Born in Harrisonburg on September 28, 1927, Doris Harper Allen lived in the city for most of her life. Her memoir, The Way It Was Not The Way It Is provides a great deal of insight into the culture, society, and significant changes that surrounded and affected the Madison campus. The book is an easy read and, though her description of life growing up in the Jim Crow South is full of difficult and painful moments, however, Allen never once expresses bitterness. The title of the memoir serves as a refrain appended to the stories she tells; at times it reflects a simple matter-of-factness about the overt racism and discrimination so commonplace in the time of her youth. For example, after describing how she always had to use the back door to visit her uncle, the chief cook in the Kavanaugh Hotel on Main Street, as well as how she was not allowed to buy the food he served there, she simply reminds the reader: “The way it was (not the way it is).” Yet Allen also uses the phrase to evoke a longing for a simpler time, such as when she retells the story of her annual family reunion when she was still a little girl. Her family would pile into three Model T Fords and drive over the Blue Ridge Mountains for a huge picnic, as she writes,
We children were so busy running and playing with our cousins of which we had new and old ones. We had the best times of our lives. We entertained ourselves with each other, never distracting the older members from their conversations. There were new games we had to learn from each other. That kept us busy and being all family, we knew the rules and respect you paid each other, so we played well together. Fun, fun, nothing but fun! All families used the same discipline and never had a disagreement. Prayer and peace prevailed at all time. The way it was (not the way it is).
Allen’s mother, Julia Howard, taught her many life skills from an early age, including canning, the care of infants, cooking, sewing, washing, ironing, and how to care for the elderly. She began helping with these chores at age five. She learned to drive at twelve and her parents had her teach her siblings the skill. Allen eventually got her license (after a warning from a policeman) at age 23.
She likely walked to Hillcrest for her work, which was thirteen blocks from Effinger Street. Even though Allen worked on the campus of Madison College, she could not attend classes there as it was an all-white school. Indeed, the closest black college (though still segregated) was Virginia State University in Petersburg, 160 miles from Harrisonburg. She reports that the Shenandoah Valley offered plenty of opportunity for blacks to work, though the types of jobs were almost entirely within the service industry: “as maids, cooks, waiters, porters, chauffeurs, and garbage collectors, and the shoe shine stand was always busy….There was no training school for most jobs, none at all. People learned from others who showed them how. The way it was (not the way it is).” As a result, while it was not necessarily difficult for an African-American to get a job, the lack of education or training opportunities made it almost impossible to achieve social mobility or advance in any meaningful way along a professional career. Thus, many black residents of Harrisonburg worked the same service jobs for years, which could explain why Allen worked at Hillcrest for over a decade.
Allen, like all African-Americans growing up in the Jim Crow era, experienced discrimination from birth. A white man, Mr. Kelly, owned a house and a big field at the end of her street. He would routinely sit on his front porch with a loaded shotgun, waiting for someone to cross over onto his property. As Allen tells it: “We took chances and played games with him all the time. He made it known he did not like certain races of people and used profanities”. She relates how a black person would only ever visit one of the big department stores in town (Grants, Charles, Woolworth’s, and McCrory’s) for the purpose of purchasing something he or she needed, but never went there to browse. As Allen recounts, “You were watched or followed all the time by the floor manager, which every store provided. You could not try on clothing or shoes, you could never return an article, or get a refund….The way it was (not the way it is).”
In the 1950s, Allen gave birth to at least one of her children at the Rockingham Memorial Hospital (currently the building occupied by the Student Success Center and the University Health Center). Blacks had to enter the hospital from the side or back entrances, even expectant mothers, and Allen was no exception. True to form, Allen does not dwell on the pain of the past, but rather looks with pride at the building now: “[The] University Health Center entrance is on Cantrell (now named Martin Luther King Jr. Way by vote of the people). The new street was named on Martin Luther King Jr.’s 86th birthday in January 2013. It is a fitting name as the front doors that were closed to blacks at the two institutions are now opened. The way it is.”
JMU President Dr. Jonathan Alger presents Doris Harper Allen with an Honorary Doctorate from James Madison University. Photo Courtesy of James Madison University. Retrieved from https://www.vmrc.org/news/details/5843/doris-harper-allen-awarded-honorary-doctorate (accessed December 14, 2020).
Reference:
Allen, Doris Harper. The Way It Was Not The Way It Is. Ed. Esther Stenson. Harrisonburg: D.H. Allen, 2015.
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