Carole Bucy

My interest in history grew out of my childhood fascination with politics and the electoral process.  Growing up in Ector, Texas, population 454,  politics dominated everyday life.  Our United States Congressman was Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the mentor of Lyndon Johnson.  Rayburn’s “larger than life” persona was a dominating influence on life in  rural North Texas in which everything from the location of highways to the appointment of postmasters was political.  I was intrigued by Texas politics and regularly heard events of the present as well as the past interpreted by my maternal grandmother, Bess Gordon Bailey,  a farmer’s wife who had gone to her polling place, the Methodist Church in Petty, Texas, and voted for the first time in November, 1920 because of the ratification of the Nineteenth  Amendment giving women the right to vote.  (It was only  as an adult that  I discovered that ratification   occurred in Nashville, Tennessee.  I think about my grandmother every time I go into the House Chamber at the Tennessee state capitol.  To think that it all took place in that room, never ceases to give me pause for reflection.  My mother was born to a woman who could not vote.)  The defining moment in my grandmother’s life, however, was not casting her vote for the first time, but instead was  the crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Depression that followed.  “Ole Hoover tried to clean us out,” she would tell me and then she would remind me that it was Rayburn and Roosevelt who had saved them from destitution. 

Although my family lived in Ector, a farming community at the crossroads of U. S. 82 and a Farm-To-Market road, one of Sam Rayburn's many gifts to Fannin County and the rest of the rural South, my brother and I did not attend Ector's small 12-grade school.  Instead, we went into Bonham, the county seat of Fannin County,  to go to school because our father was a junior high science teacher.  

Lynn, my brother, was 3 years older than I, and a gifted musician from the days of my earliest memories.  He was a magnificent pianist, who learned to improvise at an early age because our mother, Maggie Bailey Stanford, was the pianist at our country Baptist Church.  We were given a love of music from our mother and grandmother, Bess Bailey, who loved to sing and play the piano as well.  One of my most prized positions today is a magnificent upright grand piano, that my great-grandfather gave to my grandmother  for her sixteenth birthday.   My grandmother was his fifth child, but the only one who loved music as much as he did.  He ordered the piano by mail from New York and had it shipped to Honey Grove, Texas by train.   It needs a considerable amount of work to restore it, but I simply could not leave it in Texas because it was too much a part of my identity.  

            When I entered Baylor University as an undergraduate in 1968, I  quickly gravitated to the history department in large part because of my childhood fascination with history.  The professors in Baylor’s history department were outstanding.    I could imagine myself  in their place standing in front of a class teaching history in  a similar fashion and without any hesitation, I majored in American history.  Upon graduation from Baylor, I entered George Peabody College for Teachers in 1971 and earned a Master’s degree in 1972.  I chose Peabody because I wanted to teach and never applied to any other colleges. 

At Peabody, I had the opportunity to take courses with Professor Dewey Grantham of Vanderbilt.  Grantham’s recent American history seminar provided me the opportunity to broaden my understanding of political history and to place  Sam Rayburn, my childhood hero, into proper historical perspective.    When it came time for me to select a topic for my Master’s thesis, I selected the appointment of Hugo Black to the U. S. Supreme Court because  I had become interested in Roosevelt’s appointment  of Black in Dr. Grantham’s seminar.  My thesis, "Hugo Black's Appointment to the Supreme Court:  A Study in Public Opinion,"  focused on the change in public opinion surrounding the Black appointment.  When it was revealed during the confirmation process that Black had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan, public opinion regarding Black’s appointment shifted. 

            When I received my Master’s degree, the field of women’s history had not really been established.  I did not consider writing my thesis on any aspect of women’s history because women’s history simply did not exist.  All of my professors throughout undergraduate school and graduate school were men.   Social history had not really become an accepted field of study at that time. 

            Upon earning my degree, I began my career as a high school history teacher.  When I married and had children, I gave up my teaching career to be a “stay-at-home mom.”  My years at home with my children were productive ones and greatly influenced my career in unforeseen ways.   It was during those years that I discovered the story of Tennessee’s ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, a tale full of political intrigue in which the actions of Tennessee women  led to the victory.  This was an important piece of American history that  had not been mentioned in courses on the Progressive era during my time in graduate school in Nashville.   

            During those years at home with my children, I also was fortunate to be able to pursue public history as a volunteer by working on several local history projects such as the Nashville City Cemetery and a history of the Cumberland Valley Girl Scout Council that was being written by Vanderbilt professor, Elisabeth Perry.  I was a member of the Girl Scout Council’s board of directors and volunteered to do research for Perry who had been hired to write this history when the Council moved to its new building.  This experience renewed my interest and passion for doing research and also made me keenly aware of the opportunities that women’s history now offered.

           While I was a stay-at-home mom, I also learned that I could teach adults.  When a retired women's Sunday School class at our church lost its founding teacher, Miss Janie Alford, who had taught the class since World War II, I volunteered to try to teach the class.  In that class, I found a delightful group of women who had had a variety of careers.  Kathryn and Margaret Millspaugh, two former Metropolitan Nashville school principals, gave me considerable support and encouragement to return to teaching.  They simply could not imagine me doing anything else.  I enjoyed teaching the class and taught the class for six years.  These years gave me time to develop organizational and preparation techniques and an opportunity to practice my communication skills.  

            My volunteer work in history eventually evolved into paid work in public history. In 1993, I founded the Tennessee Women's History Project to promote knowledge of the contributions of women to Tennessee history.   I received two grants from the Tennessee Humanities Council to conduct  workshops for classroom teachers across the state on how to incorporate the achievements of women into existing high school curricula.  I researched and wrote a 100-page teachers guide to accompany these workshops which was published in 1993.  This guide continues to be used by Tennessee teachers.     

            My work as a public historian has been quite varied and stimulating.    In 1994, I  conducted more than 30 oral history interviews of the key players in the consolidation of Nashville and Davidson County’s government for the Metropolitan Historical Commission and also did work for the Tennessee Bicentennial Commission on the Civil War.    In 1998, I wrote “Women Helping Women,”  a history of the Nashville YWCA  which was published by the YWCA during its centennial celebration.  

            I continue to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Nashville City Cemetery, a remarkable, but largely unknown cemetery in the shadow of downtown Nashville.  I was introduced to the cemetery  in 1989 when I drove a field trip for my son's fourth grade class.  When Gladys Hamilton, the woman who had given the tour, passed away the next year, I asked the teachers if I could try to give the tour for them.  Now 16 years later, the cemetery has been a passion of mine.  In1998, I served as the founding President of the Nashville City Cemetery Association, a volunteer group dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the cemetery.  

Teaching has always been a major part of my public history work.  When I had an opportunity to return to teaching in 1995, I was thrilled.    After working that year on the celebration for the anniversary of Tennessee's ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the United States Constitution, I was hired as a full-time history instructor at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin where I presently am an associate professor of history  and chair of the History Department.  My teaching at Volunteer State has fulfilled a life-long dream to teach at the college level.  I continue to find my job to be challenging and rewarding.  It gives me great satisfaction to pass on some of my enthusiasm for history to my students and to see them grow and develop.

           In the fall, 1998, I returned to graduate school at Vanderbilt University to work on a Ph.D. in history with an emphasis on Women's History and Recent American History.  In May, 2002, I completed and received my PhD In history at Vanderbilt University.    My dissertation topic:  “Exercising the Franchise, Building the Body Politic:  The League of Women Voters of the United States, 1945-1964.”  Hugh Davis Graham was the director of my dissertation.  I was privileged to work with Dr. Graham on my dissertation.  He died the evening after I defended my dissertation after a long struggle with cancer.    During my educational years, I have had the opportunity to observe many fine professors with a gift for teaching.    From them, I learned the joy of teaching and the study of history.