Oral history interview with Loistine Defreece, February 16, 1991
Subtitle: interview M-0034, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)
Contributors: Wells, Goldie F. (Goldie Frinks), 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; African American women school principals; High schools; Administration; Secondary Education; Student-administrator relationships
Other titles: Interview M-0034, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007); Interview with Loistine Defreece, February 16, 1991; Oral histories of the American South.
Description: Loistine Defreece discusses her position as principal of Lumberton High School in Robeson County, NC. She responds to the interviewers' checklist of questions, sharing the details of her leadership style, emphasizing her commitment to curriculum development, and describing her efforts to forge relationships with students in order to make them better citizens. Defreece started teaching in integrated schools in the 1960s, so she does not believe that desegregation affected her career a great deal. Her boundary crossing came years later, when she became Lumberton's first black female principal. She seems to purposely avoid talking about race, preferring instead to focus on the challenges of educational leadership outside of a racial context. She does worry, however, about "losing" male black students, who cause a disproportionate number of discipline problems. She concludes the interview with a call to black men to act as role models. This interview is not particularly rich, but Defreece's thoughts on race and education might be useful to researchers interested in race in a post-desegregation environment.
Notes: Title from menu page (viewed on Dec. 2, 2008).

Interview participants: Loistine Defreece, interviewee; Goldie F. Wells, interviewer.

Duration: 01:04:25.

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. 80 kilobytes, 117 megabytes.

Original version: Southern Oral History Program Collection, (#4007), Series M, Black high school principals, interview M-0034, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Original transcript: 16 p.

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

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

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