School Day

"I was in the Glee club, basketball.  I was a majorette.  I was also a cheerleader.  That kept me busy."-Midge Thomas

"Every April, we had a music festival.  It was just our school."- Midge Thomas

"When I was a cheerleader, we went to North Hagerstown, South Hagerstown, Catonsville.  We had to go with the team to cheer.  We never played any white teams."  Midge Thomas

"I attended the old RobertMotonSchool for three years, and we had outhouses there, and if you think about today [very cold!] and having to go outside, that wouldn’t be very good."- Midge Thomas

"One of the highlights of my life was when I was able to finally go to Robert Moton High School.  I started Robert Moton high school in 1935.  Going to high school, for me, was something important.  A lot of people in the community I grew up with considered themselves having finished school when they graduated from elementary school.  At the time, elementary school was grades 1 through 7.  So to go to high school made you a special person in my community.  I grew up in a little community in southern Carroll county called White Rock, which was about three miles from Sykesville.  I had never heard of Taneytown.  That was, as far as I was concerned, on the other side of the world.  At that time, whether you know it or not, Taneytown was the second largest incorporated town in CarrollCounty.  Westminster was the largest, but Taneytown was a long ways from Sykesville." - Sydney Sheppard

“To go to high school made you a special person back then” –Sydney Sheppard

“It made me feel good that there was a new high school”- Sydney Sheppard

“There was no need for Robert Moton High school in Carroll County if there was integration. We never had 75 students” – Sydney Sheppard

"My happiest moment?  I had many good moments at Robert Moton…"- Bill Dixion

"We had old torn up books that the white kids had, that Mr. Janus brought to us.  And you would have maybe the introduction, and then maybe you’d go to page five or ten, and  maybe the next page wouldn’t be there again…so you would have to sort of figure out what was in between., or maybe the girl beside you would have the pages you didn’t have, so you would have to lean over and look at that girl’s page…"- Irene Brown

"[The ripped books] were very frustrating, because not only did the teachers have to figure out what we were going to read the next day, we had to figure it out, too.  We always had to improvise… “Jack ran—where--the house over here is blue—that’s another page—and you just had to read in between the lines, what was supposed to go there."- Irene Brown

"[In the school on Church Street] we had first grade to the third grade—and we had Miss Shockley’s room, and then we had Mr. Lee’s room, which ran from fourth to the seventh—and then we graduated."- Irene Brown

"In sewing class, [my sisters and I] could not use the electric machines—we had to use the treadle machines, which I could not use—it always went backwards, instead of forwards.  [The treadle sewing machine] is one where you use the treadles, just like you would use a bicycle."- Irene Brown

"We had English, we had math, we had reading, we had writing…we had civics, we had music…

We did not have a foreign language—we were lucky if we got past English, because our English teacher was really good! You did not get out of there without knowing what she had for you to learn that day!  She was very strict.  She would have a lesson for you every day…she would teach you, like swim, swam, and swum…"-Irene Brown

"We had algebra, and dividing, and addition…and every other year, we had geometry. When my year came up, we didn’t get geometry.  We had homework from each of the [four or five] classes we had that day—and it wasn’t just one sentence! In civics, they were supposed to be teaching us world history and geography…"- Irene Brown

"My cousin and I got in trouble one day, for writing up my brother’s work for him.  He was supposed to stay in after school, and do the work…He told her to pick up the piece of paper [he threw it on the floor] herself!  Of course, I went home and told…and he got in trouble.  She told him to stay after school, and he said, “We’ll see.”.   She went and stood at the door where we were to go out, and she forgot that the window was open.  There stood a piano over here, and the window was behind the piano.  And my brother had his bicycle tied on the outside of that window.When she walked down to the door to block him from coming out, he jumps out the window, gets on his bicycle, and goes about his business!"- Irene Brown

"The only gym exercise at the old Robert Moton was when we had  field day.  We had track and flag relay and dodge ball. Field day was a great day.  Schools from all over CarrollCounty would come.  We would have teams, and play Volleyball with different teams, and I think most of the time Robert Moton came ahead of the other schools.  We played Hooksville and some of the other schools. It was a big day, an all day thing."-Charlotte Franklin