Savannah Music Festival

Were you in- involved in church? What church did you attend?$$Butler Presbyterian Church [Butler Memorial Presbyterian Church, Savannah, Georgia] and what's interesting about that is, my family for years were Methodist, A.M.E. [African Methodist Episcopal], when they were on the Eastside. When they moved to the Westside, it changed. My family decided to become Catholic. I didn't want to be a Catholic, and I started attending Butler Presbyterian Church, which was in our neighborhood [Cann Park, Savannah, Georgia], actually, with some of my friends at school, Sunday school, and church was a church that welcomed young people and had quite a number of activities for young people, and I enjoyed the spiritual climate in the church. So I asked my mother [Freddie Mae Jones Williams] if I could become a Presbyterian, and they agreed that I could. So I became Presbyterian while they converted to Catholicism.$$And what were some of the activities that you were involved in at your church?$$Bible school, summer camp. I was chosen by our church to be one of the representatives to go to a summer retreat (clears throat) for--it was an interracial group. And in fact, it was not far from my mother's hometown, in--outside of Burke County [Georgia], Boggs Academy [Keysville, Georgia] (clears throat), excuse me, and that was the first experience I had in terms of any interracial interaction with the young people, and the white kids came to us from Indiana, and the interesting thing was, and this was another incident that stayed with me, was in Louisville, Georgia, was a slave market where slaves were tr- traded and the group, they planned a field trip and when we gathered for the field trip, outside of Boggs Academy we could not ride together. All the white kids had to be in one car and the black kids had to be in another car and, of course, we got to be friends, and we couldn't understand, well, why we can't ride together. You know, kids can't ride together, and they said we would be arrested. So, you know, those were hard things to fathom without developing (clears throat) some feelings of hate, you know, and that's where our parents came in to help us understand that you don't get anything accomplished by hating. You learn to think and plan and, so, you know.$Let's talk about as--let's just step back a little bit and because you're first deputy superintendent [of the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System] and I want you to talk about what it was that you accomplished in that position, if you might?$$One of the things I accomplished was im- implementing a reading warranty that guaranteed that the students would be reading by third grade. Some of that was happening at the time I became superintendent but it was dismissed, you know, because that--it was a political thing, you know, so the other is, I think, that principals felt supported and that I was a superintendent that was for the best benefit of the schools and as a deputy superintendent I worked to accomplish that. I also worked to train school leaders. We had an in- internal school leadership program. In fact I have a little plaque in there that some of the graduates, when they finished, remembered a lecture that I gave and they summarized it about tips on being a leader. I think my greatest contribution as a leader was being, setting a good example for what leadership was all about because programs come and go and they can be very political and the impact this made is actually in the schools with the principals and with the students and I think that the reading warranty was one of the things that we im- that was impacted and also I--we implemented the, what's it, the early childhood education program where we had family advocates for children in the kindergarten program. We--that was implemented. It was successful, too, because it helped to guaranty that kids would be ready to start school, first grade. Let me see. I think those would be two of the things that I would point to.$$Okay. So even though you've had a challenging term as superintendent, what are you most proud of as superintendent?$$I would say I'm most proud of the fact that I did not lose my dignity nor did I compromise my principles while I tried to do--and I won't say try, why I did the best for the schools in the school district and the children. There were gains made, there were accomplishments and I think I, not think, I walked away feeling that there were lessons learned and as--one of the things that stood out was when I was, I took the oath. The headline in the paper was "Dream the Impossible Dream" and I think that that was an impossible dream (laughter), a dream that I didn't think was possible and to walk away with, one, no money mismanaged, no scandals, the only thing that could be said is that there were some that just did not get along with Virginia Edwardss [HistoryMaker Virginia Edwardss Maynor] at the time and to me that--the most important thing was to leave that--a position as contentious as being a superin- and as political as being a superintendent. When you can walk out the door with your dignity intact, that's an accomplishment as far as I'm concerned because you have to live beyond that.