Collection Title: Jackson Purchase Oral History Project – Schools and Education
Series Number: OH247
Interviewee: England, Artice
Interviewer: Peyton, William
Date interviewed: June 28, 1979
Processed by: O'Daniel, Hannah
Date processed: February 19, 2014
Description: 1 sound disc (33 minutes)
Abstract: Artice England describes the conditions of a one room schoolhouse in Graves County, Kentucky as an elementary school student. She recalls attending the all-black Lincoln High School in Paducah, Kentucky from 1918 to 1922. She discusses the role faculty members played on shaping the education of female students at West Kentucky Industrial College in Paducah. She details her experiences as a teacher in African American schools in Graves County, including four one room schoolhouses and teaching thirty-seven years at Dunbar Elementary School. She expresses the benefits of racial integration in schools as providing higher quality resources and facilities for black students. She mentions Mayfield teachers in assisting refugees from Paducah during the Flood of 1937.
Biographical / Historical note: Artice England was born in Graves County, Kentucky on October 22, 1904. Her parents James and Anita Mason were farmers. She attended elementary school in a one room schoolhouse in Graves County and entered Lincoln High School in Paducah, Kentucky in 1918. In 1922, she graduated and passed the Kentucky teacher's examination to receive her teaching certificate. In April 1923, she married George England and moved to Mayfield, Kentucky. She taught at four different one room elementary schools in Graves County. She attended the Normal School of West Kentucky Industrial College in Paducah and later Murray State College in Murray, Kentucky. She taught fourth grade at the segregated Dunbar Elementary School in Mayfield, Kentucky for thirty-seven years, with one brief stint as a third grade teacher. She also taught for one year at an integrated school in Mayfield before retiring in 1968. England died in St. Louis, Missouri at the age of 88 on June 4, 1993.
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:
England, Artice, 1904-1993.
Segregation in education – Kentucky.
Education – Kentucky -- Mayfield – History.
African Americans – Kentucky – History.
Kentucky – Race relations.
Paducah (Ky.) – Flood, 1937.
Graves County (Ky.)
Lincoln High School (Paducah, Ky.)
Dunbar Elementary School (Mayfield, Ky.)
West Kentucky Industrial College (Paducah, Ky.)
