Oral history interview with Loistine Defreece, February 16, 1991

Loistine Defreece discusses her position as principal of Lumberton High School in Robeson County, NC. She responds to the interviewers' checklist of questions, sharing the details of her leadership style, emphasizing her commitment to curriculum development, and describing her efforts to forge relationships with students in order to make them better citizens. Defreece started teaching in integrated schools in the 1960s, so she does not believe that desegregation affected her career a great deal. Her boundary crossing came years later, when she became Lumberton's first black female principal. She seems to purposely avoid talking about race, preferring instead to focus on the challenges of educational leadership outside of a racial context. She does worry, however, about "losing" male black students, who cause a disproportionate number of discipline problems. She concludes the interview with a call to black men to act as role models. This interview is not particularly rich, but Defreece's thoughts on race and education might be useful to researchers interested in race in a post-desegregation environment.