Click here to see the conference slides w/pictures of Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk
A teacher of teachers passed away recently, my friend Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk. I was honored to know her in the last decade of her life, which in many ways followed the arc of developments in education for African Americans in the South during the 20th century.
Born the daughter of a sharecropping family in Duplin County, NC, Carrie recalled the many lessons from her family and teachers that formed her character. Some of them were as follows: Her father taught her that whatever job she took on, she should work hard and do her best, otherwise it was tantamount to stealing. Her teachers taught her that "your word is your bond."
Carrie loved her school, the seven-teacher Chinquapin Rosenwald School. It had been enlarged twice with aid from the Rosenwald Fund, the local community, and the school board. This school also housed another feature of the Rosenwald Fund's progressive approach: A Rosenwald Fund library, a collection of classic works that was supplied to many schools, both African American and white. Carrie recalled to me that her reward for finishing her classwork was to steal away into the tiny cloakroom-turned-library, and immerse herself in the books.
When Carrie was a junior in high school, her father passed away, and she thought her dream of attending college was gone with him. However her school principal, recognizing her talent, introduced her to the president of Kittrell College, founded in 1886 by the AME Church. Carrie's mother bravely let Carrie go to college, even though it meant less help at home with the farm chores and the younger children. Carrie worked her way through Kittrell before transferring to Elizabeth City State Teacher's College, which had started as one of North Carolina's "normal" (teacher training) colleges for African American students.
Armed with her new college degree and a passion for teaching, Carrie obtained a position in a small segregated school back in her home county of Duplin. However, she soon moved to Pender County after her marriage to Lawrence Harry Newkirk in 1947, and taught in Pender County for the rest of her career, which spanned 40 years.
Carrie taught at the historic C.F. Pope School in Burgaw and at the Halfway Branch School in Watha (likely a Rosenwald School) before being moved to the West Pender School, an 'equalization' school built for African Americans in 1958. She taught some of the first Kindergarten classes in Pender County, first as a summer program, then as a full year when it was added to the curriculum. Her first full year as a Kindergarten teacher she had 40 students and only a chalkboard as a teaching aid!
Although she participated often in professional development and could have sought advancement, Carrie stayed on the front lines of education, an elementary school teacher for her entire career. Due to her excellence and to the fact that she gave unceasingly to her church and to her (integrated) community, Carrie was chosen by the Board of Education in Pender to be one of the first of three teachers to integrate an all white school in 1966.
In many ways, Carrie's career mirrored the historical development of African American education in the South. The daughter of sharecroppers who longed for a new book of her own, which she did not get until 3rd grade, the psychic space that Carrie traveled was much further than the bus ride (her first), which took her from the Rosenwald School where she began her journey to Kittrell College and beyond.
A teacher to the end, Carrie often said to me "children know when you love them." I was privileged to count her as a friend for the last decade of her life, and I am honored that she entrusted me with her stories. Through the generosity of some members of the Rosenwald family who I met at the Tuskegee conference in June 2012, I obtained the equipment necessary to film and edit my last interviews with Carrie. This summer will be dedicated to editing, and I plan to have a documentary of her life finished by late fall.
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Click to Order the film "Under the Kudzu," an award-winning documentary that traces the history of two Rosenwald Schools in
Pender County, NC
