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November Volume
9
12,
KDS1IH own uraiioanoo on
NEWS
1999
Number
t
Aswan
11
Serving Catholics
I
n
$
i
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3
...Page
From the Cover Protests
fizzle,
will prevails
during pope's India visit
7
...Page
Feet
2000:
first-aid
Rome pilgrims
proposed for
...Page
9
cws
In 1962, at a time
a woman committed a quiet act of defiance that startled the people around her. It was a hot day, and Pauline Leeper was on her way via bus from Belmont to Gastonia to go to the dentist. She decided that she would sit in the front of the bus, which was something that African-Americans were not allowed to do during that time in
history.
Amid the shocked mumbles of the other passengers, the bus driver asked her to move three times. An AfricanAmerican man on the bus sitting in the back in one of the "hot seats," the seats above the motor where African-Americans had to
pulled the cord out of off the bus in the middle of nowhere into a ditch. Leeper, inspired by the words of the Reversit,
jumped
end Dr. Martin Luther King
As Elder Ministry expands, leaders localize efforts
5
Jr.,
re-
that front seat until she
in
arrived in Gastonia.
En route, she told the bus driver with a smile, "This is my seat, and I paid for
...Page
it."
Photo by Alesha M. Price
When
she reached her stop, she said stiffly, "save my seat; I'll soon return."
When
she boarded the bus
Faith
was waiting for her. She told people in Belmont that "the 'hot seat' days were over." After
Youth group members strike
in that area.
Living the
again, the seat
pose to benefit church funds
their
no one rode
...Page
16
Mrs. Pauline Leeper, a member of Queen of the Apostles Church in Belmont, sits and reminisces about her days of poetry, records and civil rights protests, while looking at an article about her refusing to sit in the back of the bus from Belmont to Gastonia and holding a recording of her war protest poetry.
back of the bus
of the Springwood, McAdenville and
That act was so inspiring that she was a feature on the early morning local news and featured on a
Belmont communities. "She had a cart of medicines that she would take with her on her visits," said Leeper. "It was like she had a magic touch because she was able to cure some people that other doctors had said would die."
that,
in the
Oscar DePriest Hand Sr. and Julia Neal Sykes' "Footprints on the Rough Side of the Mountain," a book about local African-Americans and
page
in
their achievements.
Now
Every Week
Queen of
She and her siblings attended
82, Leeper, a member of the Apostles Church, re-
called that incident with a
proud look
her eyes. Her life, at first glance, is not unlike many others, but it has been marked with other significant and remarkable events that make her in
Entertainment ..Pages
10-11
& Columns Pages 12-13
stand out among other AfricanAmerican women of her day. "I
have really enjoyed
didn't think
I
would
this
life.
I
live this long,"
said Leeper.
"Be good, keep your feet dry,
your eyes open, your heart
at peace,
the Diocese of CharlotK
when segregation was commonplace,
mained
Editorials
in
Staff Writer
BELMONT —
fear and
a
Western North Carolina
ALESHA M. PRICE
By
gather for N.C. conference
Trivia
in
Belmont woman's life like pages of history
Catholic, Lutheran scholars
good
& H E R A L D
and your soul
the joy of Christ."
— Thomas Merton
in
She
is
one of eight children born
who worked in a mill in McAdenville and a mother, racked with illness, who worked as a housekeeper when she was well. Her grandmother, of Native American descent, was a modern-day medicine woman who used herbs and other natural to a father
remedies to tend to the medical needs
St.
Benedict's School for "as long they could."
The
family
went
to
Belmont Abbey
Mass, also segregated
in
for
those days.
"It was a two-way street because seemed like our race was pulling away from them while they were pushing us away," said Leeper. "I can remember Father Charles Kaster it
saying that 'there wasn't a separate" heaven or hell, and we would all be together in the end.' Some time after that, we sat together from then on." Leeper, being one of the oldest girls, stopped attending school to take care of her parents, who had both become ill. As a teen-ager, she began serving food in the canteen of the mill as a teen-ager to help support her family. "Most children back then didn't have the chance to finish school," she explained. "Things were so different
back then; things were much harder." After she married and had eight children of her own, she was deter-
mined that her children would finish school. The two oldest attended St. Benedict's School like their mother, and all
eight graduated from college with
most of them
living and working in and around Charlotte and Gastonia. Leeper would serve as the hostess of parties and gatherings in her house for her children and their friends during the holidays, after school, and at other times during the year. "I enjoyed my children and their friends, and I wanted them to have a good time when they were at my house. The music almost shook the house, but I didn't mind. The dining room table was always full of food. I always told them you have to enjoy yourself while you can," she said. She also cared for neighborhood children when she was not working at Holy Angels, Inc., a residential care facility in Belmont for children and adults with mild to severe mental retardation and other physical disabili-
See LEEPER, page
9