Clara Withers Berryhill (1939- ) graduated in 1962 from Woman's College of the University of North Carolina, now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, with a degree in mathematics. After graduating, she taught in Washington, DC and then worked as a systems engineer at IBM, as a computer programmer at Goddard Space Flight Center, and as a financial programmer at Howard University in Washington, DC. Berryhill retired as the bursar from Howard University and then worked for a computer company called Software in Chicago, Illinois. Currently she is involved with community work and several local bridge clubs in the Washington, DC area. Berryhill discusses growing up in segregated Charlotte, North Carolina; the importance of education in her family; and her high school physics teacher and mentor Julian Powell who helped her prepare to attend the historically white Woman's College. She recalls arriving on campus in 1958, being housed in Shaw Residence Hall with other black students, and meeting upperclassmen JoAnne Smart and Bettye Tillman (both Class of 1960). Berryhill vividly remembers the Ku Klux Klan throwing Molotov cocktails at her dorm's windows, participating in the 1960 Woolworth Sit-ins with Claudette Graves (Class of 1961) wearing her green Woman's College class jacket, and the lack of social life on campus. She also talks about learning to play bridge while in school and being discriminated against by her health teacher.
