Caught Between Two Systems

About the Book

About the Author

Mable Terrell Lyles was born October 3, 1927, in Alexandria, Virginia, to Mazzie Comfort Terrell and Leslie S. Terrell. After her parents separated, her grandparents, Mable Burroughs Comfort and Frank Comfort, raised Mable. They lived on a small farm raising farm animals and plants in Spotsylvania County, Virginia. Mable began her education in a one-room Negro school, one and a half miles from the farm. The school was staffed with a teacher who taught all grades with one or two pupils per grade level. At an early age, Mable wondered why White students attended school longer during the year than the Negro students. She was very happy when the NAACP lawsuit established the same length school term for all students in Virginia. Later she remembered the NAACP winning the lawsuit requiring Virginia to pay all the teachers according to their education and experience. Mable graduated from Virginia Union University in Richmond, Virginia in 1949. In that same year, she returned to Alexandria, Virginia and married Major W. Lyles. Mable began teaching in the Alexandria school system in September 1954 and retired in 1988. Two of her sons, Reginald and Ronald Lyles were among the first pupils to integrate Fairfax County Public Schools in 1960. Mable’s interest in educational changes and the history of integration inspired her to write this book.