Blogging About My Grandmother

My grandmother was born in 1921, the fourth oldest of ten, and the third oldest of eight children that lived. She went to grade school amongst the Lutherans and spent her upper grades under the tutelage of Fess McDavid, the man who would be her brother in law. My grandmother had a knack for poetry and reciting, for writing, conducting, and giving plays, a trait which she has kept to this day. My grandmother is a natural poet, a pure talent. As a high school girl, the teachers at the school she attended all commissioned her to put on their annual plays. She drew up the cast, rehearsed the parts, and put on the plays. She also gave orations. She still has them written in her notebooks along with poems and plays that she’s written. Fess McDavid’s first wife, Mrs. Mary Foster McDavid, once told my grandmother, “ Why Thelma, if Mary MacLoed Bethune had been here to hear you give that speech, she would have taken you back with her this instant.”

After high school, my grandmother received a scholarship to Alabama A&M. She and her cousin Genice, who were the closest together, both received scholarships and went to A&M together, sharing room and board. While Cousin Genice was discovering a husband, my grandmother got sick, loosing her voice and developing an ailment in her throat that sent her back home. Papa told her, when she arrived back home, that if she could wait a couple of months, he would take her to Tuskegee for an operation from the doctors who had a clinic there. As it turns, she had a growth in her throat and my grandmother says, without anesthesia and with her wide awake, they cut the growth out, which fell directly into her lap. She recovered and the next semester enrolled at Alabama State where she took her degree in English Education. She began teaching in Autauga County, her home county, under the tutelage and principalship of her uncle, Fess(Macaulay) Goodson, my great-grandmother’s brother. She says that he told her that if she would teach his geography courses, he would teach math, because he hated geography.

At that time, teaching in Autauga County, were Fess Goodson, Fess McDavid, and Aunt Earnestine, all three of whom were principals, my Cousin Maderia( who was also a principal for a time), and Aunt Bertie. The white superintendents in the county never liked and always resented Fess McDavid, who was over the high school, because he always did things his way and did them better than they did. He had typewriters for his students when they couldn’t even think about them. He also brought professors and such from Tuskegee and Alabama State to teach and give lessons not only to his students, but to the community as well. There was also the incident where a white girl from a well-to-do family got pregnant with a black baby and was therefore taken out of school. Her family wanting her to continue her education, it was decided that they would send her to Fess, to finish high school at the Black school. Fess told them if she wasn’t good enough for their school she wasn’t good enough for his and she never did go anywhere. That was a major point of contention. All of this to pointed to the fact that they hated Fess McDavid, but never could touch him. So, when he died in 1963, they set about getting their revenge.

My grandmother says that a week after Fess’ funeral, the superintendent showed up at Aunt Bertie’s house( she and Fess had lived in the Principal’s home that was provided by Autaugaville High school, and told her that she could stay in the house, because the new principal would live elsewhere, but to “get her sister to stay with her.” Now, it was known throughout Autauga County that Hodges, the superintendent at that time, liked Black women, and slept with plenty of the Black teachers, many of them as a condition of hire. My grandmother said that Aunt Bertie started packing that night. A few weeks later, Hodges informed Aunt Bertie that her services were no longer needed in Autauga County. My grandmother was fired at the end of the year, and Aunt Earnestine was eventually taken down from her principalship and placed back in the classroom. Not long after that, Aunt Bertie made her way to Chicago. My grandmother went to Mobile, then New York (which she said she hated), and then followed to Chicago. She began teaching there in ’65 and taught there until she retired in 1981. She was one of the first teachers to integrate the Northside of Chicago.