Bryant’s roots run deep

Angela Bryant stretched out in the back seat of a green Buick and read books while she waited on her mother to finish teaching grammar school.

“When the coast was clear, she would come get me… I think I terrorized all my babysitters,” Bryant laughs as she thinks of that moment in her childhood. “[There was] nothing I loved better than being with her.”

Bryant sits casually at a bar table in Rocky Mount’s The Prime Smokehouse restaurant recalling her past. Now dinnertime, she orders shrimp and grits and a cup of gumbo because her busy schedule kept her from lunch.

Bryant, 63, a North Carolina senator, grew up in the Little Raleigh neighborhood, just minutes from downtown Rocky Mount.

Her mother, Ethel Lucas Bryant, taught fourth through eighth grades, and her father, Alexander H. “Tuffy” Bryant Sr., worked in real estate development.

Bryant peers through red-framed glasses into the restaurant’s dining room at passersby who catch her attention and wave. She knows many this evening.

Her grandparents, Wright Parker and Nannie Barnes Bryant Parker, owned Wright’s Chick Shack, a restaurant/motel combination.

The business served as a hub for travelers along U.S. 301. It was also one of the only African-American-owned businesses in the area, Bryant says.

“It was an intersection of the black and white community,” she says. “It was a place where white vendors and leaders and business people would come to engage my father and other black community leaders.”

Bryant spent much of her time at the shack sitting on a stool at the counter, listening to her father’s conversations and chatting with regular customers as they paid for food and sundries. As she got older, she worked as a waitress at the shack.

“I grew up around these older people, which I think had a lot of influence in my interests,” she says.

Years later, after earning her bachelor of science degree in math and Juris Doctorate degree in law from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Bryant returned to Rocky Mount. She came home to help develop the Wright’s Center, an adult day health care facility. The center, a tribute to her grandfather, is located in the building that once housed the Chick Shack.

Segregation in Rocky Mount

Bryant clanks the bottom of her gumbo bowl with a spoon, changing intermittently between a bite of sweet cornbread and an anecdote from her childhood. The Prime Smokehouse owner Ed Wiley III passes by the table in his white chef coat and greets Bryant by her first name like old friends.

A quick hello and she seamlessly jumps back into stories of her past.

On the first day of seventh grade in 1963, Bryant sat by herself in the George R. Edwards Middle School gym, waiting to receive her classroom assignment.

She was the only girl in a group of five African-Americans integrating the middle school that day, she says.

“There was a sea of empty chairs all around me,” Bryant says. “While I had been prepared that people may call me names or do something to me…nobody thought about what it would be like to be excluded and the power of that. It was traumatic to say the least.”

A young girl helped ease the loneliness of the morning by taking a seat next to Bryant.

“That made a tremendous difference,” she says. “It mitigated that traumatic experience.”

Bryant was never severely mistreated by her classmates, but some encounters involved teasing and strange reactions. She recalls one little girl screaming when she sat next to her.

“It was that scary and upsetting to her. I learned up close the power of racial prejudice and the misinformation and irrationality that is part of racial prejudice,” Bryant says. “As a result of those experiences, I’m very sensitive to exclusion. At the same time, I have a level of experience…that helps me do the work I do.”

For more than 20 years, Bryant has focused on training others in areas of equality and justice. Today, as a North Carolina senator, she strives for equality in the counties she serves – Halifax, Nash, Vance, Warren and Wilson.

A voice for women

Bryant’s mother and grandmother molded her into a strong, independent woman.

“I was surrounded by working women and strong women,” she says. “I wasn’t exposed to women growing up who didn’t have careers. The reality for African-Americans to be middle class, the men and women had to work. I think that was important.”

Bryant’s career includes 30 years of legal experience and 10 years as a North Carolina administrative law judge. No matter the profession, she has focused on giving women a voice.

“I felt like I might have put in a little extra effort compared to what the men would put in because of women’s issues,” Bryant says of her three-year stint on the Rocky Mount City Council. “Sometimes I felt like they would gang up on me with that male energy, or criticize my style because I can be strong and persistent. And I think sometimes they felt critical of me.”

Bryant advocated heavily for day cares and home day cares. “That is a business we have a strong tradition of here [in Rocky Mount], women running day cares, and sometimes either because of local city regulations or zoning, they would face challenges.”

Laura O’Neal, former director of Nash County Department of Social Services, met Bryant about 10 years ago. She says she appreciated Bryant’s passion for supporting day cares and women’s interests.

“If you are making minimum wage, it’s very hard to afford day care, if not impossible,” O’Neal says. “I think she was much more aware of the working poor and I was grateful for that…I always admired her wanting to listen to other people and understand how they arrived in certain situations.”

Bryant does not have children of her own and married later in life as a result of her career.

“At some level, it was a sacrifice maybe, even though it wasn’t an intentional sacrifice. It’s just how the marbles rolled,” she says. “I made some choices and that wasn’t as much of a priority as my career was.”

Her advice to young women today: join an organized sports team to learn about teamwork, and pursue education.

“Pursue your dreams and believe in yourself,” Bryant says. “Understand that effort is the key. There are not many things you can’t do if you put in the effort.”

City council

Bryant watched her father persistently pursue a seat on the Rocky Mount City Council on three separate occasions. He lost each time.

He hoped to push for access to lending, along with housing and business opportunities, she says.

“It was set up in such a way that he was not going to win. Often it was racially polarized voting,” Bryant says.

In 2003, voters elected Bryant to City Council, which she says established the first African-American majority City Council.

“It was really important to me when I ran the first time. It took us three rounds of redistricting to eventually get a majority-minority district in my neighborhood,” she says. “It was an unspoken tribute to him [her father].”

Bryant’s uncle, John Harding Lucas, 95, of Durham, says he has always been impressed by his niece’s thoughts and opinions.

“Her energy is sort of boundless,” says Lucas, former president of Shaw University in Raleigh. “I found interest in going to the meetings to hear her discussions.”

Of her time on council, Bryant is most proud of learning about the energy industry and how citizens are billed for utilities.

“People actually believed that people in the inner city were being charged more, not realizing that this was driven by the housing stock,” Bryant says. “And the rates were the same.”

Her goal – to educate the public about energy efficiency and negate the mistrust citizens felt.

Bryant went on to co-sponsor the North Carolina Eastern Municipal Power Agency asset sale bill, which is expected to lower local electric rates. Gov. Pat McCrory signed the bill in April 2015.

A look ahead

As she sips a glass mixed with iced tea and lemonade, Bryant thinks about her next move – retirement.

“I want to figure out how to transition this life of public service and find what will next make my heart sing,” she says.

Bryant knows she will always have her hands in politics, which is also her hobby, and plans to continue to leave her mark on Rocky Mount.

But for now, her sights are set on traveling and “ponder[ing] the important issues of the day.”

Plans beyond that in retirement include “Nothing. N-o-t-h-i-n-g,” she laughs.