Barbara Watson
Photo credit: Next Door Neighbor
"I really pushed to try to be more inclusive in parent volunteers and things like that…I was president of the PTA. When you are in charge, you get to do stuff! …But there is also a danger in that because, I don’t remember what year it was, but Rawls Byrd, the girls were there, I was the PTA president and it became a blue ribbon school. So what I found happening a lot was the principal going, “Look! I’m a blue ribbon school, I have an African-American mom as the PTA president, and so it was like I became this poster child...because, you know, that wasn't happening anywhere else."
Watson,Barbara4.14.11.mp3Audio of interview with Ms. Barbara Watson | Conducted by Ginger Nealon | April 14, 2011 | Williamsburg Documentary Project Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries
Interview with Ms. Barbara Watson | Conducted by Catherine Sayle | April 2, 2008 | Williamsburg Documentary Project Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries
"I think back in the early 60’s or whenever we moved here, it was kind of a closed community. There weren’t a lot of people coming and going like you see now, I mean, this is one of the fastest growing counties. Back then that was the case, everybody knew everybody. And I think there was more a formal structure of where you’re supposed to be and how you were supposed to act...and I think there were institutions that helped form that. I mean there were the separate schools and the jobs for African Americans were service related. You know my mother was a school teacher, and very few of my friends that I went to school with that were African American had professional parents. Most of them worked in the service industry or tourism so it was very different."
"I talked the same way at home as I did at school, and again, I had, you know, my mom, the teacher, at school and at home... my parents instilled that it was very important always, to be at your best and speak at your best. So it wasn't okay to talk slang and things like that. And at school that, that was a real problem because, you know, people basically said I talked white and I said, “Well, this is how I talk at home and this is how my parents want me to talk”...there were a small group of us who all had professional parents, those who were college educated, and had professional jobs. We were kind of all together in a group and kind of viewed the same way as you know, uppity, talked white, you know, Oreo, you know, that kind of thing."
WatsonBarbara2.24.11.mp3Audio of interview with Ms. Barbara Watson | Conducted by Jack Pollack | February 24, 2011 | Williamsburg Documentary Project Collection | Special Collections Research Center | William & Mary Libraries