Hyalie Esther Yamins Greene was born on March 19, 1919, in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was the eldest of two children born to Jacob Yamins and Frances Smolensky Yamins. Her father was born in Kalwaria in the Russian Empire and her mother was born in Fall River, Massachusetts, to parents also born in the Russian Empire. Sybil Eleanor Yamins Goldberg (1919-2018) was her only sibling; she also attended Black Mountain College (BMC) from 1938 to 1940.

Yamins learned about BMC from author Louis Adamic’s writings, where BMC was praised as an example of progressive education that would help bring about the inclusive and ethnically diverse America that Adamic championed. Having never visited North Carolina, Yamins enrolled at BMC in the fall of 1936 and graduated in the spring of 1941. She was one of only sixty students to hold degrees from BMC.

In the spring of 1937, Yamins met Louis Adamic during one of his visits to BMC. John Andrew Rice, founder and rector of the college, understood Adamic's influence on Yamins' path and ensured that she ate dinner with Adamic.

A Day in the Life

This digital series consists of Yamins' letters to her parents, her sister, and occasionally her aunts. In these letters, Hyalie writes with a conversational and frank tone, giving her parents detailed accounts of her day-to-day routine at Black Mountain College, from what she had for dessert each week, to famous visitors, to the experience of being Jewish in western North Carolina. 

 

After graduation in 1941, Yamins returned to Fall River and worked as a speech therapist in nearby Bristol, Rhode Island. There, she met and married Leo Greene, a fellow speech therapist who enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II. The couple returned to Fall River after the war and together they had a daughter and three sons: Jerrie, Alan, Roger, and Donny.

Hyalie Yamins Greene passed away in Little Compton, Rhode Island, on January 24, 2008.