I was born on May 15, 1891 and I’ve lived in Isle of Wight County mostly all of my life, especially in the Windsor area. I graduated from Hampton Institute in 1921 in a class of 63 students. After I graduated, I moved back to Windsor to teach. When I was in school, many women didn’t go on to college. I guess I was very lucky because it was even harder for black women to go to college.
I taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Holly Grove. Many people don’t know where Holly Grove is. It’s in between Zuni and Windsor, but it’s probably closer to Windsor. We were paid $25 a month for teaching. I think the most I ever made was $50 a month, and part of the money came from donations made by parents.
I taught at Holly Grove longer than anywhere else. I taught at a school near Shiloh Church, and I taught at another school, too. I just can’t remember the name of that school. We didn’t have any high school children at either schools. Most of the older students attended school in Smithfield. There were no high school facilities available for black students in Windsor sixty years ago. Many of the students were transported to Smithfield, or they didn’t attend high school at all. The one-room school where I taught consisted of grades one through eight. Mr. Hall was the superintendent of the Isle of Wight schools then. He told me my students learned just as well as the students from Smithfield when they entered high school. There was a bit of rivalry between the two towns when I was teaching. But the Windsor students achieved high in school, too.
As a young girl, I enjoyed school very much. I would spend most of my time studying or reading. I came from a large family, and my father wanted to see all of his children or at least one of them go to college and further their education. We grew up on a farm, and we helped our father during harvest. Many of the children didn’t go back to school until after the harvest was over. Then, they would resume their studies. We had to dig the peanuts up with our bare hands and then pick them. They didn’t have the modern equipment they have today to do the job. Back then; we plowed things with horses and a plow. We didn’t have farm machines. Even long after I finished college, people were using horses and a plow.
I had many breaks during my education, but I never gave up. I continued to study. I remember my mother was expecting her last child. She was so mad because she didn’t want any more children. So she made me stay home from school and make clothes for the baby. I was angry, too. I wanted to hurry and go back to school.
After I finished school in Windsor, my father sent me to Smithfield where I lived with my aunt. There was a lady in Smithfield who helped students learn at a much higher level so they could attend college. After I studied a couple years at the small private school, my father enrolled me in Hampton Institute. One of my sisters attended Hampton Institute the same time I did. She didn’t finish. After a year of college she was married and returned to Windsor.
The book Many Voices was published in 1986 as part of a project of the Interview Committee appointed in 1984 for the Isle of Wight County 350th Sesquitricentennial Celebration. The Oral History project taped the recollections of our older citizens and developed their stories from the transcriptions. Many Voices gave a permanent record of the previously unrecorded family life and history in Isle of Wight County. These excerpts take only the discussions dealing with the education memories of some of those citizens.