Life Is a Story
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Life is a Story
Ernestine Meadows May
Every life is a story and I'm here to say that my non-typical life, as peasant as I entered into it, had a different slant and perspective on living more so than the average person. Generations before me had stories that they could tell that would propel me to the head of the class.
It was a very interesting era, (I call it the era of being.) if you lived, loved, and still experienced the things of my generation during this period of time, you would understand the state of being just a bit more.
It was a time when bigotry needed to be exposed, constitutional laws needed to pertain to blacks as well as all citizens, and education needed to be compulsory for every child.
On the other hand, we witnessed the birth of "rock and roll", poodle skirts, bell bottom pants, petticoats, beehive hairstyles, VW bugs, hippies, and Elvis Presley's debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.
We went from using oil lamps to electric lights, from wood burning heat to butane, from an ice box to a refrigerator, from listening to the radio to watching TV, from letter writing to the rotary phone, from pigtails to ponytails, and from on the farm to uptown. Progress came slowly in the south, change came even slower.
We were poor, and we didn't need any measurement by the USDA poverty guidelines to let us know that. However, we were very rich in so many other areas. Our needs were always met, we were happy, we were a cohesive family, and we had no idea how the rest of the world lived. I don't know if we knew there was a rest of the world. I, at least , thought this was it! When I started school I found out better. That is what an education can do for you. Education is enlightenment, it opens your eyes and your entire being to many possibilities and realities.
In 1966, I became the first black teacher to integrate the all white DeValls Bluff School System. It was a "token" position. As an appeasement for integration, if you will! I was willing to be the patsy, however, desegregation was inevitable.
On my first day's assignment ...a little white boy ran through the hallway yelling to everyone after he had seen me enter the building, "Hey everybody, we've got a Nigger teacher."
Note: (He later became a great little friend.)
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About the Book
Life is a Story
Ernestine Meadows May
Herstory is a memoir of life depicting southern cultures and traditions, growing up in the 60's, educated in light of "defacto" segregation, living under "Jim Crow Laws", and experiencing a non-typical lifestyle full of hopes for the future in a small country town.
Life began for her when a marriage between a father from Homer, LA, and a mother frm Kosciusko, MS, came together in Biscoe, AR, producing the last offspring of seven children and this one was determined to take a different course in life from working in cotton fields and being denied the full advantage of an education. She would begin to dream an impossible dream in spite of all the stirkes against her from birth.
It is her desire that others would be inspired to know that one's past need not determine one's future.
About the Author
Ernestine Meadows May is a retired teacher, facilitator, and school administrator. She has matriculated at several colleges and universities in Arkansas and Indiana. She holds a BS degree in Elementary Education with a minor in English and Library Science, a MS degree in education, certification in the Montessori Philosophy of Education, and an Administrative License in Education from Indiana University.
During her teaching career in Indiana, she participated in a Write Renewal Workshop, where writing across the curriculum was implemented for her fifth grade classes.
She also helped to write the curriculum, Interactive Writing, for kindergarten students for the school district's Jump Start Summer School Program.
Her educational venue led her to further benefit from coursework in African Amerian Studies, with a focus on, "The Harlem Renaissance", and correspondence courses in Children's Literature from Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas.
She has always had a love of learning with a passion for child advocacy. It is her desire to help children fulfill their purpose in life and to become all that they can be. She has learned well from life that, "If someone else can do it, then why can't I?"
Ernestine May has traveled to Africa, China, and many cities in the United States to learn, study, and observe customs and traditions that relate to the rhythms of life.