Fairfield High School (Fairfield, S.C.)--Alumni and alumnae--Interviews
Students--South Carolina--Fairfield County (S.C.)--Social life and customs
Segregation in education--South Carolina--History
Hazel Pearson was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina in the early 1950s. She was raised in a very close-knit community, where everyone looked out for one another. She attended Gordon Elementary School, and Fairfield High School. When integration came, she remembers actively choosing to remain at Fairfield, though several of her friends chose to attend Winnsboro High School, the formerly all white high school in Winnsboro. After graduating high school, she went to college, and then worked first for Fairfield County Schools, then for the town of Winnsboro as the Director for Business Licenses and Utilities for thirty-six years. This oral history interview with Hazel Pearson on October 26, 2017 includes discussion on growing up in Winnsboro, South Carolina, her primary and secondary school experiences, segregation and integration, the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) student activist group, African American voting rights, African Americans holding political office in Fairfield County, Fairfield High School, 'Brown v. Board of Education' decision, being an active voice in implementing programs for at-risk youth, her family's expectations about education, her maternal grandparents, the differences in education past to present, her son's education, changes schools should make in regard to teaching African-American history, her ninety-five year old aunt who lives with her, Hazel Pearson's experiences as a woman during the Civil Rights era, the kinds of gender differences apparent to her during the mid-century era, working for the Town of Winnsboro as an African American woman in the 1970s, and race relations in general today.