Interviewee: Peggy McGhee

Interviewer: Maurice C. York

Interview Date: June 3, 2015

Location: Louisburg, N.C.

Length: 00:47:00

Audio Excerpt

Maurice York: My name is Maury York. Today is June 3, 2015. I’m interviewing Dr. Peggy McGhee of Franklinton, North Carolina for an oral history of school desegregation in Franklin County, North Carolina, sponsored by the Tar River Center for History and Culture at Louisburg College with funding provided by the North Carolina Humanities Council.Peggy, thank you so much for being willing to let me interview you today.

Peggy McGhee: Well, you’re welcome. I hope my experiences will mean something to someone who listens to this.

MY: I think it will. Let’s start by having you talk about your background, where you were born, who your parents were, your education, and your early career.

PM: I’m a Franklin County native from the very beginning. I was born in Franklinton, reared in Franklinton, and still live in Franklinton. My mother and father both were from Franklinton. My father was Nathan Wynne. He and my mother, Adell Cash Wynne, were married right after she got out of high school. She went to high school at Franklinton Public School, which is the high school. Interestingly, my mother graduated there, I graduated there, my daughter and son graduated there, and my grandson graduated from that high school, so we have a long history of being in Franklinton.

MY: Right.

Break in recording

PM: After graduation from high school I went to East Carolina because I wanted to be a teacher, and Ralph and I, my husband, had always gone to school together, and so we were going to get married so I applied to Franklin County Schools for a teaching position. So, my first teacher position was in Louisburg. I taught second grade, and at that time Louisburg High School had grades one through twelve. I was there the very first year that the high school was opened.

MY: What year was that? Do you remember?

PM: 1961.

MY: Okay.

PM: I spent two years in Louisburg teaching second grade. Then my son was born and the next year I went to Franklinton so I’d be close to home, so most of what I know about integration actually happened in Franklinton, although I started my career in Franklin County.

MY: I see. Now, when you were at East Carolina, what degree did you get there?

PM: I got a BS degree in education, elementary education.

MY: Elementary education, okay. Was there any specialty in that? Were you hoping to teach a particular grade level or aspect?

PM: Well I had two majors, one was elementary education and the other was psychology, and at that time I really wanted to teach. I liked young children so it was just normal for me to go into elementary education, which I did.

MY: Okay. So after your child was born you started teaching in Franklinton.

PM: That’s right.

MY: Tell me about that experience, and when was that?

PM: He was born in 1963, which is interesting that the year after he was born–. I had already taught two years in Louisburg and then when he was born I went to Franklinton and taught two years, and one of the things I learned is that I didn’t know how to teach reading. I was doing as well as anyone else but I just felt so inadequate and at that time, at UNC-Chapel Hill, they had started a new school in the school of education, which was the mechanics of reading. I happened to read about it and decided somewhere after Scott was born that I’d go to UNC and get into graduate school in the new courses that they were offering in reading. So that’s how I got to UNC at Chapel Hill, and I did graduate with a master’s, but when integration was happening I had only gone to UNC that one summer and gotten the background for what I would call how to teach reading.

MY: All right, so you had several classes that summer.

PM: Two classes that summer, and I came back to Franklin County with the title of an expert as a reading teacher,–

MY: [Laughs]

PM: –which was absurd, you know that. But at the end of that summer Superintendent Rogers, who was there in Franklinton, called me and said he heard I had taken some reading courses, and of course I was so proud of it, “Yes, I did,” and he said, “Well, we need someone to teach remedial reading for an ESEA class.” Now, there’s a lot of chance and a lot of coincidence in how I happened to have reading and all of a sudden they opened courses for remedial reading, because there was no such thing before that time. You were taught straight second grade, third grade, fourth grade, but you didn’t have remedial reading.

MY:And what was that acronym you mentioned, ESEA?

PM: Okay, I’ll go back just a little bit. In 1964 we happened to have the Civil Rights Act that said that the US government could take away monies from the state in education if they did not integrate.

MY: Right.

PM: And of course that applied to Franklinton. Then in 1965 Lyndon Johnson started his War on Poverty and he passed the Elementary [and] Secondary Education Act, which was ESEA, and this was Title I. Since that there’s been Title II, Title III, for whatever reason, but then it started with Title I, and the monies were meant to be used for remedial education and materials for underprivileged children. That’s what the monies were meant for and, Maury, it was a lot of money. It was very enticing, and all school systems were vying for this money. So I realized, [Laughs] after it’s all over, I was the de facto integration for Franklinton so that they could have that money. What I didn’t realize was the impact my agreeing to be a remedial reading teacher would have on integration and the reaction from the community. A part of my job was to go to the predominant – well, the black – school in Franklinton, which was at that time Albion-Person. That was grades one through twelve. I was supposed to go there and teach reading two days a week for one hour a day. That was all I had to do to meet the requirements of ESEA so that the school system would get all these funds to buy materials, etc., etc.

MY: Were you the only teacher, only white teacher, who went to that school?

PM:As far as I know I was the first white teacher to actually cross that line and go to a black school. I did not know it at that time but I realize it now. It didn’t seem strange to me. They were children. I was supposed to teach reading and that’s what I went to do. The class was set up in an old Rosenwald building, which is now torn down. There was a little class with a little short table. They chose six young fellows who were in the third grade, who were having difficult reading, and we sat in that little room and I taught reading, and I can’t tell you they learned to read but I can tell you that I tried. [Laughs]

MY: Do you remember any of the approaches that you used to help them improve?

PM: Well, one of the things I learned right away, for anyone who’s ever taught in the elementary grades you know that we had a series of readers. Well, there was the Alice and Jerry series. The year that I came to Franklin County they switched series to the Dick and Jane series.

MY: [Laughs] Okay.

PM: So I was prepared to go to Albion-Person to teach from the Dick and Jane series. Well, when the children came in with their books they had the Alice and Jerry books, which I realized all of a sudden, they were using the old books from the white school.

MY: Right.

PM: So I had to change my tactics, not the way you taught reading, but I couldn’t use the same lesson plans for the children at Franklinton High School to teach over there because they had our old books.

MY: Now, that’s really interesting. Let me just clarify something. You said that you were sent to work at the Albion-Person school so that the school system could get funds for buying new materials, but it sounds like they weren’t using those new materials at the African American school.

PM: I can’t tell you where they used those materials. I can only tell you, in that classroom, I used the books that those children brought.

MY: Right.

PM: But of course I had things that I had gathered of my own that I used with them, but they were trying to learn to read from those books so therefore that was their textbook and that’s what I used. I didn’t use any multimedia. It was just the printed page.

MY: Right.

PM: Now, I’m sure that, as that year went on, there were materials bought. I can’t answer to that because I don’t really know, but that was the purpose for the ESEA Title I grant, was that they were supposed to buy materials.

MY: Right. How did the students react to having you as their teacher?

PM: I was just another teacher, [Laughs] and to me they were just another class of students. They were well behaved. They really tried hard. It was just like my classes at the other school.

MY: Right.

PM: Didn’t see any difference whatsoever, and if the people at the school had any reaction I didn’t see it. I came, drove my own car, went into the class that they offered me; the students were already there when I would get there every day.

MY: What differences did you notice between the Albion-Person School and the Franklinton High School?

PM: I guess the biggest difference that I noticed was it was an old school, being a Rosenwald School, and it was in bad shape then, in bad repair. You know, they had it torn down a little bit later, but it was–. One thing I noticed, it was leaking [Laughs] and there were buckets sitting around, but that’s just because I remember the buckets were in the room. But my little classroom was very small. It was just big enough for six little students and for myself. At the other school I had a big classroom, which was a normal size classroom. Now, that hasn’t happened over the years. As you have remedial reading or remedial courses we’ve always ended up, I’ve said, in closets, [Laughs] no matter what school you were in, because you had to have the big rooms for the overcrowding.

MY: Right.

PM: But I did not–. I had no–. I talked with the teachers of the students that I worked with and they were just as concerned about those students as they could be, they were their students, but they didn’t have any negative reaction to me that I could see.

MY: Well, that’s really interesting. I think you told me recently that at some point it was decided that you should bring these students, or they should be brought, over to Franklinton High School.

PM: Well I drove myself over to Albion-Person for about three weeks. I went twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I didn’t see any problem whatsoever. I drove to the school, I parked in the parking lot, I went in. But on a Friday night Ralph and I went out to eat in a restaurant in Louisburg, and there were a group of people there and I had taught one of the family’s children. So I stopped at the table and said to them, “How is so-and-so? I haven’t seen them in a good while,” and of course they said the student is fine, she’s doing okay, but then one of the ladies said to me, “Is it true that you are going over to the – school?” Now, I’m not going to fill in the blanks. You know about what she said. I said, “Yes, I go twice a week,” and at that point they just said, “We didn’t think you would do that,” and that was the end of the conversation.

We left, didn’t hear anything else until the middle of the week, and obviously some men in town had heard this and they went to Ralph. They didn’t come to me. They went to his place of business and told him that they knew what I was doing and that it was not acceptable and that if it continued they were going to burn a cross in my yard, and they couldn’t account for my safety if I kept driving to that school. I can’t tell you what Ralph said. I do not know what he said to them, but I do know that we sat up that night, waiting for the cross to be burned, but it never was. But, the fact that I had been threatened scared us. I had a one-year-old child.

MY: Certainly.

PM: So I went to Superintendent Rogers, Ralph and I both went, and explained to him what was happening, and he didn’t know about my experience but the same things were happening to him and to some of the school board members, so it wasn’t new to him that something like this might happen.

MY: Now, you say that he told you it was happening to him and to other teachers. Is that because they were trying to implement the integration?

PM:Well, it was happening to Superintendent Rogers and the school board members. At that time no other teachers were involved.

MY: No other teachers; excuse me.

PM: I can tell you that some of the–. That same year that I started there, the next year we had students who chose – what is it, “freedom of choice?”

MY: right.

PM: And we did have some dynamite to go off at a lady’s home, on whose property some of those children lived, but this was the year before. But they had threatened Superintendent Rogers and I know for a fact that they went to some of the board members and told them the same thing, because they were trying to implement what the federal government was saying they were having to do in order to get the federal funds.

MY: Right.

PM: It was just something that was going to happen, it had to happen, everybody knew it was going to happen, but it wasn’t accepted.

MY: Right.

PM By some people. I’m going to say, it was not everyone; it was just a group of people who thought they could stop it.

MY: Now, this group, for instance the people who threatened you, do you think they were members of the KKK?

PM: Well, I could only assume that since they decided they would burn a cross in front of my house, and that was one of the signatures of the Klan.

MY: Right.

PM I don’t know that there weren’t other people who might not have had an affiliation with the Klan who were just as adamant and could have been blamed for some of these things, but I think, in my case, yes; I think it was the Klan.

MY: Right. So what did Superintendent Rogers do when you and Ralph went to see him?

PM Well, he explained that it was just not my situation but that he understood he could not put me in that situation, that it was not safe, but that he had to do something to answer the letter of the law. Of course I was [Laughs] distraught, to tell the truth. I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, couldn’t figure what I’d done wrong, but it didn’t matter. It was a dangerous situation. But he told me to stop going, that they would figure something out, and, interestingly enough, the principal at the African American school, the black school, predominantly – well, it was an all black school – saw to it himself, and I’m going to mention his name because Ollie Burrell was one of the finest people that has ever worked in Franklin County. He said, “It is not safe for her to come over here. We’re not going to bother her, no one in our race is going to bother her, but there are people in Franklinton who will,” and he said, “I’ll bring the children to her.” So, they did reduce it, because he was principal of, you know, grades one through twelve, and he had to take his time out to put those children in his Volkswagen Beetle.

MY: Oh, my goodness. Now, how many boys were there?

PM: There were six of them.

MY: [Laughs]

PM: And they did reduce it to one day a week, but they would stay two hours instead of before I had them two days a week, one hour a time. But he would come with those young boys, I would walk down the stairs to the front door, and Mr. Burrell would get those young men out of that car. They were piling out like they were–. [Laughs] It was funny to watch, because they all got piled in there. He would bring them to the door and they marched up those steps into Franklinton High School and walked in their classroom, I taught them, and when it was over he would come back and get them. As I remember, I don’t remember anybody saying a word about those children coming to the white school. Now, there were people who saw them in the school, and I could see their expressions, that they thought, “Ooh! This is not what we want,” but after that I never heard any negative comment, and those children came the whole year, once a week.

MY: So you felt that they were accepted there.

PM: If they weren’t accepted no one said anything about it, which is strange to me, that I was not allowed to go to their school but it was accepted that they come to the white school. I don’t understand that.

MY: Right. And you never received any further threats.

PM Not a single one, and I would have done it the next year but I got pregnant and had my daughter the next year so I didn’t teach that coming year. But no; there was never any other turmoil.

MY: That’s interesting. Were they the only African American students at the school that year?

PM: At that time, because it was the next year that they had the freedom of choice and they could choose which school they wanted to go to, and I know that two children chose to come to Franklinton. It was such a coincidence that this happened to me, that I had the reading experience and that ESEA came along, and it was just one of those strange things that happens all at one time. Then the next year they were being forced to carry out some kind of plans and I know that Superintendent Rogers was–. I don’t know who they were, you know, but the people in general who were so against these children coming to the school really–. I don’t have any record of it but I always heard that he had to go and spend at least one night on the top of the high school for his safety, but I don’t have any record of it in any papers so, I don’t know, but in Franklinton a lot of people know that that happened.

MY: That’s fascinating. Now, in the fall of 1966, apparently the school board had made a decision to integrate to a certain extent and a group of local citizens came to a school board meeting to protest that and they reversed themselves. Do you remember anything about this kind of encounter?

PM: I can remember them filling the auditorium with people, and there were people there who were armed. It was a boisterous crowd. The amazing thing to me is I really don’t recall anybody ever actually being hurt, but it was a very threatening atmosphere. I know the school board really–. The Klan was going to burn crosses at their houses too, but that was the year after I did the remedial reading.

MY: Right.

PM: It seems to me, when I look back at the timeline, that at one time the funding was withdrawn from Franklinton, from the federal government,–

MY: Yes.

PM: –because of that.

MY: That’s right. That was in January of 1967.

PM: Okay.

MY: They lost federal funds for noncompliance.

PM:Right, and that happened the year after I had remedial reading, that they actually had to make some decisions about how they were going to integrate, and they did reverse it and that’s when they had to go to court.

MY: Right.

PM: And that’s the time they were really after the school board. But that meeting, all teachers had to go, and a lot of town people went, just to see what was going to happen, I guess, and most all of them who were there were very calm and very–. I don’t say they were accepting; they were there to see what was going to happen and what was happening in the community and how this was going to play out, but there was a faction that was extremely violent-acting.

MY: Do you recall whether both blacks and whites came to the meeting?

PM: What I recall is mostly whites. There might have been some blacks but the ones who were rabble-rousing, the ones that I remember, were white.

MY: Right.

PM: Although there were some–. I had a lot of sympathy for the black community at that time because some of them didn’t agree with integration, not all the way. They wanted the materials, they wanted an equitable education, they wanted their fair share, which they should have gotten, and that’s what they wanted; but they didn’t want to give up their school. That school was a good school and many of our leaders in Franklin County right now went to that school and graduated, so it was a good school, and they had an athletic department that made the white school look pitiful.

MY: Oh, is that right?

PM: Oh, yes. They had a basketball team, or program, that was nationally known, and they didn’t want [Laughs] to have to mingle with us and break up that sort of thing, but they did [want], and deserved to get, the same materials, the same – and that’s what they were there for, to be sure that their children got an equitable amount of what was owed to them.

MY: Right. Well this was a very old school too. Didn’t it grow out of the old Albion Academy, which was a private school?

PM: It did, and of course with the CCC–. I think it was Rosenwald who came in and built the Rosenwald buildings for black schools. That was added to the academy because of the numbers of students. But it hadn’t–. I don’t know how it happened or why but the superintendent of Franklinton City Schools was superintendent of both schools, the black and the white. The school board looked after the black and the white. I don’t remember the blacks being on the school board. They were all white school board members but they were responsible for that school.

MY: Well, that–.

PM: So repairs–. I shouldn’t even say this but I would say that if there were repairs done it was of dire necessity.

MY: Well, you took a pause in your career when your daughter was born. When did you go back to teaching?

PM [Laughs] I went right back into ESEA because by that time–. My son went to school in 1970 and at that time they had integrated Franklinton fully, and the black school was then one through six and all of the black students from seven through twelve came to the white school. So, we had two separate schools, all elementary predominantly in the black school, all upperclassmen in the high school.

MY: But fully integrated in both.

PM: Fully integrated, so from the time my son was born until he got to school the whole thing had been accomplished–

MY: Right.

PM:–and he was in a fully integrated class. But as soon as I–. Penny was born and I stayed out I think two years and they called me from Franklin County and said, “We have an ESEA reading lab we would like for you to come and look after,” so I came back to Louisburg. They set up the remedial reading lab on the Title I ESEA, I came back and taught, and at that time, of course, Franklin County was integrated also, so there were both black and white students in all those classes. So I sort of didn’t leave it, I just left Franklinton and came to Franklin County.

MY: Right. Now when you came to work for the Franklin County schools in Louisburg were you teaching or were you just helping other teachers learn how to do things?

PM: I was teaching. They had set up a very sophisticated reading laboratory.

MY: I see.

PM: Children were coming to the lab and the first year I taught mainly in the lab. After that there were labs dotted throughout the county, in the other schools, so I would go from school to school to help them based on what I had learned the first year in the lab at Louisburg. Then I went back from there to the ESEA Building. It was called the ESEA Building. It’s called the Wiley F. Mitchell Media Center now.

MY: Right.

PM: But I was there when they built that.

MY: I see.

PM: I helped order the films, helped order the–. There were films, film strips, audio equipment, all sorts of materials paid for by ESEA that were dispersed throughout the county. We actually had someone to drive a van, and I think that’s still going on today. [Laughs]

MY: Is that right?

PM: I think it is. But I was there when they built that building.

MY: Well, when you took this job in Louisburg and had an opportunity to go around to different schools, did you get a sense of how well the different schools were adjusting to this new integrated environment?

PM: Some much better than others, and it’s not up to me to say which ones. Some were much more accepting than others. I don’t know why.

MY: Do you remember any particular incidents that stick in your mind about things that happened in a school that might reflect some not doing as well as others?

PM: PM: [Pause] Some were more accepting of the students. The students were not complainers. They didn’t complain about what they had to be taught or where they were taught but they would say certain teachers and certain people were not nice to them, that they were put down, and of course I don’t think they knew to say “put down” but they felt like there were some teachers who were very much, I almost want to say afraid of them, [Pause] and let the students know that they didn’t think it was their job to teach them.

MY: I see.

PM: But I never saw too much–. The students, I just never did see the students react in a negative way at all. I have heard that some of the black students and white students were against–. In the lab I never saw that, and I guess I was in an isolated situation where these children were so, you know, it was almost one-on-one or a few students at a time, so you didn’t see that sort of thing. I feel like there might have been in a larger classroom where you could see certain students not being responded to.

MY: Right. Looking back on this whole process, what thoughts do you have about the desegregation that took place and what its impact has been?

PM: Well, it had to happen, and I think the thing that bothers me most is that it’s still going on, that we haven’t ever gotten over it. You would think we would but I see examples of it happening every day, and you would think after all this time–. That was nearly fifty years ago, you know.

MY: Right. Now, when you say it’s still happening, we haven’t really gotten over it, what do you mean by that, or give me an example?

PM: There’s still prejudice. There is still prejudice, and in some places it’s worse than others, and it hasn’t just stayed with the schools now. You see it in the big cities now. You see it in other states. It used to be confined to the South, I thought. [Laughs] I always thought this was a Southern thing. This is not a Southern thing.

MY: Right.

PM: So we have a long way to go if we’re going to integrate and accept other people.

MY: How do you feel about the schools in Franklin County particularly, looking back on this process and seeing what the schools are like today?

PM: Do you know what? I’m proud of them. [Laughs] Knowing from where we came, I’m proud of what they’ve done, and I believe there’s less contention in the schools than there probably is in communities. Now, I could be terribly wrong and someone will dispute that, but I think the schools have done very well. They were thrown into something all of a sudden. I noticed in one of the timelines that somebody said, a judge said, it was supposed to be done way before then, and it was. You know, we knew. We put it off and we put it off so it just sort of came down on us in a whole pile all at one time, and we got through it. I’ll say again, as far as I know, I haven’t heard of anyone being hurt or maimed. Now, psychologically, some of them might have been that I don’t know about. But all in all we did a good job. We did a better job than the churches.

MY: Well, church is fairly segregated on Sunday morning.

PM: [Laughs.]

MY: Let me ask you this, Peggy. I understand that Franklin County is one of two counties remaining in North Carolina still under court order to ensure desegregation of the schools. Do you have any sense of why that might be?

PM: Because they’re still trying to be segregated, [Laughs; pauses] and their grouping practices, and it did solve a lot of problems in the beginning.

MY: Grouping practices, tell me about that.

PM: I may get this wrong because I don’t know enough about them now. I’ve been out of the system, what, eighteen years. The grouping of students with high, middle, and low by test scores.

MY: Right, okay.

PM: I know that that’s been contested for a long time. I don’t even know that they still do it.

MY: But you’re saying it was done at one time?

PM: Oh, yes. That was the–. Franklinton was too little to do that. We only had two schools and so we just divided them up. [Laughs]

MY: Right, by grade.

PM: You went this way and you went that way, and that was the end of it, by grade level. But in the county they divided the classes according to test scores. There would the higher class, the middle class, and the lower class, or the slower class. [Pauses] I guess it worked for quite some time but it has been a contention. That’s one of the reasons they keep going back to court.

MY: Because that had a tendency to segregate students within the school.

PM: It’s still segregation.

MY: I see.

PM: That’s what they were saying, but now I never got into that so I can’t really tell you exactly what they’re doing now. I just know that students are grouped by test scores.

MY: Well–.

PM: And, you know, a parent who–. It doesn’t matter what color you are, what race you are, what religion you are: parents are going to object to that, and they keep reporting it. You know, “My child is not in the top group,” or, “Why is my child down here or not over here?” So that’s my belief, and I can’t say that for sure.

MY: Right.

PM: But I think that’s the reason they keep – that it’s that way.

MY: Well, in terms of your own direct experience during these early years of integration, is there anything that I’ve left out that I should have asked you, anything that you’d like to add to what we’ve already talked about?

PM: [Pauses] I guess I will say again, the fact that it all happened in a short length of time, it was something no one thought was going to happen, and knowing that we got through it with as little turmoil as we did is just a blessing for Franklin County, and I think for North Carolina too. It didn’t happen in every state.

MY: Right.

PM: I hope it’s a much better system for everyone.

MY: Very good.

PM: I hope it is, and I feel–. [Laughs] In my heart I feel like it is because they are all offered the same things now.

MY: Right.

PM: If one gets it the other one can get it if they want it, and that was not happening.

MY: Right.

PM: So in that respect it’s a good thing. We have not gotten rid of the bad feelings, and I hope some day we will. My children benefited from it, actually, because they learned to live with people who were not like them and they learned to accept them and they learned to like them. So it was a benefit to them, and I didn’t see that it hurt them educationally at all.

MY: Very good. Peggy, thank you so much for sharing your recollections. I really appreciate it.

PM: You’re welcome.

END OF INTERVIEW

Transcriber: Deborah Mitchum
Date: July 3, 2015