Dr. Rebecca McGinnis was born on November 5, 1892. She taught elementary school from 1915 to 1960 and is the oldest living graduate of Hampton University and is still actively involved in community organizations like her church. She also still performs her civic duty by casting her vote in the Virginia State elections. In her lifetime she has witnessed amazing changes around the world, the nation, and Charlottesville after having spent her entire life to date there. The story of Charlottesville during the Jim Crow era is the story of her early adulthood and in an interview on November 18, 1997, shortly after she celebrated her 105th birthday, she described aspects of Charlottesville during the Jim Crow South...

"They just worked on farms, had different kinds of farms and gardens. A lot of them went away, come back and built homes, like up here where the new hospital is, all around Charlottesville. Quite a few of them went up, what we called 'going North' to get jobs..."

"Its been Starr Hill as long as I can remember. I don't know how it got its name, but it was always Starr Hill. There were quite a few educated people who had homes over there...All this everywhere was black and white...Most black poeple who appreciated such things bought their own homes from their meager servants pay, but that was always the hope was to buy a home. Up there where the hospital is built were black people's homes. Gospel Hill. Most people who lived all around there all worked around the university from one thing to another."

"You knew your neighbors, I don't know them now. But in my day...I mean, they weren't just friends, they were neighbors."

"At the time as I remember when I was a youngster, black and white lived together. We didn't have all the segregation like we had in the later years. After they passed what they called the Massenberg bill, that's called the Jim Crow bill, then they moved all the blacks out from the whites and the whites from the blacks, because where I used to live, whites used to live right across the street from where we lived. Children used to play all together...But when they passed that Massenberg bill, that's what it was called, forever it was called the Jim Crow law. So we've come a long way. We're doing pretty good now, a little bit better."

..."Yes, quite a few of them moved to get better jobs and going to school. A lot of people moved North to get better schools...Some of them come back, and some of them established homes up there. Some of them with grandchildren, great-grandchildren, still live up there, in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, those places."

"Much of the work done around the university was done by black people, not by white people."

"We had a saying for the reconstruction of Charlottesville, 'White people in, black people out.'