In the late summer of 1950, we moved to Little Rock for the start of the school year. The move was easy, we had almost nothing apart from clothes and books. Philander Smith College’s modest campus was in a black neighborhood just off Ninth Street, the street where “black” business was centered. Since the college didn’t initially have an apartment for us, we rented a small unfurnished one in the white quarter and furnished it from Mr. Brown’s thrift store. When we were bitten by fleas after the first night, Mr. Brown agreed to trade the mattresses and fleas for bookcases. We still have one of these. A little later, however, we moved into a “shotgun house” on campus at 1116 Izard Street, that is, one in which all the rooms are in a row, so that the porch led directly into the living room, behind which was the bedroom, followed by the kitchen . The bathroom, which distinguished the house from some of the neighboring houses, was of much later date. Like all houses in the area, our house was built of wood and stood on brick blocks, so that cats and chickens could comfortably shelter from the heat underneath. I usually teach 15 to 18 hours a week. In addition, there were faculty meetings and also the time-consuming evaluations of students’ IQ tests or their reading skills. I often had a lesson until 10:20 p.m. in the evening and another one at six the next morning. The reason for this was that a significant number of our students worked during the day and in summer the heat was more bearable early.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 129f (translation)