| Mary Semans
opens the second half of Biographical Conversations With.
by explaining the background of the endowment that James "Buck"
Buchanan Duke gave to Trinity College, benefiting both North and
South Carolina. She also recalls the life of her cousin, Doris Duke,
and recounts the many times that the press made her a target of
sensational news.
While Mary's
childhood in New York City helped her appreciate the arts, her move
back to Durham to begin college at Duke University helped her appreciate
other races and cultures. During the Great Depression, she developed
her first sense of the terrible need that existed, although she
and her family were not affected severely by the Depression. From
then on, she felt the need to share her wealth with others, and
feels that others who are affluent have a responsibility to do the
same.
Semans shares that music was the highlight of her childhood, and
that her family invited everyone around to her piano recitals. As
she wistfully admits, she stopped playing piano after she began
college, a decision that she later regretted. She talks about her
relationship with her brother and explains how the Duke Homestead
came back to her family after her mother purchased it. She also
describes her governess, Elizabeth Gotham, a person whom she says
was influential to her.
Meeting her
first husband, Joseph Trent, provides an interesting story. When
her mother first became ill, her grandmother suggested that Mary
move to Durham to stay with her, and after Mary moved in with her
grandmother, both her grandmother and aunt set up "dates"
for her. One of these dates was with Trent. When they became engaged,
the media sensationalized the relationship. That was, Mary says,
the only negative experience she had with the press.
When World
War II broke out, her husband was not drafted because he was ill.
Mary gives her own perspectives of the War and recalls growing up
in the "Jim Crow South," a time period that made her more
determined to advocate for African-American rights.
In the early
1940s, Joseph discovered he had cancer, and Mary remembers thinks
back to this difficult period. After he died in 1948, she raised
their four children on her own. A year later she fulfilled a lifelong
aspiration when she entered politics. She relates the story of her
first experience at a precinct meeting, a meeting that her friend
Bascomb Baines, a leader in Durham, told her to attend and to vote
for a candidate named Leslie Atkins. As the vote was taken, Mary
realized the racial division in the precinct, and the event eventually
culminated in black voter registration. The next year, she was asked
to run for City Council.
Issues
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