At her work desk, Dr. Carletta Barnes Ekunwe keeps a picture of herself, Oseola McCarty, and Stephanie Bullock Ferguson. Ekunwe said she thinks about McCarty often, but even
more now.
“During a time like this with the coronavirus and people not being able to work, and then I talk to some of my colleagues who have so much student loan debt … I’m just so thankful for her that that’s something I really have no worry about because of her.”
Ekunwe attended Southern Miss as a biochemistry student from 1994 to 1999. A daughter of a disabled veteran and cook, she knew she would most likely need to take out student loans to go to school. She often spent her summers flipping burgers and taking orders from unpleasant customers at Wendy’s to earn extra money. One day in 1996, the staff at the USM Foundation called her in for an interview to discuss possible scholarship opportunities and Ekunwe’s goals. Later that day, she became the second person to be awarded the Oseola McCarty Endowed Scholarship. She immediately quit her job at Wendy’s. Today, she manages Barnes Family Dentistry in Hattiesburg.
July 26, 2020, will mark 25 years since McCarty donated $150,000, often referred to as “The Gift,” to Southern Miss to establish the Oseola McCarty Endowed Scholarship for African American students needing financial assistance. The donation garnered national attention, as McCarty, who had not received any education past middle school, had donated most of the money she earned as a washerwoman.
McCarty was awarded for her generosity several times. In 1995, former President of the United States Bill Clinton awarded her with the Presidential Citizen’s Medal. In 1996, Harvard gave her an honorary doctorate, and in 1998, she received the first honorary degree from Southern Miss.
Southern Miss President Emeritus Aubrey Lucas was president of the university at the time. Lucas said once the media learned about the scholarship, they besieged her.
“They came to her modest house with all their equipment, and she was still Ms. McCarty,” he said. Despite reporters asking McCarty why she didn’t do something for herself with the money, she would always answer that she did, Lucas said.
“It was giving away this money that her life took on such great meaning for her and for others,” he said.
Still, Lucas said he had to occasionally defend McCarty’s preference for the scholarship recipients to be African American. Had McCarty continued her schooling, she would not have been able to attend Southern Miss by the time she was the age of a traditional college student because of segregation.
“I had some people say, ‘Well, she used welfare money to fund that gift.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. She didn’t get welfare. Her and her family worked.’”
The first scholarship recipient, Ferguson, a sophomore marketing major at the time, received national attention as well. As she sits at her home in Atlanta, Georgia, where she owns a fashion accessories business, she remembers her trip to New York City with McCarty and her mother. They traveled to be interviewed on The Today Show.
“We got to hang out and spend more time with her and enjoy New York City and be on television, but she got to do a lot more trips. She told me I had to go to class,” Ferguson said.
Ferguson felt the pressure to make McCarty proud. Before she was awarded the scholarship, her parents were motivated to not take out any student loans. Despite graduating the top 15% of her class at Hattiesburg High School, she didn’t receive many scholarships from Southern Miss and didn’t even qualify for a Pell Grant. Ferguson and her mother saw the news of McCarty’s donation on the first page of the Hattiesburg American and dreamed of Ferguson receiving the scholarship. Later, she learned her professors recommended her to be the first recipient.
“Thank God for people having your back, right,” Ferguson said. “I know with three kids and two full time incomes, it still gets tough to make ends meet. So can you imagine a laundry woman in the deep south, black, not ever getting paid what you are fully worth and still being able to make that kind of contribution and to do it solely from the goodness of your heart?”
As Ferguson and Ekunwe finished their schooling, they became like granddaughters to McCarty. Because McCarty lived alone with no immediate family members alive to visit her, the women would randomly stop by her house to check on her.
Ferguson would often share corn flakes and vanilla ice cream with McCarty as they chatted about their days. She said had the two met under other circumstances, they still would have had a strong relationship.
“I would just look forward to seeing her, and I think she would look forward to my little visits,” Ferguson said. “And then in her last days when she was on hospice, I went by to see her. She wasn't able to get around as well as she had been in her last few days. And she told me she loved me, and I will never forget that, because I felt, you know, I knew that she meant it, and I loved her too. And I knew when she told me that, that that was going to be the last time that I see her well."
McCarty died of liver cancer on Sept. 26, 1999, just months before Ferguson’s biological grandmother died. Neither were able to see her graduate.
“To me, she was like Superman. Superman never really dies in your mind,” Ekunwe said. “I was studying when I got the phone call that she had passed, and I was like, 'Ok, I have to push through this and make her proud even in her death and let her know she didn’t waste her money.'"
The university memorialized McCarty Oct. 2, 1999, prior to her burial. Since her death, many things in Hattiesburg have been named in her honor: Southern Miss residence hall McCarty Hall, the Oseola McCarty Scholars Program, Oseola McCarty Youth Development Center, the McCarty Legacy society and now, the Oseola McCarty Museum planned to open in October in the Sixth Street Museum District.
The district, located in Downtown Hattiesburg, features the African American Military History Museum and the Historic Eureka School.
General manager at the Sixth Street Museum District Latoya Norman said the district is partnering with the McCain Library and Archives staff for items to put on to display to better tell McCarty’s story. Norman said the layout will look similar to what it did in the 90s when McCarty gave the donation and will feature video footage of her telling the story of her life.
“What I found to be really interesting is that all these spaces are interconnected. Ms. Oseola McCarty went to Eureka. … In the 40s, the young ladies from Eureka High School came here [to the USO] and helped lift the morale of the troops who were here. … There are a lot of local Hattiesburg people who have had an influence nationally, which is really inspiring,” Norman said.
As a founding member of the Hattiesburg Convention Commission, Lucas was a part of the early conversations in 2016 to relocate McCarty’s home to the district. In 2019, the commission purchased and relocated it.
McCarty's white and red home currently sits across from the African American Military History Museum waiting to be refurbished. Lucas said the move was simply logical.
“Her story is a story of inspiration, and there’s so many facets to it. One is overcoming circumstances she couldn’t help, and the other is do something significant for other people,” Lucas said. “That house will be there to tell those stories.”
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