Nora Palmtag, LBCC Student, Shares Story of Segregation

By 

Emily Smucker

 on February 23, 2013 at 12:20 pm

Nora Palmtag, LBCC Student & News Editor for the Commuter.

Nora Palmtag dives into life with energy and zest. If you see her walking across campus, you may notice her sunny smile. But what you don’t know is that behind that smile is a woman with a truly phenomenal life story, the type you’d expect to see in a hardback memoir on display as you walk into Barnes and Noble.

Just like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and other people you’ve read about in history textbooks, Palmtag was a civil rights activist, fighting for justice in 1960’s Mississippi. Only a teenager at the time, Palmtag stood up for her rights as best she could and stirred up her community so much that the KKK wanted her dead.

Palmtag was born in 1949 in a one-room shack to a 16-year-old mother. She grew up in Clarksdale Mississippi, a place that was full of injustice.

“You couldn’t drink out of a water fountain because it said ‘white,’ and you had to walk another ten blocks to get to the next one,” says Palmtag. “You go through the whole downtown, and there’s no bathroom you could use. At the doctor’s office, you didn’t get seen until all the white patients were gone. After all the white people were gone you’d get seen, one by one, but you still couldn’t use the bathroom there.”

Schools were also segregated, and the black schools were vastly underprivileged. The textbooks at Palmtag’s high school were leftovers from the white school, with pages missing, and vulgar words scrawled across the pages.

A big reader, Palmtag eventually discovered the writings of Martin Luther King Jr., and realized that things did not have to be the way they were. “I decided to go to the white school and see, why didn’t they want us there?” says Palmtag. “What’s going on? Why were the kids allowed to write in our books all the nasty things they did, and tear out the pages before they sent them over to our school? They didn’t even know who we were.”

The kids at her new school hated her, spitting on her and calling her names. The KKK wanted her dead for daring to de-segregate the school. But Palmtag refused to be intimidated into leaving.

Once, Palmtag convinced her mother to take her to another town, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was arranging a march. Palmtag wanted nothing more than to march with the protestors. However, when she arrived, King told her that it was too dangerous, that he wouldn’t be able to protect her. According to Palmtag, King said, “I know what you’re doing. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

And so, Palmtag kept doing what she was doing and survived the abuse of high school. Ole Miss, ordered to de-segregate in order to receive federal funds, offered her a full-ride scholarship, but she refused. She wanted to get as far away as possible from the kids who had hated her in high school, and so went to college in Illinois instead.

Palmtag had been in the top 10% of her class in Mississippi. Even so, she struggled in college. Her parents didn’t support her financially, so she tried to work full time on top of being a full-time student. Eventually she was completely burned out, and decided to strike out for the West with $100 in her pocket.

Palmtag settled in Washington, getting a job with a cable company that eventually took her to Oregon. Upon retiring, Palmtag decided to go back to college, and came to LBCC.

Now, Palmtag is eager to share her story. “It’s not about me, so much as the fact that anybody…can bear anything,” says Palmtag. “If I could survive all this crap I went through, no matter how broken I was in the end, if I could survive it and make it to where I am now, you can survive anything. You can do it.”

Get ready to be inspired by Nora Palmtag. On Thursday, Feb. 21, at 1:00 pm, she will be in the Diversity Achievement Center, sharing stories of her experiences living in Mississippi during the civil rights movement. Feel free to show up and listen in on Palmtag’s life-changing story.