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Madge Hopkins oral history excerpt

About this recording

From oral history interview with Madge Hopkins, October 17, 2000. Interview K-0481. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).

Date created
October 17, 2000
Duration
1:59
File
MP3
License
This recording copyright ©2004. All Rights Reserved
Source
Original audio housed by Documenting the American South / UNC Libraries

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  • De facto vs. de jure segregation: This lesson for grades 11 and 12 will help students understand the difference between de facto and de jure segregation. Students will listen to three oral history excerpts and discuss the experiences of segregation described in each. As a follow-up activity, students will brainstorm solutions to both de facto and de jure segregation.

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Madge Hopkins is a resident of Charlotte, North Carolina who attended segregated schools and later became the vice-principal of an integrated school in the 1990s. Here, she remembers the hurt caused by segregation, which she felt even as a small child: She got in a fight with a white boy from the neighborhood, but was told by the adults around her that she couldn’t fight back because he was white.

Transcript

Madge Hopkins
I had a sense of segregation because you couldn’t go in Kress’s and get a hot dog or drink from the fountain, still couldn’t do that, and probably for me the most important thing was I could not sit on the front row at the Carousel Parade. There was always some nice white lady who said, “Put the children up front.” And I knew I was in the back and that somebody was in a condescending way allowing me to move up front as a child to see what was going on in the parade.
Pamela Grundy (interviewer)
And you felt that condescension even at that time?
Madge Hopkins
Uh huh. And that entertainment was — pre-Carowinds — was to go to Stoh Park in Bellmont and you could only go on Tuesday nights. That was the night for negroes or black folks.
…
And because when you grow up in a segregated society you’re taught your place and you accept but as time, there comes a time when you realize, “I have no place. You can’t put me in a place.”
Pamela Grundy (interviewer)
When did that happen for you? When did you begin to notice…?
Madge Hopkins
Probably the time I got in a fight with Freddy and I had to hit him back, you know, was told, “You can’t hit him back. No, no, don’t hit him.” No. And that was probably eight or nine years old. And the most, and I think probably at one of those Carousel parades when I was about six or seven. Move to the back. Why can’t we stand in the front? Why can’t I have that, go up to that counter and eat in Kress’s like everybody else does? Why can’t I do that?