| Introduction
This interview was with Hester Nelson Suggs. Mrs. Suggs was the principal at
Booker T. Washington Elementary school for 22 years and a teacher before
that in the Champaign and Urbana Schools. She was the first black teacher to
teach at Leal Elementary School in Urbana.
Abrecia Cotton and Lawanda Miller, two 8th grade students at Franklin Middle
School, conducted the interview. Gabrielle Ceasar, a 7th grade student,
engineered the interview. Abrecia, Lawanda and Gabrielle are three of 12
Franklin Middle School students and two Central High School students
(graduates of last year’s radio program) working with WILL-AM 580 on an oral
history project documenting the actual desegregation of Champaign’s public
elementary schools in 1968. The students used parts of this interview for
their 60-minute radio documentary, More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating
Champaign Public Schools.
Abreica and Lawanda conducted the interview on February 1, 2005 at the
WILL-AM 580 studio, 300 N. Goodwin Ave. in Urbana, IL.
ABRECIA: Did you grow up here?
MRS. SUGGS: Yes this is my hometown, in fact it’s my family’s hometown. I
grew up here, my mother grew up in HOMER Illinois and moved to the champaign
– urbana, my dad was born here in urbana and me and my brothers and sisters
– of which there were six of us all grew up you know, here in Champaign.
LAWANDA: Ok. Which elementary school did you attend?
MRS. SUGGS: I attended GREGORY elementary school. Now Gregory is now an
apartment building. It’s on the other side of the tracks because there was a
little cluster of minority children that went to Gregory school.
LAWANDA: Were they segregated or mixed?
MRS. SUGGS: They were mixed.
LAWANDA: Did you attend a racially mixed school in elementary, junior high
or senior high?
MRS. SUGGS: All three.
ABRECIA: What were some of the differences you noticed between going to a
segregated school and an integrated school?
MRS. SUGGS: Did I tell you I went to a segregated school? Or did I say
integrated school?
ABRECIA: I believe…
MRS. SUGGS: What was your question? And then I can…
ABRECIA: You said you went to a mixed school.
MRS. SUGGS: I yeah I went to an integrated school. Um, I guess maybe – I
really didn’t see too much difference but of course that would be how I was
sort of brought up because the neighborhood – and we lived over on the
market street side of Champaign and even though there were clusters,
clusters of minorities or clusters of black kids or – we were colored or
Negro then – we sort of went around together you know and everybody was poor
and so you know everybody just sort of went around together and you took it
for granted. I remember when I got to middle school the teachers used to
say, “You are black,” and I would say “Well why are you callin us black and
callin you white? We’re not exactly black and you’re not exactly white,” you
know, and I guess maybe I always felt good about myself and so I just sort
of felt like, if they didn’t want to associate with me that was their loss.
ABREICA: Ok. Why do you think that there was a problem later on with
integration if there wasn’t a problem when you were going to school? Like
later in the years…
MRS. SUGGS: Well one of the kind of things that - and I was just reading an
article…in fact I had a Reader’s Digest that I was looking at when I was
cleaning out my mother-in-law’s things just this week where it talked about
the migration up from the south. When the south came in – and there was
problems during that particular time but I guess there were problems every
place and so we didn’t really recognize them as the kinds of problems. But I
noticed in the integrated schools at that particular time all kinds
participated in everything but I guess as I’ve come through school, those
children that wanted to participate – now there were some places that we
just took for granted that we didn’t go or things that we took for granted
that we didn’t do. One of the kinds of things is – I guess I read some place
where the biggest obstacle you can have is yourself. You can build an
obstacle for yourself. You can have an obstacle or you can have a bump in
the road and I guess my parents always brought me up to say it was a bump in
the road, you know that you feel good about who you are because that’s who
you are no matter you know – and you learn how to treat people as people.
And if you learn to do that you know you don’t feel that – I guess maybe I
never felt an inferiority complex. And somebody else might have thought I
was inferior but I didn’t think I was.
ABRECIA: What do you remember about any of your teachers?
MRS. SUGGS: Oh I remember I had – oh many different things that I remember
about my teachers. There were those that you learned in spite of them and
theres those that you learned because of them. You know there were some of
them – I remember in first grade and I went to first grade – well I guess
maybe it was second grade cause I went to first grade in New Orleans cause
my – I had gone down to stay with an aunt for a year. But when I came back I
remember one of the teachers had given me a doll for Christmas and you
wouldn’t - you know it was a little blonde haired doll because they didn’t
make dolls otherwise you know back in that particular time but I thought
that was you know, really great and she would say you had to get your work
done. But my parents backed them up. You know I remember my sister and I -
and we talk about kids fighting in school, I think kids have always had
confrontations in school. I remember my sister and I getting in a fight on
the playground. Of course we fought with our own – within our own we weren’t
fighting with somebody else so they put us in the cloakroom because you had
to be punished if you fought and my sister turned to me and said “What are
we sitting in here for we’re not learning anything. Our coats are right
there, lets go home.” Ok…so we get up and we take our coats out of the
cloakroom and go on out because the cloakroom entered into the hallway and
went home. I remember my mother bringing us back to school, standing us in
front of the class, and that time you could whip kids taking <inaudible>.
Said “You’re sent here to learn, that’s what I expect of you.” You know and
so there were consequences for behaving – I didn’t look at it as a racial
kind of incident because I thought maybe the old stern teachers at that
particular time they did that to everybody.
ABRECIA: What was the cloakroom?
MRS. SUGGS: Well when – instead of having lockers you hang your coats. The
cloakroom was a little hallway, a little - like a little long closet and
everybody had a hook on there and you, when you came in you lined up there
and that’s where you put your belongings in that room they called a
cloakroom.
ABRECIA: What were your classmates like? What do you remember about them?
MRS. SUGGS: I remember having fun with them. I remember – and I guess maybe
we didn’t get a chance to - in grade school you really didn’t worry about
who was black and who was white and I guess the kids do that now. You know
you just play together and you had fun. I guess maybe you really didn’t get
into the problem I guess until you got around the dating age or people
started pairing off to – the racists started pairing off but those were your
friends that you played with around home so you know, it was – it wasn’t
unusual for me to play with them at school. But I still felt like I could go
into another group like - and I’ve got pictures and programs and things from
elementary school like the – who were in the different plays and these
particular kind of things so I can authenticate and give credence to what it
is, my reflections because I got pictures that show that up. The same thing
happened with my kids that came through school. You know, there were – as I
said obstacles in the road and maybe my parents had to come up. I remember
in high school – the sock hop. A fellow and I were dancing at the sock hop
and the kids all got around us and were standing there cheering like
teenagers generally do and the principal wanting to put me out of school
because he said I was making a spectacle of myself. But I remember my dad
coming up and said “No according to the blue book of Illinois no that can’t
be what happened,” and you know it – we ended up being let back to school.
He said, “Oh no my daughter’s coming back to school.” So you know we did
have those particular kinds of problems. Some were racial and some of them
we knew were racial. But those kind of things existed. I remember the Klu
Klux Klan burning crosses on our lawn three times in my lifetime. And that
was here in Champaign. One was on the east side, one was on the north side.
So you know, we realized that there were things there that existed but we
were able to participate.
ABRECIA: Ok. How did you get to school?
MRS. SUGGS: Walked.
ABRECIA: How far did you have to walk?
MRS. SUGGS: Oh well you know where north 5th street is…I guess maybe it’s
about – well the last time we were in Gregory School we had – we stayed at
the – they let us stay at the same school and so even though we were living
on north 5th street we would walk across the tracks and over the bone yard
and down the railroad tracks to school and back. When I got to high school
that’s the way we got to school. You could have ridden a bus but generally
we tried to save our little nickels or dimes that we had for lunch money. So
we would walk to school and we would leave about the time the bus would
leave and go over across the tracks, down the tracks…all of the unsafe
things that they say that people shouldn’t do now.
ABRECIA: What made you decide to be a teacher?
MRS. SUGGS: I guess maybe one of the kind of things – and I wasn’t a goody
two shoes in school and you could always – for two reasons. One because I
always sort of felt like - I was the 5th among 6 kids and I’d get in and
they would say, “Here comes that Nelson girl. Your brother did this and he
was very smart, my sisters did this,” and I was a little – had a little bit
of a devil in me and I sort of liked that particular kind of thing in a kid
because a kid’s going to need that. He’s going to need to have some pizzazz
and be a little bit dare devil and speak up for themselves you know, and I
think we need to foster that. And I got into education because – well
another reason is because I had an aunt who was the first principal of the
old Lawhead school that Lizzie – well we called her Elmira Davis – her name
was Johnson at that particular time and I just liked – I enjoyed my
elementary school experience. And I enjoyed people that liked to – I thought
it would be a challenge for – if a kid sort of did something out of the
ordinary I thought that was sort of neat. You know and I think we need to
foster that in kids. I became a teacher because I wanted to work with kids,
I became a principal because I found out in working with kids and working in
the situation and seeing some of the kind of things that happened that kids
always need an advocate. And they need an advocate in a place where they can
be a support system for them. Because if we knew everything that came along
– now some of the things that children do that we either want to incarcerate
them or put them in jail or say that they’re terrible for, we thought were
clever.
ABRECIA: How would you describe yourself as a teacher?
MRS. SUGGS: Not the same kind of way. If I – you’d probably get some of my
former students to describe me as a teacher. I was one of those that – well
I’ll give you a good example. We liked – I liked to do different kinds of
things so one of them – I liked to study science and so everybody was
supposed to have a science project. And so these two little guys came up
with the idea that they were going to dissect snakes. We didn’t even have a
sink in the classroom but here they came with these – they went out some
place and got these – caught these snakes. And here they came with two
pillowcases with snakes in them so they had one for each two kids which was
about 13 or 14 snakes that they’d brought in. Well what do you do? And I
told them they could chose their own project very much like you girls are
doing now you know you get to make up a kind of a thing and somebody is
supposed to follow through with it. They brought the snakes to the classroom
so then but we had to bury it because we didn’t have a – I said well we cant
dissect the snakes so we’re going to keep the snakes. Well the custodian
wouldn’t clean my room because he said he wasn’t coming in the room with the
snakes. The kids you know, would – I thought it was a good teaching lesson
for them…because they were garter snakes there wasn’t anything wrong with
them. And I was one of those that when we were going to grade school, my
sister and I used to catch the snakes and put them in a little jar and we
could sell them for a nickel when we got to school and we thought that was
pretty clever. And so we buried this particular kind of thing. Well the
snakes got loose and – because it rained one day and the snakes got loose
and we told them…well uh I’m in the principal’s office and here come the
kids running in “Mrs. Suggs, Mrs. Suggs the snakes are loose, the snakes are
loose.” I said “Oh my God.” The snakes went out and went over the thing out
on the playground and so we had to figure out – rather than being excited
about it or having the kids put out of school or this that and the other,
our thing was well let’s bury our project and so we all went out and
gathered up the snakes off the blacktop. You know that particular kind of
thing…the gerbils got loose and got in a shoe and the teacher next door –
you know, I don’t know whether – maybe in this day in time I’d have probably
been put out too as well as the kids but I thought it was sort of a clever
kind of thing that they – and we really learned a lot from there and the
kids got a lot of good writing experience and reading experience. And you
have to sort of stop me because as I get to talking about the different
things, so many things happened that I think was exciting. I see some of
those boys now and they still will say “Oh Mrs. Suggs didn’t we have a good
time in the 5th grade?” And I enjoyed it also.
ABRECIA: Do you have any more stories that can kind of tell about your
teaching philosophy?
MRS. SUGGS: Oh God there are so many of them you know that – I think you can
learn as much from your mistakes as you can from your successes but it’s how
we as teachers handle them. If a kid comes in and he makes a mistake on a
paper you know, you accept it to start out with and then you take that and
learn it as a teaching kind of a situation. I think everything can be turned
into a teaching kind of a situation. There are so many stories that I could
relate to you that happened during that particular time but we only have a
few minutes for this interview. And by the way that was a mixed classroom.
It was a – the story I was telling you about happened at Dr. Howard School.
I found out some other kind of things you know when I – you read and you
hear all of these things and I thought there was going to be something
different between the classrooms. But one of the things they found out was a
teacher from the principal that was there was - you don’t tell everything
that goes on in your school. For instance, the – she had it fixed so that
when the kids turned off – and this was in the white neighborhood – the rest
– almost all of the black kids were bussed in – so they would get the fire
escape or they would go up on the top of the building – you know I was
really amazed when I went out to find out all the things that did go on in
schools, that people did do in schools because all that you hear about was
what went in say the schools in the north end. And these things were going
on every place. As the teacher said “I can handle the kids, I can’t handle
all of the parents,” so if the fire truck had to come or the police had to
come, they’d turn off their sirens two blocks before they got to the school.
So and sometimes you’d never – if you weren’t there you’d never hear about
it.
ABRECIA: Which schools were – which elementary schools were desegregated in
1968 when you were teaching?
MRS. SUGGS: Oh let’s see…Marquette and Willard had been dissolved – no
Marquette was desegregated but it was integrated earlier than the regular
desegregation process. There was a whole cadres of directions and a whole
booklet that we had when the schools were integrated because we had a
superintendent – and it all goes back to leadership – the superintendent
said what he expected and so we had certain guidelines that we had to
follow.
ABRECIA: Who wanted to integrate the schools?
MRS. SUGGS: Well there was a group called the – let me see if I can get the
name right. It was a committee for community integration that was made up of
black and white people around the group. One of the – let me see…there was
about 50 or so individuals that go together – they called for community
integration. Bern Bartsol(?) who – one of the schools where he worked on
that particular committee. We had – before we finished up the integration of
the schools it was a plan – Champaign did a planned kind of thing of
integration or desegregation because the integration had to take place
within the schools but then I found out we had certain kind of guidelines
that we were supposed to – that principals were supposed to follow in order
to help with the desegregation. And then we had a group of teachers that met
together and they gave us seminars and some of the kinds of things – gave us
both positive information and information that was correct and information
that was probably a little bit tainted the way that - as perceptions. But it
was to work on teachers’ perceptions because their perception was that they
were going to get all these inferior kids coming into the school and it
wasn’t necessarily true.
ABRECIA: What were some of the things said against integration?
MRS. SUGGS: That were said against integration? Well for one thing, all of
the bussing was supposedly done for the black students, or those up in the
north end. It was a blessing and it was a curse in many different ways.
ABRECIA: Ok were going to do the more serious questions. Well I thought,
wasn’t bussing a good and bad thing because before blacks had to walk miles
but when they were bussed they may have been taken far but they still didn’t
have to walk?
MRS. SUGGS: Walking’s not bad for you in my estimation. So we bus them to
school to make them take PE. Nothing’s done as positive without some kind of
sacrifice that comes from that. Bussing was bad because for some places the
reception that the kids got after they got off the bus. The other one was
that they weren’t there until they had the program that they would make sure
that the parents could get there. Because you do need parental involvement
and the parents couldn’t be as involved if their children were farther away.
And then there were faulty perceptions - that bussing was bad because they
were out of the neighborhood. Well then when the neighborhood was dissolved
and people were moved all out into the community you had more of a natural
integration rather than a bussed – a forced integration.
ABRECIA: I know that whites were told not to like black people often and
blacks were just told things like “Keep your head up” or “Don’t pay
attention to the negativity,” do you think if whites weren’t told what they
were told that schools would have been integrated faster?
MRS. SUGGS: Well I don’t know whether…read that statement to me again
because I don’t know whether or not I agree with that all of the way.
ABREICA: Ok well, as – the way they said stuff back then in movies and
things – whites were always told not to like black people. They were always
told to stay away, they’re negative, they’ll get you in trouble and stuff
like that. Blacks were always told “Don’t pay attention to them, keep your
head up, don’t pay attention to the negativity.”
MRS. SUGGS: There isn’t an always kind of a statement. That puts it too well
– cliché black and white. And there is a whole lot of gray in between
because some of my best friends in both grade school and in high school were
white as well as black. And I think that was putting up a false barrier. I
do remember – well some of it was because they didn’t know – they didn’t
have a chance to associate with or know them because of course they didn’t
live in the same neighborhood. And there are some things that people said
that were their perceptions which were their faulty perceptions but when –
I’ll give you another good example. The little kid that – we lived on White
Street and White Street was sort of a mixed kind of a thing and all the kids
would sort of play together – this was when my children were coming along.
And the little girls – I was the one that had – would always have the kids
over to the house and we would bake cookies and we’d do other kind of things
and the little girls – the two little girls that lived down the street –
they were there and we were baking cookies one day and they said, “Danny,
there’s um black people in the neighborhood and we’re not supposed to play
with them.” Now we’re all up there baking the cookies and Danny said, “There
are?” he said “Yeah.” He said “Mama, there are some black people in the
neighborhood and we’re not supposed to play with them.” And I said “Danny
honey, they’re talking about you. We’re the black family.” He said “Oh,” and
I said, “Mama Glubber(?) and Papa Glubber,” so he went through he whole
family and he went on to say <inaudible> and I said, “Yeah we’re all black.”
So this – these girls father was a state policeman so they came back out to
play with him and Danny’s walking across the street from them, all the
neighbors are sitting on the porch and Danny says – the girls come out and
they say “Danny come on over, come on over and play.” And of course I’m
walking along behind the kids coming from Jene’s mom house – it was a block
down the street. So Danny said, “Nope. Your daddy told you you’re not
supposed to play with black kids and I’m black.” So and about that time the
father walks around the – out the side of the house and meets me right at
the time the kids are in there and of course he sputtering and he’s doing
all these things. So that’s something that was brought to them by their
parents.
ABRECIA: Yeah that’s kind of what I meant by - when they were told – the
children were told from their parents to – “You cant play with them,” or
things like that.
MRS. SUGGS: But you see they never did say they couldn’t play because they
spent most of their time down at my house. But I guess they hadn’t – you
know I don’t know exactly where that was coming and I guess I – my kids
could relate to a whole lot of different experiences like that the same way
that we could. I had a – the other daughter – and one of the girls, this was
a very prominent family in town – she was in the gifted class and there
weren’t very many blacks in the gifted class and this one girl told her -
said – they were supposed to be working on a project and she said “Well we
can’t do it at my house because my parents won’t allow black kids in my
house.” But my thing is, that’s their – they’re denying themselves that
particular kind of thing. But if you never try, if you never aim at the
stars you don’t know whether you can hit them or not. So you keep your head
up and maybe that’s what you were talking about beforehand.
LAWANDA: Ok. Did the – do you know about the EEOC recommendation?
MRS. SUGGS: Yeah. In fact I got copies of it at home.
LAWANDA:. Do you – they stated in this recommendation that between seven to
twenty six percent of – in each class the percentage should be the amount of
black students in that class. Do you think that this ever happened?
MRS. SUGGS: No because sometimes they didn’t have that many black students
in that class. And generally – and the other thing that they did – and this
happened in the other buildings is that they put – generally they put the
majority of the kids in one class, so you know, you might of as I said you
might have had a class that only had one or two in it at that particular
time so those guidelines…
ABRECIA: Ok. Earlier you were talking about the students that came out of
Dr. Howard that were - became lawyers, doctors…what percentage of students
became presidential scholars, doctors or lawyers out of Washington or Dr.
Howard?
MRS. SUGGS: Well now that all depends up on when it was. Now like Dr. Howard
– at that particular time I don’t think as many came out of Dr. Howard as
came out of Washington. And that was you know - I cant exactly tell you how
the percentage was because I haven’t really broken it down in that
particular time but you know, the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in
the pudding when you see them and they come back and they’ve been to – had
been to the black colleges and things and they had been successful you can –
they’re there so you don’t really go on a percentage but you know that they
do exist and they came through the same kind of set up that the rest of the
kids that maybe didn’t take as much of advantage of it.
ABRECIA: In 1968 black parents, the NAACP and the council of communication
integration made charges against Marquette, Gregory and Washington schools.
They claimed that inexperienced teachers were sent to schools with the most
problems. What kind of problems did Washington school have before
desegregation?
MRS. SUGGS: They had lower test scores but I’m not sure that the test scores
were really indicative of what kids could do or they were indicative of what
was tested at that particular time. And when you say back in 68…gee lets
see…as I said I know teachers that taught kids how to read – that the kids
said that they couldn’t read prior to that particular time. They had some
problems but I think the problems were a result of the whole kind of
neighborhood rather than the school casting explosions(?) on the school
itself. Because I know <inaudible name> who was the principal at Washington
prior to me coming to Washington – as I said they had good students and they
had poor students.
ABRECIA: The NAACP also claimed that children were suffering from emotional
problems from over crowded classes and poor discipline at Washington school
before desegregation.
MRS. SUGGS: I don’t know if I’m the right person for this interview because
I don’t, you know I saw kids having kids problems but I don’t – the
discipline – I didn’t see the discipline problems there and as I told you my
dad was custodian there at that particular building and so, not knowing
where you got your information or who put these particular kinds of things –
I do have a bunch of articles that were put out by the league of women
voters that they assessed different schools back in that time that I’d be
glad to dig out so that you could read them and really get factual. Cause
I’d rather give you factual information than I’d give you somebody’s
perception because my kid didn’t do well in school – now that could be a
perception that they weren’t doing well. Was I giving them the same kind of
attention before schools integrated as I was givin them afterwards? I think
they were. They had plays – I’ve got pictures of them that document them
that show that they were. And I guess I had taught kindergarten and in that
particular area they show that they were. So I guess maybe I see that as a
statement that I would hope that wouldn’t be perpetuated because it’s like
Stratton might not have the scores now that people had beforehand but there
were other kinds of things other than the outcomes of integration. Because
like we talk about that there were many students that went to the
nonintegrated schools – John Lee Johnson went to a nonintegrated school.
Kathryn Humphrey went to a nonintegrated school. And I cant see that those
people are any less for going to a nonintegrated school than they would have
been going to an integrated school.
ABRECIA: I have a quick question. Was your dad the first black custodian at
your school?
MRS. SUGGS: He wasn’t at my school but he was the first black custodian in
Washington school.
ABRECIA: Ok. Your old school that was knocked down and changed – ok. Excuse
me. Ok. Was your old school knocked down and changed when you went to it or
was this some years afterwards?
MRS. SUGGS: Now are you talking about Lawhead school? Cause I didn’t go to
Lawhead school my dad was at Lawhead school. It was done afterwards because
it was done to make way for Washington School.
ABRECIA: In a document they said that it was hard to find <inaudible>,
qualified black teachers to teach. Do you think that this was true?
MRS. SUGGS: Yes from around here it was because most generally they would –
like my sister finished at University of Illinois – in fact, I had family
that graduated out of the University of Illinois in 1917/1918 around in
there but at that particular time they didn’t teach here in Champaign they
taught down in – they sent them down to the southern schools. They had a
kind of an agreement that they would send them south. They had a partnership
between some of the southern schools. And I don’t know whether or not that –
well I had one that finished in engineering. But he couldn’t get – he got a
degree in engineering but he couldn’t teach in engineering here or practice
his engineering. I had a brother who finished Bronze Tablet out of the
University of Illinois and he could not - he was an artist. And Grubbs,
which was downtown Champaign, would give him the art work to do but he had a
little studio at home and he had to bring it home to do he couldn’t work
down there in the studio. So but that’s the way it was all the way across
the country at that particular time. So it’s inferior teachers – yeah we got
some teachers that were trained in the south and were brought up here but
like any place else some were good and some were not so good. And some were
excellent.
ABRECIA: How did bussing impact people’s view about Washington?
MRS. SUGGS: I think they thought that Washington school had all select
students, which really wasn’t right because we had to – even at Washington
School – save a certain number of students out from the area. They did that
to get other students to come in to Washington school to get non-minority
students to bus in to Washington school so they could have at least one
integrated school. When they sent the students from Washington out to the
other schools to integrate the schools they had to have some space in those
schools to put them. And in order to have space to put kids in to schools
they had to get some children out of the schools and so that’s the reason
that they set Washington up as a magnet. But Washington took all kinds of –
we took all kinds of students.
ABRECIA: Do you feel that theres still problems between blacks and whites?
MRS. SUGGS: Yeah I mean, I you know…<laughs>
ABRECIA: Is it – do you feel that it is mainly in the schools or like the
public?
MRS. SUGGS: I think it’s a reflection of the public - not as bad as it has
been but they still exist. I think one of the kind of the things too is that
I think that our kids don’t really realize from where we’re coming. Unless
you know where you’ve come from you could be doomed to repeat the same thing
over again. And as I tell the parents, you get one time around with your
child and one of the kind of things with Washington, you might have some
teachers that come in and say “The black parents are pushy,” but I think
it’s good to have pushy black parents as well as pushy white parents. The
squeaky wheel gets oil.
ABRECIA: Do you think that children have changed since when you were
teaching?
MRS. SUGGS: I think they have and they haven’t. I think that they want
rules. I think that they want rules and they want some kind of set thing. I
think that parents have changed because we want to be like the kids. Instead
of us being the authority figure we want everybody to be buddy-buddy and it
just can’t be that way all the time. (That) you have to stand up and be
parents. I’ll give you a good example of that - a little boy comes in and
he’s talking this parent – well I didn’t realize it was his parent – he was
talking to this adult going down the hallway and I said, “What is wrong with
you? You know we Washington students don’t talk to adults like that!” He
said, “That’s ok Mrs. Suggs, that’s my mother.” Well why the mother would
let the kid stand up there and talk to her like that…you know. The main
thing is I don’t think we teach the kids self-respect and so therefore we
don’t teach them to respect themselves and if you cant respect yourself how
can you respect somebody else?
ABRECIA: Ok I have two questions. The first question is when you were a
teacher did you have problems with white people not wanting their kids in
your class?
MRS. SUGGS: Oh yeah. Especially when I first got started over there…and it
changed. One – when I first started at Leo(?) - in fact, I didn’t know there
was an FBI in Urbana and the kids had written me a letter that said - we had
been studying letter writing - they wrote a thing that said “Get out of town
or else.” And of course they didn’t have – it was sent to me through the
mail and this that and the other but they didn’t address the card right or
anything like that so I put it on the bulletin board and said, “This person
right here you know, we need to work on this, kids because look this person
doesn’t know how to address an envelope.” And I put the letter up there.
Then I started getting calls from all these parents and the principal called
me down and he said “You’ve got a threat.” And so we had the FBI – because
it was right after integration – the FBI came to investigate to find out
what was going on. They took fingerprints of all of the students and the
parents and this that and the other. And a girl said – we were reading Nancy
Drew mysteries and I don’t know if you’ve read Nancy Drew because that was
one of the old time kind of things – and they do this when they’re getting
ready to run away. After I was principal – and it had to be a good ten or
fifteen years afterwards – I got this call from the girl who says she was
angry at me at that particular time and she had been borne again and she
realized her ways and so she fessed up to it. Well I said the FBI really
didn’t do any good in finding anything. The other thing is I had a parent
that had moved up from the south and he didn’t want the kid in my particular
classroom. Well see so Schafer said, “He’s going to be in that room.” She
came to the door and I guess the little boy had been giving her rave reviews
of me. He just loved the class and so she walked in the door and she came
and she said, “Oh, I didn’t know you were a -” and stopped it right there.
So you know you just had to finish it for yourself. So you had a lot of
those that happened and and so you really didn’t realize what an impact. But
now I meet those same kids now – for instance, I was in Las Vegas at the
ball game just this year and one of them called – a little boy – I’m walking
down – it’s not a little boy it’s an old man and he’s got a ball hat and a
beard down there and he said, “Mrs. Suggs, Mrs. Suggs! Come up here!” and he
proceeded to – he said, “I’ll save you a seat come on up here and sit with
us!” and he proceeded to relate to all of the people sitting around me what
a wonderful job he’d had at Washington school. And our thing was that - we
had Lau(?) and Thai and black and white and they were all – they all got
along together and it was really a real good experience. But the thing is
that the top has to set some parameters as to what actions will be. And so
it did exist and it probably still does but you know…
ABRECIA: Do you have any more stories?
MRS. SUGGS: <laughs> Well lets see…besides the snakes and the gerbils and
the – well we used to have to take kids – they had a place called
<inaudible> Zone and the incorrigible kids who didn’t do too well and we had
one little boy who would - shot up the building where he was and so see that
did go on then. And so he had to go like to the detention home and be at the
detention home but then I had in my 5th grade classroom they would let them
– they would phase them out. They would start out the school a half a day
and then they’d get longer. But this little boy had just – he had torn up
every building that he had been into and I guess maybe…so they sent him to
me and my thing was, I got me a big piece of clay and I told him “Now if you
feel like you have to hit something you can go over there and you can pound
that clay as much as you want to but this is my territory. And I think maybe
its unorthodox but I think kids understand the language - that you’re there.
If - this boy had been knocking everybody else so I sent the kids out and I
said “Well if we gotta tear up the classroom I figure we might as well get
ours out now before we have everybody in. But I didn’t want to embarrass you
so I sent the kids out for recess with another teacher because I didn’t want
to embarrass you but these are the rules of the classroom.” And that’s the
reason why I think that kids do think that you – that they need rules. And
he came to me and said, “Mrs. Suggs what would you do if I hit you in the
mouth?” I said “I’d just go over to my desk and pick up an envelope and hand
it to you so you could pick all your teeth up off of the floor to carry them
home.” We never did get to that particular kind of thing. But here again I
think it’s a learning situation – its how you handle things. Its how you
handle them and its whether or not you panic – I have another one where they
- I told you about the boys with the snakes – I come back from the
principals office and something says “Look in your desk drawer, look in your
desk drawer.” And so I go open up the desk drawer and there are two big
garter snakes. Well what do you do when you put a snake in a teacher’s desk?
I just picked them up and I made every kid in the class pet them. I walked
up and down the thing to have them petting these particular – well that you
know, the kids knew how far they could go and that again to me is a learning
kind of a situation of what you do and what you don’t do. As a principal,
when a kid was sent to the office when they acted up – you know we did some
role playing before they went back. How are you going to act when you go
back to the classroom? Because you know you’re angry - you know you’re angry
when you go back in the classroom and so now you tell me which one works.
You know so we’d sit there – or they could write out to me what they had
done wrong and what did they think their punishment might be. And those are
some of the things that they don’t do at this particular time – I don’t know
whether they would work or not but they did work for me.
ABRECIA: Do you think that the generations have changed?
MRS. SUGGS: I don’t really think so. I think you think ahead of them. I
think that they have – we’ve been through he gangs – I think they’ve changed
to the point that we’ve allowed them to change or I think parents sometimes
are afraid to discipline kids and they don’t want anyone else to discipline
kids. I think sometimes the race card is good, other times it’s a cop out.
And I think we haven’t really quite learned how to utilize or finesse our
way through it. It’s like playing cards you know sometimes you have to sort
of finesse your way through things?
ABRECIA: Do you have anything else you would like to say? Or information?
MRS. SUGGS: Well I think there’s some – everybody has a perception about how
they’re treated or how they treat other people and I think that we need to
really look at what it is that we’re doing. I think that a lot of times we
plant the seeds of deceit and other kinds of things the same way that we’re
trying to foster integration and foster people – there are three rules that
you have: you treat others like you’d like to be treated, you – words can
hurt as much as sticks and stones – you know sticks and…or and the other
thing is sticks and stones can break your bones but words ya know, sometimes
they hurt but you learn how to deal with things. And life is going to have
some obstacles but they can be obstacles or bumps in the road. And if you
look at them as a bump in the road then they don’t maximize them. And that
doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for yourself. Because I’d be the first one
to say you stand up for yourself. And sometimes we forget that children are
children and they need an advocate for them, they need someone to be there
to foster them because I’ve heard – had teachers come in and say “I cant
teach him! He smells like coal oil, he smells like this” and my thing was
“Oh I can fix that for you.” I’ll reach in and get a close pin and say “Put
this on your nose” and by the way why don’t we put this on your evaluation
and see how well you can come out – how well you can change things.” And I
think we need to do those particular kinds of things.
ABRECIA: You all got any more questions?
LAWANDA: [No.] Do we have anything else? Or anything? We have to close this.
Well we enjoyed having you and listening to your stories and she’s going to
ask the last question. What did you mean when you said that some of the
information given to teachers in preparation for desegregation was tainted?
MRS. SUGGS: I mean that sometimes we build obstacles for kids. And I guess I
heard some things here like – all people… not all people are – I don’t think
integration or even our lawsuit, when we say all people – the lawsuit
wouldn’t have worked if we didn’t have people like Herb Stevens and some of
the others who would take the system to task. So we need what I called the
ravel rousers to get things moving or the catalyst that makes things go. And
sometimes we give a false kind of an impression of what – for instance, we
build up so many barriers like the kids are going to come in and they’re
going to be disruptive – well all kinds of kids are going to be disruptive
at some time or other. And I think sometimes we put the black label on it –
the black kids are gonna do this, black kids are gonna do that and I see as
many different kind of black kids as I see different kinds of white kids or
different kinds of Orientals and I think we – if we treat all of them as
children, if we treat all of them as individuals and human beings then
things will work out. We need to stop back and take a look at what we’re
doing and I think all of the things that get published – it’s – we want
statistics and we want to study them all the time…well your – didn’t your
research to – you want to predict what your research is going to do and most
generally it comes out to your predictions.
ABRECIA: Is there anything else anyone would like to say? Well we enjoyed
you coming and we now conclude this. Thank you very much. Thank you for
coming.
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