Lucy Herring

Lucy Herring (B.1900- Oct.21, 1995 at age 94 )
Teacher, supervisor, principal, and consultant.

"Lucy Saunders Herring, the Jeanes Teacher in Buncombe County, North Carolina remembered, “We did move mountains!”93 In a 1995 documentary film, The Jeanes Supervisors: Striving to Educate, Narvie Harris proudly said, “They only gave us straw, but we made bricks.”94"
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Lucy Saunders was born in the mill town of Union, South Carolina, in Union County, on October 24, 1900, the seventh child of Nettie Ann and Albert Thomas Saunders. Her father attended a white handicapped bookstore owner, Allen Nicholson, and also served as his groom and gardener. During his employment, Saunders accompanied Nicholson on trips to the North Carolina mountains and overseas, broadening his world view and that of his children. Lucy's mother laundered for middle-class whites in order to earn money while remaining at home for her children.

Herring recalled her mother's demand for quality in ironing and folding laundry, "Folding the apparel the way Mama wanted it was a difficult task, but we mastered it." For her first job at the age of twelve, Lucy Saunders ironed clothes for fifty cents a day. Her four brothers attended trade schools at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and at Benedict College and State A&M College in South Carolina, probably to prepare for their later jobs in house painting and brick masonry.2

Saunders recalled that even children of ten to twelve years of age worked long hard hours in the fields. Henrietta Young Goodwin, Lucy's colleague and an African American teacher in Asheville for fifty years, grew up with her in Union. She recalled that African American children helped their families earn a living through farm or mill work, leaving little time for school. Mothers cleaned homes, cared for white children, or washed and pressed clothes for white housewives.3

In 1914, at the age of fourteen, Saunders moved to Asheville, North Carolina, with her mother to improve the health of a brother. Like others who journeyed to Asheville, the family knew of the healing properties of the mountain air, and the move was probably inspired by her father's experience with his disabled employer. Albert Saunders and Lucy's sisters joined the family in Asheville later.

Lucy commuted to South Carolina and completed high school in 1916 at State A&M College in Orangeburg. Impressed with her dedication and exemplary academic record, State A&M College president Robert Shaw Wilkinson recommended Saunders for the position of teacher-principal at South Carolina's Great Branch School for the next school year, a position she accepted.4

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Black schools had operated at a disadvantage since North Carolina's newly organized Republican Party of blacks and whites drafted a state constitution in 1868 providing for free public education for all children between the ages of six and twenty-one. In 1875, North Carolina.
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In 1916, 16-year-old Lucy Saunders, a young black teacher from Orangeburg County, South Carolina, presided over a classroom of 16 students, age 6 to 17 years old, at the lower Swannanoa Colored School in Asheville, North Carolina. Many could not read. One seventeen year old had never progressed beyond the first grade. Eventually, he advanced to second grade, learned to write a letter, and studied arithmetic with the fourth grade students.

Although the school term lasted only three months, Lucy’s long school day was not over until 5 P.M. The one room schoolhouse had unpainted walls, a pot-bellied stove, homemade desk with no finish, two blackboards so worn that they were impossible to write on, and no maps, pictures, or window shades. Saunders taught reading, music, and art, as well a chair caning, basket weaving, corn shuck mat-making in her “Work Corner,” “industrial” crafts considered appropriate in educating African Americans at the time.

The children proudly exhibited their crafts at the county fair. Lucy Saunders’s early classroom experience mark the beginning of a 52 year career in education. As a teacher, reading specialist, and community and educational leader, her contributions helped transform African-American education in North Carolina, particularly in the western region.

For 52 years Lucy Saunders Herring, North Carolina Jeanes Supervisor and African American Educator, 1916-1968, dedicated her life to teaching. 35 of these years were spent in the Buncombe County and Asheville City Schools.

She served as a teacher at Swannanoa, Hill Street, and Stephens Lee schools and as principal at Mountain Street, a school that was later named in her honor. She was founder and director of a summer reading clinic for teachers at NC College at Durham, NC and was Associate Professor, Director of Reading at Livingstone College in Salisbury, NC.

She was a member of the Asheville Chapter of the American Association of University Women, Gamma Gamma Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and a life member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She served as an officer of the Retired Teachers Association, the Council on Aging, and the Asheville City and Buncombe County Human Relations council.

Mrs. Herring served pupils, principals and teachers in the black elementary schools of North Carolina, primarily as a reading specialist. In Asheville she taught at Hill Street School, Stephens-Lee School and was principal at Mountain Street, a school that in 1963 was named in her honor.

Her memoir Strangers No More was published in 1983. She remained active in local affairs after retirement, as an officer of the Retired Teachers Association, the Council on Aging, and the Human Relations council. Here she serves on a panel for a 1982 event for Black Heritage week in Asheville, organized by the Equal Employment Opportunity Committee. L to R: Lucy Herring, John Baxter and Lacy Haith.

Lieutenant Colonel Asa Herring who was a Tuskegee Airman, was her only son.

Here Is A List Of Her Educational Positions
1916-1920-Teacher, Swannanoa School, Buncombe County, NC
1920-1923-Teacher, Hill Street Elementary School, Asheville, NC
1923-1935 Elementary supervisor, Harnett County Schools, NC
1935-1941-Teacher, Stephens Lee High School, Asheville, NC
1941-1949-Principal, Mountain Street School, Asheville, NC
1949-1964-Elementary supervisor, Asheville, NC
Elementary supervisor, Buncombe County, NC

1964-1968-Director, reading center, Livingstone College, NC
1945-1960-Reading consultant in NC, SC and TN
Reading clinic for teachers, NC College, Durham, NC

1962-1965-Reading workshops for teachers, Livingstone College

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Mrs Mrs. Lucy Saunders Herring was the lead creator in the Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection ca. 1888-1972
"African-Americans helped create what we know today as home. The labors of women and men helped build our land while the lives they lived helped create the mountain culture. Black children learned from their elders skills needed to survive and prosper as Asheville and Buncombe County experienced and emerged from the Reconstruction era.

What we do with this remarkable inheritance is entirely up to us."
-Dr. Dwight Mullen, from An Unmarked Trail, exhibit created by Debbie Miles, Center for Diversity Education.

Description: Often excluded and invisible from the histories of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, those of African-American descent contributed much to the physical and cultural environment of these highlands.

Those who were credited as being responsible for the creation of Buncombe County and Morristown, eventually the thriving tourist and trade center known as Asheville, owed much to those who were enslaved. This site focuses upon the donations of Mrs. Lucy Saunders Herring, Mr. Johnny Baxter, Jean McKissick McNeil, the Southern Highlands Research Center and YMI Cultural Center. Supplementing these valuable donations are additional resources from various donors and sources.

These additional resources are listed below to expand the temporal framework, for the history of these people extended before and after the dates of the original donated material. For instance, the labor of these slaves not only helped build Asheville, but also fed, clothed, and served those of privilege. Additionally, those of African-American descent contributed greatly to the folkways of Southern Appalachia dispelling the myth of a homogenous society and culture in this region.
Following emancipation, these people built their own thriving environment segregated from the majority population but still vital to the culture and economy of Western North Carolina.

*To Read More About This Collection Please Click this Link: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/.../black.../default_blackhigh.html

(To Read More About The Lucy Saunders Herring Collection, Please Scroll Down To Link.)
1. Lucy Saunders Herring interview by Louis D. Silvera, July 26, 1977, transcript, Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville, hereinafter cited as Herring interview; Lucy Saunders, “Strangers No More”: Memoirs (New York: Carlton Press, 1983), 58-61

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/.../herring/default_herring.html

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23522401?seq=1

**Part of this Black Herstory was provided by contributing researcher, Stan Best.**