Feb. 4, 2008

From the Depression to Civil Rights to today

Believe in yourself: Pellissippi State professor’s life inspires students, faculty

By Sharon Littlepage

Growing up black and poor in rural East Tennessee at the tail end of the Great Depression, young Robert Boyd didn’t feel, as he puts it, “tragically colored.”

“Yes, segregation was inconvenient at times, but I was not depressed about my so-called poverty, or that I was an orphan,” he said. “I was raised by other family members who loved me. They were remarkably resilient and demonstrated a strong work ethic that I practice to this day.”

Boyd is an associate professor of English at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. His story is imbued with an invincible spirit that echoes the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s impassioned “I Have a Dream” speech.

“I’m living my dream,” said Boyd. “I’ve reached the pinnacle of my career, because I’m doing what I love, which is teaching at the college level.”

But the road to becoming a college professor wasn’t easy.

“We were poor, but everybody was,” he said. “When my father couldn’t find work in East Tennessee, he went up North to get a job. That meant leaving my mother, my little sister, Ruth, and me behind.”

Months went by and little money came in. Ultimately, Boyd’s mother made the difficult decision to place Robert and Ruth in a Presbyterian children’s home. The following year, the children moved in with uncles Kenneth and Paul Brabson, who eked out a living by farming in Sevier and Blount counties. Kenneth also had a full-time job at Alcoa Aluminum Company. Thirty-five years and he never missed a day of work. All of the children—Robert and Ruth and the uncles’ four younger siblings—worked in the fields, so there was always food on the table.

Boyd vividly remembers the first time he had money to spend. One day after a recital at the tiny elementary school he attended for “colored” children, a Sevier County school official dropped five shiny pennies in his hand. The 6-year-old promptly purchased two red lollipops—one for himself and one for Ruth.

Eventually, Robert and Ruth were reunited with their mother, and she took them to Knoxville to live in what was known as Drew’s Alley near the Old City.

Perhaps the lowest point in Boyd’s life was being homeless, even sleeping in boxcars for a time. To earn money, he collected discarded boxes.

“I was paid a nickel or a dime for each box.” He spent the money to buy food.

Looking back, Boyd credits family values and an inner strength for keeping him on the straight and narrow path.

“I never stole or begged,” he said. “We were taught coping mechanisms and, above all, not to hate.”

Even in 1955, when he had to sit in the back of the bus in his Army uniform, coming home from overseas, he says he wasn’t angry.

Three years earlier, Boyd had enlisted to get his high school diploma after dropping out of Austin High School in East Knoxville. The military recognized his affinity for language, so he was trained as a cryptologist and assigned to a base near London. Upon discharge, he attended night classes at Jamaica High School in New York City to prepare for the G.E.D., which he passed with flying colors.

Troubling Times

In pre-Civil Rights era Knoxville, the University of Tennessee, like most universities, did not accept black students. So Boyd chose to stay in New York, where he joined the New York City Fire Department full time and enrolled part time at Queens College across the street.

Late in the evening of August 27, 1963, Boyd got a call from fire department headquarters to report for duty at 3 o’clock the next morning. The assignment: Board one of three buses headed for Washington, D.C., about three hours away, for a Civil Rights march. 

Organizers of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had anticipated a large crowd, and they needed extra security.

“I didn’t know anything about Civil Rights,” Boyd said. “And I had just gotten home from fighting a fire, so I was tired and wet. I didn’t really want to go.”

Early the next morning in D.C., Boyd and the other firefighters, along with a large contingent of NYC police officers, were given white paper hats, buttons that read “We Come for Jobs and Freedom” and armbands.

“We didn’t have weapons,” said Boyd. “We were trained as peace officers to help with crowd control, CPR, bombs and other tactics needed. The marchers didn’t know we were acting as security for the event.”

In a now-famous photo, standing about five feet from one of the last speakers, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Boyd appears in a crowd of black faces, many of them wearing the symbolic white hats.

 Watching King deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech that sweltering summer day at the Lincoln Memorial was a catalyst for Boyd, and from that moment forward, he says, he embraced the Civil Rights movement. 

“Freedom means equal rights. It wasn’t so much integration that we were after but desegregation. There’s a difference. For example, I don’t want anyone to tell me to sit at the back of the bus, but if I choose to sit at the back of the bus, that’s different. Let that choice be mine.”

Good times

After graduating from Queens College with a bachelor’s degree in English, Boyd went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University and a professional diploma in School Administration and Supervision from Long Island University, which certified him to be a principal or superintendent of schools. Along the way, he also met and married Stephanie, now his wife of 47 years, and the couple had three boys.

Out of school, Boyd worked first in Knoxville, then returned to New York for better pay. But he vowed to come home one day to East Tennessee, and 24 years later he did. In 1994, Pellissippi State offered him a position as an English instructor, so he and Stephanie returned to Knoxville.

Boyd’s mother, aunts, and uncles are gone now—many are buried in cemeteries next to the small “colored” churches he attended in his youth. Boyd continues to teach at the community college and is an active member of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. His autobiographical essay titled “Colored Me” was featured in the guild’s 2001 anthology called “Breathing the Same Air.”

“Prof Boyd inspires confidence,” said student Kara Moore. “He encourages us to keep going and to stay on task. One of his favorite quotes is, ‘We are here to be educated, not stuffed.’ He may not say what you want to hear, but he helps us recognize that we each have the tools we need to succeed, and then tries to guide us on how to use those tools.” 

Said Pellissippi State President Allen G. Edwards, “Robert Boyd is an excellent teacher. With his training and experience, he brings a unique perspective to his students and encourages them through literature and his own life’s lessons to expand their ideas about the world and how they fit into it.”  

Boyd is presently writing his autobiography, “A Letter to Martin.” In it, he will respond to Martin Luther King’s “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” 

“I want to answer from a personal perspective and tell what’s happened to me and my family since the Civil Rights Movement. We’ve come a long way. Let’s enjoy where we are.”

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