| Summary: | (4:39) Mrs. Barton discusses her teaching career. This inteview is part of an oral history project funded by a grant from the Alabama Historical Records Board, managed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History staff, using funds provided by the National Historical Preservation and Records Commission.Florence-Lauderdale Public Library Digital Archive
Interview with Martha Barton
May 14, 2009
Florence, Alabama
Conducted by Clint Alley and Rhonda Haygood
Clip 9 of 10
Clint Alley: Ah, so you, ah, were you, were you still teaching when they integrated the schools?
Martha Barton: Yes.
CA: Okay, well did that go pretty smoothly here in Florence?
MB: I guess it did because, as far as I know, we had no major problems. Ah, they integrated a grade a year, or maybe two grades a year, and started with the seniors.
CA: What year did they start doing that?
MB: Ah, must have been in the sixties. Because in ’71, I guess, I was sent to Forest Hills, and that was the first year they integrated the seventh and eighth grades out there.
CA: Um-hm.
MB: I had the personality conflict class, and you can draw your own conclusions about what that was.
(laughter)
CA: Personality conflict class.
MB: That’s what they called it.
CA: And you were a—but you were a home ec teacher?
MB: No, I never did teach home ec.
CA: Okay.
MB: I started out to get a degree in home ec, then I decided I was—I didn’t want to teach home ec. It was not—it was a twenty-four hour, twelve-month-a-year job, and I just didn’t think I wanted to get that tied up in it.
CA: Um-hm. So what did you teach?
MB: Elementary. In my time I taught from Kindergarten through eighth grade.
CA: Okay.
MB: And I had a self-contained classroom as long as they were using self-contained classrooms, and then they went to mixing them up and the teacher—when I retired—the teacher moved, the students stayed in the area.
CA: Okay.
MB: And that was hard! Cause you were going to a different group, and you had to have whatever you’s gonna do, take it with you. And if one group got out of sync, the whole thing could go—lunch could get to be a chaos if somebody didn’t get to the lunchroom when they were supposed to. Cause we had to go in a line, take our lunch, and go back and sit down in our home area and eat, and then dispose of the trays, rather than going to a lunchroom. They found out that wasn’t gonna to work and just before they closed Brandon, they had built a lunchroom. That’s where I was when I retired.
CA: Um-hm. Okay, so you retired from Brandon, is that what you say?
MB: Um-hm.
CA: And you, ah, you have a master’s in education?
MB: Um-hm.
CA: And how long did it take you to get that?
MB: Oh, I don’t know. Cause I was going in summers, I guess I did it in maybe three summers.
CA: Okay.
MB: Maybe four at the most.
CA: But, if you could have picked any other profession, would you have?
MB: Knowing what I know now, I probably would have gone into library science.
CA: Library science.
MB: Cause I worked my way through Florence State in the library over there.
CA: Okay.
MB: Wasn’t much money, but it paid tuition. (laughter) Thirty-five cents an hour!
(laughter)
CA: Is that how much you were paid? Thirty-five cents an hour?
MB: Um-hm. That’s what we all—anybody that worked—was paid.
CA: Um-hm.
MB: Now if you had a job out in town somewhere, it might have been different, but if you were working on campus, that’s what it was.
CA: It got that tuition paid, though, huh?
MB: Yep. Cause tuition was nothing then compared to what it is now.
CA: Do you remember about how much it was?
MB: No, I don’t have any idea. It was not that big a deal, so I don’t know, I don’t remember. I lived in O’Neal Hall, had no way to get back and forth from where I lived in the country to the school, and everybody that was out in that area that went to school, in college, lived in the dormitory.
CA: Okay, and you lived in O’Neal Hall.
MB: I lived in O’Neal Hall.
CA: O’Neal Hall is not there anymore, correct?
MB: No, it’s not—
CA: Okay, that’s where the—
MB: —much to my sorrow.
CA: The University Center is there now, isn’t it?
MB: Yeah.
CA: Ah, and did you, did you make a lot of good friends living in O’Neal Hall?
MB: Well, I thought I did.
(laughter)
MB: Ah, I don’t see too many of them anymore. Some of them don’t live around here.
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