Скачать или смотреть Interview with Betty MacNeal l The Black Experience in New Milford, CT

Betty MacNeal was born in 1936 and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina during the heart of the Great Depression, one of six children of Fredrick and Henrietta Pryor, a mechanic and housewife.

Schooled in Charlotte, Betty started college at North Carolina College in Durham and transferred to Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, from which she earned her degree.

She started her career teaching fifth grade in nearby Morganton, North Carolina. After visiting a friend in Yonkers, N.Y., a year later Betty moved to New York and gained a position working with teenaged girls at a residential treatment center at St. Christopher’s School in Dobb’s Ferry. Her work there soon earned her a job as a social worker for children in White Plains.

A couple of years later Betty took a teaching job in Yonkers. During that time she met Arnold MacNeal, whom she married. The couple moved to Colorado, where Betty taught in Denver public schools for four years. At that time she and Arnold had a son, Arnold Jr.

When her husband accepted a job in Connecticut in 1968, she sought and gained a job at Mill Ridge Primary School in Danbury, thus starting a 30-year tenure that lasted until her retirement in 2000.

Along the way, Betty became a resident of New Milford, where she still lives with Arnold Jr.

Since her husband’s passing in 2001, Betty became active in town as a volunteer with the New Milford Social Services office and with the Literacy Volunteers.


Featuring: Betty MacNeal
Norm Cummings, New Milford Historical Society Board Member
Edited by: Dylan Heydet
This video was created with the help of the New Milford Youth Agency.
Part of the oral history project created alongside the 2021 New Milford Historical Society Exhibit, The Black Experience in New Milford. Curator, Lisa Roush.