Anne Queen provided a safe haven for black students
Pollitt describes the leadership tactics of Anne Queen. Queen, director of the Campus Y, cultivated a safe integrated space for black students. Her home served as a conduit for the social fermentation of ideas. Queen often accommodated other's contrary habits, a recurring theme in this interview.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Daniel H. Pollitt, November 19, 1990. Interview L-0048. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
Do you recall what Anne's role was in all this was?
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
Anne was a behind the scenes participant. Let me add one more dimension.
That is the sit-ins, which was Pat Kusick and that crowd. But that was a
year or two later. We had the first wave of sit-ins and maybe forty or
fifty percent of the downtown businesses agreed to serve everybody, but
the others didn't. And that was the second wave which was the
John Dunn, Pat Kusick crowd. And that's where people got
arrested and all that sort of thing. Now, what Anne did during all this,
first of all, she was the home. The Y was the home for the black
students. They sold stocks in the Y building, so there was a logical
reason for everybody to go there, and then on each side they sold the
newspapers and then there were the lounge and the offices. And then
upstairs there were some offices all connected with the Y and good
things. But that's the one place where the handful of blacks
could go in and be treated respectfully and with warmth and with
friendship. And that was the one place where they could achieve some
prominence. Kellis Parker, I think, was his name, might have been the
first secretary or the treasurer or something of the Y. But the blacks
were given the opportunity to achieve leadership positions at the Y when
most other places were closed to them. So Anne Queen really helped
integrate the University. She was friendly to all these people and gave
them things to do. They could go out and help tutor or they could do
this and that. And then she had a Speaker's Bureau that went
on and on and on and on and almost anybody who was worth hearing was
invited down here by the Y and they would have a program of some sort.
Then there would be the reception which would be open to the public,
generally, and then the next reception at Anne's house. She
had a very small little cottage, very unpretentious, but she could
squeeze twenty-five or thirty people in for dinner, which she always
prepared, you know. And she was a teetotaler and she always put me in
charge of the liquor. And so I would bring the liquor and mix the
drinks. She wouldn't do that, you know. She didn't
mind having liquor in the house and she didn't mind if other
people drank, but she wanted no part of it. She didn't want
to do it.
- CINDY CHEATHAM:
-
That seems to be quite a characteristic of hers that she was very open
to other's people's ways, but she was definitely
committed to her own. Can you comment on that maybe more?
- DANIEL H. POLLITT:
-
Well, she had her own standards which were extremely high. I
can't give you any other illustration off-hand. But she would
invite the black students to her house and that would be maybe the first
time in their lives they'd ever been invited to a white
person's house. And in there, they would be treated like
anybody else was treated. I remember Floyd McKissick was the head of
CORE and was a very frequent visitor. And Sloane Coffin, the minister,
was down there. Al Lowenstein, I think he had been active in the Y when
he'd been a student here and he would be brought down. She
liked Michael Harrington who was the head of the Social Democratic group
and was very much up on poverty, the war on poverty, which was the
Kennedy years in the sixties. That came at the same time. And I
don't know whether Sarge Shriver came or not, but any time
there was a Peace Corps recruiter they'd be at the Y and then
they'd be at Anne's house and there'd
be people invited in. I don't know if she had a special fund.
I doubt it. But that was her role. Her role was to be extremely
hospitable to all the minorities and that includes all the foreigners.
We never had many foreigners come here like they do at Michigan or
Cornell or Harvard or something. But they were always welcomed at the Y
and it was in that connection that Anne started the International Bazaar
where everybody would wear their native garb and do their native dance
or their native instruments or their native crafts and their native
foods. So there were four or five, maybe ten, places to eat something
and you could buy things. And it was a money raiser, but predominantly a
show place for people to demonstrate their native pride and to get to
know each others. And in the international area, it was a big thing to
go to the UN. She would go up and later somebody else would take up a
bus load of kids. Frank Porter Graham was then at the United Nations. He
was high up and he would introduce and talk to directors and so on and
show them around. A lot of the kids had never been to New York City and
so they wouldn't waste their time seeing the Statue of
Liberty. They went down to Greenwich Village and East Greenwich Village
and would see X rated movies and get exposed to a part of society which
many of them had never dreamed of before. So, it was to see the U.N. and
to see a major city and see how people live in a major city. I believe
you could drive all the way to New York, at that time, in ten or twelve
or fourteen hours. The first town you get to in Virginia, they had
stopped to get something to eat at the bus station. They
wouldn't serve them because a quarter of them were black. So
they went up to picket there for a few days. So, she was the hostess and
the friend and tried to provide opportunities for people who needed
opportunities. So, that was her role...