Interviewer: Ambrose Webster II



Interviewer: Ambrose Webster II

Interviewee: Charles M. George

Date: June 21, 2001

AW: We are interviewing for the Civil Rights World History Project Mr. Charlie M. George. We are at Sumner, Mississippi in the west Tallahachie Superintendents office. Mr. George if you will, lay some groundwork for us. If you will tell us your full name and education and where you were born and everything and then we’ll go from there.

CG: Okay, my name is Charles Marx, M-A-R-X, and George. I was born August 15, 1929 at Yazoo City, Mississippi. I received my formal education in Greenwood, Mississippi. I graduated from Stone Street High School in Greenwood, Mississippi. After high school graduation, I went to Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Mississippi. And, at the end of the first semester in 1953 I went into the Armed Services for the, during the Korean conflict. I was, after basic training in Augusta, Georgia at Fort Gordon I was shipped overseas to Germany. I was stationed in Germany and I was a part of the Military Police Corps. Our basic function was to escort soldiers, act as couriers for documents, escort services for dignitaries. I did have an opportunity to go into Berlin, Germany during the time that the Berlin Wall was there. I went there several times. My duty required me to travel to all parts of Germany, also into Austria. I was there for twenty-seven months. I extended a year; the reason why I was there for twenty-seven months is because I extended a year of my enlistment for officers’ candidates’ school. During the course of my waiting to go into to the officer candidates’ school the Korean Truce was declared. So, they didn’t need anymore second lieutenants. So, I was fortunate to go to Germany because in college I took German as a foreign language. So, my going there and perform the duties I had to perform in the Army with the German National. My knowledge of German and being able to speak German helped a lot in a lot of situations. After I was discharged from the Army in January 1956 I returned to school. The second semester had started about two weeks after I had been discharged. I graduated from Tougaloo College in 1957 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English with a Minor in Psychology. I came to, after graduation, oh well before graduation let me say, in our education department our education teacher tried to find places for Tougaloo graduates to work or do their practice teaching. At that time, there weren’t too many school districts in the Delta that hired Tougaloo graduates. Simply because of the liberal, they say, attitude that Tougaloo had. We had an integrated faculty and we had a few white students. And we were right there, you might say, at the capitals doorstep with an integrated situation a few miles from Jackson. With the liberal thinking that we had with the white instructors and the white professors who came out of the east and the north they thought that maybe our ideas weren’t the kind of ideas that they wanted to have in the communities in the Delta. But fortunately the superintendent then of the West Tallahatchie school district, said yes I’ll take student teachers from Tougaloo. So, I came to this district, school district in Tutwiler, Mississippi, which is about five miles north of here I did my student teaching. And during that time, they were in the process of building a high school for blacks here at Sumner. So there was a need for certified teachers. And they needed English teachers, so I was hired. And my wife was teaching in nearby Drew, Mississippi. She also had a major in English and I was asked if my wife wanted to come and teach too because they had a space for her. So, she came. We came here and we started school in October 1957. The reason why it was October is because they weren’t completely finished with the school building and that delayed the opening of it. So, I started teaching in a segregated, supposedly equal, but separate school. I taught twelfth, eleventh, and tenth grade English for three and a half years. Then the superintendent hired me as an elementary principal. So, I assumed the principalship of an elementary school. And after my three years they changed this school from a high school to an attendance center, which housed grades one through twelve on this campus here at Sumner. After that I was appointed assistant superintendent of the, excuse me, assistant principal of the attendance center. And I remained there as assistant principal and I think I taught two English classes along with my being assistant principal.

AW: If I may ask you a question while we’re here at this point.

CG: Okay.

AW: I noticed you said that they were supposedly separate but equal.

CG: Yes.

AW: Schools…had you visited any of the white schools, or seen any of the white schools and could you make an assessment? Were the school districts equal?

CG: No. The schools in district?

AW: The schools, right.

CG: No, they weren’t. The facilities, as far as the building is concerned, the physical building it was a good building. Good brick building. It didn’t have all of the equipment in the classrooms that say that, white schools had. There wasn’t as much money put into the athletic programs and other programs, you know, that they had at the white schools. So, we were in a situation where make due was what we had to do. Okay, during this same time the Civil Rights Movement had started, I believe, because when I was in Germany, the Emmitt Till case was being tried here in Sumner, Mississippi at the courthouse. That was when I was in Germany and it had headlines in all of the Europeans papers. …in English, German and French because it was in zones then…

AW: Right.

CG: And Russians too. So, when I came back, as I said, when the Civil Rights Movement started and some of the Civil Rights people came into the community. When I say community I mean to west Tallahachie school district community. Which covered from Tutwiler, north, south and southeast of Phillipp, Mississippi and Glendora and out from Glendora. Some Civil Rights workers came into the area (not audible). And they lived with some black families called Sharkey Road. The reason why they did that was because these black families owned their own farms. They weren’t dependent on a plantation owner that’s where they lived. And they had meetings in some of the churches, that’s the only place they could have meetings.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Uh…

AW: Were there any, when they first came down were there any problems? Like, I interviewed some people who started meeting in churches there in Cleveland and they said one of the churches they first started meeting in was burned or something.

CG: There was not any kind of incidents of that kind here that I know of.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Now as far as any other kind of conflicts they had in the community I am not aware of it. We did not have any confrontations in the schools. There were occasions where schools had some meetings and a few of them came in attendance. And the big question was, do you vote, did the black people vote and the answer was no. The principal at that time was asked very pointedly do you vote, he said no I don’t vote. And he was asked questions, why don’t you vote, because I’m not allowed to vote. Well, shortly there after and when I say shortly there after it may have been a week or two weeks, one of the Deputy Sheriffs came over to the principals home and told him, I want you to go up there to register to vote. In other words they did this in order to perhaps keep the flame from flaring up. So, he went and voted and the rest of us also went up there and registered.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: We didn’t have any problem. We did not have any boycotts, any walk outs, walk out during the Civil Rights Era, we didn’t have that. So, when the thing died down, people got registered to vote, the Civil Rights workers, as well as some of the local people who stepped out and went and fought this battle. It wasn’t that we didn’t participate in it because we were here to try to educate, try to educate, not necessarily to integrate…

AW: Right.

CG: But to educate. We would talk to the kids, we would talk to the parent and we would encourage them to do what they need to do.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: And I think that a lot of the plantation owners realized there was a change coming as far as Civil Rights and blacks participating in the governmental activities.

AW: Um hum.

CG: Their people, now when I say their people, their tenants, were encouraged to go up and register and vote. And a lot them did.

AW: That’s good.

CG: During the latter part of the sixties, I’d say maybe say 1965 through 69, they had what you call freedom of choice. Where a family, particularly blacks, had a choice of sending their children to formerly all white schools. There were families who chose to do so and many of them chose not to do so. So integration started, really started back when they had the freedom of choice. It wasn’t a high percentage of blacks that went to the former all white schools, there were some.

AW: Who were, well, first of all what was your position during this 65 to 69 freedom of choice era?

CG: I was still assistant principal of the Attendance Center over here at this school here.

AW: And who were some of the first teachers, let’s say, to integrate the traditionally white schools. When did that happen?

CG: There were not any teachers, there were students.

AW: Right, okay. So, they did not have black teachers come teach at those schools.

CG: No, no. Just students.

AW: Okay.

CG: They were still white faculty, maybe in the high school there might have been four or five black students and in the elementary students there might have been four or five. But as far as faculty integration, there wasn’t any. So, when the decree came down this school district was one of the last in the state to write a plan that was acceptable by Judge Keady, who was the Federal Judge in Greenville. The school district had to write a plan for integration that was acceptable to the Federal court. So, our plan was written maybe three times and each time it was rejected. I think the school district administration, the superintendent and board of trustees said so we’re not going to try again, we’re going to let them write the plan and we follow it. So, they said you know we’re going to do what the court says. So, the last year for integration the decree came down to the West Tallahatchie school district that we must be integrated at the beginning of the seventy, seventy-one school year. At that time, I was transferred to the formerly all white West Tallahachie High School as assistant principal and there were three or four more black teachers who were chosen, the superintendent chose, to send them. You know the superintendent has the authority to place the teacher wherever the teacher is needed. So, I don’t remember now how many people there were that were sent. There might have been six or seven of us maybe more. But anyway while I was over at the formerly all black school, which was West District as being assistant principal I did the scheduling of classes, the children’s schedule. So, I had completed the scheduling, I think was a thousand and fifty-five students on this campus from grades from one through twelve. In comparison to maybe four hundred, hundred students at the West Tallahachie High School in grades, grades I forget now what grade level they were. I know ten, nine through 12 and the superintendent told me to go to high school and do the scheduling. So, what I had to do was I had to do the scheduling, student grades nine through twelve, white and black. So, I had to do all that scheduling for them. I don’t remember how many students there were in nine through twelve over there.

AW: So the two schools remained it’s just both were supposed to be integrated then.

CG: Right, right. The schools remained as they were. They changed, not the name but instead of having a high school at West District it was a junior high school.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: I had to do the scheduling. And during that time, between the interim, between the beginning of school and say August, there was a lot of white flight.

AW: I was going to ask you about that.

CG: Students and teachers. So a lot of them left. A lot of white students left. A lot of the teachers left. The superintendent had told them, told me during a faculty meeting he said this is what is going to be. And he used this term, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”. So, a lot of them couldn’t stand the heat so they got out of the kitchen, they left. Same way with the white kids. So the principal was white and I was assistant principal being black. So, you know, it wasn’t a situation where I was assistant principal over the black and he was principal over the white kids, it wasn’t like that. We were principal and assistant principal of the school.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: The students and the faculty.

AW: The faculty that remained there, did they work well together?

CG: Yes, they worked very well together.

AW: Because one interview I did like, well don’t even know if I should, Shaw, I interviewed a teacher at Shaw she was the first black teacher to teach at the white school. And she said she remembers one day, she didn’t remember exactly what happened. It wasn’t a major incident but the National Guard or something was called to Shaw. You know, school and all. Y’all didn’t have any incidents like that here?

CG: No, no.

AW: That’s good.

CG: I must say truthfully, we didn’t have any interference. We did not have cops, we didn’t have fighting We had fights but it was black and black and white and white if there were any fights. We never had black and white fights. The teachers that were there, the white teachers that remained, accepted the black teachers and visa versa. I think that as far as black and white relationship, blacks have always accepted whites but whites haven’t always accepted blacks. So, things went well, we told them what we were there for and what we were going to do. And if you couldn’t abide by the rules or by the administration the best thing to do is that you take your child, if its white then send it to one of the academies. You see what I think what made this transition, when I say transition I mean from segregated to integration, we had dialog, we had dialog as far as the community white leadership and the community black leadership, we had dialog. We couldn’t make any roads into the white community but we felt that the white leadership could make in roads to the white leadership and we could make in roads to the black leadership. So I would say that this accounted for the transition was a smooth transition then there were some of the white parents who kept their children in the school. They weren’t you would say, they were leaders in the white community. They kept their children there. And then some of the other influential whites didn’t have any children, their children had already graduated, but they were cooperative. We have a few millionaires in this community, in this school district. Just like Hutton, when they speak, everybody listened, like E.F. Hutton. As far as the standpoint of the teachers and the black kids getting along with the white teachers, the white kids getting along with the black teachers. If there was any resentment it wasn’t open resentment. You know you’ll have people who like and dislike other people.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Especially when you have an authority, a lot of people don’t accept or respect authority.

AW: Right.

CG: So, whenever there was a problem, if it involved a white kid, I went in, I handled as if, the color of the kid didn’t make a difference. If he did wrong, I got him or the principal handled, they did wrong he got them. I spanked white kids, I spanked black kids, he spanked white kids, he spanked black kids. We never had anything from the parents.

AW: Well, let me ask this. Once integration you said 1971…

CG: 70, 71.

AW: Right, 70, 71 was the deadline for the school district to get on board with integration. How did that change as far as, you said the funding for like the athletic program over here was less than or the facilities, not the physical building facilities but the equipment was less than. Was there anymore equality because of that?

CG: Well, you see the, as far as the athletic program was concerned, the athletic program at the high school was more or less the major thing.

AW: Right.

CG: The junior high school, it was junior high athletics, it didn’t require as much.

AW: Oh, so this was. I got you now. This was changed into the junior high and all the high school, nine through the car unit students moved over to the other school.

CG: Not immediately, it was tenth, eleventh, and twelfth.

AW: Tenth, eleventh, and twelfth.

CG: Yeah, I’ve forgotten that ninth grade was still there, it was some years later on when they moved ninth grade up there. So, you see the needs were different. We got lab equipment when it was a high school. We didn’t have all the chemicals and all the specimens, you know, that we needed. Whereas they had specimen. Over the years, West Tallahachie was opened in 1950, and it was supposed to have been one of the examples of what a high school should be. But this was a class act; it won the class acts down there. Number one is, the heating was in the floor, it ran through pipes in the floor. It had marble hallways, you know, plaster in the halls. In other words, it was equipped. They got more lab equipment to teach science, up to ninth grade science and all this kind of thing. We’ve got more projectors, sixty-millimeter projectors in. We’ve got more overhead projectors, got more library books, and we’ve got more textbooks. That’s what I meant, it changed. But anyway, as I said, there was continuing dialog during the early stages of integration because if it hadn’t been a dialog between the white community and the black community. When I say white and black community I’m talking about leadership. I don’t think the transition would have been as smooth.

AW: For any transition as major as school integration to take place, there must have been dialog in all areas of the community and I guess I was going to ask, you know, we’ve talk about education a lot. You allured to how the law enforcement encouraged people to vote and all. What other organizations or structures in the communities took part and how did they react to integration and the movement?

CG: Well, the all around organizations I would say that involved themselves with this would have been the churches as far as the black community was concerned. But now in the white community you had the Rotary Club, Lion’s Club, as well as churches. Let me go back and emphasize a point. I’m talking about the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, perhaps the Methodists, not so much the Baptists…

AW: That’s what I was fixing to say I noticed you were leaving out the majority.

CG: Right, right.

AW: The Baptists.

CG: But see in these churches, your Presbyterian, your Episcopal, your Methodist are your more influential people.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Now, there were some influential people in the Baptists churches, but there was a greater number in the other churches.

AW: Hum.

CG: I don’t think the black community in a sense didn’t have any qualms about integration. I think they kind of said that it had to start somewhere and the schools the best place for it to start.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: So what happened as the time went on, I’d say from 70 and 71 we had white graduates. I was elected principal of the high school in 1980. And we had white kids in that school until I know until 1985, a large number. Now, what had happened in most of the families where these white kids came from, didn’t have any small children were gone. When I say gone they had graduated perhaps gone someplace else to school. We have one private sector and that’s about ten miles east of here. But down in Clarksdale you have Episcopal Day School, Presbyterian Day School, some Catholic schools and some blacks also went to Catholic schools and from there, some of them now are going to Presbyterian Day School. But anyway, the schools went along fine, maybe 86 white kids were gone from the high schools, there were still a few in the junior high school, and in the elementary school. And some sent their kids to elementary school, we had one in Tutwiler, one in Sumner one in Webb. Webb and Sumner were the two where the small white kids went. And as they grew up out of the elementary schools some of them came to the junior high school. And they went other places after that. But I would say, there were not that many white kids in the community anyway, at the school age.

AW: Yes sir. I’ve made that observation and correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like today’s educational situation, I taught two years at Drew for the past, over a year ago. But white students usually go to the elementary school but then they’d go to the academy starting in junior high or something.

CG: Well, that’s usually the trend.

AW: Yes sir. Can you remember some of the names of some of the first black students that went over to the white school in the ‘70-’71 era?

CG: I can remember two family’s names.

AW: Okay.

CG: McKinley’s that’s the last name, it’s German.

AW: Okay, those were…

CG: Now they came, now they were living out at the Sharkey community, when I spoke of more or less the Civil Rights people lived.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: And maybe, let’s see, Brewer, maybe some Brewers.

AW: Are any of these students or people still here in the communities or things?

CG: I only know of one. There’s one out of the McKinley family. He presently works up at Wright Steel up in Clarksdale. Columbus McKinley was his name.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: The others, I don’t know. Now he’d be the one that could more or less tell you about the others. I remember him most vividly. But as I said, I think the main key to integration to West Tallahachie was a fact that there was open dialog.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Between the black community leaders and the white community leaders. Other people could come, not parents necessarily but we had other people who were not enemies or, you might say, might be friends. They would come in and look, just you know watch and observe. We welcomed that because they could see how smoothly things were going and they could carry that message out to the communities. You see, I went up to West Tallahachie and everything’s working fine.

AW: As far as, you know, during the time that SNICK and some of the groups were down. Do you remember those people and what took place there? Obviously it went smoothly as well. And what about the Headstart program in this area. Do you recall Headstart starting up?

CG: Yes, I remember when Headstart started. I can’t remember the year, but to my knowledge there might have been a few, very few, but I know in recent years, I know at least by five, maybe five years ago there were some white kids who went to Headstart, out in the Brazil community, that’s up here. Now, we’re talking about integration and segregation. Now it was not only segregated as far as black and white was concerned; there was segregation in white and white. I’ll give you an example, now I mentioned the Brazil community.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: It’s a neighborhood that’s sort of northeast of here. Community Brazil they have a lot of poor whites living out there.

AW: Yes sir. They do like sharecrop farm hands and things like that.

CG: Work for a farmer, maybe some of them had little farms. And over here at Sumner Elementary, now this is during segregation. The white kids that went to school there in Sumner were more or less ones who were lawyers sons, and daughters, and grandchildren of rich people children and children. The ones in Brazil, the white kids in Brazil, they couldn’t go to school over here they wouldn’t send them to school over here. They sent them to Webb (not audible), which was another white elementary. Because they weren’t, the kids in there they already lived in Webb. And some of their parents were prominent people, but they didn’t have this attitude against the people of Brazil down there but they had the attitude over here.

AW: Socioeconomic division as well as racial division.

CG: In other words, they classified those people out there who lived right at the outside of Brazil as poor white trash. You know, they didn’t say that what, you could see it.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: They didn’t have to say it. So, as you know as we got the first black person was elected to the Board of Trustees.

AW: When did this take place? Do you remember who he was?

CG: I remember who he was because I taught him too. His name was Roosevelt Williams. He now works for the Sheriff’s Department and if I’m not mistaken he was elected. He ran against a white opponent. You see the difference in the, when the freedom rights, the civil rights came in. The blacks had this power, voting. So, the majority voted for him. Okay, he served on the board. If I’m not mistaken he served on the board maybe, because he served on the board when I was appointed superintendent. I say he must have served on the board eighteen or twenty years. There have been some since him; we had an integrated board because like I said, the power of the vote. And see heretofore we used to have our school board elections separate from the general election until the laws changed. The laws changed it had to go onto the ballot to the general election.

AW: What about other general election, like mayoral or city council or anything like that. When did you start to see changes take place there?

CG: Uh…

AW: Or had they?

CG: Yes they had. A matter of fact we got in the West Tallahachie community. Tutwiler has a black mayor. Here recently a black female was elected mayor as well and a black male is mayor of Glendora. I don’t think Philip has a mayor.

AW: Wasn’t always like that though.

CG: No, no it wasn’t. Everything was white. We have the board of alderman up at Tutwiler I think there are five alderman and four of them are black. There are no black aldermen on at Sumner. At Webb now the mayor is black and four of the board members are black. Glendora all black. So, the Civil Rights gave the right to vote and these kinds of things cause this to happen and for the most part blacks are beginning to vote some at times. It’s hard to get them out to vote, it’s hard to get anyone out to vote now. You get your biggest vote turn out when you getting sheriff and supervisors, umaybe when you’re getting a mayor especially mayor and aldermen when black and whites are running you get them out then. But see the mayoral and the alderman are confined to that particular municipality.

AW: Right, yes sir. So, integration came ‘70-’71 to the school districts…

CG: Yes, yes. Total integration.

AW: Total integration and then promotion of blacks voting, registering to vote that was in the late sixties and the early seventies as well or?

CG: I’d say the pronounced period of time was in the seventies.

AW: Seventies. Is that the same time that you would note a change in the holdings of political offices or did it take longer for black people to be able to run and to uh…

CG: It took some time. Now we have right now, our Tax Assessor is black.

AW: Uh huh.

CG: She worked in a tax assessors office for a number of years and this is her second term…well…she was elected after the tax assessor …resigned or retired because of health. She finished that term out and I think she’s won one or two since then.

AW: It sounds like it’s relatively recent. It hasn’t since black people have been getting in political office. Is that in the nineties or…?

CG: Well, no, you mean here in Tallahachie County?

AW: Yes sir.

CG: You might say the largest part of it came during that time.

AW: During the early nineties, maybe?

CG: I would say maybe before then. I can’t really remember. The relationship now, the relationship between the white and black has improved, has improved tremendously. Blacks have been extended the same courtesies in places of business as the whites are. You might say blacks have begun to feel that they are part of the community. Not necessarily part of the black community or the white community but part of the community. And I think it has done well as far as the, we don’t have any major industry, we did have a factory over in Sumner that made uniforms for some company. Some company got a picture frame factory in Tutwiler. Blacks and whites worked side by side in both places.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: I know for an example my son, one of my sons works down here at NAPA. He works right there, he sells parts. He does the same thing any others that work in there, any other whites that work in there. In the same way in these businesses you have black managers, black cashiers, you know, what that is a ploy you might say is that blacks will tend to go over to places where blacks are involved in the business. Besides being, the dishwasher or the cook.

AW: Yes sir. You say a ploy is like a form of advertising, it’s a promotion.

CG: Yes, right. People would feel a little reluctant, blacks and whites, if you go into a place and the only thing you see in there are black faces or only thing you see in there are white faces.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: But if we use them together, it makes it blend and attracts business.

AW: Once again, that hasn’t been that way always. Can you remember back before total integration before the Civil Rights Movement? Was there a separation in businesses as far as blacks and whites?

CG: Oh yes.

AW: Where blacks couldn’t go into a certain business or like a restaurant.

CG: Right, restaurants in particular, I said restaurants in particular ‘cause as far as restaurants, there weren’t within the whole school district there might have been three or four. And blacks had their own little restaurants. It wasn’t a place where you could go in and sit down and eat breakfast and order dinner, you know order steak or shrimp or you know that kind of thing. But they had the things that they knew blacks would eat fried fish, chickens, a vegetable dinner and this kind of thing where the whites menus were totally different. But like I said, it was kind of long, a good ways because they found out it was good for business.

AW: Right. Well, I still detect in your voice, I know from my personal experiences that though we’ve come a long way, we have a long way yet to go.

CG: Yes, yes. By no means has it been say one hundred percent in other words we can’t say it’s closure. It’s still open; there are still improvements to be made in both the communities, black and white communities. But it seems to be going in that way. Right now, I think that there has to be a greater concern of the white community to, for the black community. You see, they can’t say hands off to the black community. You see, because the white community by a large part has already developed, you see, as where the black community has not developed to this standpoint (not audible). It’s missing it doesn’t have the same thing the white community has, it’s kind of concerned. But see now, more concern, as far as the white community is concerned must be focused on the black community. In other words, we come up together…

AW: Yes sir.

CG: One can’t go up here and the other stay where it is because it’s going to eventually bring this down.

AW: Now…

CG: We’ve had things that has happen in this community. One of the greatest things that happened is when we established a Habitat for Humanity. We were the first, a matter of fact; West Tallahatchie was the first, when I say West Tallahatchie was the first community in the State of Mississippi where uh…Habitat for Humanity started. It started here in Tallahatchie County.

AW: Do you have any idea when that was?

CG: Oh my goodness, it must have been back in the eighties, yeah it was in the eighties, maybe the mid-eighties.

AW: Was that white people and black people working side by side. Well, the initiative came from the white community, I think through the Methodist church and blacks were selected to the board of directors. Okay from this we got people where we have, they have adopted us. A group from La Canada, California comes every year and every house that we have built in this community, the community here, Sumner uh…we have two or three down in Goose Point. The largest number is in Tutwiler. We have this group of whites that come down from La Conada, California and build. They live in homes; they live in white homes, some live in a few black homes. We have college kids come down from some of the colleges. The University of Wisconsin come down. Some have come from Georgia. We have an integrated board. Right now, the president of the board is a nun, Sister Maurine Delaney. She’s the chairman I’m vice chairman. Mr. Hollins is the Secretary; he’s the black superintendent here now. We have the ministers from the white churches, and this has been, in other words we have people from the uh…we have people from the Presbyterian church, people from the Episcopal church that come and volunteer to come and work on some of the Habitat houses.

AW: Yes sir. And at one point you had said that you had some millionaires in the community here.

CG: Well, yes.

AW: Are there any black millionaires?

CG: No.

AW: That’s one of those equalities we were talking about.

CG: Now, we have some, I think we’ve got some you might say, they’re living comfortably.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: But as far as, earning their money off farming, I would say the millionaires we have here are ones who, you might say had a silver spoon in their mouths from the beginning but their livelihood, their silver spoons came from the laborers, from the fields.

AW: Okay, well we’ve come a long way in our conversation and we see there are loose ends we need to still make progress toward. Is there anything else you would like to add to your interview? Whether it be something else in the past or insight to the future or anything?

CG: Well, I think that, like I said, I think now the, not now, necessarily now but it has been in the past, there needs to be more concern of the white community and the black community. Now, we have people, white people, that come into the school and they read to the kids over here. They do other things, community people, but it’s only, you might say, a token, it’s only a token. It’s a good token though, when I say token I’m not belittling it at all because I think they’re doing a tremendous service. Our faculties are integrated to the hilt. I think this is one of the few years we have added Chinese on our staff. We’ve had Indians, both the India Indians and the Native American Indians. We’ve had them on our staff. Now, I was the first black superintendent, I became the first black superintendent in ’88. And since that time and since that time there have been two other blacks and a black now…superintendent.

AW: Well, I’m going to make sure I get a phone number and contact information. If there’s anything else that you can think of that you’d like to contribute, that you’d like to make sure was recorded historically, for history’s sake or if you can think of anybody else that would make a good candidate for an interview, please make sure you contact us, let us know. That’s why I ask some questions, like you were talking about Columbus and McKinley I’m going to see…

CG: Roosevelt Williams.

AW: Right, and Roosevelt Williams, yes sir.

CG: He works over in the Sheriffs office.

AW: Yes sir. And we’ll make sure we’ll contact them and see if we can’t set up an interview with them as well.

CG: I can’t think of anybody else. Now, one thing that I forgot to mention, I don’t know whether I mentioned it or not, but the Board of Trustees, and I told you Roosevelt was the first black…

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Since that time, since that time, the Board has been integrated…we’ve always had a black or two blacks or three blacks. Right now, the way it’s set up now, we’ve got just one white on the board right now and that’s a lady. We have women, not only integrated by race, by sex, women are on the board now. As a matter of fact, this board right now has three women and two men. (not audible). And the attorney’s white. That’s the present board right there.

AW: Well, if we could just make those type of in-roads into our communities, housing and poverty alleviation and things like that…

CG: As far as in the community itself, the communities up at Tutwiler…

AW: Yes sir.

CG: Part of the community is integrated. When I say integrated, I’m talking about blacks moving into a formerly all white places. Webb, every time you look around there are blacks living in homes that were formerly white.

AW: Right, but you don’t see very many whites living in houses that were formerly black.

CG: No you don’t, but because of the class, the standard of them.

AW: There’s not a division in these communities like there are in some others, like the tracks divide the towns. Is there something like that?

CG: Well, there used to be, I would say, it used to be at Webb but it’s not that now.

AW: Yes sir.

CG: It’s not that now, because you’ve got neighborhoods integrated on both sides of the track.

AW: Good.

CG: It’s the line of demarcation.

AW: Well, we sure do thank you for you time.

CG: I hope that something I have said will be helpful or but I can’t think of anything else. I might have been rambling in my discussion of telling you about these things but you know how it is I didn’t sit down and make an outline.

AW: You did fine, thank you. (End of tape)

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