Oral history interview with Maggie W. Ray, November 9, 2000
Subtitle: interview K-0825, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Grundy, Pamela, interviewer; Southern Oral History Program; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Documenting the American South (Project); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library
Edition: Electronic ed.
Publisher: University Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
Published: 2007
Place of publication: [Chapel Hill, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Interviews; Women teachers; Women civil rights workers; School integration; Race relations; Secondary Education
Other titles: Interview K-0825, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Maggie W. Ray, November 9, 2000; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Maggie Ray graduated from high school in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1960, as desegregation in schools was beginning. After years in the northeast and traveling abroad, she returned to Charlotte, eventually sending her children to integrated schools and taking a teaching position at West Charlotte. In this interview, she describes the legacies of integration at West Charlotte, which, while not fully realized, manifest themselves in easy friendships between black and white students and comfort in integrated settings. She sees backsliding, too, however, and worries that as Charlotte's African American community struggles, desegregation is not enough to help it. Her solution is the next step in her journey from indifferent southerner to civil rights activist to parent and teacher: she believes that maintaining what she describes as equity, or full equality, is more important than maintaining desegregation. This interview offers a useful look at a relatively successful effort at integration and one observer's responses to its benefits and costs.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 2, 2008).

Interview participants: Maggie W. Ray, interviewee; Pamela Grundy, interviewer.

Duration: 01:09:25.

This electronic edition is part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digital library, Documenting the American South.  It is a part of the collection Oral histories of the American South.

Text encoded by Jennifer Joyner.  Sound recordings digitized by Aaron Smithers.

Text (HTML and XML/TEI source file) and audio (MP3); 2 files: ca. 112 kilobytes, 127 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series K, Southern communities, interview K-0825, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Transcribed by Susan Estep. Original transcript: 23 p.

Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this interview.

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

System requirements:  Web browser with Javascript enabled and multimedia player.