Beatrice Green was born and raised in Carrollton, Alabama. The upper window of her hometown’s courthouse bears the ghostly face of Henry Wells, an ex-slave whose image was burned into a window on the top floor by a bolt of lightning in 1876 just before a mob dragged him from the courthouse and hung him for allegedly burning down the previous courthouse.

Just as the impression of Henry Well’s face still can be seen today in that courthouse window, so can the impact on St. Clair County that Mrs. Green contributed.

Mrs. Green, who celebrated her 90th birthday last week, was instrumental in assisting a great number changes in St. Clair County including the integration of the county’s school system and voting rights, as well as, directing the first Head Start preschool program.

She said that her parents John and Ruth Cook raised her and her nine siblings in a strict Christian home. She has remained a devoted Baptist all of her life and has attended First Baptist Church in Cropwell for 60 years.

She finished high school in Carrollton and from there went to Stillman College where she obtained her associates degree. She then went on to earn her bachelor’s as well as master’s degrees from Alabama State University.

In 1945, she met her future husband, Reverend O.W. Green, after he sought her out as she was standing behind a pillar trying to avoid being seen by the soldiers getting off of a bus. The couple married on December 7, 1946, the day of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

Reverend Green brought his bride back to Greensport. The couple lived there until 1950 when they settled on an 80-acre homestead in Cropwell. He would farm and preach while also working at Avondale Mills and she would travel each day to a school just up the road from her home to teach. The couple had two sons, Stanley and Jerome.

After the state of Alabama started funding African-American education in 1947, Mrs. Green took a job teaching at the St. Clair County Training School, which was housed where Duran South stands today.

She then became principal of Greenville Elementary School a short distance from her home.

Her two sons attended Greenville and Jerome Green—who ended up pursuing both his father’s passion for the ministry and his mother’s commitment for education by becoming both a minister as well as a college professor—remembers well growing up with a mother that taught school with a no-nonsense attitude towards education.

“You’ve got to know my mom,” he said with a smile. “She has mellowed tremendously over the years. She was the General Patton of education, as anyone in this community will tell you who knew her then.”

When Mrs. Green began teaching, cotton was king in St. Clair County and the schools had staggered sessions so children could take time during the day to help tend the fields. In the 1950s, Greenville elementary didn’t have a lunchroom; the milk was delivered and stored in the ice-cooled refrigerator and the coal man would come to deliver the coal, which the male students were charged with keeping lit to keep students warm in the winter.

After a stint teaching close to home, Green ended up traveling over to Ragland where she was principal at the New Town Junior High School on the northern end of town. She was principal there from 1965 to 1967 when the St. Clair County schools were integrated.

Once integration came to St. Clair County, the New Town school was shut down and Mrs. Green went over to the Ragland School where she taught in the elementary department until she retired after 37 years in education. “It was a very good time back then for children’s education,” Green said. She said that the change from moving from New Town to Ragland was “quite different. Seemingly, it was different in that we wouldn’t have as much to deal with [at the Ragland School].” She said that at New Town there would be two or three grades taught in one room, whereas at Ragland each grade had its own dedicated classroom.

“It was quite a change but we endured it very well because we had a relationship with [the two schools] about the changes in going back-and-forth between the different schools,” Green said. “So, we integrated easily. It was a good time and I enjoyed it.”

To this day Green still has students stop by occasionally to see her.

Both Green and her husband held a firm belief in the equality of people and had a deep-rooted faith that led them to work hard to make strides for the African-American population in St. Clair County.

Both Green and her husband were constantly involved in civic affairs and were always striving to get the most out of what the county had and has to offer. The Greens were heavily involved in the African-American voter registration and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) initiatives during the 1950s and 1960s and played a large role in getting issues pushed to the forefront of county residents’ minds.

“I took part in the St. Clair County Democratic movement for the Advancement of Colored People,” Mrs. Green said. “We [pushed to] move forward and it went well. We had a good working relationship with both blacks and whites during that time.”

“They lived for that,” her son Jerome said. “And at the time when [they] were doing it, it was not a safe thing to do. I can remember as small child going to voter league meetings with my parents down some backwoods, dirt road to a church in the woods and when you saw headlights behind you, you got a chill. But it was their faith [that guided them]. They found strength and courage and confidence in the church. And the thing that they knew was that even though race was a real problem, they always understood that all white people were not against them. They knew that because there were always significant members of the white community who did not think that things were right and so they had help and were not alone. And they were never bitter. They were always optimistic and confident. They believed in America and they believed that if you worked hard and you did what you were supposed to do, then it would be alright.”

In addition to working with the NAACP, Green was also the first director of the Head Start program in St. Clair County and was instrumental in getting its preschool curriculum up and running. “We had a good beginning,” Mrs. Green said. “Everything went well and we all worked together for the good of the whole community.”

At the time, activist John Davis was pushing for the preschool program, but he was met with hesitation by county officials because of his so-called “radical” views; so Mrs. Green was installed as the first director.

She said that she had many “great experiences” throughout her career in education. “I worked with lots of schools in the county,” she said. “I really enjoyed it.”

Green said that she’s seen “great changes” in her 90 years. “I walked to school. I went from walking to the riding the bus. I drove to Ragland for 20 years to teach up there. I did a lot of going and coming. I saw some cloudy days and some sunshiny ones. But they were good. And I worked with some good people. I’ve had some good days and some bad days, but all the good ones outweigh the bad ones. I’ve had some hills to climb but I made it.”

Mrs. Green stays optimistic about the changes in both the county and the country as a whole. “There have been changes and there will be changes,” she said. “It won’t always be well. But God will carry us through and life will go on. There will be progress and continued progress and as the years come there will be more changes. The world may not seem the same, but time changes [and with that] there will be new ideas and new generations coming along and they will make changes. There are women coming up in the world and doing [more] things now. Men had better step out of the way because women are taking over,” she said with a warm smile.

She said that in her lifetime she’s seen people go from horses to cars “and now we’re flying. I don’t know what’s going to take place next, but something will. Some great change will come about and it’s going to be different. There will be new ideas, new judges. But you can’t go much faster than you can push a button. But I think that we’ve done well as a people and I thank God for his goodness and his grace.”