WEBVTT 1 00:04.000 --> 00:38.000 —moving me from the St. Paul Elementary School to the Scotch Branch High School. And everyone was having to come in to fill out applications. So they required me to come in and fill out application. And on that application, they both asked the question, "Are you a member of the NAACP?" So when I got that question, I wrote in that, yes, because I did not want to be moved from St. Paul out here. You getting me? 2 00:38.000 --> 01:03.000 I knew that this was going to result in being fired or not being hired. So I filled it out, and I put the application on the desk with the secretary and I walked out. I went back to my boarding place at St. Paul and went back in my room and started packing my bags and getting all my belongings together. 3 01:03.000 --> 01:26.000 Finally, the lady out the boarding called me and says, "I heard the call [indistinct 00:01:13]." Says, "Somebody to see you, Mr. Butler." I says, "Just a minute." And finally when I went out, there sitting in the yard was the superintendent and the chairman of the trustee board, and I walked and I was so mad. 4 01:26.000 --> 01:57.000 I walked up to the door and I did one of them kind of angry, because I wasn't putting on or acting. I says, "Yes?" He says, "Come me a minute. We want to talk to you." So I walked out to the door. I said, "What is it?" He says, "Get in." So I just reached in and cocked the back door and opened it. I didn't get in, but I just come in, and I turned around and sat on the edge of the car seat. 5 01:57.000 --> 02:30.000 He says, "[indistinct 00:01:58], we noticed that you filled out your application and you said that you are a member of the NAACP." I said, "That is correct." He said, "Well, we can't hire you if you put that on your application." I said, "I know that." They say, "Well, why don't you do this," they brought along a new application. "Take this application and fill it out and don't put that on here." 6 02:30.000 --> 02:54.000 I said, "Well, that still wouldn't change the situation, would it?" Said, "Yes, but it wouldn't be on our record." I said, "I'll think about it." And I took it. I went back in the house and started packing again. Then finally I decided I'd go up to the church, which was up the road about a mile and a half or maybe a mile, it's only around a mile, and talked to this Reverend Litchburg, who was pastor of the church. 7 02:54.000 --> 03:25.000 I says, "Look here. I filled out an application a few minutes to go at the district office and I told them that I was on that application, that I was a member of the NAACP. I was just visited by the superintendent," and told what all was said. So he said, "Well, Mr. Butler, let me tell you what," says, "if they are willing to do that, knowing that you have told them the truth, and they want you to tell a lie one, do it." 8 03:25.000 --> 03:54.000 So I said, "I'll think about it." I went back toward South Carolina State College and I had several friends who were principals of schools in various counties and I told them about it. They told me the same thing. So I fill out that application and mailed it back to them, and to this day I haven't heard one word from them concerning it. I was hired back to be principal at [indistinct 00:03:51] High School. 9 03:54.000 --> 04:21.000 That's interesting. I'm going to ask you another thing about education. Being an educator, can you talk about how you see the education of Black children changing from the time when you were a child to now, I guess, the quality of their education, the content, I guess, attitudes toward education? 10 04:21.000 --> 04:49.000 Well, that's a situation which I've seen some changes in. Because I told you before that time I had a very mediocre type bringing up if had not been for teachers who were energetic and enthusiastic and very interested in helping to develop the little Black girls and boys they were dealing with. There would have been a lot I would've missed. But I feel like I did a pretty good job of doing that. 11 04:49.000 --> 05:28.000 When I came out of college and started working, I came into a very, very deplorable situation of students and what they had to work with and us typing up and dedicated to the cause for all these years, trying to build it out. Through my work here at the high school, I had to be very innovative in trying to bring in these types of things, bring in even sometimes speakers that could motivate individuals to look up and try to be somebody. 12 05:28.000 --> 06:05.000 Because they've been pushed down so long and I not having anything to work with. So I've had the opportunity to have to fight for a lot of things that I needed for them in order to improve their education. But until 1971, yes, 1971, I was appointed or elected to serve as the superintendent of the district in which I had been serving under for so long. 13 06:05.000 --> 06:41.000 I went into this with that same determination to do all I could to improve the area and the school system and the educational process. I feel like we did a pretty good job. But this change from administration, when I went to the superintendent's office, had to bring in other individuals from other areas to serve as principal of the school. There is where a lag, a slack. It caused quite of friction among students, teachers, parents, and all these type of things. 14 06:41.000 --> 07:10.000 So I served that office for seven years, and when I felt like I couldn't take it any longer, asked them to transfer me then back to the high school, and there I came back there and worked for six more years. In the spring of 1984, in '84, I retired because I put in enough years in to move out of the system. 15 07:10.000 --> 07:55.000 But I've seen certain periods in there where education was doing real well, and then I've seen periods in which it seems to be going backwards. Right now, I'm serving as a member of the school board of this area, and we are very much concerned with the state level of student progress that they're measuring up with other systems and others in the state as well as national, that we find that it has been kind of low, and we're working very hard to try to build this up. 16 07:55.000 --> 08:15.000 Just quickly, this is a complete change of subject, but Black businesses in Orangeburg as well as in this area, can you tell me what they were like? What, were they restaurants primarily and did you patronize those? 17 08:15.000 --> 08:29.000 Oh yes, Orangeburg as well here, Black businesses are doing pretty well now, some of them, but at one particular time they were almost frozen out also. 18 08:29.000 --> 08:29.000 When was this? 19 08:29.000 --> 08:29.000 I beg your pardon? 20 08:29.000 --> 08:32.000 What time? 21 08:32.000 --> 08:54.000 Back during the time when schools were ordered to integrate and individuals were losing their jobs and things of that nature. That was a lag there then, because individuals were having to leave this area and go elsewhere to find the work. So they were not here as they were when I first came in. 22 08:54.000 --> 09:26.000 Orangeburg, yes, it was booming. We had one car that they used to call the Weber car where we had the dime stores. Weber had a soda shop, that's what we called it, the soda shop, and various things of that nature. Yes, it was doing it real well. I don't know whether they still have that there or now or not, but at one time it was moving pretty good. 23 09:26.000 --> 09:34.000 Well then, excuse me, it's okay.