Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 731

it. It's the most difficult thing in the world. I belong to the kind of women that are naturally domineering. There are a good many such women. I was in advanced middle age before I recognized that I might be domineering over my children. It's a great surprise. People don't recognize it in themselves at all. It takes real grace. You have to have something external to yourself to interpose and make possible this understanding that possibly you are infringing upon the spiritual and personal rights of other people by deciding everything they should do. You see that in all groups.

I think there is a very large element of humanitarianism in the South and always has been. I'm impressed by the number of schools and colleges founded in the South, founded in the really almost immediate post-war days when there was nearly almost no public moneys available for education. The sacrifices that were made to open these little schools and colleges to give people an opportunity for an education were great. It may not be the best education, but that was the purpose of it. I'm also impressed by the number of schools that were opened for Negroes by Southern white money when there wasn't much money, when it was a terrible sacrifice.

There is the Comer family of Alabama. Donald and Hugh





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help