Poinsettia Galloway Peterson (1946- ) graduated in 1966 from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) with a degree in sociology. She retired from teaching and school administration in 1998 and currently works with the Maryland State Department of Education.<br><br> Peterson talks about growing up in Brunswick County, North Carolina and the importance of education in her family as both of her parents were educators. She recalls coming to UNCG without having visited the campus, bonding with the other freshman African American students, the transition of the institution from being an all-female college to a co-educational university, campus rules and regulations, and her social activities. She vividly remembers two incidents of discrimination'her health teacher telling the class that venereal diseases are carried by 'nigras' and being refused service at the Apple House restaurant on Tate Street. Peterson discusses student teaching at Dudley High School in Greensboro; the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968; graduating at age nineteen; starting her teaching career at Nakina High School in Columbus, North Carolina; and the close bond she and the other black alumni who live in the Washington, DC area have maintained.
