I could take off door the day and go and volunteer at school to read and glass with children or whatever. We went to park. We went to on family picnics, even just the three of us was I had my child. I enjoyed playing a lot of games with my son. We had part of the basement set up almost like a little playroom for us and it was almost like I was an older kid with [LAUGHTER] whatever he was playing with I was playing with also, and even had a little slide about this tall. He was very little. I get on that too. I'd get on his tricycle. Anything, I say a lot fine with my children as we were growing up. Also try to do a lot to stimulate their desire and interest in learning.
• [01:30:49] INTERVIEWER: In regards to your children, were there any personal favorite things that you guys would like to do?
• [01:30:56] Sylvia Nesmith: It mostly revolved around my son at the time. But I remember one favorite game that we'd like to play, and that was battleship. He loved the battleship and one of his favorite games and it got to be one of mine. He was maybe about four or five, when he started to really like that. But then before that it was hungry hippo is, have you heard of it? [LAUGHTER] We'd love playing that, that was really get into it. Let your passions go. [LAUGHTER] I can't think of any other particular games that we'd like to play together, but especially we had so much that we did together.
• [01:32:01] INTERVIEWER: Are there any special days, events or conditions that you practice with your children in your childhood?
• [01:32:21] Sylvia Nesmith: I think we did more birthday parties and that was something that became just so special. When I grew up, we didn't pay that much attention to birthdays, not as far as big celebrations and so we had birthday parties and in one year it was always something like really special, that we did or we went to a very special place and invited all of his classmates and his special friends. That's nice, but I just never remembered paying so much attention to all of that. Even one year I invited a caricature artists there and he would draw pictures of the kids. That was my attraction for that party. Then one year of course we avoid invited a clown beer to entertain. We just didn't do all of that when I wasn't [inaudible 01:33:20] [LAUGHTER]
• [01:33:24] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your working years.
• [01:33:35] Sylvia Nesmith: When I graduated from high school and college, there was emphasis on being mobile. If you wanted to take advantage of various opportunities, you'll have more and more options available to you and also grow until forth in your career. I moved away from anybody that I knew almost a third of the way across the country. I moved from North Carolina through the Midwest. That was interesting, but I've an independent person anyway, and I've enjoyed it, developed friends and so forth. But I think at that time it was more emphasis on or moving away. Moving to another place where before a lot of people stayed in their hometowns or close to that was when they got out of school their work.
• [01:34:34] INTERVIEWER: [OVERLAPPING] last questions up here [inaudible 01:34:49]
• [01:34:55] Sylvia Nesmith: Single topics.
• [01:34:57] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Just [inaudible 01:34:58] I related to this. These are going to be a few wisdom questions thinking back over your entire life. What are you most proud of?
• [01:35:27] Sylvia Nesmith: I'm proud for me. My ability to adjust to the changes that have taken place or some of my spiritual growth. I am proud of how that has helped me and it still is helping me to develop to where I can deal with and respond and face in a positive way some of the challenges the society presents to an African American and female.
• [01:36:15] Sylvia Nesmith: What would you say has changed the most from the time you were my age to now?
• [01:36:28] Sylvia Nesmith: I would think communications and technology. I think that's a big change. I think back to the days when everybody didn't have a telephone in their home, and when people started to get telephones, you had a two-party, three party, four party line where you had several different families on one line. Now every person has a telephone. I think back to cameras, where cameras were big and bulky, and now many people have one, even on their phones. There's just so many developments from the time I was in high school and now in media and communications.
• [01:37:38] INTERVIEWER: What advice would you give to my generation?
• [01:37:48] Sylvia Nesmith: As an older person, I'm looking back and thinking about the things that are very important. I think one of the most important things is our relationship with each other nationally, globally, in your community, in your neighborhood and in your town. To me that is the difference between civilization and primitive is how we respond and get along and cooperate with each other. Mine, it's so important in how you can develop things, how people can prosper, everybody can prosper and so forth. One of the things I would say is question things, question everything. Why do we do things like this, why do we treat people this way? Even question yourself. Question, why you do things, why you feel a certain way in your personal life and regarding other people. Because a lot of times you'll find out that these really may not even be your own thoughts. [LAUGHTER] This is something that has been put into you by somebody else and you may not even like it, but you find yourself doing things because you may have been conditioned to do certain things. That would be what I think, and I think that has helped me a lot in reflecting and introspective type of reflection also is basically questioning things and having freedom of thought and trying [LAUGHTER] as much as you can not to let someone else control your thoughts. There a lot of things you can't control, but you can try to control your thinking and your thoughts, they're yours and yours alone. I think that would be probably one of the things that will make a big difference in the world and relationships, how we learn, how much we learn. That's just question all the time, question.
• [01:40:25] INTERVIEWER: Is there anything maybe underdose that you'd would like to add that we haven't talked about?
• [01:40:32] Sylvia Nesmith: Well, one of the things you asked earlier I think was, what were some of the political happenings and so forth around the time that I came up? I thought back and remembered when I was in elementary school, it may have been upper elementary school and we had to learn how to get underneath the desk and tables and so forth in case there was a bomb strike or something. I remember riding around on Sundays or whatever day we would be riding out or wherever we were going, and sometimes my parents were pointing out where there were different bomb shelters and so forth. I don't know if we've been through a time since then other than with the terrorism that we were so concerned about our own safety as civilians even. During that time was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember there was a standoff between President Kennedy and Russia regarding Cuba because Russia had started to build some missiles and so forth. Cuba, and from at least they were saying back then they were pointed right at us. But anyway, there was a standoff there and many people thought there was a possibility of a war right here on our land. We were actually taught, so that was something that I didn't think about at the time. Another thing that I thought a big significant thing that happened was in schools. I remember this so clearly in the ninth grade, we had a teacher and her name was Mrs. Simon, and every day before we started, you did the Pledge of Allegiance and you said a prayer. We said a prayer before we started school, anything. She came in one day and she was a larger lady, and she said, "Well, kids I tell you they passed a law we cannot pray anymore in school." We were all very sad about that. This goes back to your thoughts, she said, but they can't stop what we meditate on and what we think on, and so we're just going to have silence for a few minutes and we're going to meditate, but we won't be praying out loud but you do that. That to me was a very significant thing that happened in our society when we could no longer have prayer in school. I guess that went back to what they thought was freedom of religion. You can look at that two ways, but I guess some people felt that it impinged upon their freedom not to be a Christian or pray the same way that other people pray