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Viola Barnette: Spoke Out for Education
Interview and story development by: Loretta Akins, Joseph Ayers, Shatara Drummond, Rachel Dudley, Chris Hewitt, Xavier Jordan, Katie Powell, Matt Welch, Ryan Wright, and Deidre Abouahmed
Young mother - about 1926
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She always smiled. She sang all the time, and she spoke in the softest voice. True to her favorite hymn, "I'm on the Battlefield", Viola Barnette spoke out for a better education for African-American children in Madison County when no one else shared her hope.
That is how Mars Hill College Assistant Football Coach Kevin Barnette describes his grandmother. "I never saw her frustrated. She never raised her voice. She always knew it was going to happen. She was the most positive person I've ever been around. She just believed that God was going to work it out."
Viola Barnette, who died in 1983 at the age of 91, was honored "for her contribution toward equal secondary educational opportunities for all children in North Carolina" during Martin Luther King Day ceremonies at Mars Hill College on January 16.
When she was raising her nine children in the 1940s, public schooling for African-Americans in much of rural North Carolina stopped at seventh grade. After the seventh grade, the children had one of two choices. They could just stop at the seventh grade and try to find a job or repeat the seventh grade over and over.
"My grandmother thought that was pretty stupid, to be honest with you," Coach Barnette recalled during an interview with the Hilltop staff. "She wasn't a person to really show a lot of emotions, but it never made sense to her that they just would continue to repeat the same grade, and that's all."
Old School in 2006
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The all-black Long Ridge School in Mars Hill had only two teachers and two classrooms for all seven grades and no indoor plumbing. At the time there were public schools in the county that offered a high school education, but they served only white students.
Emily Herring Wilson described Viola Barnette's reaction in her 1983 book, When the Sun Goes Down, about the influence of elderly black women.
"…she 'asked around' if there was any way buses could take the children from Mars Hill and other small villages into Asheville, 25 miles away, where they could advance through high school. …At first she had no encouragement from her inquiries. Then, finally a letter came, which said that the buses had been secured."
The letter, Viola Barnette told her interviewer, said, "You have not only made it possible for your children to attend school, but for all the children."
Viola Barnette about 1980 - Photo from When the Sun Goes Down
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Coach Barnette said his grandmother, a laundry woman who took in washing for people at the college, would not take any credit for her accomplishment were she alive today.
"I know for a fact she would give God all the glory."
A Mars Hill graduate, Kevin Barnette was raised in Madison County and still lives here today with his family. His fondest memory of his grandmother is that she loved kids, and that she would treat kids with great respect. "She'd get down to your level and talk to you…She always had toys in her house for kids. Even up into her eighties she would be on the floor playing with kids. Everything had a rhyme or reason to it. It either had a learning concept to it, or a spiritual concept."
She stressed education and wanted all of her children to go to school to get an education and be successful. "She wanted them to desire to have an education."
His grandmother, he said, "never wasted her words… When she said something, it always had unbelievable substance to it."
Coach Kevin Barnette receiving plaque commemmorating his grandmother from Vice President Nina Pollard
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He said the first time he understood the wide impact of his grandmother was in 1997, when he was flown to Duke University Hospital in Durham for emergency heart surgery. " I had two heart surgeries at Duke, and I was in the heart tower. One day I was walking and a gentleman came into my room. I didn't know him from Adam. He said he was Robert Seymour."
He learned later that Robert Seymour is a well-known pastor in the Chapel Hill area who during the days of segregation was influential in fighting to integrate churches, restaurants and schools in that area. Early in his career he had been pastor at Mars Hill Baptist Church. Viola Barnette had worked for him. "He told me during that time that my grandmother played a real important role in how he saw Civil Rights and his spiritual walk during the time that she worked for him. And to me that was really amazing. Finding out and knowing who Robert Seymour is, and finding out and knowing that she had that big an impact."
She supported Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. "She really despised racism."
She was a very strong woman. She had her name changed from Barnett to Barnette with an "e" on the end because the governor of Mississippi at the time (Ross Barnett) had the same name and she despised the things he did to defend segregation. "It's very important to me when people write my name that it has an "e" on the end," said Coach Barnette.
Friends and family of Viola Barnette who came to the ceremony. Click to enlarge.
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Many years after the first buses took black children from Madison County into Asheville to school, Madison County public schools finally opened their doors to black students.
Coach Barnette, who went to school in the early seventies, had five older brothers. "I know that four of my brothers had a hard time with integration. Once they got into high school, all four of them said there's no way we're going to go through that. They all went into some form of service, Army, Navy….By the time I got there, it was so much easier."
He's aware that problems still exist for blacks, and he's not sure whether he'll send his own children, ages 2½ and 4, to Madison County schools.
But his own experience in Madison County's newly integrated schools was positive. "All my friends that I grew up with, we all went to the elementary school here. From here I went to the high school. I played Little League baseball, Little League football. I was involved in the Boy Scouts, the Cub Scouts, and all of those things with all of those kids from the time I was very young
"I haven't really had any racial problems in Madison County. I know that sounds impossible, but I haven't. I grew up and basically spent my entire life here."
He was then and is now continually inspired by his grandmother's persistence and faith. "Her walking a mile and a half carrying clothes and washing people's clothes, and taking care of nine children by herself….I have it easy compared with that!…She saw through her spiritual walk that all things were possible."
A Grandson's Perspective
Reader Comment:
Debra A. Huff - Campus Ministry Assistant, 2/1/2006, 11:39:46 a.m. - Wonderful story!!!
I would loved to have known Ms. Viola. I believe that Kevin is living proof of the spiritual influence that she left.
Tuwanda Johnson 2/8/2006, 3:55 p.m.
Shatare: This was a wonderful story! I'm so proud to be your aunt! Love ya. Keep up the good work!
Sheila Stephens, 2/28/06, 12:55 p.m.
Shatara, This is a very touching story, I am proud of you! Stay focused and keep pressing on.. Love ya.. your Aunt Sheila
Adrian Werts, 2/13/2008, 4:44 p.m.
I am in the 8th grade at Champion Theme Middle School in Stone Mountain, Ga., and I am working on a project about education in the 1940s, and this information really helped me a lot. This lady made history. If it wasn't for her and many other people, we wouldn't be where we are today in getting a good education. THANK YOU!!!!!
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