Pocahontas Museum’s Namesake A Mentor To Remember
Last updated Saturday, October 25, 2008 9:03 PM CDT in News
By George Jared
The Jonesboro Sun
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POCAHONTAS -- Pat Johnson doesn’t remember the day she first stepped into the Pocahontas Colored School, but she’ll never forget the woman she met there.
The one-room schoolhouse and church had a teacher who taught grades one through eight — Eddie Mae Herron.
“I just can’t say enough about what she (Herron) did for me,” Johnson said while sitting inside the same classroom she entered almost 57 years ago. “She taught us to read. She taught us to talk. I can’t believe she taught eight grades.”
In 2000, Johnson helped start a project that is now the Eddie Mae Herron Center, a museum dedicated to black culture and history in Randolph County. Blacks make up only about 2 percent of the population in the county, and Johnson was afraid their heritage would be lost.
The nonprofit museum is supported primarily by donations, fundraisers, some grants and an endowment of $35,000 from the City of Pocahontas.
Inside, the classroom has been reconstructed with mismatched desks, chairs and books. A portrait of George Washington hangs over where the blackboard use to be, and a portrait of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sits at the front of the room.
“We didn’t have a flag so we said the pledge of allegiance to George Washington’s picture each morning,” Johnson said.
Barbara Wyatt works in the museum, and she said about 100 people visit each week. Both women grew up in Pocahontas, experiencing the civil rights movement as it unfolded in the 1950s and 1960s.
Wyatt, who is white, said she knew about the black school, but as a child she wasn’t allowed to go near it.
“It was in what we called ‘shantytown’ and most of the white kids didn’t go there,” she said.
As a child, Johnson said she was aware of the discrimination. In one part of the museum there is a sign that reads “colored only” above doors leading into bathrooms. It’s a reminder of how far society has come, Johnson said.
“I grew up being rejected by signs that said ‘colored’ or ‘white only,’” Johnson said. “I could be mad but I’m not bitter about it.”
Every aspect of Pocahontas was segregated in the 1950s, Johnson said.
“Some of the poorer white kids would come over and play in the (black) neighborhood, but when we would all go to the Dairy Freeze there was a line to go inside (for the whites) and we had to stay outside,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the people in Pocahontas have always been nice and courteous towards her, even at the height of the movement.
Johnson said she remembers plays, cakewalks and school programs. While renovating the old schoolhouse, she noticed handwritten numbers on the sub-flooring, used for Herron’s Friday night cakewalks.
“Families would make cakes and bring them up to the schoolhouse,” Johnson said. “You stood on a number and if it was called you won the cake. When I saw those numbers it made me cry. I helped put them on the floor.”
Money collected from the cakewalks was used for pencils, scissors and other classroom supplies.
David McDonald has written a book detailing how his father Charles McDonald, a white minister, came into contact with Herron in 1959.
Herron approached Charles after she and her students were kicked out of the Memphis Zoo because it wasn’t “colored day” when they went.
In his book McDonald chronicles how much this event affected his father and how it changed his perceptions of segregation and race relations.
Jan Ziegler of Black River Technical College wrote a comprehensive history of the building and the people who’ve occupied the structure.
Pictures of former students dot the walls. Quilting classes are conducted in the museum each Monday and Wednesday.
Today, Johnson is obviously proud when she talks about becoming the first black president of the Randolph County Chamber of Commerce, starting in November.
“I’m a little bit scared,” she said with a smile.
A lifelong resident of Pocahontas, Johnson, who will turn 60 this December, said she has no regrets about staying in the town she loves.
“I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” she said.
Distributed by The Associated Press.
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