Professional Women
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- Anne Batten oral history interview, 1993 July 26
- Anne Batten discusses growing up in the Dilworth community in Charlotte, North Carolina, her career as a teacher, and the role she played in historic preservation in Mecklenburg County. Subjects include teaching English, French, and history in rural North Carolina and in Charlotte; her role as president of the Mecklenburg Historical Association and working to preserve local historic sites; notable Charlotte families and individuals; and her views on school desegregation in Charlotte.
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- Sister Mary Michel Boulus oral history interview, 1993 June 28
- Sister Mary Michel Boulus recounts her life and her forty-five year career in Catholic education and administration. The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, Sister Boulus grew up in Concord and describes the challenges the Catholic community faced there, including some of the difficulties she personally encountered as a Catholic in a majority-Protestant community. She taught math at both public and Catholic schools before joining the Sisters of Mercy in 1949 and provides a summary of the order's history and how the Sisters became affiliated with Belmont Abbey. She shares some of her experiences working at Catholic high schools around the state and discusses her experiences as the president of Sacred Heart College. Sister Boulus also reflects on the challenges that faced Catholic educational institutions at that time, including the order's declining numbers, the popularity of pastoral ministry over education for newer sisters, and the resulting financial burdens placed on these institutions as they were forced to replace aging religious staff with lay people.
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- Dorothy Counts-Scoggins oral history interview 3, 1996 January 20
- Dorothy Counts-Scoggins recounts being the first African American student to integrate Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina at the age of fifteen. Topics discussed include the remainder of her secondary education, Charlotte busing and her views on the future of Charlotte's schools, as well as how her experience at Harding led her to become an advocate for children.
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- Thereasea Delerine Elder oral history interview 1, 1993 June 25
- Thereasea Elder recounts her life and career as a public health nurse in Charlotte, North Carolina. Before going into public health, Mrs. Elder was a nurse at Good Samaritan Hospital, the region's only hospital for African Americans. She discusses working at the hospital and how her job differed from that of white nurses at the segregated Charlotte Memorial Hospital. She explains that she left Good Samaritan to work in public health because she had seen what the lack of preventive services and education could do. Mrs. Elder joined the Mecklenburg County Health Department in 1962, and she discusses her experience as one of two African American nurses who integrated the public health nursing service. She also explains how the department's approach to public health nursing evolved over the years. She describes her health consulting and volunteer work with organizations including hospice, the Cancer Prevention Coalition, Energy Committed to Offenders, and the Greenville Community Historical Society. Mrs. Elder discusses growing up in the Greenville neighborhood and the negative effects the Southern Asbestos Company Mills had on the health of her family and the community. She also discusses how the African American community's perception of hospitals and the medical profession changed over time from the 1930s to the 1950s. Mrs. Elder concludes by discussing the growing problem of teen pregnancy at the time of the interview and the challenges women faced before abortion was legal and birth control was easily obtainable.
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- Elisabeth G. Hair oral history interview, 1993 June 25
- Elisabeth "Liz" Hair, the first woman to be elected to the Mecklenburg County Commission, recounts her life and involvement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg's government and Democratic Party. Having grown up in a prominent political family involved with the Democratic Party in Missouri, Mrs. Hair explains that getting involved in the League of Women Voters and the local Democratic Party was a priority for her after moving to Charlotte. She describes the internal politics of Charlotte's Democratic Party in the 1950s and the work she did to bring structure to a chaotic organization. This led to a more prominent role for her in local and state politics in the 1960s, when she was the chairman of the Mecklenburg County Board of Elections and a member of the Carlyle Commission, which established North Carolina's community college system and brought a number of colleges into the public university system. Mrs. Hair discusses her role in the formation of the Charlotte Women's Political Caucus, explaining how that led to her election to the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners as its first female commissioner in 1972, where she would go on to become the board's first female chairman in 1974. She describes the sexism she faced from the male commissioners, from their suggestion that she be the board’s 'hostess' at her first county commissioners' meeting to the internal politicking they engaged in to unseat her as chairman in 1977. Mrs. Hair discusses many of the political issues she fought for while on the Board of Commissioners, including education, affirmative action, food stamps, energy, and the arts. She also discusses her political and civic activities at the time of the interview, including her election to the State Community College Board and as a registered lobbyist for Piedmont Gas, and her involvement with North Carolina Dance Theatre (now Charlotte Ballet). Mrs. Hair concludes the interview with a reflection on her family and her political legacy in Charlotte.
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- Sara Wyche Higgins oral history interview, 1993 June 7
- Sara Wyche Higgins discusses her almost forty years as a piano teacher in Mint Hill and Charlotte, North Carolina. After moving to Mint Hill in the late 1940s, Mrs. Higgins soon began playing accompaniment at Bain School (now Bain Elementary School), and she describes the central role the school played in the close-knit community's cultural life. A former president of the Charlotte Piano Teachers' Forum, Mrs. Higgins discusses the role the organization has had in raising the level of music education in the city through its monthly programs, master classes, and recitals. She shares her own philosophy on teaching piano, including the need for regular practice and the importance of creating a positive learning experience for children. Mrs. Higgins also discusses working at the Southern Park Music School, explaining that the school's success shows that music lessons can occur in a businesslike setting without reducing the standards of instruction.
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- Gladys Lavitan oral history interview 2, 1993 July 1
- Gladys Lavitan recounts her life and her sixty-three year acting career in Charlotte, North Carolina. She describes growing up in Charlotte during the Depression, the city's reaction to the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, and how the city grew in the post-war years. Mrs. Lavitan's acting career officially began at the age of fourteen when she became the youngest member of the Little Theatre of Charlotte (which later became Theatre Charlotte). She discusses how the city's theater community developed, with attention to the roles Tom Humble at the Little Theatre and Dorothy Masterson at the Golden Circle Theatre played in shaping the community's culture. In addition to her stage career, Mrs. Lavitan was a popular radio personality and interviewer during the 1940s and 1950s, and she discusses her work as the host of WAYS-AM's "Woman's World" talk show, which ran until 1960. Mrs. Lavitan also discusses the growth of Charlotte's Jewish community over her lifetime, including her family's role in the founding of Charlotte's first Reform synagogue, Temple Beth El, and the development of Shalom Park and the Jewish Community Center.
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- Jonnie McLeod oral history interview 1, 1993 July 6
- In this interview, Dr. Jonnie McLeod discusses her forty-year long career as a physician and as a central figure in Charlotte's medical community. She discusses the role her gender has played in her education and career, including the sexism she has faced over the years. She also explains the importance of female professional mentors, and how supportive her husband has been of her career. Dr. McLeod explains how she came to develop the sex education program for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in the 1960s and discusses the resistance to the program by certain organizations in the city. Her work with the school system lead to her involvement in the early 1970s with the treatment and prevention of substance abuse in young people, an issue to which Dr. McLeod would devote her future career. She describes the development of Charlotte's first drug treatment center, Open House (later called the McLeod Addictive Disease Center). She discusses her ongoing work at the time of interview including chairing the Impaired Physicians Committee, and AIDS education and outreach. Dr. McLeod concludes by discussing challenges facing the medical community such as substance abuse by doctors and the obstructive effect insurance companies can have on providing treatment for substance abuse., Jonnie McLeod was a 69-year-old woman at the time of interview. She was born in Lucedale, Mississippi in 1923. She was educated at Newcomb College and Tulane University School of Medicine, and was employed as a pediatrician, sex educator, substance abuse rehabilitator, and college instructor., Digitization made possible by funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.