I went to Habersham County, Georgia, and taught vocational agriculture one year after college. Then I went into the military, World War II. I took my basic training in Florida at Camp Blanding. They sent me to Fort Benning, Georgia, to go to Officer Candidate School; finished that, and, in May 1945, I guess it was, they sent me to Texas. I trained troops about three or four months, and then they sent me to Okinawa, Japan. I stayed there exactly one year. I was education officer for the island—wound up running a radio station for the whole island, the Armed Forces Radio station. I had fifteen enlisted men, and we would go up on top of a mountain. We had a shortwave outfit, and we’d turn it on at night, after we’d go off the air, and talk to people in Africa and Asia and different places, just playing around with it. After a year I had enough time in to come home.
I came home and went back to teaching school in Banks County—taught school for ten years. We showed steers at the Atlanta Fat Cattle Show. To get a project, the students had to have something that was tangible. They learn faster when they have something like that. I had it worked out with the Northeastern Banking Company there in Commerce, Georgia, that if I brought a boy down there that needed some money to buy a calf, they’d loan it to him on my name, only I didn’t have to sign anything. This boy and his dad would sign, and when we sold the calf, we’d go back and pay it off. So if he had money left over, he’d put it in his pocket. That was an enticement for them to do a good job. The Future Farmers of America [FFA] chapter and I got together, and I said, “Look, if one of these calves dies, we have a problem about paying it off. From now on, what about just adding five dollars to the expense of buying a steer, and I’ll put that five dollars in an insurance fund.” We had one calf to die, and we paid it off out of that insurance fund. I don’t know whatever happened to the insurance fund. They still had it when I became superintendent.
One year we had, I believe it was, fifty-four steers down there at the Atlanta Fat Cattle Show. Some of those boys had never even ridden on an elevator or eaten out rather than eating a regular meal at home. They’d eat a hamburger. It was educational all the way around. One year we won the FFA class, and that boy got two thousand dollars for his steer. The restaurant people would come in and buy the steers. They’d beef them [slaughter them for beef] and say, “The grand champion of the Fat Cattle Show,” and people would buy steaks better that way.
My students put in an indoor toilet at the high school in the basement of the library building. The superintendent wanted me to lay out a drain field. I did that, and when we got through, I told the board of education, “I saved you a whole lot of money by laying that thing out, digging those trenches, putting gravel and those pipes in, and covering them back up. Now, why don’t you buy us a tractor?” So the county board bought us a tractor for the kids. We used that tractor to go out and plow their acre of ground for cotton or corn or whatever they wanted. It was interesting! I never had a job I didn’t enjoy.
Then I ran for county superintendent. No one else would have it, and I was elected. Earlier, we had a fellow by the name of Clarence Tucker who was superintendent and had been for several years. He was a native of the county. One year, a young fellow who was a Baptist preacher, Ted Sisk, from Stephens County moved over to Banks County because he dated a girl from Banks County. He ran against Mr. Tucker and won. He and I surveyed the entire high school layout where we built the new high school. I became real close to Ted, and he became close to me. When his term was about over, I went by his office and said, “Ted, are you going to run again?” He said, “Why are you asking?” I said, “Well, if you don’t run, I’m going to run, but I won’t run against you.” He said, “Well, I’m not going to run, but don’t you tell anybody.” I didn’t tell anyone until qualifying day, and I went in and gave my check. That was all it cost—the entry fee—because no one tried to run against me.
I missed the kids more than anything else after I became superintendent. Before that, I’d take them camping every summer. We had a little canteen at the school there, and we’d open it at recess and lunch and sell Cokes and candy. We made enough money to buy a truck. We had a small truck, and then we bought a ton and a half. When we did that, I could haul the whole chapter at one time—twenty, almost thirty boys. They’d bring in groceries from home, and we’d go camp out for a week. I’d get pup tents off of the war surplus, and I had enough for every camper. We’d do our own cooking. I’d take those boys to a movie one night—just load them up on that big old truck and take off. That’s what we also used to haul steers to Atlanta for the cattle shows. I enjoyed the high school boys about as much as anything.
I stayed there as county superintendent for three and a half years, then the state board of education had me come to Atlanta. I issued teachers’ certificates for ten months. Then I was director of vocational education for the state and built area technical schools like Lanier Tech and most of the buildings over in Clarkesville at North Georgia Tech.
Then, in the fall of 1965, the governor called me and said, “Dr. Purcell is going to retire, and if you would like to have the job, we want you to be state superintendent. He’s got one year left. During that year you’ll have to run for the office.” That summer I had to run for the office statewide, but no one would have it, and I was elected. In January 1966, I became state superintendent. I went in as Dr. Purcell went out. I only had an opponent one time in sixteen political years. I beat him in his own county.
The state of Georgia didn’t have a school building program till the fifties. I’d get appropriations to allot funds to local systems based on the state board policies. I got special education and the arts funded, too, and I also introduced a bill to provide school-bus drivers with state insurance and retirement, and it passed. Georgia was the first state to pass funding for the school lunch program with state money. My school lunch lady, Josephine Martin, came to me and said, “There’s not enough federal money. We can’t have a decent meal with that. We need some more money.” I said, “Well, Congress is not appropriating enough.” She said, “We can get state money, maybe?” We introduced a bill, and we got state money—so much per meal served.
About the time I left was the time Jimmy Carter got his finger into education and tried to get my job appointed by the governor rather than elected by the people. I took the position that the people had children in school and the position was too important to let one man make the decision—the people ought to elect the superintendent.
I went to Washington one time to see Senator Sam Irvin of North Carolina. He and his committee wanted me there to talk about federal involvement in the state education program. What had happened was that we were getting so many reports on the amount of money we were receiving from the federal government. It was terrible. We had about seven, eight percent of federal funds coming into education, but we had stacks and stacks of forms we had to fill out—teacher, principal, local superintendent, then myself—I had to consolidate all that and send it to Washington. I got all those forms with blanks and made a copy of them, put a red ribbon around them, and caught an early-bird plane to Washington to Senator Sam’s committee. When I sat down in a chair, he said to the whole audience, “What’s that you have there, Superintendent?” I said, “This is the red tape that the U.S. Office of Education sends out and gathers.” He said, “Well, what do they do with it?” I said, “Well, I asked one time, and the man who answered my question took me into a room and showed me where they stacked them on shelves in that little room. They stayed there and gathered dust.” It bothered him. That really got to the U.S. commissioner of education. You see, when the Congress passes a bill and the president signs it, it then goes back to that agency for the agency to hire the lawyers and everything to try and determine what the bill said. By the time the lawyers and the staff got through adding rules and regulations, we had an undue amount of regulation. For instance, civil rights were coming with integration. We had to keep records there for a while that if there was any discipline problem involved with a
minority student, we had to keep that person’s name and the date that they had complained, what it was about, and send the reports to Washington. There were only seventeen states that had to do that, just southern states. The way Congress passed the bill, it only included the seventeen states. I mentioned to Senator Sam’s committee that day that “we’ll solve the integration problem in Georgia before you do in Boston and Chicago and New York and Los Angeles.” It wasn’t long until there were demonstrations in Boston after Georgia schools had successfully integrated.
I guess the biggest challenge I faced was trying to work around with Lester Maddox when we had integration. He didn’t want the schools to integrate. He said, “You don’t mix hawks and crows,” and shook his head. I guess working with him was probably one of the most difficult things I had to do. I’ll have to say this for Lester: He was the easiest governor to work with, at the same time, because if he told you something, you could bet on him doing it. He kept his word. If he said, “I’ll do so and so,” he’d do it. If he said, “No,” he’d fight you tooth and toenail.
PLATE 13 Mr. Nix served more than a decade as the Georgia state school superintendent.
I suspect a vocational tech program and kindergarten for little kids were the best things I have ever done. I may not ever be noted for it, but building all these vocational technical schools—there have been thousands of students who have gotten a job because they were able to go through a mechanics course or bricklaying, typing, or shorthand or biology. That’s one thing I am really proud of.
The other thing is having kindergartens. See, we had kindergartens in Atlanta and Columbus. That’s all. They paid for it with local money. It was illegal for me to pay for it with state money when I was state superintendent. I was in Israel, Tel Aviv, for the federal government. I was on a trip with seven other state superintendents for the government, and we didn’t have anything one morning, and I started walking around on the street. I ran into a little school and found out it was an elementary school; they had a kindergarten. I went in and sat down in that classroom all morning, watching what the teacher and the students were doing. When I came back to the States, we had a state board meeting, and I told the state board about it. I said, “It’s amazing what those little kids can learn, how fast they pick up stuff at that time. We need to have kindergartens all over the state for everybody.” What I argued with the legislature, when I was trying to get kindergarten through, was that the way it is now, the children all come to first grade and, without kindergarten, it’s hard to keep them all in the seats for the first month. It takes about a month to get them all to sit down at the same time. I said, “This is a readiness program. We’re getting them ready to learn. It’s not necessarily teaching the three Rs, but they will probably get some of that, and they will learn their colors and things like that.”
The state board finally passed it, and I put it in my budget for the next appropriations and the governor kicked it out—Jimmy Carter kicked it out the first time. Then, the next time, Jimmy was still governor, and Maddox was lieutenant governor. Maddox helped me keep it in the budget. We got it in the budget at one-fourth the amount needed per year for four years. When I retired, I got the last fourth. That was for all children. I couldn’t have done it if they had given me all the money to start with because I didn’t have enough teachers or classrooms. I had to get that ready.
I retired in August of 1977 when I was fifty-five years old. I had been on the road and, as you can see [shows me his notes], I would write as I would ride around. My writing shows it, too. I retired and moved up to Gainesville, Georgia, because there were a lot of medical facilities there, and I knew I was getting older. I built a house and lived in it for three years, then I bought half of my daddy’s farm here in Cleveland and built this house; I’ve been here since 1982. I started with a herd of cattle till Ruby had a pacemaker put in, then I sold all the cows. I just devoted my time to looking after her because she has had two open-heart surgeries and can’t do a whole lot of cooking or anything like that. So that’s pretty well my eighty-nine years!
“But he was a stinker, that boy of mine.”
~An interview with Lillie Billingsley~
I never would have guessed one person could be so interesting until I met Lillie Billingsley. She welcomed my teacher, Mrs. Holly Cabe, and me into her home in Scaly Mountain, North Carolina, with open arms. Mrs. Billingsley was so kind to us that day—something that I will never forget. She relived her childhood and shared ninety-one years of memories with us, including some of the ways young people had fun “back in the day.”
—Viola Nichols
I was born the nineteenth of August in the year 1914. When I was born, I was born over there in Blue Valley. I don’t know how long we lived there. I guess I’ve lived here in Scaly, North Carolina, about sixty-five years, right here in this house. We was doing good back then. All of us young people were ’tending the churches; we didn’t have much places to go in them days like y’all do now, so we went to church right down here. [She points down the road.] We’d just have a ball down there because we didn’t understand their kind of religion. They did some funny things down there; their religion down there was always different from ours. They used to get up and dance, and some of them would just fall out in the floor. The women, they’d usually bring wraps and lay them down in the back of the church, and when they’d take them fall-out spells, this old lady, she’d get the coats and the wraps off the wall and lay them over the women.
PLATE 14 “Jim and me, we didn’t have a car; we walked everywhere we went.” Lillie Billingsley in 2006
I didn’t know nothing about it, and I still don’t know nothing about it. Course, I don’t mean nothing by it, and I love everybody. We just went to cut up and have us a big time; everyone did it. We didn’t go for nothing bad; we just went to see and be seen, if you will, and to have a good time, and we did. We really had a good time down there.
Now, some of the boys was pretty rude. They’d get out around the sides of the church, and lots of them drank back in those days, too, and they’d look through the windows and make ugly faces at the church members inside. Some of them would throw things through the windows. Some of the church members would get up there and get to shoutin’ like they do down at the church, and them boys would throw things through the windows at them. A lot of the boys would sit on the back row and drink. They would get their little half-pint bottle out of their pockets and take ’em a drink. Then they would put it back in their pocket. We was just there for a ball—just a good time.
My son, Jimmy, pulled a big joke down there one time. He was the biggest thang you ever seen; he was the cutest thang. He was full of life and fun, and he wanted to enjoy himself, and he did so. He would put on a dress and the whole thang, and he’d get a brassiere [she motions to her chest] and make him some boobies, and then he’d go to church. At church there was a man that liked the women awful good, and he’d run after any one of them that would even look at him, and those that didn’t look at him, he’d chase them, too! And Jimmy, he’d go to church down there. But he was a stinker, that boy of mine—he was a stinker indeed! And, boy, was he good-looking, that boy of mine. But I thought all my children was good-looking, so it don’t make no difference. Anyway, Jimmy dressed up like a girl, and he decided to play a trick on this man that liked the women real good. So Jimmy would wave, real shy-like, at the man that liked the women, and the man would just perk up and look at Jimmy and smile. Jimmy just kept it going. He would peek around the corners at the man and just wave. He had the man chasing him all over Scaly. The man would foller [follow] Jimmy up the road and down the road.
Dolly [Mrs. Billingsley’s sister] married Dub. Jim [Mrs. Billingsley’s husband] and Dub were brothers, so sisters married brothers. It’s about all the same thing; she married Dub just like I did Jim. I was married, I guess, three months before Dolly was. Jim and I were married at the courthouse in Franklin, North Carolina. Jim and me, we didn’t have a car; we walke
d everywhere we went, but we didn’t have to walk up to Franklin. We rode with the justice of the peace. After the wedding, he brought us back here to Georgia, and then we walked right up that old rough mountain to the Mud Creek Country. On the way, there was a place they called the Devil’s Den with big rocks. We come by that and stopped and looked at it, then walked on up to the neighbor’s house to just stop and rest a while. John Carpenter’s house is where we stopped, and he and his family wanted us to spend the night, so we did. We spent the night that night, and then we walked all day the next day, and we come on up to where my mother and father lived.
PLATE 15 “I liked Jim the best; he was a sweetheart.” Jim and Lillie Billingsley in 1957
We stayed with them for all that summer, and I remember they helped us get started. My daddy said, “I got a good farm and plenty of land and all the plows and everything you need; you can tend all the land you want to tend. You’ll get everything free, and that’ll get what you need to get a house and stuff and get you started.” That was from the ground up, you know. He did; he gave us that land, and we grew potatoes that year, and we had a big turnout of cabbage. We had a little old Ford truck that we used to haul the cabbage on down to Georgia.
We bought us two beds—two little iron beds—and a kitchen buffet. We made our own mattresses. It was fun to do because everybody back in those days was in poverty. One feller didn’t feel no better than the other because nobody had any food to eat, and that’s how it really was. We got on our feet. Mama gave me pots and pans from her house and some things out of her pantry to help us get started on. I didn’t know much about cooking, but we got by.
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