Mae Bertha Carter’s high-profile battle to end school segregation in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s led to her home being sprayed with bullets, but, ultimately, eight of her children graduated from the previously all-white Drew High School. Seven of her children went on to earn degrees from the University of Mississippi.
The Carter family’s lawsuit filed against Drew, Mississippi, schools in 1967, with the help of an NAACP legal team, struck final blows to segregation in Mississippi. The family’s story was chronicled in national news reports and is also the focus of the book Silver Rights by Constance Curry.
Mae Bertha Carter died in 1999 after a long life of community activism. The New York Times opted to write an obituary on the important civil rights movement figure. Today, a red maple tree named for her stands in the Lyceum Circle near Carrier Hall at Ole Miss. It’s appropriate because the matriarch was adamant she wanted all of her children to get their degrees from the university, her daughter, Deborah Carter Smith, said.
“She knew the University of Mississippi was the best university in the state and that’s where she wanted us to go,” she said. “I think about her all the time. She was proud of us, and she would let us know that we did well.”
Smith, who works as a senior accountant in the Ole Miss bursar’s office, is a 1981 graduate of the university who has worked at Ole Miss for 36 years. Her siblings Larry Carter, Stanley Carter, Gloria Carter Dickerson, Pearl Carter Green Owens, Beverly Carter and Carl Carter all attended Ole Miss.
Mae Bertha married Matthew Carter in 1939 and raised 13 children. The couple sharecropped on a plantation in Sunflower County.
The Civil Rights Act in 1964 effectively desegregated schools, but Mississippi enacted a “freedom of choice” law, which allowed black parents to be intimidated into keeping their kids from the white schools. It didn’t work on Mae Bertha Carter. In 1965, she and Matthew Carter enrolled their children in the local schools. The Carter kids became the only black students there.
After they broke the racial barrier, the owner of the plantation where the family lived and farmed cotton told the Carters they’d get a better education at then all-black schools. He asked them to withdraw. Mae Bertha Carter’s response was to put a record player out on her porch. She played one of President John F. Kennedy’s speeches on civil rights loud enough so the plantation owner could hear it while he spoke to Matthew Carter in the yard. She later referred to the plantation owner’s advice when talking to her husband, saying, “I birthed those children and bore the pain. He cannot tell me what to do about my children.”
The couple faced much opposition not just from the plantation owner but also from the community. Their home was shot up in the middle of the night. Eventually, they were even kicked off the plantation.
While the Carter kids were attending Drew schools, NAACP attorney Marian Wright Edelman represented the family in its challenge to the “freedom of choice” law, and they won the suit in 1969. This knocked down the final barrier to ending school segregation in Mississippi.
Their struggle to get an education and eventually overturn laws that allowed segregation created a tight bond between the Carters.
“After sharing that experience, we all became really, really close,” Deborah Carter Smith said. “We are still really close.”
Gloria Carter Dickerson enrolled in the Drew schools when she was in seventh grade. The Carter children had many bad days at school, but their mother would sing them “freedom songs” to lift their spirits. Pep talks were also common in the Carter home.
“We would hear all this bad talk,” Dickerson said. “We would hear them say how stupid we were. We didn’t fall for that because Mama would tell just us, ‘You are a great person.’ She let us know how special we were. Her words were powerful enough that we didn’t listen to the others.”
After five years, she graduated and enrolled in Ole Miss and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She became a certified public accountant. After a career with businesses and nonprofits, she retired in 2010 and moved back to Drew.
Gloria Carter Dickerson now runs the Mae Bertha Carter Learning Center in Drew and also the nonprofit We2gether Creating Change, which helps local students with the skills they need to attend college. Her conviction comes from the understanding that her mother was right about the importance of an education.
“She always said education is the key to a good quality of life,” Dickerson said. “My mother rubbed off on me. I believe what she said. Education helped me improve my life. We don’t live in poverty anymore.”
Pearl Carter Owens said receiving her Ole Miss degree allowed her to work for Energy Transfer Partners, which is a Fortune 500 natural gas and propane company, right out of college. She’s grateful her mother was adamant that she attend the university.
“I was recommended to this company by a friend,” Pearl Carter Owens said. “They asked me to come in for an interview. After I arrived, the manager took one look at me and said, ‘If you can get a degree from Ole Miss, I know you can do this job. The job is yours if you want it.’”
This May, she will have been with the company 40 years. She said she believes her mom’s pep talks played a big role in her success.
“My mother always told me how great I am,” she said. “She said when you begin to feel different, look in the mirror and say, ‘I am great.’ She was an amazing mom.”
She said she has always strived to be a supportive parent like her mother was.
Pearl Carter Owens’ daughter, Latoya Green, is an Oxford native, who earned a management information systems degree from Ole Miss in 2002. After college, she went to work in tech for Walmart and designed software for their checkout systems, and maintained it. Today, she works for Amazon.com, where she is responsible for performance of its global retail systems. She is based in Seattle.
She marvels at how much easier getting an education was for her when compared to her mother and the other Carter children in Drew. Latoya Green grew up admiring her grandmother and what she accomplished.
“She was one of the biggest role models in my life,” Green said. “She did so much for us to get here.”