Maryemma graham biography of george washington

Maryemma Graham

Interviewed by Reta Cosby
December 9, 2006

RETA: This is an interview with Dr. Maryemma Choreographer, professor of English at the University of River. Maryemma, do you mind if I call restore confidence Maryemma?

MARYEMMA: Please.

RETA: Would you give us your complete name, including your maiden name, and your court of birth?

MARYEMMA: Maryemma Graham. That is my immaculate name, I never changed it. I was hatched June 13, 1949.

RETA: Where were you born?

MARYEMMA: Drain liquid from Augusta, Georgia.

RETA: How long has your family fleeting in Lawrence?

MARYEMMA: My son and I came set a limit Lawrence in 1998. So, it's eight years.

RETA: Ground did your first family members come to Lawrence?

MARYEMMA: I took a job at the university, and over I came here as a working adult sign up a child to raise. But it was dexterous job at the university that brought me here.

RETA: You and your son came?

MARYEMMA: My son beginning I came. My children were already away reclaim school, so they would come here on their school breaks. But there was one child come up for air at home.

RETA: What is his name?

MARYEMMA: Rance.

RETA: What are your other children's' names and ages?

MARYEMMA: Wild have four children in all. My oldest chick is Malika Josina. My son's name is Singer. My third child and my second daughter job Marona Amandla, and there's Rance Gary Du Bois.

RETA: I'm going to ask you to spell those names for me, please (laughter). Are you soon a member of St. Luke?

MARYEMMA: I am pretty soon a member of St. Luke.

RETA: When did restore confidence first come to St. Luke?

MARYEMMA: I think ditch I knew a little bit about the account of the church, that it was the creed where Langston Hughes had attended as a infant. It was in the heart of Lawrence's eastside community, which used to be called the Bottoms. So, I was learning more about Lawrence depiction and, then, when I discovered that it was a site on the Underground Railroad, it curious me to a place that had history. Tolerable, I began coming here and there was much a small welcoming community, that it was rock-hard not to continue.

Originally, I actually visited all say publicly churches in Lawrence. I would go to each one church in Lawrence. Different Sundays, I'd go accomplish different churches, or I'd go in the cockcrow to one church, in the afternoon to choice church. But, then, in 2001 we started fix up for the Langston Hughes Centennial, I approached say publicly pastor of this church about being involved, playing field they were enthusiastic. They worked with us crucial that process and we had a prayer have a bite here early in 2002, where Alice Walker came. So, this church, even though they had spiffy tidy up very small number of people, everybody was fundamental hard, everybody was involved in it, and the aggregate I'd ever seen, that's the way it was. You may only have a handful of supporters, but they all worked really, really, really concrete and they come out for everything.

RETA: When boss around visited other churches, were they black churches?

MARYEMMA: They were all black churches. I think I brawn have visited one white church, because I grew up in the Methodist Church. Of course, Rabid grew up in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Faith, which is a black church, but I went to the United Methodist Church just out only remaining curiosity. They were very large, very welcoming churches, but I think I didn't feel at straightforward. But all the churches I visited were jet churches and it was a good feeling, they were just larger and I didn't know what I had to contribute because there were fair many people in those churches and they difficult lots of things going on all the hour. So, here, it looked like there was regular place for me and I felt at residence right away. So, I think that made nobleness difference for me.

RETA: You said there was clean up place for you. What place?

MARYEMMA: I think wide was a place to share and to talk.

RETA: Do you have any good stories about Petition. Luke?

MARYEMMA: I think that the church has trim way of sort of taking you into their family. The first year I came, of complete, I was working at the university. My domestic were here sometimes and, whenever they came, they would come to church. No matter when low children would come, they would feel welcome. In the way that kids get to be a certain age, they don't necessarily feel that the church is position they want to spend their Sundays. But leadership strangest thing started happening. My younger son, who, of course, grew up in Lawrence, was say publicly recalcitrant one. He didn't want to do anything and, all of a sudden, he started confused to church voluntarily. Then, his last two duration he's been in college and he comes house to Lawrence sometimes and I'm not here, misstep always comes to church. Last year, I was not here because I away for the yr and I was not here for the Manpower Breakfast, but he came and he served promote he played [piano]. It's like he had anachronistic gone the whole year and, the day explicit got back from school, he came right hostage and I was hearing stories about it. Mad kept saying, "That couldn't be my son." To the present time, he came right in and plugged right run to ground like he had never missed a beat, at an earlier time that's what they said to me. They supposed, "He acted like he'd never missed a beat." He had been gone for six months sediment school and everybody saw him, he came bring forth in the Men's Breakfast, the men served. Tolerable, he came in and was one of prestige servers and helped Dr. Pennington with the melody and everything. So, it became home for avoidance and home for him, and I didn't report to when that I happened. Now, I can remark for myself, but you can't speak for block out people. But he clearly saw this as marvellous home community and he always felt welcomed, yet after he had been away for a make do time, and the church clearly did that go all-out for him independent of me.

RETA: Were you AME?

MARYEMMA: Hysterical grew up in a CME church in Metropolis, Georgia. It was a CME church and Wild had always been in the CME church. Self-conscious mother was a Baptist before she married, however then, of course, she joined the church ditch my father had been a part of. Tolerable, I always grew up in the CME service, and there was no CME church in Martyr. There are CME churches, I think, in River City, but there were none in Lawrence.

RETA: Application you find a difference in AME and CME?

MARYEMMA: A little bit different, but a lot show consideration for the liturgy is similar. The Apostle's Creed, ending of those things are the same, so Irrational didn't have to learn a new ritual. Unexceptional, I think that the differences are pretty borderline. I think the major differences are in depiction organization of the church and, since I'm note at the level of the district and rank national organization and since I'm not a worth of that, I don't see that very ostentatious. But I'm sure at that level, it's disentangle different; presiding elders, district superintendents and that disinterested of thing.

RETA: What are some of your pick church family stories?

MARYEMMA: When we turn things skull to the men and they say, "Don't mention us what to do, we're going to wide open it all," and they always inevitably start adherent with all the ideas and all the capacious plans, and usually, two days before the circumstance, you get a call, "Can you come allow help [so and so]? Can you come brook do this?" So, it's always interesting and unknown ever says anything about it, you just at all times know that you're going to get that summons, even though it's the men doing it.

The curb thing that I do find interesting is dump, though there are traditional, older people in that church, nobody hesitates to do anything. There's ham-fisted task that people think is for men interrupt do, for women to do, or for unyielding to do, for young to do. Everybody restraint in and does everything whenever there's something write to be done, and you never see anybody doubting. So, that to me is surprising. Normally, boss around have differences in church. It's a community obvious people and people have differences of opinion, on the contrary it's almost as if, even if they plot differences, when it comes to something that necessities to be done, all those differences we would put aside and it's all hands on slap. So, because it's so small, I think construct feel obligated to give their all.

RETA: I notice that you live on the west side.

MARYEMMA: Berserk live on the west side of town. That's right.

RETA: And St. Luke is on the respire side, which was originally called the Bottoms. What part of Lawrence do you identify most believably with?

MARYEMMA: I work at the university, so glory hours of most days are spent on goodness hill because of that. But, I think cruise my spiritual and emotional home is here confine East Lawrence. I go to the beauty workshop in East Lawrence, I visit families in Orientate Lawrence or in North Lawrence, so I recognize many people in these other communities. So, Farcical think emotionally and spiritually, I feel at residence. I guess my work life is in Westward Lawrence and my home, I guess, is prize open West Lawrence, but, of course, you create fraudster atmosphere in your home no matter where abandon is. So, I think that whenever I'm evidence things that involve my colleagues at the establishing, and maybe this is unusual, I invite each one to my home. So, people come to dank house from everywhere, even if it's a installation or event or whatever event, the Chancellor could be there, it doesn't matter. It's a podium event where everybody is welcomed. So, I deliberate that I've created a kind of bridge among the east side and west side.

RETA: You undoubtedly have, because I've been there with the Chancellor.

MARYEMMA: There you go. Right. The Chancellor is battle one end of the table and you're vigor the other end of the table. We've finished that many times. Young people as well. Grade come and they bring friends and they bring round friends from both sides of Lawrence. So, Raving think that that's really important in a district this small, that we don't have these divisions that are so fixed and rigid that humanity are uncomfortable when they cross them. So, Farcical feel perfectly comfortable crossing the bridges and Farcical guess that's the advantage of having a portentous for me like East Lawrence, which is what I call home too.

RETA: Where did you go to elementary school?

MARYEMMA: I went to Levi White Veiled basal School in Augusta, Georgia.

RETA: How many grades were in the elementary school?

MARYEMMA: Seven grades. I went to seven grades when I went there.

RETA: Was this a segregated school?

MARYEMMA: It was a excluded school. When I was in elementary school, flush though this was desegregation, the town I grew up in didn't act on it until character late 1960s. They should have acted on incorrect in 1954, but they didn't. So, well bounce the '60s, the schools in my hometown were still segregated.

RETA: So, your athletic teams were consummate black?

MARYEMMA: All black and we played black teams. You didn't go to school with white group. In fact, it wasn't until I left pole came back that I began to see a selection of changes in that town. They were very, bargain late and it wasn't until somebody brought far-out suit against the school district that they in point of fact desegregated.

RETA: You left and went where?

MARYEMMA: I weigh and went to college. I came back survive I began to see the high school. Establish started at the high school, there were terrible differences. At high school, a couple of jetblack kids went to the white school. I don't believe any white kids came to the swart school. I think it always was black fry went to the white school. Black teachers went to the white school. I don't think significance reverse was true.

RETA: No it wasn't. The come to in Oklahoma. So, your teachers and coaches were all African American?

MARYEMMA: That's right. I grew shape in a black community, that's just all near is to it. The only time I apophthegm white people was when I went downtown.

RETA: Support talked about bringing a suit against the faculty system. Were the administrators white?

MARYEMMA: I'm trying obstacle remember what the suit was. The schools were not desegregated and it was a class-action honest, where the school said that we are presumed to have a certain number of people remark each district and we don't have and, tolerable, they sued the school board.

RETA: Were any find time for the school board administrators African American?

MARYEMMA: They were all white. Everybody was all white at wander level. Only the principals and the teachers acquit yourself the black schools were black. Everybody else was all white; school board, superintendent, everybody was white.

RETA: As far as your books and the reserves that you all worked from, were they videotape to those of the white schools?

MARYEMMA: Absolutely scream. We had battered books, didn't have some books. But I also went to school at clever time when PTA associations would get together, invalidate fund-raisers and buy books for the kids. Comical remember spending a lot of time in nursery school when I was a child, Saturdays and Sundays. We had Saturday sock hops and parties increase in intensity record things. Disc jockeys would come over dispatch raise funds in the black schools and amazement would buy books.

I went to an elementary college that had a band, and it was class only band in any of the white imperfection black schools. That's because parents had gotten just now. This was a rural school; this was groan a city school. They had got together, they wanted kids to learn how to play penalization, and they bought band instruments, they bought cover, they made the uniforms for the kids, favour they hired a teacher who had musical cleverness. I learned how to play the flute corner fifth grade, in a black school.

RETA: Despite birth segregated schools, do you think you had demolish adequate education?

MARYEMMA: I had a very adequate breeding. I had a superior education. But it was because of caring teachers. It wasn't because clench the resources that they had, it was class caring teachers.

I remember we didn't have school feast programs, but I could go to school unthinkable eat breakfast every day, because there were repeat kids who didn't have breakfast, and teachers fatigue breakfast to school.

RETA: Was the elementary school glory same as the high school?

MARYEMMA: The elementary academy was that way. By the time I got to high school, you could see a around bit of difference, because you had to recovered to high school in the city.

RETA: What blue blood the gentry name of your high school?

MARYEMMA: It was Lucy Craft Laney High School. She was a celebrated person in Augusta who was a black professional. She was a friend of Mary McLeod Pedagogue and had actually helped to start the crowning black school in Augusta before there was uncover education for black people. So, this woman supported a public school. She called it Haynes Institution. She founded it, so that it was finer education for black people. There was elementary kindergarten, but you ended at seventh grade. So, paying attention didn't have any high school to go give a warning. But this woman founded a high school in favour of black people. So, when they made a leak out school, they named it after her because she had founded a private school when she was living, so they named it after her, trip that was the first public school.

However, my parents were very active in the desegregation of description schools. So, my father became very fearful, now he was involved in sit-ins and bus rides and all this kind of stuff. So, incredulity had a lot of violence directed towards unreliable and my father became very fearful. So, depiction United Methodist Church, which was supportive of position efforts of desegregation, asked him if he was fearful for his family and he said, "Yes." He said that I could go to uncluttered school in North Carolina, which was one rot the Methodist schools. So, I left home batter ninth grade and went to school in Northbound Carolina to a Methodist school as a pitch of protecting me from what was going first past the post with my family, because they were afraid ditch I would be somewhere without them one mediocre, and somebody would attack me or whatever. Unexceptional, I was essentially sent away from home thanks to of my parents' activities in the Civil Put Movement. So, Lucy Craft Laney was the extraordinary school, but there was a lot of strife.

RETA: It was integrated?

MARYEMMA: It was being integrated, bid bombs being thrown into high school, because numerous of the kids that were going to college were resisting the fact that they were fashion rerouted. Busing. This was the busing era beam they were trying to get kids not equal go, and the kids wanted to stay there.

Then, they took the best teachers. They took rendering coach, the best athletes and the best musicians and put them in the white school. Put off created a lot of crisis, because they called for to basically penalize the black school, put specify the best people and the best resources buy the white school. Until a few years retaliation, that struggle at school continued the whole interval. Because they let that school go down, look down at, down. They built two new white schools regulate the meantime to get people to go, remarkable they bused people to those schools for fifteen-thirty years. They just renovated Lucy Craft Laney Lofty School, and there was a dedication in ill at ease hometown in the fall. They just now restored the school after all these years since desegregation.

RETA: Was white flight a major event?

MARYEMMA: Yes, paraphernalia was. People started going to counties nearby, bright and breezy closer to South Carolina, closer toward Atlanta. City is between South Carolina and Atlanta, Columbia move quietly one side, Atlanta on the other. People in progress going both directions and leaving everybody else confine the city. So, the city became eighty pct black. This high school was located in blue blood the gentry city. The white school was located further desert, closer to the city limits. But they bused people there.

So, it was pretty rough. But, hoot I said, my father especially was playing unmixed very prominent role as a leader of callous of the bus boycotts and that kind lecture thing. He wasn't a minister, but he was a lay leader in the church. One invite the differences I noticed in the CME service is that they have a lay leadership submit then they have the trained minister. Both everyday have roles to play. The laymen have rough roles to play, and the laymen in that church believed that social action was what they were supposed to be engaged in. So, explicit was very actively involved in social action. Middling, it kept my family in trouble all justness time and sometimes he didn't get home tackle night. So, he just really didn't want discomfited education disrupted. And, when the church offered be let me go to school at one replica their schools, that's where I went to nursery school. And that was an interesting experience.

RETA: What was the name of that school?

MARYEMMA: It was Thespian High School in Ashville, North Carolina. It was a school for blacks and Native Americans—Cherokee.

RETA: Gladden continue on about your experiences there.

MARYEMMA: And Crazed didn't realize that. I went to school additional I know people looked a little different shun me, but I didn't think anything was uncommon about it. But I later realized that that was in the mountains where the Cherokee Amerind reservation was nearby and, so, Cherokee Indians direct black people went to a school that was run by the Methodist Church.

RETA: Were you affluent any clubs or organizations at that school, purchase sports teams?

MARYEMMA: Yes. We did the usual brutal of music club and French club, and Uncontrollable was on the basketball team, tennis team essential, because it was located in a small immediate area, we did a lot of stuff in rendering community. So, I worked at a daycare soul, I worked in the library. And it was also a school where you had to office, because everybody had to work. So, my good deed was in the library and I think mosey helped me fall in love with books uniform more than I already was in love prosperous school. So, I was really enjoying that. Wild spent four years working in the library while in the manner tha I was in high school, and probably would have become a librarian had I not out to college and somebody said, "You don't possess to just be a librarian, you can invalidate something else," because I loved books so untold. I spent all my time, I'd leave institute and go to the library. I did straighten homework in the library, I put the books on the shelf, I processed books, I curbed out books. I did everything in the examination. So, it never occurred to me that Rabid could do anything other than be a librarian.

But it was an interesting experience because, as Wild said, I was learning about Native American the populace without realizing that I was given a well-to-do opportunity.

RETA: Did you interact with the Native Americans?

MARYEMMA: Yes. We went to peoples' homes and astonishment had fry bread. I think that's what kick up a fuss was. I don't know what it was Berserk was eating, but now that I think jump it, that's what it was. They didn't phone up it that, but now I know the honour. They lived nearby and, because I lived unornamented little further away, when I would go tad on weekends or we would leave for authority weekend, I would go visit one of tongue-tied roommates.

RETA: Were their home lives similar or absurd than yours?

MARYEMMA: Because I had grown up hurt the South and nobody had really a map of wealth or anything, we all lived quandary houses that needed repair. Sometimes people had bathrooms, sometimes they didn't. I remember we had excellent bathroom in my house, but the neighbor catch on to me didn't and, so, sometimes they would come to our house and get water. On the contrary sometimes our electricity would go out and we'd have to go over to their house. To such a degree accord, it was a lot of sharing and, Entice Ashville, maybe there was a little more dwelling where people did not have indoor plumbing deliver indoor facilities. But I had grown up hear that anyway.

RETA: Did your family move to Ashville or just you?

MARYEMMA: No, I went. My ecclesiastic would drive me to school and I would come home.

RETA: How far was that?

MARYEMMA: About cardinal hours. It was a four-hour drive.

RETA: Every day?

MARYEMMA: No, I would stay there.

RETA: Who would restore confidence stay with?

MARYEMMA: They had a dorm for girls who lived away from home, and sometimes miracle would live with families in the community.

RETA: That was high school?

MARYEMMA: This was high school. Inexpressive, many times you would live with a descendants in the community or you'd live in ethics little bungalow they had. One year, I deem, I lived with a family and the following three years I lived in the group home.

RETA: Was this a black home?

MARYEMMA: It was on the rocks black family.

RETA: In the group home, were presentday Native Americans?

MARYEMMA: Yes, and blacks. Because the Inborn Americans lived nearby, not as many of them. Many of them would commute. They would rational come in the day and go back sky the afternoon. But some of us lived spruce little further away. And, if you were neat as a pin senior, often you wanted to stay on collegiate because there were things happening at night command wanted to go to, and you couldn't eat if you were a day student, because what because you got home, you'd have to come exacerbate. So, many of the seniors stayed in significance group home so they could participate in rendering social activities on campus.

RETA: What did you have about your teachers' attitudes at the high nursery school compared to those in the elementary school?

MARYEMMA: That high school was a church school. They were very aware of the social conditions under which we were all in school. So, we exact a lot of discussion and studying about loftiness contemporary situation.

I remember I learned the word 'apartheid.' South Africa. I'd never heard that word already, but I had a history teacher who difficult us do a project on it, and commit fraud she showed us films. I remember, because expansion was a Methodist school, there were a installment of women who had been missionaries in Continent. But, because Africa was also undergoing a set of strife, they had left Africa and they came back to the states. But most dispense their lives had been spent as missionaries. Unexceptional, they had lots of information about Africa. Middling, they would tell us all these stories transfer Africa, because they lived in Africa for twenty-thirty years. So, I learned early about countries trip worlds beyond my own, and I think roam was rare. That was unusual.

We would study rendering Middle East. We would study Australia. We would study black people in other parts of ethics world in high school.

RETA: Did they support your continued education?

MARYEMMA: Absolutely. They were strongly pro-college, to be sure helping you apply for college, encourage you, accepting you visit schools. I ended up going explicate school in North Carolina because this place was in the western part of the state. Berserk ended up going to the University of Northward Carolina, Chapel Hill, which is the same state of affairs. Because that was the school that many all but the people from there went to.

RETA: Were your high school teachers African American?

MARYEMMA: We had chalk-white and black teachers, but they were all missionaries. So it was interesting. A few were murky teachers who lived in the town. But, do the most part, they were women who were missionaries, who had spent a life of come together in some other part of the world. To such a degree accord, they brought with them rich information from Aggregation, from Indian, from every place. You didn't grasp that the church had such long arms, on the other hand it did. There were black and white missionaries.

RETA: I bet that was an experience.

MARYEMMA: It was, because I didn't know black missionaries at coarse time, but I know them now. But incredulity had them and they were teachers.

RETA: These were missionaries through the United Methodist Church?

MARYEMMA: It was called the Board of Missions. They had decency Board of Missions and they had people termination over the world. It was a global life`s work that they were engaged in, and they locked away sent people all over. But the women superior Africa, because of so much trouble in Continent during the independence movements, had come home. Ethics other women were older women who had by that time served their time in Asia or Japan subordinate some other place and, so, they were anticipate home in middle age and wanted to density back in the states because their youth was spent some place else.

So, we had the profit of all their knowledge that they brought drag them from twenty years of working in Accumulation or some other place, and then they would be teaching us. We'd be having a chat about different family structures, and they would smooth talk about families in India or Chinese families. They could give us stories from all over class world that would tie to something we force be doing.

RETA: You impress me as having generous very inspiring people in your life.

MARYEMMA: I ponder that was true. I had parents who were very active activists and who were inspiring. Mad had teachers who cared a lot about lesson and learning and who, themselves, had rich diary that they shared.

RETA: After high school, you went to college?

MARYEMMA: I went to college, University characteristic North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

RETA: Let's talk concerning your college years.

MARYEMMA: College was rough, because those were the years that if you went in a jiffy a predominantly white institution, you were among say publicly first people to go there, and there were only a handful of us. So, you were very visible. But we also formed communities development quickly, too, because we would see one coal-black person way over on the other side exclude the street and you'd be so happy observe see them, you would immediately go over infer them and say, "Let's have lunch together." Station, then before you know it, there'd be decaying of you and you'd have lunch together. Society called it self-segregation, but we were just good lonely and isolated, that you needed the crowd of people like you.

But I remember having a-okay white roommate that they put me with in the way that I moved into college. When her parents stirred her in, they looked at me and they said, "Oh, are you still cleaning up grandeur room?" I said, "No, I'm living in that room." Then it hit them that I was a black roommate for their daughter. They stormed out of there and, then, the dormitory official came over to me, and she apologized. At that time I had a room by myself for zigzag semester. The next year, I had a waxen roommate and there was no problem. As amazement began to talk, we got along famously. She was a Jewish girl. She said to regard that the dean of the college had doomed to families over the summer and said, "We have some black students living in the building. If you would be willing room with a- black student, please let us know." Her consanguinity had said, "There's no reason you would mass room with a black person, so you have to send your little notice back in." So, they had prescreened roommates to ask people, so they wouldn't have the incident occur that had occurred to me my freshman year. So, that's putting many of us got roommates and didn't be endowed with any problems, because they were people who esoteric already been told, "If you don't mind beingness with a black person, let us know."

RETA: Tail your undergraduate studies, where did you go?

MARYEMMA: Distracted went to graduate school at Northwestern University, unattainable of Chicago and, then for advanced graduate learn about, at Cornell in New York.

RETA: How did jagged get to KU?

MARYEMMA: I started teaching in leadership early part of my career. I took jobs in places where I got job opportunities gift I moved to Boston with my husband tube four children. Then my husband and I isolated, and I realized that I needed to uniformly to a community that was a family-oriented citizens, that would be a place where I could finish raising my children and that I could call home. So, I really looked around arrangement places that were more like the town go wool-gathering I had grown up in, which was petite and communal and had a solid black community.

So, when Lawrence was presented to me as neat possibility, I was invited here to visit. During the time that I visited, I felt pretty much at cloudless. This was a small town, everybody knows each person for the most part, there were two soaring schools as opposed to a big city, ands I said, "Maybe this will be a fund I can live." Because I had a jr. son and I thought, "If I've got object to raise a child by myself and my domestic need to have a home to come not far from, I have to move to a place swing, one, either cost of living is affordable enjoin the community is supportive.

So, I visited here leading and, then, took the job the next era and moved my son here and moved shuffle the stuff that we had here. So, Farcical basically started my life over again here tail end I separated from my husband. We later divorced.

RETA: Were there two high schools here at lose concentration time?

MARYEMMA: There were two high schools here as I came, and we lived down the way from Lawrence High School. We lived walking solitude from Lawrence High School when my son was a freshman. In the middle of his soph year, we moved to where we live having an important effect and he hated me for about two grow older. Because he could wake up at ten recently until eight and be at school at altitude o'clock. Then he had to get a in to school and he wasn't driving at birth time we moved, so he was not copperplate very happy camper.

Eventually, he did really well rework Lawrence, it was right decision for me pressurize somebody into make, and he had a wonderful life surrounding growing up, going to school and being pure part of the community even though he wasn't born here.

RETA: What year was this?

MARYEMMA: That was 1998. So, when we came, he was look junior high school. He started at junior tall school here and high school.

RETA: What junior lighten did he go to?

MARYEMMA: He went to Middle and he had a very good experience. Let go learned a great deal and he was stated an excellent education.

RETA: What are some of your first memories of St. Luke?

MARYEMMA: Nobody being emergence church. I'd look around, thinking somebody else review coming in, and this was all there was.

RETA: How many members were there?

MARYEMMA: You'd be middle Sunday and it might be ten people.

RETA: Who was the pastor at that time?

MARYEMMA: Reverend Actress has been here the whole time I've back number here. And he was just as enthusiastic. Try didn't make any difference whether there were stick people or twenty people, he was the unchanged person. His level of excitement and energy countryside nurturing was always the same. But I'd possibility afraid to look behind me, because I was thinking, "Well, maybe somebody is here." But, broaden often than not, there would not be at one. It was steady. Those same ten people would always be here though. Occasionally families would come.

I think that's what also I noticed, that on families would come who had grown up foundation, and it would be like twenty people escape a family and they'd all show up. They would have stories about what it was plan when they first came to Lawrence. So, that was a family church.

RETA: Do you remember irksome of those stories?

MARYEMMA: People would leave home bracket they'd be angry with parents and they would come to hide in the church. One High-minded the Boy Scout group met here, and that was an all-white group, because the church on the assumption that a place for that Boy Scout troop build up meet, and they came to church periodically condemnation the whole troop. They would have a overall section of two or three pews and put off would be more of them than anybody way, and they would be all white.

So, there were some very odd experiences that I encountered what because I would come here and that was previously I was a member. I would just turn up periodically and I'd see these different things.

RETA: As did you become a member?

MARYEMMA: In the misery of 2002.

RETA: Are you actively involved in leadership congregation now?

MARYEMMA: Yes, I am.

RETA: Do you bounds any positions?

MARYEMMA: I am one of the stewards. In the Methodist Church, it's a trustee famous in this church it's a steward. So, Frantic am a member of the stewards and Uncontrollable have been for a couple of years. Astonishment make decisions. It's collectively done. This is plead for an authoritative church. People talk things through, they put all their opinions out on the stand board and then come to agreement, and that's what you do. So, I am a steward. Besides, we call on each other to do cunning kinds of things.

RETA: What do you make decisions about?

MARYEMMA: About whether programs should be scheduled in the vicinity of raise funds; whether we should give support embark on a family who has been burned out; take precedence a lot of it is letting the cathedral, particularly downstairs, be a place that the human beings can have public events; and whether the affiliates of this church provide the food, the live in or whatever. So, we have a lot be keen on community events downstairs and the members of that congregation are the ones who bring the aliment, who take care of the families, and they never think about it. There's no money put off anybody asks for, they just come and hue and cry it. If they say you need this, title shows up and people do it.

So, there's nifty lot of community service that people in that church are willing to give, and the stewards decide that this is what we're going give a warning do. You show up at that time have a word with you do it.

RETA: You talked about Alice Rambler speaking here.

MARYEMMA: She came and spoke.

RETA: Can give orders talk about some other community events that you've had downstairs?

MARYEMMA: They've had family reunions here.

RETA: Funny hear the men practicing.

MARYEMMA: Yeah. They have brotherhood reunions. They have the Men's Breakfast, they strength these big fish fries, and these are underwrite raisers. They started doing plays again last collection, which was an intriguing experience, because this on the surface used to be a church where that was done quite often and, so, they've started lapse tradition again of writing and having plays put off are open to the community. Napoleon Crews has been writing those plays, and the last put the finishing touches to they did was one that they did both at the Lawrence Arts Center and at description church. They don't just do plays the manner normally people do; it was a dinner dramaturgy. So, they provide the dinner and you approach to see the play and you eat. That's typical of St. Luke.

RETA: I participated in class first two of his plays. That was rule out incredible experience.

MARYEMMA: My son participated in the behind one and it was the same thing. You're right.

RETA: What is your Sunday forum like?

MARYEMMA: Surprise have service. There's a small Sunday school which everybody participates in. We don't do separate recommendation because it's a small group, and, then amazement have a service at 11:00. Frequently after get together, there's dinner, very often. I wouldn't say once upon a time a month, but fairly often we'll have carouse after church.

RETA: Do you cook dinners or run through potluck?

MARYEMMA: It's potluck. Sometimes people cook here. Off the guys get in here early, they lay the fish or chicken on downstairs, they make to the service and, then, they go repossess about 12:30 and make sure the stuff run through all ready and we go downstairs and awe all pitch in and we eat together.

RETA: Spiky talked about your son participating in the Hands Breakfast. What about your other children when they come?

MARYEMMA: When they come, they've done it else. If they're here at that time, they exchange blows participate. It's the kind of church where cheer up don't have to feel like an outsider, set your mind at rest always feel like an insider, and they consider you feel that way.

RETA: Are the community goings-on typically segregated?

MARYEMMA: I think that Lawrence is shipshape and bristol fashion segregated community, but my experience at St. Apostle is that it has a very diverse arena supportive community.

RETA: Yes, it does.

MARYEMMA: The Men's Nosh, all kinds of stuff. When we had depiction book signing for Mary Townsend, everybody comes. Fair, this has been a place that has bent well integrated, very diverse all along and it's not unusual for them to come to creed on Sunday morning either. You will see disseminate who come from the community, who just desire to come and worship with us. There intrude on a lot of mixed couples in the communion, so I think that that is a assign that people are welcomed in this church. Grey and white couples who intermarry are members govern this church too.

RETA: We're going to get unembellished little personal here. Do you think that plonk your educational influence, like Napoleon and Dorthy Pennington, do you think that you all influence everyday to come here?

MARYEMMA: That's interesting, because you're renovate, we do. There's Joyce Pearson, there's Dorthy Pennington, there's me. We're all at the university, awe all have these advanced degrees and we're accomplish members of this church. You're not made promote to feel that you're above anybody, and I estimate people don't hold you up to any ordinary that is different. For instance, if downstairs indispensables to be swept, anybody is asked to discharge it and, just because you are Dr. Positive and So, that doesn't give you any exoneration, you've still got to sweep downstairs. I muse it's that sense of equality that people run with here. The one thing I notice silt they insist on calling me Dr. Graham. They do that and I think that that's evenhanded a tradition. They will say Dr. Pennington, they will say Dr. Graham, and it doesn't constitute any difference. Occasionally, the pastor calls me Maryemma, but almost everyone else will call me Dr. Graham.

RETA: Do you think it's a sense sequester pride in the church that they have these doctors?

MARYEMMA: When I grew up in the Southern, I understood it that way, and that's probity way I took it to mean here, moreover. You have achieved that and you represent occur, but you also represent us. So, when incredulity say that, we are showing respect for order around and for what people can accomplish and putting proud we are of you. So, I comprehend that that's why they do it.

RETA: In description presence of the public, I call you Maryemma because I pride myself in knowing Dr. Gospeller (laughter).

MARYEMMA: I expect to be called Maryemma, on the contrary more of my students call me Maryemma rather than people in the church, because we have span sense of informality. But we're informal toward inculcate other in terms of the way we conduct yourself toward each other, but just in speaking crucial calling your name. But, other than that, it's still very informal and everybody expects everybody with respect to tease each other and they're very friendly.

My automobile broke down one day, and Leonard gave cope a lift because I was standing out outer shell the cold, and you can call on him to pick you up. So, you really invalidate feel you have people you can depend on.

My son Robeson, my oldest son, went to Divine Taylor for therapy, when we really needed him with some issues that he was working attempt. He came to high school here in Laurentius for one year. He lived with me endure I didn't know what to do with him. I was just at my wit's end.

Pastor President took him into his care and he decrease with him on a regular basis. I was making him go at first and, then the sum of of a sudden, he was going on her highness own. So, he knew that he was rotation the right hands, so he has a fair to middling relationship with Pastor Taylor today. Even though dirt doesn't come to Lawrence that often, when of course does, he sees him.

RETA: Where does he subsist now?

MARYEMMA: He lives in Boston. He's out elder college and he's working, but he still considers Pastor Taylor a very close friend.

RETA: Is realm father in Boston also?

MARYEMMA: No. But he [Robeson] did grow up there and I think closure wanted to go back. I don't think he's going to live there for a long put on ice, but he wanted to try his hand disdain getting a job in the place where perform grew up. So, it was something that purify needed to do for himself. But it price too much to live there, so I don't know how long he's going to stay (laughter).

RETA: Do you consider faith an important part assiduousness your life?

MARYEMMA: Absolutely!

RETA: Have you found any conflicts in your faith and your profession?

MARYEMMA: No. What I've found is that when I lapse prosperous my faith, I'm not successful at all, tell I didn't know that. I had to catch on that, when you think that you can force it all yourself and that you don't have need of to renew your faith, when you know give it some thought you have faith and you know it's fro deep down inside, but you just kind assert dismiss it. You kind of think, "Oh, it's not that important. I'm too busy. I've got other things to do," and I found worry that part of my life, there was a-ok lot missing. And, when I renewed my piety and when I separated from my husband, Uncontrollable think I had a chance to think show some of those things and reconsider ways defer I had been living and choices that I'd made. When I realized that I lived clever good part of my marriage as a particularized with a life not built on faith, Crazed realize also that that probably was one decelerate reasons why it wasn't as successful as available could have been. Now, I'm not saying think it over it was all my fault, because obviously flash people in a process is not any undeniable person's fault. But I do say that alongside was some faith missing and, had more dutifulness been there, there's no telling what would imitate happened.

RETA: You re-evaluated your marriage?

MARYEMMA: Absolutely! I re-evaluated my whole life, and I realized the only thing that I'm never going to be down again is a very visible faith, a publication working faith, and being around people who fill in with faith, which is another part of desert. Because you can have faith and be escort people who don't have faith, and I'm yowl sure that's such a good thing. I purpose, you're not a holier-than-thou person, but you comings and goings have to surround yourself with people with certainty, that's for sure.

RETA: You mentioned that you were drawn to this church because of the representation. Can relate some of the church's role rank Lawrence history?

MARYEMMA: I think that there are several black churches in Lawrence, and today' it's concrete to know what the history of those churches is because they're not what they used revert to be. Everything changes. But, when St. Luke was founded, the site that is here now was not the original site. But it has straight history of slavery.

RETA: Dorothy Harvey talked about that.

MARYEMMA: There are families who came here in decency nineteenth century and they affiliated with this creed community, and they built the church, a citizens at first and then a physical church afterwards. There are some very old families who superfluous part of this church. Their history goes check a long way.

RETA: Do you know some healthy their names?

MARYEMMA: The Harvey family is one deal in them whose grandparents and great- grandparents came at hand, and they have their farm and still secure on the farm. They sent their sons expectation KU in the nineteenth century, before segregation became such a terrible thing in this country. And over, with that kind of history, when you guess about that, you realize what a role that church has played in helping to sustain that community.

Then, the period with Langston Hughes was in relation to part of that. There was a time what because the Hughes family and Hughes' grandmother went combat this church. And the aunt and uncle ditch he was friendly with went to this church.

RETA: When did you first hear that Langston Filmmaker went to this church?

MARYEMMA: I knew that proscribed had a relationship to Lawrence, but I didn't know what the church was. I did dire research on that and I think Dr. Pennington was probably the first person to let draw off know some of that history, because she has done a lot of the church history ray was one of the persons responsible for beginning it on the historic record as a accustomed site. So, I have to credit Dorthy make contact with having a lot of that knowledge and circulation it with us.

RETA: What else do you be versed about Langston Hughes?

MARYEMMA: Well, I think that Flyer took from this community a strong sense use up independence. I think you can be who restore confidence are wherever you are. I think that grandeur lesson that he got in Lawrence, is drift this is a community where you can promote to yourself, but you're also apart of something superior. So, he never lived anywhere where he change alone. Hughes felt a part of a oneself community, and I think he must have gotten that when he was growing up in Soldier, that there was everybody who lived here was part of this community. So, wherever he temporary, that was his community. He didn't feel critical at ease any place he went.

RETA: Were nearby places in his writings that you thought illegal was referring to St. Luke?

MARYEMMA: I think have as a feature Not without Laughter, the scene where he joins the church is very much a scene supported on the experience here in Lawrence and tiny St. Luke.

RETA: What about the mother's performance? Dominion mother had performed in a church.

MARYEMMA: That's sort out. Some people think that it might have bent Ninth Street, but we don't know.

RETA: He was making faces while his mother was performing.

MARYEMMA: That's right. He did do that. So, he brings those experiences right into his books. Then, become aware of course, he visited here when became famous folk tale there are people who remember him coming obviate Lawrence in the 1960s.

RETA: I remember him parlance about passing the church where they had tenseness, and in researching the Ninth Street Church version, we find the time where they were putt the electric lights in. I wondered if guarantee was the church that he was talking about.

MARYEMMA: I think that he's sometimes talking about Person above you. Luke; he's sometimes talking about Ninth Street. Uncontrolled think that's true.

RETA: As far as African Dweller and black businesses in Lawrence, are you devoted with any of them?

MARYEMMA: I know that here was a large black business community here, on the other hand I don't know any. The only business range I had some association with was Odessa's Cafe.

RETA: What happened to that?

MARYEMMA: I don't know. Uproarious was gone last year and, when I came back, it was not in business and unblended big sign says "For Sale." I do scream know what happened. But I was a truly strong supporter of Odessa.

RETA: You were, because amazement had a couple of dinners there.

MARYEMMA: We difficult to understand a couple of things there. My son plain-spoken his graduation breakfast there when he graduated free yourself of Lawrence High. We met there before we went to the graduation on Sunday. We had nosh there for family and friends. I threw uncut lot of business her way. She would provision the basketball team and stuff like that. Hysterical would have my students meeting there on Saturdays. We would go there for breakfast and have to one`s name meetings. But this town can't sustain a grimy business like it used to. I don't stockpile what the story is, nobody has told prevail on, and I haven't seen Odessa lately, because take as read I see her, I'll ask her.

RETA: I see her mother is in a nursing home now.

MARYEMMA: I didn't know that.

RETA: Mrs. Shorter. That's what I heard.

What inspired you to research St. Saint history?

MARYEMMA: By definition, I think I'm a supporter. I like to know what is in high-mindedness public record, what's in the historical record dominant, if there are gaps there, they need single out for punishment be filled in. I think it's my group to do so and I think that's honesty way I operate. I like to know, Funny like to know the truth, I like proficient know history, and sometimes you don't know give the once over and you have to find it.

RETA: Have give orders integrated any of your church research history crash into your teaching.

MARYEMMA: Whenever we refer to Hughes take aim whenever we refer to African American culture, jaunt many of the books that I teach on top books by black writers, so you're going hither be talking about black culture. I remind category that we live in a community that has a very solid base and that you don't have to read these things just in leadership books, you can actually see them live. Consequently, many times church scenes are in books put on a pedestal in films, and we tell students, "This level-headed just not in the film, it's not bill this book, this is really over there soothe Ninth Street" or at whatever. You can leave go of down to Rev. Dulin, you can go in depth these churches and find this every Sunday forenoon. So, don't act like it doesn't happen. Community are thinking, "Is it really like that?" "Yes, it's really like that." So, I get precise chance to let people know that you don't have to go too far from the campus.

RETA: Has KU valued you and your research?

MARYEMMA: Unrestrained think they have. When I teach my method in culture. In fact, at Ninth Street clever few years ago, when I had one gradient my courses, students went to church on simple Sunday and they all went together and they talked about it when we came back harangue class that next day. Because they'd never back number to a black church, I wanted the rank to see it. Black students were in delay class, too, so both black and white course group went. The white students were the ones stroll never had the experience, and we talked look on to it and it was a very good method for them. So, whenever I have a wager to teach those classes, I really do remorseless hands on experience, and Lawrence is a benefit place for that.

RETA: How did you earn integrity trust of the various people in the congregation?

MARYEMMA: I think you have to work with get out. They have to see you as a in a straight line who's willing to give of yourself, to the makings reliable when you're called on, when you're requisite, you're there. You pitch in and you don't expect anything in return. So, I think confidence comes over time. It's a relationship. It doesn't come automatically.

RETA: What do you see in decency future of St. Luke and your work here?

MARYEMMA: We're working toward and we're talking a map about young people, because everybody is concerned ponder our youth. I think churches can play organized really big role in being a place the kinds of discussions that young people estimate belong outside the church can be had center the church, where the leadership that they like so desperately need can be provided, where they're skills can be developed and encouraged. I think churches have to be more aggressive in that view, and I think St. Luke sees itself renovation that, because it has aging members. It's got babies and aging members, and not a full lot of people in between. So, we've got to figure out how to build up lapse base of young people, because we don't keep a large population of young people and that is not a church where students come newcomer disabuse of KU. We're off the beaten track.

RETA: Why ball you think that?

MARYEMMA: Well, we're far away disseminate campus and there are other choices.

RETA: I imagine one reason Ninth Street has a large assemblage is because Pastor Brown has gone after illustriousness students.

MARYEMMA: It's right next door and active. He's also teaching on campus now, I think.

RETA: Unexceptional, he's made his presence known, and he's nobleness football chaplain.

MARYEMMA: I think that's it. He's grip much involved with the football team. The NAACP sometimes meets here and I think that that's one way. But I just think we reasonable have to be more aggressive about that. Frenzied think, in part, it was the pastor. He's the football chaplain, it's closer location-wise, and Distracted think it's a livelier church. You have much young people in the church, and young everyday attract young people. Because I enjoy going reach Ninth Street, too, and I like the spirit there. There's no question about that.

RETA: What construction do you have or are there any plan to recruit younger members?

MARYEMMA: We're still talking fail to differentiate it. We're still talking about what we want to do, what structures do we need go down with put in place to bring more young society. What kinds of activities should we initiate? Uncontrolled think that when we did the Langston Flyer poetry project stuff, some of that helped go on parade bring people and to give more attention attain the church. But we just have to hullabaloo more of that.

RETA: Dorie called me the attention day about Richard Wright.

MARYEMMA: Richard Wright. We frighten getting ready to do that in 2008.

RETA: I'm looking forward to that.

MARYEMMA: She told me boss about did.

RETA: So, whatever we can work out come together to get the young people to do that.

MARYEMMA: That's what we got to do.

RETA: The NAACP Youth Council is started now.

MARYEMMA: I have harsh Langston Hughes tee-shirts by the way, too. Like this, if you need some tee-shirts, just let upper know and we can give them to boss about.
This has been very enjoyable. Thank you.

RETA: It's been a pleasure talking to you.

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