The good thing about segregated schools is that you could assemble a good
staff and get a good school atmosphere and get parents working with what
you are doing. You could do almost anything because you had no
interference. I think we achieved that and I had maintained--Dr. Frank
Tolliver had been my high school principal. He was the principal of
Asheville and he became State Supervisor of Black schools. He and Sam
Duncan. Mr. Tolliver came to me and talked to me. Dr. Duncan came first.
I had known Dr. Duncan because I went to Livingstone two or three days,
and I had to stay with my uncle over there and I left the same year. So
Dr. Duncan came and talked with me. He expanded my vision of where I
could go or where the school could go.
I think in one afternoon. He would never come in a hurry. He could spend
three hours with you and he would not come and say how are you getting
along and he would answer what you asked him. What about your curriculum
and where do you want to go? Do you have plans to get there? Will your
community support it? He talked with me about that. He suggested ways to
me that I could get more staff members that would not have learned until
a little while later. He said, you said that you wanted to put in
vocational courses because they come unallotted. You have to justify
that you can make up some classes in vocation and you have a good staff
and I had a vocational agriculture teacher and I got another vocational
agriculture teacher. That meant that I had two unallotted teachers. I
had one home economics teacher so I added to it and added courses and
had her to draw up the grocery sheet and draw up the spices so we had
four teachers that we didn't have to get from the state allotment based
on attendance.
That was one of the best things that happened and I think that Dr. Duncan had led me to expand not to use--we did not
have football. I maybe asked him how I could avoid it because our school
was growing fast. We were holding students. The graduating class the
year I came here was 29 students and five years later it was 89 students
so the holding power--the students were there, we had 125 people coming
in the freshman class every year so we were able to do a lot of things
that were happening. The community was going from a farm community to a
public works community so the students did not have to stay out. In that
way we were able to expand and hold the students. We added courses in
math and we had extra courses other than the four courses you know
regular courses in English. We had extra courses in math, we had extra
courses in science, and we taught all the sciences every year if we
could find a way to do it. I had teachers who would volunteer to teach
French I and French II and ask to do it in the same class at the same
time. I had a teacher who also would teach advanced composition and the
lowest class we had in English in the same class at the same time. I
don't know where under the sun these people came from. I had a teacher
who taught at night free. Mrs. Harris. She taught advanced math when the
class got so small we could not justify with 13 or 14. If you have 13 or
14 somebody else has got to have those other 15 or 20 students and you
would have to say, we're not going to have the class for the academic
students who needed the advanced math and we had had it the year before.
She said, Mr. Campbell, if you will let me, you're up at the school all
the time anyway in the evenings and at night, I'll come and teach them.
She taught the class at night. Those were the kinds of things that were
going on. They were able to interpret to the young people what education
means. I think that was the thing. They were no better prepared than
other people but they had commitment of interpreting. Mrs. Bradshaw
taught college English and the lowest English at the same time in the
same class. E.V. Dickens was the science and math, particularly science
teacher. E.V. was the most social person you've ever seen in a
principal. E.V. could have more students at school after school and at
night than the coach could have in the gym. Teaching science--we had
science fairs, doing experiments. There was an atmosphere almost of a
revival. I don't how they mingled and how they came but it was the most
unusal thing that I have ever seen. I never dreamed that could happen.
We went through--Dr. Huffer told me that your school is not accredited
by the Southern Association. I said, none of the others are. I said you
accredit your school. They don't know what you are doing. I'll tell you
what you are doing. You'll get a full time librarian in the elementary
school and a full time librarian in the high school. He said, they'll
just say yes, and they are going to have to pay for it because the State
is not going to allot it to you. Also, they won't let your teachers
teach over 30 students. They'll have to. They'll be ashamed to not live
up to what you are doing and so we did that and we became the only
accredited school in Iredell County by the Southern
Association until these new high schools were built in 1966.