Collection Title: Jackson Purchase Oral History Project – Schools and Education
Series Number: OH245
Interviewee: Danner, Ceola May Rogers
Interviewer: Bates, Mary
Date interviewed: September 8, 1979
Processed by: O’Daniel, Hannah
Date processed: February 12, 2014
Description: 1 sound disc (25 minutes)
Abstract: Ceola Danner discusses her experiences at attending segregated schools, Lincoln Elementary and High School, in Paducah, Kentucky during the 1920s and 1930s. She divulges her family’s financial struggle during the Great Depression and how it prevented her from graduating from West Kentucky Industrial College in Paducah. She also details her family’s stint as refugees during the Flood of 1937. Danner describes race relations between white and African American communities in Paducah during the 1920s and 1930s and how integration improved social conditions for blacks. Lastly, she tells of her father, Ollie Rogers, and his experience in an all-black cavalry regiment in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War and his efforts to organize a drum and bugle corps in Paducah during the Second World War.
Biographical / Historical note: Ceola Mae Rogers Danner was born at Paducah, Kentucky in 1916. She attended segregated schools, which included Lincoln Elementary School and Lincoln High School in Paducah, Kentucky. She graduated from high school in 1933 at the age of sixteen. She briefly attended West Kentucky Industrial College but was forced to withdraw due to her father losing his job during the Great Depression. She left West Kentucky Industrial College and worked as a maid and shampoo girl at a beauty shop in Paducah. She married in 1940. When she was 35 years old, she went back to school at West Kentucky Vocational School to take a business course and was hired as a clerk typist at the institution. She died in 1990 at the age of 74 in Paducah.
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:
Danner, Ceola May Rogers, 1916-1990.
Segregation in education – Kentucky.
Education – Kentucky -- Paducah – History.
African Americans – Kentucky – History.
Kentucky – Race relations.
Paducah (Ky.) – Flood, 1937.
McCracken County (Ky.)
Lincoln Elementary School (Paducah, Ky.)
Spanish-American War, 1898 – Personal narratives, American.
