Interviewee: Dr. Judy Carter, female, African American, first Black teacher at an all-White school during desegregation era
Interviewers: Dr. Niki Christodoulou, Dr. Darla Linville, Augusta University
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Dr. Niki Christodoulou: Dr. Carter, um tell me a little bit about yourself. Who you are and where you were born, when, your ethnic background…
Dr. Judy Carter: (0.22 seconds) Ok. Well, I was born in a little town about forty miles north of Augusta, called McCormick South Carolina, uh a very poverty stricken area of South Carolina. I'm from a single-parent home; my mother had three children. I'm the youngest of three. I have one sister who is living my brother passed away when he was very young. So it left the two of us, um, never thought about going to college when I was growing up because we were poor and that’s something that was never something we discussed in our home. As a matter of fact, when I finished high school my teachers - before I finished high school my teachers told me I need to go to college. And um, we got into a bit of an argument about that because to me that just – didn't understand that we didn't have any money and we didn't have any money and I could not go to college. So one of my teachers insisted, she brought an application to school for me to go to Paine College which is right down the road, right down the street. She had graduated from Paine College and she said, "Judy you have the ability and you shouldn't sit around and just keep saying you're not going because there are ways that you can go." Of course, I didn’t know any of those ways she was talking about, but she did ask me, if there was anybody in my family who could loan me some money and maybe one day I could pay it back. And there was one person in my family that we used to always go to when we needed something it was my mother's brother, my uncle. He owned a restaurant in Greenwood, South Carolina and he was living very well. So, whenever we needed something, we always went to him. So, this teacher helped me to fill out the application to go to Paine and um so we filled it out. And, uh wrote the letter and I was accepted and I went to take my entrance exam and all of that. I got sick, I was so nervous that day that I got really really sick. And so I took about half of the exam and I couldn't take anymore. Uh, so they took me down to the emergency room at the hospital to see what was wrong. But, there wasn’t anything really serious, I was just nervous; I couldn’t believe I was doing that. So, anyway we got accepted and we went to Paine College. And it was another world for me, like I said we never discussed college in my family. I couldn't believe I was there and it didn’t take me long to start really enjoying Paine college and I met a lot of new people from different places. We had students there from all over the country and even from foreign places. So, um it was a culture shock, kind of for me to meet people from all these different places. Some – not everybody was poor, um – I found out that there were Black people who lived very well; who came from upper middle class families, there were some like me but by no means were they all like me. So, I met them and associated with them and all of that so I want – I'll skip over some of the Paine College experience. But teaching um became interesting to me, because I had some teacher who said to me uh you just kind of act like you could be a good teacher, you could do well with children. And that kind of thing, but my mother wanted me to be a nurse since I got in college, because you know in the beginning she didn't say anything about what to be. But, she decided once I got there that she wanted me to be a nurse. She loved nurses for some reason, I never really understood it, but she just loved nurses. I think it was the uniforms or something that they wore. Um and I was pretty bold and uh as a matter of fact, one day a man across the street from her house killed his wife. And she sent me over to see if the lady- we heard them fighting and she sent me over to see if the lady was really dead and um and I went over there and I couldn’t find a pulse and um I wasn't nervous about that I think that's that was another reason she thought I could be a nurse. But, um then they called the police and they came she really wasn’t quite dead, but on the way to the hospital she died. He stabbed her with a screwdriver. It was horrible. Um, but anyway, um, I said okay, if that what she wanted. So I got in nursing school and the nurses lived at Paine College. We took the core curriculum at Paine College and then we took other courses down at the hospital. So, um it was a three-year program and I didn’t like it- I- I-I didn’t like the dirty parts of it. I just really got sick a lot; I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t like giving- when they taught us how to give injections, I couldn’t do it. I had my eyes closed and I was getting ready to give somebody an injection and the supervising nurse came around and she said, “What you are doing!” And I said, “I’m getting ready to- “and she said, “Oh no you’re not!” So she took me in the medicine room and just fussed at me about doing that. And I said this is not for me and I tried a little longer and I stayed in it for two years, so I only had one more year to go, I could not take it anymore. So, we got out of nursing school, and my mother was very unhappy with me about that and um, then that’s when I thought about teaching, when people were saying to me, well you should try that, so I did and I absolutely loved it. I didn’t know I could like school that much until I got into education. So, anyway we went on and we finished college and uh it was during the days of segregation and I went to the board of education to apply for a job. And uh after talking with me, the uh the interviewer said, “How would you like to work in an all-White school?” And I said, you know I need a job, it really doesn't matter what kind of school I work in um I would not be afraid to do that. Um, it would be fine with me. So, they put me in an all-White school. (7:52 seconds)
Dr. Niki Christodoulou: Tell us a little bit what it meant to be segregated. How did it look like? (8:00)
Dr. Judy Carter: (8:00) Oh my, it was really bad, it was to separate thing, everything was separated. You had a White this and the same thing a Black one over here. A White theatre and in the movie theatres we could go in the upstairs. We could not sit in the downstairs part with the White people. So, we had to go up the back steps and go in the back and, uh, sit up there; like a balcony type thing. You could not go in restaurants, they had a side door that said colored on it, and if you wanted to order a hotdog or a hamburger you would go to that side door and order that. I remember one day, excuse me, my friends and I were going up to Clarke Hill up to the lake it was about ten of us. We were in two different cars, so we stopped at this restaurant on the side of the road we all- excuse me- We all went in and we ordered hamburgers, so the guy said to us we cannot serve you all hamburgers uh and you’re in the wrong place, if you go around back to that window and order your hamburgers then we can serve them to you. So, there was one person in the group who looked White, but he was really Black. So we all went out and we let him come back in to order the hamburgers, so he ordered them and they fixed them and then they gave them to him. He said no thank you we changed our minds, because we planned that we wouldn’t take them. Just let them fix ‘em and lose that money, and we were scared when we did it, but we all stuck together and did it. But, uh then all the schools you had Black schools and you had White schools and you had private schools and you had some Black private schools and you also had White private schools. But, most people couldn't afford to go to the Black private schools; you had a certain class of Blacks that went to the private schools. So everything was separated um and it was just a- a pretty bad time during that time you didn't- Black didn’t have good jobs. Um my mother was a maid uh my father was a construction worker. I knew him well even though they were not married to each other, but so uh neither one had a good job, so um that's why we were poor like we were, because she certainly didn’t make much being a maid and I don’t think he made much being a construction worker either. But, the-the thing that I looked back on – I see children who are hungry now and who don’t have the proper clothes to wear to school; now, that never happened to me even though we were poor um we always had a lot of food. I- ne- I never in my life was hungry um we always had nice clean clothes and my mother instilled in us, she said now there's something about being clean, you don't have to have money to be clean. You don’t have to live in a big house to be clean. She said if you have one dress you can wash it at night and hang it up and iron it the next morning and wear it again. But you-you don't ever have to be dirty, you don't ever have to be smelly you know. And we didn't have running [water], but the-we had a well in our back yard. And when you got ready to take a bath my mother would draw the water, heat it up on the stove put it in a tin tub and you would take your bath in a tin tub and go to bed. You know so and she always kept our clothes nice and clean. And I think that’s why for a long time I really didn't know how poor we were, because the people I hung around with were also like that so I just kind of thought everybody was like that. But, anyway that's what it looked like and, um, in the- I’m – I’m so proud now to see how much things have changed. Just like last month they had the-the program honoring um Black instructors here and um I almost cried um when I went to that and I saw what was happening, because years and years ago that never ever would've happened here or anywhere else that would not have happened. So and I got in a lot of trouble when I was in- teaching in the public school system for trying to teach African American history in February, but right before I tell you about that. I want to tell you what happened my first year of teaching in my first month in this all White school. (13:25)
Dr. Niki Christodoulou: What year was it? (13:26)
Dr. Judy Carter: 1967. (13:28)
Dr. Niki Christodoulou: Thank you. (13:29)
Dr. Judy Carter: um hum, uh this parent called me and she said, “Why are you in our school?” And I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Why are you teaching in our school? You are a nigger and I don't want any niggers teaching my child. And uh, you need to go to a nigger school.” So I listened to her, I had expected something like that to happen uh and it did (chuckle). So I said, “Mrs. Green,” I'll never forget her name, if I live to be 100, I am an African American, I am not a nigger, I said, “I don’t know how you came up with that name and I said I was sent here by the board of education, I didn't ask to come here. I said, I was trained to teach all children not just Black children but all children; and I will probably be one of the best teachers your son has ever had.” She said, “Well I don't want you here and I wish you would change your mind and go to another school” and I said, “Well your wish is not going to come true, because I am not leaving.” I said, “But let me tell you something if you meet me in the principal’s office in the morning we can have your son transferred to another classroom, for his homeroom.” She didn't come, she didn't meet me; she left her son in my room. He was a sweet child; never had any problems out of him; smart, sweet. And she never bothered me anymore. But I did find out from the children that she had gone around in the community trying to get parents to sign a petition about putting me out of that school and trying to send me to another school. And several of the children said, “Well my mama wouldn't sign it, my daddy wouldn't sign it”, but several of them said, “well, my mama did sign it” and children at that age, that was sixth grade, will tell you anything, all of their business, everything, they'll tell you every bit of it, but anyway it didn't go anywhere. But, in February – this is my first year teaching Black History Month – so I asked my students sixth grades now, they are pretty mature… I said how many of you know, anything about Black history and what Black people have done to build this country. And nobody raised their hands, they didn't know anything about Black history. Um, so I said this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to the library I'm going to get some books and I'm going to bring them to the classroom put them on the table and if you would like to get one or more and read it that's fine but you don't have to. It's not mandatory so they said, okay. So I brought the books in, put them on the table and I couldn't get them on the table fast enough, they were picking them out, picking out which one they wanted to read and they took them home. And they were reading them and the parents were furious so the parent’s called my principal and said they didn't want their children reading those books that I had made them read. But, I hadn't made them read them (chuckle). Now, this is not all the parents, this is just some of the parents, but it was enough of them to be concerned about it. So I had asked the students, I said now when you read a book and if you really really like it why don't you draw me a picture or make a collage or something like that to show what you had read. And because they loved to do that and they made pictures, they made collages and the secre[tary] – the librarian came to my classroom and she saw them and she asked, if she could put them in her display window, they were so good and I said, yes. You know I asked the kids permission they said yes, they were happy. So, she put them in a display window. The next morning I came to work, they were gone, so I went to the principal to tell him what happened but he already knew.