Freda Andrews

Freda Andrews (FA): It wasn’t Durham Public Schools, it was Durham City Schools. I had my first teaching job at Fayetteville Street School in Durham. The ironic thing is, about that, as a Black teacher, I had to learn the culture of my own people because of the difference. When I was in Person County all they sang was, “She’ll be Coming around the Mountain.” But when I came to Durham, the kids were singing, “Thriller.” I said, “How am I going to adjust?” I was too [white] to be Black. That was my scary moment. I couldn’t control… I couldn’t manage my classroom.

So, I went home telling my daughter my saga about “I don’t know how to relate to these children.” Because they were behavior-wise like night and day. Even the music, everything about them was different. I asked her what should I do? She said, “Well Mom, you got to realize what your setting is. You gotta go in there and let them know who the teacher is, first of all.” They used to have a saying for teachers, “You can’t smile until the end of the year.” Things were really difficult for me. But then I kept saying “I don’t know whether I’m too…I can’t relate to them. I can’t get their attention. I can’t get them to do what I want them to do.”

So, she said, “We always believe in prayer.” That’s a strong glue to our family. So, after I prayed about how to handle the situation, I was determined that I was going to go back in there and this was going to be our class. Not their class, not my class but together we were going to work together in this situation. Once I did that, once I started talking about more of the things they enjoyed doing, I could understand the background better. My family was, basically, we grew up thinking we were kinda, I guess you say, middle class and up, so it was hard to identify with the inner-city children because I was never from the inner city. As an educator, oh my goodness, I am so far out of the range of these babies, but I made it because they eventually knew that I cared. That was the difference. Because once they realized and when I introduced my poems to them, they had no choice but to get [in line]. That’s how I worked that out.

Freda Andrews: Everything was like, all the children wanted to do is to grow up and be farmers. They had no aspiration other than that. Drive a big tractor. They could describe that tractor and tell you what it was going to be like because they worked on the farm. That was all they knew. I felt so bad for the impoverished little Black children. And when I asked them “Did they want to be [the] owner?,” they just didn’t know, they had no one. With this poem, “I want to be somebody,” Miss Andrews instilled that in them: “You DO want to be somebody. You don’t have to be somebody else to be who you are.”

I don’t know how I got off on all of that, but it was my experience with that Civil Rights Movement that I kept the dream alive through poetry. In that classroom I couldn’t really say all the things because of political reasons, what it was like, but my children knew how strongly I felt about them being treated fairly, about them having the same rights as others. I didn’t have that privilege. I said when I grew up you went your way, other races went their way. Even though we integrated, I remember when Lincoln High merged with Chapel Hill High. There were about eight of them who chose to go there. I did not choose to go there. I thought we had great teachers where I was. My community was fine with me, but because of the prestige some people thought it would give them, they chose to go there but they never integrated. Even today, if you were to go and watch them on the campus, the Blacks are still huddled together, and the whites are still going, it’s not like we are integrated, in a lot of places.

Freda Andrews: I realized that for my children to feel what I felt, I had a couple of poems that I remember the most. I would have them learn and recite.
Poems like “Harriet Tubman”.
Harriet Tubman
Didn’t take no stuff
And wasn’t afraid of anything either.
Didn’t come into in this world to be no slave
And wasn’t going to stay one either.
Farewell, she sang to her friends.
She was mighty sad to leave them.
She ran away that dark hot night,
Ran looking for her freedom.
When I would do this poem to my students, they loved it. That is how I taught history to my children. It used to be Black history but it’s history. They would learn these poems. In fact, in my church I served as a Sunday School teacher. I would utilize them to instill proudness in our children. When we grew up, you have got to realize, things weren’t the same as they are now. Black folk didn’t feel like they were worthy of anything or worthy to have the same advantages as others.

So I had them to learn “Hey Black Child”
Hey Black Child
Do you know who you are, do you know who you really are?
Do you know you can be what you want to be, if you try to be what you can be.
Hey Black child.
Do you know where you are going, where you are really going?
Do you know you can learn what you want to learn, if you try to learn what you can learn.
Hey Black child.
Do you know you are strong, I mean really strong?
Do you know you can do what you want to do, if you try to do what you can do?
Hey Black child, be what you can be, learn what you must learn, and do what you can do.
And tomorrow your nation will be what you want it to be.

This was our civil rights movement. Oh, I have so many [poems]. They knew Mrs. Andrews was the poetry lady. They had to learn every one of these. That’s the thing about it. I have children coming to me today saying Ms. Andrews, “Do you remember when you taught me that poem.” I say “I sure do. You better never forget it!”

The other one I used to love, because I wanted to make sure my children were able to feel like they were somebody. The music like James Brown [was important.] Hey and I’m Black and I’m proud [was his message.] We needed to know those things, they needed to be instilled in our children. We would go to museums. They would display us as ugly dolls. Creatures that always had the slavery mentality. They didn’t show the beauty of us. I wanted the children that I touched to have those [positive] moments thinking “Hey I don’t have to look like somebody else. I can be who I am and still be great.”

This next one was by a little fellow. He was only 11 years [old] when he wrote this poem. His name was Curtsy Thompson. I never met him, of course. He was from Gary, Indiana. His poem was “I Want to be Somebody.” My children would recite this.
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
So, if I can’t be the movie star, then I’ll write the script.
(They needed to know you don’t have to be out there, they can do other things.)
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
So, if I can’t be the President, then I’ll be his wife.
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
So, if I can’t live in the big house on the hill, then I will be the architect.
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
So, if I can’t be the shoemaker, then I’ll wear his best shoes.
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
So, if I can’t sing the song, then I’ll write the lyrics.
I want to be somebody, somebody real bad.
I would have the children add their own stanzas--their own expression of what it means to be somebody.

This is how through the movement…at one point I got in a little bit of trouble. I don’t know if I should say that or not. I was one of those militant teachers. I brought a big afro. I was told I looked like Angela Davis. In fact, if you saw a picture of her you might say, “yes she did.” I recall my principal wasn’t used to that. I had gone to an integrated school. I was hired in Person County for 11 years. The first time I went to interview there at the school I had my hair pulled back. After I got the job, I came there with a big afro. The principal didn’t know who I was. I often teased him about that afterwards. I was in a place called Helena in Timberlake, North Carolina. In those days they didn’t have a movie theater.

Freda Andrews (FA): Folk like me, they don’t have to pay us full salary. They hire us to come in and do remediation for a grade level to help them because many of the students don’t do well on the End of Grade tests. We are like a faux tutor in the public schools. We remediate them. I work four days a week, part-time. My job is to help them with the skills that they are weak in. That’s pretty much all it is. Sounds like a fancy thing but that’s all we do. Work with a small group in math and reading. Those are the two areas.

Interviewer: Do you ever get frustrated or feel things toward like seeing things being perpetuated or never ending?

FA: There is such a break down in education and the importance of it in the inner city. Many of our parents of the students I work with are so young that they don’t tend to value education like my parents did. The home values are broken down. We’ve got children raising children. We come from an impoverished area. Durham is supposed to be a ‘pretty good neighborhood’ but we still have children that are homeless. I work with some of those children, they live in hotels. Of course, studying is not their priority, food is, getting to school. When they come to school late every day, there’s not much we can do except reach out and make a difference with these children.

When they go home, homework? Who does homework? All they want is video games. This is what they have, this is what they do. I found that many of them are struggling. They have not mastered the kindergarten/first grade levels. They are still so weak in the academic areas because there is no one home to reinforce what we do. To encourage them first of all. That’s why I love these poems. They have to encourage them and instill that. I had one student go home and her mother was a teacher where I worked. I was giving this homework assignment and some other things and her mother was complaining that I was giving too much work.

Her daughter said, “Well mom, Ms. Andrews said….” You know what she told her. “We can do all things.” This young lady is now getting her doctorate degree, because [of] the things that I instilled in her. “You can do this. So what if you’ve got more than one assignment.” I didn’t realize at that time that I was even touching her. I was pushing another child. It just happened to fall on her shoulders what I was getting one child to do. Her mom said, “You made a difference.” I said, “I did?” I have so many stories of children when I see them.

Freda Andrews: The schools were, as I said, full of caring teachers and the reason I chose to be a teacher today or an educator was because of some of those teachers then that taught me and instilled in me that you want to be somebody. So, when you want to be somebody, you have to grow up and watch the role models who can inspire you.

I would go home and pretend that I was a teacher. In fact, that was my passion. I would line my baby dolls up and they would sit out there, and they had to listen to me with my ruler in my hand. I would point and I would emulate everything my teacher would say and do in the classroom, all day till time to go to bed. My favorite chore in wanting to be a teacher, now most folks say they want to be able to help others, mine was to grade papers. Who wants to do that? [laughter] I thought that was the nicest thing. I would pretend I was a teacher and I’d grade those papers and put a smiley face on them, or a check mark or 100% on them. That was my dream to grow up.

I loved how many of them dressed and carried themselves. I thought teachers could do no wrong. I was so disappointed when I realized they were people just like me. They were human. They were on a pedestal for me. I went through high school having done well as far as academics were concerned.

Freda Andrews: I grew up walking to Northside Elementary School because that’s the mode of transportation in those days. And I would cross a little branch everyday going to Northside, which was 20 minutes from my house, if that much. The only difficulty with that sometimes, the little water would rise up sometimes across the creek, and I would be afraid to cross it, but my older siblings were always there to help me. I grew up in Northside elementary school. I went to that school from grade first, because there was no kindergarten, through sixth grade. And the same people that I grew up with, that I went to school with, were the same people that I graduated with – when I did, finally, in the class of 1965. We did everything together. We walked to school together, we played together, we were in the same classes together. And the thing I admire most about Northside, and Lincoln High, and the schools that we were in, not that they were segregated, but because of the fact that we had caring teachers. Teachers who wanted us to be successful. And they cared about us. The one thing young people don’t realize is that a lot of times now it's more like coming at you to greet, keep moving on. We don’t get personal with our students, and we don’t have time for one another. But in those days, the teachers or the principal lived right in the same community that we grew up in. In fact, my principal, Mr. McDougal, lived right behind me. So he would watch whenever we had parties at my house. He would watch to see our behavior because he was strict on, you know, being great in the public [inaudible]. So I would always be embarrassed the next day when I would be sitting in a classroom, and he would, “Ahem!” on the intercom, “Oh, I just want to throw shoutout to a party that I observed the other night,” and he would go on to tell the whole school about my party. You know, I was like [] how well-mannered we were and he would just say that, and it was kind of embarrassing to me, but I learned to get over it because I knew he was, you know, a spy [laughs]. But anyway, as I said, Northside [] Elementary School all the way through middle school and through high school. Because you know, we really didn’t have a middle school, it was just you went from grade one through six and then you went on through the other grades. We didn’t call it middle school, we skipped that part.

Freda Andrews is a daughter of the Northside. Notably, her primary and secondary school education transformed her life immeasurably. Her teachers, especially at Northside Elementary, created a classroom setting that directed individual attention to each student. Fostered by these nurturing teachers, she attributes their dynamic pedagogical methods to her desire to pursue a career in education. She reflects on how her involvement in the Freedom Movement shed light on the potency of change. She references poems and freedom songs that echo this fervent desire to evoke change. She recounts how she incorporated these poems into her teaching curriculum. She expresses that this unconventional style of teaching black history countered the negative stereotypes that were ascribed to her African-American students. She shared that one of her ultimate goals was to instill self-worth in her students. Additionally, she discusses her diverse teaching experiences and her challenges catering to the needs of her students. She states that her resilience was inspired by her key figures in her life like Hilliard Caldwell, Floyd McKissick, and her grandfather. She reflects on their instrumental roles in shaping her character and values. In the interview’s conclusion, she circulates back to her insights on education. Her career exposed the flaws of the education system to her, and she shares her ideal vision for classrooms. She notes that a paradigm shift in how individuals approach teaching their students will reform the school system.