Honoring Black History Month: Dr. Liz White’s journey

**(Dr. Liz White reviewing “A Gathering of Old Men” by Ernest Gaines at the Lincoln Parish Library)**

By Kyle Roberts

The lobby of the Lincoln Parish Library excites Dr. Liz White.

As she walks along the entrance way, she’s enamored with the decorations and books celebrating Black History Month. Dozens of books by black authors, paintings by black artists and traditional African garb adorning the entrance in the library.

“It’s so nice to see,” Dr. White said, deliberately taking time to soak in the visuals. Celebrating Black History Month is special for her.

Of course, it’s different from what she remembers growing up: as an elementary student in Jackson Parish back in the segregated 1950s, her teacher would have to take down any materials honoring black history in her classroom should the supervisor come make a scheduled visit.

Now eighty years-old, Dr. White has her own history to share as the first black instructor hired by Louisiana Tech University back in 1973– a journey that was forged in the heart of the battle for civil rights during her youth and a tenacity for wanting to be the very best educator she could possibly be.

“She was always a pusher and a seeker– always wanting to do more,” her cousin and mentor Aleane B. Hayes said. “She had meager beginnings, but she rose above all of that. And she’s still pushing the way she did back then. She’s just somebody who wanted to keep reaching high– and she did that.”

Born Lizzie Barnes in 1943, Dr. White was the fifth child to Edd and Oneda Barnes of Pleasant Grove, La., a small country community in Jackson Parish southwest of Jonesboro that she adores to this day, despite now living in Ruston for over three decades. Her father Edd was a pulp wood contractor, while mother Oneda stayed at home. The family lived on an 80-acre farm, where Dr. White remembers picking potatoes, peas, cotton, corn and peanuts among other produce.

She would go on to attend Jackson High School, the all-black school that shaped young minds on Beech Springs Road in Jonesboro. Her senior year, Dr. White would be part of the state championship girls basketball team for the Jackson High Wa-Ha’s, though there is still a sense of bittersweetness in her recounting all these years later.

“One of the most disappointing things despite winning the championships was that we wanted to go down to Baton Rouge like other teams had done,” Dr. White said. “We had never been down south before. And where was the playoff? Grambling. We had hardly ever gotten away from our doorsteps.”

Following her graduation in 1961, Dr. White would marry Charlie White, a saw mill worker from Bienville Parish, who would later go on to retire from the Stone Container plant in Hodge, La.

Charlie, along with White’s brother Harvey, were two of the founding members of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a civil rights movement that began in Jackson Parish and soon spread throughout the nation during the fight for equality.

During these times of civil unrest and shortly after marrying, Dr. White would begin her higher education path in the fall semester of 1962 at Grambling College, where she would commute for four years back and forth, and in the midst of becoming a new mother, too, to Don José, born the same year in January.

There was never a doubt for Dr. White– her destiny would always be an educator, especially given her relationship with her previously mentioned cousin Aleane, who was an educator and nearly a decade her senior.

“She had majored in English at Grambling, and she was an English teacher,” Dr. White said. “She was playing a major role in our community– mentoring the young girls and everybody in the community. She was adored as the “educated” person in the community.

“She was so articulate and very business minded. I wanted to be like that. She did a lot of training in our church with plays or reading poems– she wanted to make sure you did it correctly.”

Hayes credits their parents for setting the tone for the importance of education in their family.

“Our parents were instrumental in that,” Hayes said. “They realized education would set us free, and they instilled that in us.”

Dr. White also credits an English teacher she had growing up, Mrs. Ruth Bonner, for instilling confidence in herself by having her help with other kids in class with writing and spelling.

So for four years, Dr. White commuted five days a week from Jackson Parish to Grambling College– nearly sixty miles there-and-back and finally graduated in May of 1966 with a bachelor’s in English Education, a minor in Social Studies, and a certification in Library Science. In the midst, she become a mother of two– her second son Adrian was born in September of 1963.

Now out of school (for the first time), Dr. White would then take a job as an English teacher at that all-black Pinecrest High in Winn Parish in the fall of 1966.

Two years would go by, and Dr. White would get an incredible opportunity funded by an endowment for the humanities grant: an entire summer in 1968 in Manhattan, Kansas, at Kansas State University, where a village of family helping would be critical as Dr. White was away from husband and sons.

“It was the first time I had ever left home,” Dr. White said. “I flew, and it was my first airplane. It was another country for me. A real culture shock– we didn’t see anything in Louisiana like what I saw there. The campus was so diverse. There were people from all over.”

Don José remembers the family all stepping up during his mother’s educational pursuits and how it shaped him as a young man.

“We were caught between not only my mom’s education, but my dad’s career, as well,” Don José said, who was five-years-old at the time. “We were the classic kids that were shuttled between grandparents; during the time she was in Manhattan, we lived with my maternal grandparents. And then when she was completing her master’s degree, we lived with my paternal grandparents. We had a mixture of experiences.

“It made being Dr. White’s son challenging but also fulfilling. Challenging in the sense that anytime your mom is gone, kids have a reaction to that. But it’s also fulfilling in that we had a chance to be in some different environments; we made new friends and new connections we wouldn’t have had. It was enriching on the one hand, but challenging on the other.”

In between her time at Grambling College and then Northwestern State in 1969, Dr. White would be moved from Pinecrest to Winnfield Senior High School, due to that state of Louisiana requiring integration and finally honoring the landmark ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.

“I was one of three teachers that had to leave Pinecrest to go to Winnfield Senior High,” Dr. White said. “It was almost like a nightmare. I became ill at one point because there was so much pressure. You knew you weren’t wanted there, and you had to be there to keep your job. And you were treated like you weren’t wanted.”

Dr. White started off teaching ninth grade English and tenth grade government at Winnfield Senior High, while spending hours helping in the library, though she felt as if there was no focus on the areas of which she was teaching.

“I knew I wanted to advance my education, because I knew I couldn’t stay where I was,” Dr. White said. “So I started working on my master’s.”

Credits earned during her trip to K-State would transfer to Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, La., where Dr. White would earn her M.A. in English in May of 1973.

Dr. White fondly remembers her time at Northwestern State, as both student and graduate assistant, and is exceptionally proud of her master’s thesis, believing her education would finally put her on an optimal career path in Winn Parish.

Sadly, it would not be that way.

“I had been able to teach college freshman at Northwestern State, and it was a big boost and motivator for me,” Dr. White said, admitting that at the time she had never considered teaching at the university level. “When I got back to Winnfield Senior High the summer after I graduated (with my master’s), I was flying high. I had written a master’s thesis– most people did not write the thesis; they took extra hours to fulfill the requirements. But I really wanted to improve my writing.”

Her topic was on W. B. Yates’ poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” with a focus on allusion and context. Unsurprisingly, she made an A. When she received her grade, she was ready to come back to the principal at Winnfield High and talk about her career path moving forward. And despite her protestations, she was given vocational English to teach.

That was the end of her career at Winnfield High.

“That ran me away,” Dr. White said. “It was a slap in the face.”

So Dr. White turned her attention northward — to Louisiana Tech University’s English department. Louisiana Tech had only in recent years begun to accept black students: James Earl Potts in the spring of 1965 and Bertha Bradford-Robinson a few months later.

Never lost on Dr. White, both students were from Jackson Parish, with Bradford-Robinson attending the same church as Dr. White: Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church. And in response to Louisiana Tech accepting both Potts and Bradford-Robinson, both of their home churches were burned to the ground on the same night (Potts’ home church was Bethany Baptist Church in Quitman, La.) on Sunday, Jan. 17, 1965.

“My sons asked me what made me think I could get a job at Louisiana Tech,” Dr. White said. “I felt so prepared to teach after my time at Grambling College, and I just felt so good about myself after getting my advanced degree at Northwestern State.”

Dr. White knew she would stand face-to-face with a giant barrier at the time: Louisiana Tech had never employed a black faculty member at any level. Still, there would be no stopping her.

“I had the fortitude because I had come out of the civil rights movement in Jonesboro,” Dr. White said. “We were breaking down all kinds of barriers; it had gotten in my blood. I was ready to knock down another one.

“I’m going to ask for it– even if I don’t get it, I’m going to ask.”

And ask she did. Dr. White called the chairman of the English department, Robert C. Snyder, on the phone.

“I said a few things to him,” Dr. White said. “I told him my name and where I was from. I told him I just completed my masters of arts degree in English at Northwestern State. And I made an A on my written thesis.

“Then I said, ‘I’d like to teach for you.’ And I’ll never forget his words: he said, ‘You sound interesting. Why don’t you come up and talk with me?'”

So the whole White family loaded up for the drive to Ruston, and Charlie, Don José and little Adrian sat outside George T. Madison Hall while Dr. White had her interview with Snyder.

“He was very gracious to me,” Dr. White said. “It was extraordinary, because I wasn’t expecting that kind of welcoming spirit. He asked me several questions, and I was starting to feel like this man was genuine. I started to really open up and express what I thought and what my feelings were and what I had done.

“He said, ‘Well, you have the job.'”

Dr. White credits Snyder for his courage to be willing to hire the first black instructor at Louisiana Tech, right on the spot, no less. And in the Fall Quarter of 1973, Dr. White began what would be an illustrious career at the university, despite still facing hurdles as the only black faculty member amongst her all-white colleagues at the time. She remembers her first few months as “quiet” in regards to how people were receiving her overall.

“There were two or three faculty members that were very open and supportive, particularly the females in the room,” Dr. White said. “I was busy making sure I did what I needed to do. We knew as African Americans, we had to do more than enough, so that’s what I was busy trying to do.”

Over time, Dr. White would continue to climb the ranks within the English department– moving to assistant professor in 1977. Not one to ever remain complacent, Dr. White would then earn her doctorate from Northeast Louisiana University (now UL-Monroe) in December of 1982. She then was promoted to associate professor in 1987, and her full professor promotion finally came in 1996.

And as rightfully proud of her educational accomplishments as she is, Dr. White beams when she talks about being the editor of the “Active Voice” from 1987-1995, which was the quarterly-published newsletter of the Louisiana Association for College Composition and distributed to English teachers statewide.

“It created a different attitude about me and my ability to perform in my field,” Dr. White said. “Whenever I got it published, it went out to universities throughout the state and I’d always fill my colleagues’ mailboxes with the newsletters so they knew it had been published.”

Don José recognizes that pride she has in the newsletter, too.

“She had a tremendous amount of fulfillment out her time serving as the editor,” he said. “It gave her a chance to participate in journalism, editing and publishing. That was something that African Americans, in general, and professors in her area had not had very many opportunities to do those kinds of things. She was a trailblazer.”

A trailblazer, indeed, Dr. White would then create and teach the first course ever in African American Literature at Louisiana Tech and started an initiative to establish the course as a permanent listing in the English department’s curriculum. And after years of teaching and having numerous papers and articles published in professional journals, she would finally retire from teaching in May of 2000. From there, she would go on to work for 19 years as a tax professional at H&R Block in Ruston, allowing her to live a different life from the one before in the teaching profession.

In her decades of service to Louisiana Tech, she saw change at the university following her landmark hire with the consideration for more diverse applicants.

“I saw (Louisiana Tech) picking up other people of color for staff, though not as much in academia at the time as I would have liked,” Dr. White said. “But the atmosphere was more relaxed, and it’s continued to improve. It almost has to, because once you see the train moving forward, you have to jump on.”

And while retired, her love for education has not stopped — it just looks different now. A member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Dr. White founded the Ruston chapter of Grambling University National Alumni Association, served as president of Jackson High School National Alumni Association, and since September of 2017, she now serves as president of Lincoln Parish Retired Educators.

She sponsored a book club and hosted discussions in Union, Bienville, Lincoln and Jackson parishes and was very involved with the NAACP Ruston branch for many years. In 2023, Dr. White and other members of the community started the now-defunct Coalition Against School Closures in a response to a bond proposal that would consolidate elementary schools in Ruston. Most recently, Dr. White was the featured speaker for a book review at the Lincoln Parish Library on Thursday, Feb. 22, and Friday, Feb. 23 of this year.

She was asked about how proud she was looking back 50 years ago to her hire.

“I’m very much proud to look back,” Dr. White said in conclusion. “Mr. Snyder called me after my first day of class and asked ‘How did it go?’

“I told him how it went, and he said to me ‘You’re breaking a lot of ice. Don’t ever forget that.'”

A list of some of Dr. White’s accomplishments is below: