Teacher Stands Out in Class of Her Own : Trailblazer: Barbara Lawrence Hill is a Santa Ana Unified pioneer. She plans to retire this year.

SANTA ANA — To her second-grade students, she is known as Mrs. Quila Roder. But her real name is Barbara Lawrence Hill--and there were good reasons why she changed it.

Soon after being hired as Santa Ana’s first black public school teacher in 1963, Hill walked into the teacher’s lounge at Diamond Elementary only to see everyone in the room get up and leave.

Although teachers at the all-white school continued to snub her, Hill insisted on eating her lunch in the lounge every day, until her co-workers got tired of leaving.

“It went on for three to four months,” said Hill, whose strong voice and confident bearing never waned. “I sat there all by myself, but I didn’t stop going because that’s what they wanted me to do. I’ve never wanted to run away from racism.”

After 32 years in the Santa Ana Unified School District, Hill--now a teacher at Madison Elementary--plans to retire this year. Although her departure probably will come with little fanfare, she helped blaze a trail for other African American educators.

“Young educators don’t appreciate what the first black teachers went through,” said Nora Kaufman, a close friend who taught in Santa Ana from 1967 to 1993. “It’s all laid out for them now, and they’ll say, ‘I haven’t witnessed any segregation or bias.’ But that’s because people like Barbara fought for it and paved the way.”

Shortly after Hill began her teaching career, she says she became the target of numerous racial attacks that continued for years. She received death threats, her Santa Ana home was burglarized almost monthly, her car engine was short-wired and racial slurs were painted on her house. At school, some parents pulled their children from her classroom, a teacher stacked cabinets to separate her teaching area from Hill’s, and another refused to let her students play with Hill’s.

It was in 1976, when she was transferring to another school, that Hill got the notion that by changing her name she could to some degree shield the two young sons she was raising alone. But before she retires, she plans to change it back.

“I came to this district as Barbara Lawrence Hill, and I’m going to leave here as Barbara Lawrence Hill,” she said. “I changed my name to Quila Roder to protect my family, but I almost view it as a slave name. It’s never been part of my consciousness, and I’m not giving up the honor of my real name.”

After years of keeping many of her experiences private, Hill, 59, agreed to talk last week about the discrimination she endured. She’s not bitter, but she doesn’t want others to think that being the first black teacher came without a cost.

“If you’re the first black in anything, there’s a price that you have to pay,” she said. “I was never promoted because I resisted the system. But I don’t want anyone to think I’m going to leave here regretting any of it because I’ve earned a lot of respect in this district and the community. I always thought I was someone who would overcome the obstacles.”

After growing up in Long Island, N.Y., Hill attended Santa Ana College--now Rancho Santiago College--UCLA and Cal State Los Angeles, before earning a master’s degree at Pepperdine University.

She began in 1962 as a substitute teacher at Fremont Elementary in Santa Ana and was hired full time at Diamond a year later. She also was a specialist in black culture at district headquarters for two years, and she taught at two other grade schools before switching to Madison about 10 years ago.

“She’s very well respected by other teachers,” said Martha Baker, Madison’s principal. “I think she speaks her mind, but she’s also kind of a comedian. Sometimes, she’s tongue and cheek, but she’s a very good teacher.”

Ollie Louise Whitaker, who is black, also began teaching full time in Santa Ana in January, 1963, but Hill signed her contract first, district officials said. Whitaker now teaches at Valley High School.

When Hill and Whitaker began their careers, the Santa Ana district was predominantly white. Today, the district is 88% Latino, 6% Asian, 4% white and 2% black.

During the 1960s, groups such as the John Birch Society--who believed the civil rights movement was a communist plot--were entrenched in the county, according to Lawrence B. de Graaf, a professor of history at Cal State Fullerton.

“So even hiring a black teacher in a predominantly white school district probably caused a lot of resentment,” de Graaf said. “It was a very hostile environment for blacks during the John Birch era.”

Hill recalled the fear she felt on numerous occasions when strangers followed her home. Once someone even tossed bricks through her kitchen window.

“Anglos resented the fact that the system was being integrated, and parents knew that, if one black was going to make it, more were going to come,” she said.

While at Jefferson Elementary during the mid-’70s, Hill’s all-white group of co-workers called her in for a meeting.

“When I walked in, they said, ‘You are here because we no longer want you at this school,’ ” said Hill, who spent about a year and a half at the school. “They didn’t give me any reason or ask me for my opinion.”

Although 57 white parents signed a petition protesting Hill’s transfer, she was sent back to Diamond Elementary against her wishes.

Several times during her career, Hill has been reprimanded and accused of being insubordinate to her supervisors. She filed at least eight grievances in response to such accusations, and won some of the cases and lost others when they were reviewed at the district level.

She also once filed a discrimination suit against the district because she felt administrators had done little to defend her against racist attacks. For example, she was angry that they had refused to defend her when parents yanked their children from her classroom or called her racist names. She eventually dropped the suit, lacking the money to press the case.

Nowadays, most of her colleagues--of all races and ethnicities--know little about her tumultuous career.

“Barbara never shared with me her personal experiences,” said Helen Matthews, an African American principal at Monte Vista Elementary in Santa Ana, who has known Hill for many years. “I’ve heard her allude to things being rough, but she’s never brought a lot of attention to herself. I don’t know if people are even aware that she’s the first black teacher.”

Johnny Williams, assistant principal at Valley High School in Santa Ana and a 29-year veteran of the district, also knew few details.

“I know she had problems, but she’s never been really outspoken about them,” said Williams, who helped start the Black Educators Assn. of Orange County. “But I know she’s a very qualified teacher.”

There are now 70 black teachers and 11 black administrators in the roughly 50,000-student district. By far, Santa Ana is the leader among Orange County school districts when it comes to the hiring and promotion of African Americans, county figures show.

Hill said she doesn’t go out of her way to mentor young, black teachers, but nothing pleases her more than to hear of other blacks being hired or promoted--she knows that she and other veteran black teachers helped open the way.

“Once the first one or two blacks go through it--if they can bear it and stay--it helps the next group,” she said.

Upon seeing Hill at school, those unfamiliar with her career might never recognize that she had endured years of anguish.

During a recent afternoon, Hill, who is fluent in Spanish, laughed and joked as she played dodge ball with her bilingual students. As teachers walked past her, she freely smiled and joked with them.

John Bennett, the district’s assistant superintendent of elementary education, said he was unaware of Hill’s early battles with the school district. The only thing he could remember was that the district’s fire prevention project she organized in the mid-’60s was twice voted the best in the country.

“She struck me as certainly a very caring and concerned teacher,” he said. “I viewed her as a strong teammate. I have never heard anything other than that. She goes the extra mile for kids.”

Indeed, Hill said she has never let her problems with the school district interfere with her mission in the classroom. “I’ve always received outstanding evaluations . . . because I teach from the heart.”

Hill said most of the children in her classes are poor and have learning or behavior problems.

“I can teach them because I know what it feels like to be invisible in society,” she said. “When I look back on my career, I love every challenge the district gave me because I feel I was able to overcome them. I hope that is an inspiration to other people like me who have been made to feel as if they are invisible.”