Phylissa Mitchell

PHYLLIS LEFFLER: [00:00:00] So I’m Phyllis Leffler. I’m at the library of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society. We are interviewing Phylissa Mitchell today. And with me in the room are George Gilliam, Annie Valentine, and our marvelous videographer, Lorenzo Dickerson. So thanks so much for being here to do this.

PHYLISSA DENI MITCHELL: [00:00:24] It’s my pleasure.

PL: [00:00:25] I really appreciate it. We’re going to start off with some really simple questions that will not stump you, I don’t think. So can you first of all tell us your date of birth?

PDM: [00:00:37] October 27, 1954. I was shocked to learn I was a Wednesday’s child. “Wednesday’s child is full of woe.” (laughs)

PL: [00:00:50] I hope not.

PDM: [00:00:51] It was like I didn’t need to know that, you know? (laughter)

PL: [00:00:53] I hope not. And where did you live when you were growing up here in Charlottesville? 

PDM: [00:01:00] My parents worked for the Millers at Yule Farm, so we lived there until I was nine, and that was at White Hall. So I started school at Murray School which was the new all-Black school that they built during the waning stages of Massive Resistance. Now I understand it’s 97.0% percent White, which I just love that irony. So what was in White Hall. And then Mrs. Miller, who never struck me as being particularly sane, even as a child (laughs) -- I mean she had a dalmatian named Truffles that bit everybody, you know, it’s like somebody would walk to (bark sound) so she kept them. But they left, and then they went to work at Wavertree Hall Farm which I understand now is an equestrian. [00:02:00] So we were there for a year, and it was one of those -- my father was an alcoholic, he was a batterer, and that all blew up when we lived there. And so then mom and we kids moved to the eastern part of the county where they both grew up. So from then on, from like fifth grade onward, we were in Cismont, Keswick, Cobham.

PL: [00:02:41] Now when you said Murray, just to be sure, is that Murray?

PDM: [00:02:46] Yeah.

PL: [00:02:50] So you really did grow up in the rural parts of the county, it sounds like.

PDM: [00:02:54] Oh, yeah. The first time I tasted pizza, I [00:03:00] was a college freshman. I’m serious. So it was a big deal when McDonald’s opened when I was a high school junior, I think. And we were just like, “Oh my God, look at this food, it doesn’t taste like food.” Then we realized years later it’s not food. (laughter)

PL: [00:03:20] So did you have a sense of neighborhood growing up? Aside from these families that your parents worked for, was there a sense of a community or a church group?

PDM: [00:03:32] We were all brought up in Mom’s church, which is Zion Hill Baptist Church. My father was at Saint John Baptist Church where Lorenzo grew up and his dad was. And my maternal family is huge, and so when I started school at Murray, I actually asked, because I had not met a child who wasn’t related to me (laughs), [00:04:00] which cousin are you? This is true. I had 42 first cousins, yeah, it’s a big family. So the sense of community we got was from family, extended family, and church.

PL: [00:04:19] And you saw those people pretty regularly, it sounds like.

PDM: [00:04:21] Every weekend. Because you went to church, and there was not this nonsense of “I don’t feel like going to church.” “Get dressed.” “Okay.” (laughter) You either accepted religion or you got your butt beat. Yeah, so lots of church, lots of church activities. I started dancing pretty young. So every time I could, I took dancing lessons until both knees [00:05:00] went out. But I loved it because I’m so tall, but dancing is horrible on knees.

PL: [00:05:08] What kind of dance did you do?

PDM: [00:05:09] I loved jazz, but you have to start in ballet. And then school was where we got all of our social interactions. I don’t know, Lorenzo, if your kids do this, but for us, it was a big deal to go spend the weekend with another family. I mean you just felt like you were going to Mars, you know, you packed your little suitcase. And you were going like six miles, you know, but that sense of being able to share with another family was wonderful.

PL: [00:05:40] And the other family was sort of part of your extended family?

PDM: [00:05:43] Sure, they became it, yeah, everybody.

PL: [00:05:45] But you went to make some friends, not immediate family.

PDM: [00:05:52] Yeah. And once we were friends with someone, [00:06:00] my parents became friends because, you know, even then they were quite aware that life is difficult for little Black children. And so it behooved them to know who it was we were fraternizing with.

PL: [00:06:15] So when you were growing up, do you remember your parents discussing issues related to the integration of schools?

PDM: [00:06:27] Oh, God, yes. In fact, his aunt, Geraldine Johnson, she -- yeah, okay, so I’ll back it up -- R. A. Johnson was the minister, Reggie Johnson was minister at Zion Hill Church. And he made sure that the congregations and all congregants were aware of what was happening in the world around us. So we knew that the schools would eventually integrate. I can’t say anybody was really happy about it because if you grow up in apartheid, [00:07:00] when your only exposure to White people is through the glass, the only thing we saw of them was on TV beating Black people with hoses and German shepherds. And then they said, “You’re going to go to a White school.” It was like you didn’t know because you didn’t. So I wasn’t that excited about integration. I didn’t know when it would happen. I don’t know when it did happen in the western part of Albemarle County. But when we came east, we went directly to Stone-Robinson, and that was quite odd.

PL: [00:07:38] And what year would that have been?

PDM: [00:07:41] It must’ve been ’64.

PL: [00:07:43] So you would have been 10.

PDM: [00:07:45] Just about, yeah. And you walked in with all of those odd preconceptions. And these are actually true stories. I thought that race where people drove in a circle, [00:08:00] you know, my father always called this a redneck 500, which is what I called it, and I didn’t understand why the kids at school were very offended, because that’s what my father called it. I didn’t know it was also known as the Indianapolis 500. We were told from I don’t know what source that White people’s hair smelled like dog hair when it got wet when it rained, and so you’re sitting in class on a rainy day sniffing. And these are all true stories, I mean that happened, and all kinds of weird things like that. And so you approached White people as if -- and I think White people did it too -- as if they were Martians. But there is I think something -- I think the genuine curiosity that you experienced in the ’60s and ’70s, you know, you’re just like who are you? [00:09:00] Why do you feel this way? Why is it that I’m really poor? Although I don’t know if we understood we were really poor. By the time I got to UVA, I recognized that we were so poor, we couldn’t afford the “r” in poor, we were po. That’s how I felt, but I don’t know if I really understand that until I had immediate access to middle-class things, typewriters and multiple coats and multiple pairs of shoes and stuff like that. We just didn’t have that back then.

PL: [00:09:30] And nobody knew who really had it.

PDM: [00:09:33] No, I mean you could go into White people’s houses that my parents kept clean, but just running in and seeing a closet isn’t the same as knowing the things that were available to them because of money.

PL: [00:09:47] For sure. So when you went to Stone-Robinson, how many of the people in your class would have been African American?

PDM: [00:09:58] None.

PL: [00:10:00] So you were the lone Black person in your class.

PDM: [00:10:03] Yeah. And I think that was true for most of us. I mean when I think of the Albemarle 26, most of them didn’t have -- I mean we were sparsely sprinkled throughout the classrooms. I don’t remember having another Black person in class until Jack Jouett, which was a middle school back then.

PL: [00:10:24] So when did you go to Jack Jouett, was that fifth grade?

PDM: [00:10:27] Back then, it was seventh, eighth, and ninth. And it was a junior high school and not a middle school.

PL: [00:10:38] And then the classes were more evenly divided racially?

PDM: [00:10:41] Yeah. Although the people that I had in classes then were, you know, Theresa Quarles, for instance, and I were in a lot of classes, George Bates, and then classes like home ec. There were a lot of Black women in that class. [00:11:00] And chorus, for some reason, I was voluntold to join the chorus, even though I didn’t have much of a voice, I didn’t think, and I despised the choir director, she was God awful.

PL: [00:11:18] And this was at Jack Jouett that this all happened.

PDM: [00:11:20] Yeah.

PL: [00:11:21] So really, it sounds like by the time you got to Albemarle High School, you had already experienced desegregated education, both through Stone-Robinson and through Jack Jouett. So unlike some people, for example, who had gone to Burley, who when it closed, and they end up in Albemarle, it feels even more jarring perhaps. But I don’t know if that’s the case.

PDM: [00:11:56] So my sister went to Burley for [00:12:00] one year, and then Mom said, “This is ridiculous, you’re going to get over there and get comfortable, and you know you’re going to go to Albemarle.” Because we obviously knew that the county didn’t have the funds to keep up the charade of an equal school system for Blacks and Whites. And my sister, when she got to Albemarle, she just didn’t understand it. The first year, she was assigned a locker with a White girl who decided that she didn’t want her things to touch my sister’s. And Judy was like, “I got a locker to myself. Why would I care?” (laughter)

PL: [00:12:40] Was this an older sister?

PDM: [00:12:42] Yeah, four years.

PL: [00:12:46] She experienced -- you did go in ’69, and so she would have gone in like ’64 or ’65?

PDM: [00:13:00] So she went to Murray until -- so she graduated in ’68. And if I back-time that, she went to Albemarle, it must’ve been ’65 or ’66. We were at Murray together because back then, it was one through seven. And she tells the stories that I was one of those kids who just had the attention span of a gnat. So I was the one corralling people and crawling out of windows. And my mother said that the first grade teacher, who was also my third grade teacher, she had a very tiny voice according to Mom, and Mom said she was so happy that she had a heart attack when I was no longer her student. (laughter)

PL: [00:13:45] It sounds like your mom had a sense of humor. I think you inherited it.

PDM: [00:13:50] She did, (laughs) thank you. So Murray was one to seven, and then Judy went directly to Albemarle as an eighth grader. [00:14:00] When you think about it, it’s very weird to have somebody who was 12 or 13 in there in the same school as 18-year-olds. It just didn’t feel right, I mean it doesn’t sit comfortably with me. So she had a very different experience than mine. And I always say that Judy and I are only four years apart, but it’s like we’re generationally different. She went to fashion school, for instance, and that never would’ve occurred to me.

PL: [00:14:30] Is Judy living locally?

PDM: [00:14:32] No, Judy got married and ran away in ’70 at some point, it must’ve been ’72, she got married in ’72. And it’s really hard to drag her back. And I don’t know what else happened that she -- she’s really reticent, my sister is -- so what she experienced, I just know [00:15:00] just some of the highlights, like the girl who refused to share a locker, however that was only the first year. The next couple of years, there was lots of locker sharing going on, and she actually had friends, I think, who were White.

PL: [00:15:14] So what are the things that you most remember about Albemarle High School?

PDM: [00:15:19] Mr. Hurt, the principal. He was really immense. He was just a really nice man. And as a grownup looking at his charge at the time, I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like blending all of these different kids who had absolutely no social interaction at all into one place, and what that must have been like. So I loved Mr. Hurt, I just thought he was a really cool guy. It seemed to me he knew everybody’s name, and he knew everybody’s parents’ name. And Mom said up into the ‘90, he was like, “Hi, Mrs. Mitchell,” [00:16:00] because he had Michael, my youngest brother graduated in ’76, I came out in ’72, and my sister came out in ’68, so he had all of us. And I saw him as very kind and very forward-thinking for this time. I liked it because there were so many more resources for us at Albemarle, a lot more people. There were taller boys, you know, that’s always a consideration if you’re a tall woman, that there were taller boys. (laughs)

PL: [00:16:38] And when you say there were many more resources, can you be a little more specific?

PDM: [00:16:41] Sure. You were exposed to languages and math, English, creative writing, and composition. I don’t play an instrument, but because I was athletic, I never could because you can’t do both. [00:17:00] And then things that you never thought that you would be able to do. I got introduced to AP classes at Albemarle. And in that case, homework became something other than just a chore; there was an opportunity to learn stuff. And I’ve always been a reader, and better books, with the exception of The Last of the Mohicans, and to this day, that was the most awful thing I’ve ever read in my life. And Tess of the –

PL: D’Urbervilles?

PDM: -- D’Urbervilles, oh my God. And I could handle everything else, but those two were just -- so I just sort of sat in the class, I didn’t like that. So yeah, intellectually, it was a lot more interesting. There were a lot more clubs. There were a lot more people, there were people you didn’t know. And we talked about this on the 50th reunion committee. The women who came, and they were all women, they came [00:18:00] from Western Albemarle, which was I guess Henley, and I don’t know the elementary schools. And it’s funny to hear them talk about how they felt as if they were -- because they felt there were more of us from Jouett, and whatever the school was in North Garden and Scottsville. But she said that she always thought that we from this part of the county just got more opportunities than them, which wasn’t my –-

PL: [00:18:33] Prior to Albemarle or at Albemarle?

PDM: [00:18:35] At Albemarle.

PL: [00:18:37] So you were the favored group.

PDM: [00:18:38] Yeah, that was the perception. But when I go back and I look at the cheerleaders from my senior year squad, only one was from Henley, or two -- there were actually two, and one dropped off because of grades.

PL: [00:18:58] So before we actually get into [00:19:00] the athletics, our indefatigable researcher over there, Annie, has picked up on the fact that you were in something called the Pep Club, and in SCA. So is that like student government?

PDM: [00:19:18] Yeah, Student Council Association.

PL: [00:19:21] And you were in Young Democrats.

PDM: [00:19:24] I don’t remember we had that -- did we? Probably, I just don’t remember it.

ANNIE VALENTINE: [00:19:29] Maybe the yearbook is wrong. (laughs)

PDM: [00:19:31] Yeah, yearbooks are never wrong. (laughter)

PL: [00:19:36] So do you have any recollection of why you chose those kinds of clubs like the Pep Club or the SCA?

PDM: [00:19:43] Pep Club was, well, we were cheerleaders, and so we had to be peppy. (laughs) It was something that, it never occurred to any of us, I don’t think, I don’t know of any cheerleader who was not in Pep Club. [00:20:00] And so the purpose of the Pep Club was to support the team and to make sure people got to games. So yeah, that was the backing, I think, for athletics. Student Council, I have no idea. I was probably interested in something that they were doing. There was Concerned Black Youth -- I was Black, and most Black children were involved in Concerned Black Youth, because even though -- It wasn’t like getting to UVA when you really felt like a raisin in cream cheese, you know, because there were, I think, 100 of us maybe in a class of 2,000. So we at UVA just sort of moved like this. At Albemarle -- and I think this was true, and I don’t know about other students -- but my experience as somebody who spent a lot [00:21:00] of time in prep classes is, I just didn’t see a lot of Black kids. And so that was an opportunity for me to, yeah.

PL: [00:21:10] So that would’ve been a student club?

PDM: [00:21:12] Yeah, that was a student club.

PL: [00:21:15] And would you say most of the student -- well, it was Concerned Black Youth, so it would’ve been all Black students in it. Do you remember the kinds of issues you took on at all?

PDM: [00:21:26] I remember one of the first things they did was to make sure that there were Black cheerleaders for the following year. And that came from our friend, Chip German. Chip didn’t think of this -- what Chip was reacting to was the fact that when cheerleaders came over from Burley, they didn’t give them the opportunity to join the squad, and then they tried out again, and they didn’t make it. And so what pissed Chip off was the fact that there were no Black women in the athletic teams, were like in the high ‘80s for [00:22:00] Black athletes. And so he got together with the football players, and they did the “Man, this ain’t right” thing. And then everybody walked out of class except me because the rumors didn’t get that far to me, and so they walked out. And Mr. Hurt went out and listened to their demands. And then Darlene and I were sitting in class, and she was a year ahead of me, so we weren’t in the same class. We were told to come to the office, and Mr. Hurt in inimitable fashion, because Mr. Hurt could chase a point for like three years before he finally made it. So we’re sitting there, and he’s going “blah, blah, blah” and we still don’t know. (laughs) And then he says, “So I am adding you and Darlene to the squad,” and we just kind of went “What?” and that’s what happened. But it was the athletes and students’ walkout that I think really galvanized the administration to do something.

PL: [00:22:58] So I’d really like to pursue that a little bit [00:23:00] more. Maybe you could first tell me who Chip is.

PDM: [00:23:03] So Chip German was –-

PL: [00:23:06] Oh, I know Chip.

PDM: [00:23:09] So Chip was a senior when I was a sophomore. Sandy and I were in English together, I think, and a couple of other classes. So I knew Sandy, and I knew Sandy had an older brother who wrote for the newspaper, The Highlight. And then because Chip wrote for the paper, and he had other kinds of -- he was a senior, so I wasn’t quite sure what else he did because sophomores didn’t, we were the low people on the totem. But I know that he was very friendly with the athletes, and I know that they were all having this discussion about cheerleading, and why don’t we have cheerleaders who look like us?

PL: [00:23:47] It wasn’t Chip who led this walkout, was it?

PDM: [00:23:55] No, he didn’t lead it, he couldn’t, but he was there with them, [00:24:00] I’m told. Chip was my boss at UVA for about a year. It was so amazing that this happened. (laughs)

PL: [00:24:14] Yeah, he’s a good man. So let’s go back up because I think this is really important. So there were no Black athletes, no Black cheerleaders when you were a sophomore.

PDM: [00:24:32] No.

PL: [00:24:33] And when did you actually become a cheerleader?

PDM: [00:24:35] So I tried out cheerleading everywhere because I just thought it was fun. You could jump up in the air. And I was a dancer, so I was very, you know, I could get up really high. So I tried out every year, and sophomore I didn’t make it, so then I tried out for basketball and made it. And then my junior year, I tried out for -- I guess varsity was before junior varsity -- [00:25:00] so I tried out and made it, appointed to the squad.

PL: [00:25:05] Appointed as a junior.

PDM: [00:25:07] As a rising junior, so I was appointed in my sophomore year for the junior squad, yeah.

PL: [00:25:13] And it was just you and Darlene then?

PDM: [00:25:16] Mm-hmm. So what he did was to expand the squad from 10 to 12, me and Darlene. So I was one of four juniors on the squad, and all of them flunked off, and I just thought it was the weirdest. It’s kind of funny now, years later. But at the time, I was thinking, you know, the senior girls were not necessarily that nice. And because I had that kind of a stupid golden retriever, “Hey, like me,” kind of thing going on, they didn’t, [00:26:00] so they were not nice. The woman who graduated the year I was appointed a cheerleader, Karen Viar is her name. And they did something weird with the cheerleading uniforms. It was considered -- I mean it was a gift for a cheerleader to give you the one that she’d had for her years. And so Karen Viar was also 5’10”, and she wasn’t skinny, but she refused to give me her uniform so that the woman who got it had to cut it down to fit her (laughs). It was just stuff like that.

PL: [00:26:41] And you understood that at the time to be racially motivated?

PDM: [00:26:44] Oh, of course, yeah, she did not hide her racism. And you could get away with that, I guess, in 1970 when she was there.

PL: [00:26:56] So if I understand this correctly, you were on the cheerleading [00:27:00] squad as a rising sophomore, tried out as a freshman.

PDM: [00:27:06] No. So junior high school was seventh, eighth, and ninth, so I went to Albemarle when I was in 10th grade. And in 10th grade, I played basketball, and that spring, I tried out for cheerleading and was appointed to the squad.

PL: [00:27:23] So you were on the squad in 11th grade.

PDM: [00:27:27] Yes, and senior year.

PL: [00:27:30] So how come you did that rather than continue to play basketball?

PDM: [00:27:38] Because I liked it. I thought it would be fun.

PL: [00:27:44] So you were involved really in sports just that one year in basketball. Cheerleaders are obviously supporting the teams.

PDM: [00:27:50] Right, and it’s a multi-sport event, so you can’t cheerlead and also, for instance, play tennis, you couldn’t back then. [00:28:00] But in my senior year, I played softball, and I was the worst left fielder that you’d ever seen. But again, I had the attention span of a gnat, it’s like, “Oh look, birds!” (laughter) But in senior year, I could do it because I was out the door.

PL: [00:28:22] So I’m not sure I’m remembering this correctly. Maybe, Annie, you could jump in here. Was it you who told me about this book that I should try to find out about cheerleaders or why it was so hard to be Black and be a cheerleader because of standards of cuteness and beauty? I think you told me about this, right?

PDM: [00:28:45] Yeah. So Ted Delaney was a good friend. He was the first Black tenured professor on the undergraduate campus at Washington and Lee. And his field of research was integration in central Virginia. [00:29:00] And one of the things he said he found was that the pain point in desegregation was cheerleaders. Football players got along. If you remember the movie, Remember the Titans, that’s how boys worked it out because that’s -- but for cheerleading, what Ted surmised was that it had a lot to do with standards of beauty, what cuteness is. Because what function does cheerleading serve, right? We’re boosters. But there are no ugly cheerleaders, and I’m saying that as somebody who just has regular features, right? That’s what it requires. And if you didn’t have those, you were unlikely to make the squad. Cheerleaders back then tended not to be heavy. [00:30:00] I was tall but proportional, so proportionality had to be a big thing. So standards of beauty differ across cultures, once you get past the symmetry of it, because all beauty across all cultures had that idea of the spacing of the eyes and the distance from the -- so there’s that. But having, you know, I suspect -- and Ted is no longer here to talk about this, but I think it had to do with the uppity-ness of a Black woman thinking that she could come here and do stuff that White girls traditionally did, which is really weird because I mean I was tall, so in my first year of cheerleading, it was ba-ba-ba, you know, and Karen Viar was the same way the year she was. [00:31:00] And in my senior year, a girl named Barbara Masnik, we were both the same height, which made it a little better. But cheerleaders are typically about 5’4”-5’5”. Albemarle, they tended to have curly brown hair. The set of juniors we had my senior year were all blondes -- that’s not true, they were mostly blondes.

PL: [00:31:23] Do you remember feeling some of that hostility or somehow that you were something of a misfit on the team or were being judged differently than the White girls would’ve been? You know, the kinds of things that Ted Delaney spoke about, did you feel that, or were you just happy to be on the team at that point?

PDM: [00:31:53] I think it would have been [00:32:00] more difficult if Darlene and I didn’t have such boosters in the Black community. Because everybody who played, every athlete who was out there, their parents were there. And they cheered us as much as they cheered the team. It was a point of pride, I think.

PL: [00:32:25] So did your parents come to all the games because you were cheerleading?

PDM: [00:32:30] Yeah, they came because, you know, it’s also performance. Cheerleading, when I think back about it, I was a real jock in that I loved sports, and so I knew what was happening on the court and on the field, and sometimes it was hard to drag me away from that. Like this picture, whatever the picture is, I’m there going, “Are they going to make this shot?” when I should’ve been going, “Go team, go team,” you know. (laughter) [00:33:00] But thinking back, it wasn’t that easy. And it was really bad when I was a junior during away games, because Albemarle was a big high school, and we played other big high schools, and so we actually played a team in Winchester. And it wasn’t so bad during football season because the boosters got a bus, and we all went up together. But basketball was played a week day and a Friday night, and again you’re going to Winchester, or you’re going to Manassas, or you’re going to Spotsy. That’s a lot of driving. And the game that I really remember the most is when we played a team in Danville. And we also wore black armbands [00:34:00] because we were post-Vietnam War, which I guess wasn’t the smartest thing to do at a place like Danville. (laughs) But what I do remember is that the state police escorted our bus into the stands, and they led us onto the field where we were going to cheer. It was really weird. It was the first time I had experienced White hostility in such an organized fashion, you know what I mean? (laughs)

PL: [00:34:35] So what did you experience, what happened?

PDM: [00:34:37] Well, they said that they didn’t like us, and that we shouldn’t have been there. And I think there was something that was said in higher channels, perhaps asking them not to bring us. And if you told Ben Hurt something like that, that wasn’t going to sit well with him.

PL: [00:35:00] Good for him.

PDM: [00:35:02] Yeah.

PL: [00:35:03] But this was as a cheerleader, you’re now saying.

PDM: [00:35:05] As a cheerleader, yeah.

PL: [00:35:07] And so you really remember that as being a really difficult moment.

PDM: [00:35:10] Oh, yeah.

PL: [00:35:12] And how many Black students were cheerleaders at that point in time?

PDM: [00:35:15] That would’ve been me and Darlene. And the following year, there was Jean who was on the GAA. I think there were like four or five across all of the cheerleading squads. But that first year was just Darlene and I on varsity, and the next year, it was just Teresa and I on varsity.

PL: [00:35:43] Do you remember any things that people would have called out at that event?

PDM: [00:35:48] The ever-popular “N” word.

PL: [00:35:50] Really, wow, and you had to weather all that. Were there any faculty, advisors who spoke to you about those incidents?

PDM: [00:36:00] So boosters were faculty and parents, and they were just pissed off. I don’t remember exactly what they did, but I remember feeling very safe coming into the stadium.

PL: [00:36:17] And did you ever, like after you were at games, maybe away games, in which you traveled to get there, did you travel with the cheerleading team or as individuals in private cars?

PDM: [00:36:31] No, we traveled as a squad. Generally, if there was a bus, we could ride on the bus with the boosters, and I think that’s what we did for two years. Cheerleaders couldn’t ride with players, and nobody could figure out why. (laughs) I don’t know what they thought would happen on these big comfortable buses (laughs), but we were forbidden to [00:37:00] ride with the athletes.

PL: [00:37:20] Did you ever sort of stop as a cheerleading team to eat while you were out on the road, or use restaurants or things like that?

PDM: [00:37:30] Yeah, I had forgotten all about that. You had to be careful about where you stopped. This was particularly true during basketball season because we played those Tuesday nights. And generally, a teacher was driving us to these places. Stepping back 50 years later, thinking about the liability issues (laughs) of a teacher driving a bunch of five girls somewhere, I mean it’s just frightening, you know?

PL: [00:38:00] It wouldn’t happen today, for sure, yeah.

PDM: [00:38:03] So I vaguely remember a teacher named -- he taught something called Distributive Education, and for the life of me, I have no idea what that is. I think it has something to do with sales, but I have no idea. His name was Mr. Gardner, and he drove us to some game somewhere. And he said, “Why don’t you tell me what you want.”

PL: [00:38:28] In terms of food?

PDM: [00:38:29] Mm-hmm.

PL: [00:38:30] And so he would go in and get it for you and bring it out.

PDM: [00:38:32] Yeah. So the other girls could get out if they wanted to, but he suggested that I not.

PL: [00:38:38] And you were okay with that.

PDM: [00:38:40] Well, yeah.

PL: [00:38:41] You didn’t have a choice.

PDM: [00:38:42] Well, no, I understood that I was a unicorn, you know, there weren’t that many cheerleaders who looked like me.

PL: [00:38:54] Well, we’ve heard another story that came out of Lane High School. [00:39:00] And the coach there, the coach of football, was Tommy Theodose, who is still alive. And some of the people who played for him said he wouldn’t allow anybody to stop and eat if they couldn’t all go into the restaurants.

PDM: [00:39:19] That sounds like him, yeah.

PL: [00:39:21] Isn’t that right, didn’t we hear that?

PDM: [00:39:22] Mm-hmm.

PL: [00:39:23] So this is a little different, and you had no choice but to accept that.

PDM: [00:39:28] Yeah. And I don’t remember feeling bad about it. For one thing, you’re coming back from a game, so you’re just exhausted, and it was like okay, I can sleep some more. And keep in mind, going to an away game did not negate the fact that I had homework due the next day. (laughs)

PL: [00:39:48] So retrospectively, when you look back at those Albemarle High School years -- clearly you’re part of planning an alumni reunion -- do you think of them as positive years for you?

PDM: [00:40:00] I do. And it’s taken me 50 years to get there, because when they did their 20th reunion, I was living in Seattle. And Mom says, “Oh, you’re going to have a 20th reunion,” and I go, “Okay.” So I changed my plane ticket so I could miss it (laughs), you know, I did not want to have anything to do with them. I don’t think there was a 30th, but I was here for the 40th. And reconnecting with my students at the time, it’s just been wonderful, actually. And the other thing is that, as old people now, we can talk about this stuff. And you have a perspective, you can look back and think, did we really do that? And we were all so cute (laughs), when you look at those pictures, it’s like if you’re young, you know, generally you’re cute anyway. But it was like wow, we did that. And we were talking about herkie jumps, you know, and that’s the one where you jump up in [00:41:00] the air, and you get your right elbow to touch your right heel. How did we do that? I couldn’t do that now. This is this way; I would be struggling. (laughs)

PL: [00:41:15] Absolutely. You said it took you 50 years, you didn’t want to have anything to do with it initially.

PDM: [00:41:21] Yeah, I went to the 40th, and I was like “okay.” And I only went then because my cousin was going, and as you know, I have lots of cousins. And it was just fine, it really was. But I think what Albemarle did in those years, you become very comfortable at taking risks, and I think that’s what I learned most of all from cheerleading, that you have to be dogged, you have to take risks, and you have to become resilient because you’re going to fail. [00:42:00] And so I’m pretty comfortable saying that I don’t think I would have evolved into the person that I’ve become without those experiences.

PL: [00:42:09] And so those were largely extracurricular experiences.

PDM: [00:42:12] Yeah. There was a guidance counselor, and I only knew this later, Mrs. Dofflemeyer, who just thought Black people were inherently stupid. She didn’t want me to go to UVA. And it was Inez Bowles who was the woman who said stop. And so when I got to look at those records, because you can get all of that stuff now, and it said that I was just wonderful at extracurriculars, but she didn’t know if I could handle the intellectual aspect of UVA, so there was always that. So after, [00:43:00] I became for journalist for 15 years. And one of the things that I learned there, or maybe it was something that I took into it, was just the tenacity. And it served me well later going to law school that, to me, “no” is just the first negotiating point, so that has all served. And I don’t know if it was cheerleading when you were forced, I mean you’re a public face, and you talk to everybody, so by the time I got to writing stories about people and talking to people, I asked anybody anything. And you can certainly not answer, but you’re never going to answer if I don’t ask.

PL: [00:43:50] So it sounds to me a little bit like you’re saying that those formative years, junior high school, high school, [00:44:00] were ones in which you experienced discrimination. But it almost sounds as if you had enough internal strength from other sources, family, whatever, to sort of accept it in some ways, as -- certainly to fight it when you could, but also to a little bit like let it just go. Is that true? I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

PDM: [00:44:30] I think that’s true, but it’s also true that we had -- the African American community buoyed us, I mean they just loved to see us in uniforms, and they talked about us as, you know, “look.” And so when you have that, even though all of this is going on, it’s immeasurable, the confidence it gives you.

PL: [00:45:00] Sure, so you had a lot of community support, not necessarily school support, except for this principal who seems to have been very, you know.

PDM: [00:45:08] And our teachers were supportive, because other Black students could be cruel too. I was always the person reading a book, and that was just accepted because they’d known me for a long time, I’d always read books. But sometimes kids got teased and stuff for that. It’s a point of pride for me today that I was a point of pride for them. And I’d like to think that, because I did it, another young Black women decided to do it. I remember going out to some junior high in that part of the county, southern Albemarle, [00:46:00] and working with a young Black woman there who wanted to try out for her team, and it was very cool.

PL: [00:46:09] You did that as a high school student?

PDM: [00:46:11] Was I a junior or a senior? So Ben Page and I were in the same -- and it was his younger sister, Muriel, who wanted me to go out to whatever that school was to teach them the cheers and the inner workings of cheerleading. And just be able to be someone who could be helpful, and to be something of a human library and a bridge was something that -- and again, you know, I was very athletic. I’m just a born jock, I’m just more comfortable with doing athletic things than others.

PL: [00:47:00] So what do you think the impact was of athletics on school desegregation and making people comfortable with it?

PDM: [00:47:17] So the purpose of athletics is to teach young people the lesson of working hard to achieve a goal, and also to work willingly with one another. So in that respect, I don’t know if there would have been as cordial -- if I can use that term -- integration would have been without that, without the idea of -- I mean when I think about my brother played football, and he went on to become a pro football player. But from seven in the morning until seven at night, he was school, he was practice, and it [00:48:00] taught them hard work. It gave them a sense of their own strength and also limitations, because sometimes there are people you just can’t tackle. Or if you’re cheerleading, there’s just some -- those half-splits that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders do that’s really hard to do, and it could really hurt you. So you became aware of your limitations, but you also became aware of the things that you could do as a team when you permit yourself to be part of something. I’m really happy I did it. And two years after I left, a Black young woman became the head cheerleader, and she was from that part of the country where I went out to work with [00:49:00] those young women. She died just recently, Debbie Phillips, but she would have been a good one too.

PL: [00:49:09] So once you graduated from Albemarle, I heard you say you went on to UVA, and so ’72, entering UVA. I was involved in a project about women at UVA a long time ago. I’ll bet you were too -- we can talk about that later. That’s a really interesting choice to go to UVA in ’72.

PDM: [00:49:34] Yeah, I was in Upward Bound. And I don’t know if I would have even thought of UVA if it had not been for Upward Bound. Looking back, UVA was probably a bad choice for me. But yeah, I had dated my boyfriend at the time who was a first-year student, [00:50:00] so I was going to follow -- I don’t know, but we broke up, of course, first semester of that year.

PL: [00:50:08] And so that’s why you chose UVA, because you’d been exposed to it through Upward Bound, and because you had a boyfriend there.

PDM: [00:50:15] Yeah. You have to remember that UVA did not become a great school until women came. (laughs) So UVA was okay academically, but it wasn’t as good as Hollins or another woman’s college at the time, and I don’t know if I would’ve done well at a woman’s college. But UVA was probably too big and too traditional for me, and that’s played out by the fact that I didn’t graduate in ’76. I met a nice Jewish boy, converted, and went off with him. He did his anesthesiology residency here, and I went off to Rochester, New York, with him. [00:51:00] And then I got into journalism, and then I came back and finished my degree in ’96, and then I went to law school. And UVA, when I came back in ’95, was just so different from the place I had left 20 years earlier. It was just amazing. One of the amazing things was that Bob Canevari, who at the time was the dean of students, had hair, and Larry Sabato, who was a student when I was there, had hair down to his butt, and he had none. (laughs) I was like how did this happen? (laughter) So it was Gordon Stewart was my association dean. He’s just wonderful. He said, “We kept trying to get you to come back, and I’m glad you did.” It was also important to me to graduate from UVA.

PL: [00:51:58] So you went to UVA in ’72, [00:52:00] and you stayed how long?

PDM: [00:52:02] Three years. I got married I think in ’77 maybe? So I dropped in and out and in and out because it was still acceptable at that time to leave school to get married.

PL: [00:52:21] But you came back eventually to get your degree here. And what did you get your degree in?

PDM: [00:52:27] Religious Studies with a minor in Government because church was always so important to Black families. I wanted to understand. So when we were kids, Billy Graham used to do something called the -- he had these things where he’d buy all the networks’ time at 10:00 for a week, I’ve forgotten what he called it -- it wasn’t a pilgrimage -- and so at 10:00 every night for like a week, you had Billy Graham talking about, “If you do not accept Jesus God as your savior, you will go to hell.” [00:53:00] And as a child, I remember thinking, wait a second. What do you mean, if you don’t accept Jesus, you’re going to go to hell? That’s ridiculous. Because even for a young kid, my youngest brother had been killed by a drunk driver when he was eight, and it was like he hadn’t been baptized. Is he going to go to hell? There are lots of people in other parts of the world who don’t believe in the same things that I do. Are they going to go to hell? So what I was interested in was learning about how religion shaped societies. And at UVA at the time -- and it still does, I guess, to some extent -- UVA Religious Studies is an interdisciplinary thing that looks at anthropology and history. And I concentrated on Judaism, and I was really interested in the historical Jesus. But I was also interested in government because I had been a reporter. So I did religious studies, [00:54:00] and Gordon Stewart talked me out of getting a dual degree. He said, “You just want to walk in May,” so that’s what I did.

PL: [00:54:07] So were you working with people like Harry Gamble there?

PDM: [00:54:12] Yeah, Harry was the chair when I was there. And did you know Connie died?

PL: [00:54:18] I just saw that in the newspaper. She was living away for a while.

PDM: [00:54:25] Yeah, we were in the same book club. And I didn’t even know I hadn’t seen her in three years because Covid has made, you know -- but yeah, she was lovely.

PL: [00:54:35] Yeah. I don’t know if there are other things you would like to talk about, your experiences, your high school years, etc.

PDM: [00:54:52] I guess the only other thing that I would say is that you have to just understand -- and I think I had a [00:55:00] good understanding because I had a brother who was killed -- I understood on a deep level how fleeting life is. You have to wring out of it and put into it as much joy as you’re able to, and so that’s what I would want your children to know, and they probably already do.

PL: [00:55:23] What are your thoughts about race relations today? I know that’s a very big question, but where we are as a society, as a community.

PDM: [00:55:38] So I was doing IDE, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity at the library. And so I think it’s really hard to reach any idea of equanimity or equity unless you understand your history. [00:56:00] And there is such reluctance on the part of this country to understand what happened here. The interesting thing, I did a Fulbright in Ukraine for two years, and one of the things that you learned -- I can’t talk about Ukraine -- but one of the things that you learn right away is, the Soviet bloc and the Soviets did a really good job of explaining American History to the citizens. The first thing they ask you about is, “Why did they destroy the Indigenous population? You do understand that your system of classifying people was adopted by South Africa, you know.” [00:57:00] So they have an idea, and they know what happened here, and they don’t understand why we -- and it’s hard to admit privilege, it’s hard to share; I understand that as a human. You know, I love rhubarb pie, and I don’t like to share it when I make it. I’ll keep it for like six years in the freezer, (laughs) but I don’t want to share it, and I understand that. But if you don’t let go of that, that privilege, you know we’re just going to be mired here, just stuck. Years ago, there was an original Star Trek episode where there were these two men -- one was black on this side, and one was White on this side, and the other guy was the opposite, White on this side and black on this side. And they were forever fighting because they could not accept the fact that they were equal. [00:58:00] And whenever I talk about race relations, I always go back to that original Star Trek episode of needing to let go in order to grow as a culture. Trump didn’t help anybody, of course, and he let all of the loonies out of the asylum. You can’t go back to -- now people like me will not permit us to go back to where we were. And one of the things that Trump did was to radicalize people. Like I’m 67 years old, and I’m ready to pick up a tree and beat somebody to death (inaudible) (laughs) you know what I mean? It’s like what’s going on with you people, don’t you understand? And I think that’s true for many of us in this age group.

PL: [00:58:57] So I just want you to clarify that. [00:59:00] So for this age group, meaning sort of where you are in your late-60s.

PDM: [00:59:05] Yeah, sexagenarians, yeah.

PL: [00:59:08] Okay, so you’re saying many of you sort of want to beat people over the head and say, “Don’t you understand the larger history that we’ve all lived through?”

PDM: [00:59:17] Yes. And we’re not going to go backwards.

PL: [00:59:19] Right, well that’s good.

PDM: [00:59:21] I mean you can’t say -- and they’re trying to now -- but you look at all of the gays -- so I taught for 15 years and telling -- I was at Auburn for a hot minute, and I could not stay because it was Alabama, and I’m a Black woman who is not stupid. And I was not going to put up with the way people are treated there, students are treated there. But I had this kid who was going to write a paper -- and there were two of them -- one was, she wanted to do the history of rock and roll and was shocked, I tell you, shocked to believe that if it were not for Black people, [01:00:00] there would be no rock and roll. She just didn’t get that, and she said that in her paper. That wasn’t as egregious as the kid who wrote a paper -- or she pitched me this idea of writing her paper on why Black people can’t swim. I’m a swimmer. And I said, “What do you mean, they can’t swim? Do you mean because they’re not taught to?” “Oh no, physiologically, their bodies won’t let them swim.” And that was 2005, I believe. How has that been -- and Ted Delaney, my late friend, was talking about when his children were in school -- no, he was telling me about the textbook from 1976 that showed enslaved people getting off of ships in britches and wigs, black ones, saying, “Hi, there” to the people who enslaved them. You know, it’s just (laughs) I know.

PL: [01:00:54] Well, right now if you’re listening to some of the testimony for the –-

PDM: [01:01:00] For Ketanji Jackson Brown?

PL: [01:01:02] I mean you know it’s unbelievable think about some of the thinking of some of our senators, you know, it’s just.

PDM: [01:01:12] How is sedition and -- I mean it’s like Ukraine, I can’t talk about without just –-

PL: [01:01:20] I can understand, yeah. Well, I have three people who have been sitting here very quietly, who I can imagine have some follow-up questions. So Annie, do you have questions you’d like to ask?

AV: [01:01:34] Do you remember anything else at AHS besides the one walkout? Were there multiple walkouts? Do you remember any fights in the hallways? I know at Lane at this time, they had to have police officers stationed in the hallways.

PDM: [01:01:49] Yeah, we weren’t Lane, in part I think it’s because we were so rural. You have to understand that it was a really, really rural county, and you had to drive [01:02:00] a long way to go beat somebody up. (laughs) It’s not like walking down the street. We didn’t have those, although there were fights, and my brother experienced some of those in Jack Jouett. And it’s not to say it was halcyon, nobody was singing Kumbaya, but I just don’t remember the level of tension at Albemarle that they experienced all the time at Lane.

LORENZO DICKERSON: [01:02:28] I have a couple questions. One is, to this day, growing up -- literally to this day, my father always talks about Deni Mitchell doing the splits as a cheerleader, and how great she was. So I’m curious if you had favorite routines or ever favorite cheers that you remember.

PDM: [01:02:50] There were some that I created that I really liked. I really liked doing the split jump because I have very long [01:03:00] arms and legs. And I looked like a bird in flight, I think, (laughs) just like whoo, this is so fun to be way up here. So I liked it, and I liked doing splits. But again, I like motion and movement, and it was fun. And so his dad would’ve been one of the people at those games, sometimes not even looking at the football play, “Go, Deni,” he’d say. Of course we were childhood friends. (laughs) But yeah, so I loved doing splits. I love teaching people how to do that stuff. There was one cheer, it was like a call and response -- a football player called Lawrence somebody, he must’ve been a tackle because he’s about this tall and that wide -- he would do this during pep rallies, he would say [01:04:00] “I got the feeling,” and we’d go, “Oh, yeah.” And then we’d do split jumps at the end of that. I wish I could remember his last name.

LD: [01:04:13] Where did your parents attend school?

PDM: [01:04:16] Mom went to a variety of schools. She went to Cismont School where Ken Ackerman lives now -- or he maybe sold it, I don’t remember -- so she went there. But she left school in eighth grade. There were 13 of them, and she had to be able to help her parents. And my father went to high school in New York for reasons that are not clear to me. And I suppose I should suss that out because he’s been dead since ’85, but his sister is here now.

PL: [01:04:56] So you don’t know why your dad lived in New York or what the reasons for that were?

PDM: [01:05:00] Well, my mother always said that he was really spoiled, and he was, I think. He was the only boy with four sisters -- Dorothy, Ethel, Marion, Gertie -- only boy, five sisters, next to the youngest. So he didn’t have a lot of impulse control -- I can say this as a grownup looking back on my childhood. He was a very troubled guy, but he was really smart. He subscribed to National Geo and read it cover-to-cover. The first time I saw a person with boobs was looking at the cover because of the way that they photographed people on the continent of Africa back then. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He could not dance to save his life. (laughs) And I look a lot like him, I’m told, and he looked a lot like his mother. [01:06:00] So yeah, I don’t know a whole lot about that. And they all fled -- meaning my father and his sisters -- they all fled to New York once they graduated. And my aunt got out of Burley in 1952. And education has always been important to -- well, it’s hard to say because working and buying things and owning a home, all of that is important too. And sometimes education for my generation got dropped from the mix. But they were all proud that those of us who went to college went.

PL: [01:06:47] I do have another question. You left Charlottesville and Albemarle County for how many years, would you say, 20, 30?

PDM: [01:07:00] I left in the late ’70s, and that was a starter marriage, the one that you have when you grow up to get a good marriage. I left him and went to Seattle, and then I came back here for a couple years because that’s how I got into TV at Channel 29. And I was also writing full time, I was writing a novel which never sold, but we won’t talk about that either. (laughs) And so it was at Channel 29 that I learned the really, really basics of broadcasting, and then took that knowledge back to Seattle because I had a boyfriend there. But sadly as it turned out, I was the only person in the relationship, but I had to move out there to find that out. So then I was out there working at the PBS station in Seattle. And I wanted to come back east because it’s 11 hours door to door when you live out there, and your entire family is on the east coast. [01:08:00] And they started to die, meaning my mother’s sibs, and so it behooved me to be back east. And so I went to Charlotte for a minute and then to New York for four or five years working for CBS and ABC.

PL: [01:08:15] And so when did you come back to Charlottesville?

PDM: [01:08:19] I came back to finish off my degree in ’95 and graduated in ’96. And then I did some local journalism with -- what is her name, the city editor at the -- Jenny somebody I think. And I worked with Beth at the Charlottesville Business Journal, and then I worked for the Orange County Review, and I did that, and then I went to law school. And then from there, I went to West Virginia on a tenure track for -- yeah, my mom called me a vagabond. (laughs)

PL: [01:09:00] Where did you go to law school?

PDM: [01:09:01] Washington and Lee.

PL: [01:09:05] What’s it like working for the institution where you got your degrees?

PDM: [01:09:09] Oh, it is so bizarre, I mean there are ghosts everywhere. You know, they tore down -- so I would see scenes every time I was walking around Alderman, right, because as an undergraduate, that was the library, or it was my first year. So every time I walked, I said oh my God, I remember going here and doing this, and doing this and they shouldn’t have been doing that, but you know what I mean? So yeah, it’s like you never -- you are always running into former selves, and sometimes that’s pleasant, and often it is not.

PL: [01:09:43] George, do you have anything you want to add?

GEORGE GILLIAM: [01:09:44] I don’t.

PL: [01:09:45] You don’t, we covered it all, huh? I’m sure we haven’t covered it all. You have been amazing. You’re such a reflective person, really.

PDM: [01:09:56] You know, I’m very honored, Lorenzo, and please tell your [01:10:00] dad how much I adore him and thank him.

LD: [01:10:02] I will, thank you. He tells this story of the two of you being in Jack Jouett together. And he’s running down the hallway, and he said that Deni comes around the corner -- he’s running in the hallway not paying attention to what he was doing. And Deni is tall, so he said he runs into Deni, and she flattens him. (laughter)

PDM: [01:10:27] That is probably so true. (laughs) I hope I saw him before I flattened him. (laughter) So yeah, his dad and his group of friends, it’s funny, I remember because they were very protective of us. And I remember once coming from a football game, and there was your dad, Teddy, Tubby Johnson, [01:11:00] there were three of us. Back then, none of us had cars, and so even if we had cars, gas cost 35 cents a gallon, but if you had a dollar, you could go anywhere, except you couldn’t go very far on those guzzling big cars. But Teddy had a smaller car, and we were in there like this. And somebody said something fresh to me, and it was like, “Whoa, who are you talking to, man?” They were pretty belligerent, so we really appreciated that, and we were all like cousins.

PL: [01:11:41] It sounds like you have a very rich community in your own right. And I’m so glad you’ve done this because of something you said in your interview about how it’s really important for people to know that history, to know the deeper history, but to also know the immediate past. [01:12:00] And that’s a big motivation for this project. We’re using sports as a lens, but we understand it’s much broader than just sports. So we hope to collect a real archive of this material, you know, have it available through the Historical Society.  

[Extraneous material redacted.]

PDM: [01:13:39] Cool. If you do something about student government, you should probably reach out to my cousin, James White. He was the first Black –-

AV: [01:13:47] We’ve been looking for him, thank you. I’ve been combing through all the yearbooks, and he’s done so many special things, a lot like you. So the two of you were on the top of my list.

PDM: [01:13:58] Oh, well thank you so much.

AV: [01:14:00] So it was really a gift to have you, and to know about him as well.

PL: [01:14:14] He was the first Black SGA president at Albemarle, did you say?

PDM: [01:14:18] I think, and class president too, I think.

PL: [01:14:42] Terrific, thank you so much.

PDM: [01:14:44] You’re welcome.

END OF AUDIO FILE