Transcript of full Charles Hayes interview

BY OLIVIA WINSLOW | olivia.winslow@newsday.com

My name is Charles B. Hayes. I'm going to be 85 years old Feb. 14. The B stands for Burnett. I lived in Morganza [La.] for a number of years. I moved about in Louisiana. One of the things that did happen to me, I wasn't drawn to it so much as -- it was something that I thought I could do -- education, being a teacher. My parents made sacrifices. Let me tell you, when I started going to school myself, there wasn't any opportunities at all for Negro children. One thing that had to happen was that they actually pay to have aunts and uncles to keep me in New Orleans ... That's the reason I got into it [education] ... it's the one place I could get a kind of education because of what was available. But getting in there and finding out how badly they were being taught and how little people were genuinely interested, I decided I was going to hang with it. It became a kind of profession, not that I was prepared to do it or that I had even thought of keeping with it, it was something that I thought had to be done.

Q: But when did you decide that you were going to become an educator, and were you still in Louisiana?

Hayes: Yes, I was still in Louisiana, but let me just tell you it was something that happened gradually. It wasn't something that was dramatic and that sort of thing. It happened gradually. The more I met those children and the more I saw how their backgrounds were, and the kinds of things that happened to black youngsters did not make any sense to me. So, what I did was, here they were with 46 schools in Pointe Coupee Parish Louisiana, because everybody walked to school. The white kids all rode buses. They had seven beautiful buildings for white youngsters, but not for black youngsters. So it made a difference in the kinds of things that happened to black youngsters, and I thought that it was something we had to do something about. Now, of course, the parents of the black children were fearful about standing up and requiring things. They did things that were just, I don't know how you would describe it. The Pointe [Coupee] Parish school board required them to have fish frys, cookouts, to secure the materials to build these one- and two- and three-room schools, that's what they had to do. And then they had to deed it over to the parish. I was educated in the schools of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. I even stayed at a boarding school run by missionaries from New York.

Q: How old were you when you decided that education was going to be your vocation because you were frustrated by how blacks were educated?

Hayes: As I said to you, it was something that was gradual. It was something that happened gradually as I began to realize here's a place I can give of myself and do some things that would be helpful and at the same time -- see these great parents of mine, my father never saw the inside of a high school, and my mother never graduated from high school. But here were people who had this mission and they got me through by sending me off to live with relatives.

Q: Let's fast forward. In 1964, you're on Long Island. You are named as principal of Prospect Elementary School in Hempstead. News accounts at the time characterize you as the first black principal of a public school, certainly in Nassau County, and possibly on LI. What did that mean to you and do you think to the larger African- American community here in Nassau County at the time, 1964?

Hayes: I think it was a lot of mixed things thrown out. I have to precede this by telling you that I lived and worked in Delaware. I was invited to come and run a school in Wilmington, Delaware, and going there is where I learned a lot about how schools could be run and should be run ... And when I was invited, after having gone to Columbia University Teachers College to work on my doctorate, I decided that this was the thing to do because I could go and give of myself in a larger arena, not realizing going into the public schools in Wilmington, Del., and then to the schools in Hempstead would be a sort of curtailing of my efforts because they were going to put limits on me as to what I could do and when I could do them.

Q: Do you consider education a form of activism and if so, why? Why did you become this kind of an activist, an educator who obviously has a goal.

Hayes: How did I decide, what about what happened to me gave me the impetus or the feeling that I could do this? I have to tell you that the impetus came from my maternal grandmother, who's one of the most outspoken people you ever wanted to meet ... that was the thing that drove me. If you have any courage at all you do the things that you feel strongly about. That's the thing that drove me. When I came to Hempstead, the principals were all very quiet and subtle and that sort of thing. And here I'm speaking about why are things -- the materials, for example, were shortchanged in the black schools in Hempstead ... there's no direct line, there's no picture. What you have there is somebody who kind of is your driving force who stands back. By this time she [his grandmother] had died.

Q: Describe some of the difficulties you encountered in being a trailblazer as the first black principal in Nassau County.

Hayes: So you want me to talk about the kind of barriers and the kind of things that I experienced and the things I had problems with and that sort of thing in becoming the first black principal. The truth of the matter is I never thought about my being the first black principal. What I thought about was what do I do to make this school an open place for black kids to learn and to get on. As I said to you earlier, the kids who were coming through my school led things over at the high school [in later years]. And they came from the least economically well-off school in the district. And that's a fact. But it's because we did things to make them feel as though their talents were as good as anybody else's. We did that sort of thing. I took my kids to the village courts, 7th and 8th graders, they went to the village courts to see the kinds of things that happened to black people. The trials and that sort of thing. I did that because I wanted them to see what happened to black people when you get to court. And I wanted them to get the feel for it and get the sense that they had something to say about that. I invited people, for example, a woman who was a movie star, to come talk to my kids, to invite them to go to a studio in Long Island to see how moving pictures were made.

Q: You said you didn't think about being the first black principal. But I would imagine, especially back 40 some years ago, that other people may have had preconceived notions about what you and the black children you were supervising could do.

Hayes: A&S was a big department store, the most prominent department store in Hempstead. A black woman who had been a teacher in the school that I took over before I took it over, left. And I met her in A&S one day and, in front of all the whites in the store, she said, 'Why in the hell don't you go back where you came from. We have good white principals here, we don't need you.' That's the lecture I got from her.

Q: What was your response?

Hayes: What the hell could I say? She walked away and left me standing there. I did say to her, 'Let's go outside and talk about this.' She said, 'Talk about what? I told you what I have to say, I've said my piece mister, I don't have to speak to you.' And she went away.

Q: Was there a difference in how white teachers related to black students as opposed to how black teachers related to black students?

Hayes: You want to know what kind of reactions there were [to] the black kids from white teachers? There were predominantly white teachers. I have to tell you it was a tough job because most of them, behind my back, fought me. They did things to make sure that they were not driven to do things where they would be criticized by their white colleagues. That was a fact. And I was aware of that. So there was not a heck of a lot I could do. Because when they went to teachers' meetings, look, let me just give you an example: At the hall, something like the Oddfellows, it wasn't Oddfellows, the military group that had a hall in Hempstead, and I have to tell you this is where they met. They called a meeting about me to see what they could do about me because I was causing problems for the other teachers by having these other people on the edge, the white teachers on the edge. 'What can we do? This man is getting these white teachers all upset.' They didn't know that I would be there. I went there and sat in the front row and waited. And the woman who was head of the teachers' association said, 'This meeting is not for you, Dr. Hayes. This meeting is for white teachers from these other schools and from the white teachers from your school. We don't have any special meeting for you.' [But he said] 'the meeting is about me and I'm going to stay here to defend myself. I'm not going away.' So they broke up the meeting.

Q: What were the white teachers at your school upset about? What were your policies they didn't like?

Hayes: The fact they were being asked to do things differently from what the other teachers would do. Examples of telling them that their [black students'] opportunities ought to be as good as anybody else's. That they should not be treated differently, they should not be downgraded, that the kinds and quality of things that went on in Prospect School ought to be the best there is. And I would go around to the classes and give examples of the kinds of things that I was doing.

Q: So you wanted teachers to encourage students. Was that a predominantly black student body at Prospect?