Carrie Harris interview recording, 1995 July 13

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Alex Byrd	Okay. The mic's on now. If you could start by giving me your full name, and where you were born, and when you were born?	0:00
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Again?	0:10
Alex Byrd	Yes, ma'am. I rewound the tape.	0:11
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Oh, did you? Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris.	0:12
Alex Byrd	And where were you born?	0:18
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Earlington, Kentucky.	0:20
Alex Byrd	And what county is it?	0:22
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Hopkins County.	0:24
Alex Byrd	Hopkins County. And what's your birthdate, Ms. Harris?	0:25
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	August the 23rd, 1902.	0:28
Alex Byrd	1902. Well, you've lived a long time, Ms. Harris. You must have seen a lot. I'm going to start with your early days in Earlington, and I'd like to know, if you could tell me, what your parents' names were.	0:31
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	My mother, Mary Lou Dunlap.	0:51
Alex Byrd	And your father?	0:59
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	James Luther Dunlap.	1:00
Alex Byrd	Well, what was Earlington like when you came up? Can you describe the town for us and where you lived?	1:05
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Earlington, in my youth, was being a mining town, where many of the people lived in company houses.	1:17
Alex Byrd	Okay.	1:29
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Fortunately, we had our own home, a very comfortable dwelling, on Atkinson Avenue, which at that time was one of the streets of many children. I'm trying to—Families that were very well trained. The children were very well trained. We attended school at Million High School.	1:31
Alex Byrd	Million? M-I-L-L-I-O-N?	2:09
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Million. Uh-huh. Which at that time was a two-story building, a brick structure. The upper grades were on the second floor, and the lower grades were on the first floor. There was a gong in the center that was rung to designate dismissal, and lunch hours. The principal was J.W. Bell. We walked from our home to school, which was in the neighborhood. Everyone at that time went home for lunch, and was quite an honor to go home at that time, because mother always had hot bread, Karo syrup, and we ate our lunches and went right back to school.	2:11
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	After school hours, we each had our chores to make, to do. I was always helping mother, but the boys had little jobs in the community. There were two of them, and our father was working, not in the mines, but as—Oh, wait a minute. Well, I'm trying. Well, I want to put something in there. Can't think of it.	3:44
Alex Byrd	We can come back to it.	4:20
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Well, he came home from work each evening, and after he was home, we would all have our dinner together, and after dinner, Dad always read the paper. We had to get our schoolwork, and each of us had our separate housing units for the night, and our routine for each day was our breakfast, school, home for lunch, and back home with our afternoon chores. And that was a daily routine in a home, which grew rapidly from four to eight children.	4:23
Alex Byrd	Who were your brothers and sisters?	5:11
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I was the oldest.	5:12
Alex Byrd	You were the oldest?	5:13
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Uh-huh.	5:14
Alex Byrd	And who was after you?	5:16
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Beg pardon?	5:18
Alex Byrd	Who came after you?	5:19
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Arthur. A son. Arthur.	5:21
Alex Byrd	And who followed Arthur?	5:25
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	James Edward.	5:29
Alex Byrd	James Edward?	5:29
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Uh-huh.	5:30
Alex Byrd	And after James?	5:31
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Edith.	5:32
Alex Byrd	Edith?	5:33
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes, sir.	5:34
Alex Byrd	Were you happy to get another sister?	5:38
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Beg pardon?	5:41
Alex Byrd	Were you happy to get another sister?	5:42
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Oh, yes. That made four. Then that made four, and then—	5:42
Alex Byrd	Yes, ma'am.	5:43
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	—as the family continued to grow, Elizabeth came after Edith, who was the most talented person in the entire family. A very talented musician. After Elizabeth was Jesse. Following Jesse came Simon Alfred, named for the two grandfathers.	5:46
Alex Byrd	Okay.	6:14
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	And last on the list was Cecilia, the name of the grandmother, the paternal grandmother.	6:18
Alex Byrd	Can you tell me something about the lineage of your mother and father?	6:25
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	My grandparents?	6:32
Alex Byrd	Yes, ma'am.	6:33
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	My grandmother, Cecilia, my paternal grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. My paternal grandfather was of another Indian tribe. My maternal grandmother died very early, was the average American Negro. But my maternal grandfather was also an Indian, but I'm not familiar with the tribe. My paternal grandfather, parents, grandparents, and my maternal grandparents, were both Tennesseeans, who migrated for a livelihood to Earlington, Kentucky.	6:34
Alex Byrd	And they set up work there in Earlington? They started work there in Earlington from Tennessee?	7:30
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	They moved from early from Tennessee to Earlington, Kentucky. Both of them.	7:39
Alex Byrd	What kind of work did they move for?	7:43
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Miners.	7:46
Alex Byrd	They moved for mines?	7:47
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Uh-huh.	7:48
Alex Byrd	But your father didn't work in the mines, right?	7:49
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I tell you what, he didn't work down in the mine, but he was a miner, but he didn't work down in the mines. In the early years, I'm trying to, he was really, he shoed, see, at that time, the mines—	7:55
Alex Byrd	Okay.	8:11
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	He shoed them.	8:12
Alex Byrd	Because the horses took the carts down into the mines, and he shoed the horses?	8:13
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	He worked on the anvil all the time.	8:20
Alex Byrd	Okay, so a blacksmith?	8:22
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	That's what I'm trying to say.	8:23
Alex Byrd	Okay.	8:24
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I'll tell you, I'm trying to get, yeah, my daddy was a blacksmith, but he was a blacksmith for the mines.	8:24
Alex Byrd	Okay.	8:31
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	My grandfather and he worked in the mines. But the later years, in the later years, my father became a United Mine Workers organizer.	8:33
Alex Byrd	Oh, Ms. Carrie.	8:44
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah. Yeah.	8:45
Alex Byrd	While you were still in the house, while you were a child in the house, your father started working for the United Mine Workers?	8:47
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No. I was a young lady by that time.	8:54
Alex Byrd	Okay. So you weren't living in the house anymore?	8:57
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No.	8:59
Alex Byrd	Do you remember how your father got involved with United Mine Workers of America, or the kind of work he did for the union?	8:59
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I'm trying to think.	9:13
Alex Byrd	Okay. I can pause it and cut it back on when you're ready.	9:14
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah.	9:21
Alex Byrd	Okay, Ms. Carrie. We're back on tape. And so I wanted to start back with questions about your father and him getting involved in the United Mine Workers of America. Could you tell us how he got involved with the unions, and where he worked for the unions, and what type of work he did for the unions?	9:22
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	He was selected by a group of leaders within the area of Kentucky to become, because of his leadership, to become one of the leaders in the United Mine Workers of America. At that time, they were located in Madisonville, Kentucky. They had an office on Main Street. From this office, they were sent to various areas to organize men who were working in the mines, to become unionized.	9:45
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	This created quite a confusion, because it was dangerous, and many times, men were hurt, bombs were even cast at certain places, because the non-union members or leaders did not want their men unionized, because they had to pay a certain salary, and their standard to pay a certain salary was against their budget. I'll say it that way. Therefore, it was dangerous for my dad and all the other men who went into the fields of various areas to unionize the workers.	10:35
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Once they became unionized, they had to pay a set salary, and this salary was supposedly equal for all persons, which was against the ideas and the policies of those who controlled, or who owned these various mines. And therefore, they set up stations to block these men from becoming unionized, and that created an antagonistic attitude between non-unions and union leaders.	11:23
Alex Byrd	This is amazing, Ms. Carrie. This is amazing. I've never had any stories like this.	12:13
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Is it? I'm telling you the truth. My language is not as well as I'd like to have it.	12:16
Alex Byrd	It's excellent. It's excellent. It's just like reading it from a book. Did it make it dangerous for your family?	12:20
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Oh, yes.	12:29
Alex Byrd	It was dangerous for your father. Was it dangerous for your brothers, and sisters, and your mother at home, that your father did this work?	12:30
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	It was dangerous for us all, because number one, we didn't know when they were going to attack dad, or where they were going to attack him. And that made us all skeptical. Because when you are skeptical, you can't be at ease.	12:38
Alex Byrd	Right. You're always wondering if he was coming home, or when he was coming home.	12:57
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	That's right. Many men were killed.	13:03
Alex Byrd	Well, how did your father make arrangements for the family while he was gone? Did he have people come by and check in on y'all?	13:06
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No, no, no. We were just left alone to see to ourselves.	13:16
Alex Byrd	Okay. And y'all managed fine?	13:20
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah. We managed. He would not be gone maybe two, three days at a time.	13:21
Alex Byrd	Okay.	13:27
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Now, well, anything—But maybe you better ask questions.	13:29
Alex Byrd	Okay. I'm going to stay with the union organizing for a bit, and the work your father did, if that's okay?	13:35
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Well—	13:43
Alex Byrd	Or you think you pretty much covered as much as you can on that? I was going to ask you whether, did you know, did he organize in this area here in Muhlenberg County?	13:44
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Oh. Yes. The names, there are a lot of men that went, that really became—Well, they were dangerous.	13:55
Alex Byrd	Okay.	14:06
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I mean, there were a lot of men right in this area that were assisting in their area. You're not recording, are you?	14:07
Alex Byrd	Uh-huh. Okay, we're back on tape again. We just finished talking about your father's union activities. I'd like to talk a little bit about how strikes affected your family, directly and indirectly.	14:18
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	The family was affected indirectly to the fact that we could see other people suffering for the lack of the supplies. Directly, we were recipients of our income not being affected by the strike, but our father had to reimburse some of those people who were suffering with substance that we had at home. In that way, it directly affected us, but indirectly, we were not suffering. We had minimum food, minimum sources of income, and many sources of supplies at home, but our friends and neighbors were suffering, and in that way, we were asked to contribute some of our means and some of our resources to keep them from suffering, or to aid them in their suffering. In this way, it directly affected us, and strikes were always very dangerous and very, very costly.	14:33
Alex Byrd	I'd like to talk now some about just the culture in Earlington, and your father and your mother's attitude about education, and about educating their children, and what they instilled in you about education.	15:54
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Earlington at this time was one of the better communities. We had three good churches, well organized. Our families were really trying hard to see that all their children attended school and church. As a whole, the community was one of a better living, I'll say better living conditions for all people. Yet there were a few, as in all communities, who do not desire to be elevated in their ideas and ideals, but the majority of the people were better living, or sought to live on an average level. The occupation of the community would be miners. There were several who were involved in the educational world, where we had very, very effective, educated people to train the youth of that day. The community was situated with—Let's see this. Wait a minute. Let me get myself together.	16:11
Alex Byrd	Okay. We're back on tape, and I just wanted to get back to what the neighborhoods look like and what the homes look like in Earlington, and how the neighborhood homes changed over time. And also if you could, the difference between folks who initially owned their homes, and folks who, because of circumstances, had to initially move into these company homes.	18:09
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	[indistinct 00:18:39]. Right.	18:39
Alex Byrd	Okay.	18:45
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Earlington was really a town divided into three divisions. There was an area called Johnson Hill. There was an area called. And then on Johnson Hill, the people more or less owned their homes. There were not any mining homes on Johnson Hill. Everyone there owned their own home and built their own home. But in other areas of Earlington, there were some who were still living in miners' furnished homes. Very small, three-room houses. Eventually, these people got the idea for a better home, took their meager income, and improved on this miner's home by buying it, and improved it to the extent that it resembled the original homes of the original homeowner-owned homes. And that improved the community, improved the town, and really had a tendency to improve the quality of the citizens, because everyone was trying to be elevated according to those in the better living conditions.	18:45
Alex Byrd	Were there some folks who didn't improve on their homes, and so there were some neighborhoods where you might not want to travel in, or some neighborhoods where you might not want to go? I know Aunt Maggie was telling me that there was some parts of mining and towns around here, in Powderly and in Browder, where they were kind of rough, especially on payday, and things like that. Did the miners ever get rowdy, or did anyone ever get rowdy in and around Earlington? Did you ever have trouble with just keeping people civil?	20:17
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	In every community, there are sections where people are affected on certain occasions. Earlington didn't have a specific district, but it had homes that people would avoid because of the riotous, uncultured, and dangerous occupants, and those areas were sparse because it was not a collected area, just certain homes throughout the town that people would avoid because they knew within that home, there were undesirable habits and customs.	21:06
Alex Byrd	Okay. How would the rest of the populous deal with these folks who didn't really want to be a part of the community, or who were anti-social?	22:04
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	They avoided them by not visiting them, but other than that, they continued to try to improve themselves with the attitude that those who were not coming up to par would eventually catch their hope or the idea and improve themselves.	22:15
Alex Byrd	Okay. Did Blacks and Whites live together in the same districts of Earlington?	22:37
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	In some areas. In some areas. In the area of Atkinson College, Atkinson Street, they were integrated.	22:41
Alex Byrd	Okay. How should I spell that?	22:57
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Huh?	22:59
Alex Byrd	How should I spell that?	22:59
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Atkinson?	23:00
Alex Byrd	Yes, ma'am.	23:00
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	A-T-K-I-N-S-O-N. Atkinson Avenue.	23:03
Alex Byrd	Okay. And that was integrated?	23:05
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes. Really, we were very much one family in that area. There were times when even we played together. The Whites were able to have dollhouses in their yards, and many times we would go and play in their dollhouse, because we weren't able to have a dollhouse.	23:07
Alex Byrd	Okay. Because y'all couldn't afford one?	23:41
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Couldn't afford it.	23:42
Alex Byrd	Is Atkinson Avenue, was that on Johnson Hill?	23:47
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No, no.	23:50
Alex Byrd	No?	23:50
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I'm trying to think what we called that area.	23:52
Alex Byrd	Is that where you lived, in that area?	23:54
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Uh-huh.	23:57
Alex Byrd	Well, I'll come back to it.	23:57
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I'm trying to think of what that area, what we called that area. See, we had Long Town Hill. In Long Town Hill, they were all mining houses, very little homeowners in Long Town Hill. I was trying to think what they called this other area where we lived. I think they had Long Town and Johnson Hill, and they had some people who lived in The Bottom. We had a place called The Bottoms, which was down by the lake. We had a beautiful lake in Earlington.	23:59
Alex Byrd	Was The Bottoms a nice place to live, or was it too [indistinct 00:24:35]?	24:30
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Not as desirable as some of the other places, because it was low. It wasn't the families. It was low, and it was quite flooded when the rainy season, and The Bottoms were flooded, which made it mostly undesirable, not for the citizens, but for the living conditions.	24:35
Alex Byrd	Okay.	24:58
Alex Byrd	Now it is. Okay. It was recording too low.	24:58
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	All right. After finishing the eighth grade, with no high school in Earlington, my parents, being very well, being aware, should I say, of an education and what it meant, saw that I went to Kentucky State University for high school and college. My mother had no other income, therefore she sought to do handiwork for people at a minimum sum to help supply my needs at Kentucky. My father gave out his meager income for my support.	25:48
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	While at Kentucky State, I sought to help myself by working in the lunchroom, and doing laundry for some of the teachers that needed someone to do their laundering. I would get up early in the morning, maybe 4:00, before the regular students would go down to the laundry on schedule, and wash and iron teachers' uniforms and clothes to help supply the means that I needed, that my mother and father were not able to do. I stayed in Kentucky State for five years, and during that time, I worked most of the time to help myself. With the aid of my parents, I was able to complete the schooling at that particular university.	26:41
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	At the conclusion of my five years there, my grandfather at that time was in California. My paternal grandfather. He sent money to buy my class ring. That was his contribution. I had been able to also save some money, so that made me able to graduate like the other girls and boys, with all the things that I needed of graduation.	27:41
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Now, to give you a little insight of some of the things I did while I was at Kentucky State, I was never the best student, but I certainly wasn't the push. I did quite a bit of crocheting to supplement monies to supply my needs. I worked in the dining hall. I did whatever was necessary or whatever I could get to do to help to meet my emergent needs as a student. I was able to make contact with some of the members of the faculty, who saw to me having some amusement that I wasn't able to afford, by accompanying them to certain places when they wanted a companion. So I made myself very useful, and in the end, it paid off for the simple reason I was able to meet all requirements and graduate with some of the best grades, or some of the better grades, not the best grades. But I never was on the delinquent list. I was always a B student.	28:13
Alex Byrd	What was the coursework like at Kentucky State?	29:29
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Beg your pardon?	29:31
Alex Byrd	What was the coursework like at Kentucky State?	29:32
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	The course was very interesting because we had one teacher—I took home economics as a—See, it was the Kentucky Industrial Institute, and we had to take some vocational work. So I took home ec, and I had one teacher from New York and one from the Carolinas, and the one teacher was from Pratt.	29:38
Alex Byrd	Okay. Pratt Institute?	30:11
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Pratt Institute. And I was working in the dining room, and I would some day go late, but they always made provisions for me to come into classes late because of the fact I was still trying to help meet the requirements, financial requirements that my parents were not able to do or to assist them so that I could have the things that other girls and boys had.	30:13
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Now, on graduation, regardless of how little we were, my mother was able to come, and I was so glad, because she had never been able to go to a place much, because she had a large family, and with a large family, it took a lot of money in those days, and we didn't have it, but we had a living, and that meant a lot.	30:39
Alex Byrd	Did you take Negro History in school?	31:00
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Oh, did I? Dr. Jones, P. W. L. Jones was my history teacher, and we studied Carter G. Woodson's history, which somebody stole from him.	31:03
Alex Byrd	Oh, no.	31:19
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Somebody borrowed it and didn't return it.	31:21
Alex Byrd	Okay.	31:22
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I sure hated it, too. He was a very, very outstanding race man. I'll say it that way.	31:23
Alex Byrd	Dr. Woodson, or Dr. Jones? You're talking about Dr. Jones?	31:31
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Dr. Jones.	31:36
Alex Byrd	Okay.	31:37
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	My history teacher was a very, very influence—Black leadership, was that Black leader?	31:38
Alex Byrd	Well, let's tell them what a "race man" was.	31:45
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	A race man.	31:47
Alex Byrd	What does that mean, for the people who never heard of it?	31:49
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Well, one who was very, very interested in the elevation of the Negro youth, and he did everything to portray the improvements of the Negro race. At one time, when I was a senior, he sponsored the play The Awakening, which was written by, let me see—	31:51
Alex Byrd	I'll pause. [INTERRUPTION]	32:25
Alex Byrd	Good afternoon, Ms. Carrie. Thank you for having me back. Today is July 19, and I'm still speaking with Mrs. Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris. The interview that we started on, when did we start it? Okay. On July 13. This is a continuation of the July 13th interview.	32:38
Alex Byrd	Ms. Harris, when we started, or when we finished the last part of the interview, we were talking about your leaving Kentucky State, and so I'd like to today move through your teaching career. So if you could tell us where you went, or where you went to work initially after graduation from Kentucky State?	33:03
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	From Kentucky State, I went into the teaching career in Hopkins County, Kentucky School. One-room school building, where I had 88 students for my first job, in eighth grade. I had to divide these students according to their learning abilities from grades one through eight. This is my first experience in a one-room school. At first it was trying, but I found it very challenging, and after four years in the eighth grade in the one-room school building, I moved on to another system wherein we had an elementary department, in which I taught in Providence, Kentucky. Was that all right?	33:31
Alex Byrd	That's fine. Can I ask you one more question about the one-room school? You said you divided the students according to ability. Would that mean that you could sometimes have kids of different ages in the same groups because they had the same ability, so you wouldn't necessarily hold a younger kid back if that kid could perform at a higher grade level?	34:35
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No. We tried to divide them according to their potentials, and we kept no one back because of their age or their ability. We tried to put them according to what they could project. I'll say it in that way. In other words, if I had two children in the first grade, those two children were taught in the first grade. I might have five or six in the fourth or fifth grade. They were taught on their own level the things that they could do best with, and on, until we got into the eighth grade. I may not have but one child, but that one child was taught on the eighth grade level.	35:02
Alex Byrd	Okay. Did the children on higher levels ever help the children on lower levels with some—	35:55
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	That was a necessity.	36:01
Alex Byrd	Okay.	36:03
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Because of the fact of the time element. There were times when you would have the eighth grade child to assist the first, second, or third with some of their study periods, when you were otherwise occupied with another class.	36:03
Alex Byrd	Okay. Did you teach from Basils, or did you have books? What did you use for your lessons?	36:22
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Everyone had to furnish their own books, and the only supplemented material we had, I had to furnish it from my own income, which at this time was on a basis of $60 a month. At the end of the first four years, I had been successful in keeping the attendance up to the point that I earned a bonus for having kept 95% attendance for that particular, that was the first year, and it was at a small town at St. Charles, Kentucky.	36:29
Alex Byrd	I don't want you to be modest when I ask you the next question. I want you not to be modest when I say, how did you manage to keep attendance so high?	37:15
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	These children had had other teachers, but I'd visit the community. I tried to make the community a part of the school, by visiting them in their homes and making them feel that I was a part of the community, not only a part of the school.	37:26
Alex Byrd	Would you dine in the homes sometimes [indistinct 00:37:51]?	37:48
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	I ate in their homes. I'd visit their churches even at night, and made it a business of mine to become familiar with their home environment. And doing so, this seemed to have been something rare, and for that reason, the children became a part of my community family, and they felt really a part of the school. Not only a part of the school, but a part of the community. And in that way, we were able to keep all the students very interested in attending school.	37:51
Alex Byrd	Was this a mostly farming community?	38:30
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Mining community.	38:33
Alex Byrd	It was a mining community. Okay. Well, I guess I know that after teaching in the one-room school in Hopkins County, you then went to Providence, and after that, taught briefly in the Greenville school system. But I'd like to take you now to your tenure in Drakesboro, at Drakesboro Community School, and just ask you some questions about your work there. Could you describe the Drakesboro School, the physical plant for us?	38:34
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	When I entered the Drakesboro Community School, we had the elementary department and a high school department all under one supervision, was a principal. Each teacher had two grades. The rooms were small, but they were crowded, because some teachers had as many as 40 students in one homeroom. Each teacher taught his own load. There was no passing from one room to another for teaching facilities. Every room, it was equipped for its own level, I should say it. One teacher would have the two grades, or perhaps the 9th and 10th. Everything that came under the 9th and 10th grade level was taught in that one room. Every student was provided with their own supplies by the teacher or by their parents. Nothing was supplied by the state or by the community. Does that answer your question?	39:13
Alex Byrd	Yes. That's real good. In teaching, what different things or different subjects did you teach, academic subjects did you teach during your time at Drakesboro Community School?	40:31
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Since I had been trained to do most anything, having been trained in a segregated college, I had to be flexible. So I had taught several phases in this particular situation. I first began to teach Latin and English. Later, I was in the field of home economics. Added to me from the home economic course, added to it was a small library, having been specially sent to Fisk University, where I received training, as a special training, in library science. This was furnished, or was financed, by the State of Kentucky. Therefore, I had two full teaching load, home economics, and supervising a small library.	40:49
Alex Byrd	They don't hardly teach, at least when I was coming up in high school, they had begun to phase out or pare down a lot of the home economics courses, so that there aren't as many of them, and not as many students go through them. And therefore, some of our listeners might not be familiar with the content of a home economics course. So if you could just describe for us what would be the subject matter and what would be covered in such a course?	42:10
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Home economics at that time had seven areas in which you had to teach the youth, the young ladies in particular, in that day. Some of them were sewing, cooking, management, childcare. Can't think of it. Just a minute.	42:41
Alex Byrd	We're back on. Were these mostly, did you ever have young men who would come through your course?	43:19
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	One young man said he wanted to train, because he was going into management when he became a young man, and he came in to take part in some of our phases, but he didn't stay. But it was open to men as well as young ladies. And might I add, at this time, we had an organization called the NHA.	43:30
Alex Byrd	And what did that stand for?	43:57
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	The initials were for New Homemakers of America. All the 17 states, southern states that were in the segregated road, enrolled operated the NHA. Each year, the NHA had a national convention where our girls were carried to various areas to become familiar with home life. Are you taping or not?	44:02
Alex Byrd	Mm-hmm. Should I pause? I can ask you a question.	44:46
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	All right.	44:49
Alex Byrd	Was there, this NHA was a Black organization, was there—?	44:50
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	It was African-American girls. The Caucasian, or the other school, what shall we say—?	44:55
Alex Byrd	The other school. The White school?	45:12
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah. They had the FHA.	45:12
Alex Byrd	Which is the Future Homemakers.	45:13
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Homemaker department, had the Future Homemakers of America. We were not ever a part of that until after the general integrated program.	45:15
Alex Byrd	Was there ever any cooperation before integration between the NHA chapters in the county and the FHA chapters?	45:30
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	No.	45:39
Alex Byrd	Any other professional intercourse between teachers at the Black school and White teachers at the White school?	45:40
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes. The teachers had an organization. The homemaker teachers had an organization, and so did the library teachers have an organization.	45:48
Alex Byrd	Okay. And y'all would meet, Black and White teachers together?	46:00
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	We would meet together.	46:03
Alex Byrd	I'd like to talk with you now about the things you did as a teacher for the school, or things that were expected of you at Drakesboro Community. We know nowadays teachers come, they teach their courses, and oftentimes, perhaps too often, then they just go home, and then they come back the days, just like a normal day. But you pointed out to us that you had to supply some of the supplies for even some of your kids. I wonder what was expected outside of, what was expected of Black teachers at Drakesboro Community outside of just the normal academic teaching.	46:06
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	All the extracurricular activities that we had were outside—	46:49

Alex Byrd	You were saying you were given examples of the extracurriculars that teachers had to take on.	0:01
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	This is the extra load the teachers had to carry outside of the regular teaching program or the teaching schedule. The basketball was extra with no extra pay, music, no art, but what they had was more or less people who were gifted in art, but no special teaching in art. I'm sure you've heard of the little newspapers that the school had.	0:08
Alex Byrd	Right, that Miss Blackley did?	0:44
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah, it was extra, no extra pay. The lunchroom supervision is by yours truly, making out the menus, writing the checks and paying the cooks, no extra pay, long hours, and serving lunches for the teams or visiting personnel that came to the school was all an extra duty with no extra pay. Long hours before and after school, regular hours for bus duties, no extra pay.	0:46
Alex Byrd	How did teachers raise money for these extracurricular activities?	1:43
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Many ways, contests of some kind. We used to have a queen and a king contest. We sold commodities during the school hours or lunch hour, special commodities such as candies, ice cream. Then we had different types of classroom activities, selling or buying, or some type of personal activities the teacher would supervise to raise money to buy the supplies that we needed because no money was funded by any department of the state or county.	1:52
Alex Byrd	Do you remember, at the time, there being any resentment over that fact or did people just accept it if that's the way things were, that the state just didn't give money, and so y'all knew what y'all had to do in order to make things run?	2:48
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	It was just an accepted situation. We knew we had to do it and we did it. And to my mind, the children accepted responsibility and the parents accepted responsibility and rallied to our call.	3:03
Alex Byrd	I want to ask you just one more question about managing the classroom during this time period. You told me some about how you managed it in the one-room schoolhouse. Was there any difference—	3:24
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Quite a bit because the children went to different teachers for different subjects, especially the secondary classes were teachers. Each teacher had a specific load, a specific subject. However, they were generalized in their training, but they had to accept a certain responsibility, especially to take math. Somebody taught math, someone taught English, and someone taught history, and the students had to go to different teachers for different subjects above the seventh grade.	3:40
Alex Byrd	Did you ever take on, you were telling me you taught math also before. Was that at Drakesboro Community?	4:23
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes. I taught math. No, I didn't teach math at Drakesboro Community. I taught English in Drakesboro Community and Latin, until I was switched to home ec.	4:30
Alex Byrd	Where were you when you were teaching geometry?	4:41
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	At [indistinct 00:04:46].	4:45
Alex Byrd	At Green? Okay. Well, now I just want to move on and ask you some closing questions about the differences between Drakesboro Community School and Drakesboro Consolidated, the integrated school that went online in, I guess, '64, in '64 and '65.	4:46
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	The new system of integration brought on two or three, really several changes. One, when we were segregated, the salaries, more or less, was unequal. We had equal salaries, smaller enrollments, enrollment loads, classroom loads, paid activities. Every extracurricular activity received extra compensation for it. Even duties such as selling tickets at our door for an activity, people were paid to do that when we had to do it on our own, previously. I'm trying to think of something else. I had it all down.	5:08
Alex Byrd	I've got it. I think that's most of it. Equalized salary.	6:12
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Equalized salary.	6:16
Alex Byrd	Paid extra, reduced loads.	6:17
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Paid extracurricular activities.	6:18
Alex Byrd	Oh, the schedules.	6:19
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	And a smaller classroom load.	6:21
Alex Byrd	Right. More equipment, supplies were provided.	6:23
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Supplies were provided by the state, more or less, titles one and two.	6:27
Alex Byrd	And I think you told me that, but the schedule also got more routinized.	6:36
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes, and then, see, we had special teachers for retarded children. You know what I'm trying to say.	6:40
Alex Byrd	For folks with learning disabilities?	6:52
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yes. That's what I want, special teachers for students with learning disabilities. That's what I'm trying to think.	6:54
Alex Byrd	Ms. Carrie, those were all the sort of benefits that came from integration. All of those were good things. I want to ask you, how did the Black children fare, from what you could tell and from what you heard from other teachers, in the consolidated school?	7:04
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Many of the black students were segregated in their classroom because of the fact it took some time for the realization that we were equal or we were in an integrated setup. So the Black children, in many cases, were isolated in areas within the classroom and not properly supervised according to the children of the other race. This had brought on several children quit school or became disinterested because they were not recognized equally.	7:27
Alex Byrd	Can I ask you one more question? You might not even have an answer to it, and if you don't, just say, "Alex, I don't have an answer to it." It's a tough question. And I want you just to think about the first five years after integration. Do you think that Black children got a better education at Drakesboro Consolidated first five years after integration or did they get a better education at Drakesboro Community School?	8:10
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	As we compare the segregated area with the integrated area, the Black child, African American child, did not progress as rapidly because, in many cases, they felt inferior and they were treated as inferior. Only the ones who were accelerated in their knowledge or their ideas and were able to push themselves forward were the only ones that received equal recognition. And then there were times when that particular individual felt inferior because of the attention, perhaps, of some teachers who were not ready to accept integration.	8:42
Alex Byrd	I was going to run and get you some water.	9:37
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	Yeah, that's all right.	9:39
Alex Byrd	I think that's about it, Ms. Carrie. I'll just close by saying, if you can imagine someone popping this tape in a recorder long after I'm gone, long after we're all gone—	9:40
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	That's right.	9:51
Alex Byrd	—and you want to give them some type of the essence of the life lesson of your experience here on this world, what would you like to leave with them about coming up the time you did and doing all the things that you did?	9:54
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	You [indistinct 00:10:11].	10:10
Alex Byrd	I'm fine.	10:10
Carrie Dunlap Smith Harris	As a climax, comparing integration and segregation, propose a radical change in the ideas of man wherever he was. We'd like to consider the fact that man is not an island of his own, that we as a people should always realize that an individual should be treated as an individual, and that we must remember that, though the changes come, we must learn to accept whatever falls in our path as a challenge to move forward, regardless of who it involves.	10:32
Alex Byrd	Well, I thank you. Thank you so much. That was it. That's all we [indistinct 00:11:45]. I'm going to cut us off.	11:37

Item Info

Title:

Carrie Harris interview recording, 1995 July 13

Date:

July 13, 1995

Creator:

Harris, Carrie Dunlap

Contributor:

Byrd, Alex

Description:

Name: Carrie Dunlap Harris; Date of birth: 1902-08-23; Place of birth: Earlington, KY; Occupation(s): educator; teacher; librarian; Residence: Greenville, KY
Informant ID: 1014; Interviewed by: Alex Byrd.

Occupation:

Location:

Format:

Language:

English

Digital Collection:

Behind the Veil

Source Collection:

Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South interviews, photographs, and project records, circa 1864-2011, bulk 1990-2004

Series:

Related Resources:

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Provenance:

The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired the Records of the Behind the Veil Oral History Project from the Duke University Center for Documentary Studies in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

Copyright for content created by the Behind the Veil project is held by Duke University and made available to the public using a Creative Commons Attribution / Non-commercial (CC-BY-NC) license.

Identifier:

RL00170-CS-0961
36a9b566-e78d-4632-8c25-60d3eb97b0f9
behindtheveil
4bbb910d-7a72-434b-bad4-2baddb0604b2
ark:/87924/r4n301g34
4bbb910d-7a72-434b-bad4-2baddb0604b2

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Carrie Harris interview recording, 1995 July 13

Transcript

Item Info

1. Carrie Harris administrative file, 1995

John Hope Franklin Research Center

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Carrie Harris interview recording, 1995 July 13

Transcript

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John Hope Franklin Research Center

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