Castlen, John C. Tape 1 of 1 December 2, 1980 By: Ruby Shaffner

RS: I am Ruby Shaffner and I am interviewing Colonel John Castlen from Greenville, MS. Colonel Castlen, C a s t l e n, will be discussing his education as received in the Greenville public school system. Today is December 2, 1980.

JC: Ruby actually this is going to be a rather jumble up thing. It’s going to be as I remember and things as I remember about school. I actually started to school in Greenville in the Old Central School Kindergarten in 1917 but I didn’t go very much because my mother was not able to get me over there all of the time so I dropped out. In the following year started back into Old Starling School, which is now the White House and began school there. Actually my school days were well prepared because most of the older teachers were friends of our family and many of them had taught my mother. My first principal and my first grade teacher had both taught my mother when she went to school as a … in grammar school. Also even before I had started school, Mr. E. E. Bass, who was the superintendent of the Greenville public school system, was noted for taking boys camping. And I had already started camping and going out in-over-night camps and things like that with Mr. Bass before I’d ever started school. He was noted for being a great walker and he believe in hiking. I always thought of Mr. Bass as a very old man but he did so many remarkable things. I don’t remember much about the black schools so I’m going to confine my remarks almost entirely to the white school system. When I started to school in 1918 the Greenville public school system had a high school and three grammar schools, one of which was a joint grammar and junior high school. Starling School had the principal Mrs. M. Boyd. We have a new school named after Mrs. M. She taught in Greenville Public School District for a long time, she was one of my mother’s teachers. She taught my mother in the 6th grade. Ms. Carrie Lee was the first grade teacher. She had taught my mother in the first grade at the old Archer School, which is on where the Junior Auxiliary building is located in Greenville now. We had Court School, another grammar school, which was who the principal was Ms. Susie Trig. I didn’t know any of the teachers at Susie Trig at Court School because it was down on the north end of town and we just didn’t get down in that area very much. Central School located between Broadway and Theodore just behind the present MS Power and Light Company the principal was Ms. Mattie Houston when I started to school. And Ms. Mattie had some real fine teachers that had been the system for a long time; Ms. Beatrice Fulwiller, Miss Beckwith, and several others. Central School was a joint school different from the other two elementary schools. In that it had a Kindergarten that had a … Miss Nelly Griffin had the kindergarten and it also had the junior high school portion the 7 th and 8th grades for the entire Greenville public school system. In that official teachers in Central School who are well remembered in Greenville for their educational abilities were Mrs. M. Brown, who later on had her own private kindergarten after she retired from teaching active teaching, and Ms. Mattie Acking, who spent her entire life teaching in the Greenville public schools. In the junior high school portion, we had 5 teachers who circulated around and was the first time that, or rather the students circulated around into the various rooms and they taught the 7th and 8th grade. We had Ms. Norma O’Bannon. We had Ms. Phillips, a Ms. Thunderbert, Ms. Shepherd, and at the present time I’m trying to think of who the other teacher was but I can not remember, but we when through the 7th and 8th grades all of the students from all of the elementary schools came there. Because students came from all over the city, Central school was the only elementary school that had a cafeteria and we had it down in the basement. And they served sandwiches and things like that down there. It was a very nice little cafeteria. I didn’t eat very much in those days so I really didn’t appreciate what was going on. The Greenville Public Schools, even when I was a child, had textbooks that you could rent. This was even before the days that the state textbooks were furnished to the schools for the students to use. For that reason and because of the Greenville Public school many of the white children from outside of Greenville. Particularly down Wayside, Alburn, and south of town and north Winterville, Lamont, came into the, before the school was consolidated even, came in and went to school in the Greenville Public School. Because some many of the county schools during that period was still one-room schoolhouses. I know that out at Pricilla, my Aunt Johnny Crouch, Ms. Johnny Crouch, who later Mrs. George Swift taught originally when she started teaching, she taught in a one room schoolhouse in Charter, MS. That was when my grandfather had a plantation down on Lake Washington and then she moved to Greenville she started teaching at the little one room school up at Pricilla and lived with the McQuinns at Pricilla. And while she was there, there were a number of people I know that went to that school the Griffin boys and some of the girls went there for some years. The McQuinns went over there but just adjacent to Pricilla the Brandon’s would live in town during the school year. And have Coleman, Buddy and Royal go to school in the Greenville public schools. There was not much vocational training in our public schools when I was young and in high school. I entered high school in the wake of the 1927 flood. And prior to that time there had been a manual training class in the high school that was woodworking. But most the equipment was lost or ruin during the flood of 1927 and it was never reopened up until World War II as long as I could remember that. The vocational part that was opened Mr. Eugene Mitchell came to Greenville in about 1928 fresh out of MSU or A&M College in those days. And one of the subjects he taught was automobile and mechanics. And I remember one of the things we did we went around out in the country all of these old cars which you can still see sitting around by these houses, where the people bought a car at settling time and then couldn’t drive it anymore and let it go to rack and ruin. We would get the engine out of those cars and bring them back in and down in the basement of the Greenville high school we would work on those engines and get them to running. Mr. Mitchell also taught a mechanical drawing and some mathematics but I’m getting a little head of myself I was going to stay on the grammar school to start with. I went through and stayed in Starling School for the entire six years. During that time the old building, after the first year at Starling School, the old building was torn down and the new building, which sits there today, was erected. They built that thing while we were out for the summer vacation. My second grade teacher was a lady name Ms. Bridget. She is later married Mr. Mack Payne. In the grammar school, we had not only a real active activity period as far as art was concern. We had a singing instructor. The art teacher and singing instructor went around to rotate it to all of the schools in the area. We had a Ms. Worthington. Ms. Worthington was a lovely lady. She’d had infertile paralysis when she was young and she came around and taught art. And I never did learn to really draw pictures or things like that but I learned to appreciate many pictures that she would show us and things like that. Our singing teacher was also a rotating person. She was a Ms. Antly. Ms. Antly married T. A. Middleton, who was the principal of the high school. Mr. Middleton came to Greenville in I think about 1924 or 25, about 24 or 1925. And Mrs. Middleton later went on to be one of the associate professors of music at Belhaven College and Mr. Middleton left after he resigned and went to Jackson and was associated with one of the school supply companies. I’ve forgotten which. Both of them maintain their Greenville connections for many years. Mr. Forest Murphy came to Greenville at the same time that Mr. Middleton did as the football coach for the Greenville high school. He was a very successful coach. He’d came out of Transylvania University where he had been a football player. He also taught Chemistry and was a very, very excellent instructor. After Mr. Middleton left Mr. Murphy became principal and also continued to be the football coach and Mr. Eugene Mitchell came to be his assistant. During this period, 1928,I think it was, Mr. Kenny Hackston who had been an outstanding football player and was a Southeastern Conference Official and an official for the high school association. Volunteered his service as the assistant coach and the Greenville High School Hornets won all of their games that year. But was declared ineligible because Mr. Hackston did not teach any classes other than physical education that is football. The coaches were required to teach some other subjects other than just coach football. I was in central school in what we called junior high school in 1926, 25, 26, 26 and 27. When the flood washed us out in April of 1927 school stopped and we all went and enjoyed the water. Greenville was flooded completely and all schools stopped. The schools picked up the following September and everyone went to the next higher grade automatically promoted. I have one story to tell about the flood. We stayed in our homes on Main St. between Harvey and Edison Street during the entire time of the flood. There was a very swift current that ran down the streets of both north and south streets, Edison and Harvey. And one day we were sitting on our front porch and looked down at Harvey Street and Mr. Bass was caught in the current and paddling his boat furiously trying to get across the street. But it was no head wave. In fact he was going down stream rapidly. My mother said to me go and get Mr. Bass and pull him on over out of the current. The water was just above waist deep in that area right then. And I waded on and got Mr. Bass and pulled out and almost had him successfully out of the current when the boat slipped out of my hand. And Mr. Bass’s boat went back against the Jordan’s pipe, steel pipe fence and over turned and drenched Mr. Bass. Mr. Bass wore a coat, high stiff collar and a necktie at all times. Well we got him to the house we got the boat dumped out and he was going to the Greenville high school which just a little more than a block away to see Ben, the janitor. But his clothes were drenched so mother persuaded Mr. Bass to take some of my stepfather clothes and wear them. My stepfather was a man that weighted well over 200 pounds and was about 6 feet tall. Mr. Bass wouldn’t weight 150 pounds if he were soaking wet and was about just about 5”10’. So you could imagine how he looked in those clothes. But anyway we got him over to talk to Ben. He came back and mother had somehow dried his clothes in the meantime and we got him on his way. And as we started, started back to go back across there I said Mr. Bass you want me to help you across Harvey Street. He said no John that’s all right I’ll turn it over myself this time. Well he got safely across went on back. The students that could during the flood took some type of extra work. I was always one that lagged behind. So when the water had started getting a little bit calmer, my stepfather took me and we went in our boat just north of Shaw and caught the railroad where they had built it down coming south. And put me on the train and I went up to Tennessee and went to Webb Camp that was run by Webb School at Bellbuckle. And they specialized in the summer of making up work for boys that hadn’t done so well the year before. Well we had a number of people from down here in the delta that were up there. I remembered Tory Wood from Hollandale and J.W. Kent were there when I got there. I had known them both all of my life because my mother grew up in Hollandale. There were several boys from Leland. Murphy Jones from Leland was up there. But anyway we were taking courses that were preparing us for the next year. All of us to go in high school the following year. I needed it. While I was in high school, one of the ??? things in my young life was the fact that Mr. E.J. Lukenbauk come into Greenville public school system with the advent of the flood. Mr. Lukenbauk had formerly been the head master of the Greenville Military Academy. The Greenville Military Academy was started in the early 20’s or late just about the end of World War I by a man named Captain Riley. And he had quite a clown tale. And one of the teachers that Captain Riley had was Mr. Lukenbauk. And Mr. Lukenbauk took over the school and ran it until the flood when after Captain Riley’s death. The big football game of the year was Thanksgiving with Greenville High School and Greenville Military Academy playing. In Greenville, we had several school systems. It’s quite remarkable that we had so many. We had the Catholic School, St. Rose of Leland, which had a high school. It was before St. Joseph had its full-scale high school. But it was down next to the Catholic Church. We had the Greenville Military Academy. We had the Greenville Public School for the white. We had the Greenville Public School for the colored or blacks. And then the Chinese people had, in the delta, a school of their own. The school was actually located part of the time in Cleveland and part of the time in Greenville. But it kept the school system widely separated. I can remember when I was in high school taking a school census. A group of high school seniors in the fall and winter of 1930 were employed to take a school census. And it was our responsibility to go out and list by name everyone of school age in the Greenville Separate School District. There were about 6 of us. We divided the city and those parts of the county that came under the Greenville Separate School District. And it was a big job but it was remarkable how many people both black and white that were not in school, even though they should have been. You realize when you did that why MS ranked among the lowest nationally as far as education. When I was a young boy Mr. Ben Hatch was the Superintendent of county schools that’s an elected office. And Mr. Hatch was a friend of our family for many years and when he retired in 1948, I believe it was, Ms. O’Bannon was elected to replace him. And under Ms. O’Bannon the consolidation program of the school system of the county began and also her continue of office integration was accomplish. Jeff Boe was elected when she retired, which was the year after I retired out of the Army so I remember it rather two years after I retired from the Army. She retired in 1968. Mr. Forest Murphy followed Mr. E. E. Bass as the Superintendent of schools in the Greenville Separate School District and when he left Greenville after a successful coaching career and being a successful school administrator he went to the University of MS. Where he was recognized for his ability as a school administrator and was used by Judge William Caddy who graduated under him as a student in 1931. When Mr. Murphy was principal. Was used by Judge Caddy to come up with plans for integration of many of the school systems throughout the state or the delta portion of our state. I remember when Mrs. Roburst came to Greenville and she was the principal after working at Court school and Mrs. Susie Trig became the principal at Starling school, following Mrs. Boyd. And while she was there in 1936 the first cup pack was organize in Greenville at that school.