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Oral History Interview with Willie Shepperson Pt. 1
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Oloye Adeyemon: Brown v. Board oral history collection. Prince Edward County, Virginia. School segregation, desegregation interviews. Interviewee, Mr. William Shepperson. Interviewer, Oloye Adeyemon for the National Park Service. Interview conducted at First Baptist Church in Farmville, Virginia on September 5, 2001. These interviews are made possible through the Brown v. Board Oral History Research Project funded by the National Park Service for the summer of 2001 as part of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site Oral History Project. Mr. Shepperson, what is your full name?
Willie Shepperson: Willie Lee Shepperson.
Oloye Adeyemon: And what is your birthdate?
Willie Shepperson: August 21, 1937.
Oloye Adeyemon: Where were you born?
Willie Shepperson: Meherrin, Virginia, Prince Edward County.
Oloye Adeyemon: How do you spell that?
Willie Shepperson: M-E-H-E-R-R-I-N.
Oloye Adeyemon: Is that a district of Prince Edward?
Willie Shepperson: No, that’s a little town in Prince Edward.
Oloye Adeyemon: Okay. Mm. And what were your parents’ names?
Willie Shepperson: Father’s name, Reverend Patrick Henry Shepperson. My mother’s name, Sally Katie Shepperson.
Oloye Adeyemon: I guess you’ve answered part of the question. I was gonna ask, what did your parents do for a living?
Willie Shepperson: Well, no, I didn’t answer that because in addition to being a preacher, my father was also a farmer
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: He also, um, worked cutting pulpwood and logs. My mother was basically a stay-at-home wife.
Oloye Adeyemon: Did he own his own land?
Willie Shepperson: Yes, he owned his own land.
Oloye Adeyemon: Did he have a pulpwood truck?
Willie Shepperson: He had a pulpwood truck.
Oloye Adeyemon: What church did he pastor?
Willie Shepperson: Uh, he pastored several of them, Gill Hill Baptist Church at one time, um, [Unintelligible 02:09] Oak Baptist Church. And then there was one more, but I don’t remember.
Oloye Adeyemon: Were all of these in Prince Edward County?
Willie Shepperson: All of ’em are Prince Edward Country. No. One in Prince Edward County, one in Lunenburg County, and one was in Charlotte County.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. So, he had to travel back and forth?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. Did your—what did your mother do?
Willie Shepperson: Housewife.
Oloye Adeyemon: Housewife. Uh, were they both born in Prince Edward County?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Do you have brothers and sisters?
Willie Shepperson: I have two brothers and one sister.
Oloye Adeyemon: What are their names?
Willie Shepperson: The oldest of the group is Lester Henry Shepperson. My sister’s the next oldest, Florine Shepperson. And my baby brother, Lionel Shepperson.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. What do you do for a living, Mr. Shepperson?
Willie Shepperson: I am retired.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. What did you do?
Willie Shepperson: Director of organization for the United Brotherhood Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO, located in Washington, DC.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. And, uh, before that?
Willie Shepperson: Before that, probably odd jobs as a teenager and so forth because I was there for 43 years.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm. Mm-hmm. Um, where did you, uh, get your training as a—
Willie Shepperson: For this job?
Oloye Adeyemon: Yes.
Willie Shepperson: I guess you would call it the College of Hard Knocks because I started out working for a place called, um, Williamsburg Steel, which was located on Page Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. I joined the union there when I first arrived, and I moved up through the ranks.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: Eventually, after being on that job for approximately three and a half years, I became a u—officer of the union. And from there, graduated and became, um, an officer of Local 2947 in New York. Then I became an organizer for the International. I became an, uh, international representative for the International. I became a, um, representative of the general president, served under five general presidents. And then I became an as-assistant—special assistant to the International director of organization. Then, ultimately, a director for the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.
Oloye Adeyemon: All right. And you currently live—
Willie Shepperson: Lower Maryland.
Oloye Adeyemon: Lower Maryland. Um, you spent your entire school years here, in Prince Edward County?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. Uh—
Willie Shepperson: School years, meaning the—
Oloye Adeyemon: Oh, the—
Willie Shepperson: - formative years, yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Uh-huh. Uh, where did you start elementary school?
Willie Shepperson: I started elementary school—let’s back up. I started elementary school in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: Uh, I was in the second grade when I moved—when we—my family moved back here from Chester, Pennsylvania to Prince Edward County.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, you were born here—
Willie Shepperson: Born here.
Oloye Adeyemon: - your family moved to Pennsylvania—
Willie Shepperson: Moved away.
Oloye Adeyemon: - and came back.
Willie Shepperson: Because my father needed work, and he got work at the s—at a shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: When the war ended, he moved here, to Prince Edward County.
Oloye Adeyemon: Okay. So, other than those first two years, you went to school the—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - entire time here.
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Um, what was the impact when you—of leaving—well, first of all, was the school that you went to in Pennsylvania integrated?
Willie Shepperson: To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. It probably was because in the area where the Quakers lived. So, I-I imagine it was, but I couldn’t tell you.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: I don’t remember.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, it was kind of early, and there wasn’t—
Willie Shepperson: Very early.
Oloye Adeyemon: - a lot of impact—
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: - coming from there back to—
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: - a segregated school system.
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: Okay. Um, your earliest memories of elementary school, uh, can you share with us what it was like going to elementary school in Prince Edward County during the segregation?
Willie Shepperson: The things-the things I remember about elementary school was that we were fortunate because the land that my father purchased was right across the road from the elementary school. So, we could get up and less than three minutes, we could be at the schoolhouse. The same thing returning home. But there were children who had to walk, rain, snow, sleet, whatever, and there were no—there was no asphalt on the roads at that time. It was just plain, old red clay. They had to walk up to four and a half to five miles one way to get to school. You’re talkin’ about children who are six years old. They carried their little lunches in a brown bag when they had some lunch to bring. Or oftentimes, when it got lunchtime or recess, they would accompany us-accompany us-us across the street—across the road to my mother’s house, and she would fix something for them. Now, you’re talkin’ about little kids, 16 years old, getting up in the dark.
Oloye Adeyemon: Six years old.
Willie Shepperson: Six years old, walkin’ in the dark in the wintertime with ice and snow four and a half to five miles to get to school. My brother was being paid $1 a month by the PTA to make the fire so that there’d be fire in the schools when they came. Then they had to turn around at 3:30 and walk that four and a half-five miles back home. At the same time, that old yellow school bus carrying the white kids went right-right past ’em, throw the ice and snow on them on their way to a nice centralized heated building in Green Bay, Virginia where the white kids went to school. That was my first impression.
Second impression. They gave us a book to read, and the book was called Little Black Samuel. I remember it very well. Little Black Samuel. It was a little black guy with real big eyes and with a lot of white in ’em, and he had big, thick red lips. And he ran into this tiger, and the tiger was chasing him. And the ti—and he was running around this tree. And incidentally, it was a palm tree. And I didn’t know there were any palm trees in Africa. I know that now, but at the time, he was running around a palm tree. He ran around and around that tree, and he outran the tiger to the point where the tiger melted and turned into butter. The little black boy picked up—scooped up the butter, put it in a bucket, took it home to his mammy, and she made pancakes.
Well, I didn’t understand this, and I was most disturbed by it. So, I walked out of school. And you will find, throughout this interview, that I walked out of school a lot when things disturbed me. So, I walked out of school, carried the book across the street to my mother, asked her to explain to me how this tiger turned into butter, and why this little black boy has these big eyes and red lips. Bein’ who she is—and you will find, throughout this interview, that she was an inspiration in my life—she sent me back with the book and said, “Never mind about the tiger or running around the tree or turning into butter. Don’t worry about that. You don’t know that’s not true. Be able to read the words that’s associated with the tiger running around the tree, and it’ll help you later on.” So, I went back over there.
The next incident that I had was that they had books that—we used to get books that had the answers in the back. Answer a question, and then you could turn to the back, and there was an answer. Well, these books that we had, all the answers were filled in. Back across the street again. I don’t understand this. Why do I got this book with answers in it? She said, “Don’t worry about that. Check ’em and make sure the answers are right.” Those were my first two impressions of elementary school.
The biggest shock that I got in elementary school was when my brother—came time for my baby brother to graduate from high—into high school. At that time, the black teachers at these one-, two-, and three-room wooden shacks that they built for black children, they had to have a full complement of students in order to get full pay, one through seven. If you didn’t have grades—children in grade one through seven, you didn’t get paid the full amount. So, what happened was—this was an incentive for the black teacher to always have seven grades to teach.
So, if it—this year, if everybody did well and everybody was movin’ up and there was nobody that’s gonna be in her seventh grade, somebody got flunked. Because she’s gonna keep at least three students in that seventh grade so she can get full pay. And one year, the three students was my baby brother, Lionel, and Mrs. Beatrice Woods’ two twin daughters, Gene and Margaret. She flunked them so that she would get full pay. Incidentally, she’s dead now, but that teacher’s name is—that’s available. And, um, that was another impression that I got of the black schools.
Another impression that I got of the black elementary schools was that the kind of teachers that we got, um, morally, they weren’t of best—the best of character. Because first of all, you were way out in the boondocks. And they weren’t that concerned about your education anyway. They, meaning the white people, weren’t that concerned about your education anyway. So, they would bring in teachers who were actually alcoholics. And we knew they were alcoholics, the teachers. And, um, I don't know that I wanna give the names of the alcoholics, but they were alcoholics, okay, the teachers. There-there were times when, um, these teachers would come to school actually under the influence of alcohol to the point where they would sit there and sleep, and we would basically sorta run the school ourselves. And this went on for, I guess—one year that she came back a half year a second time before they finally dismissed us. That’s elementary school.
Oloye Adeyemon: I wanna ask a couple questions. Uh, how were you able to find out what had happened to the three children? How was—how were you able to determine that-that-that-that had happened and why it had happened? You know, that it had happened [unintelligible 11:22].
Willie Shepperson: Well, when you say it had happened, what are you talkin’ about?
Oloye Adeyemon: The children being flunked in order to have seventh grade—
Willie Shepperson: Oh, very simple.
Oloye Adeyemon: - [crosstalk 11:27].
Willie Shepperson: My brother, baby brother, was one of them. He had made good grades all year, so had Margaret and Gene, made good grades all year. There was nothin’ wrong with their grades.
Oloye Adeyemon: Was your mother able to intercede? Was she—
Willie Shepperson: She attempted to, but there was-there wasn’t very much you could do. Teacher’s word was law, and the, uh, school board, board supervisor at that time, were all white, and they fully backed up this teacher that they had there.
Oloye Adeyemon: You mentioned about teachers, you know, coming to school drunk and [crosstalk 11:58].
Willie Shepperson: Intoxicated? Oh, yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Yeah, intoxicated. Uh, was this all the teachers or just—
Willie Shepperson: No, no. I can think of two.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. And so, it was just—it wasn’t so much that all the teachers were that way. It w—you had dedicated teachers.
Willie Shepperson: You had dedicated teachers in elementary school. But the point I’m making is that this would’ve never taken place in the white school.
Oloye Adeyemon: I understand that.
Willie Shepperson: That’s the point I’m making.
Oloye Adeyemon: That it was tolerated.
Willie Shepperson: That’s right, it was tolerated.
Oloye Adeyemon: And the school buses that carried the white children were paid for by—
Willie Shepperson: County taxes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - county taxes?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Black and white?
Willie Shepperson: Black and white.
Oloye Adeyemon: But there were no buses provided to blacks at that time.
Willie Shepperson: No. Also, the b-building with the centralized heat in Green Bay was built with tax funds.
Oloye Adeyemon: Now, Green Bay is a-is a community in, uh—
Willie Shepperson: Prince Edward County.
Oloye Adeyemon: - Prince Edward County?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Uh-huh. And that was the community where white students from the area that you lived in went-went to—
Willie Shepperson: Elementary school. Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - went to elementary school. Were there other differences in terms of the curriculum, that you know of, between the white school and black school—
Willie Shepperson: Well—
Oloye Adeyemon: - during the elementary—
Willie Shepperson: - I-I don't know the curriculum for the white s—classes—schools because I didn’t have access to that. I can merely tell you what we had.
Oloye Adeyemon: What was that?
Willie Shepperson: And-and a lot of times, being only one teacher and having all seven of these grades, sometimes the guy in the seventh grade was subjected to classes being taught to the first grader.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: And, uh, back at that time, out in the rural area, in most cases, you didn’t get a lot of help from your parents. And I was fortunate because both my parents could read and write. But a lot of those parents in the rural areas, they weren’t educated. They went—from the time they could tie their shoes, they went to work on the farm because they were sharecroppers. They didn’t have very much education, so they couldn’t help the kids with the homework or check the homework or whatever.
Isolated case, but I remember one guy, we would call him Rudolph. That’s all we would call him was Rudolph. His father insisted that he graduate elementary school. When I came back here from Ch-from Chester, Pennsylvania in the second grade, Rudolph was in the third grade. He was 19 years old. I graduated from elementary school into high school. Rudolph was still in the third grade. And the way he got out of the third grade, he went into the army. And you tell me there’s not something wrong with that. That would never happen in the white school.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, having, uh, finished elementary school, in order to, uh, attend high school, you had to come into town, into Farmville.
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: How far—how long a distance was that?
Willie Shepperson: Twenty-two miles from the way our bus went. Twenty-two miles.
Oloye Adeyemon: You did have a bus at this point.
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yes. Mm-hmm.
Oloye Adeyemon: Was this paid for by tax people?
Willie Shepperson: Paid for with tax funds. Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: And of course, the buses were segregated. You rode the black bus, and whites—were the buses the same?
Willie Shepperson: No. The difference being we got the buses after the white folks were finished with ’em.
Oloye Adeyemon: Was that also true with the books?
Willie Shepperson: We got the books after the white folks finished with them.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. And would that—you suspect might’ve been true with some of the equipment as well?
Willie Shepperson: Don’t suspect. Know it. You see, one of the things that I think is missing here is that when the students at Robert R. Moton walked out that day, they did not walk out because they wanted to integrate schools. They didn’t do it because of that. We had inferior resources. We had inferior buses. We had inferior books. We had inferior, uh, movies. We had inferior athletic equipment. We had inferior everything except teachers. We had superior teachers.
Oloye Adeyemon: With the exception of a few cases that were tolerant about the school system.
Willie Shepperson: What you talkin’ about, elementary-elementary school? But in the high school level, I say we had superior teachers—
Oloye Adeyemon: Superior. Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: - all the way around. The only time our teachers maybe have d—might have disappointed us was when we did have the strike about the school closing because they were afraid of their jobs, and they had mortgages to pay and all this.
Oloye Adeyemon: I understand.
Willie Shepperson: So, therefore, what they did—not that it’s excusable, but they did it in order to protect their incomes and what they acquired in life. But we had superior teachers.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: I am not sure that integration was the way. Because when we went to school with our black teachers, our teachers made us believe we could fly.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: Believe me. They were good. There’s nothin’ wrong with our teachers. As opposed to right now, today, uh, the black students today, the—that white teacher does not show the same interest. They don’t care. All they wanna do is draw the paycheck. At the end of—at the beginning of the month, they want the paycheck. And there are more-there are more white teachers in the system now than there are black teachers. And the school is predominantly black schools. They just recently-recently hired 32 new teachers for the school season coming up. Only eight of ’em are black. Twenty-four are white.
So, this-this integration thing, I’m not sure that it was the best thing for us. We did not have to sit beside a black child in—I mean, a white children in order to succeed. Proof is in the pudding. I never went to school with a—integrated school. Did I—was I successful? I think so. Edna didn’t go. Was she successful? I think so. In [unintelligible 17:12], we have people who went on to, uh, jobs in NASA, uh, professorships with—excuse me—college and university. So, sitting beside the white student wasn’t our goal. Our goal was to have the necessary resources in order to—so that our teachers could do what they needed to do to teach us how to live.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. Did you have a, um, cafeteria in the high school?
Willie Shepperson: Well, you have to define cafeteria. Are you defining cafeteria as a place where you can go in and sit down at a table and eat?
Oloye Adeyemon: Like, in the white high school, they had a place where they—
Willie Shepperson: Didn’t have anything like that. No, no.
Oloye Adeyemon: Did you have a gymnasium?
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: They had one in the white school.
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Uh, did you have locker rooms?
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: What did—
Willie Shepperson: Showers? No.
Oloye Adeyemon: No showers.
Willie Shepperson: No showers. You stand out in the rain after the game.
Oloye Adeyemon: Did you have a formal football field?
Willie Shepperson: We had a formal football field, but it was a ragtag football field. It wasn’t very well kept. It had grass in spots. In some spots, it didn’t have. If you were running down the field and somebody tackled you, you might fall on a rock. And that was more painful than the tack-than the tackle.
Oloye Adeyemon: Now, you said that the teachers were superior. What were their qualifications? What kind of training did the teachers that you had in high school have?
Willie Shepperson: I couldn’t tell you whether they were mas—had master’s degrees or BS or BAs, but I can tell you what they did have. They did have a concern for us. Because if you acted up in class or you failed at something they thought that you ought to be able to handle, they would take that 22-mile ride out to your house and tell your parents.
Oloye Adeyemon: Yeah.
Willie Shepperson: Back in 1950, you don’t want your teacher comin’ to your house tellin’ your parents that you w-weren’t actin’ right because they didn’t have this child abuse stuff then.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: You-you got abused.
[Laughter]
Willie Shepperson: And I don’t mean lightly. You got abused, Jack. Because if they had this child abuse stuff now, my mother would still be pulling time.
Oloye Adeyemon: [Laughter]
Willie Shepperson: They straighten you out. They didn’t bring any Ritalin tablets and give it to you. My mother had a cure for all that. You’re oversensitive. You’re hypertension. She got a remedy for all that. And when you went back, you was straight.
Oloye Adeyemon: And the teachers, they had permission. If she wasn’t able to get to you soon enough to-to—
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yeah.
Oloye Adeyemon: - discipline you to—
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yeah.
Oloye Adeyemon: And then get disciplined again when—
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yes. Not only that, so could the neighbor discipline you.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: If the neighbor dis-disciplined you and send you home, you get a light whipping. If they neighbor disciplined you and walked you home, you’re in for a killing. Because now they know that this was real serious stuff now ’cause the neighbor had to bring you home.
Oloye Adeyemon: They were [crosstalk 19:44] comin’ up.
Willie Shepperson: There was no switch, man. You get—I remember my father cuttin’—breakin’ a limb off the tree—
Oloye Adeyemon: [Laughter]
Willie Shepperson: - and puttin’ it in his back of his belt. And you see this thing—you know how them Indian fellas are, the headdress?
Oloye Adeyemon: [Laughter]
Willie Shepperson: That’s how big that thing was stickin’ up behind his head. You got a killing. Yeah. That was-that was the era we grew up in.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. So, you know, that-that-that-that sense of community—’cause these teachers not only felt that way, but they lived in the community—
Willie Shepperson: Yeah.
Oloye Adeyemon: - and they went to the same churches. They might’ve been a relative for that matter.
Willie Shepperson: Could’ve been. Right.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, would you agree that that’s one of the biggest things the children today miss when they go to school?
Willie Shepperson: I think one of the—yes, that, but also, one of the biggest things that children today miss, including the black-black children, is the ability to-to identify with the instructor. When I was going to school in both elementary school and high school, if you had a problem, you could go to the teacher and talk to them. And they would try and help you. The little kid, six-year-old kid, if they came to school and just say they had an accident on themselves, the teacher would clean ’em up or have some of the oldest kids in the school to take ’em out to the park and clean ’em up. Not happenin’ now. If his little nose was dirty, she would bring tissue or take out her handkerchief and clean his nose. You’re not gonna find any white teacher in Prince Edward County pullin’ out her handkerchief and blowing some black kid’s nose on it. You gotta be kidding. It ain’t gonna happen. But those were the little intimate things that took place that caused us to-to feel like we were part of a family. That doesn’t exist now.
Oloye Adeyemon: On the other side—and would you agree this might even apply to some black teachers, especially ones from coming—that are teaching in a community that’s not their own community where the children are black—that what you were saying about the child identifying with the teacher, that it’s equally important the teacher identify with the child and that the teacher feel that what they’re doing is appreciated by the parents and the child is cooperative. I guess what I’m saying is that with teachers, oftentimes, using it as a stepping stone, not really being dedicated to teaching. And also, not being sensitive to the culture and to the, you know, the-the things that are goin’ on with the child.
Do you think that sometimes they—and not to say it doesn’t happen intentionally, but that sometimes they won’t dismiss or-or-or-or-or label a child incorrectly because that child may come from a household where there’s a great deal of discipline, and they speak when they’re spoken to. And they may be in an integrated class where children are raising their hands, “Oh, oh, I know the answer,” and they never do that, and so it’s assumed that they’re slow. In fact, they-they understand quite well what the teacher is—
Willie Shepperson: Well, I choose to explain it another way. We’re talking Prince Edward now. I’m not talkin’ on a national level ’cause I’m talking Prince Edward. In Prince Edward County, the problem you have in that era is that the administrative staff, the top of the food chain, so to speak, they have decided where everybody’s supposed to fit in, what niche. In Prince Edward County today, you have, what they call, special education classes. I find that ironic that you have 83 kids in that class and all, except four, are black males. [Unintelligible 23:27].
You have what’s called, um, gifted children. I find it ironic that of all those kids—and there are almost 100-and-some kids in that gifted section—only two of them are black. Most of them are white children who are the daughters and sons of the professors of Longwood College and Hampden-Sydney College—and the college—and the teachers are Prince Edward County. That is the kind of system that you’re dealing with now. And what you have is a great deal of apathy on the part of the families of these children because they don’t protest it. And the reason why they don’t protest-protest it is the same reason why that they had all this fear 50 years ago. That is, basically, they wait—they work for the leadership of this community who promotes these ideas and these things. And they’re not gonna jeopardize their job. There’s still a great deal of go along to get along.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: There’s still a great deal of it.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, this is the context in which the students took the actions they did—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - at the high school.
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: How long had the students been planning and discussing what they were going to do before they did it?
Willie Shepperson: They didn’t. They didn’t. They didn’t. There was no plan. There was no discussion. On the day that it took place, that’s when the discussion—Barbara is, I understand—I wasn’t there with her. But as I understand it, Barbara got really ticked off ’cause, one day, she forgot her lunch. She had to go back home to get her lunch. By the time she came back, the bus had passed her by. She had turned—was standin’ on the side of the road. The bus carrying the white kids passed right on by her and went up—went right passed the school she had to go. When she finally got to school, this vision that she had had about—and this dream and this prayer that she had about a-a new school with new books, it just came to fruition.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: Now, one would say, “Oh, man, that was somethin’ that just happened more than once.” But you see, there’s-there’s a-a-a whole litany of things that caused something to happen.
Oloye Adeyemon: True.
Willie Shepperson: One of those things, in 1951, that took place that I suppose nobody tells you about is that—remember those regular buses I was tellin’ you about?
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: At a place called Elam Crossing in Prospect, Virginia, ridin’ one of those old raggedy buses—
Oloye Adeyemon: In Prince Edward County?
Willie Shepperson: Prince Edward County. Ridin’ one of those old raggedy buses, crossin’ the railroad track, he broke down on the railroad track. The train came by and hit that bus. Killed five of our students on that raggedy bus. That was in 1951. There were a number of things that took place leading up to the fact that these children said, “Enough is enough.”
[Crosstalk]
Oloye Adeyemon: I’m sorry.
Willie Shepperson: Go ahead.
Oloye Adeyemon: No. I was just gonna ask you if you could mention a few others of-of those th—types of things that might not be generally known.
Willie Shepperson: Oh, you had things where the—it was proper for, um—especially among the boys. They were called [unintelligible 26:24]. When the young guys would come in as freshmen students, for the other students to jump on and beat ’em. And the teachers condoned this. That was another thing that-that was frustrating [crosstalk 26:33].
Oloye Adeyemon: At the high school.
Willie Shepperson: At the high school level, yes. It was-it was also frustrating that we had a movie on personal hygiene that they showed three-four times a year. It was about syphilis. And all the actors and actresses in that movie was black except one that was a doctor. And they showed this scene where the syphilis baby was being buried in the grave, you know, with the black undertaker, and everybody’s singing these sad songs. And that movie was shown not only at our black school but over at the white school. Now, what’d they tell the white kids? “Those black boys over there got syphilis. You better leave ’em alone.” And I decided not to watch it anymore, and I refused to watch it. I got sent home and couldn’t come back to school.
Oloye Adeyemon: One of those times you went home.
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yeah. Couldn’t back—come back to school until my mother came back with me. She came back and explained a few facts of life to the principal. I never had to watch it again, but they still showed it. All of these things, very frustrating to come to school and you had to have an umbrella over your head when it rained in order to do your test because the ink from your paper would run because of the rain water falling down through one of those tar paper shacks.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. And-and it wasn’t that certain students—because of the older crowd that had to go there. Because certain classes were there, every student that was at the high school—
Willie Shepperson: They got down with another h—they got their shot in one time or another. Everybody got their shot in in one those tar paper shacks.
Oloye Adeyemon: And the school, I understand, was-was, uh, not, uh, to built to a-to accommodate even 200 students. They had almost 500. Is that—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - accurate? So, there were a lot of things, but would it also be safe to say that segregation, in general, was a part of the issue not just what was goin’ on in school but just the whole idea of the treatment was also an underlying cause of—
Willie Shepperson: Segregation as a-as a definition for what was taking place to us did not exist, as a definition. Do you follow what I’m sayin’?
Oloye Adeyemon: At that time.
Willie Shepperson: At that time, it did not exist.
Oloye Adeyemon: No, I’m not saying as a definition. But I’m just saying the conditions that—
Willie Shepperson: Yes, yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - the blacks were living and had been living. Uh, is it safe to say that the conditions that contributed to what happened were conditions that went beyond just schools?
Willie Shepperson: Oh, yes, yes. By all means, yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: And would you say it—’cause you had said—you talked about the teachers needing to protect their job, but would you say that, uh, the teachers, whether they supported what the students did or not, were aware of why the students were doing it?
Willie Shepperson: It’s a possibility that some of them were aware. I don’t think most of them were aware. They can—if they were aware, very few of them. Um, I am sure that, in the past 50 years, there’s been some changes made in the—in how the teachers at that time would say that they reacted to it. But most of ’em were scared to death.
Oloye Adeyemon: Scared. But even when you’re scared, in your heart, you may know that this is not right, what’s-what’s bein’ done to me or to my people. It’s not right.
Willie Shepperson: Well, I-I can-I can’t sit here and make excuses for them. When you talk to them, let them make their excuses for themselves. If I’m scared—if you fall in the river and I’m afraid, I can still reach out my hand to you and say, “Grab on.” I’m scared to death, but I can still do that. They didn’t reach out their hand and say, “Grab on.” They were raising hell worrying about their jobs.
Oloye Adeyemon: I understand. I understand.
Willie Shepperson: Okay. So, I don’t have any forgiveness in my heart, if that’s what you’re talkin’ about—
Oloye Adeyemon: No, no.
Willie Shepperson: - or to justify what they did. No, I don’t.
Oloye Adeyemon: No. I just wondered if-if this was something that, as a whole, uh, the community, uh, identified as a problem. It’s just that certain people were willing to take a stand and certain might not have been.
Willie Shepperson: In Prince Edward County, as I am sure in the other areas that you might go in, black folk, back at that time, did nothing as a whole except come to church as a whole.
Oloye Adeyemon: Okay.
Willie Shepperson: Very little else was ever done as a whole. It was done individually for self-preservation. If I can go to Mr. Charlie and get the word to him first about what’s goin’ on, I’ll get the extra piece of fat back. Okay. So, then, we didn’t do anything as a whole other than to go to church. With this action that was taken by the children of Prince Edward County, that was the first time that the parents were forced—noticed what I’m telling you—forced to do something as a whole.
Oloye Adeyemon: I understand. I understand. So, when this occurred, the—I understand that one of the things that happened was that principals gotten out of the building, gotten away from the building. They didn’t walk out. Or—
Willie Shepperson: I understand that to be true also.
Oloye Adeyemon: Right. And that they then—someone took a note to the office saying that the bell should be rung for [unintelligible 31:28].
Willie Shepperson: I understand that to be a fact, but I don’t know that because I wasn’t a party to that.
Oloye Adeyemon: I understand. So, when y—what grade were you in when this—
Willie Shepperson: Eighth grade.
Oloye Adeyemon: Okay. And so, you ended up in the auditorium.
Willie Shepperson: Ended up in the auditorium.
Oloye Adeyemon: When you were on your way to the auditorium, you were not aware of what was gonna happen when you—
Willie Shepperson: No.
Oloye Adeyemon: - walked in. What-what happened after that? What happened when the children assembled in the auditorium?
Willie Shepperson: We were told by Barbara of all the things that we were tired of and how we were being mistreated and how we needed a new school and how we needed new books and how they were going downtown and confront to the school board about getting these new books and the new school. We were also instructed that everybody who lived out in the county and who had to ride the buses not to leave the schoolground, those who lived out in the county, like me. If you live in the county, don’t leave the schoolground because the bus may leave you.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: But those who lived in town who walked to school, they all went downtown to confront the school board because they were walking home anyway.
Oloye Adeyemon: Now, you lived in the county.
Willie Shepperson: I lived in the county.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, you re-you remained at the school.
Willie Shepperson: No, I did not.
Oloye Adeyemon: You went—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: Even though you knew that you were takin’ a chance that you—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - might not get the ride. So, you felt pretty strongly about—
Willie Shepperson: No, I didn’t feel pretty strongly. What I felt was, to me, I was part of the gang. And here was a gang goin’ down there to do somethin’, and I wanted to be in on it. Now, that may sound kinda crazy to you.
Oloye Adeyemon: No, not at all.
Willie Shepperson: But I didn’t go down there because I thought I was being a martyr or because I was gonna change, uh, some segregation laws, Brown v. Board of Education. But a lot of my friends were going downtown.
Oloye Adeyemon: And you were gonna be with them.
Willie Shepperson: I was gonna be with my friends going downtown.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm. When you were doing this, what was the reaction or actions of teachers?
Willie Shepperson: Well, one in particular that you’re gonna interview, his name is Thomas Mayfield. You’re gonna interview him. He was one of the few teachers that had a telephone in his room. When we started to march downtown, old Tom got on the phone and called the folks and told ’em we were coming. Ask him about it. See if he’ll tell you the truth.
Oloye Adeyemon: What about other teachers?
Willie Shepperson: Most of the teachers, they sorta milled around, didn’t say very much, looked shocked.
Oloye Adeyemon: They didn’t attempt to prevent you from—
Willie Shepperson: No, they didn’t get to prevent us. No, no.
Oloye Adeyemon: Were—was—what—were the—was the march orderly? Or, you know, wh-wh-what was goin’—were you singing? Were you—
Willie Shepperson: No, we weren’t singing. Just walking downtown.
Oloye Adeyemon: And was the traffic blocked?
Willie Shepperson: The traffic wasn’t blocked, no.
Oloye Adeyemon: I have some experience with protests of various kinds. I’ve been involved in some. But in all the years, I’ve never heard or experienced anything where children did that type of thing spontaneously and were able to carry themselves in that manner. Wh—can you—
Willie Shepperson: They were doing a grownup thing. They were doing a grownup thing. They were going to see the school board. That’s where they were goin’, going to see the school board. They weren’t going downtown to march. They weren’t going downtown for a sit-in. They weren’t going downtown to-to, uh, block traffic. They were going, very businesslike, to see the school board. That was their sole purpose, to go see the school board.
Oloye Adeyemon: Is that—did it ever strike you as incredible?
Willie Shepperson: No. It strike—struck me as being normal.
Oloye Adeyemon: Normal?
Willie Shepperson: Yeah, normal.
Oloye Adeyemon: But that doesn’t happen every day.
Willie Shepperson: Well, no, it doesn’t happen every day, but you don’t meet students like the students of Robert R. Moton High School every day.
Oloye Adeyemon: Obviously not.
Willie Shepperson: Yeah.
Oloye Adeyemon: Obviously not.
Willie Shepperson: It struck me as being normal.
Oloye Adeyemon: Obviously not. So, when you went downtown, uh, there were certain students that had been designated to be the spokespeople-spokespeople for the [crosstalk 35:23].
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: And those students attempted to present their demands to—
Willie Shepperson: No. No, that’s not what happened. You see, they were certain folks who were selected as a spokesperson. Once you got downtown, the commonwealth attorney and others grabbed everybody they could. Instead of having them going to meet the s-the school board, they crowd ’em into this room—one room first. And then they started dividing them up, each taking so many students into another room and start questioning them about what they name was, who their parents were, and who they worked for.
Oloye Adeyemon: You were questioned in that way?
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: How many students were there?
Willie Shepperson: Forty. Forty-five, maybe. I don't know. There was a hell of a lot. It wasn’t—let’s put it this way, it wasn’t half of the school [crosstalk 36:06].
Oloye Adeyemon: That ended up downtown.
Willie Shepperson: That—no, it wasn’t. No.
Oloye Adeyemon: What happened to—
Willie Shepperson: And most of them were kids who lived in the town.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: They were not stud-students from the rural areas. They were students who lived in town.
Oloye Adeyemon: Now, after—well, you did not get an audience. They didn’t deal with your demands. There were meetings here, at First Baptist—
Willie Shepperson: Mm-hmm.
Oloye Adeyemon: - that occurred. And also, there was a strike. Is that correct, that students stayed outta school for some time?
Willie Shepperson: Yeah, for 10 days.
Oloye Adeyemon: Ten days. The children that were in the county, did they come into town, and did they attend these meetings during that 10-day period?
Willie Shepperson: So, their parents would let—if their parents would let them, yeah, some. I don't know.
Oloye Adeyemon: Were your-were your parents involved in—
Willie Shepperson: Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: - these meetings? So, you had a chance to come?
Willie Shepperson: To some of them, yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: What were those meetings like, and what was discussed? What was planned? What was—
Willie Shepperson: There was—those meetings were very tense. I think, probably, the two of the most relaxed people in those meetings—and both ’em, unfortunately, are dead—was Reverend L. Francis Griffin and a gentleman by the name of Mr. Scott from up in Prospect. He’s—he was 107 years old when he died. When Mr. Scott came, Mr. Scott brought Prospect because most of Prospect was Scott’s.
Oloye Adeyemon: [Laughter]
Willie Shepperson: And he had an enormous family.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: He could—just with his family alone, he could fill this room.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm.
Willie Shepperson: And he brought ’em when he came. And I think those were probably two of the most calm—two of the calmest people in this building because, somehow, they just weren’t afraid. They were doing what they had to do. But most of the families from the rural areas, 90 percent of them were sharecroppers working on the white man’s farm. Now, when you work on the white man’s farm and you go against the white man’s wishes, what does he do? He puts your ass off the farm. You got nowhere to go. So, they came seekin’ some answers as to how they could participate in the process and still maintain their own on the man’s farm. That was their reason for being here.
Oloye Adeyemon: So, did Barbara Johns play any role once the adults got involved? Did she continue—
Willie Shepperson: Barbara Johns played the most important role when the adults got involved, the most important. Because it was Barbara who hassled, uh, Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill to get Prince Edward County included in the Brown v. Board of Education, uh, suit.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: Barbara did that, constantly hassling them. If you talk to Oliver Hill, he’ll tell you that. Barbara was ahead of her time, way ahead of her time. It’s a shame that she—her name was not the one mentioned on—in the case against Prince Edward County. Uh.
Oloye Adeyemon: Yeah, ’cause she was not a petitioner, was she?
Willie Shepperson: No. She was—and there’s a reason why she wasn’t a petitioner. And the reason why she wasn’t a petitioner was because, um, there was an agreement made among the students that no one would ever tell who the student leader was.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: I will not call the person’s name who told who the student leader was, but somebody told, and I know who told. That person is also dead, so they’re not here to defend themselves, so I won’t say it. But that person went to the white people and told who the student leader was. Shortly thereafter, the Ku Klux Klan burned the cross in her family’s yard as a signal to her. They—her-her family became afraid for her. They sent her to—outta town to Montgomery, Alabama to live with her Uncle Vernon Johns who was a Martin Luther King mentor. I don’t-I don’t know if you know that.
Oloye Adeyemon: He was from this county, right?
Willie Shepperson: He—yes, right up the road here. He—there’s a mark on the highway tellin’ ya his birth rights.
Oloye Adeyemon: Did he have any impact on Barbara Johns when she was growing up?
Willie Shepperson: I couldn’t tell you that. I couldn’t tell you that. In reality, Barbara, to me, was a very pretty young lady. Very quiet, very withdrawn. And if you—in my dealings, the few times I dealt with Barbara was, one, the day she came out the school building, and she was telling us to go into the auditorium. That’s one of the times I’ve talked to Barbara. The other time that I’ve talked to Barbara was when Barbara was upstairs in this building right here, and she talked to the parents and to the students in this building up here. And on the way out, I spoke to her. Those were the only two times I ever talked to Barbara in my life.
So, I couldn’t tell you a great deal about what Barbara was like and what she did and what didn’t do ’cause I don't know. And to sit here and do that, I’d be telling you a lie or making up something. I don’t intend to do that. But she was ahead of her time. She really was. And—anyway, she was sent outta town. And when S-Spotswood Robinson and Oliver Hill and another guy, who was the president of the NAACP at that time, named Lester Banks out of Richmond, Virginia—he’s dead.
Oloye Adeyemon: That was—he was the Virginian—
Willie Shepperson: Representative of NAACP. He’s dead now, Lester Banks. When they came here looking for someone to act as a petitioner, they went through the alphabet.
Oloye Adeyemon: Mm-hmm.
Willie Shepperson: And because of the fear and the concern, when they got to the Ds—they’ve gone through the As, the Bs, and the Cs. They got to the Ds, D-A, Davis. And Dorothy Davis’s grandmother convinced her mother to-to allow-allow her to be the petitioner. And that became Dorothy Davis, et al. v. Prince Edward County Board Supervisor. That’s how that happened. Because Barbara was sent outta town to protect her from the Ku Klux Klan.
Oloye Adeyemon: How many petitioners were there, total?
Willie Shepperson: Good Lord. Which—there were two cases now. One was-was Davis v.—
Oloye Adeyemon: That-that one, Davis v. Prince Edward.
[Pause 41:46 - 41:52]
Willie Shepperson: Thirty-Thirty-five, I would imagine.
Oloye Adeyemon: But—
Willie Shepperson: The second one was the most, the one with Griffin v.—
Oloye Adeyemon: Right.
Willie Shepperson: Yeah.
Oloye Adeyemon: So—and this first one would’ve occurred soon after the walkout.
Willie Shepperson: Yes, the year after.
Oloye Adeyemon: Right. Now, the difference when the NAACP got involved was that the em-em-emphasis was placed on integrating the schools.
Willie Shepperson: That’s the only way that they would take case—
Oloye Adeyemon: That’s the only way.
Willie Shepperson: - as I understand it. Yes.
Oloye Adeyemon: I want to, um, break here, uh, before we go on. I wanna talk about the court case and, you know, Reverend Griffin’s role in that one. And then if you can help us to-to-to understand the connections from that first case and the second case.
Willie Shepperson: Mm-hmm.
Oloye Adeyemon: Uh, but in closing, uh, is there anything else that you think would help us to understand the walkout and the immediate aftermath of it.
Willie Shepperson: The immediate aftermath of the walkout was one of economic pressure. This town shut its doors and turned its back on the black community. Most of the mo—most of the money and all of the power was vested in the white community here. When they started firing people from their jobs, when, uh, Miss Mary [Unintelligible 43:13]—they blackballed her. She couldn’t teach nowhere in the State of Virginia. Uh, a lot of the other teachers, because of the—of, um, what happened, they were nervous about whether or not their contracts were-were gonna be renewed. They—some of them were renewed to the extent that when the school’s closin’, they had no jobs. They had to go elsewhere.
Uh, there were people who worked in the pulp woods cutting logs in the sawmills. They found out who their children, and their children went to, uh, Robert R. Moton High School. The sawmill job was no longer theirs. Uh, it’s a lot of them who worked sharecropping, and they were in the—just in the planting season when all this happened. It was the planting season for the tobacco. And you had what was known as, uh, hotbeds at that time. See, ’cause I grew up in the hotbeds. You got out in the woods, and you cut down the tree. You break back the leaves. And this was new ground here that nothing had ever been planted on before. And this is where you would plant your seedlings to grow your tobacco that you p-pulled the plant up and take it outta the field and put it in a row.
Well, they had started their hotbeds. But when this happened, the white folks went out there and destroyed the hotbeds so they wouldn’t have any crops to plant. Uh, those who cut the pulpwood, you had to go and find a benevolent white man in order to sell your pulpwood because the other white guy had the, uh—had control over the franchise on the railroad cars that came in that the pulp was loaded on. And your cord of wood was never—is equal to the white man’s cord. It was—now, I knew what a cord of wood was because I was in high school, and I knew how to measure. And I’d tell my father, “He’s cheatin’ you. You have more than two cords of wood on this truck.” He would say to me, “Shut up. Leave it alone. Some is better than none.” Go along to get along.
But anyway, these were the kind of economic pressures that they put on you. And then you had the pressure against the known leadership, and that known leadership in this area was Reverend L. Francis Griffin. He had no credit whatsoever in this town. They took away his credit. Um, this church who w—who housed the black bourgeois of Prince Edward County, if there was such a thing as the black bourgeois—I say that with tongue and cheek—but they were the ones who had the professional jobs. They were the teachers and the undertakers and the—whatever. They turned against the man. Why? Because the pressure from the white people in their jobs made them believe that if we just—if Reverend Griffin would just stop, all this stuff would go away. And he refused to stop.
Reverend Griffin, for a long—I came back here in the latter part of the ‘60s, early part of the ‘70s. And I came back here under the pretense of organizing unions. I had this unlimited expense account. Whatever monies I requisitioned, [snaps fingers] within 24 hours, it was here.
Oloye Adeyemon: Let me, uh—wh—the tape is gonna cut off, and I do wanna talk in the next portion of the tape about, uh, Reverend—
Willie Shepperson: Okay.
Oloye Adeyemon: - Griffin’s role. I appreciate you taking this time. And, you know, this has been, um, very, very valuable in terms of your insights and in—you know, clearing up some points—
Willie Shepperson: Okay.
Oloye Adeyemon: - for the record. Thank you. Okay. I’m gonna start when we get together tomorrow.
Description
Brown versus Board oral history collection. Prince Edward County, Virginia. School segregation, desegregation interviews. Interviewee, Mr. William Shepperson. Interviewer, Oloye Adeyemon for the National Park Service. Interview conducted at First Baptist Church in Farmville, Virginia on September 5, 2001.
Credit
NPS
Date Created
09/05/2001
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