By Derron Craft
Virginia Cook has been in the world for almost 80 years and has seen a tremendous change in the behavior of those who will follow her generation to rule the world for the next 80.
Growing up in a small country town, Virginia struggled with hard times to get where she is today. She was born in 1933 when segregation still existed. Growing up poor didn’t make her angry; it made her more appreciative for what she has today.
She thinks kids today have a lot more advantages than people did when she was coming up. She said kids now get more and have more places to go.
“Kids now can have cars at the age of 16. In my day the parents only had cars,” she said. “A dollar to me back then is just as much as a $100 to kids today,” she said. She didn’t even know what an inside bathroom was because they had to use an outhouse.
“We couldn’t miss something we never had,” she said about nice cars and jewelry. They always spent their money wisely and she always looked for the cheapest thing that she needed. One pair of shoes had to last her and her brothers an entire year. She had nine brothers and when their shoes worn out they had to walk around barefoot or try to sew up the shoe.
Before school she had chores to do. She had to milk cows and bring in wood. Then she had to walk two and a half miles to and from school. They didn’t know what a janitor was in school. They had to do all the janitor work themselves. “That’s part of coming a long ways,” she said.
The teachers were a lot stricter on them and were allowed to whip them. She laughed and said, “I didn’t act bad at school; I got all my whoopins at home.”
She first started working when she was 13 years old. She made $12 a week and had to give six dollars to her mother. She only worked in the summer. In high school she didn’t have money to buy her lunch so her brother paid for her lunch every day. He had to work on Saturday polishing shoes just so his sister could eat lunch. Eleven people lived in her two-bedroom house.
She had a hard time getting a job before the civil rights act passed. She was the first black person to work at a particular company in 1963, but it was hard to make friends because the whites weren’t friendly towards her. She was expected to do twice as much work as the whites were expected to do.
“One time I tried to eat with them, but when I sat down they all jumped up from the table and left me alone,” she said.
One of the most surprising things she’s seen is the election of President Obama. “I felt like that was part of Martin Luther King’s dream coming true,” she said. She also added that it was a slow progress because of the previous president. She said, “Most people thought Obama could get right in and fix things; it’s not an overnight thing.”
She thinks the roles of women have changed a bit. When she was young, women had to be in the house by a certain time while now they can stay out as long as they want. Married women always stayed at home when she was younger.
Her advice to the young people is to stay in school and get all the information they can. She had brothers that had to drop out of high school so they could help out the household. She said, “Kids nowadays should be thankful that they can finish school. A few of my brothers had to quit school and work so we could have food on our table. So when you all complain about school, don’t take it for granted.”
“Martin Luther King, by the help of God, helped pave the way for young people today and they should take advantage
