Johnnetta Cole Interview (page: 5 / 5) Past President of Spelman College	Print Interview

Dr. Cole, let me ask you about an issue that's often discussed on your campus, that is balancing family life with a professional life. What advice do you have for men and women faced with that?

Johnnetta Cole: I'm going to draw on the works of a dear colleague and a friend, who I mentioned a little earlier. One of my closest friends in the world is Catherine Bateson, also an anthropologist. Catherine wrote a wonderful book called, Composing A Life. It's a book about five women, she's one, I'm one and there are three other women.

It's a complex book, but if I can try to say in simple language what it's about, it really is about women and all that we do. Catherine (and I share her view) rejects this notion of us women folk as jugglers. You know, that gives you the image of all these things up in the air and something is bound to fall. Rather, the image is one of improvisation. Of taking what is there at any given moment and creatively finding ways to make it all work. Composing our lives.

The message that I want to give to young women, and to young men as well, and to us older women and men too, is that a consciousness about what we're doing might help us see that uniformity, that singularity, that oneness of purpose, may not be the best for these times, maybe for any times. Perhaps we should learn from women who are multiple in who they are, and what it is that they do.

I appreciate that in putting a value on complexity and multiplicity, I may be ignoring what it means for my sister who has just come in from work, as has her husband, who has a mound of work to do tomorrow. Who must now get the kids fed, get the homework overseen, clean the house, put a load of wash in. Perhaps I'm simplifying things, when what I should say is, why doesn't he come and help?

Suppose he too had more than one job to do. Suppose his life consisted of creativity and improvisation, and composing in process. Obviously, my goal is for each of us to participate as parents. For men and women to nurture, for us to co-nurture. We're going to have a much richer world when each of us is involved in a diversity of ways of being human.

Dr. Cole, you said one of the adversities you overcame was the criticism that you sustained when President Clinton first took office. How has the criticism of your work or ideas affected you? How have you changed, and how did you deal with that criticism?

Johnnetta Cole: What I learned most of all during that period was the power of belief in self. A belief in one's self is not the same thing as arrogance. A believe in one's self is not the same thing as ceasing to care what others believe. But if you really know yourself, if you believe in who you are, it's amazing how much criticism you can withstand. I was, again, exceedingly fortunate.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The charges that were leveled against me, I found it important to say very little. The folk who spoke were amazingly effective in saying how they perceive me. The Atlanta Jewish community, responding to some unbelievable charge that I was practicing anti-Semitism. The Atlanta business community, responding to a charge that I was a communist. And so, others spoke up. And I think the lesson to be learned there is that when we are connected to folk who are being charged unfairly, it is our responsibility to speak up.

[ Key to Success ] Courage

Do you think your upbringing and your early years have prepared you to deal with these important questions and adversities that you faced later on?

Johnnetta Cole: I don't think there's any question about that. It would be rare for a day to go by without my having a flash from Mt. Olive AME Church, in which I sat as a kid, often too long. It seems to me church went on forever. Or a flash of some moment of counsel that I got from my mom. Or some instruction for a given moment in a day, that comes from a recollection of an experience with my sister, as we grew up, or with my younger brother.

I think who we become is strongly shaped by who we were, but I don't think it determines all. That's important to say, because I think we're constantly working on ourselves. We are works in progress. To say that who I am was set in those early days in Jacksonville, Florida would give me little credit for the human capacity to learn, to change, to grow.

Regardless of what field someone chooses, what personal characteristics do you think are most important for success?

Johnnetta Cole: I think it is impossible for someone to succeed in anything if that person lacks integrity. If it's a person without a moral core, without a center, without a set of beliefs about what is right and what is not right.

I happen to think that we can live in this world together with different values, but you've got to have some and you've got call them your own. And you've got to be true to them. So I think a sense of personal integrity is absolutely key.

I would add to that. I think it is impossible to succeed at anything without perseverance. It all may look easy, it may look so almost dramatic to be in a place with these important lives. But these are folk I'm sure...I know I can say it for myself, who have spent enormous numbers of hours working, persevering, not giving up.

What advice do you give to young people just starting out, looking back on your own successes and failures over the years?

Johnnetta Cole: My advice to young folk is that of all the things in the world that will happen to them, I just hope in those later years they will be able to say, "Somebody was a little better off because I was around." You can't see yourself now at that age, but do your best to live this life so that when you get there, you feel good about it all.

What do you know now about achievement that you did not know when you were younger?

Johnnetta Cole: I've learned that achievement is a process, not an event. I think we often create this notion that you do all of this stuff and there, 4:30 on a Thursday afternoon in the month of October, you have arrived. I don't think that's the way it goes. You get there only to use it as a platform, to go again. That new arrival, if it has any meaning at all, inspires you to take off again.

What do you think it takes to achieve in America, and what does the American Dream mean to you?

Johnnetta Cole: The American Dream really means to me, no more and no less than what Dr. King captured in that incredibly moving Washington speech. The American Dream means to me that little girls and little boys who are Black will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That's the American Dream.

What does it take for all of us to achieve it? A whole lot more hard work. I think it takes our government's involvement, because it's only from that broad macro view that a body of legislators, and a president, and a set of judicial systems can do the things that need to be done.

I think it involves our corporations, and our foundations, our institutions of education and of culture, committing and recommitting to this dream. But if government did all that it can do, if corporations, institutions and foundations did all that they could do, there would still be a lot of work that can only be done by us, as individual Americans.

The challenge is for each of us in our own way to make sure that our daily lives, our daily action is in valuing others, not by the color of the skin, not by the shape of the body that creates a gender, not by what we think are the beliefs and the religious way of a person, but by the real content of that person's character. That to me is the American Dream

My final question, Dr. Cole, going back to the library for a moment, what one book would you select to read to your grandchild?

Johnnetta Cole: The one book that I would want to read to my grandchild is the book that I have yet to write. It's a book about friendships that cross lines. Friendships between folk who are black and white, or Jewish and gentile, or young and old. Books about friendships between people who are rich and poor.

I'd want to read that book, because I think the message I want my grandchild to get is that one of the most precious things in this world is to be able to genuinely appreciate difference, and to strike to the core of being human, and that is to engage in a true friendship. Lots of folk have, in a sense, written those books, but I'd like to write it for my own grandchild.

Dr. Cole, is there anything else you'd like to say before we conclude our conversation today?

Johnnetta Cole: Just one thing. This is really a privilege, and I'm grateful.

Dr. Johnnetta Cole, President of Spelman College, thank you very much for this wonderful time together.

You're welcome.

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