Marvel Cooke: Interview #2

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to tutor the master's other children. We believe he was one of the children, possibly of a slave on the plantation. But he was free. I realize that he was well educated. My mother used to tell us that he wrote well and that he was a good mathematician, but somehow we thought she was just—what do I want to say?

Currie: Inventing?

Cooke: Probably inventing the story. Until she died, and when she died, my sister and I were going over some of the letters that she had wrapped up in white paper tied with pink ribbon, and one of them was from him, her father, to her, about 1900. It was written in Spenserian handwriting, much better handwriting than my mother had. She had obviously told him about this man that she had met, my father, in South Dakota, and she'd always wanted him to approve of whoever she was going to marry. They didn't have enough money to get to Washington, where he was living. In answering her letter, he said that he trusted her, she had very good judgment, he would love to meet the man she intended to marry, but he knew that she had good judgment. The letter was in perfect English, beautiful handwriting. It was only then that I believed this story that he had been well educated.

Currie: Why wouldn't you have believed?

Cooke: I don't know. I was a victim—all of us were victims of the kind of history we had learned about the slaves and what had happened to them. No one said anything about these slaves who were possibly children of the master, who were well treated by the master, treated like their children. I didn't know that. All I knew was what I got in the history books that we were bombarded with in the public school system. It just seemed fantastic to me, but it is true.

Currie: Where did he go for his theological training, do you know?

Cooke: I don't know. He probably was self-taught. Even my father, who was considerably younger, had been self-taught until he decided he wanted academic training. So I imagine he was just self-taught and he felt a "calling".

Currie: Did you ever know him?

Cooke: I never knew him. He died, caught a very bad cold. If we go back to the Taft inauguration, it was on a very blustery day, and he caught a very bad cold and died soon after that. I never did see him. I know I was about seven or eight years old when he died, and I went down into Virginia for the first time with my father, who went down to pick my mother up. She had gone down to his funeral. But I never saw him.

Currie: It's interesting that you went down into what we would consider the deep south. As a child, did you think of that any differently than you did in Minneapolis?

Cooke: Yes, I guess so, because my father and mother talked in front of us enough for us to know that they stayed in Minnesota because they wanted us to have a better education than we could get in the south. So I guess I did feel it.

Currie: When you took that trip, did you know the differences between Minnesota and—

Cooke: Yes, I did, because I had a number of cousins. It was in the fall, possibly November. It was very much warmer in Virginia. My cousins, first cousins, were in school, and I went to school as a guest with them. I remember it very well. Rode in an ox-cart with my uncle's children, and it was very different from the kind of school that I'd gone to. It was a one-room school, many grades in one room. It was very obvious that there was a great difference in the type of education that black children in the south got.

Currie: It was also a segregated school?

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Cooke: And there are several Persidias in my family. I have several cousins named Persidia. Seems that most of my mother's sisters had decided to name their first daughter for their mother. Thank God my mother did not name me Persidia. [Laughter.]

Currie: How did you get the name Marvel?

Cooke: Well, my mother's best friend, before she left Washington, D.C., was a schoolteacher, whose name was Katherine. My mother promised, when she left to go to the Indian reservation in South Dakota, promised Katherine Taylor that if she ever got married and had a daughter, she would name her first daughter for her. So I come along, and my father did not like the name Katherine. Marvel is a Swedish name. It seems that the Swedish people name many of their girl children whatever the Swedish word for Marvel is. So when they came here, they translated it, the name from Swedish to English, and the name is Marvel. Almost every Marvel I know comes from that general area. My father came in and said, "I don't like the name Katherine. I like Marvel." So my mother gave in, and I became Marvel Katherine. But I was never to tell Aunt Katherine that my name wasn't Katherine.

Currie: That was difficult, I imagine.

Cooke: So when I first met her, I was about seven, on that trip when my grandfather died. After my grandfather died, we stayed with Aunt Katherine in Washington, D.C. My mother said, "Now, your name is Katherine. You be sure to answer to that." So it turns out Aunt Kate—I always called her Aunt Kate—would come and call, "Katherine!" And I wouldn't pay any attention to it, because I wasn't accustomed to it, you know. [Laughter.] I'd forget. Then all of a sudden, I'd say, "Oh, yes!" So she told my mother that she thought I was hard of hearing. She thought that when we got back to Minneapolis, my mother should take me to an audiologist and find out why I didn't answer when she called.

Currie: That's interesting. I have a story about my name, too, but this isn't my interview. When you were in college, I think we have another picture here that sparks this.

Cooke: Yes.

Currie: This was in college?

Cooke: Yes.

Currie: Looks to me like you have an Irene Castle bob.

Cooke: Well, I don't know. I don't know that it was cut that way for that reason, but—

Currie: It looks very stylish. You said you were active in a sorority.

Cooke: Yes, the AKA sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, which is a national sorority. I think the two oldest black sororities are Delta Sigma Theta and Alpha Kappa Alpha. We started Eta chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha at the University of Minnesota.

Currie: Why did you start the sorority?

Cooke: I don't know. It just was a fad, I think. All the white students had a sorority. This was an already established sorority, and we just thought it would be nice. I guess no reason. I know that as soon as I came to New York, I forgot all about the sorority, and somebody found out that I was a member of AKA. The woman who was most active here, a much older woman than I was, came after me several times. I told her I found so many other things to be active in, that interested me a great deal more than the sorority. I never was active, really, after I left school. It was just a school activity.

Currie: What kinds of things did you do with the sorority?

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established a big translation department. When I applied for the job, which I got, I sent my high school picture. Well, we're a fairly light family, and my name was Jackson—S-O-N on the end. It seems to me it's not a Swedish name. But they didn't realize that this was a black applicant until I got there and they looked at me. I was quite naive. I was told by the person who interviewed me that the translation department had not been set up, but would I mind taking a filing job until this department was set up. I would have the same salary that I would have as a translator. Being quite naive and that being my very first job, I said, "Of course not."

About six weeks later, I was walking through the building. It was not one of the regular government buildings. It was like a barracks that had been set up for this department, part of the War Department. I was walking through part of the building I had never walked through before, and I noticed some young people, obviously translating. I went close enough to see what they were translating, and they were translating from Spanish to English.

I went back to my department and asked if I could leave for the afternoon. I wanted to go up to the Capitol, where the senators were. I wanted to go see Senator Shipstead.

Currie: From Minnesota?

Cooke: From Minnesota. Anyway, I went up and I went in to Senator Shipstead's office. I'll never forget it. It was a very large office. Fish swimming in water were painted around the edge of the ceiling, and there was a big sign: "It's a poor fish that's never seen a Minnesota lake."

So I checked in with the receptionist. I knew that Senator Shipstead—I felt he wouldn't know the name Marvel Jackson, but I put down "Marvel Jackson, Madison Jackson's daughter." So within a very few minutes, Senator Shipstead, who was a beautiful man, imposing-looking Swedish gentleman, came to the door and said, "I want to see Madison Jackson's daughter." I walked in, and there were a number of men sitting in his office. I suspect they were senators. He said, "I want you to get a good look at this young lady. If it were not for the fact that her father is a Negro, he would be in Washington setting many things straight that need to be set straight. He's one of the most brilliant men I've ever known." I was very proud.

Currie: How did your father know Senator Shipstead?

Cooke: I guess he was one of his clients! How do I know? [Laughter.] I don't know how he knew him, but he did know him, because I'll never forget that incident.

Currie: It's interesting that by being basically an entrepreneur, whatever you want to call it, this allowed your father to make very heavy-weight political connections.

Cooke: He did. He did.

Currie: It's really interesting, I think.

Cooke: Really and truly, if I were a good enough journalist, I would have gone back and dug into it a little bit further. My father died—let's see, I came here in the fall of 1926. My father died June, 1927. Many outstanding members of the community who attended his funeral, twenty years earlier were members of the mob which had gathered on our front lawn to read resolutions to get rid of the Jackson family. But he had become a very outstanding member of that community.

Currie: The year that you met Senator Shipstead, do you remember what year that was?

Cooke: I couldn't really. Maybe 1924, '25, something like that.

Currie: So your junior year in college.

Cooke: Yes. I went back and went to school afterwards.

Currie: Was Senator Shipstead able to help you at the War Department?

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Cooke: She must have. How did I learn that?

Currie: Well, he might have told you.

Cooke: No, he didn't. I told you when I met him and I finally got up nerve enough to say my mother knew him. He asked me who my mother was, and he said, "You're not that child's daughter." So there must have been some discussion between them of the difference in age.

Currie: I didn't ask you yesterday to describe your house.

Cooke: I have a cousin who has a picture of it. It was a brick house. The bricks were made individually. I saw some of them being made. They were stucco bricks. Most houses are completely stucco, but these were stucco bricks and the stucco wasn't as coarse. It was finer.

It was a two-story house with an attic and a full basement. On the first floor was a quite lovely foyer with pillars of oak, leading into a living room. At an angle from the living room was a large dining room, behind that my father's den, library—he had a wonderful library—and a very large eat-in kitchen. Very many built-in features. For instance, there was a built-in flour bin, something you didn't see at that time in houses.

There were four bedrooms and a bath upstairs. The attic, where we played in the wintertime, was a full attic. We could have made a room up there, but it was a storage space and place for us to play. The basement had a very modern—for that time—furnace—coal furnace. Didn't have gas furnaces yet. It was a coal furnace. Somebody asked me once did I ever live in a place with gas lights. I never did. We had electricity.

Currie: This was 1907.

Cooke: Right.

Currie: So that's very early.

Cooke: Yes. It was a modern house. And besides that, it's very interesting. The house was very cool in the summer and very warm in the winter. The reason for that, my father had worked with the architects. The house looked larger from the outside than when you got inside. It looked like it was a huge house. But there was a six-inch brick wall and then a vacant air space, and then the inner walls. This air space was the thing that kept the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Currie: Did you ever have people working for you in the house?

Cooke: Yes. When we moved from South Minneapolis, when my father built this house, my mother had had a Norwegian woman by the name of Mrs. Anderson, who helped her once a week with the laundry. Mrs. Anderson loved my mother. So when we moved to Prospect Park, which was a long way for her to come from where she lived, she would come. Of course, my mother had a washing machine, but not like we have now. Mrs. Anderson would wash the clothes, then go outside to hang them out on a line to dry. A neighbor, Mrs. Fisher, who lived two or three lots from us—her house was north of us, and then there was a vacant lot and then a house, then our house—she came running when Mrs. Anderson first came, through the back yards. She looked and said: "Well, I've often seen (and she used the word) niggers working for white folks, but I never saw white folks working for a nigger before." [Laughter.] I don't know why I remember that story, but—

Currie: How did Mrs. Anderson react?

Cooke: She said, "I wish I had more niggers to work for."

Currie: A practical woman.

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[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side B]

Currie: You were saying you were engaged to Roy.

Cooke: I had been engaged in college to Roy, and it was normal, I think. He was really the most articulate black student, male student, out there, and we got along—intellectually. I didn't know anything else but the intellectual contact. So anyway, Dr. Du Bois knew I wanted to stay in New York, and he felt that I was going to marry Roy. He said that he wanted to meet that young man of mine. When he went on a lecture tour which included Jefferson City, Missouri, Roy came up from Kansas City to see him.

When Dr. Du Bois came back, he said: "I like that young man of yours, and I'm going to try to see to it that he gets a job here. But I want to tell you, if he gets a job in the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] or the Crisis, that will be the end of your job here, because I don't believe in a husband and wife working for the same organization." He'd had some experience that hadn't worked out. I said, "Oh, that's all right." As a matter of fact, up to that time I thought, "When I get married, I'm going to stay home and have children." I wasn't thinking of a career, particularly. I said, "Oh, that would be all right."

So Dr. Du Bois had political differences with the NAACP crowd about that time. Walter White, James Weldon Johnson, people like that were there. He was about to leave this NAACP-Crisis set-up.

Currie: What was the difference?

Cooke: I don't know what it was, but I think it could be researched very easily. He had some political differences, and that's why he broke with them. It was after that—see, he had put Roy's name in the coffer—and it was after that, that Roy's name came up and he was asked to come in for an interview, and he got the job. But it was actually Du Bois, through me, you know, that set that up. There were a lot of young, intelligent black men around here who could easily have filled that job in the NAACP. Why would they all of a sudden find somebody way out in the midwest to bring here? I think it was actually my contact with Du Bois that caused that.

Currie: So it was some luck on his part.

Cooke: Yes, it was a lot of luck. A lot on my part, too, that I had the mother I had. But I don't think that Roy would have ever been here had it not been for that—

Currie: That incident. Do you think that he grew into the job?

Cooke: I don't think he grew into it. I'll tell you one incident that I know. A white woman, Mary White Ovington, who was one of the founders of the NAACP, died, and there was a memorial service for her at Town Hall. Du Bois was living in this house at that time.

Currie: In this apartment house where we are right now?

Cooke: Yes. He lived in apartment 7H. As a matter of fact, he married Jessie Fawcett while he lived here. She lived here, too.

Currie: Did you go to the wedding?

Cooke: No, I didn't. I don't know where the wedding was. It wasn't necessarily here. I went to their house several times. They moved from here over to Brooklyn Heights, and I was there several times for parties and things like that.

But anyway, this is before he married her. You've been around this corner, and that awful tree, every time I walk by that tree, just before you get to the house, I think the city ought to take that tree down because the sidewalk is so treacherous at that point. Well, anyway, I ran

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my parents and my past. It was very easy for me to talk about them. One day we were picketing up and down in front of the Amsterdam News, and Ben said to me, "You know, it's amazing. You have a much better reason to be a member of the Communist party than I have. Why aren't you a member of the Communist party?"

I said, "Because no one ever asked me." It was a naive statement, but you know, I was well dressed and had obviously had some education. At that time most of the black people in the party were factory workers and domestic workers, and they hadn't reached many people like me yet. They soon did, because quite a few around the Amsterdam News and other places like that joined.

Currie: That will be good to go back and talk about all that, too.

Cooke: It was a very interesting period.

Currie: Oh, yes.

Cooke: Because Richard Wright was around us at that time, too.

Currie: You have had such a fascinating life. I asked you if you ever thought Roy Wilkins would have achieved what he did.

Cooke: I don't think so. That may sound a little bit conceited, but these are the steps by which he got to New York. There's no doubt about that. I think even Roger would admit this, you know.

Currie: You really grew up in a white environment.

Cooke: Completely!

Currie: Totally white environment.

Cooke: Completely!

Currie: What effect do you think that had on you later? I know you said your best friends now are a white couple. Do you think—

Cooke: No, I think that my friends—I'm thinking about the people who are closest to me—are people who feel the way I do about the way this country is going, whether they're black or white. It just so happens that this couple and I were very active in the [American] Newspaper Guild together. We were together in some struggles we had at the Newspaper Guild. We just developed a very close friendship.

My husband died eleven years ago the day that you and I first met, on October 4. I got the message of his death from the hospital about 7:30 a.m., and the first person I called was Richard Carter. He lives in Ossining. He said, "I'll be there within an hour." He got here about 9:00 and he stayed with me all day. My husband was cremated, and he stayed with me until everything had been completed. Took me to dinner, brought me back home, and he would have taken me up to his house, but I had to be home. He said, "You're all right." He didn't leave me until 10:00 that night. We have that kind of close relationship. The nicest times I have socially are with them. I'm going up to their house tomorrow night to spend the evening and come home Sunday.

Currie: Do you think the fact that you grew up in a white environment has made you more comfortable with whites than other blacks?

Cooke: No. I'm comfortable with anyone with whom I can have an exchange of ideas, whether black or white. I know that I am not prejudiced against white people as a lot of black people are, you know.

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Cooke: Yes, and when I saw Harlem, I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world to live, you know. [Laughter.] I thought, "This is where I want to be."

Currie: That's interesting to me, too. Can you describe your first impression of Harlem?

Cooke: There's such a vast difference now. Harlem, at the time I came, was from about 110th Street to 145th Street. I'm at 155th Street. Now Harlem is from 110th Street to—it's wherever blacks have moved. It's up to at least 168th Street and from river to river. It's just spread. Harlem, I think, is not a real district, but wherever the blacks live in this particular area in Manhattan.

Currie: So when you came to this place that they called Harlem, what can you remember?

Cooke: I'll tell you. What really amazed me was a Sunday afternoon on Seventh Avenue. It seemed that people, after church, there are a lot of churches adjacent to Seventh Avenue, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, Mother Zion, and St. Phillip's Episcopalian Church, and churches all the way down. After church, these very well-groomed people would promenade on Seventh Avenue. To me, it was the most beautiful thing in the world to see these well-groomed people, so happy, promenading on Seventh Avenue. The corner of 135th Street and Seventh Avenue was called "the Campus." The young students would congregate, you know. It was alive! It was before the Depression, and there just seemed so much hope in this particular area—hope that isn't here anymore. You haven't ridden down Seventh Avenue?

Currie: No.

Cooke: Riding down Seventh Avenue now, I feel so sad, because so many of the apartment houses looked bombed-out, you know, and so many homeless people you see on the streets. It isn't the same.

Currie: What did the apartment buildings look like then?

Cooke: They were very, very nice-looking, you know, well kept, and you never saw any houses boarded up. Some of them not even boarded up, empty—oh, it's heart-breaking to ride down Seventh Avenue now. In this area, that's not true. I made the remark a couple of summers ago, I was sitting out on the benches with a friend. I think you've noticed there are benches.

Currie: And a little park over here, where there are some benches.

Cooke: Yes. We were sitting out there, and I looked down the street. There isn't a bombed-out house up here, you know. It seemed pretty intact. But you just go over the bridge, get into—well, there's a couple of housing projects, but you get down to 145 Street and from then on down, it is dreadful.

Currie: Earlier, you referred to this as "the hill."

Cooke: Yes.

Currie: Edgecombe Avenue.

Cooke: Yes. It was called Sugar Hill.

Currie: How did it get that name?

Cooke: I don't know. But as a matter of fact, after the strike, I said, "I've got to work with the people." I chose to work with the Domestic Workers Union, and one woman liked me. Her name was Daisy, and she liked me very much. She kept asking me where did I live, and I didn't want to tell her because I didn't want her to feel that there was any difference in our perspectives and what we were fighting for. But she was so nosy about it, so she finally said, "Oh, you live up on Sugar Hill!"

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I worked with an artist in Dr. Du Bois' office. He was trying to make a living as an artist, but he couldn't. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. He's one of the artists in that particular period—Aaron Douglas.

Currie: I'm not familiar with him.

Cooke: He became the head of the Art Department at Fisk University afterwards. But he knew me and he lived here in 409 Edgecombe. He and his wife, who was a schoolteacher, encouraged me to come live with them. So I lived with them, and my husband, who was not my husband at the time, spent many lovely hours in that apartment.

Currie: Can you tell me how you met your husband?

Cooke: Yes, I can. My husband, I think I told you, was West Indian by birth.

Currie: No, you didn't.

Cooke: He was born in Jamaica. I met a young West Indian athlete. His name was Phillip Edwards. He was an Olympic athlete, but he didn't run for the American team, because he was West Indian, and had not yet become a citizen. He ran for Canada. My husband was a very good friend of this young man's older brother, and they thought that Phil was very naive. They had a system of putting notches on a door frame whenever they'd "made" a girl. See, my husband Cecil and his older brother meant —making a girl was really "making" a girl.

Currie: You mean having sex.

Cooke: That's right.

Currie: It still is, I think.

Cooke: They felt Phil was being honest, but his notches went up so fast. So they didn't think that Phil had gone to bed with that many young women. Phil said to them, "I've met the nicest American girl." They didn't think Phil knew what a "nice" American girl was, really. I was still living in 133rd Street when this happened.

So one day Cecil was walking down Seventh Avenue, and saw Phil in a barbershop getting a manicure. He said, "What are you getting so dolled up for?"

Phil said, "I'm going to visit that nice American girl I told you about." He met my sister Helen, Roger's mother, at the same time he met me.

So Cecil went home and got really dressed up. He said, "Wait for me. I'll be back." He said, "I want to meet this nice American girl of yours." So they came to 133rd Street and Phil introduced me to Cecil. It seemed that Cecil had said, the night before, that he wasn't going to get married until he got a Ph.D. He received his M.A. from Columbia that year. Until he got a Ph.D., he wasn't going to marry any girl. So they came in and visited for I can't remember how long. It wasn't a long visit. Cecil was much taller than Phil and he stood behind Phil, and mouthed, "Can I call you?"

I said, "Yeah." And within five minutes he called me.

He said, "I would like to come back to visit you." And that night he went back to Phil's house and said, "I saw the girl I'm going to marry."

Well, he was a very interesting person. It was quite different from going around with Roy. He was certainly as bright as Roy, or brighter. He was also an athlete. He was a quarter-miler—got through college on athletic scholarships.

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Currie: How did he court you?

Cooke: Well, how does one court a girl?

Currie: I've had lots of men do it different ways.

Cooke: Oh, you have?

Currie: Yes.

Cooke: I guess this was different from anyone I'd had before. He didn't have any money, and I know what we did mainly was ride the ten-cent bus. The Fifth Avenue bus was ten cents then. And a big night with Cecil was to ride the ten-cent bus down to the Village and ride back and maybe get a hot dog on the way. It was the first time I'd had a physical contact with a man, too. So it was kind of a dynamic.

Currie: You mean you were strongly sexually attracted to him?

Cooke: Yeah, that's right.

But I remember I was so naive. I thought to myself—he talked about marriage from the very beginning. I still was wearing Roy's ring when I met him.

Currie: So you were really officially engaged?

Cooke: Oh, yes. Roy came to see me on my birthday in 1929. I had just met Cecil before he came. Roy was still in Kansas City. He was my birthday present, and I remember thinking: "How conceited can one be?" I remember that so well. He was my birthday present. I introduced him to my friends, the Douglases and some of the writers, and Langston Hughes, and people. He was a stuffed shirt. I thought to myself, "How on earth?" I didn't know how not to marry him. We'd been engaged through college. I felt like I was kind of bound. There was no way I could get out of it. My mother didn't like him. I think I told you that.

Currie: Yes, you did.

Cooke: So he went back and called my mother. No, I don't think he called her. He wrote her a letter. Roger has those letters. I gave them to him. I gave him a couple of very important letters.

Currie: I hope he preserves them.

Cooke: He said he would. I'm sure he did. Anyway, he wrote to my mother and said, "We are getting married in June." This is 1929, the year I did get married.

Currie: But not to him. [Laughter.]

Cooke: So he said, "We're getting married in June." He had told me, when he was visiting me as my birthday present, he had told me about this girl that was so crazy about him. I looked at him and thought: "You conceited so and so." I said, "There are a few men who like me, too." I remember saying that to him.

One of whom was Cecil and Eric and a lot of—I'd gone out with a number of men who seemed to like me. So we let it go at that. So he wrote the letter to my mother that we were getting married in June. My father had died in 1927. Oh, she was so angry. She didn't want me to marry Roy.

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intelligent and prouder of being black than Roy. He had been an athlete, but you know, that was a means of getting through school. So we went down to City Hall. I'll never forget the day we got our license. It seemed that Cecil met everybody he knew that day, and they said, "Babe, what are you doing down here?" And he was embarrassed. He said, "Oh, I came down to get a license for my car," or something like that. We were going to go to the clerk and get married that day. He said, "Let's get married in a church. Let's go to the movies." So instead of getting married, we went to the Capitol Theater to see a movie.

I came home. I was living in this house then. I came home and I had the license, and I put it away. I said, "If he never mentions it again, I won't mention it." So we kept going together and had a very, very nice relationship that summer, and he didn't say anything about getting married. I had said to him that day, after we didn't get married, "Look. I will never support a man." He owed Columbia $800 he had borrowed to get his master's degree. That was a lot of money then in 1929. I said, "I would like to support myself. I'll never support a man. I think I don't want to marry you until I can support myself and we can have a good, equal relationship." He said, "That's okay," but he never said anything more about getting married.

So on September 4th or 5th of that year, his cousin rang our doorbell. I was home, and he said, "I can't find C." His whole family called him C. "I can't find C, but I'm sure this telegram he got refers to you." The telegram was from A&T College in Greensboro, North Carolina. It said, "We have positions for "you and your wife" beginning September 9th. Your wife would have to be here by September 9th." The job offered the "wife" was in the high school department. "But we would like to hear from you immediately. You should be here September 9th." Something like that.

Cecil turned up and I showed this to him. He said, "Well, you got that license?"

I said, "Yeah." It seems that since I had made this statement that I wanted to support myself, he had been making the rounds of the southern colleges for positions for "me and my wife."

Currie: So he was going to get you a job, too.

Cooke: Yes, because I said I wanted—

Currie: But he didn't talk to you about it?

Cooke: No! He wanted to get married immediately. I encouraged him to go home and get dressed. He had on—what did they call them? Used to wear these—

Currie: Knickers?

Cooke: Yes, knickers. I said, "I'm not marrying you like that." So he went home. This was on September 6th; it wasn't on September 4th. September 6, 1929. He went home and got dressed, and we found an Episcopalian minister. You didn't have to wait around like you do now.

Currie: Do you remember which church you went to?

Cooke: Yes, St. Luke's Episcopalian Church. Father Edmead, a West Indian minister, performed the ceremony. He's dead now. Of course—everybody's dead, except me. Aaron Douglas' sister-in-law and her boyfriend went with Cecil and me, and we got married. I remember standing there saying, "I haven't known this man very long." I was saying this to myself. Father Edmead evidently had a sight problem, and the marriage ceremony was in large print. Anyway, Episcopalians have a set thing for it. I could read it upside down.

Currie: The ceremony.

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that you have been untouched." Those are not his exact words, but this is what he meant, you know. You know, I had got beyond the point that I thought being touched—

Currie: A virgin.

Cooke: I had got beyond that, but he hadn't.

Currie: He had certainly been having sex.

Cooke: Yes, he had it, but he had a double standard. You know, he was a man of double standards.

Currie: It sounds like he was pretty traditionally sexist.

Cooke: I think he was. Anyway, my interpretation of Roy as a leader of NAACP, you know, he was very critical of Martin Luther King. I happen to know that's the truth. That's what almost broke my sister and me up when I said that.

Currie: When you think about it, what would have happened if you had married Roy?

Cooke: My mother's best friend, whose name was Mrs. B.S. Smith, she was the wife of the lone black lawyer out there, liked me. She was the one that had brought me to New York on that trip. She never wanted me to marry Roy. I never understood why she didn't want it, but she always thought I was too "good" for him. I don't know what was wrong with Mrs. Smith, but she never wanted it. When we didn't get married, she wrote me a letter and said, "Thank God." I don't know what her reasons were.

Roy was very nice-looking and he was very articulate, but he wasn't progressive. To answer the question you asked, I thought the same thing. What would have happened to me? But many people who knew both of us felt that I was stronger than he, and that he would have not taken some of the political stances he had if he'd had a wife like me. There are people who felt that I was the stronger. I don't know that that's true. I'm not sure that I wouldn't have become—I don't think I would have, not with a father and a mother like mine.

Currie: So you don't think you would have become a traditional—

Cooke: No, I don't think I could have. In my marriage with Cecil, I remember when he was picking me up, something we're going to talk about later, the strike—no, it was when I got caught in the [Senator Joseph] McCarthy thing. I had been arrested on a strike picket lines and stuff like that. I remember when I couldn't understand why I was being sought after by McCarthy. It did become apparent during the executive session with him. He was out after a young woman who had worked with Doxey and me, who was a real reactionary, but she had later worked for the Army. Because she had worked with Doxey, according to newspaper accounts, she was fired as "red" aide to the Army. She was a little red-baiter, you know, and she deserved—oh, she deserved everything she got! She used to be against the union, any union activity. But anyway, I would have liked to have thrown her to the dogs, but, of course, I couldn't, because I think I was a very good union person and I was a member of the Communist party. When they asked where I worked ten years ago, I said, "The People's Voice." I opened the door to what they really were out for. I didn't know. What did the People's Voice have to do with the Army and McCarthy hearings? Did I know a person by this name? They were out after her. I had to call on the Fifth Amendment. I would have liked to have thrown her to the dogs, but I called on the Fifth Amendment.

I remember Cecil had gone through an awful lot with me. I was not really a traditional wife. I wanted children and never had any children because of an accident I'd been in.

Currie: So you were unable to have children?

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Cooke: I don't know. I think it would have depended on the circumstances. If Cecil had enough money, if we had enough money to see that the children were taken care of, maybe I would have considered working if I had an exciting-enough job. But I think my orientation was naturally toward a home and being a homebody.

Currie: Interesting. Did you go to Greensboro, North Carolina?

Cooke: Yes. It was a wonderful trip. Cecil, of course, was broke. He just got his master's that year. I had said, in talking—I didn't know he was looking for jobs for us—but I had said that I would never ride in the back of a bus or in a segregated section of a train. I would not do that. Cecil believed me. So we got married September 6th. He said, "I'll be back for you tomorrow." He didn't stay with me that first night.

Currie: How come?

Cooke: When I got home, the Douglases were having a party. Walter White was there, I remember, and the president of Bennett College—no, Fisk University. They were having a great time, and Cecil took me back to my room and he said, "Now we're married. You go to bed, and I'll see you tomorrow." I don't think anyone's ever had a honeymoon like mine. Anyway, I sat there for a while. He went out through all these people. They knew him. He was a well-known person. They said good-night to him and the music kept on. I said, "I'm not going to sit back here." I went and joined the party, and they kidded me, you know.

Currie: Did you tell them you had gotten married?

Cooke: They knew it! Alta and Doug [Douglas] knew it. Their sister had been part of my wedding. So I got properly kidded about it.

The next day came. It turned out to be a Saturday. The Douglases and I got up and had breakfast. I thought Cecil would come any time. I didn't see him, didn't hear from him, and I got properly kidded by the Douglases. "Where is this husband?" About 4:00, Cecil turned up, and he looked tired. It turned out that he had taken seriously the fact that I had said I wouldn't ride in the back of the bus and I wouldn't ride in the segregated section of a train. The only way he could solve that was by getting a car. He had borrowed money from a cousin or some relative to buy a second-hand car so we could drive down to Greensboro. That's what he had been busy doing.

So we started out in the worst rainfall that I think we'd ever—oh, it was an awful rain. I remember the dress I had on started shrinking up, you know. We got as far as Trenton, where Roger's mother was working then. She worked as secretary of the YMCA there. Cecil knew Helen, and he knew she lived there. He said, "Why don't we go by Helen's?" So we did. Helen was rooming, and she didn't know how to explain us to her landlady. I had been there the week before as an unmarried person. She didn't know how to explain to the woman that we were married, so I slept with Helen and Cecil got a room down the hall. That was my second night of marriage.

So we got to Washington, and the woman I told you about, Aunt Kate, lived there. I took Cecil by Aunt Kate's, to introduce her to my husband, and she had us to dinner. This was on Sunday. We started off for Greensboro. I thought we'd go to a motel or something on the way down. I was quite tired. He said, "Do you mind driving straight through?" I thought to myself, "What kind of man have I married?" I said, "No." I didn't know what else to say but, "No."

So we drove and drove. We didn't know where we were. It turned out we were near Durham, North Carolina, and Cecil got a flat tire. It was early in the morning, like 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. He didn't have equipment to change the tire. This was a new car to him, had just bought it, and didn't have the necessary equipment. He said, "I'll have to catch a ride to go to the next town to see if I can get someone to come back here and fix this tire."

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Cooke: I was supposed to teach English in the high school department, but I taught anything they didn't have anybody to teach. It was a very loosely organized school. I know I taught history, I taught Latin, I taught English. Anything that they wanted me to teach, I taught, as well as I could. I know in the Latin class, it was Cecil's fault. They had asked him to take the Latin class. I'd had about as much Latin as he'd had. He didn't want to do it, and he said, "My wife can do it." I used to have to study, burn midnight oil to stay ahead of the class, because I didn't want to do a bad job. It was a lot of work.

Currie: I took Latin. It's not my favorite subject. I never took to it.

I'd like to go back a little bit. We've gotten you married, but I'd like to talk a little more about the Harlem Renaissance.

Cooke: I really never was a part of it. I kind of came in at the tail end of it. It was a fascinating period. Jean Toomer was around.

Currie: Did you ever know him?

Cooke: I met him. I went with Eric Walrond. I really thought I was going to marry him.

Currie: How did you meet Langston Hughes?

Cooke: I don't remember just how. I know there was a club called the Civic Club, which used to have programs and dinners and stuff, and these people would be around.

Currie: Did you have to be invited to the Civic Club?

Cooke: You were invited. I was very lucky. I think that most of my life has been luck. I was lucky to have the parents I had, a parent who knew Du Bois. I didn't earn anything. My life drifted that way, you know. Even the meeting with Senator Shipstead was accidental, as far as I'm concerned. But I've just been lucky. I remember about Richard Wright. A few of us had started a writers' group, and Ben Davis, of whom I've spoken, was very interested in that. He was a very cultured person himself, a graduate of Harvard and a lawyer. He was very interested in the writers' group. I remember that I was in it, a young man by the name of Oliver Harrington, and Bill Chase, about five or six of us. Oh, George Murphy, of the Afro-American Murphys. He became a Communist at the same time I did. George was in that group. We tried to get Judge Bruce Wright into that group. You've heard of him?

Currie: No, I haven't.

Cooke: You've never heard of "Turn 'em Loose Bruce"?

Currie: No. Tell me about him.

Cooke: Bruce Wright went through the system and became a judge. He wrote poetry. He still writes poetry. He has a volume of poetry out recently. He lives in this house now. He moved in recently. But anyway, Judge Wright was sick of the black prisoners who were without money and didn't have any representation and they would be in the penitentiary system for a year, eighteen months, on petty charges, and couldn't get out. So when any of them would appear before Judge Wright and he felt it was a petty crime, you know, and they shouldn't be punished this way, he would dismiss them. So he got known as "Turn 'em Loose Bruce."

Currie: So you tried to get him in the group.

Cooke: Yes, we tried to get him. He was a student, but he was writing. We tried to get him in the group.

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Currie: How did you meet Langston Hughes?

Cooke: I don't know. For instance, the Douglas home was a meeting place for all of these people, and there used to be terrific parties there. I remember Wally Thurman. Have you ever heard of that name?

Currie: No.

Cooke: Wallace Thurman. He was a writer. What did he write? A novel. I've forgotten the name of it. I could find it. But they used to congregate around the house, and white people were fascinated by this group of young black artists. They used to come in droves into this area. I remember one time Aaron—I was married and living here at this time—Aaron called and said, "I want you and Cecil to get dressed up and come to my house." We were like on a show. A very wealthy white woman, I've forgotten her name, but she was a millionaire, used to love to come to Harlem to meet these strange black people who were writers, artists, etc. He said, "Be on your best behavior." That's what Aaron said to us. I remember being interrogated. They asked you: "What do you do for a living?" We told the truth, but we dressed it up.

Currie: In what way? Give me an example.

Cooke: For instance, I worked for Du Bois. I did a lot of secretarial work for him, but I also wrote a column called "The Browsing Reader." I was editor of the column. I didn't talk about the endless filing and typing I did daily. Instead, I dwelt on the more creative part of my work— [Tape interruption.]

Currie: You said you were really in love with Eric Walrond.

Cooke: Yes, I was really in love with him, the first time in my life I had really cared deeply about somebody of the opposite sex. It wasn't just because of the exciting people he introduced me to. He was quite a nice companion.

Currie: He's the one who introduced you to all the writers and artists.

Cooke: That's right. He had met me before I actually came back here to live, and if I examined it, I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't one of the reasons I really wanted to come to New York. But anyway, it was a very thrilling experience for a little gal from Minnesota. I went to a lot of very interesting affairs with him, and I remember the shock I got one night when we went to a party. It was in some white person's home down in the Village. I don't remember who it was. Someone said to him, "So Eric, you've got a Rosenwald Fellowship." He hadn't told me. When he took me home, he said, "I'm going to have to leave you for about six months. I'm going to Jamaica to do some work on my book."

So Eric left, and I was just devastated because all my social life was built around him—he used to meet me from work. I was working with Dr. Du Bois on Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. We spent every evening after work at the Forty-second Street Library, where I wrote and he wrote. We'd go across to the Automat and he would go over the stuff I wrote, and he expressed himself that he thought I had a lot of ability. I was really emotionally involved—it wasn't just for the writing, it was just that I liked Eric. He's the first man I had ever had any feeling for. So when he went, oh, I was just devastated. Then after six months, he got an extension of another six months, and he went to England. I didn't see him at all. Then I met Cecil afterwards.

Currie: Before you talk about Cecil, let me turn the tape over again. [Tape interruption.]

Cooke: One evening there was a gathering at the Douglas home. We decided to go to a club. We walked from here down through Striver's Row, 139th Street, and went over on Lenox Avenue to a well-known club. I've forgotten the name, but we were a mixed group, half white, half black.

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mixed marriages in Minneapolis were called Manassas. They were really discriminated against. I know I had an awful fight with some of my friends because I developed a good friendship with a little Manassa girl. I thought that this would be a good subject for a novel. Anyway, that is what I was working on.

Currie: Did you ever finish the novel?

Cooke: No, no. I didn't.

Currie: Was that the first time you'd tried to write a novel?

Cooke: Yes, but maybe I just wasn't a writer. Anyway, that's what I was working on.

Currie: Why do you say maybe you just weren't a writer?

Cooke: I don't believe that. I know that I could have written it. I didn't stick to it enough. I got diverted, you know, too easily.

Anyway, getting back to Eric, I was devastated when he left. You know, he was the first man I ever really cared deeply about. I told you, I think, that Eric had known Cecil was a West Indian. It turns out that Cecil's first girlfriend was Eric's sister in Panama. So it was a kind of—

Currie: Very small—

Cooke: Yes, it is. So anyway, I was not sorry I married Cecil; I got over Eric.

Then Countee Cullen*, you know the name?

Currie: Yes.

Cooke: Well, Countee was a good friend of ours, too, a good friend of Cecil's. He was in high school with Cecil. Then he became a good friend of mine. Well, Countee was in Europe at the same time that Eric was, and Countee said, "You're a fool, Eric. If I had any chance to marry anybody, it would be that girl." This is what I was told Countee had said to him. And by this time, we were back in New York. This is when I had the surgery to try to see if I could have a child. I was in my hospital bed, and in walks Eric. I almost fell out of the bed. He thought that Cecil and I were separated. That was during a period when Cecil was in the south, finishing out a contract, and I was up here. He thought that we were separated, and he said, "I really came back because I made a mistake."

Then I didn't see any more of Eric until 1960. I went to Europe with Dr. Rosen, and we stopped in London to see Paul Robeson. Eric called, and I didn't have time to see him, thank God. But when we came back to London, he made it his business to see me, and he at that time said, "Why don't you stay a little while? I'll get a little pad for you." I said, "I have to go back with the people I came with." But had he said that many years before, it would have been a different story.

Currie: That's interesting. Also, we should say Countee Cullen was a poet, right?

Cooke: Yes.

Currie: Was he ever in any of your writing groups?

Cooke: No. No, he led a very strange life. He was a very sweet person. It was rumored that he was homosexual. He just didn't seem to make it, you know, with the virulent crowd that we went with.

______________________ * Countee Cullen, a poet, was prominent in the Harlem Renaissance.