Third Grade

Ms. Anderson

Marva Hickman represents the common understanding of their third-grade teacher, Ms. Anderson. Mrs. Hickman said “well I guess everybody remembers Ms. Anderson as being the strictest probably and the most difficult to be able to satisfy. But she was real strict. But all of the teachers were, I thought, very nice.”

Julius D. Fuller echoes Hickman with his description of Ms. Anderson. He said “she was a different type of teacher. She had a personality, I’ll say that, but she didn’t tolerate anything out of the ordinary.” He then said “but you learned a lot. She’d tell a lot of these different stories, entertaining things. Now that you’ve aged you might have called them tall tales, I don’t know. Some of it was pretty unbelievable, but maybe, maybe not. She was a good educator.”

Troy Hampton describes his third-grade teacher similarly to the above descriptions. He says “she’d always tell us how dumb we were. ‘Y’all so dumb, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.’ And then this is what she said ‘white kids can do this she said, ‘they take tests, right? And they pass their tests and they make so much good grade on ‘em.’ … but she’d get mad and throw stuff at us, right? And you’d sit there in the classroom and she would be so hot some days, she’d just put the windows down, make us sweat, and sit there and sweat. And she’d just jump up, she would just go bonkers on us.”

Douglas Patterson recalls Ms. Anderson. He said “she was bent on teaching you obedience. I remember the first year I went to her in her class, I think she whupped ‘bout five different young boys that were kindly unruly, and she let everybody know that she was the teacher. She let everybody know, you’re gonna be obedient and listen to what I tell you to do, and some boys that laughed at her, she went in the closet and pulled out this big paddle, and when she got through [laughter] everybody paid attention to her. So she taught more on obedience and discipline.”

Michael Porter passes on Ms. Anderson’s life advice in his interview: “Ms. Anderson always told us, always read more than one newspaper and now it’s kinda like watch more than one news channel.” 

George Penn said "down the hall, we had Ms. Anderson. [27:59] Oh my lord, she was something else. To be brief, she was crazy; she would beat you and kept the room boiling hot. If she decided everybody needed to drink water, we had to get up, march down that hall in a line to that hot water fountain, bend over there, and get a drink of water, then get back to the room. Don't step out of line, or you'd get beat! Miss Anderson. Nettie G.   She’d see momma in the evening; she'd be walking home with a briefcase, and she'd walk over. I’d get behind momma and hide behind her. “Come on, George. It’s your teacher.” I said, “I know it.” Then I’d go home. I’d say, “She'll get me for snubbing her.”  [She said], “Miss Anderson’s sweet.”  I said, “No she's not!”

George Penn recalls on time with Ms. Anderson: "every chance she had, she beat the girls’ hands. She was crazy. I’m telling you, Miss Anderson was. She brought her momma to school with her one day. Miss Anderson looked to be about 300 years old. Her momma; they brought her in sections in the room and sat in a chair. I said, “Oh man.” Joe said, “Don't say nothing.” I said, “I’m not.” She sent him home in the third grade, walking.  Kicked him out of the school Interviewer: What’d he do? Mr. Penn: Question her on the Titanic. ‘Cause, she told us that she was on the Titanic and had danced with John the Baptist. So Joe raised his hand. I said, “Put it down.”  [Joe said,] “Ms. Anderson, there was nobody lived on….  Plus, there’s no black people partying on it.”  [She said,] “Come up here.” Back to the big Ebony magazines; she'd roll one up [and said],  “Say what?” I said, “Lord, she's gonna hit Joe, sure as fat meat's greasy.” And she would hit him right in the mouth. But she said that she danced with John the Baptist on the Titanic. No way. So when I tell momma what she said, she said, “You're lying.” I said, “I am not. That's what she said.”

Dr. Mickey Hickman recalls "third grade, gosh, we call that bait and switch now when we look back. But, we went from the prettiest teacher to maybe I don't know how to describe Ms. Anderson in the third grade, she was harsh. It was like, I can't… She should have been a catholic school nun.  She beat me every day with a ruler on the hand - not viciously or anything, but she was real strict. We had to, she would do an inspection and our hands had to be clean.  Of course, sometimes we played before the school bell began, but if your hands weren't clean, you got hit.  If you didn't have a handkerchief, you got hit.  If I didn't have my dot on my “i”, directly over the “i”, I got hit. If my “t”, the cross on the letter “t”, if one side was longer than the other, I got hit. That woman hit me.  It was the first time my parents came to school, I remember that.  Also, I remember she was just - I was glad to get out of third grade, and all.  But she gave me good grades and things."

Ms. Elise Ward

Arthur Meadows fondly remembers his time in third grade. He said, “she was pretty strict but she was very kind and she was generous with gifts and things and rewards and things like that on various occasions.” “She had some toys and they weren’t all educational but they were nice toys and around Christmas time they were even nicer toys. But she didn’t just give out toys every day. She did reward you from certain periods.”

Ms. Lucy Harmon

Rozema Payne Grubb said "so I was in Ms. Harmon’s third-grade class during the ’52-’53 school year. I remember that she was a sweet lady, but strict. You had to learn and obey the rules. We had lessons in the mornings, recess around 10—about 15 minutes—more lessons until lunchtime … Ms. Harmon believed in you learning a lot and working hard."