No, I don't know if I got less and wasn't inquisitive, because you just
didn't. If they needed you to go in the dining hall to pour tea then
that's what you did. But I never heard anybody say anything derogatory
to me, even when I was out in the dining hall. So I pulled a few months
working at Rogers Restaurant. Then I went away to college and went to
Barber Scotia College in Concord, [South Carolina] and there I majored
in English and minored in French. I left Scotia, which was like a
finishing school, in my mind like a finishing school because they taught
us how to walk, how to talk, how to set tables, how to interact with
people and you carried yourself
Page 5 in a certain way. I
hear people say now that I have this certain aura about me but that's
coming from Scotia, that's Scotia's training. Because when the girls
would go up town, and we had to wear gloves and carry our little
pocketbooks and wear our little pumps, the store owners would say, "you
must be Scotia women. You have to be Scotia women." Of course, you stand
out, you look like that, you go uptown with your gloves and your
pocketbook and your little pumps on, yes of course, we were Scotia
girls. But I appreciate the training I got at Scotia. There again,
because it was an all-girl's school I was protected. That patriarch made
sure his little girl was protected.
When I graduated from Scotia I took a job in Sheraw, South Carolina at
Robert Smalls Elementary School. Mr. Smalls, the man for which the
school was named for, I found out was a naval officer and he was one of
the first black naval officers. Here in Sheraw, South Carolina, this
little small school, I kinda found really what I wanted to do, and that
was to teach. That's my niche. I love school, still love school. I had
some wonderful, challenging students and I learned from my seventh grade
experience working with the seventh graders there my first year
teaching, where I thought I knew everything and I didn't know anything
as I found out. I had one challenging class of students who were low
achievers and I didn't have any materials to work with. I went to the
principal's office that particular day really depressed because I didn't
think I was getting anywhere with the kids and he gave me this comic
book on Robert Smalls. I used that comic book as a textbook and my kids
just came alive. So I went from the comic book to comic strips from the
newspaper and my kids learned so much, they were still getting
literature. They were still getting the spelling. They were still
getting the grammar, everything you would have gotten from a regular
textbook, but this was not overwhelming to them. It turned out to be one
of the most joyous years of my teaching career.
Page 6
I was married my second year in South Carolina and my husband decided
that I would come back to Raleigh. For awhile I lived there and he lived
here. So then he decided OK, this is enough of this kind of stuff so
you're going to come home.
I came home and got a job at Cary Elementary. I think Aaron Fussell was
Superintendent at that time. I interviewed for the job and they sent me
to Cary Elementary to Mr. E.B. Comer who was the Principal at Cary
Elementary at that time. During the interview he said something quite
odd, I thought. He said, "What would you do if someone called you ugly
names or someone made some derogatory statements to you. How would you
handle that?" And then he looked me directly in my eye and he said,
"What would you do and how would you act if someone called you a
‘nigger." It just took me aback because I was not ready for that. I had
been insulated from all of that. Robert Smalls was an all-black school,
I lived in an all-black neighborhood, went to college at an all-black
school, went to an all-black high school, when to an all-black
elementary school, so I had just been in this all-black world insulated
from without, except for when I was living on the farm. When you live on
a farm you live in a person's house because you're tenant farmers. You
establish a relationship with them that is kind of cordial, it's a
cordial relationship. So I had been insulated from all derogatory
remarks. Now my Dad and Mom couldn't say that because they experienced
it all. I'm sure they made a pact between themselves that said, our kids
will never ever face what we had to face. They will never hear what we
heard. They will never be treated the way we were treated. And they did
just that. They were arm in arm and we were insulated, we were protected
in every way that they could afford. So when he asked me, how would I
respond or how would I react, what would I do, I said, "I don't really
know what I would do. But I'm not going to let people reduce me to
nothing. Because I know what the word means, I'm just going to consider
them as being ignorant." He
Page 7 said, "That's exactly
what I want you to do. That's exactly what impresses me. So you will
begin work immediately." I started Cary Elementary that fall of '69.
Had a wonderful experience there. There was one lady across the hall from
me, because I was one of three blacks on staff. Leverne Hairston was a
P.E. teacher and Arthur Vines was the shop teacher at that time. Then lo
and behold they hired this black lady to teach English. This was just
the beginning of integration. So I'm on the rough edges of it. So this
lady across the hall, Mrs. Violet Pruitt, old farm lady, taught English,
lived in Chalybeate Springs which is near Fuquay, came across the hall
one day and she said to me, "I want to ask you one question." And I
said, "Yes, ma'am." "I want to know why you want to be in my school?"
And I looked at her and I said, "Your school?" "Yeah, why do you want to
be in my school? We don't want you here, you know that." I said, "Well,
I was hired to do a job and I'm going to do that job the best I know
how." Do you know, Mrs. Pruitt and I became the best of friends. She
invited me to her home, she invited me to her daughter's home. She used
to cook chicken and dumpling and bring it to me, and that was one of my
favorite dishes. We just became the best of friends. Even when I was at
East Cary, when we moved to East Cary, she stayed in contact with me.
She would call me sometimes, even when she retired she would still call
me in the afternoons and say, "How are you doing, Carolyn? I was just
thinking about you. How are you doing?" And sometimes we would go back
to that conversation when she asked me that. And she said, "That was
just my ignorance, but you taught me differently."