Collection Title: Jackson Purchase Oral History Project – Schools and Education
Series Number: OH237
Interviewer: Murray, Nicollete
Date interviewed: November 13, 1980
Processed by: O’Daniel, Hannah
Date processed: January 28, 2014
Description: 2 sound discs (60 minutes)
Abstract: Vivian Caldwell discusses the long process to attain her degree in education at Western Kentucky State Normal School (presently Western Kentucky University), stating that she was unable to attend college without periodic breaks to acquire funds for tuition and other expenses. She recalls her salaries as a teacher, what it was like teaching during the Great Depression, her experiences at Hickman High School and the desegregation and consolidation of the schools in Fulton County.
Biographical / Historical note: Vivian Caldwell was born in Hickman, Kentucky on November 11, 1898 to James Williams and Isabelle Whitley Caldwell. She attended high school at Hickman College, which was later renamed Hickman High School and consolidated into Fulton County High School. She and her class of thirteen total students graduated in 1917. She taught seven months in a one room school in Mississippi County, Missouri. She attended Western Teachers College in Bowling Green, Kentucky full time from February 1, 1918 to October 31, 1918 before returning to Hickman to teach. She returned to college full time from 1921 to 1922 and part time during summer terms until she graduated in June of 1928. Since there were no math openings in Hickman, she taught high school math and English in Campbellsville, Kentucky and later in Franklin, Kentucky. From September 1929 until she retired in May 1969, she taught high school in Hickman. She died at Hickman on June 1, 1984.
General information: No user access to original recordings. Use audio user copies, digital derivatives, transcripts, and/or tape indexes. This collection may be protected from unauthorized copying by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code). Permission for reproduction must be requested from Murray State University.
Subject Headings / Descriptors:
Caldwell, Vivian, 1898-1984.
Hickman (Ky.) – History.
Education – Kentucky – Fulton County – History.
School integration – Kentucky – Fulton County.
