Vivian Pemberton recounted author Pat Conroy’s experiences teaching impoverished black students for Delpha Study Club members at their October meeting in the Methodist Family Center.
Conroy based his memoir The Water Is Wide on his one year of teaching at a two-room schoolhouse on an island off the South Carolina coast. Given the fictional name Yamacraw Island in the book, the land was accessible only by boar, and the inhabitants had changed very little since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Transportation on the island was by oxcart and there was no electricity or telephone. The island’s industry of oyster fishing had been destroyed by factory waste pollution. Conroy’s 17 students in grades five through eight spoke Gullah, a local dialect, and could barely communicate in English Most of them read below the first grade and had practically no knowledge of the outside world. However, they were very polite and submissive, probably because of the leather strap on the principal’s desk.
Conroy used a Sears catalog to interest the students in reading, played classical music, showed films turned on the radio to listen to news. He used these resources to teach history and geography, which thee students learned by memory.
After he married, he tried to commute daily by boat from the mainland, but the county school board refused to pay for the fuel and after a court hearing he was fired. He left the island hoping that he had been able to change the quality of the students’ lives in some way.
Pemberton announced that she would host the November meeting in her home. Ann Cales will review the book Follow Me to Alaska by Ann Parker.
Attending the meeting in addition to Pemberton were Linda Brown, Ann Cales, Evelyn Coyle, Beverly Frazier, hostesses Gayle Kuchera and Carolyn Ott, and Marjilea Smithheisler.
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