Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation
Season 1, Episode 8: Dr. Sandra O'Neal – After Death Communications

JUNE 30, 2023 | THE 431 EXCHANGE; MYA CARTER (HOST), JEFF GEOFFRAY (NARRATOR); DR. SANDRA O'NEAL (GUEST); 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.]

[00:00:00] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: This is the way it was. Back in those times, Black people usually had a lot of children. They were renting in places that had maybe two bedrooms and you had maybe seven or eight children in two bedrooms. You had a little bathroom, but cold water. Those were the living conditions. The houses were so close it was like you were living with another family.

The projects were a step up. [00:00:30] Everybody wanted to move in the projects because in the projects your rooms were allocated according to how many children you had. You had a garden, you had hot and cold water, you had a lawn, and the living conditions were quite different from living in, in, I guess you could call it the slums, the ghetto, whatever it was. But that's what a lot of Black people could afford back then.

We lived in the Tremé section most of my life and then when I was about [00:01:00] twelve we moved uptown with my grandmother who lived in the Magnolia projects. She had a garden, she had a fireplace. It was just a little place, but it was so much better than what we had. I moved into the St. Bernard Projects when I was sixteen and we were very happy about that.

[00:01:18] Mya Carter: The 431 Exchange presents Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights In New Orleans and the Nation. Exchange [00:01:30] Place is the story of a school whose mission was to train mostly African American women the skills they 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 [00:02:00] biographies of the school's graduates who changed the moral skyline of their city, how they did it, and how the school's teachers and supporters struggled to overcome the massive forces arrayed against them.

Episode 8: Dr. Sandra O'Neal - After Death Communications

an exchange between Dr. Sandra O'Neal, Adult Education Center Class of 1970, and Jeff Geoffray, the youngest son of the Center's director, Dr. Alice Geoffray. [00:02:30]

Part 1: Early Life

[00:02:34] Jeff Geoffray: Your grandmother encouraged you to follow the rules of Jim Crow, for instance, by making sure you moved to the back of the bus or the streetcar...

[00:02:41] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: The way it was with my grandmother, she didn't want anyone to tell us anything. That was her reason for doing that because she figured that if we didn't go to the back of the bus or something that somebody would tell us something or insult us or maybe even try to push us. And she did [00:03:00] not want that. She would not stand for that. So when we got on the bus she would say, "Alright, straight to the back. Straight to the back," and we went to the back. So we were safe in the back.

[00:03:10] Jeff Geoffray: That's a common theme amongst Black families, elders protecting younger ones by helping them navigate the rules of Jim Crow that weren't necessarily apparent, or logical, and of course unfair.

[00:03:22] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Right. I think back then, if you could rescue a child who was in trouble, I, I think a lot of people did it, [00:03:30] particularly in the neighborhoods. If you were doing something wrong in the street and your parents came home, before they could get home, the neighbors would run and tell them what you were doing. And that was also a way of protection, trying to protect the child from elements in the street, being punished by the police.

[00:03:50] Jeff Geoffray: While you were living in a segregated neighborhood, you did have a friend who was a White girl.

[00:03:55] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, Veronica Vera. We were living on Sixth Street around [00:04:00] the time we were living in Tremé and we were going back and forth moving and, uh, Veronica lived next door to us. Actually the, the neighborhood was segregated and her mother used to let us play with her, but when her grandmother got off the bus and she was coming down the street, we had to leave. Her grandmother didn't want her to play with us.

[00:04:20] Jeff Geoffray: Veronica's mom would let you play together, but her grandmother would've been opposed to it.

[00:04:24] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Her mother used to encourage us to play with Veronica. She had all these nice toys and [00:04:30] she had this big, long porch, and her mother would say, "come on and play," and we would go play. And my mother, she just felt like, "yeah, just make sure you're not there when her grandmother gets there."

[00:04:41] Jeff Geoffray: At the time you were going to school, after segregation in public schools was ruled illegal. Did you attend any integrated schools before you went to the Adult? Education Center, for instance, was Walter L. Cohen High School integrated?

[00:04:55] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, Walter L. Cohen was segregated. The teachers were all [00:05:00] Black from kindergarten all the way up.

[00:05:03] Jeff Geoffray: You were always a top performer in school.

[00:05:06] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: When I was in high school, I was a straight A student. I was on the student council, I was in the drama club. We had the night of music and drama, and it was like, "don't go out for the lead if O'Neal is going out," because they knew I was gonna get it. If there was any type of speaking part or mistress a ceremony, they, they always picked me because they thought that I spoke [00:05:30] well and, and I had that confidence and, and I had it in church too, but when life changed it, it, it just went down. It just, it just went down.

[00:05:40] Jeff Geoffray: Would you describe yourself as a high achiever?

[00:05:42] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, I liked learning and I liked excelling. I wanted to make the, a honor roll every semester. I liked doing homework. I used to write when I was in junior high school, I was the literary editor of our paper, our school paper. And I used [00:06:00] to write poems you know and things to be published and little stories about what's going on around school. And when I got to high school, that kinda slacked off. But once I got back to, once I, uh, was enrolled in the Adult Education Center, you know, and there were opportunities to write than I would.

[00:06:20] Jeff Geoffray: Was your family proud of your achievements in school?

[00:06:23] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Well, my mom was proud, my grandmother was proud, but they really expected it. They expected not only me [00:06:30] but my two sisters to do well in school. And I think it really came from my dad. When my dad joined the Navy and when he graduated from high school they had a special graduation just for him.

[00:06:43] Jeff Geoffray: How did your mom and dad meet?

[00:06:45] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: My mom met my dad in the country because my mom was visiting a relative out there. And that's where she met my dad.

[00:06:53] Jeff Geoffray: What was your mom's name?

[00:06:54] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Florence. Florence Hannah.

[00:06:56] Jeff Geoffray: Your father was a teacher.

[00:06:58] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: His name was Paul [00:07:00] O'Neal. He went into the Navy and my aunt told me that when my mom met him, he was teaching school.

[00:07:07] Jeff Geoffray: You were a happy teenager, a confident high school senior, looking forward to your high school prom and then furthering your education afterwards. But that was when everything was turned upside down. Your sister felt gravely Ill. Tell me about your eviction.

[00:07:23] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: After my sister got sick, my mother wasn't able to work, so the rent had gone unpaid for three months [00:07:30] and that's when we got the eviction notice. And I went to to the project office and I asked them if they really were going to evict us, and they said, "yeah." We had a certain amount of time to get the money. So I went to my grandmother and I got the money and I paid them.

[00:07:45] Jeff Geoffray: I thought when you entered the Adult Education Center, you had always suffered from a lack of confidence. But I know now that there was a point in your life where you were filled with confidence and then that changed.

[00:07:56] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, I lost that when life changed. [00:08:00] I thought everything was, you know, going so good. I was just gonna go through high school, get a scholarship and everything, and I had to go and wash dishes all night, manually wash dishes at Tony's Spaghetti House and then do domestic work. And I, you know, I thought I was better than that, but I, I kinda lost my confidence and, and, and when I got to school, it built it up.

[00:08:25] Jeff Geoffray: When your sister became ill, you had to put your education on hold to take multiple jobs, [00:08:30] even working as a domestic to support your family. Your mother lost her job when she started going to your sister's hospital seven days a week. Your sister was holding on for dear life and your mother didn't want her to be alone. Several months later, you just barely escaped eviction. It was then just on the eve of your prom, you realized you had to get a full-time job to help support your family. At first you tried to work your full-time job after school.

[00:08:57] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I would go to work. Uh, my hours were [00:09:00] like five to one, something like that. I tried to go to school in the daytime, but I, you know, I was too tired When I'd get off at one, I would just sit outside and watch the dawn come up, and then I would go to the hospital to relieve my mom. And there was some back stairs at Charity. So, uh, we would sneak in and, and her room was right by the stairs, so we would just sneak in and go in my sister's room and sit with her. She had cirrhosis of the liver.

[00:09:29] Jeff Geoffray: You were working [00:09:30] in the French Quarter at a time when Black people were not welcome there.

[00:09:33] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, that was at Tony Spaghetti House. I worked there. You could be there, but you'll probably be stopped. Like, where are you going? What are you doing down here?

[00:09:43] Jeff Geoffray: Did Tony's serve Black customers?

[00:09:45] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It was a rarity. It was in 1965. I worked there from March to May. I started working there when my sister went in the hospital, and when she died in May, I quit. When a Black person came in [00:10:00] Tony's, we would all run to the front, "Oh, a Black person!" You know, all the cooks and everything would run to see the Black person.

[00:10:08] Jeff Geoffray: How did you get the job at Tony's?

[00:10:10] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: One of my friends who lived in the project, she worked there and one night she couldn't go, so I went to substitute for her. She was a dishwasher, so I substituted for her and then they eventually hired me to make pizzas with the chefs.

[00:10:28] Jeff Geoffray: Did the job require any [00:10:30] training?

[00:10:30] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: When I got to the dough, the dough was already spread out on the pan. He had all these pans stacked up with dough on them, and all I had to do was put the sauce on them and the cheese and, you know, and the toppings, and put 'em in the oven. I think they made their job as easy as they could for me.

[00:10:48] Jeff Geoffray: Your high school counselor implored you to stay in school.

[00:10:51] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, that was Mrs. Williams. She used to call me and tell me, "come back to school. You can do this, you can get that. You only needed this." [00:11:00] But I told her, I said, "I have to work." I said, "I have to go to work!"

[00:11:04] Jeff Geoffray: You eventually got a union job making relatively good money, though it was backbreaking work for a man or a woman.

[00:11:11] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Right. Yeah. West Virginia Paper Company, they may have been union and they paid really well.

[00:11:18] Jeff Geoffray: How did you land that relatively good paying job.

[00:11:21] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I was referred to, to that job by a friend who worked there as a sewer. She used to sew paper bags. They needed [00:11:30] more Black people, and they told them to bring their friends. And so I went there and I had to take a test and I took a test and I got a job as a bagger and we worked the swing shift. Now at Tony's, I was making seventy-five cents an hour, so I think when I started at West Virginia, I don't know, it was a dollar and something and I was making twice as much money, maybe more.

[00:11:55] Jeff Geoffray: Why do you think they needed more Black people?

[00:11:57] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I'm assuming that, I'm assuming they [00:12:00] needed more Black people 'cause they didn't have any, they had very few.

[00:12:04] Jeff Geoffray: You eventually met a young man who started courting you heavily. How did that happen?

[00:12:09] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I was a young woman living in the projects. Uh, they weren't, most of the boys were going to Vietnam and a lot of them weren't coming back and there weren't many options for Black people. Girls or boys and all. I met him, Lionel, Lionel Burns, he wasn't [00:12:30] from New Orleans, he was from New Roads, the country, and they had their own land. They had a couple of houses and horses and they, they lived pretty well in the country and he really fell for me. He was, he had money. He had a brand new car. Even his cousins had new cars and he worked several jobs. And I remember when he, he wanted to marry me. He had brought me some clothes, he brought me a diamond ring [00:13:00] and we hadn't been intimate or anything like that. And he proposed to me, and I remember my mama said, you better marry him. He's a good man. Marry him. And he used to go visit my grandparents with me and he would bring my grandparents on these trips, you know, where he would drive them. He just got into our family and everybody loved him. And there were no other, I wasn't looking to get married, but I had just weren't any other [00:13:30] boys who had those credentials? Most of them were unemployed or they worked in a job at the hotel. You like the Monte Leon or, I can't think of the other ones, like bus boys, stuff like that. They were young. They had, they didn't have good jobs. They didn't make good money. They lived at home, and so he was a good prospect for me. So we got married.

[00:13:52] Jeff Geoffray: Why do you think he fell for you so hard?

[00:13:55] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: He saw a good looking girl from the projects. Good looking and [00:14:00] intelligent. I was smart. I wasn't for mischievous or anything like that was a good catch.

[00:14:07] Jeff Geoffray: Did you have a big church wedding?

[00:14:09] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, we, we were Baptist. He had to get baptized first and we had to join our church.

[00:14:19] Jeff Geoffray: Lionel had a good job at Avondale Shipyards.

[00:14:22] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Not right away he worked at Avondale. When I met him, he was doing landscape work with his [00:14:30] uncle, parking cars. And then in the country he had some kind of job, so he, he, he always had a lot of jobs. He always had money. But after we got married, I think we may have been married for maybe eight months, that's when he got on with Avondale, with his brother.

[00:14:48] Jeff Geoffray: That was a relatively high paying job. I think Union too. I believe there may have been a relatively high amount of Black workers there because they had government contracts, and so the Civil Rights Acts would've encouraged [00:15:00] Avondale to have non-discriminatory policies. But my understanding is that those jobs were really hard to get.

[00:15:06] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah. From what I understand about Avondale, back then, you had to know somebody. Someone had to bring you in, and his cousin worked there and his cousin got his brother on, and his brother got him on.

[00:15:20] Jeff Geoffray: Lionel's job at Avondale must have had a big impact on your home economics. Were you still working too?

[00:15:26] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I was home pregnant. I had stopped my job. He was working [00:15:30] at Avondale. He was making good money, but he wasn't bringing it home. He had another family that I didn't know about, so we really didn't get the benefit of all the money that he was making. We just got the basics and I didn't have everything that I really needed because he was supporting another family.

[00:15:51] Jeff Geoffray: Weren't you two married?

[00:15:52] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: He was married to me and he was, he had another woman pregnant who he was taking care of.

[00:15:59] Jeff Geoffray: [00:16:00] How did you find out about his other family?

[00:16:02] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It. It's a, it's a messy story, Jeff.

[00:16:05] Jeff Geoffray: Sandra, does it hurt you to talk about, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable telling me.

[00:16:10] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, I can tell you if you wanna listen, I can tell you. I can tell you. She, okay. She, um, was masquerading as his cousin and living with him, and she used to call my house and ask to speak to him and I thought that was his cousin. And one Thanksgiving we had all [00:16:30] gone to a dinner by his family and I, I announced to them that I was pregnant. This was before Raquel was born. And they said, "guess who else is pregnant?" And I said, "Who?" And they said, "Louise." I said, "oh, that's nice." It was his cousin Thelma that told me that. And she just looked at me. I said, "why? What's the matter? She's pregnant, right?" "Yeah," and, and she gave me a look and I said, "no!" And she said, "yeah." And that's how I found out that she [00:17:00] was pregnant for him. And I remember I just left and he followed me and I said, "is that really true?" And he said, "yeah, that's true."

[00:17:09] Jeff Geoffray: What was going on in your mind at the time?

[00:17:11] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: All I could think of was the deception. You know how she fooled us and made us think she was his cousin? And I later found out the night we got married that she had a miscarriage for him. He was full on with this woman before he, you know, even married me. I [00:17:30] don't know why he married me, he should have married her.

[00:17:33] Jeff Geoffray: Did you think about leaving him?

[00:17:35] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: When I would talk to him about it or I complained to him about it or this and that, then that's when he became abusive, verbally abusive. But I stayed with him, you know, I stayed with him. Because my grandmother told me to stay with him. She said that, my grandmother said he, that I was "the belle ma", meaning that I had the upper hand. The belle ma, I guess that's the [00:18:00] woman that sits on the hill, the southern belle, who has everything, crazy.

[00:18:07] Jeff Geoffray: Why do you think he didn't marry her?

[00:18:09] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I think she had become too familiar to him. She was from the part of the country he was from, and they had been going together for years. Then he comes to New Orleans to see me, and I'm new and ambitious and he did love me.

[00:18:28] Mya Carter: Part 2: The [00:18:30] Adult Education Center

[00:18:32] Jeff Geoffray: Sandra, why did you quit your job at the paper factory?

[00:18:35] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I quit because I was pregnant. I couldn't do the work, and I applied for unemployment compensation. I didn't get it, but by then, that was in 1968. And I had my baby in September of '68 and she was three months old when I started going to the Adult Education Center.

[00:18:54] Jeff Geoffray: After your first daughter Raquel was born, you decided to go back to work. You [00:19:00] wanted a good job and you knew that would require more education.

[00:19:03] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I remember there were like little training programs, community-based training programs, and I had applied for a few of those, but they were filled up. You couldn't get in because they were already filled up.

[00:19:17] Jeff Geoffray: When you applied to the Adult, Education Center, you didn't get in immediately.

[00:19:21] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, I just used to call and talk to Ms. Geoffray. She used to talk to me. "I'd really like to go to school. I'd really like to [00:19:30] go," but the admission was over and everything and she said, "I'll see. I'll have to check." And then she called me one time and she told me, "you could come in because of your persistence." That's what she said, because I was persistent and I really wanted to go, and she let me go.

[00:19:48] Jeff Geoffray: Do you remember how you felt in the first days when you were attending the school?

[00:19:52] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Mm, I remember I was really glad to be there. I got to school early so that I could catch up. I didn't know how the type [00:20:00] so I think the typing teacher was there because somebody had to show me how to type. But I would get there a little earlier and practice typing.

[00:20:10] Jeff Geoffray: Even though it was your first time attending school in nearly five years, and even though you didn't know anyone, you felt immediately comfortable.

[00:20:18] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah. That was my first impression, yeah, of school, catching up, meeting people. I liked the environment. I liked the fact that it was in the Quarter and we were around all [00:20:30] these different places where we can walk to eat and meeting so many people, so many young women like myself.

[00:20:37] Jeff Geoffray: You started developing a close relationship with Alice, even though she wasn't one of the counselors.

[00:20:42] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Eventually, once I got there, when I got to tell her things about me, things about my life, I think everybody did.

[00:20:49] Jeff Geoffray: When you started school, did you have any role models to look up to in terms of becoming an executive secretary?

[00:20:56] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I, I, I thought it was just training to be a stenographer. [00:21:00] We took typing, we took, uh, shorthand and, you know, you know the things that we learned and other girls used to come back after they were employed and they would come back to the Center and they would be all dressed up in suits and they would tell us how they made coffee and they did this and that. They just had this hoity attitude. And I said to myself, "I don't think I could ever be that person." You know, "I don't think I could be that person, [00:21:30] personality wise, for coming from where I came from, but I eventually became that person.

[00:21:35] Jeff Geoffray: You enjoyed going to school, but at the same time you were unhappy. You even said that you were depressed. Was it mostly due to the relationship you had with your husband?

[00:21:45] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I wasn't happy because he was involved with this other woman and she had a baby. Her daughter is six months older than my oldest daughter. I decided to stay with him and he continued his affair and a [00:22:00] lot of times he wouldn't be home and sometimes I just didn't have any money going to school, getting out and going to school, even though he supported it. I, I really wasn't happy with my home life.

[00:22:12] Jeff Geoffray: Even so you felt he was supportive of your going back to school. Did you have anyone you could talk to about your feelings, about your marriage? What was making you unhappy?

[00:22:22] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yes, I used to talk to Mrs. Geoffray about it. I remember us having these, and sometimes I'm [00:22:30] wondering if I'm imagining as much as we used to talk, but it seems like we used to have a lot of conversations about what was going on in my house. Because I remember I would tell her things like, well, "I wanted to get my hair done this week." You know, she would ask me, but she knew what was going on and she would ask me, "How are you doing?" Or, how she would phrase it, I don't remember exactly, but you know. And I would tell her, I was very open with her, and uh, I told her, I'd say "he wouldn't give me any money [00:23:00] to get my hair done and don't feel too good, cuz my hair looks horrible." And I remember she gave me some money to get my hair done and she said, "I'm gonna give you this because I think this will make you feel better. And help your self-esteem." I think I'm paraphrasing now because it did help my self-esteem and she said it would make me feel better and it did.

[00:23:21] Jeff Geoffray: The school also identified that you needed eyeglasses.

[00:23:25] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yes. I couldn't see the board and I kept wondering what was [00:23:30] wrong. Told her about that and she gave me some money to get some eyeglasses to go to the eye doctor and get some eyeglasses.

[00:23:37] Jeff Geoffray: There's a great picture of you and your new eyeglasses giving a Certificate of Appreciation to one of the many school visitors, Congressman Hale Boggs, who was the House Majority Whip, held one of the most powerful positions in the US government. Boggs voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but later became the War on Poverty's champion in Congress on behalf of Lyndon Johnson.

[00:23:59] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: [00:24:00] What was going on, there were several people who would come to the school and the girls would do presentations, and he was one of them. And Mrs. Geoffray chose me to do that. I didn't have any input in it at all. I didn't ask for it. I wasn't expecting it, but she thought it would be a good idea if I did it. And I remember thinking, "oh, this is an important person." And I was feeling like, "oh goodness, am I up to this?" [00:24:30] And she was like, "yeah, you can do it. Sure." It was like, "he's just like everybody else. He would appreciate it, it would be a good a thing." And, and I did it. It was easy. It was short. And I felt good about it. I remember I, uh, dressed up for the occasion, as, as the girls did, and it was really a morale booster.

[00:24:51] Jeff Geoffray: While you were attending school, were you concerned about not getting a job after you put in so much work?

[00:24:57] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, I wasn't concerned. I wasn't [00:25:00] concerned because from what I could tell, the girls who wanted jobs were getting jobs. I didn't know anyone who graduated and wanted the job. As a matter of fact, a lot of the students had jobs before they graduated, so I felt pretty confident that I would get a job.

[00:25:19] Jeff Geoffray: In various ways, the school almost guaranteed you would get a job if you put the work in. They emphasized that the employers needed talented women like you, and that was not a message Black [00:25:30] women often heard.

[00:25:31] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Mrs. Geoffray used to tell us that the business world wanted us like they were waiting for us.

[00:25:37] Jeff Geoffray: Graduation was a big deal. The school viewed it as a learning opportunity for both you and the business community. It was a chance for each of you to shine in a very public moment in front of a large crowd. Over a thousand people attended some of the graduation ceremonies. What did it mean to you personally?

[00:25:58] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, it was a big deal. It was [00:26:00] a big deal because that would be the first time that I would really get a chance to walk across the stage and receive a diploma because of my, uh, academic accomplishments, with my family there. My little girl was there and my grandmother was there. And we wore these pretty white dresses with heels. We got all dressed up.

[00:26:24] Jeff Geoffray: Except for guest speakers the whole graduation was performed by the graduates and alumna, from singing the [00:26:30] national anthem and the school song to the invocation and prayer. Even the dresses were a chance for students to shine.

[00:26:36] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: One of my friends who was in the program, she made my graduation dress and it was beautiful. I, I picked out the pattern and I picked out the material. Her name was Joan Dauchez and I believe she lived in the 9th ward. And just a little side note, I think all the students who lived in the 9th ward could sew, but anyway, she would measure me at school and, and she made [00:27:00] my dress. She made a beautiful dress.

[00:27:02] Jeff Geoffray: You took part in the ceremony as a speaker?

[00:27:05] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: After Dorothy won the competition to give the valedictorian speech at graduation...

[00:27:11] Jeff Geoffray: You mean your close friend Dorothy Payton?

[00:27:13] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: ... I was disappointed, but Dr. Geoffray told me right after that she told me that two people had rated me as number one and she gave me the opportunity to do the invocation for the graduation. She gave me a place of honor. She had faith in me. [00:27:30] She saw something in me and she pushed me forward. And when I gave that speech, I was very nervous and I hadn't had much, uh, practice in public speaking since I was in high school. I did have a good story, but Dorothy was really good. She was older than me and I still remember parts of her speech. But Dr. Geoffray just picked me up and said, "oh, you didn't do badly. There were two people who thought you were number one." And then that restored my self confidence.[00:28:00]

[00:28:02] Mya Carter: Part 3: Working Life

[00:28:05] Jeff Geoffray: Statistically, there were few Black women working as secretaries. When you entered the workforce, what was your experience on the job?

[00:28:13] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Being a Black woman back then. I don't know. Maybe it's been the experience of some of the other graduates, but I did not see a Black woman in corporate America being a secretary, [00:28:30] having her own office, working with the corporate bosses, working real close to them. They probably could work in a stenography pool, typing, or doing the mail, or something like that. But I didn't see that because all the places I went to, the secretaries were White and they were older, and they looked like secretaries. Now, later on, I'm sure the Black people who were there became secretaries, but I, I didn't see [00:29:00] it in 1969.

[00:29:02] Jeff Geoffray: Being a secretary was not your long-term goal when you went back to school. What did you want out of a job after the Adult Education Center?

[00:29:09] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I just wanted, at that point, I wanted a better job. I wanted a job where I didn't have to work bending my knees and stacking bags and working a swing shift or having to wash dishes. I wanted to aspire to a job, a white collar job. That's what I wanted.[00:29:30]

[00:29:30] Jeff Geoffray: You landed a white collar job. In your first interview.

[00:29:33] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: After I graduated I had one interview. That was at Gulf Oil Company and they hired me. That was in 1970. I graduated in 1969. My daughter was born in December of '69, and in January of 1970 I was working.

[00:29:54] Jeff Geoffray: You took the civil service test to qualify for a government job.

[00:29:58] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I took the civil service [00:30:00] test. I think a lot of the girls took the civil service test, and I stayed at Gulf Oil Company for six months. I started in January and I left in July of 1970 to work for the government.

[00:30:15] Jeff Geoffray: Yes. A lot of the graduates took the civil service test and did well. Why were you interested in working for the government compared to Gulf Oil?

[00:30:23] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Job security.

[00:30:25] Jeff Geoffray: Did you like your new job?

[00:30:27] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yeah, it was a good job at the time. The thing [00:30:30] about that was at the Adult Education Center, we had electric typewriters. We had new electric typewriters. And when I went to work for the government, we had manual typewriters. I had to learn all over again. And I remember our manager, Mr. Copeland, used to come stand by me and say, "What school did you go to?" And I would tell him, and he said, and "You all learn how to type?" I said, "Yes, Mr. Copeland. We learned how to type on electric typewriters."

[00:30:59] Jeff Geoffray: You soon got [00:31:00] your first promotion from secretary to another position.

[00:31:03] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yes, service representative.

[00:31:05] Jeff Geoffray: Did your promotion come easy?

[00:31:07] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It didn't come about easy Jeff. We were hired and the students from the Adult Education Center had advanced skills. Okay. We were more advanced than the the people who were already working there as far as writing, as far as speaking. And they used us to train other people that were [00:31:30] coming in. Other white students right outta high school or maybe some who didn't finish high school. We trained them and then when there was a promotion, they promoted the students that we trained. We didn't get promoted. We had to wait. It was just like a succession line. We had to wait until they were promoted and then it was like our turn. And so I said to myself, I said, this is ridiculous. I've trained all of these [00:32:00] students and now they're...

The next level up was claims representative. And so I went to Mr. Copeland secretary, he was our district manager, and I told her, her name was Marcy Muse, that I would like to make an appointment to speak with Mr. Copeland. So, you know, she gave me an appointment and I came to work. I looked real professional and everything. And I spoke with Mr. Copeland and I spoke with Mr. Ronsenfeld. He was the assistant district manager. [00:32:30] And I told them that "I deserved a promotion," that "I knew my job, I was able to teach other people," and that I wanted to be promoted. And when a promotion came, he came around my desk just flirting in a professional way, and I got promoted. But had I not gone to the Adult Education Center and had the exposure with other people, with other White men who are professionals and knew how to talk to them and interact with them, [00:33:00] I would not have approached Mr. Copeland and Mr. Ronsenfeld. That's something that I took with me.

[00:33:07] Jeff Geoffray: You took from your training at the Center. Did you see other employees being assertive in the same way?

[00:33:12] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No one was approaching them. My other colleagues, people who I was working with, they weren't getting promoted. They were just sulking around and everything, and I said, "Well, I'm gonna go talk to 'em." No one else did that.

[00:33:25] Jeff Geoffray: At Gulf Oil Company, before your job with the government, you learned a lesson about how the [00:33:30] simplest of changes by a Black woman in the office could cause a big stir when you changed your hairstyle from a perm to an Afro, how were you wearing your hair before you made that change?

[00:33:41] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: When I first went to go for a company, I wore a perm maybe with a little bang and a rest, tapered on the sides and tapered on the back. Put one day I had a parent and the next day I had this big afro. Actually it was a wig, you know it, it was [00:34:00] a wig. A lot of people wore wigs and I had this big Afro wig and you know, everybody was turning their heads and looking and, "Is this a new girl?" Or, you know, didn't they realize it was me? Then it was like, are you upset with us? Are you angry with us? Just a wig. The Afro was perceived as Black Power, militancy, and everything, but it wasn't really about that at all. It was just [00:34:30] about looking chic, wearing mini-skirts and vests and long skirts and bell bottoms. That was just a part of the attire.

[00:34:39] Jeff Geoffray: You thought you were being fashionable, yet your White bosses and colleagues thought you were making a statement because you were mad at them. For some reason, the way you described the outfit, it does seem chic!

[00:34:49] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I was just all, I was into myself, I wanted to look good. And I remember that particular day I had, it wasn't leather, it was what you call that [00:35:00] material? It looked like leather, but it it...

[00:35:02] Jeff Geoffray: I think that kind of faux leather was made out of vinyl.

[00:35:06] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Right. You know, that mini-skirt with a matching vest. I think they may have called it the wet look. And that was just all a part of my outfit. The hair went with what I was wearing. It was a look. I was surprised at their reaction. I just thought it was funny. It's me. It's just a hairdo.

[00:35:25] Jeff Geoffray: It wasn't long into your secretarial career before you went back to [00:35:30] school to pursue a bachelor's degree in social work at Southern University at New Orleans, or SUNO, as they call it.

[00:35:36] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Right, I was going to school full-time at night. I would get off from work and go to school. But I'll tell you this, when I got to SUNO, I think I wasn't at the lowest level. I was a junior because I had been taking courses off and on. I would take courses at Our Lady of Holy Cross, and I had some courses at Delgado that [00:36:00] I had taken which gave me a sophomore status. And so when I, uh, enrolled in SUNO, I was on a junior level.

[00:36:08] Jeff Geoffray: Around the time you were first starting work there was a famous conflict between the police and Black Panthers at the Desire projects. The perception of that event has changed over time with new information coming out. What was your impression of that conflict?

[00:36:22] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I knew about it. I didn't participate in it. I think the closest I got to it was in 1970. I [00:36:30] was working at the Gulf Oil Company and the Panthers had taken over the Desire project because that's where I used to bring my daughter to, you know, to babysit. I would bring her to the Desire project in the morning. Then when I got off from work, I would go pick her up, and so I have some knowledge of that, but I wasn't afraid. I just went there, avoided the barricade, got her, and got out of there.

[00:36:55] Jeff Geoffray: One of the things that has come to light compared to news reports at the time was that the [00:37:00] Panthers had earned a good reputation with a Desire.

[00:37:03] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yes. Among the people who lived in Desire, they had a reputation of doing positive things because they, they ran out the drug lords and the people who used to sell drugs, not only did they start a breakfast program, they used to help the elderly get their medicine. They had a library for books for children who wanted to read. And they were young people, and most of them were teenagers. They [00:37:30] wanted to come over and take over the Desire projects without the police interference. They wanted to handle any problems that occurred in the Desire projects and help empower the people. And that's what they were doing. And the problem came when the police infiltrated the Desire projects with two policemen who came in to make like they were two Black guys trying to help. And then they found out that they were part of the police force. And then [00:38:00] that's when the trouble started.

[00:38:01] Jeff Geoffray: You moved out of the projects after starting your first secretarial job?

[00:38:06] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I did move out of the projects when I started working for Gulf Oil Company in 1970 and we moved out of the projects and we moved to a house and then we moved to Park Chester, which was, uh, an apartment development, which was really nice. And that's where I stayed with my husband.

[00:38:25] Jeff Geoffray: Eventually you moved to one of the few suburbs where Blacks were allowed to own homes [00:38:30] due to defacto segregation that was still in place.

[00:38:33] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I, when I left New Orleans and moved to Marrero in 1973 and I bought a little house on the 235 bill. That was my move to the suburbs. We stayed there three years, then I bought a house, the one where I am now.

[00:38:49] Jeff Geoffray: What is the 235 bill?

[00:38:51] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It was the government housing program under Section Eight, Housing and Urban Development, where your house note is [00:39:00] based on your income and an amount of people in your family.

[00:39:04] Jeff Geoffray: The suburbs for Black people and other low income folks wasn't quite the same as what was built for White suburbs. Like the 9th ward, the infrastructure was not highly developed, but was it a step up?

[00:39:15] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It was a step up and I guess the suburbs for Black people were these undeveloped communities in places like Marrero, maybe Westwego, Slidell, where the government was [00:39:30] building homes. Nice little brick homes with central air and a garage for low income families. Now when we moved out to Marrero, the street wasn't even finished. All the lights weren't even on in the neighborhood. But we were happy to go, it was far away, and you know, we didn't have two bridges like we have now. There was no overpass over the Harvey Canal. The traffic was bad, but it was a step up for [00:40:00] us and for a lot of the Black families.

[00:40:02] Jeff Geoffray: The community was different. For instance, you attended an integrated church for the first time?

[00:40:07] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Yes, our church was Black. It was predominantly African American, and that's the way it was pretty much in the sixties and the seventies. If you went to a Catholic church, then it was probably integrated, but I was Baptist and our churches were African American. When I moved to Marrero and I let my children go to this [00:40:30] Pentecostal church, it was integrated and that was nice.

[00:40:34] Jeff Geoffray: That was in the seventies was the school integrated.

[00:40:37] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, we lived in an integrated neighborhood in Marrero, but at school everybody was Black.

[00:40:44] Jeff Geoffray: In the meticulously researched book, "Documenting Desegregation," the authors find that gains by Black women in terms of job integration nearly flattens starting around the 1980s. Even in integrated offices Black women were being [00:41:00] managed by White bosses. The research suggests that it was harder for Black women to be promoted compared to White women who seem to get promoted more easily into human resource positions, for instance. We already talked about one promotion that happened after you noticed many White women you were training getting promoted over you. Did you see that pattern repeating itself later on too?

[00:41:22] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I worked for the government for thirty-two years and that was my experience. Every rung, every [00:41:30] promotion that I got, I had to talk to the manager to get promoted. There was a lot of favoritism. Somebody had to like you. You had to keep your mouth closed and be liked. In other words, make gumbo for the boss, make cookies and things and smile. And I wasn't that type of person, cause Ms. Geoffray didn't train us to be like that! And that's not who I was. I had to speak up for myself and promote myself and my [00:42:00] abilities in order to get the job. And I'll tell you one thing there was a manager's trainee program and I went to the manager's trainee program. It was in Dallas. They paid for you to go away and attend these classes and everything. And then at the end you were interviewed by a panel of higher ups from Dallas. And I did really well. I, I scored really high. I felt really good about myself. And then when you go back to your office, everybody's waiting to see, "Did they [00:42:30] pick you? Did you make it?" And no, I didn't. And so I called Dallas and I said, "What happened?" First I talked to my manager and he's like, "Well we highly recommended you. I don't know what happened." You know what they told me? I didn't have a college degree. And guess what? You didn't need a college degree for that job. They were going to train you. So I filed a grievance. Once I filed a grievance, they gave me a job as a, a supervisor. And so I did that for a while and I decided I, I didn't [00:43:00] like it. So I went back to my old job.

[00:43:02] Jeff Geoffray: You pursued your degree and even went on to earn a master's degree.

[00:43:06] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I continued to go to school, I continued to work and everything. I got a master's degree. They still didn't promote me. It was like they were angry with me because they were like, "We gave you the job and you didn't like it. We're gonna give it to somebody else." Then you could get a PhD. But when the government is angry with you or the government doesn't like you, you're not gonna go [00:43:30] anywhere. And it doesn't matter if you're Black or White. That's the government. And I left there suing them. After I retired, I had a suit with the government.

[00:43:41] Jeff Geoffray: was the suit for?

[00:43:43] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It was over a supervisory position that I had applied for a couple of years before I retired, and I was the only one really that that applied who was really qualified for that job, and they went out of our region and picked someone else, a young [00:44:00] White guy who was really nice. I bought his grandmother's antique stove, so it was nothing against Brian. We were cool, but the idea was that I was more qualified than he was, and so I sued them and we went to court, but it was discrimination, whatever, all kinds of things.

My son represented me and I knew I wasn't gonna win. I told him I wanted a lot of money, you gotta pay me. They offered to give me the back payment and the [00:44:30] position if I didn't take them to court. I said, "No, I wanna go to court." I just wanted to hear their explanation for not promoting me, and they lied. Some of them lied and made up things. And I, I, again, I just couldn't get over and they were angry with my manager because, uh, attorneys for Social Security told him he should have promoted me. In the end, I said it wasn't about [00:45:00] the money, it was about the principal.

I had a lot of my friends call me after that. These were Black people who had worked for Social Security for years and told me that they were all getting promotions. Things really had changed since I filed that suit. I said it wasn't for me. I wanted them to hear my side and I wanted to hear their side.

[00:45:25] Mya Carter: Part 4: Today and the Future

[00:45:29] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: [00:45:30] When I retired from Social Security, I retired to pursue my PhD. In the beginning, I thought that it would lead to promotions within the agency that I was working in. That wasn't happening. They didn't care about that. And so when I got my master's degree, I, I just happened to be talking to a friend of mine and she told me, "What are you gonna do with your master's degree? You ought to go ahead, get a PhD." And she told me about Jackson State that if they accept you, it's [00:46:00] tuition free. Plus they gave you a stipend, you could be a graduate intern and still earn money. And so I applied for admission to Jackson State and I went for an interview and I was accepted.

[00:46:13] Jeff Geoffray: Pursuit of your PhD, opened the door to teaching and then curriculum development.

[00:46:19] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Teaching was a lot more fulfilling than working with the government because I had a lot more autonomy to write, to develop lesson plans and courses, [00:46:30] which was something that I enjoyed. It came easy.

[00:46:33] Jeff Geoffray: What kind of classes were you teaching?

[00:46:35] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Well, I was in the social work program, so I was teaching social work classes.

[00:46:41] Jeff Geoffray: Did you have a particular focus?

[00:46:43] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: When I was in the master's program, it was all about the TANIF program, temporary assistance to needy families, and everybody was writing about and debating the pros and cons of the TANIF program. So that was my focus back then.[00:47:00]

[00:47:00] Jeff Geoffray: Your children all pursued higher education too.

[00:47:03] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I have a daughter who didn't complete college. She went for two years. And she went to pursue a medical assistant degree. Now she's a a medical specialist. My other two children, the oldest and my son Lonnie, they're attorneys, and my son Gavin, he's a teacher too.

[00:47:22] Jeff Geoffray: What do you think caused all your children to excel in high school and then in higher education?

[00:47:27] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Well, you know, they really didn't have a [00:47:30] choice. They had to go to school. I think my daughter Gigi, the whole, while she was in high school, she only missed one day. My daughter, Raquel, she may have missed like maybe one or two days. My son a little more. But you know that that was their occupation to go to school. I went to work. They went to school, and not just go to school. You had to do well.

[00:47:52] Jeff Geoffray: You moved to Jackson, Mississippi to teach at Jackson State and complete your PhD. You used what you learned in your professional life to [00:48:00] overcome your grief after your mother died, and that experience, how you overcame your grief, changed your professional direction.

[00:48:07] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: It was the inspiration for my dissertation. Mom died in 2003, and I had been in the program for two years. It, it really made me stop and, and think about my life. I had lost my sister in '65. I lost my grandmother in '69 and [00:48:30] my dad in '76, and then mama in 2003. And I just never really had a chance to grieve. I never did.

My sister died. I didn't cry. I didn't cry. I didn't go to the funeral. I had all this pent up grief, but I didn't know it. I think that comes from my grandfather, 'cause when my sister was dying, he said, "When you go see her, don't have a tear in your eye. [00:49:00] Don't cry. Just be strong." And then that's the way I was.

That's what I adopted. And that's the way my mom was. That's the way my grandmother was. You went to a funeral, you didn't see people crying and falling out and hollering and everything. That just wasn't our way.

[00:49:17] Jeff Geoffray: Your mother died unexpectedly, and that had a big impact on why you were having trouble coming to terms with your feelings about her passing. Then your healing process started in a completely unexpected way.[00:49:30]

[00:49:30] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: My mother, she wasn't sick. She just went to sleep one night and she didn't wake up. She had just gone to the doctor and the doctor was, was shocked that she just died. I didn't have a chance to talk to her, you know, no last conversation. And I was all in my head, you know, "Where are you? Can you hear me?" I remember I was washing her comforter, and in my mind I'm thinking, "Where are you, Mama?" What are you doing?" I'm thinking, "You just disappeared." And [00:50:00] I heard her say "San, Mama's all right." Just like that, "San, Mama's all right." And that's it. Thank you, Jesus. It was all right. She let us know she was okay.

[00:50:12] Jeff Geoffray: That after death interaction with your mother left you with a feeling of peace. That feeling was so profound that your scientific mind wanted to know if after death communications could be used to help others overcome grief. You knew from your work that a high proportion of social work clients had [00:50:30] adverse health consequences during the course of grieving.

You believed that any tools that could help clients overcome grief would also help them in other tangible ways, help them move on with their life in positive ways. But the interaction you described when you were washing your mother's comforter wasn't the first after death communication. The first communications left you a little taken aback, a little confused.

[00:50:55] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: The first instance of after death communication with [00:51:00] Mama was we had this picture of her that we had taken one Thanksgiving and she's sitting at the head of the table. And I have one and I gave my daughter one and we put it on the refrigerator and it's like a five by seven. And when I was getting ready to go home to make the funeral plans, I brought the picture because I thought it would be a good picture to put in the paper.

But when I got the picture, it had this white streak in it, kinda like a tornado. If you can imagine a [00:51:30] tornado going through a picture. And I'm like, "What happened to my picture?" I'm like, "Wow, something happened. Maybe it got wet on the refrigerator." So when I got home I told my daughter, "Gigi," I said, "We're gonna have to use your picture because there's something wrong with mine."

And when she brought her picture, it had the same white streak. And we saw that and, and I thought, that's just Mama's way of saying she's gone, letting us know she's gone. She went by way of the white tornado, you know? [00:52:00] And that was the first thing. And then after that other things happened. But it wasn't just to me it was to our whole family.

And, and so I said, "Wait a minute. Let's see if other people are, if, if, if this is happening to them." But it brought a great sense of peace.

[00:52:17] Jeff Geoffray: Your journey to overcome grief started by helping others.

[00:52:21] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: I decided I was gonna be a volunteer. I started the hospice program so that I could help other people go through [00:52:30] the dying process. I did that for two years and when Mama died, you know, it just made me think about all this and bring all this together. And when we started having after that communication with her I thought maybe this will be able to help people.

I'm like, "Does this help with the grief process?" And then that's when I started doing research on it. And my committee chairperson, Dr. Osby, said, "Why don't you just do it [00:53:00] on a segment of the population of African Americans?" Because so much has been written about after death communication on European culture.

So that's what I did.

[00:53:12] Jeff Geoffray: You turn your experiences, your research, and your dissertation. Into curriculum that you taught first at Tulane and then at Jackson State.

[00:53:21] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Absolutely. That was it. That was it. I wrote two courses, uh, based on my dissertation for Tulane. Uh, [00:53:30] one was, um, Death, Dying and Grief, which I'm teaching at Jackson State. They adopted it, so I'm teaching that course. And the other one was Spirituality in the Social Environment. And, uh, I no longer teach that one, but I, I had an opportunity to teach based on that and to get to have a dialogue with students based on my research.

[00:53:55] Jeff Geoffray: Where you're still teaching it now. What did you discuss in the class you called [00:54:00] Spirituality In the Social Environment?

[00:54:02] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: Spirituality from everybody in the social environment. People have different definitions of spirituality. It doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. That's what our discussion was about. Have you had any communication with your mother since she passed?

[00:54:21] Jeff Geoffray: Our mother died with a tremendous feeling of sadness. She wished she had accomplished more. She was not ready to die. She felt her life [00:54:30] was unfinished. She looked around the world and saw so many of the same problems, problems she'd worked on, repeating themselves. She called them, "The Four Horsemen of the 20th Century; Poverty, Prejudice, Pollution, and Political Expediency."

She felt she had failed in trying to alleviate these problems. When she died, she was depressed, so it was sad to see her die that way, and so our grief went on for years. Then in reconnecting [00:55:00] with her former students, and colleagues. She came back to life. This is how we're communicating with her in this conversation.

I tell you this very literally, talking with you, looking into your eyes, is the same as speaking with her. I hope you don't mind me saying all that...

[00:55:18] Dr. Sandra O'Neal: No, it's okay. It's all right. It's all right. It's interesting.

[00:55:26] Mya Carter: That concludes Episode 8 of Exchange Place, [00:55:30] Dr. Sandra O'Neal - After Death Communications. Please join us for Episode 9 coming up next!

[00:55:37] Jeff Geoffray: This has been a presentation of The 431 Exchange.

We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to adults seeking to transform their lives through 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. [00:56:00] Copyright 431 Exchange LLC 2022.

[00:56:04] Something New: Music by Kevin Gullage: "Something New": Music by Kevin Gullage [00:56:30]

I’m doing something new.

It ain’t got no name yet.

I’m doing something big...

something they will not forget.

Now I tried and I tried to live the same[00:57:00]

but I look around you know there needs to be a change.

So I’m doing something new.