Ep. 2 Hilda Jean Smith: From GED to PhD

Episode 2. Hilda Jean Smith: From GED to PhD. A day after her wedding, sixteen-year-old Hilda Jean Smith’s mother dies, leaving her the responsibility of raising 10 younger siblings. Though she eventually drops out of high school to do so, Hilda never loses sight that education was the most important stepping stone to a better life. In this interview with Hilda, we hear her incredible story.

This is a presentation of The 431 Exchange. We are a non-profit scholarship fund dedicated to adult students seeking to transform their lives through continuing education. We invite you to learn more about us by going to our website www.431exchange.com where you can hear more inspiring stories by signing up for our newsletter. Thanks!

Episode 2: Hilda Jean Smith

[Dear Audience, this transcript corresponds exactly to the Youtube Podcast version that has a slightly different structure for the opening three minutes. Therefore, while the words correspond perfectly the timecode is off by 30 seconds or so. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you.]

[00:00:00] Hilda Jean Smith: My full name is Hilda Jean Smith. I got married when I was sixteen years old. The day after I got married my mother died.

I'm one of twelve children and the oldest girl. When my mother died I took home brothers and sisters and got pregnant and had no idea of going back to school or even getting a GED, you know.

My mother was a barmaid. She worked in a bar. She contacted tuberculosis in the bar [00:00:30] and she stayed in the hospital for a long time on medication. The whole family had to take medicine. Her tuberculosis had subsided, but she died in her sleep and we believe it was lung-related from the TB. But, the bad part about it, I had a brother who was two months old when she died and I raised him.

My father was an alcoholic almost up until his time of death. But it didn't stop us from loving him. In his sober moments he was a great guy.

A lot of people get married to leave their parents home. It's not [00:01:00] even what I would call for me love and all that. I'd had a kind of rough childhood. My mother and father was not in the best of relationships with each other and I just wanted something different.

[00:01:13] Mya Carter: The 431 Exchange presents Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights In New Orleans and the Nation. Exchange Place is the story of a school whose mission was to train mostly African American [00:01:30] women the skills they needed to integrate the secretarial offices of the Deep South between 1965 and '72. Those offices were not just segregated, for the most part they were completely off limits to women of color and many were fighting to ensure the workplace would stay that way for years or decades to come. The first season of the podcast tells the inspirational biographies of four of the school's graduates who changed the moral skyline of their city,[00:02:00] how they did it, and how the school's teachers and supporters struggled to overcome the massive forces arrayed against them.

Episode 2

Hilda Jean Smith: from GED to PhD

an exchange between Hilda Jean Smith, Adult Education Center Class of 1970, and Jeff Geoffray the youngest son of the Center's Director Dr. Alice Geoffray.

Part One: Early Life

[00:02:28] Jeff Geoffray: So Hilda by the age of [00:02:30] sixteen you were a newlywed, a mother to be and, together with your father, suddenly in charge of your eleven siblings, including a two month old baby brother. Then things got even more complicated, right? Your grandmother, your mother's mother, tried to take custody of most or all of your siblings, and you and your dad went to court in another state to stop it. Did your grandmother want custody of the kids because she didn't think you and your father [00:03:00] could handle the responsibility?

[00:03:02] Hilda Jean Smith: My grandmother, my father, and my mother's sibling, never had a good relationship. They never had, so it wasn't his ability to handle it or whatever. It wasn't anything that she and I discussed insofar as her taking them. It was a decision that she made. She had come out here for my wedding and by the time she got home she found out her daughter had died. So she turned around and came back and loaded them up. The children who went with her, three of them stayed with her, and three of them stayed with [00:03:30] an aunt and they were very happy to come back to New Orleans. It was a very unpleasant experience for them. We don't talk about it that much even now because it was an unpleasant experience for them.

[00:03:42] Jeff Geoffray: Your father had to fight hard to get them back. Hire an attorney in Arkansas, a White attorney because there were virtually no Black attorneys... go to court. How long did that process take?

[00:03:55] Hilda Jean Smith: Oh my God. It must have taken a year or so, more than a [00:04:00] year. It was a process. They had been down there for a while. They had grown a little. Just even getting it started and filing papers and finding a lawyer and all that kind of stuff. But it eventually did happen and all of them were really very happy to come back. The thing that disturbed me, even to relive this now, and, and part of my conversation with you is helping me to relive my life, to take on that responsibility to almost be in shock. I was like numb for six months. I didn't cry. Then one day I [00:04:30] fell apart and that was about six months after.

[00:04:32] Jeff Geoffray: How do you mean you fell apart?

[00:04:34] Hilda Jean Smith: I start crying, I broke down.

Up until then, I'd been numb, just functional. I took care of the business, took care of people, put things in place, and I didn't deal with my own feelings.

[00:04:45] Jeff Geoffray: Was there anyone in your life who could help you deal with those feelings?

[00:04:48] Hilda Jean Smith: One of the things I have experienced over the years and I truly believe it's the presence of God, I've had good people in my life, but nobody takes the place of a mother. My [00:05:00] church a couple of years ago had a mother and daughter retreat. Everybody got up and did all these speeches and I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that.

I did tell them I've always had older women, women I consider friends, people that I confide in and that I can talk to because it's something when you grow up and being a woman and being in a marriage and a relationship and you don't have a mother who's there to support you. Now you have some people that may even have a mother who's alive, [00:05:30] you know, but don't have that kind of relationship with them to support them and encourage them. I've had people in my life as long as I can remember, who could see in me what I couldn't see in myself.

[00:05:42] Jeff Geoffray: Who is an example of someone who saw something in you that you couldn't see in yourself?

[00:05:46] Hilda Jean Smith: I wanted to be a teacher before I wanted to be a nurse and it's because of Celestine Detiege and she lived, she moved to California and she's the reason I moved to California.

[00:05:56] Jeff Geoffray: Why do you think Black teachers had such a great [00:06:00] reputation despite their salaries not being on a par with their White counterparts? And despite a great disparity in the amount of money spent on the resources for their schools?

[00:06:12] Hilda Jean Smith: Let me say this, and, oh God, this is just, I'm I'm gonna have to calm down after this interview. Get my, my emotions together. You were there for those kids because you saw the future of your race, the future of that child in that teaching, in your job and [00:06:30] what you did. Mrs. Detiege she wasn't even my teacher. She was a teacher across the hall from me. And she took an interest in me and I and her.

We became good friends. She gave me work to do and I helped her and she moved to California and she asked me to come move. She asked my mother if I could move.

[00:06:49] Jeff Geoffray: Then your life changed. Tell me how much you looked forward to motherhood to starting your own family.

[00:06:56] Hilda Jean Smith: Ooh woo! Oooh woo woo! [laughs]. [00:07:00]

Oh my God... My little brother, when my mother died she left a two month old child and I raised him. So I was walking around pregnant with a baby. That just took everybody.

[00:07:16] Jeff Geoffray: You mean your mother had passed away, so you were taking care of your baby brother and other siblings, and then after you got married, you became pregnant with your first child. What was your first pregnancy like?

[00:07:28] Hilda Jean Smith: My oldest son, [00:07:30] oh my God. It was a joy. When God has blessed you with a child, it's like giving you a second opportunity to live your life over again. Childbearing in family is important from a spiritual standpoint, and we should honor and love our children and develop and shape them in a way that is positive.

And I'll leave it like that.

[00:07:51] Jeff Geoffray: What are some of the things you learned as a young mother?

[00:07:54] Hilda Jean Smith: When I count my own children and my brothers and sisters, I had seventeen children that [00:08:00] I had to care for at one time in one house. Even with seventeen children I would take them out to dinner. I would take them to amusement parks. My rationale for that was to expose them to life.

You cannot be your children's friend. You don't drink with 'em, hang out with 'em. You make them accountable. Parents are parents to give leadership. I enjoyed my children and I enjoyed my siblings. [00:08:30] My house was always the house where if your child was missing you could go find him. As a young mom, I did a Bible school once a week with fifty children in my home.

[00:08:42] Jeff Geoffray: Fifty children? Was that part of an organized Bible school?

[00:08:45] Hilda Jean Smith: It's called Child Evangelism Fellowship and they're still around, they're worldwide, and they've changed it [laughs] a little bit. I didn't beat up on it too bad. They deal with colors, red is for the blood of Jesus. White [00:09:00] is for the sanctification, how once you get the blood of Jesus, you become like white and sanctified, but the black was for sin. When I become color-conscious of who I am, the black lost meaning as representing sin, and in this country anything that's negative is related to black. The villain, is always black. The clothes and and everything related to that color. So I had [00:09:30] to rethink that mentality and how I related to it.

[00:09:35] Jeff Geoffray: By the time you decided to go back to school you had seventeen kids that you were taking care of. Eleven of your siblings and six of your own. As with a lot of women I know who were on Welfare all the while you were working two or three jobs to support your family. There are a lot of people who would judge someone in your position, people who would say you wanted to be on Welfare.

How would you respond to those kinds of generalizations?[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] Hilda Jean Smith: Did you watch the movie "Claudine"? Claudine is a movie about a single black family. The woman had kids and she met this guy who was a garbage man. They became girlfriend and boyfriend, but she couldn't claim him necessarily as a husband 'cause the system would give you more money if the man wasn't in the house. The majority of the people on Welfare are not African Americans and they're not people of color.

[00:10:26] Jeff Geoffray: So you're saying the Welfare system could have a negative impact on the lives [00:10:30] of people who are caught in that system regardless of color.

[00:10:34] Hilda Jean Smith: I had a member of the church that I used to belong to. She worked for the welfare department and I had to go and pick up something or drop off something to her, and I walked through that welfare department and I saw all those people standing in line, people with babies, and I wanted to hold a class right then and there, and I wanted to tell people. I used to stand in those [00:11:00] lines and I used to be like you are now, but you don't have to give into this. You can do better and you gotta want better. When I stood in those lines and I did those things, I feel the system was built to dehumanize you, but I did not permit it to dehumanize me. I didn't because I knew who I was, as we who believe in God would say, and I know [00:11:30] whose I was. I knew God had something better for me and that wasn't my end. Even before the school, I would clean houses. I would work in a restaurant. When I was pregnant I was working in restaurants and bars, restaurant-bar combinations, not just a bar as a bartender. And I've worked all, [laughs] all my life. Even now some of my children and grandchildren, they tease me and some of 'em have taken on some of my same attributes that I am not crazy about. [00:12:00] I have worked as long as I can remember and I refuse to let anyone define who I am and I wanna teach that to people. The hospital where I work, the Cancer center is there, the behavior health is upstairs and the Cancer center is downstairs. When I'm going to work, there are people coming in to get their Cancer treatment. I go and I talk to them. I say, keep up the fight. Don't give up. You can [00:12:30] beat this. I said, you see that chair you're in? I was in that chair and I couldn't walk and I couldn't breathe, but now I'm okay. I'm better. So keep fighting.

And it's the same way with people on Welfare and mothers with children. If I get an opportunity I will encourage people. People always tell me I am an inspiration, and I think that's God's calling on my life to inspire others because life can be better. [00:13:00] Your glass is always half filled. Don't always look at it as half empty.

[00:13:04] Jeff Geoffray: Is it accurate to say that self-reliance, self-responsibility, are foundational to the African American community that you were raised in?

[00:13:13] Hilda Jean Smith: I just had this conversation with my brother who's a retired supervisor and we were comparing jobs and being in leadership and management and the people that we manage in today's environment. Being African American and coming from a certain culture, we look at life from a certain perspective. [00:13:30] My brother said he told his granddaughter that if your grandmother and my grandmother and her grandmother could get here and survive off little or nothing and still was able to make life what it was and bring us to where we are today, then you better get yourself together and do what you need to do.

Now our young people today, they don't know what it means to not have a whole lot. They don't know the importance that gift of working towards your goal. Our foreparents did not [00:14:00] have the things that we have today yet they made it.

[00:14:02] Jeff Geoffray: My sister Jeanne and I started on this journey wanting to prove the hypothesis that the students of the Adult Education Center were filled with what I would call a sense of grace before they even entered the program. While the school taught you important skills that helped put you on a meaningful career path at a time when laws and the attitudes of some were changing, you were blessed with the highest of virtues before you stepped through the school's [00:14:30] doors. Does that hypothesis ring true? And if so, where do you think that grace came?

[00:14:37] Hilda Jean Smith: I'm gonna take it in a certain direction. You gotta get ready for this. You said grace. If you'll think about it from my perspective, the African American community has always had a connection with God...even before Christianity. All right. I and I, I have read books in college that I would not have read if I had not been in school about [00:15:00] spirituality before Christianity.

Okay. So when you tell me about grace, and when I try to reflect on my own grace, where God has brought me from, and I look at my siblings and sharing stories where God has brought them from, yes it is grace. It is grace. But I'm going to tell you something about grace. Even though a lot of us may have it, we don't always recognize it. Alright? And it's people like your mother that I [00:15:30] believe that God used to bring out the recognition.

[00:15:34] Jeff Geoffray: What role does prayer play in your life?

[00:15:37] Hilda Jean Smith: Oh, Jeff, Jeff,

if I could come through the phone right now, I would kiss you. I asked my father at a very young age, and it was younger than five or six, I think, maybe a little older. I said Dad, "if God knows everything, why do we have to pray?" My father told me that what prayer does for us doesn't change God's will, but it [00:16:00] makes our will become God's will.

I am a praying person. I do believe in prayer. When I don't know what to do I pray. When you get to a point where you don't know what to do, don't do anything. Pray about it, stand still, and feel the presence of God. It's those decisions that we make when we are stressed, those decisions that we make when we are uncomfortable, when we are hurting, when we are in pain that have [00:16:30] consequences.

[00:16:36] Mya Carter: Part 2: The Adult Education Center.

[00:16:41] Jeff Geoffray: Did you ever think about nursing before you decided to go back to school?

[00:16:45] Hilda Jean Smith: I got married when I was 16 years old. The day after I got married my mother died. So I took home brothers and sisters and, and I was taking care of people and got pregnant and had no idea of going back to school, or [00:17:00] even getting a GED. You know? I think that's one of the reason people go into nursing. They're caretakers.

[00:17:05] Jeff Geoffray: When you decided to go back to school in 1969 with seventeen kids under your wing, your first step was to visit the Office of Manpower Development and Training, the MDTA as it was known. The first thing they offered you was training to be a cook. How did you respond to that suggestion?

[00:17:25] Hilda Jean Smith: I told them that I do that every day at home. And I did not wanna do that. I still [00:17:30] enjoy cooking. I still feed people. If you watch that film I sent you where I was interviewed as "the remarkable woman in the Bay area", I told them I cook, I feed people. One of my grandsons say, "Granny, why do you go out to eat? Because you always complain about the food." I like to cook. [laughs] But then they offered me the program at the Adult Education Center, and it was something new. It was a challenge and I liked challenges and I, I ate it up.

[00:17:59] Jeff Geoffray: [00:18:00] Had you ever thought about being a secretary?

[00:18:02] Hilda Jean Smith: I did not have a planned direction for my life and that's the truth.

[00:18:07] Jeff Geoffray: Up to that time the options for women, and even more so for women of color, were limited from a practical standpoint. When you were growing up, did you think about the things you could do, were permitted to do, versus what you wanted to do?

[00:18:22] Hilda Jean Smith: I never thought about what I couldn't do. I thought about what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a race car driver. I really wanted the [00:18:30] challenge. Other than that, I wanted to teach. I had always admired teachers and loved teachers. A teacher make an impact on an individual, not for a moment but for a lifetime. I find what I didn't get in teaching in nursing.

[00:18:46] Jeff Geoffray: Now you're enrolled in a PhD program related to nursing at the age of 75. You've already had a successful career. Did you expect that continuing your education in 1969 would have the impact that it [00:19:00] did?

[00:19:00] Hilda Jean Smith: I'm saying this to you. You go back to New Orleans. People who have worked and are working for minimum wages and stuff like that, unless they get an understanding and an education on how the economy works, then they feel that what is happening to them is the correct thing. They feel that's the way it is and that they're okay and they make it work. They're working two and three jobs. Everybody in the house is working, but even though you might [00:19:30] have a little of this, a little of that, but look what you having to go through to accomplish it.

[00:19:33] Jeff Geoffray: That is one of the common themes I've discovered in the hundreds of interviews I've done over the past five years, and all the books and research I've done too. In those times, everybody's working multiple jobs. Side hustles as they were often referred to, ten, twelve hours a day from an early age, and yet people were still poor, still struggling. Did you think of yourself as struggling?

[00:19:58] Hilda Jean Smith: I thought I was a [00:20:00] struggling person. We never missed a meal and we never were outdoors. We ate something, even if it was beans and rice. I had support from friends and family, but there were things that I would have liked to have done on a different level that I didn't do.

[00:20:17] Jeff Geoffray: You were accepted to the Adult Education Center, and in order to attend, you also had to attend a second school at night to get your GED. That meant you were attending classes more than ten or eleven hours a day [00:20:30] for nine months. Can you recall what kind of changes you were going through because of that intense experience?

[00:20:37] Hilda Jean Smith: Ah, I don't know if it's a, a thing of being 75 years old or what it is with this retroflection, but coming from the South a lot of times you'll find people who get stuck in a rut. That it has been this way. Why change it? It's not bothering nobody. And they don't know anything different because they haven't opened up, they haven't read Newsweek.

When we were at the school they subscribed to Newsweek and [00:21:00] US News & World Report so that we would be current on current events in our environment. But in my community, my culture, we don't have subscriptions to those magazines. And what that did for us as students, it opened a different world for us. And when we learned about that world, we taught our children about that world.

The school was like a pivotal point in me seeing life differently. The more education I gained and the broader my scope got, it was more I understood about the economy of [00:21:30] life. I got married when I was sixteen, had my first child when I was seventeen. Some people, that's all you're gonna do the rest of your life.

Raise kids. You don't travel, you don't go no place, you don't do anything. But I wanted more and I, by the grace of God, I've been given more.

[00:21:44] Jeff Geoffray: When I talked to your fellow graduates and asked them about their lives and their experience at the center, do you think they would give a different view of the school?

[00:21:52] Hilda Jean Smith: Be prepared to receive a different perspective. Though we may have a common denominator being women of [00:22:00] African American culture, there may be some fine points where we overlap, based on our parenting family location it's gonna be different. In New Orleans, you got the uptown and the downtown. [laughs]. You got the the, this project and the that project.

[laughs]. We were from all over and we all brought something different to the table. We didn't know each other, but our stories were different.

[00:22:22] Jeff Geoffray: Is there one aspect of the training that helped you more than others?

[00:22:25] Hilda Jean Smith: There was a lot of teaching and preparation to get to a point of having that [00:22:30] confidence that I could go out and get this job. They couldn't refuse us, especially government jobs, especially jobs that were receiving subsidies. I don't know if you've ever done marketing for companies like Tupperware and all of the rest of the stuff that's out there.

This has been my philosophy 'cause I have participated in those programs. If you believe in the product, you can sell it. And it ain't a hard job because they can feel the energy, they can feel the, the heart. They can [00:23:00] feel, regardless of what the product is. It could be a new, new tool, a theory, an idea...

[00:23:05] Jeff Geoffray: So what I think you're saying is that the training in typing, shorthand, and all the other courses, gave you confidence in yourself. So when it came time to interview, you believed in the product. The product you had to sell, the product, being yourself. I know several business leaders and politicians I've interviewed said the same thing about Alice.

She believed in you all as a product so she had the utmost [00:23:30] confidence in selling the practical merits of hiring these highly skilled women she believed in, regardless of color, without quote sounding like a revolutionary unquote.

[00:23:42] Hilda Jean Smith: What your mom did. Your mom created those jobs for us. They weren't there.

[00:23:48] Jeff Geoffray: There is this trope in Hollywood movies and books like "The Help" that's called the White savior story, stories that on the surface are supposed to be about the Black experience, but [00:24:00] are in essence just a way for making White people look good because they're helping African Americans.

It would make me feel terrible if we were perpetuating that White savior myth by telling this. In my mind, students like yourself presented with an opportunity seized on it, made great sacrifices to do so, and in the process opened the doors for others. As Alice said, you, you changed the moral skyline of New Orleans.

You captured the imagination of [00:24:30] other women around the country, along with businessmen, reporters, and politicians. Alice's life was a struggle before she became the Director. But more importantly, she said she lacked confidence. She didn't love herself. She said the students and her colleagues helped build her professional self image.

She was given the job of a lifetime and she did it well, but she was no savior.

[00:24:55] Hilda Jean Smith: Your mother was Miss God, so she wasn't just doing her job. It was [00:25:00] more like a, a ministry. You could feel the love. You could feel her concerns. She took a personal interest in every student. Just cause you were referred to the program by the Manpower Development Training Act didn't mean you got into school either. She would interview you and so that even take it to another level on the commitment and getting to know the student.

And it wasn't that she became the counselor and solved all your problems, but her door was open.

[00:25:25] Jeff Geoffray: Who was your favorite teacher?

[00:25:27] Hilda Jean Smith: I enjoyed all the teachers there...[00:25:30]

[00:25:30] Jeff Geoffray: But you developed a lifelong friendship with one of the teachers named Floyd McLamb. How did that evolve? Why do you think he showed a special interest in you and, and you in him?

[00:25:41] Hilda Jean Smith: Teachers are individuals who find what the student's learning style is and teach to that style. He showed interest in all the students. He was kind. We became good friends. [00:26:00] I got laid off for a whole. day and lost a day's pay and he let me come down and work in his 927 Shop, his framing shop.

[00:26:09] Jeff Geoffray: When you say you lost a day's pay, I think you're referring to the fact that the school had a policy where if you missed an unexcused day or were late on a certain amount of occasions, you lost a portion of the stipend you received for attending. Is that right? Floyd was trying to make up for what you lost.

[00:26:25] Hilda Jean Smith: He's always trying to save people. I was renting a TV [00:26:30] and he had a fit that I was paying that exorbitant price for that television, and he gave me one and had me to take it and take that one back. Mr. McLamb has helped a lot of people. And I beat up on him. I said, "You never gave me nothing," and he said, "you didn't need it, you're too busy earning it."

[00:26:50] Jeff Geoffray: You recently found out that he gave you a gift while you were in school that was anonymous at the time. What happened there?

[00:26:57] Hilda Jean Smith: Your mother called me into her office [00:27:00] and told me that she had a secret donor, and that donor had given me three-hundred dollars. It was right at graduation time. The money came with a condition and the condition was I couldn't pay any bills. I couldn't spend it on anybody else. I had to spend it on myself. So I went out and bought me a very nice dress for graduation, a whole outfit.

I had never spent that kind of money on myself.

[00:27:24] Jeff Geoffray: After you graduated, you and Floyd stayed in touch?

[00:27:27] Hilda Jean Smith: I would come to see him whenever I'm in New Orleans. [00:27:30] I've stayed at the bed and breakfast that he had. We talk on the phone. When he travels he always send me something. When he was going through his illness, we talked almost every day. We talked and, and encouraged him when he wanted to go home. I never thought anything of it. And it's funny, we even talking about him now because I haven't seen him in a while. When I went home, I was with my brothers and sisters. I did not get a chance to visit him. I, I was telling my granddaughter this morning, I have to go to New Orleans, even if [00:28:00] it's only for a short while to mainly see him. I don't know when I won't be able to see him anymore. [laughs]. You know what I mean? I wanna enjoy him while he's alive.

[00:28:12] Jeff Geoffray: You two have much different views on religion. He's a gay man, raised in the Bible belt, traveled all over the world, a successful businessman, millionaire many times over, who believes in kindness and helping others. He's given away millions, even several houses [00:28:30] to people. He lives by the golden rule, but at the same time, he's not a fan of formal religion.

[00:28:35] Hilda Jean Smith: One of the things I don't do with him, I don't argue religion with him. Okay? And we talk about God and when we get to a point of me knowing when to shut up and shut down I do it. I respect his opinion. I, and I hear him and I give him mine, and he does listen. When he was growing up, when he was trying to learn, he was always told to [00:29:00] stop, don't ask questions. Shut up. be quiet." And that had a toll on him.

[00:29:05] Jeff Geoffray: Floyd has told me that he admires you because you live your life consistent with the principles of your religion. If you ask him if he believes in God, he says, "Which one?" Even Christians argue about how to interpret scriptures, whereas for Floyd, it all comes down to the Golden Rule -- being kind to others.

Do you ever get frustrated with some of the inconsistencies between one religion or [00:29:30] another, or with people who are church going but who don't live their lives consistent with principles like the Golden Rule?

[00:29:38] Hilda Jean Smith: The most segregated time on Sunday morning is eleven o'clock and that's when all the White people in their church and all the Black people in their church. Segregation, not coming together. The most religious time on Sunday morning isn't at eleven o'clock. It's what time the football game starts. What we bring to the table is our own personal experience and interpretation, and what we have been taught and what people do [00:30:00] in the name of God, in the name of God isn't always good. When we do things in the name of God, it should be done in a manner in which God gets the glory. People are gonna feel better about who God is.

[00:30:18] Mya Carter: Part 3: Working Life.

[00:30:25] Hilda Jean Smith: I worked in VA hospital. That was the first job I got after graduating and I [00:30:30] was always someplace helping out and a nursing supervisor would come and say, "Hilda, you aren't supposed to be here." But if somebody asked for an extra set of hands they don't follow the rules or the policies.

And she said, "well, if you wanna be a nurse, just go to nursing school."

[laughs]. And I remember that and that was my motivating factor for going to nursing school. When I came to California, I tried to get into an RN school and, and eventually I got my LVN. Then after I got that, I went on to get my RN.

[00:30:56] Jeff Geoffray: It must have been hard getting your Bachelor's degree in nursing while taking [00:31:00] care of your kids, your siblings, all while moving out to California.

[00:31:03] Hilda Jean Smith: I tried a couple programs, didn't make it. And, and you see, that's the thing that drives me in education. One of the things I learned from the Adult Education Center. When you want to teach a student, you find the means and the method to teach 'em. You don't enter a relationship with them to fail them. You're trying to help them succeed. I took a class at San Francisco State. The teacher walks [00:31:30] in on the first day of class and said, "I have 100 students in this class and I'm gonna fail half of you." I, I still remember that. And that was many years ago. If, if you all can't handle a hundred students in the class and you shouldn't have registered that many.

And as a teacher who imparts knowledge, my goal should be to find out what your learning style is and help you to achieve your goal.

[00:31:51] Jeff Geoffray: Tell me a little more about the transition from your first job as a secretary to becoming interested in nursing.

[00:31:57] Hilda Jean Smith: There was a doctor who was changing a dressing on the patient, [00:32:00] and I'm at my desk and there's a window and then he says, "come here." And I said, "Who me?" And he says, "Yes, you get in here." He needed somebody to hold the patient's limb. So I go in there and this man is bleeding all over the place and I almost fainted 'cause I didn't like blood.

And then I said, Hilda, you can't do that. You gotta stay you gotta stay alert, you gotta stay awake. And I just stood there and prayed and I got through it. But when the nursing supervisor came, [00:32:30] she said, "Hilda, you aren't supposed to be here." As a secretary, they asked me to go do it. I go do it. I mean, I didn't, you know, "that ain't in my job description." Either somebody wants something to be taken to surgery or picked up from surgery.

I, I just go help. And that's what led me into the field. I had not identified that as a calling and I really had not identified that at someplace I was gonna go.

[00:32:56] Jeff Geoffray: When graduated from from the Center. You did great on your interviews and ended [00:33:00] up with multiple offers. Eventually, you decided on the job with the Veterans Administration at the VA hospitals over some private companies because you wanted the security and the long term benefits that came with the job. I believe your salary at the VA was at least five times higher than what you had ever made, plus the benefits.

What difference did that money make?

[00:33:22] Hilda Jean Smith: It wasn't just the money, because money doesn't drive my life. I'm happy to have it, but it was also the position. [00:33:30] The stature that came with the job. There is something about a person who works and one who doesn't. Employment gives us a feeling of, of accomplishment, a feeling of well being, of being a contributing person to society.

I, I was able to stand taller because of my job.

[00:33:48] Jeff Geoffray: Still the money must have made an impact.

[00:33:50] Hilda Jean Smith: I didn't buy the house until after I was at the VA. Four bedrooms for all those kids.

[00:33:56] Jeff Geoffray: You decided to finally take up the invitation from Mrs. [00:34:00] Detiege your grade school teacher to join her in California. How big was your family when you went west?

[00:34:06] Hilda Jean Smith: When I moved to California and transferred from VA hospital, I had two, three, six... I had seven children. Plus three brothers and sisters and we slept in her basement. I got married in '63. I moved to California in '71, had finished the Adult Education [00:34:30] Center, gotten a job and everything, and I moved out here and we stayed in her basement for about a month or so, maybe a little longer. She knew someone who was a real estate agent who had a house for rent and I moved in that house with no furniture. And there was two mattresses in the house and we put paper on the mattresses and we slept on 'em till I was able to buy some furniture.

[00:34:51] Jeff Geoffray: Getting back to New Orleans, you were one of the first Black secretaries at the VA hospital. Did you have any negative experiences integrating your workplace?

[00:34:59] Hilda Jean Smith: I did [00:35:00] not have a bad time working at VA Hospital. Not painting flowers for myself is what I bring to the table. I get along with all people regardless of their race, creed or color.

[00:35:12] Jeff Geoffray: Would you say your approach to life helped you overcome situations that might have otherwise been negative?

[00:35:18] Hilda Jean Smith: I'm from New Orleans, and I was there when I had to sit behind on the bus when we, we were segregated, when we couldn't use this toilet or that toilet. I was [00:35:30] there. I've been standing at a bus stop and had rotten eggs thrown on me when I was dressed up going to an event. I have had all kinds of things that have happened to me because of my race.

I was in New Orleans when the Black Panthers were there after I graduated from the Adult Education Center and got my job at VA Hospital in New Orleans. And I was very radical. At my job they used to call me the Black Panther. [laughs]. I was spouting the boldness, the racism and all that kind [00:36:00] of stuff. There were certain things that that angered me.

Okay. But I have learned and I learned this a long time ago, not just at the age of 75, that you cannot let what other people do influence your behavior. The best way to do that is to surround yourself with positive stuff and not negative stuff. I do not wanna be an angry Black woman. I wanna give love.

[00:36:27] Jeff Geoffray: Do you think problems related solely [00:36:30] to the color of your skin that you encountered when you were young growing up in New Orleans have disappeared, or do you still encounter those issues, especially in the workplace I mean?

[00:36:40] Hilda Jean Smith: Black nurses have problems. It is still there. Because of your color you are only allowed to go so far. You're not given a respect of who you are. I don't care how we wanna get around it. This is a very racist place. I've actually had patients who said, "I don't want a Black nurse." [00:37:00] Now we respect if a woman who is Muslim says she doesn't want a male nurse. That's her religion and culture and we understand that. But for a person to say that uh, it is usually White, a person to say they don't want a person of color. At my job, they ran a thing on Black history Month and they talked about a nurse, Murphy was her name, one of the first nurses and what she had accomplished. And for the longest they would not let them work as a [00:37:30] nurse. They would not let them take care of White people. They sent 'em to Germany and they took care of the German soldiers and the German soldiers treated them bad. How do you feel that you have lived in a country, given your life and yourself for that country, and then foreigners treat you worse than you should be treated?

It's, it's not just African Americans. It's also brown people and yellow people. They're not treated with respect in this country.

[00:37:58] Jeff Geoffray: Has prayer helped you in your career as [00:38:00] a registered nurse?

[00:38:01] Hilda Jean Smith: At work you can't talk about religion, supposedly. My manager told me one time, "stop talking about religion and send the chaplain in [laughs]." But I'm gonna tell y'all something. It took the hospital many years to create a chaplaincy program in hospitals. They didn't always have it. Catholic hospitals had it, but other non-religious hospitals did not have a religious component for their patients. And then they did some research and discover that through [00:38:30] prayer and community, people get better and heal.

[00:38:33] Jeff Geoffray: What do you pray for?

[00:38:35] Hilda Jean Smith: When I'm on the phone with people, I don't end the conversation without praying for 'em. I offer prayer at Church on Sunday. I even have a wall with people's name on it that I pray for. My life is prayer.

[00:38:49] Jeff Geoffray: You pray for other people? Do you pray for yourself?

[00:38:53] Hilda Jean Smith: Prayer is a conversation with God. So I talk to God all the time. I don't worry about [00:39:00] parking. If I find a parking spot. "Thank you, God." I have a personal relationship with God. And what that relationship does is it gives me peace, it makes me happy, it gives me joy, and it really gives me direction. When to open my mouth, when to close it. And I'm gonna tell you something and you think about this and you try it. If there's something that you want to know, but asking at the time that you want to know it might not be the most appropriate time. [00:39:30] Just hold your peace. And I guarantee you within that day, your answer would come that you didn't even solicit.

About four years ago, I stopped using the word trying. When we use the word try, I believe that we're giving ourselves permission to fail because you can always say, "I tried," and that gives you a sense of success.

[00:39:57] Jeff Geoffray: At the Adult Education Center there was an [00:40:00] exercise that when I was younger, I thought was very simple, but recently I tried the exercise myself and I couldn't do it. The exercise was standing up and completing the sentence, "I am proud of myself because..." Do you remember that exercise?

[00:40:16] Hilda Jean Smith: ' Cause we are our worst critics, okay? We don't find the reasons, oh God, we don't find the reasons to be proud of ourselves. When I was growing up, I thought my skin was too dark. I [00:40:30] thought my feet were too big. People always saw in me what I didn't see in myself. It was others who encouraged me to go to school. It was others who encouraged me for better. Regardless of your thoughts, regardless of what's going on, your happiness should be derived from within, and it shouldn't be contingent on another person or circumstances.

[00:40:54] Jeff Geoffray: You were telling me that in your work and your classes, you're learning trauma informed care. [00:41:00] My understanding is that in trauma informed care, the practitioner shifts the focus from 'what's wrong with you' to 'what happened to you.' Can you tell me what you've learned about trauma informed care beyond the definition?

[00:41:15] Hilda Jean Smith: I have learned about informed trauma to really know what children have experienced. When you see people hurting you don't know what is causing their pain. We need to build people up. We need to support people. Even like [00:41:30] at my job, sometimes people are suicidal. I got to stop my jokes with them. I say, "If you don't like your life I know somebody that's dead will change places with you."

But I'm beginning to learn from taking this class on suicide prevention and taking a lot of classes and understanding trauma-informed care. People have experienced trauma in their lives and we need to stop long enough to have that conversation with them. Not to solve their problems. People don't want you to solve [00:42:00] their problems. They just want someone to listen to their problems.

[00:42:03] Jeff Geoffray: You've been ordained as a minister. I understand there's a lot of prejudice in the ministry, not with respect to race necessarily, but with respect to gender. How did you become a minister despite the bias against women in the clergy?

[00:42:17] Hilda Jean Smith: When I felt the calling of God to be a minister, I didn't accept it. I did not accept it 'cause I had been taught differently. When I was in New Orleans, I, along with [00:42:30] eleven other women, went to a training that was for women to learn how to be missionaries. I did that training for a year and when the pastor ordained us, he told us that if we "could be the husband of one wife" he would've ordained us as ministers because he only believed that men were ministers and pastors.

Alright. And [00:43:00] so I took, and I, I took that and I carried that forever and a day. I carried that. There's a very famous old preacher that's been around for a long time, dead now. Jay Vernon McGee. I used to listen to him all the time. Oh, he was so staunch in the Bible and he talked against women ministers. One day I was sitting at, in the cafeteria at San Francisco State University and I was [00:43:30] trying to study, I was perplexed. I was reading the Bible and this woman walked up to me and she said, "Oh, what's going on?" And I was telling her how the Bible says that in New Testament scripture that women are supposed to keep silent in the church. And a lot of men have used that for women to not be preachers. A lot of other things they've used too. And this woman told me, White woman, she told me, "Honey, when you're reading the Bible, you just [00:44:00] can't take scripture out and just read what you're reading. You have to look at the context. You have to look at the audience that it was said for what was going on at the moment to give meaning to what you're reading." Then I began to get like a release. Then people began to come into my life that encouraged me that God had a calling and for me to go in and preach the Gospel. You just can't pick things out of the Bible [00:44:30] and believe what you wanna believe. You gotta believe it from Genesis to Revelation. In Hebrews, there was a scripture that I was led to that says that there's neither male nor female.

God is not a male. God is a spirit. We that worship Him must worship God and spirit and truth. When we refer to God as a male that is bringing our own knowledge and our own experience into the conversation. People trying to keep God as a quote unquote [00:45:00] male is that hierarchy of male chauvinism that we live in. Look at the glass ceiling that women have been trying to break for a long time in this country. Look at the old boys club and the things that people do in the name of God.

[00:45:22] Mya Carter: Part 4: Today and the Future

[00:45:25] Hilda Jean Smith: The only way to [00:45:30] combat ignorance is through education. Currently, I am enrolled in a program online. We have to do some virtual classes, a lot of homework, discussion boards and reading, to become a facilitator for suicide prevention. I'm taking that class and I am studying to be certified as a psychiatric mental health registered nurse.[00:46:00]

[00:46:00] Jeff Geoffray: And you're going for a PhD.

[00:46:02] Hilda Jean Smith: I will start my Doctorate program, a Doctorate of nursing practice. I've been accepted in a program. I've already ordered my books, and the only reason I didn't start it right now is because before the opportunity to do this program came, I had already signed up for these other two classes.

[00:46:20] Jeff Geoffray: How long will it take to get your Doctorate?

[00:46:22] Hilda Jean Smith: This is a two-year program and I'm excited about it. I told other people about it, [00:46:30] and I told other people about everything that I find myself doing right now because that's the thing about sharing who you are and what you are. You're not, you're not selfish. You're not in competition. You want people to experience all they can. Our time here on Earth is not determined by us. While we're here we should make the most of it. Not being angry. Not being mean. Just celebrate and enjoy life. Smell the roses.

[00:46:57] Jeff Geoffray: What draws you to nursing in the mental health field [00:47:00] as opposed to other kinds of specialties within nursing?

[00:47:03] Hilda Jean Smith: Mental health is a very important thing in our society. It has been the dark thing, like we didn't wanna talk about alcoholism. We wouldn't, didn't wanna talk about a simple thing like diabetes. And now we find mental health is that taboo subject. You find that a lot of entertainers and well-known people are coming out saying they have mental health problems. A lot of people who we love have committed suicide.

[00:47:29] Jeff Geoffray: [00:47:30] What challenges do you face as a 75 year old pursuing a PhD?

[00:47:35] Hilda Jean Smith: Let me say this very prayerfully. You know my journey with Cancer. What the chemo did, and anybody you may play this for or listen to this, know that Cancer destroys the individual. It destroys your cell. It not only destroys Cancer cells, but it destroys good cells. And my memory is bad. So I asked myself, "Hilda, how is it [00:48:00] you, who can't remember nothing, call yourself going to school." All right? And I'm learning how to use the computer and challenging myself to do that and being patient while I'm doing it. I'm reading, I'm highlighting. I'm teaching other people.

[00:48:16] Jeff Geoffray: Some of your family members tease you because you're still in school.

[00:48:19] Hilda Jean Smith: Let me tell you something. I have all kinds of books. I have every book that I've ever gone to school with. I have two walls of books in my house. And I get teased... I've 'been in school all my life.' [00:48:30] But there's something with learning. It introduces you to things.

[00:48:33] Jeff Geoffray: Do you enjoy homework?

[00:48:35] Hilda Jean Smith: I spent my whole morning doing homework on a program at my job that they paid for me to attend as a nurse educator there and what I'm studying that blew me out of the water. We all know about the CDC, especially around the pandemic, but my class is on suicide prevention. But the CDC is loaded with data on suicide training prevention funding. It's [00:49:00] an aspect of that website that I've never looked at. We were assigned to look at two other websites and just knowing what's out there and knowing that people don't know what's out there, it has given me more determination to teach.

[00:49:17] Jeff Geoffray: Has higher education changed any of your religious views?

[00:49:20] Hilda Jean Smith: I had to learn while I was in seminary to love and respect people who are gay. Alright. When I went to seminary, [00:49:30] I used to beat up on gay people. With my religious self. Okay. And I had a teacher who said, "Hilda, I want you to take that Bible and go home and find me everywhere in there where the Lord beat up on gay people." I couldn't find no place. Okay? I, I stopped trying to live other people's lives through my vision. I've had a lot of patients who are gay. I support them and whatever they're going through, you know, I've had a, a lady who was a coworker, [00:50:00] she's White. She came into my office the other day and we had a meeting.

And when she got ready to leave, I said, "I love you." And she goes, "Hilda, when you say that, I feel it." She said, "I couldn't receive that from just anybody," or, "I'm not able to tell people that I love them, but you say it with feeling." And she said, "and I'm happy and I love you too."

[00:50:25] Jeff Geoffray: You recently spoke at a wedding about how your views about biracial children and [00:50:30] couples have changed recently.

[00:50:32] Hilda Jean Smith: The last few months, I, I have really come to accept the trauma that people go through who are products of biracial marriages and relationships, 'cause they're, they're not accepted in, in either race and they keep trying to fit in and to be accepted and find those who will accept them as they are. I have a biracial daughter, my granddaughter is biracial and biracial grandchildren, [00:51:00] and I said, those who love them really have to recognize their struggles and support them in life. And, and almost everyone there came up later and told me how much they appreciated the words.

[00:51:12] Jeff Geoffray: You continue to teach at church too.

[00:51:15] Hilda Jean Smith: I do teach. [laughs]. I teach Sunday school on Sunday mornings. [laughs]. Ahhh, last month I taught it from uh, Portland Airport 'cause I was [laughs] in Portland and tomorrow I will be teaching it from Seattle and, and then I'll get on the plane.

[00:51:29] Jeff Geoffray: What are [00:51:30] you teaching at Bible school?

[00:51:31] Hilda Jean Smith: We have been studying about justice. In the Bible when Job's friends came to him and they had an opinion on how God was treating him and where the justice was in it.

[00:51:42] Jeff Geoffray: It seems like there's no limit to your reserve of energy.

[00:51:45] Hilda Jean Smith: That is again an example of that word determination versus trying. When you attempt to do something, obstacles come in your way. Obstacles will come there, there's this force, you can call it whatever you [00:52:00] want that wanna ruin your day. You pick up your yourself and you dust yourself off and you continue to go. I was coming home from work two weeks ago on a Monday night, and the transmission went out on my car. I got work to do and patients to see and I couldn't be without a car. Within one week I bought a brand new car. A 2022 with all the bells and whistles and I did it all online and it wasn't because my credit was that great, it was because God was present.

[00:52:29] Jeff Geoffray: Who do you look [00:52:30] to for help when you need it? Like when you needed to get around, when you were in between cars?

[00:52:34] Hilda Jean Smith: My granddaughter took me a hour and a half drive away to a dealership to pick up the car. They introduced me to it, did everything, signed all the papers, and then the credit manager asked me, "where's the check?" I looked at him and said, "what check?" [laughs] He said, "you didn't bring a check with you?" I said, "no, I didn't know I was supposed to..." [laughs] "I done went to the credit [00:53:00] union. They're financing it!" I went in at 5:30 on a Friday and signed all these papers. They didn't have a check ready for me, so he said, "Monday morning, you make sure you call them. If we don't have a check from you by Friday, we'll be running this through our own credit department." Monday morning, the credit union called me and told me that they'd mailed the check they'd sent it to my email and all this here kind of stuff. But you hear what I'm saying? I did not come out of pocket one dollar, [00:53:30] but I have a car that I would only dream of.

[00:53:33] Jeff Geoffray: What is your dream car?. What color is it?

[00:53:36] Hilda Jean Smith: My car. Ooh, why is it everybody always ask about color? [laughs] Every car that I have actually purchased brand new, which this is the second one, they've always been silver because when you start adding color, you increase the price.

[00:53:51] Jeff Geoffray: A lot of people have hard time finding what they want especially these days with chip shortages and all kinds of delays in the supply chain. Did you have any [00:54:00] problems?

[00:54:01] Hilda Jean Smith: I ordered the car online. I went to chevrolet.com and put in all these little things that I wanted 'cause I was gonna get what I wanted. Then you put in your area code and they tell you what dealership in your area have the most features. I had twenty-five features that I wanted and this dealership had eighteen and that's why I chose the car. I wanted heated seats. I wanted a sunroof and I wanted all kinds of [00:54:30] stuff, but it didn't have several other things I wanted. It didn't have the heated seats, but it has the navigation, the phone, the, the media and all that. And then when a young man was showing me the, the car, he said the chip for heated seats isn't in, but this car does have heated seats. In three months when they come in you'll get a letter to bring your car in to any Chevrolet dealer and they'll be installed free. To me, Jeff, that's grace. That is grace.[00:55:00]

[00:55:01] Jeff Geoffray: As you were telling me that story, it makes me think that some people make grace happen in their lives. How do you feel about life right now?

[00:55:08] Hilda Jean Smith: My life right now is boiling over. [laughs] It is boiling over with things at work, teaching at the job, going to school, doing papers. I'm still seeing patients and there was a young woman thats at the hospital and I spent some time with her yesterday and she's hurting, so I'm reading all this stuff and that's what's blowing my mind and trying to [00:55:30] stay afloat. Other than that, I'm enjoying life right now. You just keep doing what you're doing to make life different for people.

My question to you, and I've been wanting to ask it for the last hour, what has sparked your interest in African Americans?

[00:55:46] Jeff Geoffray: I was five years old when I started taking the streetcar by myself to the Center after school, and then going into the school with my mother on Saturdays. I hung out during many functions, including when graduates came back to speak to new [00:56:00] students about their experiences in the workplace.

To me, you were like rock stars, role models. I knew your stories from listening to my mother, especially when the school died and she was trying to resurrect it. I knew your names. I began to measure success, the American dream, American history, democracy, perseverance, determination, strength, with all of you.

This project started simply as a way of reconnecting with you. [00:56:30] Reaching out to you in our grief after our mother passed away. Reconnecting with our heroes and seeing if you were still bigger than life and finding that you were. Then the project morphed into trying to find out what was the source of your strength.

Then a more formal study in line with what we thought our mother would've done. One of the important things that we learned was that what made you such extraordinary people before you even went to the Adult Education Center is that the New Orleans neighborhoods you came from, the families that you came [00:57:00] from, the African American community in New Orleans, and maybe even the United States was at least one important source of your strength. Unlike many other people in the United States who are not Black or not from New Orleans, we were given like a gift to be able to experience you and your culture in the setting of the school.

[00:57:21] Hilda Jean Smith: You're right on. I totally agree with you.

[00:57:23] Jeff Geoffray: My mother felt blessed to have the experience of teaching you. We felt blessed too.

[00:57:28] Hilda Jean Smith: I'm glad that you could say [00:57:30] that 'cause anybody else might have been jealous of the love that she gave us. 'Cause she loved us. She truly loved us and she poured herself into us. And the fact that she was your mother and she had still enough love to give you and us. We are so blessed. You and your sister, you look back over your upbringing, your mother, and the things she did, bringing you to school and being there with her as she worked. That was God in the process.

[00:57:56] Jeff Geoffray: Jeanne was a bit older than me when she started coming to the school. [00:58:00] Let me let her speak for herself to answer your question.

[00:58:03] Jeanne Geoffray: From my perspective growing up, we saw my mom come alive teaching you. It was magical to see Mom so happy when she was in a broken marriage, her husband didn't support her mentally or with money. She would come home and tell stories. Y'all were kind of magical to us, that y'all made my mom who she was. That's what I feel like sparked our interest. [00:58:30] Who were these women? And from there we went on this journey for the last few years, knowing more about you guys and, oh, these are the women that made Mom so happy, who's making us happy now.

[00:58:41] Hilda Jean Smith: She made us happy too. We loved her. Hopefully the podcast will do something to stimulate people and their choices in life and knowing that they're not alone and knowing the possibility of what they can accomplish. I, I tell people the word try, gives you permission to fail. I'm sure there have been times when they've been determined to do something and they have [00:59:00] achieved it. We are our worst enemies. We find fault in us that we think other people see.

[00:59:07] Jeff Geoffray: You said the school helped some students recognize their own grace. I think you did that for our mother too. She didn't recognize her own grace before she became director of the school and helped to fight to keep it alive.

[00:59:19] Hilda Jean Smith: I believe the things that you do for others, you don't do it for it to come back to you. You don't do it for what you're gonna gain from it because it's what God has called you to do, [00:59:30] and the blessing that you receive does not come from the same person that you gave it to.

I don't permit people to define me. I know who I am. I haven't always been happy with me. there have been times when I felt my skin was too dark. Because in our culture, lighter-skinned Blacks used to get treated better than darker-skinned Blacks. I have experienced that.

When I see young people today struggling my heart hurts. There is this guy at my job. He asked me, "Why do you care about me so much?" I said, "cause [01:00:00] you're a human being. That's your only requirement in life."

I wanna be the God that people have not seen. Not that I wanna be a God, but I wanna represent God to people to really know what it means to love. Love is when you can be completely nude before a whole audience of people, but yet you have all your clothes on. You don't have to pretend you don't have to fight. You wanna celebrate the moment and enjoy life. Love [01:00:30] assists us. It aids us in accepting another person's wrong, but it doesn't mean that you stay in that relationship and let that person abuse you, or misuse you, because that abuse could have a profound effect on your upbringing, your experience, and who you are as a person.

I'm one of few Blacks in this neighborhood that I live in. My neighbor during the Black Lives Matter movement came over to me. I've lived next to them for eleven years, and she said, [01:01:00] Hilda, "I did not know that race relations were this bad." She said, "My mother, we are from Mississippi, my mother was a principal of a school and we celebrated Martin Luther King's birthday every year, but she never told me about all this stuff."

What I told her was this. I said, "You celebrate your mother and you love your mother. Because she didn't teach you hate." Parents taught their children hate. Children didn't come here hating people of color. [01:01:30] You take two kids and you put 'em in the same area. They're gonna play, they're gonna have a good time. It's the parents that separate them.

Can I tell you something and not seem like I'm a rich woman because I'm not... I laughed, this morning I picked two quarters off the floor and they been down there for a minute. And I laughed at myself. I said, "Hilda, I remember a time you'd be around here scraping all them nickels, dimes and quarters to go to the store." [laughs] No money would be laying around here on the floor.

I tell [01:02:00] my friends, I think it's the place where God has brought me to. As much as I've struggled in life, as much as God has allowed me to be a blessing to someone else, I'm not struggling now. I live from check to check, yes, but it's not bad. And I'm meeting my bills and I eat some of the things I enjoy and I do some of the things I enjoy and I do a lot for other people. I'm not struggling now.

[01:02:28] Jeff Geoffray: Hilda, I'm so [01:02:30] grateful you took the time to share your life with us, not just in this conversation, but practically for all our lives. From your GED to your PhD, Jeanne and I like to say. We've talked a lot about the power of prayer. Can you leave us with a prayer?

[01:02:46] Hilda Jean Smith: Let us pray. Oh God as we come thanking you for this moment. Thank you for all that you do in our lives. Most of all we come thanking you for the gift of your Son. And Lord we come praying for this little group of people that you continue to bless us and Lord enable us to be a [01:03:00] blessing for somebody else. To build hedges around us and protect us from the evilness that is present. And let us be always able to see the good in somebody else, to make a difference, to show love and move forward. We thank you for the experiences that you have given us to help us to be the individuals that we are today. And we just celebrate who you are. And we celebrate life because of who you are. So all we can do is say thank you, we love you, and we continue to show our love toward you. And this we ask in [01:03:30] Jesus' name, amen.

[01:03:31] Jeff Geoffray: I think a lot about something you said to me a long time ago, you said, quote from the mountaintop we can see more mountains. And what I take away from that is that at the peak of insight, we realize how much more there is to know. To me, that's the ultimate metaphor for striving.

[01:03:48] Hilda Jean Smith: Yes. From the mountaintop you can see more mountains.

[01:03:53] Mya Carter: That concludes Episode 2 of Exchange Place. Hilda Jean Smith: from GED [01:04:00] PhD. Please join us for Episode 3.

[01:04:04] Jeff Geoffray: This has been a presentation of The 431 Exchange. We're a nonprofit organization dedicated to adults seeking to transform their lives through continuing education. We invite you to learn more about us by going to our website

431exchange.org

To hear more inspiring stories, please sign up for our newsletter.

Thanks.

[01:04:32] Steppin' Out by Kevin Gullage: I've been up all night.

I've been up all night.

I've been dancing and moving.

I feel all right.

I'm lookin' real good. I'm lookin' real good.

Don't be shy now. Don't be shy.

Don't be so rude.

Let's tear the house down.

Tear it down.

Let's break all the rules.

Let's get to steppin' out.

Steppin' out.[01:05:00]

Steppin' in the street. In the street.

Let's get to steppin' out. Steppin out!

Let's dance 'till the morning. Dance 'till the morning.

Tonight is the night to do it all right let's get to steppin out.

Steppin' out.

Steppin' out. Steppin' out.

Exchange Place: How A Small Struggling School Transformed Civil Rights in New Orleans and the Nation

Ep. 2 Hilda Jean Smith: From GED to PhD

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