Interviewee: Mr. Corey Rogers, male, African American, Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History, Augusta,

Interviewer: Dr. Niki Christodoulou, Augusta University

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Dr. Christodoulou: Mr. Rogers, Thank you for coming here and so uh, so first of all, I want you to tell me a little bit of information about yourself. Your name, um, ethnic background - if you want to tell me when you were born and where, and this information so that I have an idea of who you are.

Mr. Rogers: Sounds good. Um, my name is Corey Rogers. Uh, I was born here in Augusta, Georgia December 15th, 1973. Um, for the most part, I’ve spent most of my life here in Augusta with the exception of going off to school, to Undergraduate, and then graduate school so there was about a seven year stinge I was away from the city. Um, came back around 1999 and I’ve been here ever since - I’ve been back since. Um, Augusta growing up here was a very interesting city, um you know, lots of history, lots of culture here in the Augusta area. Um, it’s a fun place to grow up. One of the things from a personal standpoint: I didn’t know much about Augusta’s history growing up here. My parents are from South Carolina so uh most of my holidays, if not all of my holidays, a lot of what sort of what shaped me came from South Carolina. So it wasn’t till I was in graduate school where I began to fully understand the importance of individuals like Lucy Craft Laney, and Reverend C.T. Walker, and other sort of icon figures in the Augusta history. So, that really wasn’t until I was involved, and I was working on various projects as an adult. Um, but uh let’s see. I guess personally - I love this big city difference it has in bearing but I consider myself sort of a worldly person. I love to travel. I love to meet people. Different people from different walks of life - and actually doing that helps me sort of frame a lot of my worldview, and also helps me understand and do my job here, as well. Um, that’s all, I think, about it. All I can think of about now. (laughs) (2:50 seconds).

Dr. Christodoulou: Can I ask more about your personal experiences and how they connect with your work here, as we move on? (2:57 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Sounds good. (2:58 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Um, so what is the importance of Mrs. Laney, of Lucy Laney in education… (3:09 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Ok… (3:09 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: … in the CSRA and even more broadly? (3:13 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Well one thing to understand about Lucy Craft Laney is that she was a national figure of prominence. That’s one thing that I often like to stress when people come to the museum or people ask me about Ms. Laney. Ms. Laney was not this obscure educator living in Augusta with this backwards school that only catered to a certain clientele. At the height of its popularity, the Haines Institute was a nationally recognized school with a very comprehensive education - very detailed outlined programming that Ms. Laney crafted from the very beginning. She as a national figure of prominence - not only did she rise to notoriety but also many of the people that she mentored would also become prominent educators and prominent activists in their own right. Now, there’s a lot to take in when it comes to looking at Ms. Laney and looking at her life. I guess that to your initial question, “What was her contribution to education?” I think that the first thing to understand is that Ms. Laney created what we today would call a comprehensive style approach education. So um, many schools that have a comprehensive education where they offer various tracks from vocational to more classical style, business, a little bit of everything, Ms. Laney had this all the way back to the late 1800s – early 1900s. So, in that case, she was a visionary where she created a school that catered to the various needs of her community. In other words, she recognized early that not everybody could go to college. She recognized early on that not everybody would work well with their hands. So she created a school that offered various avenues for different people, so I think that’s very important. Know that even before it was sort of in vogue to talk about a comprehensive education, here was Ms. Laney who created such, such an uh instrument here in the Augusta area. Um, most of her focus in my opinion, was on a classical style of education. Um, so her – and her students for a four- year liberal arts education. Most of her students once they graduated from Haines would go to certain schools: Atlanta University, which is today in Atlanta Georgia; Lincoln University in Pennsylvania; Howard University – Washington D.C.; and most her students ended up going to Howard would either go to the medical school or the law school. So um, Ms. Laney firmly believed in preparing her students for higher education and the bulk of them ended up going to those schools, and from there ended up carving out their own legacy with respect to their own profession. Whether they were doctors, lawyers, dentists. In the case of Frank Yerby, he became of the most recognizable African American authors of the 20th century educated right at Ms. Laney’s school at Haines and later Payne College. Um and so, that was Frank Yerby. I often use him as an example of the type of product that Ms. Laney produced - the type of student that came out of Haines. Very well prepared, um, you know with a strict curriculum. Strict discipline in terms of how students should act, behave, things of that nature, and it also culminated in these young people who became very, very successful in their personal lives. So, Ms. Laney just had it - the it factor - and education was paramount to her, it was paramount. One thing I often like to point out, uh, is Ms. Laney creating the Haines Institute, it was chartered in 1886. So, here you have 21 years removed from the formal end of slavery in the United States. I think in the mind of Ms. Laney, she wanted to create a school that would educate the sons and daughters of former slaves. It was one generation removed, and even though Ms. Laney was never a slave herself, she was born during slavery in 1854. So, Ms. Laney was born in an era in which African Americans were second class citizens. She saw education as a vehicle to pull them out of the mental shackles of slavery, the physical shackles of slavery, and pull them out of this whole notion of being second class citizens. Education was that doorway they would create - this balance - within American society and so um, I often say Ms. Laney’s purpose in creating the school, and creating the climate of education, it was very purpose driven. She had a purpose in mind. She had a calling in mind, and um she used every resource at her disposal to create the schools and to create the climate for education. (9:08 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: What were some things about 1886 with uh that’s when slavery ended? (9:17 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Ended in 1865. (9:19 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: 1965. (9:20 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: In 1865. (9:21 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: In 1865. (9:21 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (smiles, laughter) Yeah. (9:23 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: So … tell me, what were the happenings during that era? So, the slavery ended. Do you know what other happenings might have helped her formulate her vision, and also gave her the ways to bring her vision to life? (9:58 seconds).

Mr. Rogers: Well, first thing um you have is…and this number is pretty staggering if you think about it. But, the first thing that really gave Ms. Laney license to do what she did was Four Million. For the 13th amendment to the Constitution freed 4 million people. So, you have 4 million newly freed slaves as a result of a civil war that was fought that killed over 600,00 Americans. The passage of the 13th Amendment, uh the assassination of our president, so you have a whole lot going on. For these 4 million people who are freed, now what do you do? You have your freedom, what do you do with the freedom? Not only that but let’s not forget the quarter of a million freed people of color and there’s a distinction that I often like to make. Prior to the civil war, there’s always been sort of this myth about the American south, that every person of color was slaved. In fact, at the onset of the hostilities in Charleston in 1861, there was a quarter of a million African Americans who freely lived within the south with very few rights - if not little - to none - no rights at all, in many cases. Some fought for the South as a matter of fact. Thousands of African Americans fought with the South during the Civil War. But, that’s another story for another time. Uh, but here you have 4 million people that's free now; what’s there to do? You also have a federal government who’s come in and imposed um sort of an, almost, formal martial law if you will. That period primarily we call the reconstruction period where the South is trying to rejoin the union – um, their sort of reconstructing the social fabric of the South. So, pre-1861, you have your planter class, you know, poor whites and then, on the bottom of the totem poll, you have people of color. So, now all the sudden the social dynamic is turned up on its head. You have a void with thousands of members of the planter class who are dead - uh out of a job - if you will. They’re plantations that are no longer running as they ran pre-1861. Um so, in steps, the federal government is to … what we call, a reconstruction period. And during this period, the years after the civil war, African Americans from many fronts begin to make strides. Begin to make progress. Not all, but some, and there seems to be a sense of hope and optimism not just in education, but you have African Americans going into politics. You have African Americans going to businesses. African Americans, um, becoming you know - going to college becoming very well educated. So you essentially – you have – here is a push on many, many different fronts to create a sense of equality um - to even show America that African Americans have the intellectual qualities, the business accruement, and the political fervor to keep with anyone. And so um, Ms. Laney, after graduating from college in 1873, saw education as that vehicle and so it, it, it, certainly was the climate in the country - the climate certainly lent itself to allow Ms. Laney to create these institutions. Now, what really made it even more profound, more pronounced rather, was the fact that many of the before mentioned plantation owners, Confederate officers, whites who felt themselves disenfranchised because of the civil war, um many of them begin to take back power both legally and illegally after the civil war. So, as reconstruction began to dive in - now all the sudden um you have this era that sort has upsurged in where African Americans are targeted. Schools are burned; churches are burned; black men are kept from voting usually by terrorist tactics … you see the rise of groups like the Ku Klux Klan … and this ushers in, what we call, the period of Jim Crow. Period of legal segregation. And I think this period of legal segregation even gave Ms. Laney even more fuel to do what she did. Because now she sees that America is creating this system of sort of a pseudo-slavery; an extension of slavery, a second class citizenry, and Ms. Laney wanted to assure that African Americans had all the tools necessary to compete in any given situation especially with um these dual systems being set up in the deep South. Where you have White over here and people of color over there. So, she, she recognized the time she lived in; adjusted accordingly in terms of her mission; but never let the time period which she lived in dictate what she should do. I often like to say she faced a lot of racism, of course, because she faced a lot of sexism and none of that mattered to her. (15:59 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: And … the fact that none of this mattered was because apparently she have had some internal strength. (16:08 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (nodding)

Dr. Christodoulou: That is, uh, often because of our experiences or because our vision is so strong that it becomes a driving force, and nothing else matters. (16:28 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Okay. Uh. I think there were probably two things that drove Ms. Laney. Number one: she was a very spiritual woman. Um, she and her family were members of the Presbyterian church, and when I say family, I mean really extended family. Ms. Laney never married and she never had any children of her own. She had 9 brothers and sisters all born in Aiken, Georgia. Uh, her father Reverend David Laney, who was a carpenter, was the pastor of Washington Avenue Presbyterian Church in Aiken, Georgia. And actually it, it’s sort of interesting. The sort of spirit, that of leadership, the spirit of wanting, to see change from about. I think it was sort of in her DNA because according to sort of the rural accounts in the black community, it was in Reverend David Laney on the steps of Washington Avenue - that Presbyterian church - that read the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863 after it was passed. So, I think that sort of spirit of leadership; that sort of spirit of vision; that sort of spirit of wanting to lead; sort of probably came from her father. A lot of it trickled down into the siblings because we focus on Ms. Laney here because she was the only one of the ten that lived here, so, but, if you look at some of her siblings, they became very successful in their own right and I’ll talk a little bit about that as we go along. I think that uh her spirituality had a lot to do with it. Just the sense of believing in a higher power. Calling on this higher power and giving her the strength and encouragement to do what she did giving to the environment and the climate in which she did it. But, also, I think that even to sort of a bigger extent, the sense of community was where she sustained a lot of her strength. One of the unintended consequences of legal segregation was that it forced, in many cases, communities to become stronger and more cohesive and so the federal government and state governments, local governments, create these dual systems treating African Americans as second class citizens. But, what African Americans did was sort of turn the tables on the system, and said what we’re going to do; we’re going to make our communities that much more stronger. We’re going to make our systems that much more stronger: churches, businesses, schools; you name it. So, Ms. Laney looked to the community as her driving force to help her create these entities: the nursing school, the kindergarten, the primary school, the high school, all the things that she created in the Augusta Area. So, you'll often find that if you read many of the newspaper accounts of that era, if you read some oral accounts - oral traditions - that have been recorded - written down – so, you’ll notice that Ms. Laney often worked with others regardless of their socioeconomic background. Regardless of their religion, whether they were Baptists, Methodists, Catholics. It really didn’t matter to Ms. Laney. She worked with everyone, and she created a climate in which others felt comfortable in uh stepping up to the plate. Doing things for the community; uh working with others; so I think that the two things that really helped her: her spirituality, but more importantly, I think just the sense of community and knowing that the community was behind her, and, knowing that what she was doing would, in turn, benefit the community. (20:23)

Dr. Christodoulou: So um, … I have a question for Haines School. Maybe you said that already. Were there grade levels? (22.39 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (Smiling, nodding) Yes, yes. (22:39 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Haines was K-12; it was Kindergarten through 12. You could … there, there, were people who literally spent their entire educational career prior to going off to college at one school. At Haines, and often, you will find that many of the black institutions started, they had a kindergarten or an elementary school component to it. Um, and then, even college, what we think of as college today. Many of those colleges or universities had high school components. The rationale being that many people, many African Americans, coming out of slavery seeking education needed a foundation. They needed a foundation. You just couldn’t throw them into a four-year liberal arts or, or, a four-year high school component and expect them to learn. So, what Ms. Laney and many others did was they established these schools. They laid the foundation. So, you added Kindergarten, Primary school; you had what we today call elementary, middle, and high school and in the case of Haines you even had um courses offered at Haines on the level of your first and second year in college. So, Haines was often referred to as a, “Junior college,” in many cases. I even had pamphlets where it said, “Haines Junior College,” because most of her, if not all of her, graduates if not graduated from high school; they were already two years ahead of their peers in college. It was just that uh strenuous of a curriculum - If you will. I guess to your question; Haines was K-12. (22:27 Seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: And it was for boys and girls. For different people you said… for… (22:32 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (nodding) Yeah. (22:34 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Yes. (22:33 seconds)

Mr: Rogers: Now, if you don’t mind. I’m going to sort of steer off for a moment and talk a bit about the history of the school because it actually pertains to what was mentioned. Initially, Ms. Laney wanted it to be an all girls school. So originally, it was supposed to be just girls. Um as word in the community began to filter throughout the community that this young educator, Lucy Laney, was here in Augusta - moved from Savannah to Augusta. As of matter of fact, when she graduated from Atlanta University, she taught in four different cities; it wasn’t just Augusta. She taught in Milledgeville, Georgia; she taught in Aiken; in Savannah; and then she came to Augusta. But, when word began to spread, several of the young men in the community began to show up at the school. Or, actually, church because she started the school at The Fellowship Hall of Christ Presbyterian Church here in Augusta, which is right across the street from where you parked. However, at the time, Christ Presbyterian Church was located on the corner of on, on, Telfair Street, um, in downtown Augusta and then it moved to this community. So initially, she wanted to be sort of an all girls school where, you know, she could work on, you know: English, Math, Writing but also social graces, etiquette, all little bit of everything. But, once the young boys in the community began showing up. She made it co-educational. She invited everyone in and um, from there, she just went about educating as many students as she could find. (24:20 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Um without Ms. Laney - how would things be different? (24:39 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (Smiles) Oh, well it is kind of different to say because you never know if there was no Ms. Laney, but if someone else had stepped up to the plate. Would there be another individual inspired like Ms. Laney? But, you know. To answer your question. To answer your question: “if there were uh no Ms. Laney,” I think that things would probably look a lot different. Um you know, because Ms. Laney wasn’t just uh a teacher that educated. She inspired. I mean you know; it’s one thing to, you know - go to school and, you know, have teachers that are part of your life and you don’t remember um how they impacted your life. Of all the Haines graduates that I’ve interviewed over the years that I’ve been here, um everyone says the exact same thing. It’s almost like scripted. They always say Ms. Laney was strict. The teachers at the school were very, very, strict. Um, you had to stay in line. You had to wear uniforms. You had to do this; you had to do that, and they all loved it. They all loved it. Because it seems as though um whether it were to take away from Ms. Laney or from her colleagues that educated these young people was the sense that they can accomplish anything. That they could do anything. That skin color had no, no, bearing on what they could achieve in life. I mean they … I often like to say that their the most fanatical people that I know here in Augusta - were graduates of the Haines Institute, and then, subsequently, graduates of the Lucy Laney High School which of course there’s a direct linkage – a direct connection between the two schools. Um and so, there very, and fanatical may be strong word to use, but they had a deep love and a deep commitment for Ms. Laney - for what Ms. Laney created - for the ideals that she instilled upon people in the community. Um, so, I guess, if I were to say if there were no Ms. Laney, I think that the, the, makeup of education within the black community, throughout the country in the early 1900s, would have looked a lot different. Because Ms. Laney - one: not only inspired the young people but she inspired other educators including one that overshadowed her - that become a major figure in education and social activism and that was Mary Mcleod Bethune. So, she is a direct connect to Ms. Laney. So I think that the landscape would look a whole lot different because I think not only was Ms. Laney educating but she was also inspiring (nods) (22:33 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: White people as well? Or just Blacks mainly? Was for White people as well or ... (27:40 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Oh well the school was um all African America school. Uh, it, of course, was created during segregation, so there were White schools, and there were Black schools. Um, I think that for many northern Whites; I think that for many liberal Whites; I think that it served as an example of what African Americans could do if racism is set to side. If you – if you, gave African Americans an opportunity to create and gave them the opportunity to use things they could do it. Um, they could do those things … Oh, ok. So, yeah, I believe that, um, for many Whites Ms. Laney did serve as a vehicle, or sort of a window, into what African Americans could achieve. Probably the most glaring example was some of the benefactors of the school. So, Mrs. Francine Haines, a northern woman, a northern woman, who met Ms. Laney in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1886, gave initially ten thousand dollars for Ms. Laney and bought the land and construction of The Haines Institute. And that’s because she saw something in Ms. Laney, and many of the other Whites, White Americans who gave Ms. Laney money many years later probably saw the same thing. Ms. Laney, of course, was a great ambassador, not only for education but a great ambassador for the community. Um, she began uh she took up an interest in the language in Latin when she was uh in Aiken, and furthered that love and interest of Latin when she was in college. And so, she spoke Latin fluently and taught Latin at the school. Every student in the high school component was required to take Latin. And so, often you go over to the school and hear her speaking in Latin. Many of her students uh spoke Latin fluently as well. So, she was a great ambassador for what they could achieve if you just stepped out of the way and stopped putting obstacles in the way of their achievement (30:10 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: And not only in Augusta, but also in the broader area and the nation. (30:15 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Oh, oh, yes. Ms. Laney inspired. I keep using the word “inspired” but I think that’s the most appropriate word to use. As it relates to what her legacy was all about. Giving two examples - Uh, Ms. Laney inspired two young women to do exactly what she did here in Augusta. So, there was a young woman by the name of Charlotte Hawkins Brown who started a school in North Carolina called The Palmer Institute. It was an all-girls school based off of Ms. Laney’s Haines Institute. As a matter of fact, in Dr. Brown’s autobiography, she cites, “Haines Institute,” as the blueprint for her school in North Carolina. But, probably the most glaring example and most well known example is Mary Bethune. A young lady born in Maysville, South Carolina, educated in what is today Nova Scotia College Presbyterian School in North Carolina, came to Augusta to work with Ms. Laney and then left after one year because she had her own vision, and ended up in Daytona Beach, Florida and created an all-girls school which morphed into what is today The Bethune College. And so, uh, what essentially, uh, Ms. Laney did, was inspire others to – to create their own little niche. Now, I mention earlier that most people remember Laney over Ms. Bethume. I often get that; we get that a lot. “I never heard of Ms. Laney before. Where had she been all this time? ” Or, “We know Mary Mcleod Bethune,” and that’s because uh for one: Bethune College uh that bears her name is today uh internationally recognized institution. Thousands of young people go there every year to go to school. The other thing is - Mary Mcleod Bethune became a major player in the administration Franklin D. Roosevelt. So, she was one of several African Americans that uh served in his administration and, as a matter of fact, Mary Mcleod Bethune and several other African Americans became known affectionally as FDR’s Black Cabinet. So, that’s an alternate to the president’s actual cabinet. Uh and so uh, she gained national and international fame as the face of black education, of social activism. But much of what she did was created through, uh the uh, vision and inspiration of Lucy Lane (nods). (33:12 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Alright, and, uh … (33:16 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Is the air ok in here? Or … is this ok …the air? (33:20 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: I think so. (33:20 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Alright (nods). (33:22 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Um, what is your contribution in the area? So, you mentioned before … (33:36 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (smiles) Okay. (nods) (33:36 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: … the graduates of Haines, who are inspired by Laney’s work. So, what is your, uh, contribution in this? (33:46 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Well, what little contribution I’m able to make has really come into a form of trying to understand better what made this community? One of the really - the new things about Ms. Laney’s life – time-period - was that Ms. Lane did not exist in this vacuum, you know. Uh, she was here in Augusta. She was doing all these extraordinary things. But, there’s so many other important people in this community around her, and so, what I try to do here at the museum is interview individuals. Talk with them: those who may have known Ms. Laney directly; those who have grown here in this community; those who grew up in families where they heard the stories in exploits of Ms. Laney, so I can more effectively weave together stories of all of these individuals. So, to talk about Ms. Laney’s relationship to not only local individuals but people on the national scene. How did Ms. Laney interact with Booker T. Washington? How did she interact with W.E.B. Du Bois? How did she interact with [FIRST NAME] Johnson? Who were some of the people who came to Augusta? Because Ms. Laney was known for bringing in national figures to come to her school. So people like Mary Anderson: very famous opera singer of that time period. People like Roland Hayes: very famous opera singer. Even the President- elect of the United States, William Howard Taft, came and spoke at the school in 1908. So, um, I guess my job here is to understand the different complexities of this community. To research the community, talk to people who grew up in the community and see how all these stories come together. Now a more important function of what I do here is taking all that information … constructing it into a cohesive narrative, and then talking to the community about it. Not just keeping all this information bottled up, or just talking with my students in a classroom setting. But going out into the community. Talking to school groups. Sitting in groups – church groups. Um, bringing people to the museum so they can see the hows; so they can see some of the other people that interacted with Ms. Laney, and showing them just uh how complex it was to live as an African American during that time period. You sort of have one foot in one world, one foot in another. You have this black community that was developed here in Augusta, which had been in respect of, some of, other black communities around the South, and around the nation, but you also have a larger world out there. And so what we try to do here, what I try to do here, is uh to talk a little about um how these individuals \contributed to their own community. But, at the same time, who they sort of successfully – in many cases, successfully navigated larger world. And so um, I think that uh my role um which seems to be a multifaceted role when you work in a small setting like this where there are only a few of us here. We sort of have to do a little bit of everything. Um, my role here is to document the history of the past, oral accounts, um, and then, take that info and share it with the community (nods) (37:26 seconds).

Dr. Christodoulou: Including the schools that you mentioned before, and, um, the broader community as well. (37:43 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (nodding) Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Uh, students here in Augusta, uh, it’s kind of interesting, and I’ve never done a study as to how other, how other, communities have done this um. I know many communities have uh have, have, engaged in this but not the extent of Augusta, and that is Augusta is a very unique situation in that many of the streets, schools, buildings, here in Augusta are named for people, and named for prominent people. So, students that go to Lucy Laney High School have a sense of historical, cultural, importance because the school – that, that the school - that they attend bears the name of the real educator. And so, in many cases, the teachers there um, you know, allow them to understand the importance of Ms. Laney and it gives them a sense of pride. Um, it’s almost like that in many of the other schools as well. Many of the other students attend, for example, A.R. Johnson Magnet School. They come to the museum; they come to this room; and when I point out A.R. Johnson, they’re like, “wow.” Many of them had no clue of the connection, and so, uh, I think it’s very, very, important (Mr. Rogers points down twice) that we focus heavily on educating young people. I didn’t know a lot of this growing up as I mentioned before. Uh, I really didn’t become aware of the importance, the historical importance, of many of the individuals and many of the institutions in the Augusta area, until I was an adult. Keep back on mine – I’ve made it sort of my mission to educate and instruct young people at a very early age. To give them a foundation, and I think that it’s so important because they go to schools. They go into buildings. They travel down the streets every day with the names of very important people, and I think it’s important for me to make those connections and allow them to, then, take a sense of ownership and sense of pride in their community (39:45 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Uh, and any … any final words? Uh, something else that we should know? That’s maybe not known about Mrs. Laney, or … something else you want to add? (40:03 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Well actually, yeah. I, I, think sort of the perfect way, to um, to cap this particular interview is that when the museum was created in 1991, and the women, um, The Women Adult House Incorporation created the exhibit; it would be easy for them to just create a museum for people to come in walk around. Look at artifacts from days gone by and people ... it would have been easy to do that. But, in establishing the mission of the museum, and establishing the foundation of that, we try to do - one of the key components - was education. Was educate. And they saw that education was the lifeblood of what Ms. Laney created so they, in turn, went to carry on Ms. Laney’s legacy by creating different um opportunities for students to see the museum, and for us to create various educational opportunities for them. So, we host a series of camps throughout the year. Our summer camp is around arisen. We’re about to have our annual summer camp, and what we’re about to do is to instruct students in various parts of, of, what the community has to offer we try to take them outside the confront zone. They’re probably used to A and we try to introduce B to them. We bring in various speakers from around the community. We take them on various field trips. We have different classes and sessions. We have art classes. We have language classes. We have sign language classes. We do a little bit of everything. I think the purpose of that is to not just talk about Ms. Laney’s legacy but actually put her legacy into practice. And I think that’s why we do, what we do here at the museum. (42:13 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: Thank you so much … (42:16 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: (nodding) Thank you. Thank you. (42:17 seconds)

Dr. Christodoulou: … for your contribution. (42:18 seconds)

Mr. Rogers: Thank you (42:19 seconds)