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Interview with Mary Sue Casey

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Interview with Mary Sue Casey

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Interview with Mary Sue Casey

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  • MSC 1 Mary Sue Casey Interview (MSC) Interviewer: Emma Miller 06/04/2015 Duration: 41:51 Start of Interview EM: I just have some background questions to start off with. I already looked up a little bit, but just for the record’s purpose, what year were you born? MSC: 1952 EM: And have you always wanted to stay in North Carolina, around the Western North Carolina area? MSC: No. In fact, if I wasn’t taking care of my mom, I probably wouldn’t be in Western North Carolina, right now. But that’s okay. I’m making the best of it. When I finished high school, I had a full scholarship to go to Winston-Salem State University, but I didn’t go. I went to Western. I made that choice based on the advice that people around me gave. Some people didn’t have very much faith in the predominantly black universities, which Winston-Salem is, but I have a lot of friends that have went there and they have done very well. EM: These things happen. MSC: Yes, so, I wanted to go then, and then after college I did apply to teach in Western North Carolina, but there were no positions available. So, I did go to Monroe. And that was the closest to home I could get, was Monroe. Other places I interviewed - I interviewed in Georgia, and South Carolina, and also in, what’s the name of that county? Its further east than Monroe is. I can’t remember the name of the county right now, but stayed in Monroe for twenty four years. So, it was great. I enjoyed it. Monroe is situated where you can go to Charlotte, you can go to Winston-Salem, you can go to Greensboro, you can go to Raleigh, all of these places. You can go to the beach. It’s right there, you know? It’s just a few hours, two or three hours and you’re there. Two or three hours and I was home. EM: That’s nice. MSC: Yeah, it was. EM: Did you have a specific teacher or any class that inspired you to become an educator? MSC: Yes, Rebecca Evans, at Sylva-Webster. She was an awesome math teacher. I mean, she explained everything so clearly, it was like wow, how could I not know this? You could just listen to her and it would be great. I never liked math growing up. EM: Oh, I’m so bad at it. I’m so bad at it. MSC: Oh, and I made B’s all the time, and it was arithmetic. Back in those days, you did arithmetic all the way up through eighth grade. There was no pre-algebra, or anything. So, when MSC 2 I was introduced to algebra, I loved that. It was no list of numbers to add. Oh boy. And see, I wasn’t introduced to a calculator until I graduated college. EM: I can’t even imagine. MSC: Yes, that was the day and the time it was. Yes, Mrs. Evans, she has passed away, recently she passed away, but I was in school with her daughter. When I went back to Smoky Mountain to teach, her granddaughters were there. So, she came up to my classroom and visited me while I was at Smokey. EM: Oh, I bet that was great. MSC: That was. She surprised me. He granddaughters were graduating, so, she was in town for graduation, and she came up to my room. It was so good to see her. EM: That’s so neat. What was your schooling like in Sylva-Webster, was it good? MSC: Sylva-Webster? Yes, it was good. I was very, very quiet because we had just integrated eighth grade. My parents told me, “You go to school to get an education. I don’t want you in any trouble. Don’t be running your mouth about anything. You just go and do your work.” And that’s what I did. That’s what I did the whole time. It was not a typical high school experience, but it was high school, for me. EM: What can you tell me about the integration of Sylva-Webster, since it happened right when you were a part of it? MSC: The way I hear it, and I kind of believe it because of the Board of Education building, that’s where I went to school from first grade to seventh grade, in that building. The year before I started, it was a brand new building. That was in ’57. ’57 is when they opened it up. Well, I think it was ’55 or ’56, that the federal government said all schools will be integrated. Okay? And that was in ’55 or ’56, and in ’57 we went into a new school. Knowing good and well they had to integrate, instead of integrating, that would have been the perfect time, because they had old buildings falling apart, they decided to wait. So it was what, ’57? And we finally integrated partially, in ’64. EM: Long process? MSC: Yeah, it was a long process. And I don’t even know if it would have happened then, if it hadn’t been for the boys that lived in this neighborhood, and the boys that lived down that road, and over here on this street. Black people here, white people down there, down there. And those high school boys would get together during the summer and play football over here. This community building was not there. That was the playground. That was the football field for that school, and they would get together and play during the summer. The way I understand it, I wasn’t there, but I understand it, one said to the other, “You should play with us instead of Webster.” And they said, “Okay, when does practice start?” And they just showed up. The black guys just showed up for practice, and the coach said, “You can only play here if you go to school here.” And they said, “Okay, where do we go to register?” Not knowing what a big deal it was. When they were confronted with that, they had to deal with it in some way. Now, that’s the way MSC 3 I understand it. That was the big thing that made them partially integrate. What they did was just choose a few to go to Cullowhee Valley and Sylva-Webster, I guess. They didn’t choose any elementary kids just high school kids. EM: Do you think the community had a positive reaction, a negative reaction? MSC: I think that being in Jackson County, and if you look at the number of people, black people, it was very easy for people that were in favor, and people that were not in favor to tolerate one person. Like, every class I was in, I was the only black person in that class. “Well we can tolerate one.” You know? But if it had been different, I know it would have been different here too- their reaction. If there had been more of us, there would have been problems. I believe that. I believe that, because I just know what I endured as one person the first year at Scott’s Creek. I was at Scott’s Creek that first year. And when the teacher left the room- EM: It was bad? MSC: -a couple of guys. They would get in the desk right behind me, and talk about the “N’s” they saw in town, and what they were doing. One of the teachers even used the N-word in my sister’s class. Yes, but you know, she was the only one there, and all she could do was start to cry, and she cried. What else could she do as a sixth grader? That was hard, you know, coming home. That’s when our parents started banging it in our heads. “Here’s the reason you’re there. You’re there to get an education, that’s what you do. No matter what you hear, don’t respond. No matter what you see, don’t respond. Just do.” EM: I can’t even imagine how difficult that was. MSC: Yes. EM: How have these memories, do you think that they shaped your life and your career, to become an educator? MSC: They definitely shaped my- well, first of all, the two ladies, I had two ladies. I was there seven grades, I had two ladies. The first one taught first through fourth, kindergarten didn’t exist at that time, first through fourth grade. All of us, first through fourth graders was in one room, and she taught everything. Now the fourth graders did leave out, and go to another room for science and math. Okay. Fifth grade, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders were in there. The eighth graders went out, but the fourth graders came in, so that didn’t make much difference there. It was impressive. Once I did become an educator, to think back on how- EM: On how they taught so many grades at once. MSC: Yes, because I wasn’t behind when I got to Scott’s Creek. I was not behind at all. I mean I still made B’s in math, and A’s, B’s, and C’s, I did. I was not behind. They did their job. They definitely did their job. They had impressed me, and then I met Miss Evans, and I just wanted to be just like Miss Evans, to be able to explain. And I remember I was on student council my junior year, and one of the projects we had, student council members got to teach a class of their choice. Do y’all still do that? MSC 4 EM: No, because I’m president. I don’t know if I’d know how to. MSC: No? Okay. [Laughter] MSC: Well, I chose to teach Algebra II. She explained it to me, and then I explained it to the class. They understood what I was talking about, and that was amazing to me. Yes, this is what I want to do. I want to teach. I want to teach high school. EM: Did you figure that out then, or did you know before? MSC: I pretty much knew, but that was just- EM: The final decision, I’m sure. MSC: Yeah, the final decision. EM: How many students were in the one room with the first through fourth? MSC: There were eight in my class. When we started first grade there was eight of us, four boys and four girls. EM: I can’t even imagine how many were in there. MSC: That’s about average. Some classes may have had five. Some classes may have had twelve. It just depends, but I would say eight would be about average. So, they would probably have thirty two in the classroom. EM: Did you teach math, or did you teach just everything? MSC: No, I just taught high school math. EM: How long did you teach? How many years were you at the high school? MSC: At Smoky? I was at Smoky seven and a half years. EM: You were at Monroe for twenty-something? It was a while. MSC: Yes. I taught in Monroe twenty three years. I lived there twenty four, but one of those years I took off. I went back and got my Masters. In fact, I came home and got my Masters at Western. I had twenty three years there, seven and a half at Smoky, and eight years at Cherokee. I went to Cherokee after I left Smoky. EM: Did you like teaching high school or elementary better? MSC: High school is just wanted. I wanted to do high school math. Geometry became my favorite over the years. When I was in Monroe, at Sun Valley High School, that’s when I really connected with geometry. In high school, it was the hardest subject, and I never wanted to teach it. You have to think. It’s not, “Now you add something to both sides.” There are steps in algebra that you take. You had to think through that. I said how do you teach somebody to do that, but I got to where I really enjoyed doing that challenging them to think. MSC 5 EM: I know that you were elected as the secretary of the Jackson County chapter of the NAACP. Do you have a specific memory, or any person that you think inspired you to join the NAACP? MSC: No, when I was in Monroe I joined just because somebody asked me, but I never attended any of the meetings or anything like that. They organized, NAACP, right after I retired. So, to me, that was something I could do that I thought I would enjoy doing. The purpose, once I saw the purpose written out in words, it’s exactly what I’ve been building up to do. For example, when I first came back to Jackson County, I’m trying to think of her name. Mrs. Oliver, she was mayor. Brenda, Brenda Oliver was mayor of Sylva, and she wanted to create a club of different backgrounds, people from different backgrounds and sections of the county, and let us come together, and kind of be somebody she could go to for answers. “What does your part of the county, or of Sylva, think about this? What does your part think?” And that was called, “Bridging Jackson Communities,” and I was a charter member of that for as long as she was mayor. That was kind of the beginning that laid the platform for that. Also, at the same time, my cousin that lives in Andrews, she started an organization called “One Dozen Who Care,” and it was a 501C3 organization. It was twelve black women and they were to work in the community, and mainly we wanted to take care of our youth and our elderly. That organization is still in existence. In fact, this coming Saturday, they’re having their elder dinner. We had a dinner every year, free of charge for the elderly. And then we would honor one of them by giving them a plaque and a newspaper article about them. So, those two organizations, the work that I did for that was the background for NAACP, because that’s the kind of work we do as well. NAACP, the president in North Carolina, is Rev. William Barber. He says that he would like, more than anything, for the NAACP to go out of business. He would like it for them not to have any more business to do, because their purpose is to make sure that no one – no one is discriminated against. It started out just colored people, but now it’s no one. They’ll fight the battle for anybody, if they feel they’ve been discriminated against. So, if there was no need for NAACP, it’d be amazing. So, he says that’s his goal, to get rid of NAACP. I enjoy that part of it, I do. EM: What’s your role in leadership as far as being secretary for the Jackson County chapter? MSC: My responsibility is to take the minutes, of course. I have to attend all the committee meetings, no matter what committee it is. There’s a long list of committees, but we’ve only been able to organize a few, but I’m supposed to attend all of the committee meetings. And membership, I’m supposed to keep the membership list, and not make it public for anyone. And the reason they have that as a rule, back in 1906, when the NAACP was formed, if you belonged to that as a white person, then your job was in jeopardy, your life was in jeopardy if you joined. So, they kept the membership list a secret. And even for blacks, if they worked for someone that was prejudiced in some ways, and they found out they were a member of the NAACP, then they could lose their job. So, that was a special list of people. Now, some people think that now there’s no need for that, but if you’ll remember, not too long ago, the NAACP office in Colorado was blown up. I think there’s still a need for the secrecy. There’s members of our organization here in Jackson County that definitely do not believe that, and they harass me because I keep it. As long as I’m told to do that, I have to do it. So, that’s the hardest part of my job. And they said, “Well, if we want to recruit people, we don’t know whether or not they’re a member or not.” I MSC 6 said, “Well, recruit them anyway. They’ll tell you if they’re a member or not already.” And they do have some legitimate reasons for wanting to know who is, because we’re trying to - One of the committees is religious leadership, and we’re trying to pull out ministers that would be interested in working on that committee, and also being a member of NAACP. And they want to know, “Well, what ministers are already members?” If they knew that, they could go to them, you know? And I said, “Well, if you give me the letter, I’ll send it to those.” They want to be in more control than that, and I understand it, I understand it, and I think we’re moving towards a compromise. And I think, not just our organization, but organizations all over the country are having trouble with that, keeping that list a secret. They’re having trouble. Matter of fact, this coming Saturday, I have a conference call just for secretaries, and it’s about membership roster. So, it may be some changes coming where they will get what they want. EM: I think it’s nice that it’s been kept such tradition for such a long time. MSC: Yes, 1906. It’s been that way a long time. EM: Do you think you guys still experience racism in Jackson County? Is it still prevalent? I know it’s probably not as much as it used to be. MSC: Right. I think, yes. The reason I say that is because of our Legal Redress Committee in the NAACP. This is if you think you are experiencing discrimination, you write it up, we have forms that we give people to write up their situation. And then we send it to lawyers that belong to the state organization, and they look at it and see if they think they have a case, and if we should get involved. We’ve had four since we organized in May of last year. So, it hasn’t been a year yet, and there’s four cases of things that have happened. And the very first one shocked all of us. I mean, I was the one that took down - this lady could not write – so, I wrote down whatever she said, and I tried to make it as clear as possible. Make sure I was getting what she said. Not putting in my part of it, you know, what I think about it. And when we read that to our organization, they were shocked. They said, “Now, what county did this happen in?” I said, “It happened in Sylva.” And they said – Because Franklin and Swain are also a part of us, because they didn’t have enough people to have their own organization. So, we have people from Franklin and Bryson City that are members of. And they kept saying, “Now, what town?” Every time they would say, “What town is this in?” I said, “This happened in Sylva.” It was just unreal. There was one other one. I’m not going to tell you about the first one. That one was just really bad. But one of them was job related, a man having trouble on his job. Another is job related. We had two job related, and what was the third one? EM: All in Jackson County? MSC: Mm Hm. And the third one, I can’t even remember. Oh, oh. This man was from out of town, and he was driving through Franklin, and was arrested. He pulled over to let somebody else drive, and the police pulled up and asked questions, but he ended up in jail, and he didn’t think he should be there. We don’t know about that. That’s still in the process of being handled in the courts, so, we don’t know how that one’s going to come out. We weren’t very clear on details either. That one we don’t know. I couldn’t even remember it, but I had to think about it. But those are the sort of things, you know? If they think they are being discriminated against, MSC 7 we’re the people that you need to come to. And don’t just go to court by yourself, because a lot of people don’t even understand the courts. We do have lawyers that are members of the NAACP, and they are willing to council free. So, that’s good. EM: That’s important. MSC: Mm hm. EM: Now, I have a few questions about - I know Liberty (Baptist Church), your whole family has been super involved your whole life. How has Liberty impacted your life and just your career as an educator? MSC: Oh wow. EM: Kind of an open-ended question. MSC: That’s like asking me, has my faith. Yes. EM: I know how important it is to you. MSC: My memories of Liberty go way back to before I started to school. School, you remember that forever, but I remember Liberty forever, and the people that were here, and the leaders that were here. As an educator, fairness, things like that come to play. Family situations, family situations and how to handle them. A lot of times, especially with teenagers, and that’s who I worked with the whole time. If there was a family problem, girls coming to you, to confide in you, saying their pregnant, or whatever the situation is. My first question to them always was, “Do you go to church?” That answer depended on how I would proceed from there, because I know exactly what to do if their answer is yes. Talk about their faith and how they can depend on the Lord and whatever. But when they say no, that’s hard, that’s when it’s hard. You have to talk about the people around them, who they have for their support base. They’re saying. “I don’t want my parents to know.” Well, how’s your parents not going to know? EM: Yeah, how are they not going to find out? MSC: Yes, things like that. Decisions I had to make when families were involved. And sometimes it would be parents coming, over the years. The parents would come and say, “We’ve got this situation in our home. I know it’s affecting my child, so, I want you to be aware of it.” And then, do you say, “Well, can we pray about it?” Or just don’t saying anything? Usually, I didn’t say anything and prayed about it anyway. That’s the way you have to use it. Liberty taught me that. EM: Did you attend a different church when you went to Monroe for so many years? Did you find a church out there? MSC: To show you how much Liberty was involved, our pastor at that time knew a former pastor of a church in Monroe. He had died, but his wife was still living. So, when he finds out I’m going to Monroe to live, he calls this lady and says, “I’m sending you one of my people.” So, she knew to expect me. She gave me her name and address, and all of that. So, the first time I MSC 8 went to church, I had to find Mrs. Little. I said, “Where is Mrs. Little? I got to tell her that my pastor sent me.” And she knew my pastor, so, that was how I got connected to that church. EM: It’s like a whole family. MSC: Yes, it was, even way down in Monroe. EM: How have you been involved in various positions in leadership? I know you’re the Christian Education Director? Have you had other positions throughout your time? MSC: I was treasurer for a while, for many years as a matter of fact. And missionaries, I’m president of the missionaries right now. I’m also Christian Education Director for our association of churches. It’s eight Baptist churches that are predominantly black. They go from Canton to Hayesville, So, I do that as well. EM: What role does Liberty Baptist play in the community? What do you guys do in and around Jackson County? MSC: Because of the pastor I had growing up, the one that sent me to Monroe? His name was Rev. Joe Smith. That’s his picture in the back, there. Because of him, he was at this church fifty-something years as pastor. He was also the Chaplin for the fire department in Sylva, so, if there was any problems with blacks – Like he was on that committee when they decided to partially integrate. He was one of the black people that they chose. He was the leader, no matter what church you went to, if you were in trouble, you went to this man. Because the Methodist church, you know how they have – I forget what they call them - circuit preachers? Yes, and they’re not usually from your community. He lived in the community, he was here, and he played a major role, a major role in our community, even the community of Sylva. Usually, well, our pastor now, he says, every time he goes into a business, and they find out he’s the pastor here, they start talking about Joe Smith. If it’s an older person, because he died before I came – he died in ’96. So, they know him. That’s the person they relate to this church. He was a leader. He was definitely the leader in the community. When we had vacation bible school, it was for all the black churches, it wasn’t just for our church, because they were smaller, we were the largest black church and so they were pulled in. If we did anything, we always pulled in the other churches, like revivals and things like that. EM: Now, this is kind of not on topic, did you like teaching in Jackson County or Monroe better? I was just curious. I know it’s so difficult to compare them. [Laughing] MSC: The Smoky people I run into, the kids I taught at Smoky, they always say, “Which is better, Cherokee or Smoky?” [Laughing] MSC: They always ask me that! I say, “That is not fair. That is not fair.” But I enjoyed those twenty-something years, twenty three year that I taught at Sun Valley, because I grew up. I learned to be a teacher down there. MSC 9 EM: It was a large chunk of your education. MSC: Mm hm. It is. It is. Also, I was really into sports, not as a participant, as a spectator. Here, in Jackson County sports was a big deal back in the ‘60s, when I was here. We were winning then even. [Laughing] They’re winning now, too, especially basketball. When I went to Monroe, I continued to go to the ball games. Well, I was the only teacher at games except for the other coaches, and so they made cheerleader coach. What did I know about cheerleading? Nothing, but I learned. I went to camp and learned. That was my pride and joy, my squads, because over the years, they won four state championships in 3-A. And we went to Disney, and we went to SeaWorld in Orlando to compete. Did well. Never came out on top there, but did well, did very well. I remember one year we went, there was a hundred and twenty squads in our division, and to be on TV, you had to place in the top ten. We placed sixteenth. That was a heartbreaker. There was not much difference between the sixteenth and the tenth. There was not much at all, but little things. But that was awesome. I learned to be a cheerleading coach, even though I had never done that in my life. When I came back home, and told my friends that that’s what I had done, they like, “How could you have been a coach? We don’t understand how you could do that.” And then one of my friends, she said to me, she said, “I was watching this dance competition on TV, and they were showing their coach, and she couldn’t dance, she controlled.” I said, “That was me! I controlled. I was in control.” Oh gosh, those girls, I just love them. I still stay in contact with them, Facebook, all the time. Their children are named after me, stuff like that. It’s just great. They’re my children that I didn’t have. That was the fun part of being at Sun Valley. It was Tuesday, Friday, during basketball season. Practice on Monday for games, practice on – not Wednesday, you had to go to church. Thursday for competition, and I saw them all the time. Football, all the time. The pep rallies. We did homecoming, just the cheerleaders. We did the whole deal. They’d choose a theme, and they went out, their parents went all out for it. It was wonderful. It. Was. Wonderful. And it was hard to start over with that. When I left Sun Valley, I was teaching children of the people I had taught when I first went. So, I knew the community, I knew family. It was so hard to start over at Smokey. But the best thing was I was a teacher. I knew how to teach, so that part of it was good. I had great students. The classroom was great. Extracurricular, I did venture into cheerleading a little, but it wasn’t too good, it wasn’t too good. It didn’t work out. And times are changing anyway. As time changes, the coach has to change with the times, and there had been a gap between being at Sun Valley and being at Smoky, and I had gotten out of touch with those changes. I had a couple of squads that were pretty good, they were JVs. One JV squad was awesome, completely awesome. EM: I cheered JV last year and then this year, for a while. We had fond memories. We only went to competition one time, and we were the only person in our division, so we won. We were the only one in our division, but I can’t even imagine how difficult it is to coach cheerleading, because I know from experience how many issues there can be with getting twenty five girls to all do the same thing and all get along. MSC: It is. Sun Valley was so good that our coaches, our football and basketball coaches had their friends at the newspaper to do an article on us, but it was an editorial, and he talked about them being trained seals, you know, kind of making fun of them. And then, they came in and MSC 10 said, “Look what he wrote about you. He’s going to be here tonight. He’s going to be here tonight, what are you going to say to him?” They wanted me to let him have it, the way I had let them have it when they badmouthed my girls. Don’t be badmouthing my girls. It was funny. I waved at him. I didn’t say a word to him. They were disappointed. [Laughter] The girls I coached, they all wanted to be coaches. And some of them have had the opportunity, and they call me and they’d be crying and they say, “How do you handle parents? Parents are, oh gosh.” EM: Cheer mamas are crazy. MSC: Yes, they are, for real. The things they said about Miss Hughes on Facebook, in public, was terrible. I’m glad I don’t know them. If I ever met them, ugh. I think I even got talked about because she said, “and she had people there judging that didn’t know anything.” It was me. It was me they were talking about. EM: Miss Hughes is an amazing coach and an amazing lady. I don’t think a lot of people appreciate the hardships that you go through as a cheerleading coach and as a teacher. I just can’t even imaging. MSC: My girls knew – and teenager-like, they would play me against their parents. They’d go to their parents and say, “Miss Casey said I had to,” blah blah blah blah blah, you know. Or they’d come to me and say, “My mama said I had to,” blah blah blah blah blah. You know, they do that. You have to understand that they’re going to do that, and that’s why you have to work closely with the parents. So, you’ll know, “Oh, you all are doing this now.” They can call me and say that, or I can call them. You know, and I did. I remember one time, my captain, oh. It was a game and it started to rain, and her dad came down and told her to get her things, they were going home. And she came over and she said, “Miss Casey, my dad wants me to go home.” I said fine, you going home. He’s your dad.” I said, “He trumps me every time.” I said, “But tell him I want to see him in my room first thing Monday morning.” She said, “Oh, okay.” So, she left. She wasn’t in trouble, he was in trouble, because he had promised me, you know at the beginning he had promised me… EM: You cheer rain or shine, and snow MSC: As long as the boys are out. EM: Oh yeah, then we’re always out there too. MSC: Now, if the boys go home, we’re going home too. He was coming down the hall that Monday morning, and one teacher said to my captain, “Oh Holly, you’re in trouble.” She said, “No, my dad is in trouble.” I just asked him, I said, “Now, didn’t you tell me blah blah blah? And didn’t you tell me blah blah blah? And didn’t you tell me blah blah blah?” I said, “What has changed? Just let me know what has changed since then? And if I can handle them, Holly can be with me. If I can’t handle them, you have to take Holly home for good.” That was it. Most of the MSC 11 time, my principal backed me up, and when your principle doesn’t back you up anymore, it’s time to go. That’s when I stopped coaching at Sun Valley. EM: Is that the reason you returned back to Jackson County? MSC: It was coincidental. It was the same year, but I don’t know if you remember Miss Painter? She was a math teacher. She’s retired now. She was sending word to me that there was three math positions available at Smoky, and it thought, if I apply, I be I’ll be third, at least third. I felt like if I applied I would get one of the three. If it was just one or two, I don’t know, but three. So, I thought about it, and when I decided to not coach the next year, I thought about that for a while. I had coached for how many years? Eighteen, nineteen, twenty years, something like that. I said I don’t think I can be here and not coach. And I would be intimidation for the coach, whoever that is, and I don’t need to be here. So, I had already put in for a transfer. I said okay, do you want to start over in Union County, or do you want to go home? Which do you want to do? I came home. And it was a good choice, because my dad lived one year, and then he died. My mom didn’t never live by herself though, there I was, ready to walk in. EM: Is there anything you want to talk about? I don’t have any more questions to ask.
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