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In Their Own Words . . .

ZENOBIA FERGUSON

The following excerpts are from an interview with Zenobia Ferguson, a resident of Roanoke, Virginia, who was displaced by the urban renewal of the Northwest section. This is the story of how she moved to the city and made a home for herself.

I had never lived in an all-black neighborhood until I came to Roanoke. Because where I lived was out on a farm, and all around it, people were white, and I didn’t see black people until I went to church, or Sunday School, or in the winter when I went to school. All of my schoolmates were black. That’s just the way it was. We played together. Fought and played. Country life, you were very isolated from people because most people were on a farm, and unless there was some kind of activity at the church or at school, you just didn’t see people. But you know, black people, that is. The Pullens, they lived across the road, we all played together, and they were all white.

And the neighbors we had that were black were just an old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Wax. We’d go down to see them, but they didn’t have any children. And see, I left Fincastle when I was twelve and went to Christiansburg Institute for high school, because there was no high school in my area for black people.

It was nice. They were strict. They were really strict, and I was the youngest student there. We had dormitories. We had matrons, and founders of that school were people from Pennsylvania, they call them the Quakers. But the atmosphere of that school was sort of like Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama, because I understand that Booker T. Washington was instrumental in getting that school started.

Mostly the boys learned the trades. We had students from all over Virginia. Some from New York and some from Pennsylvania. It was a boarding school and a day school also.

[Commenting on the strictness] I had been over in the Edgar Long Building and I had to come back and get something I left in the dormitory, and I would run up the steps, and the matron would say, “Go right back down where you started running, and start walking like a lady.” And on Saturday night we had what was called the Douglass Literary Society, named after Frederick Douglass. And that was where you learned poetry and society, and then they would talk to us about the social graces and this kind of things.

We had to line up on Sunday morning, and we would walk over to the Christiansburg Church. And the matron would walk down the line and inspect you.

And on Monday nights, we would have a Monday night meeting, and everything that you did wrong was written in her black book. And she would go down the line, and point you out, and she would say to me, “I don’t have your name here, but I know you did something. And I’m going to find out!” And she was always on my case. Always on my case! And I saw her in Washington later, and she was with her daughter, and she said, “I just loved this girl!” And I thought to myself, “God!”

And at boarding school, you had calling hours on Sunday. And boys would put your name down, and then if you had been good, you could come down and sit in the living room and talk, but he couldn’t touch you. No handling, no, no no! You used to have to cross your ankles. I think about that and think, “God, look at kids today.” But other things that the kids do, I think, you know, it all comes in time. Because I remember when I was up there in Christiansburg, my mother sent me a new pea coat, that’s what we were wearing then. And I had everybody autograph my coat with a pen. That was what you did with it. When I went home, my mother was furious. She said, “What’s this?”

And I said to her, “Mom, if I knew I couldn’t have it autographed, I wouldn’t have worn it.”

And she smacked me. She thought I was being smart. But that was just what kids were doing. And I was so proud of my autographs.

Of course, I have never let anything stop me. I just keep on going. When I finished Christiansburg Institute, I marched with my graduating class, but two days before graduation, I was called into the principal’s office. Botetourt County was supposed to have paid my fee, and they didn’t. And they didn’t give me a diploma. I had to march with a blank diploma. And I had to fight back the tears, because I had worked, waiting tables, and washing dishes, and doing everything I was supposed to do, but they messed up.

[Mrs. Ferguson moved to Roanoke at that point.]

I had so many people who were good to me here. Mrs. Pullen and her daughter Ethel. We had a drama club in Christiansburg and Edison had one too, and we used to exchange plays, so I knew Ethel, when I was going to school, and when I would come here I would go down and see her, and everything. And I would ask Mrs. Pullen, her mother, “Can Ethel go with me this place or that place?”

She’d say, “No. Ethel can’t go and you’re not going either!”

I had a lot of people like that, Mrs. Pullen [another Mrs. Pullen; this one was black], Mrs. Martin, and all those people would just tell me what I could and couldn’t do. That, I used to appreciate. I really did.

I remember hearing about Henry Street; there was a club called the Morocco that you could go in, and it had bands and those kind of things, and that’s where I met my husband, you know? And he had just come back from World War II, and that is where I saw him. And Henry Street is where if you wanted to dance or anything, this is where you went. If you wanted to go to the movies or the theater, that’s where you went. You could go downtown to the theater but you had to go up to the mezzanine, or the balcony. You had to go up all those steps. So we felt like the Virginia Theater was ours, we could just go there. And then there were restaurants and things like that. And most of the people we knew, like, I’m trying to think of the name of the restaurant, but his daughter and I, we were buddies. We used to go over there and get these big old steaks and all that kind of things at his restaurant at Henry Street.

And we didn’t hang on Henry Street. Because I’ve always been this kind of person: if I’m going somewhere, I’m going. But I don’t go out on the street when I don’t know where I am going. I wasn’t that way.

So, we had four social clubs that had formal dances, and there used to be the Roanoke Auditorium. We used to go dancing there, and hear Ella Fitzgerald, Erskine Hawkins, and Cab Calloway, all those fellows. They used to come to Roanoke and we used to go to those dances and have a ball. The Hotel Dumas had a private band, that is where the music center is now. And they had a private band and you could go and dine more elegantly. And we used to go there. And of course there was the Royalton, where they used to have the Red and White Ball. We would go there.

[I settled at] 402 Chestnut Avenue, Northwest. It was just a close-knit neighborhood. The neighbors were, okay, I’ll give you an example. My daughter, and she is really my stepdaughter, my husband had her before we got married. I have a son and he has a daughter. But when she went to college she said that somebody took her bag with all of the clothing that she could wear at that time, because it was September, and it was hot. And she called back home crying. My neighbors across the way started buying clothes for this girl, and gave them to me so I could take them down there to her. That is the kind of neighborhood I lived in. It was just, “What can we do?” You know? And she wanted to come home, you know. She didn’t want to stay at college, but I was determined that she was going to stay there.

Now people weren’t always in each other’s homes, I don’t mean that. But it was just a lot of love and caring. But I’m going to tell you something, it’s the same thing in this community. I have been lucky and thankful that people have a sense of belonging. And in Northwest, there was a lot of pride of ownership, pride of belonging. Our families and our schools and our churches, all were sources of pride. I shall never forget when Four Sounds sang down at Roanoke Auditorium. And everybody applauded them. They were just magnificent. You have never seen anything like it. We were so proud we didn’t know what to do.

One day I was on Chestnut Avenue, looking out the window of my beauty shop, and I said, “I am going to get my degree.” I called Lawyer Muse and told him my situation, and he said, “Mrs. Ferguson, you stay on the line, and I will put my secretary on, and I am going to dictate a letter to Mr. Wilkerson,” I think his name was, the superintendent of the state. And, he did that. He said he would get my diploma papers for me, and he did it. And when I got them, I decided, I will never argue with anybody about a high school diploma. I went to Virginia Western Community College, and I enrolled and I graduated from there. And then for my last two years I went to Hollins. And I graduated from there in May 1972.

Nothing could stop me. I just made up my mind I was going. I said I would do whatever I can, and I did that. I just made up my mind; when things are going bad, I just get going.