A First Black Professor Remembers Her Segregated Education

Hortense McClinton has lived with a remarkable sense of determination — for 95 years.

Her father's parents were slaves, and McClinton grew up in a completely segregated society, the all-black town of Boley, Okla.

"I didn't realize how segregated everything was," she tells NPR's Lynn Neary. That changed after a visit with her uncle in Guthrie, Okla.

"I went to the movies and I didn't know blacks were supposed to sit upstairs. And I sat down and they told me to go up," she says.