Ms. Clara Dixon Britt: School Days, South Carolina

Camyra Mergogey and Colby Westbury highlight the Grits Festival in their hometown of St. George, South Carolina. They also interview Ms. Clara Dixon Britt about her life growing up there. Ms. Clara has lived in the Texas Community of St. George since she was born and she talks about what it was like to go to school in the 1930s and 1940s. How did a bull help her achieve perfect attendance?

Speaker 1 (00:04): Greetings from South Carolina, I'm Colby Westbury, and recently, my colleagues and I conducted and collected oral history of St. George, South Carolina. St. George is a small rural community in Dorchester County, located in South Carolina. St. George has a population of 2,137 residents, and the County altogether has a population of 148,469 residents as of 2014. St. George is unique for many different things, one including the Grits Festival. Grits is a big part of the residents of St. George. Back in 1986, the town of St. George found out that they ate the most grits per capita out of any place in the world. When this was [inaudible 00:00:53] found, thus later, the World Grits Festival was born.

Speaker 2 (00:56): Each year, our festival holds a unique contest where people get to roll in the grits.

Speaker 1 (01:03): Yes, we said roll and grits. But enough about that, that's a story for another time. Why don't we get on down to the purpose of this documentary? Let's go and meet Ms. Clara Britt.

Clara (01:15): My name is Clara May Dixon. I married a Britt, and now I'm Clara D. Britt, and I'm from the Texas community of St. George.

Speaker 2 (01:27): Ms. Clara has lived in the St. George community ever since she was born, and she is now 90 years old. We sat down and had a lovely chat with Ms. Clara to find out what her school days were like. Today, getting to school is as easy as getting on a bus. Back then, however, times were different. Students were not provided public bus transportation.

Speaker 1 (01:54): Oftentimes, students had to walk great distances to attend school. Listen as Ms. Clara speaks of her journey to school.

Clara (02:02): And I had to walk five miles and five tenths from where I live to the second red light in St. George, and had to do it every day. And if you were late, you got a beating in your hand. Now, you're cold and tired. I wish I could see those people now. We were tired and done walked five miles. And if you got in that school late, you got a beating in your hand.

Speaker 1 (02:35): Can you imagine walking five miles to school each day, rain or shine, often on dirt roads? Times are sure different.

Speaker 2 (02:43): Listen as Ms. Clara goes on to explain how students stayed warm in school.

Clara (02:50): When they ... the heating system, you had a large heater in what they call a flue, outside the building, and then that chimney had a hole, like that clock. It would go through the chimney, and then the smoke go up in the flue. And the first one get there would build a fire. And we stand around the heater until the room get warm. It wasn't but one room, and it was [inaudible 00:03:25]. And their parents would bring wood to the school so that we would have wood, and if the wood ran out, the third graders had to go out in the woods and get some wood, and bring it down to make more ... so that we could have wood for all day.

Speaker 2 (03:53): When you think of afterschool activities, what comes to mind? Perhaps basketball, soccer, robotics, at least football, maybe tennis?

Speaker 1 (04:01): Life was drastically different for Ms. Clara. Without her classmates knowing, she worked a full-time job after school. Her dad died when she was very young, and her mother and her siblings had to work extra hard to make ends meet. Take a listen.

Clara (04:17): I didn't tell my classmates what I was doing, but they would get out of school, [inaudible 00:04:24], that was my high school, a half a day. And the children had to go home, and whatever they had to gather in the field, they would gather them in the field. So I would leave [inaudible 00:04:39] School and walk down to the second ... Texas road now, it wasn't a Texas road then, it was just a road. And I walked down there and then I'd walk a little down that road, and over to the right was my cousin's cotton field. And I put my books down at the end of the row, and I got two croaker bags. You all might not know about croaker bags, but it was croaker bag that you put the cotton in.

Clara (05:10): And I would go take one bag and put it on and drag the other bag, and I'd go halfway to the field. When I'd get halfway to the field, I had that bag full, and that was 50 pounds. I left that bag there and went on to the end of the row. And there was so many people picking cotton until ... by the time they weighed everybody cotton, I was at the end of that row. Now I got to pick up this 50 pound bag of cotton and bring it back to the road. That's where they ... everybody had the cotton line up by the road. So when I'd gotten back there then, I would be the last one that they weigh the cotton. So I would have me a hundred pounds of cotton.

Clara (05:56): And then, when I didn't have to go to school that day, I'd pick the highest cotton I ever picked, about 118 pounds that day. But my classmates, up till now, they still didn't know that I would go, even though some of them had to go home and pick cotton. But they didn't know that I would walk to the cotton fields, pick 100 pounds of cotton that evening and go home, catch the wagon on home. I didn't have to walk that day.

Speaker 1 (06:29): Out of all the things that Ms. Clara had been through, she would do anything to get to school. In fact, she had quite an adventure to make sure she got perfect attendance. Here is her tale.

Clara (06:42): We had hogs and cows, and we had a bull. They call them bull, I think still call them bulls. And we trained him to plow the plow, because we didn't have a mule. We trained him to plow, to pull the wagon, and you could ride him. So when I was in elementary school, we had had rain that night real hard, and water was all on the ground, and we had to wade to get to school. And I always wanted to have a perfect attendance. So I asked my mother to let me ... the bull was named Dan. And I said to mama, let me ride Dan. Nobody was going to wade in the water to school. I said, let me ride Dan to school so I can get my perfect attendance.

Clara (07:39): So my mother let me ride the bull. And I rode the bull, and in the schoolhouse, they had trees, so I tied the bull on to the tree, and let him stay there until school was out. When school was out, I got back on the bull and ride the bull back home. So the teacher knew that I had ride the bull to school, and she gave me a little dictionary with a red back, and I had it until some time ago. I can't find it. It was just about that size, and it was a dictionary, and she gave it to me for making the perfect school day. And I was the only one in the school made a perfect attendance. But if I hadn't have ride the bull, I would not have had one day. I would've been short one day, but I got to make my perfect attendance.

Speaker 2 (08:41): We've hoped you've enjoyed this documentary of one of our most treasured community members, Ms. Clara Britt. This project allows us to get to know our elders and learn the history of our town's past. Stories like these are what keep our town's memories alive.

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Asset ID: 8654
Themes: Education, work, school, farming, agriculture, adversity, perseverance
Date recorded: 2017
Length of recording: 9:13 m
Related traveling exhibition: The Way We Worked
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Dorchester County Archives and History Center, South Carolina
More information or related story: https://museumonmainstreet.org/content/mr-wilbur-cobbs-school-and-work-south-carolina