My work would not exist without Ethel Morgan Smith.
Her book was the dock from which I first bore out onto this sea of history, her words being my original compass. She taught me where to begin and what direction to set my sails to.
The ancestors proved to be the ever-present North Star that took over in guiding me. They led me to destinations I did not know I needed to go to.
However, if not for the encouragement and support of Pauline Kaldas and TJ Anderson,
I’m not sure I could have ever made this journey.
The Business Office
It is 2015. I am a bi-racial student in my junior year at Hollins University - my dream school - in the business office of the Cocke Building to pick up a financial aid check. As I await my turn, I busy myself with the room, walking the perimeter, glancing over photographs on the wall.
This building always comes across as flat to me. Several of the structures on campus are from the mid to late 1800s or earlier. They have wraparound porches and crown molding and character. This one does not. Aside from its great Montecilloesque columns and Back to the Future clock tower similarity, each room inside appears much like a plain box stacked upon or next to another pre-glued, collapsible-bottom box, all of them seemingly arranged by the economy of their function. Nothing feels lovely about the space, which strikes me as odd considering the aspiring grandeur of the face of this edifice that overlooks Front Quad.
Twelve broad concrete stairs lead to a great portico as wide as half the building’s width. The outside looks presidential, as though it should be imprinted on pristine silver coins. The inside appears plain though, not quaint-plain, cardboard-box-plain. The low pile carpet – a lifeless variegated medley of muted purple, tan, and gray – is rough, ostensibly laid for its utility. Black vinyl baseboards rim the floor. The rooms are illuminated by four-foot-long, double-row, fluorescent, commercial lights set in a ceiling that resembles pegboard. It is the most ordinary place I have experienced on campus.
Outwardly, the Cocke Building is a monument and focal point of Hollins tradition on campus. I know from past years that in May, Honors Convocation will begin at the foot of Cocke stairs where seniors will line up in their personally decorated robes (often passed down from a previously graduated classmate). Church bells will ring out in jubilation as soon-to-be graduates begin their walk into duPont Chapel where awards will be announced for their academic achievements. Come graduation, professors will also line the base of these stairs to wish well the recessional of recent graduates, hug them, and tell them to be sure to keep in touch.
Yet, I am not at the front of the building. I’m not out on Front Quad, surrounded in a lush, green canopy of trees. I am in what feels like the basement, though I am sure there is another floor beneath me. I am in the belly. There is no fanfare or charm here, only square offices that I am certain are filled with the most manila of manila envelopes. In fact, the only thing noteworthy or historic about where I stand are these images I peruse along the wall.
I continue to look about the room when I notice a black and white panoramic view of Front Quad from 1908. The image appears to be taken from within the structure I am in, as though the walls of this place have not been built yet. I’ve never seen campus from this angle. More than that, I’ve never seen it from this time. I’ve seen portraits of certain renowned individuals of Hollins history (they usually had a building or room named after them) but I’ve never witnessed the campus space from a time before me.
I notice the land is different too. A covered bridge (no longer present) seems to lead to the area I am in now. The trees are so much smaller. I wonder how many of them are still remaining, how many of them stood there that day and observe me still. I can spot seven white women, presumably students, leisurely walking about the area, wearing what appears to be everyday floor-length white dresses, with long sleeves. I think I see a May pole which explains the barren trees – they are awaiting spring. I can almost imagine these students carrying parasols and getting in and out of carriages. Here they are, walking the same path I have walked many times between Pleasants and Swannanoa. Neither of these buildings can be seen. In fact, Swan has clearly not yet been built.
Looking closer at the image, contention fills me. A dis-ease of distance makes a new home in my chest and shoves aside my fondness for Hollins. My shoulders seem to scrunch up a bit. I cannot rest into this scene, though I believe that I am supposed to, expected to even. I cannot relax at all. I cannot be swept up in the euphoric nostalgia that I think I should taste in this moment. Instead of receiving me like a portal to the past, this view denies my escape into it; it is a wall restricting me. Suddenly, I realize I could not have been a student at this time. At best, I would have been the help. Only my labor and the cosigning of white authority would give me access to these buildings and the grounds that I enjoy so freely. This campus is not for me.
Wait. When was the first student of color admitted?
When did the first professors of color begin teaching here?
Where are the people of color during this image? Why have I never seen them before?
It dawns on me that a founding of 1842 in Virginia would entail enslaved people. Realities begin colliding as it occurs to me for the first time that segregation occurred here, not only enslavement but emancipation and Jim Crow too. This gamut of historical fragments stockpiles one after another onto my ideas of the space. Westward expansion, abolition, slave codes, and Indian removal heap themselves onto what I thought I knew. 1908 is suspended in front of me, and I am recognizing all that came before and all that will come after. I know that my piece of history, my foundation, falls into a certain timeline incongruent with other events. I feel disjointed from my dream, from my ideals, from my beloved Hollins.
Hollins, like my birth, like the story of my parents, had a complicated coming of age. Like my identity, it too needed to be reconciled, sifted through, and processed. Just like me, its very existence reflected American history in undeniable ways.
In this moment, Hollins ceases to be a series of isolated events on an itinerary of founding, single-sex differentia, name change, accreditation, graduate program, and me. Time is no longer in a line at all; it is circular – it revisits itself. I will never again see Hollins in a linear fashion. I will always see her as active propagation, both living in and engaging with the world around her, influenced by culture and exposure – a testament of a collective of what was allowed to be, what was insisted upon. Just like me, Hollins was shaped by the environment, by the context of what occurred in the area and by the relationships concerning her. I cannot know Hollins, really know her, without knowing what Hollins was born out of and what impacted her development. Nothing is what it previously seemed to be.
The next day, I commence asking faculty a few of my questions. Surely, they know. After a bit of poking around, I learn that the first tenure track professor of color is teaching here currently. He is one of my favorite professors – TJ Anderson. He is in his mid-50s, a jazz-centered poet and musician, known among students for being approachable and teaching beyond the mere theories of writing, who challenges students to think about their own presumptions.
Otherwise, I am told by most faculty and staff that, “We just cannot know,” that (for the most part) the history is lost. Interestingly, some faculty have questions of their own.
“There used to be a woman named Buttercup that worked here in the 80s. I don’t know what ever happened to her.”
“Where would you even find that? Old ledgers maybe? Do we have those?”
“Where did they live?”
Eventually I am pointed in the direction of Ethel Morgan Smith’s book, From Whence Cometh My Help. I devour it, writing questions and revelations in the margins. I expect to find answers. I find community instead… and more and more questions to be asked. More importantly though, I encounter Clem Bolden on the page.