To understand this is to understand the ethnic philosophies and approaches to education.
Our family was part of a community of those whom would be called WASPs today ; that is, "white, Anglo-Saxon protestants."
To the English, education had long been something for the elite and the aristocracy, and not necessary for the masses.
This mindset had come to the English settlements and have not been entirely overcome in the first one-and-a-quarter centuries of the new nation.
In contradistinction, for instance, people of German origin viewed education as a responsibility a community had for all its children.
German emigrants established their settlements by first dedicating property for a school, and their laying our their town around it.
Starting a school per se was an early priority for such settlements whereas Anglo-Saxons town depended more on the haphazard thrust of market forces.
At the turn of the century Greenville still depended on private academies.
Grandmother's brother-in-law came to establish such a school, and our grandfather's mother and grandfather had spent their working years in such pursuit.
It was at this juncture that a giant strode on the stage of North Carolina.
-13-
