Humans of Lee: Rachel Tolliver, professor and eyewitness to Civil Rights aftermath
Valeria Ramirez/ Lee Clarion
I spent a chilly Monday afternoon chatting with Rachel Tolliver on the third floor of the School of Nursing building. Rachel is a new addition to Lee’s faculty, as this is her first year working as a nursing lecturer on campus.
Rachel was born in Montgomery, Alabama, a city known as the bedrock of the Civil Rights Movement. She said growing up surrounded by such rich history was an experience that served to shape her scope for the future.
“I was born in the '70s, and that was right after the Civil Rights Movement. Things changed and progressed and African Americans really flourished, so I got to see that as a child growing up,” she recalls. “I had a lot of adults to look up to and was able to see how one can go from lower income to higher income based on education.”
Thanks to her experiences, education became Rachel’s main passion in life. In her community, kids were pushed to either further their education or go into the military.
“When you look at the Civil Rights Movement, the biggest thing was segregation and not having that equal opportunity for quality education,” she explained. “Once we got it, it was important that we went for it. People had fought for it; people had resisted and been a part of this great movement to make my generation’s lives better than the generation of my parents.”
Rachel was part of the Majority to Minority transfer program, meaning she didn't attend the high school she was zoned for. Segregation, in her community, was still prevalent, though it was based on socioeconomic status. Schools were mainly made up of students who came from families in similar income brackets. The program was designed to integrate the schools, and her reception at a more affluent school was surprising.
“When they did the Majority to Minority transfer, they sent a bus to pick up a group of students, and when we got there it was like, ‘Wow, this is a rich school with the rich kids. We don’t see these kids in our neighborhoods, they don’t shop at our grocery stores,’” Tolliver said. “It was different, and where we thought there might be racial tension, there wasn’t. Once we got there we realized that though they didn’t live in the same neighborhood and had a different socioeconomic status, we were still just kids striving for an education. Any stereotypes were debunked.”
Rachel is one of eight children and was next to the youngest. She got the opportunity to see her older sisters go to college; her oldest sister was actually the first nurse Rachel ever knew. Now out of the six girls in her family, four of them are nurses.
She credits her family’s fascination with nursing to her mom, who wasn't a professional nurse but never failed to care for her parents before they died, as well as for other folks in need.
“We saw that caring modeled in her life, and we wanted to do the same thing,” Rachel said. “When we asked about what fields we should go into, my mom thought nursing would be a good field in order to be able to care for other people.”
In pursuit of a nursing career, Rachel decided to attend Troy State University in Montgomery. She wanted to stay in her hometown in order to help out her mother, who had become disabled with a respiratory illness. As a result of her long school hours and care for her mom, Rachel found herself in a somewhat solitary lifestyle.
“I enjoyed Troy State because it was next to a hospital called St. Margaret’s Hospital, and they did a lot of clinical hours. I was able to work at the hospital and get firsthand experience as a nursing assistant. I didn't get involved with much because nursing is very intense, and it doesn't leave a lot of time for socializing.”
It wasn't until the last six months of Rachel’s nursing program that her life had a big change-up. She met her future husband at church and got married as soon as she graduated.
For the next twenty years, Rachel focused on raising her family, a feat that included homeschooling her kids. In the midst of that time, they decided to move to Cleveland while her husband attended Tennessee Temple in order to finish his theology courses. They then decided to stay because of the educational opportunities in Tennessee.
Rachel and family celebrate her graduation from UTC.
Courtesy of Rachel Tolliver
When Rachel hit that twenty-year mark, she went to school again. In 2011, she began working on her bachelor’s degree at UTC. She then went on to earn her master’s degree in Nursing Education from Western Governor’s University and homeschooling her kids helped her decide how she wanted to use her master’s degree.
“In homeschooling them, I understood the difficulties that students face with learning because my kids had their own individual challenges,” Rachel said. “Their strengths and weaknesses were different, but I had to learn to adapt to either one. When I got my master’s in Nursing Education, I wanted to help other students learn in the way they learn and to understand that there are different learning styles, but that it doesn’t mean that they are not capable of learning. One just has to take the time to allow them to bloom in their own way.”
From that point, Rachel began joining nursing organizations such as TNA and began applying to different schools. Her daughter mentioned that Lee had a nursing program, and Rachel quickly filled out an application. She was hired as an adjunct professor for the spring 2017 semester and was then hired for a full time position starting in the fall semester.
“I love Lee. What I love the most is that I can share my faith. You couldn’t ask for anything better: to incorporate learning into sharing your faith and making it positive for the students, as well as using devotionals to encourage them.”
Apart from her passion for nursing, Rachel also has a passion for suicide prevention and mental health.
“For the African-American community, we don't talk about mental health at all. There is a stigma associated with mental health, and my fear is that our culture will slowly decrease because we have substance abuse in our culture,” Rachel said. “We have mental health that goes untreated in our culture, and one of the largest things that occurs because of this is suicide. I want to empower all cultures—especially the culture here at Lee—to get us talking about suicide prevention so that it doesn’t become taboo or some type of stigma. Our society has to be more sensitive to it, and letting people know that there is help, that they don’t have to suffer in silence, is a start.”
Rachel said she wants all Lee students to keep in mind that they ought to put effort into seizing this life period.
“This is your time. This is your moment. Don’t let it pass you by,” she said. “Some of the people you meet here will be your life friends, and some of the experiences you have here you might never have the opportunity to have again. Take advantage of it.”
