Sybil Yamins
Courtesy of Western Regional Archives
FOCUS
General Studies
ROLE
Student
ATTENDANCE
1938 - 1940
BIRTH
1920-08-14
Fall River, MA
DEATH
2018-04-02
Fall River, MA
Sybil was a student from 1938 to 1940. She participated in Waiting for Lefty in 1940, cast as the secretary. After leaving Black Mountain, she graduated from the School of Business at Simmons College in 1943 and began secretarial work at the Red Cross in New York City. She married Simon Goldberg and devoted her life to raising her children and participating with nonprofit organizations.
Alternative name: Sybil Eleanor Goldberg
An obituary for Sybil can be found here.
Relationships
Sister: Fellow BMC student, Hyalie Esther Yamins
Asheville Art Museum Collection
Writings about Sybil can be seen in digitized college bulletins on Asheville Art Museum's collection website: collection.ashevilleart.org. They can be found by searching these accession numbers:
2017.40.138 Januart 3, 1944 bulletin,
"Sybil Yamins writes from New York City: “The work at the Red Cross is intensely interesting, and I am very enthusiastic about it. It doesn’t seem possible I have been out of college and working for six months now. The first few months, especially during the summer, I just enjoyed the freedom of being out of school, with no term papers, exams, and the like on my mind, and time to do lots of the reading I had wanted to and hadn’t these past few years. But now I am seriously considering taking a night course or two at Columbia or N.Y.U.- the sort of thing I didn’t get enough of at Black Mountain and couldn’t squeeze in at Simmons with all the required courses. It is ironical that when you are in school you seem to look forward to graduation and a job; then, when you have them, suddenly you want more education.”"
2017.40.281 Waiting for Lefty show poster
Black Mountain College Project
Mary Emma Harris interviewed Sybil in 1997 and the transcript is available from Appalachian State University under The Mary Emma Harris and Black Mountain College Project, Inc. Oral History collection.
Topics: Hearing about BMC – working at Lake Eden Inn – classes with John Evarts, John Rice – travel to BMC with Jamieson – dinner dress at BMC – death of Frank Nacke – BMC students – post-BMC professional work
Author
Amanda Hartman
Amanda Hartman is the creator of BMC Yearbook, serving as the lead director, engineer, and researcher. She holds a MLIS in archive/ collections management, MA in art/ museum education, and BA in design. After working in museums and archives for a decade, she made the transition to tech and is now a software developer specializing in applications for museums, archives, and higher education.
Her interest in Black Mountain College began while working as a digital archivist with the Asheville Art Museum's BMC archive collection. She transcribed and digitized over 1500 documents created by the college. While working closely with these archives, she began independent research on the interracial program and Negro Week activities BMC, writing biographies of lesser known students and staff members. That research transformed into this BMC Yearbook project.
