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Saving the stories of the elders is the goal. When citizen groups came together in Yellow Springs a dozen years ago, they began a civil rights oral history project, intended to gather the stories of Blacks and whites who worked together to secure the civil rights of all. WYSO got involved early, and for the next month we’ll be sharing edited versions of those oral history interviews. Hear from Betty Ford and Phyllis Jackson. They were cousins born in the 1920s and graduated from Bryant High School. They both had long careers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and were deeply involved in the community and especially in Central Chapel AME Church. These two women helped guide the community’s oral history project. Phyllis Jackson is especially passionate about black history and genealogy and has spent years researching her family’s story. Amy Harper interviewed them.
Betty Ford: My name is Betty Ford.
Phyllis Jackson: My name is Phyllis Jackson. I was born on September 26, 1924, at the corner of Dayton and High Street at 503 Dayton Street.
Betty Ford: I was born in Yellow Springs, where the Antioch Library is now located on 16th plus South, not on a south street here in Yellow Springs.
Amy Harper: So that place wasn’t part of the college when you were born?
Betty Ford: Nope. My grandmother sold it in Antioch.
Amy Harper: who is your grandmother
Betty Ford: Tennie Lawson. She is also Phyllis’ grandmother.
Phyllis Jackson: And I don’t know exactly when that came to Yellow Springs, but our grandmother was born in Spring Valley in 1850. Their family was in Minnesota, and their birthplace was Georgia. And this was in 1850. And I’m sure they were fleeing to the South as well, because they were free at that time. And after the Civil War, they returned to Ohio. My memory, I said then, was when I was 4-years-old after that, you know, it was foggy. But I remember going to nursery school, which I thought was a Black nursery school on Elm Street. And it was operated at that time by two Black women, one was the minister’s wife, Harris, and the other was the Yellow Springs woman, Beatrice Carlisle.
For the past ten years, I have gone to community nursery school and they have some pictures from the nursery school I attended on their bulletin board. They recognized it as the first community nursery school. I’m not sure why it’s called a community nursery school, but when I was in school, I thought it was a black nursery school. It was run by two black women and all the people there were Black. And I don’t remember seeing white kids there, but they might have been. After that, I went to Dayton Street School in the first grade and stayed there for six years. And then I went to Bryan School.
Amy Harper: The Dayton Street School, the old village building. It wasn’t separated, was it?
Phyllis Jackson: No, as far as I know, segregation ended in Yellow Springs in 1887 when Ohio made it a law that all children could be educated publicly. But someone mentioned to me just this week, ‘You went to a black school, an elementary school, didn’t you?’ And I said, ‘No, I went to a public school,’ and they were surprised that there was a Black school here. But I’m not sure when it closed, but it didn’t open in 1900. That’s all I know about the Black school.
Amy Harper: So you don’t feel like you’re going somewhere other than a nursery school?
Phyllis Jackson: Nope. When I was studying, I didn’t feel like I was going to a separate place. I know that I am Black and I know about discrimination. We didn’t have role models when I was growing up. The only role models I felt like us were ministers, and those of us who chose not to be ministers didn’t really know about other professions. But soon we found out, you know, that there are other professions. I guess you could say that we are limited in our knowledge of the possibilities.
Amy Harper: When you say you don’t have role models, you’re talking about people in leadership positions.
Phyllis Jackson: And other successful, you know, fields, whether it’s entertainment yes business or medicine or whatever. I just felt that if we went to a black school, we would have role models.
That was Phyllis Jackson and before that, her cousin Betty Ford. In 2014, when Amy Harper interviewed them for the Yellow Springs Community Oral History Project. Betty Ford passed in 2019 and Phyllis Jackson in 2020.
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