Hi!  I’m Warren Mackey and I want to share with you a few things about myself.  I was born in Carver Hospital here in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I am the product of parents who were born and raised in Chambers County Alabama which is located between Auburn and Tuskegee in lower Alabama.  My father had a third grade education and my mother had to quit school after the seventh grade, so they imparted into me and my siblings at an early age the value of getting a good education.  Black people in that part of Alabama not only lived in a totally segregated world but at that time they faced the prospects of being sharecroppers like their parents.

My dad didn't want to raise his family in that condition, so he left to join the United States Army during World War II.  He served with General George Patton as the Allied armies fought their way across Europe.  He drove a supply truck.  One scene that my dad described to me that has stuck in my mind is how the Allies sent these fast planes across the English Channel called P 51’s that were to drop flares on the German positions.  They were to be followed up by the bombers.  It was clear to me from his descriptions, even at that early age, that it was one huge battle.

Upon his discharge, my dad moved to Chattanooga so he could work in the foundries located here like the Southern Alloy and U S Pipe.  When the area around West 9th Street was being torn down, my father made a bold move. He moved the family out into Hamilton County into a new subdivision called Riverside Park.  It was on Riverside Drive where I grew up.  Back then there was nothing around us.  Neither Amnicola Highway nor the railroad yard was there initially.  Living there was like being on an island for we never went anyplace nor did many cars travel down the road.  It was not until I got into the sixth grade that some of the boys off the drive would begin to thumb a ride into town to go to Lincoln Park or the YMCA on Park Avenue.

I spent the first six grades at Roland Hayes Elementary School located on Riverside Drive. For the seventh and eighth grades I was bused to Booker T. Washington High School.  In 1964 Riverside Drive was annexed into the city of Chattanooga so now I would attend Riverside High School which opened up that fall.  At Riverside High School I had some outstanding teachers who would make some lasting impressions on me.  One of them was my homeroom teacher, the late Mrs. LaGrange Bettis.  She was the first teacher that I had who not only taught the subject matter but also many of life’s important lessons.  On some level I believe that she was one of the people that inspired me to become a teacher and I have incorporated some of her techniques in the classroom that I use in my teaching today. 

After graduating from Riverside High School in 1967 I was fortunate enough to get a Tennessee Educational Loan to attend Tennessee State University in Nashville.  My years at Tennessee State were full of excitement.  I met people from all over the nation.  Our football team turned out many professional football players--Eldridge Dickey, Claude Humphrey, Waymon Bryant, Too Tall Jones and Jefferson Street Joe Gilliam among them.  During my sophomore year the school produced the first and second draft picks into the National Football League. One student who was in the class behind me was a person who went on to achieve international fame--Oprah Winfrey.  While at Tennessee State I did not circulate much and did not make friends easily. I majored in history and was fortunate to have a couple of professors who took an interest in me.  Mrs. Lois McDougald was one of them.  She was class personified.  The other was the department chairman, Dr. A.T Stephens who gave me a bit of encouragement.  It took me four and a half years to graduate. One of the achievements that I am most proud of is that I never dropped a class (if I paid for a class I was going to get my money’s worth.)  Because I graduated at the end of the fall semester, I began studies for the Master’s degree by enrolling into graduate school at Tennessee State University. 

When the spring quarter came to an end I went back to Detroit to work for Chrysler Corporation where I would go to make my money for the school year. I had moved out of the comfort of my parents home after graduating from high school at the ripe age of seventeen to work in the automotive industry to make money to go to school.  However, now that I had graduated from college I was promoted to supervision due in part to my rather deep experience of having worked on the assembly line.  It was during this time that I married my college girlfriend, the former Cheryl Bryan from the Bronx in New York.  It was during this period that I started my family with my daughter, Nonya, being born in Detroit. 

After a year of being out of school I returned to finish my Master’s degree.  Upon my return I was offered a graduate teaching position in the history department.  Little did I know that it would become my life’s love and profession.  On some level I had had a notion of going to law school.  In retrospect I believe that I would have been a good lawyer but not very happy.  As I neared graduation I began to seek out a school to get a doctorate in history and almost immediately I found Middle Tennessee State University.  I don’t know what the deciding factor was for me to attend there but I am sure that the closeness of Murfreesboro to Nashville had something to do with it.  I did not have the money to relocate across country.

Black students were still relatively new to the campus when I enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University.  Needless to say I studied my books but I also studied my classmates as well for having grown up in a totally black world; now for the first time I was looking to understand societal norms related to race.  Part of my fellowship at Middle Tennessee State University had me teach classes each semester and so that gave me another perspective and eventually I learned that people are people regardless of their race.  I believe that all people have essentially the same needs, wants and drives.  In spite of having to work a job and teach classes to feed my family my grades didn’t suffer. 

It took me two years to complete my course work for the doctorate and I began to look for a place to launch my career.  I heard that seven out of eight people who leave school without the degree in hand never come back to complete it.  Therefore I decided to find a job as close to Murfreesboro as I could get so that I could stay in communication with my doctoral committee.  In spite of teaching offers at Fisk University (where my wife graduated from) and others, I decided to come back home to Chattanooga.

Chattanooga State Community College is right down the road from where I grew up.  I have many memories of the location for we used to go down to the river to fish.  Murray Hills, the community where I bought my house, is less than five minutes away.  So now after many years at Chattanooga State I have come to a point in my life where I look to serve the community even more so than I have in the past as evidenced with my serving on many boards and committees—Joe Johnson Mental Health Center, Room in the Inn, WTCI, CARTA, the Cancer Society, Kidney Foundation and the Chancellor’s Roundtable at UTC.

Being teachers, my wife and I never set out to be rich.  Consequently, having purchased our home we have already achieved OUR American dream of raising a family, buying a house, and both of us having careers of teaching for over thirty years. So we are now free to be of service to our fellow man and we offer ourselves up to advance the plight of the whole community.  If it is the will of God and the voters of the fourth district I will continue to serve on the Hamilton County Commission with principles and vision.