Crosby, Kathleen, 1925-2012

Desmarais, Melinda

Charlotte, North Carolina

J. Murrey Atkins Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

2001-10-01

1 audio file (1:44:08) : digital, MP3 + 1 transcript (39 pages : PDF)

sound recording-nonmusical

spoken word

eng

Kathleen Crosby was a 76-year-old woman at the time of interview, which took place in her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina, on March 9, 1925. She was educated at Johnson C. Smith University, Bank Street College of Education, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and was employed as a teacher, school principal, and school administrator.

Kathleen Crosby recounts her forty-year career as an educator in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), as well as her involvement in the civil rights movement in Charlotte. She describes the conditions for African Americans living under Jim Crow in the Charlotte region in the 1930s to the 1950s, with special focus on the way it affected teachers and students. As the original Head Start Program coordinator for CMS, as well as the former director of the regional Head Start training center, Ms. Crosby explains the beginnings of the program in the Charlotte area, the training teachers underwent, and how Head Start classes were racially integrated long before the rest of the school system was. She discusses how she was brought in as the principal of Billingsville Elementary in the early months of busing and how she changed the school's institutional culture, working and bringing together teachers, students, and parents of all backgrounds and turning what had been a troubled school into a successful model of school integration.

MP3 access copy created on ingest from WAV optimized production master file. Interview originally recorded on two minidiscs and digitized using a Digidesign 003 rack.

School principals
School administrators
Teachers

Crosby, Kathleen, 1925-2012

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Billingsville Elementary School (Charlotte, N.C.)
Project Head Start (U.S.)

Early childhood education
School management and organization
African American school principals
Early childhood education--Administration
Racism in education
Segregation in education
School integration
Busing for school integration
Race relations
Civil rights movements
Racism
Threats of violence

North Carolina--Charlotte
North Carolina--Charlotte--Grier Heights

Interviews
Oral histories

1930-2000

Civil rights and desegregation in Charlotte

Living Charlotte : the postwar development of a New South city

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Digitization made possible by funding from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

audio/mpeg

OH-CR0190