Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation
Season 1, Episode 12: A Cowardly Lion

AUGUST 25, 2023 | THE 431 EXCHANGE; MYA CARTER (HOST); KEVIN GULLAGE (MUSIC)

TRANSCRIPT:

[Dear Audience, this transcript corresponds exactly to the Youtube Podcast version that has a slightly different structure for the opening three minutes. Therefore, while the words correspond perfectly the timecode is off by 30 seconds or so. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you.]

[00:00:00] Mya Carter: Geoffray considered the news of Gibbons's departure catastrophic. Not only was Gibbons leaving, he was departing within a month ahead of the school's scheduled opening and before they had even found a location. Not to mention, they were still awaiting final funding that was in part dependent on Gibbons’s presence as the author of the original grant application.

Who could possibly fill his shoes? Geoffray didn't think of herself as a [00:00:30] courageous spirit, nor did she think the rest of the staff that she had hired felt that way about themselves either. For months in the confined space that composed their temporary offices at Dominican College, Geoffray had heard Gibbons responding to phone calls protesting the school.

She had taken messages from some of the callers to pass along to Gibbons. They were almost always from wealthy society people who kept screaming about "all the Black people coming into [00:01:00] the neighborhood." They threatened to sue Dominican College and worse. The protests had increased after news was released about the formal contract for the Adult Education Center.

The neighbors surely did not want the program at Dominican or nearby. And they said so several times a day to the Sisters by telephone, by mail, and even in person. Whenever Geoffray had chatted with Gibbons [00:01:30] about these calls, she had thought, "Thank goodness, at least Father is here to answer the protesters. He knows how to fight back." 

But now, he was leaving. What would happen to us, she wondered. Who would lead the fight? The more Geoffray thought about it, the more upset and anxious she became. "Why did the Dominican Order do this? She kept asking herself. How could they abandon us at the [00:02:00] beginning of such a controversial but justifiable project? How could they take Gibbons away when we needed him?" 

The 431 Exchange presents Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation. Exchange Place is the story of a school whose mission was to train mostly African American women the skills they [00:02:30] needed to integrate the secretarial offices of the Deep South between 1965 and '72. Those offices were not just segregated for the most part they were completely off limits to women of color and many were fighting to ensure the workplace would stay that way for years or decades to come. The first season of the podcast tells the inspirational biographies of the school's graduates who changed the moral skyline of their city, how they did it, and how the [00:03:00] school's teachers and supporters struggled to overcome the massive forces arrayed against them.

Episode 12: A Cowardly Lion 

As it turned out, Gibbons' imminent departure wasn't the news that most rattled Geoffray. The more unbelievable news. was that Gibbons wanted Geoffray to take over for him as director of the Adult Education Center. "Since you've been in on this since the beginning," he said [00:03:30] calmly as they sat in his office, "I can't think of anyone else more qualified to take over my job."

Geoffray stared back at Gibbons in disbelief. "Me," she thought to herself, "Me, who had never thought—or wanted to be—anything other than a teacher?" Geoffray was unable to answer him. All she could think was, "Could I do it?" 

Growing up, Geoffray never wanted to be a [00:04:00] teacher. At various times in her early life, she dreamed about being a singer, or a pianist, or a screenwriter.

But a teacher? She never gave it a thought. But as a student in Catholic elementary schools, she loved and respected her teachers. In those early years, there was a special nun—Sister Mary Carmel—who waited for her and the other students each evening. Sister Mary Carmel's students could hear [00:04:30] her laughter reaching out to them as they left school.

At the end of every school day, come rain or shine, Sister Carmel would spread out her big black cloak, nine yards of fabric in those days, to draw her students close to her. Later, as an adult, Geoffray wondered, "Did she make this gesture out of love? Or to warm us on those cold winter nights when our clothing must have seemed inadequate."

When Geoffray eventually did become a teacher, [00:05:00] she thought about Sister Carmel often. She wanted to be like her, a source of comfort and joy, and a rock students could lean on, especially if they had no rock at home. 

Geoffray was born at home in 1924, and her elementary school years coincided with the Great Depression of the 1930s. She was one of many children who did not have much to look forward to. Everybody [00:05:30] was struggling, but her family was struggling more than most. There was no electricity in her home. At nightfall, after they closed the door, she and her sister and baby brother watched the scary images their shadows made on the wall with the help of kerosene lamps—but only when they actually had kerosene.

Years later, when she was writing a newsletter and talked about the good old days when no one had electricity [00:06:00] in their homes. Her mother started to laugh. Geoffray asked her, "What's the matter?" "It's that line about the electricity," she said. "Growing up, almost everybody in the neighborhood had electricity but us."

The electricity was there, but we were too poor to pay the public service to connect it. In the mid-1950s, nearly ten years into her marriage and with six children at home, Geoffray had to make a momentous [00:06:30] decision—go to work? Or stay at home and hope her husband, who was ill with a form of depression that was never fully diagnosed, would get well enough to return to work—and soon enough to keep the family out of financial disaster. As much as she fought against the idea of leaving her children to work, she realized she couldn't wait for her husband's health to improve. She knew the kids needed food, clothing, medical care-none of which the family could currently afford. [00:07:00] Some of Geoffray's friends and neighbors suggested that she let one or two of her children go to live with her brother or sister.

Neither of whom had children at that time. It sounded like a reasonable solution, but she could not forget the Murphy family who had lived next door to her when she was younger and who had gone through a similar situation. They had six children at the height of the depression and decided to allow their oldest daughter to live with a [00:07:30] well-to-do relative until they could get on their feet.

Unfortunately, that day never came. The oldest daughter alienated herself from the other siblings—at school and at play. She wore beautiful clothes, went to dancing lessons, performed at dance revues, took elocution lessons, and rarely gave the time of day to her younger sisters and brothers. Geoffray was not concerned that her brother or [00:08:00] sister would act unwisely in such a situation.

She was more afraid of what the children would do to themselves or to one another. Jealousy. Resentment. A feeling of being better than the rest. A feeling of being left out or abandoned. A feeling of not belonging. Ironically, years later, when the Murphy children were grown, the younger children had to take care of the oldest sister.

She had become an alcoholic and [00:08:30] had abandoned her own child. When she considered placing her children with another family member, Geoffray thought to herself, "This is not the answer. Which one could I let go? Which one could I let walk away from the circle of the family? Which one of them would feel the abandonment themselves and know that they had been automatically excluded from the secrets and sorrows of the group as a whole?" 

"Each one had something to contribute. No, [00:09:00] I was too selfish to choose that road," she decided. Others suggested Geoffray go on welfare. She thought of how her mother had managed to keep her and her siblings together. Her mother had crawled under people's houses with their permission to find discarded slivers of wood to keep their stove burning, begged people for an onion or two to season the beans for dinner, and walked across town every day for months [00:09:30] to visit everyone she knew in order to borrow money for graduation fees.

No, Geoffray couldn't do that either, or go on welfare. She was too proud. There was only one thing left to do—go to work. It had been eight years since Geoffray had graduated from Dominican College. She had never worked before. She could not drive a car. "Where could she get a job? Who [00:10:00] could she get to mind her children?"

There were no nursery schools in those days. But she thought this was why she had gone to college. The first woman in her family to do so. Her education was a difference maker. She thought about how her grandmother and aunts had laughed at her mother for encouraging her to go to college. "What good would it do," they had asked. Geoffray felt like she had to make an example of [00:10:30] herself for her own pride's sake. If not for other women, too. Geoffray started her job search in the early part of July, 1952. She went first to the one place for which she had credentials—the school board office. She had heard so much about the need for teachers, it did not occur to her that she would be turned away. After examining her papers, Geoffray was told she needed to take the National Teachers [00:11:00] Exam, a requirement which had been added since she had graduated from college. "When can I take the exam?" "You just missed one—in June. You won't be able to take the next one until February." "Are there any exceptions? I really do need a job."

She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice, but she didn't think anyone was fooled. "Where was she going to go? What was she going to do?" Geoffray's [00:11:30] next try was with the morning newspapers. She scanned the classifieds one after another and found herself returning time and again to a job she thought was way beyond her qualifications.

It was a two-line ad that said, "House Organ Editor, Experience Required, Call." She thought she knew what a house organ editor was. A sort-of in-house company newspaper. She knew what experience [00:12:00] required meant, of course, and she didn't have any—except as a college newspaper editor and alumnae newsletter editor.

She thought surely they would laugh her down the hall. Geoffray called the number listed in the newspaper and made an appointment. Then, she called Sister Mary Clara, who had worked with her on the alumnae paper. "Would she send some copies of some of the more recent editions?" The Sister was encouraging. As they came to the [00:12:30] end of their conversation, Geoffray broached a subject she'd had on her mind all along.

"When I go in for the interview, Sister, should I tell them I have six children?" While Geoffray waited a few seconds for Sister to get her thoughts together, she added, "You know employers don't usually hire a person with one child, let alone six." Just a few years earlier, the teaching profession in many states would have been entirely closed off to a married woman with [00:13:00] children. Then, as Geoffray would recall later, a voice came across the wire—it was a voice from heaven. Sister Clara said firmly, "Alice, would you deny any of your children?" Geoffray knew what she had to do. 

Geoffray was trembling when she went for the interview at Motion Picture Advertising. So much was at stake. Her interviewer, Mrs. Sherrick, was very nice, [00:13:30] but very quiet. She spoke in a whisper. Geoffray had become so used to the chaos of six children all talking at once that she had trouble understanding what Sherrick was saying. They were almost through the interview when the dreaded question came. To Geoffray, it seemed as if Sherrick shouted it in the cavernous conference room.

Geoffray struggled to get the words out. "I have six." She wasn't sure if she said it proudly. [00:14:00] Sherrick didn't blink an eye saying quietly, "I don't see a problem with that, so long as you have someone responsible to take care of them." Sherrick didn't ask for the details of Geoffray's child care plan. Perhaps she knew Geoffray hadn't gotten that far.

Geoffray sensed Sherrick trusted her. Geoffray realized she only had a day or two to find that important person who would make having a full-time job possible. She knew it [00:14:30] wouldn't be easy. 

Once home, Geoffray dialed number after number, following leads to find help without success. She grew desperate. Geoffray said a prayer to St. Jude, the patron Saint of lost causes, and dialed the next number. It rang in the home of Ms. Mildred Cayette, who had advertised that she wanted to work five days a week, cooking and cleaning. Geoffray told Cayette she had [00:15:00] six children, all under eight. Two, who would be going to school. The other four would be at home, some still wearing diapers and still taking bottles.

She would need Cayette from seven-thirty in the morning until five-thirty in the afternoon. As Geoffray stated each requirement, her heart grew heavy for she heard no response from Cayette. She was sure Cayette was going to say, "Do you think I'm crazy? I want to work, [00:15:30] but not that bad." But Cayette didn't say any such thing. To Geoffray's statement, "I need someone to care for my children. I have six under eight." She said, "That's OK. I have nine." Responded Geoffray, "How could you be able to get to me in time for me to get to work? And how could you stay so late without neglecting your own?" "My husband works for the railroad," Cayette said. "He gets all my [00:16:00] children ready and gives them their breakfast in the morning while I'm getting dressed. Then, after he brings me to work, he goes home and sees that they have everything else they need before he goes to work. In the afternoon," Cayette continued, "he will get home earlier than I do and get supper on the table before he comes to pick me up."

Geoffray could not believe her good fortune. As she wrote later in an unpublished memoir, "It took me seven years to stop pinching myself [00:16:30] that Cayette was just a human being, like you and me—and not an angel sent from God." Cayette rarely missed a day of work. Except for the time she got the shingles. Because of Cayette's reliability, Geoffray eventually ended up with a work record she would have put up against any other employee or teacher in the city of New Orleans.

Motion Picture Advertising did just what it sounds like. Sell ads for neighborhood movie [00:17:00] houses and drive-in theaters. Geoffray’s job was to write and edit the house organ that went out each week to salesmen in twenty-four of the country's then forty-eight states. 

When Geoffray's boss, Mr. Mabry, saw the responses to her Screen Broadcaster, as it was called, he rewarded her immediately. He gave her a raise, he changed the format, he made it bigger, and he encouraged the salesmen to [00:17:30] send in items. Geoffray’s raise wasn't much by today's standards—only five dollars—but for MPA and the times, it was startling. 

Geoffray's starting date was July 19, 1953. Less than six weeks later, she received a telephone call from the New Orleans School Board. They had an opening for a business education teacher at L.E. Rabouin Vocational High School. They [00:18:00] needed her immediately. She told the personnel director, Mr. Hebeisen, that she couldn't accept. "When you told me you couldn't hire me until I had taken the National Teachers Examination in February, I applied for another job. I couldn't leave them now." Then Geoffray asked, "By the way, what happened to the requirement to take the exam?" "We'll just waive it this time. We need you now." "They would waive it because they needed me? They [00:18:30] couldn't waive it when I needed them," Geoffray thought to herself. 

After Geoffray told Hebeisen the same thing, she thought it was over. But Hebeisen wouldn't let her be after that. Each day, he was getting calls from the principal of the school, Violett O'Reilly, demanding a shorthand teacher. He didn't want to say no to O'Reilly, an extremely influential person in the school system. Hebeisen pressured Geoffray for weeks. 

Back at Motion Picture [00:19:00] Advertising, one day when Geoffray was talking to Mabry, she told him about Hebeisen's continual calls and how grateful she was to him for hiring her when she really needed a job. Mabry looked over his spectacles at Geoffray and asked, "Why can't you do both? You certainly can use the money with all those children." "I didn't think you wanted a part-time editor," she replied. "You seem so dedicated to the newspaper." "That's [00:19:30] true," he said, "and I want you to edit it. But I think you can do both. Rabouin is just a few blocks away. You can come here after school, and get all your mail, then bring the material every morning to the printer. He's just across the street from the school, isn't he? I don't see any problem." 

Geoffray didn't want to bring up the question of salary. She had always been shy about that. But Mabry brought it up himself. "I'll pay you the same thing I'm paying you now, except for that last five dollar raise." [00:20:00] 

The conversation convinced Geoffray that the good Lord was with her. She worked the two jobs for the following seven years and added a night school teaching class. After seven years of this schedule, Geoffray and her six kids moved in order to follow her husband, who was now working as a music teacher in White Castle, a little country town in southern Louisiana.

Geoffray had to learn how to drive so she could commute eighty miles to New [00:20:30] Orleans, where she continued to hold the three jobs. Once the family moved to White Castle, they had to say goodbye to Cayette. But Geoffray never forgot that it was Cayette who made it possible for her to begin her career, and ultimately, to begin her life as a teacher. As a person, Cayette may have been one of a kind, but the role she played in Geoffray's upward mobility was played out in the lives of countless other White women [00:21:00] and their households throughout the United States in the Twentieth Century. Without Cayette, Geoffray would never have been able to be in the position of considering becoming the next director of the Adult Education Center. 

Back in his office at the Adult Education Center in August 1965, Gibbons waited for an answer from Geoffray about whether she would agree to replace him as director of the school.

Geoffray felt she had not been prepared for leadership. [00:21:30] She had no education beyond her bachelor's degree. She had no administration experience. She thought Gibbons's proposal was neither practical nor wise. Somehow, though, Gibbons saw something in her that practically no one else had. As he had been doing since they had met—and as he would do for the next two years—Gibbons instilled confidence in Geoffray. He did so in many ways, including having her accompany [00:22:00] him to high-level meetings, and introducing and treating her as a peer, encouraging her to pursue her master's degree, valuing her thoughts, ideas, and proposals, and putting her in positions that up until then had been out of her comfort zone.

Less than two months earlier, Geoffray had only been an observer standing on the sidelines, standing by while countless intelligent, determined Black women were fighting for equality [00:22:30] and respect. Geoffray sympathized but was in no position to aid those women who were hopelessly underemployed as domestics and in other low paying jobs, yet who longed for a quality education and a way to climb up the economic ladder.

Up until that point in her life, Geoffray had been focused on her own ambitions as a teacher. Not to mention, her own obligations as a working mother who was the sole support for seven children. She was [00:23:00] barely able to support herself.

She had never met women like Patricia Morris until she interviewed them in the summer of 1965. Geoffray had been recruiting many potential applicants by going to their churches and other venues in the Black community. She even solicited students while shopping in the grocery store. Through interviews and other interactions she had gotten to know them. She respected them. She empathized and bonded with them over what they had in [00:23:30] common, not over how they were different. Many were mothers with ambitions and hopes similar to her own. She also noticed in some the same kinds of weaknesses—a lack of confidence in appearance and feelings of inadequacy.

The younger women reminded Geoffray of her own daughters. Yet their circumstances were different from Geoffray’s because of Jim Crow and other tools of systemic racism. [00:24:00] All the potential students lacked the kind of educational opportunities that would propel them into a good job and a stable future. These students wanted to be part of a broader world, a broader economy, and there were no programs that could help them cross the bridge into that world. Before the summer had begun, Geoffray had no real idea of the kind of hurdles these women faced. By the end of the summer, it was obvious to her that the program Gibbons had designed could be [00:24:30] that bridge. 

As she sat in Gibbons’s office, Geoffray could see in front of her the kind of opportunity teachers dream of. The opportunity to teach students desperate to learn. Geoffray did have the confidence that she had the skills to put them in a position to qualify for the kinds of jobs they dreamed of, if they followed Gibbons’s plan to the end. She had done the same for scores of young White men [00:25:00] and women. 

Geoffray realized there was no turning back. There was no way she could abandon these students. And with this commitment, she had now become a full-fledged member of the Civil Rights movement. 

That concludes Season 1 of Exchange Place. 

Thank you for listening. 

[00:25:21] Jeff Geoffray: This has been a presentation of the 431 Exchange. We're a non-profit organization dedicated to adults seeking to transform their lives through [00:25:30] continuing education. 

We invite you to learn more about us by going to our website at www.431exchange.org. 

To hear more inspiring stories, please sign up for our newsletter.

Thanks. 

Copyright 431 Exchange LLC, 2022. 

[00:25:49] Steppin' Out by Kevin Gullage: I've been up all night. 

I've been up all night. 

I've been dancing and moving. 

I've been dancing and moving. 

I feel alright. 

I feel alright. 

I'm lookin' real [00:26:00] good. I'm lookin' real good. 

Don't be shy now. Don't be shy. 

Don't be so rude. 

Don't be so rude. 

Let's tear the house down. 

Tear it down. 

Let's break all the rules. 

Let's break all the rules. 

Let's get to stepping out. 

Stepping out.

Stepping in the street. In the street.

Let's get to steppin' out. Steppin out. 

Let's dance 'till the morning. Dance 'till the morning. 

Tonight is the night to do it all right let's get to [00:26:30] steppin out. 

Steppin' out.