ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 27, 1997 TAG: 9702270006
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
THEY WEREN'T FAMOUS, these women. But they cut a wide path where it mattered.
In the old black neighborhoods of pre-integration Salem, they were the mothers and grandmothers - not to mention problem-solvers, teachers, motivators and good-deed doers.
Sheriffs, too. In those bygone days, any one of them could stop mischief with a look.
"Black Women: Achievement Against the Odds" - an exhibit on display at the Salem Museum - celebrates them.
It celebrates famous black women, too - from the 18th-century slave and poet Phillis Wheatley to Rosa Parks, the 20th-century Alabama seamstress who refused to sit in the back of the bus and helped define the civil rights movement.
A modest exhibit developed by the Smithsonian Institution tells their better-known stories in the center of the Salem museum's exhibit hall.
But Museum Director Mary Hill - who arranged the exhibit to coincide with Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March - elected to flesh out the Smithsonian display with local people.
Thus, the display cases around the exhibit room walls are packed with the photographs, creations and mementos of local black women from the bittersweet days of segregation.
Of course, they steal the show.
It is these doughty women - these Salem matriarchs, most unnamed and many long since gone - whose images begin to fill the mind's eye after a trip or two around the room. They seem to prowl the exhibit cases in all their sharp-eyed glory, discussing which good deeds might need doing, which sick neighbors might need visiting - and which bottoms might need warming.
Marylen Harmon, who moved to Salem as a young girl, still recalls that "look," which could fill a juvenile heart with terror.
"We'd say, 'Oh-oh, we're getting the eye,''' Harmon said. "Nowadays they say, 'What are you looking at me for?'''
"Black women have always been strong and the backbone of the family and the community," said Melody Stovall, who still lives in the house in Salem her grandfather built. Stovall contributed some of the objects for the show, as did Harmon.
Both have strong memories of the older women who shaped them, in the segregated Salem of not-so-long ago. Edna Prunty. Harriet Borzotra. Bessie Harris. Jessie P. Jones. Ellen Hale. Gertrude Harris. Laurie Peery. Laura Spurlock.
"Even though the outside world was very difficult and unfair and unjust, they were able to function and live full lives in spite of the odds," said Stovall, former executive director of the Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Roanoke.
Said Harmon: "We never wanted to let them down."
In fact, the exhibit isn't only about Salem's matriarchs. Full of memorabilia from Salem's early black churches, schools, clubs and businesses, "Achievement" is more a slice of life - a glimpse of the Salem that was, in the decades before integration.
Hill, the museum director, did not hesitate to include items that, as she says, "tell the story of achievement in an indirect way." Thus, in addition to photographs, quilts, and family heirlooms, there are Marylen Harmon's roller skates. Their wheels are still pocked and gritty from the Salem streets. Black children were not allowed to use the smooth-surfaced skating rink across from Lakeside Amusement Park, Harmon said.
The exhibit also tells of black-owned Salem businesses, such as the mom-and-pop owned Pine Oak Inn on East Main Street, and Camp North, the summer camp on the edge of town that catered to black children from New Jersey and New York. The hotel was run by Ellen and Robert Hale; the camp by Lillie North and her husband, Floyd.
And then there were the schools. Part of the exhibit is devoted to George Washington Carver School - the Salem elementary and high school that educated blacks from Salem, Roanoke County and beyond.
Harmon, who was in the last segregated class to graduate from Carver in 1966, can still recall word for word this daunting epigram from third-grade teacher Jessie Jones:
"Good, better, best: Never let it rest until the good is better and the better best."
"The teachers back then were very strict," Harmon said. "And they were very demanding. But they practiced what they preached."
And not only the teachers. They were big joiners, these black women of old Salem, and at least three of their clubs are represented in the exhibit; in photographs and other odds and ends, including their meticulously kept books of minutes.
All seemed to stress fellowship, community and good works. There was the Ladies Sewing Circle, founded in 1906 by Lula Penick. The Twin Sisters Club - in which, apparently, women chose a "twin" to be supportive of through thick and thin. And the Gospel Team, whose members were devoted to doing good.
The minutes of the Gospel Team's meeting of Dec. 12, 1952, for example, note that the women donated $15 that day to a Christmas Cheer fund.
The minutes from another meeting note the return of a member following a lengthy illness - who "gave a wonderful testimonial of God's goodness."
Most of the clubs have since gone out of existence - along with much else. Harmon and Stovall spoke of the changes within this once tight-knit community with some regret.
"Integration took apart a lot of that," said Harmon, who is now chairman of the social studies department at Northside Middle School in Roanoke County. "A lot of the businesses are no longer there. I always say it was the worst of times, but it was the best of times. The family culture was much stronger. People looked out for you."
"I certainly miss for my children the spirit of the community," said Stovall. "It was the school, and the church and the community life. It was a self-confined community for the most part, and of course that's no longer true. It had its pluses."
Like its women.
One comes from the Salem exhibit with the sense that their lives, if lived behind the veil of segregation, were still rich with their own victories.
Stovall said they definitely achieved against the odds, as the exhibit says. "Because they had so many obstacles against them. And so many reasons to give up."
Harmon, for her part, looked up to them "always. And still do."
"Black Women: Achievement Against the Odds" is at the Salem Museum through May 24. A reception will be held from 4-6 p.m. on March 6. The Salem Museum is at 801 E. Main St., in the historic Williams-Brown House in Longwood Park.
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. ROGER HART STAFF. These photographs were taken fromby CNBthe house of the Duckwilders, a once-prominent black family in
Salem. Their house was torn down a few years ago and these
photographs and other items given to the Salem Museum. The women are
unidentified, but at least some are presumed to be family members.
The largest photograph may be of a Duckwilder family matriarch from
the turn of the century, museum officials said. color. 2.& 3.
Exhibit photos. Helen Hamilton (above) in a performance of "Carmen"
at George Washington Carver School in the 1960s. Undated photograph
of the swimming pool (left) at Camp North in Salem.