Student Activism in the 1930s
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ASU Autobiographies

American Student Union Summer Training Institute Autobiographies
Virginia Sanford
1. Being born into a family of the great middle classes is in itself no particular distinction; it happens to thousands of Americans every day. And so I began.

2. Greensboro, North Carolina, where I have lived all my life, is located in the Belmont section of the state. It is an industrial, educational, and cultural center. Some of the largest textile sills of the world are located there, two women's colleges, and three negro colleges are in Greensboro. Even though Greensboro is progressive, it in thoroughly Southern.

3. My family is liberal. They are of course Democrats. My ancestors were early Scotch-Irish and English settlers of America. Included in this category are a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia, several distinguished military men, and statesmen. There is still one question on which my family maintains a Conservative and reactionary stand and that is the race question. A Negro is all right as long as he remains in his place— an interior one.

4. All of my school life has been spent in one school. From kindergarten through high school I attended Curry Training School of the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina. Students at Curry are human guinea pigs. They are experimented upon by the girls at Woman's college. Nothing related to a liberal student movement could have arisen at Curry. There the idea of student activities was correct as long as those activities were strictly controlled by the faculty. Nevertheless, one of the greatest stimuli to liberal and intelligent thinking I have received came from my high school history teacher. She had a great deal of faith in and understanding of the common person and this she passed on to some of her pupils.

5. Being interested in current topics and economics I have read widely and variedly. Seeing conditions that exist in our economic system made me thoroughly disgusted with the capitalist system and instilled in me a desire to help change it. But I have never become aware of a worthwhile liberal student movement until I entered Woman's College and met Jane Gillett. Jane at that time had just returned from the first ASU Leadership Institute, and she was the original contact I had with a student movement. So in the fall of 1938 I Joined the ASU.

6. The activities of the chapter at Woman's College are necessarily limited because of ignorance on the part of the college students and opposition of the administration.

7. I came to the Institute this summer in order to prepare myself for an active role in the student movement. Two facts are vivid to me; my overwhelming ignorance, and the great future for a student movement in the South.

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