Barbara Collier
Clip 5—Learning Materials
AH: Eleanor Wonce showed us some of the things that Miss Baldwin used to teach with. She had some flash cards. And I noticed that some of them have white children on them. Did you notice that at the time, or did you think anything about it, like the school books and things like that?
BC: Okay, yeah. All of them had little white kids in it with blond hair and a little dog named Spot. Spot, that was his name, and that was it. They didn’t, we, no, we didn’t have ourselves in any book. She’s right about that. All of them had little white kids on it, running, blond hair, and the dog Spot.
AH: Did you think anything about it then? Or what did you think about it?
BC: No. I didn’t think anything about it because I just didn’t think anything about because I thought, back then, I just thought we were all the same. Because see, I didn’t think, I didn’t see a lot of white people, right? I just didn’t see—we would go downtown to shop on Saturday. That’s when I saw the white people. And that was it. I didn’t see them at church. I didn’t see them at school. That was the only day I saw them, on Saturday when we went downtown to shop. Or when we went to eat. But I didn’t think anything about it back then. And I saw them on TV. That’s about it. But I was never afraid of them.