David Sloan

GEORGE GILLIAM: [00:00:01] David, it is Wednesday, November 11th, 2021. Present are David Sloan, Lorenzo Dickerson, Phyllis Leffler, and George Gilliam

[Extraneous material redacted.]

GG: [00:01:51] What is your date of birth?

DS: [00:01:53] January 18th, 1955. 

GG: [00:01:58] And your parents, [00:02:00] cop?

DS: [00:02:01] Yes. Policeman and a secretary.

GG: [00:02:05] Who was your secretary for?

DS: [00:02:08] Hovey Dabney for a while, and she probably bounced around a little bit in between Hovey Dabney and Rick Goins…

[Extraneous material redacted.] 

GG: [00:05:34] What schools did you go to?

DS: [00:05:38] From starting in kindergarten?

GG: [00:05:39] Yeah.

DS: [00:05:41] McIntire. I lived in the Hogwallow part of Belmont, which had not been annexed by the city at that point, so McIntyre was a county school. I went to kindergarten there. And then, I went to Robert E. Lee Elementary School second, third, [00:06:00] and fourth grades. And then, I went to Clark Elementary, and then, Buford.

GG: [00:06:07] What, five through --?

DS: [00:06:10] Clark was just fifth grade. 

GG: [00:06:11] Just five, okay. 

DS: [00:06:13] And then, in sixth grade, I went to Jefferson. The city was building Buford and Walker Junior High Schools, but they were not ready. So, they figured up this plan to put all the sixth graders from the city into Jefferson. And then, from there, we did seventh, eighth, and ninth at Buford, and then 10, 11, 12, at Lane. And it was interesting because Robert E. Lee, George, you guys maybe remember this or know this or have discovered this along this journey, I didn’t know this, but Robert E. Lee was the feeder school into Rock Hill Academy. Rock Hill Academy was essentially established during the time of integration. [00:07:00] 

GG: [00:07:04] Segregation academy.

DS: [00:07:06] Right. And the only way I can remember because I never asked my parents how I ended up in a private school, because we financed everything we ever had, cops don’t make a lot of money and neither do secretaries. And the only thing that I can put two and two together is that George Bailey, the sheriff of Albemarle County, his wife was the headmaster –- headmistress of Robert E. Lee school. And I can only assume that was either free tuition, scholarship tuition for children of police officers.

GG: [00:07:42] What years were those? Do you remember?

DS: [00:07:45] So, how old are you in second grade? Seven? So, that would have been ’62, ’63, ’64, probably, those school years. 

GG: [00:08:00] Because part of the Massive Resistance was to give the parents of kids kickback, basically. 

DS: [00:08:09] To help them go to private school?

GG: [00:08:12] To let them go to private school. But that was declared unconstitutional in 1959. 

DS: [00:08:20] You know, I don’t know and if I did ask the question, I don’t remember the answer. But I can tell you that there would be no way that I would be going to any kind of private school without there being either a full scholarship ride or some heavy-duty assistance. And of course, you’re a kid, you’re oblivious to it. So, for me, integration really became a reality when I was 10 years old and I was going into the fifth grade, at Clark, which I assume means that Robert E. Lee [00:09:00] and Rock Hill became either you pay or you don’t come. 

GG: [00:09:08] But Clark, they weren’t integrated.

DS: [00:09:12] They were when I went to school there in the fifth grade. 

GG: [00:09:17] Really?

DS: [00:09:17] Yes. In fact --

GG: [00:09:19] Yeah, that would have been ’65, I’m sorry.

DS: [00:09:21] ’65, yes. And I’ll tell you this story just because not as whatever, there’s some word for it that they use on social media when you’re talking about yourself, but I grew up as a kid a modest means and hard work and have had a checking account since I was 12 years old and cutting grass and all that other good stuff that you do when you’re raised in Belmont and raised over in Hogwallow. And I, to this day, am very proud that I am a Belmont boy. [00:10:00] But when COVID hit, I have become as I’ve gotten into the back nine, as they say, I’ve become very, very interested and intrigued by our racial injustices, our racial course that this country has taken, and find it ironic that what our constitution says and how we really practice it. But I’m not deeply intellectual about it by any means. But I’m learning and I’m getting better and there’s just some things that don’t jive. But I got together a group of people that were Baby Boomers, and they were half white, half Black. I had Dom Starsia, the UVA lacrosse coach came, and he was born on Long Island, not Brooklyn, but on Long Island. And there were 600 white kids in his school, and Dom’s a little older than me. So, there were 600 white kids in his graduating class. [00:11:00] 

GG: [00:11:01] At Lane?

DS: [00:11:02] No, on Long Island. This was his experience. His dad was a police officer, too, so I think that’s where, in addition to lacrosse. But Dom told this story, and then of course, the town next to theirs was 600 Black kids. There was none of that. It was really kind of crazy, which we had in Charlottesville, to be honest with you, but most of us were oblivious to it, being that young. And I remember we’d play tackle football at Belmont Park with various other areas of the city, that kids ride their bikes over and we’d have a knock-down-drag-out, good old-fashioned tackle football game. And the kids from Ridge Street would come. So, this guy named Howard Swift got up, and Howard, Frankie, we called him -- do you know him? 

LORENZO DICKERSON: [00:11:55] He lives in my neighborhood.

DS: [00:11:56] I’ll be danged. [00:12:00] One of the kindest, gentlest human beings you’ll ever know, very diminutive, small guy. Loves sports but was never big enough really to play any of them. And so, I invited Frankie to come, and Frankie invited some other guys that I went to high school with, junior high school and high school with, actually. And Frankie lived on the east side of Ridge Street, so he had to go to Clark. And the Black kids that lived on the west side of Ridge Street went to Johnson. Johnson was heavily influenced by the liberal faculty, and so forth, of the University of Virginia, so it was a little bit of a different climate over there. Belmont was pretty --

GG: [00:12:39] Pretty conservative.

DS: [00:12:41] Pretty conservative, working class, tough guys. So, Frankie got up at this group. What we did was, we got together at Washington Park, which for me is always a symbolic park because we wouldn’t go to Washington Park when I was a kid. You would not ride your bike to Washington Park. [00:13:00] It’s just the way it was. And so, to me, it’s now a park open and everybody can enjoy it, and it’s still right in the middle of the city. And so, we met at Washington Park, and everybody introduced themselves and talked a little bit about what they’ve been doing all their lives. All these people were born in the ’50s. And Frankie got up and told a story I had never heard before, which was that he was scared to death about his first day at Clark Elementary School because he was afraid that he was going to get beat up, either on his way to school or on his way back to school. He said told his mom and dad the night before and they said, “Well, we can take you to school but we can’t pick you up from school.” So, he knew he was going to have to walk from Clark back to his house on Ridge Street. And he said that, and this is a quote, he said, “I met this white boy and his name was David Sloan, and he walked me home.” And it just about made me cry, [00:14:00] which is where I’m close to right now because I had no idea at the time, but my dad was a cop. He dealt with a lot of low-income White and Black people, but we all know, if you open your eyes and your heart to it, that it was a hard time for Black people. Still is. And a hard time for people just with modest economic means. They’re the ones that seemingly get in the most trouble, certainly back then, it seemed to be that way.

GG: [00:14:36] So, what year did you graduate from Lane? 

DS: [00:14:41] ’73. Anyway, Frankie told that story, and it warmed my heart because my parents were not unlike -- well, George you remember. Phyllis, you remember. You’re a byproduct of the environment that you come up in. Had I been in an environment of racism, [00:15:00] or if there was any tone of racism, there were some, what I would call, generational racism. My mother’s family was from Red Hill. They were kind of country people, enough said there, but she would wash – I would bring home my football uniform during two-a-days, plus the uniforms of six or seven Black guys on the team who didn’t have a washer and dryer in their house, and we lived in a little 900-square-foot rancher over on Ridgemont Avenue, and my mother would wash all those clothes, fold them, send them back with me for so these guys would have a dry uniform for practice in the afternoon in the middle of August. Heartwarming story. Fortunately, I was not indoctrinated into that world.

GG: [00:15:53] Where did you get your news? 

PHYLLIS LEFFLER: [00:15:56] Could you hold up just one minute? What’s [00:16:00] Frankie’s last name?

DS: [00:16:00] Swift. 

PL: [00:16:01] Thank you.

GG: [00:16:05] Where did you get your news? Daily Progress, or radio, or TV news?

DS: [00:16:12] I think it was probably the Progress, and then TV. All we had was the major channels, right? You had the rabbit ears.

GG: [00:16:25] Right, ’73 is just when Channel 29 was getting off the ground. 

DS: [00:16:30] Right, exactly. So, we’d watch the Richmond news, in the ’60s. ’50s, ’60s, you’ve got Channel 6, or 12, exactly. 

PL: [00:16:44] Can I ask another question while we’re on it? You said at Clark, integration became a reality. So, what does that mean? Was the school pretty evenly mixed?

DS: [00:16:56] No, not at all. Not at all. 

PL: [00:17:00] And maybe you could tell me about Jefferson School, too.

DS: [00:17:03] Jefferson School was really truly the first -- thinking back on it, was really the first realization that there was a whole group of kids out there, a whole group of people out there that I had never had that much exposure to other than through sports. Sports, to me, was always the great equalizer without even thinking about it. You didn’t think about it. The guy was either a football player or he wasn’t. Or he could run track or he couldn’t. It almost didn’t make any difference what color, or what religion, or anything else that somebody may be. They were teammates is the way we always looked at it.

PL: [00:17:48] So, Clark, there just would have been a smattering of --?

DS: [00:17:51] Just a handful, a handful. And then, Jefferson was every sixth grader in the city. [00:18:00] So, you were drawing from Rugby, Hessian Hills. You were drawing from Blue Ridge Road, Meadowbrook Heights, part of Greenbrier, you were drawing from where when we got to high school. So, when we got to high school, Buford was a blue-collar, working-class -- Blacks and Whites were all basically somewhat in the same socioeconomic status situation. Walker was all the doctors’ kids and professors’ kids, and kids from the projects, kids from public housing. So, I don’t know that they had any more racial strife. That was a very trying time. That was in in the late ’60s. That was a very, very unruly timing in the Civil Rights history of this country. And I don’t recall that, [00:19:00] but I do know that five or six of the very good football players that played at Walker Junior High School did not play in high school because they felt like Tommy Theodose and Joe Bingler were racist. So, they didn’t play. I’ve joked about that. I say I probably would have never played a down if those guys would have played. If they had showed up at Lane, I’d have been riding the pine. They were good football players. And good guys. But Charlottesville had a fire lit, just like 2017. I mean, Charlottesville had a very tumultuous racial period. There was a guy named Cherry Pie that had been put in jail and the joke from the White people was always, “Where can we get free Cherry Pie?” The joke was not a joke to the Black people which was, “Let Cherry Pie out of prison, or out of jail,” whatever Cherry Pie was. Cherry Pie is still around. I saw him not too long ago, actually. I don’t [00:20:00] know if he goes by Cherry, or Mr. Pie now, but he was around. Anyway. 

GG: [00:20:09] So, how familiar were you with Massive Resistance? Had you ever really heard anything about it?

DS: [00:20:18] No. And if I did, it didn’t stick with me. It didn’t stick with me. In fact, I would probably say that when I was 12, 13, 14 years old watching the news, and watching the riots when Martin Luther King was shot, or Bobby Kennedy, or whatever, watching the news of the riots in all the big cities, and it was --

GG: [00:20:46] You were pretty young.

DS: [00:20:48] Young. Very young. Didn’t make a lot of sense to me. And of course, as we know now probably better than even ever in history, news is only as good as the people putting it out there. [00:21:00] 

PL: [00:21:02] You’d have been at Buford in those years, right?

DS: [00:21:05] Yes. I started at Lane in the fall of 1970. 

GG: [00:21:13] When you were very young, did you ever go to Burley to see games?

DS: [00:21:20] Not that I remember. I want to say my dad took me one night, but I don’t think we did. We were pretty big -- it was in our DNA that we were going to play football, if my father had anything to do with it. And so, we were huge Lane High School -- of course, the ’60s, Lane had that win streak, but it would have been great if Lane and Burley had played each other, even just once. Burley had a phenomenal football team, which [00:22:00] you know, we’ve talked about, probably. 

GG: [00:22:04] So, you weren’t really affected by the closing of Burley.

DS: [00:22:09] No. 

GG: [00:22:10] Or, you weren’t actively.

DS: [00:22:12] Right, no. By the time I got to Lane, that was not in the distant past, but it was not a big deal.

GG: [00:22:24] So, did you ever hear the families of some of your contemporaries complain that their son’s place on football team, or lacrosse team, or whatever was taken when they moved the Blacks into Lane?

DS: [00:22:45] Not that I recall, no. Again, I think you look back at it, you can only surmise certain things about it, but I think it was because we came from the other side of the tracks, [00:23:00] so to speak, in the sense that we were a lot more homogeneous in our socioeconomic level. We were all basically pretty hardcore working-class people. 

GG: [00:23:19] Everybody loved your dad.

DS: [00:23:22] Everybody did love my dad.

[Extraneous material redacted.]

DS: [00:25:24] He was a good fellow. Miller School straightened him out.

GG: [00:25:29] Did it?

DS: [00:25:30] Yeah. One of many people that Miller School straightened out. Because it was, at one time, a school for orphan boys or single parent boys, a military school. And Dad was the youngest of 14 kids, and his daddy died when he was two. So, by the time he was 12 or 13, he was leaning the wrong way. And one of his sisters was in nursing school at UVA and heard about Miller School, went down there and got him and brought him up here.

GG: [00:25:58] Miller [00:26:00] was a very wealthy investor in banks. 

DS: [00:26:04] Samuel Miller, yeah.

GG: [00:26:06] Bank stocks all over the country. And the Confederates -- I’m sorry, the Union troops wanted to shut him down because he was pouring money into the Confederate warpath. And so, they attempted to confiscate all of his money, and they got a lot of it, stock certificates from banks all over the place they got, and he sued to get it back and he got a lot of it back and poured that into a trust that started Miller School. 

DS: [00:26:46] A beautiful place. I think they still have 1,800 acres. Western Albemarle, 1,800 acres. That’d make a lot of developer salivate. (laughs) [00:27:00]

GG: [00:27:03] Were you ever there when they played “Dixie,” or displayed the Confederate flag as sort of a taunting of Black players at UVA or anything you recall?

DS: [00:27:17] I remember UVA playing “Dixie,” and some students waving Confederate flags. And of course, I was there the day Harrison Davis walked off the field and flipped everybody the double bird. We just had Harrison, Kent Merritt, John Rainey, and Stanley Land back for a home game where we recognized them as the first African American scholarship football players. And I think they were very appreciative of it. They were all seniors when I was a freshman, so I got to know them a little bit. But good guys.

GG: [00:27:55] When we were talking to the coach [Coach Tommy Theodose] and you were seated next to him, you [00:28:00] raised very briefly the topic of the violence that occurred before or after some games. And we were wondering whether or not it was always Black on White, or White on Black, or was it --?

DS: [00:28:25] Yeah, I think it was White on Black. Lane played in the capital district, and of course, Richmond was a different world. And I never -- the only time as a ninth grader, which would have been in the spring of 1970, I played baseball at Lane. There were three of us ninth graders that made the baseball team, somehow. I’m not sure how I made it, but I think Joe Bingler thought I would be a good catcher, and he had his eye on me. And as soon as he tried to make me a [00:29:00] catcher, I quit. So, we played at Maggie Walker and Armstrong, and some of the traditional Black schools in Richmond. But I was never --

GG: [00:29:14] Did Whites show up at that and crack a few people over the head?

DS: [00:29:22] Not that I remember. I really don’t remember. I think I was after that. And I think it ended quickly. I’m not sure how long, maybe, but by that point in time, it had run its course, George. You know, you talked about Massive Resistance, and if you go back to when it all started in the late ’50s, by the time you got to the early ’70s, it was almost, I don’t want to call it old news, but it was -- we never felt -- I have to say, I remember sitting at a baseball game [00:30:00] at I think it was at TJ -- not TJ Armstrong, whatever Armstrong High School is in Richmond. I can’t remember the name of it. But there were two that I remember, Armstrong and Maggie Walker were the only two that I know that were Black high schools, like Burley. And when Richmond integrated, I don’t think they did a lot of busing. Like, Douglas Freeman stayed pretty much lily-white on the west end of Richmond. But when those schools would play, I think there was some tension in the stands. And I know that Theodose alluded to having rocks and bottles and stuff thrown at the buses as they were leaving. But I don’t recall that happening to -- let’s say Maggie Walker came here to play. I don’t recall that happening in Charlottesville. But again, I was young.

GG: [00:30:50] How about in the home school? Do you remember any violence that occurred at places other than Lane? [00:31:00] 

DS: [00:31:03] No. No, I don’t. I don’t even remember at Jefferson when you -- that could be a pretty volatile age in the sixth grade, and I do remember, and we’ve since become very good friends and collaborate very often, he lives in Birmingham, Alabama, a guy named Dick Dickerson, had several brothers that all grew up here in Charlottesville. And Dick was my class and he had an older brother who was also in our class, but he had flunked a grade or something. He had a great nickname. His name was Milton Dickerson, but he went by Catfish. And Catfish was a great basketball player. But anyway, I must have said something to Dick that wasn’t appropriate in the sixth grade, standing in line at a water fountain, because he got a big mouth full of water and spit it in my face. [00:32:00] 

GG: [00:32:00] I bet he didn’t do it more than once.

DS: [00:32:03] You know, again, I can only maybe make this up but, in my mind, I was like, “I’m not going to get in a fight because if you get in a fight in school you get in trouble, and I don’t want to be getting in trouble.” And so, I actually think I had that thought like, “God, I probably deserved that.” I was not -- George, contrary to wherever your beliefs come from, I was not a macho, macho man. In the fifth grade, I caught Mike Johnson holding my girlfriend’s hand walking home from Clark Elementary School, and I thought, “He’s holding my girlfriend’s hand.” I went over there and got up in his face and he promptly kicked my butt and that was it. I never fought again. That was the last fight I’ve ever been in, in my life. I played a violent sport maybe, but I knew I wasn’t [00:33:00] a fighter. 

GG: [00:33:02] Lane school walkout, 1972. Any familiarity with what was going on there?

DS: [00:33:09] I remember it, but I don’t remember why. What was the reason for it? I remember that being something to do with policy? That’d be worth finding out. Because I do remember an organized walkout, but I think it was more hooey than dooey, as Sunny Randall would say. 

PL: [00:33:32] I think it was the African American students were demanding more Black teachers, more Black classes, that would relate to African American students.

GG: [00:33:42] Black history.

PL: [00:33:44] It was, nationally, a time of the Black Power movement, and I think these kids were saying they didn’t feel that some of their interests were being met. I think that had a lot to do with it. [00:34:00] 

DS: [00:34:01] Again, it keeps going back to this theme. We were somewhat -- when I say “we,” my group of friends, my circle of friends in high school, most of us were oblivious to it. Most of us were like, “What’s their problem? What are they doing?” But now, 40, 50 years later, we understand what was going on. We understand why they were doing it. We understand the history that we were taught versus -- I know critical race theory is such a hot topic and I don’t want to get going on politics, but it was a hot topic in gubernatorial race, and they don’t even teach it in Virginia. I’m no scholar, but critical race theory to me is teaching the true history, not teaching the history that was in the history books that we learned from, [00:35:00] which were only partly, part of the picture.

PL: [00:35:07] Can I intervene for a moment? I’m remembering that when we met with Coach Theodose that you spoke about, one, playing with other Black athletes, is that right? 

DS: [00:35:26] Yes.

PL: [00:35:26] And secondly, I thought you had talked about -- you just said that the coach talked about it, but I thought you had talked about some violence towards the buses and trying to get out of town really quickly in some cases or others, but you’re saying now that --

DS: [00:35:48] I don’t think that was part of anything that I lived through, but I certainly heard stories, and maybe even witnessed it at some of the games in Richmond. Charlottesville [00:36:00] was still a bucolic little town.

PL: [00:36:04] You traveled.

DS: [00:36:05] Yeah, yeah, when we traveled. We never had any trouble down there, that I recall. But I know Lane High School teams through the ’60s had issues at several of the schools down there. 

PL: [00:36:19] And when you were playing football, or other sports, were there other Black students on your teams? 

DS: [00:36:27] Yes. 

PL: [00:36:29] And that was never an issue, it was not a concern for anybody which you can remember? You just --

DS: [00:36:36] Certainly nobody on the team. No one on the team. Even if they were overtly racist, never an issue. 

PL: [00:36:47] And why was that? Was it the coach’s attitude?

DS: [00:36:53] I think it was partly just that we were all suffering under the same coaches. It was hard playing football for Tommy Theodose [00:37:00] and Joe Bingler. There was nothing easy about it. And so, there was a certain level of respect no matter what your color, no matter what denomination church you went to, no matter what your ethnicity was. And again, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, but most of the Black guys that I recall from Lane High School were good. They played. There weren’t a lot of benchwarmers. And so, made me one time I think about it, we had a guy that -- I won’t mention his name because he’s a longtime state employee that’s retired -- he weighed about a 117 pounds, bowlegged, slow as molasses, and he played football. And you just look back at that time and you go, “Why would you do that?” And I think part of it is that you wanted to be part of something. You wanted [00:38:00] to be part of a team. Maybe his daddy made him do it. I’m not sure. There’s certainly been no shortage of that in today’s world. But no, we had Ronnie Green, Roland Beauford, Tom Martin, Bonnie Wicks, Chip Williams, Lacey Jones, Clyde Greenlee, these guys were good. They were really good. 

GG: [00:38:23] They were all Black -- players? 

DS: [00:38:25] Yes. Yes. I remember one time, I broke through the line, I ran around the left end and I had a clear path to the goal line and I thought, “Here I am, I’m moving, I’m moving,” and I look to my right and there was Roland Beauford. I don’t know if you know Roland, but he ran this County Jail [inaudible] City Joint Security Complex. His nickname was Poochie. His brother’s Carter Beauford, the drummer for the Dave Matthews Band. So, here’s Poochie who’s 6’1”, 245, and I’m about 5’11”, 190, and I thought I was pretty fast. [00:39:00] He’s just running right next to me, the whole way. I think he had another gear. But he was escorting me into the end zone, and I’ll think back on that. So when you think you’re good, you’ve got to remember things like that. But most all these guys are still around Charlottesville. Not every one of them. And I occasionally will run into them or say “hi” to somebody to tell him I said “hello,” and every now and again somebody will call.

PL: [00:39:34] So, on the field, it was all about playing ball and winning. And then, did those relationships for you continue off the field, or did people kind of then go to their --

DS: [00:39:46] People sort of did their own thing. I think my brother, who came after me at Charlottesville High School, I think that’s when you really saw the first signs [00:40:00] of Black and White athletes, student athletes whatever you want to call them, socializing and hanging out together. I don’t recall that when I was at Lane. We were teammates. We were cordial. We spoke to each other. We lived in that world with each other. Well, I had a guy named Richard Shackelford who became a really close friend of mine in junior high school. And do you know he came to my house and spent the night with me on a regular basis, which, I’ve got to say, it was pretty big of my parents back in the time period, but it was just pretty big for Shack to do that kind of thing. He passed away about a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago, unfortunately. Good friend. But not through adulthood. We were good friends in junior high school and [00:41:00] high school. But he was one of us. He was one of our gang.

PL: [00:41:02] So, in high school, what kinds of things did you do socially when you weren’t playing ball? Did you get together in groups of friends, or was it one-on-one friendships? Did you hang out in certain places?

DS: [00:41:16] Well, when we got to Lane, we met a whole new group of people. So, we became friends with some of the people that I’m close friends with today that grew up and went to Walker, and then when we came to Lane, everybody came together, especially in the dating arena. It seemed like there was an awful lot of attraction from the boys and girls for each other that had come together -- probably like anywhere. But I’m trying to think if we had --

PL: [00:41:54] Did you go to movies? Were you at people’s houses?

DS: [00:41:56] Went to basketball games. We rode [00:42:00] around in cars and did stupid stuff. I would call it a very typical teenage experience. But I really don’t recall a lot of racial strife in junior high school or high school. I think I told the story once; I remember Clarence and Roy Fitch at Buford when we were ninth graders, singing, “I’m dreaming of a Black Christmas,” which I thought was clever but they were saying that in the hallways around the holidays. And that’s as close as anything that I remember. And we had dances and everybody went. It wasn’t like there was, “What are you doing here?” kind of thing. Maybe I’m not remembering it correctly.

PL: [00:42:49] Kent Merritt, you know Kent?

DS: [00:42:50] Oh, yeah. 

PL: [00:42:51] He told us this story, and it’s now on camera, right, so I think it’s -- that he was in the fifth [00:43:00] grade, right? He talked about it in the fifth grade.

GG: [00:43:00] I think so.

PL: [00:43:03] He was asked, there was some type of a school party or dance, or something, in fifth grade, (crosstalk), and he was friends with a white girl, and the principal asked him not to dance with her.

DS: [00:43:19] I remember being asked to dance by a Black girl at Buford Junior High School. And it was a little bit of a dilemma at that point in your life. You’re a teenager and you’ve got all kinds of hormones raging around, and we ended up being friends. I can’t remember her name, now. Beautiful, beautiful gal. And I can’t remember if I danced with her. I think I did. I think I did. I think I did. I think part of it was not so much the race thing as I just thought she was going to be a lot better dancer than me. And no, I’m just kidding you. I don’t want any part of that. Anyhow. [00:44:00] 

GG: [00:44:01] My daughter Louise went to the senior prom with a Black kid.

DS: [00:44:09] Yeah. So, there you go.

GG: [00:44:10] That would have been about 1980. 

DS: [00:44:14] And I think it’s changed. I think it’s changed dramatically. 

GG: [00:44:19] Oh, today, it’s much different.

DS: [00:44:20] As it should. As it should. That’s my next group, if you guys want to be a part of that. My next group is going to be interracial marriages. We’re going to all get together -- not that I’m in an interracial marriage but I want to be part of this discussion group about what it’s like to be married to a person of color, whether you’re a man or a woman. It’s an interesting topic, I think.

GG: [00:44:46] Where are you going to have this? 

DS: [00:44:50] It’ll probably be in spring so we can meet outside, and probably in Washington Park. It’s a good spot. It’s a good central [00:45:00] location. But if you talk to Rob Archer, I don’t know if you know Rob Archer, he ran track at UVA and he went to engineering school, but he’s ended up being an entrepreneur and teaches some classes now at the engineering school. When he ran track at Virginia, he met his wife who also ran track. She’s a tall, statuesque blonde, and he’s not. He’s not tall and statuesque, but I think he was a pretty good runner. I just think those stories are interesting because too many people live in this cocoon and they don’t realize what it’s like out there for folks sometimes. They think it’s baloney. 

PL: [00:45:53] David, when you got to UVA, how did the environment change for you at UVA, [00:46:00] from Lane? Of course, you’re now in college, and of course you’re probably not living at home anymore, I assume, right?

DS: [00:46:08] Yeah, no. I was not living at home. Of course, home was here, so I could go home on Sundays and have dinner, and my mother would wash my clothes for me, God bless her heart. But my experience at Virginia was pretty much a football player, typical -- what they do with these kids now, these kids are on lockdown. I mean, it is a totally different environment than when I was there. Both with alcohol, both with every telephone -- we didn’t have cell phones, obviously, but every phone now is a recorder. And so, anything you do, you are being filmed in all likelihood. And I’m trying to think. We did not have a ton of Black guys on the team back then. [00:47:00] Kent and those guys, those four guys were around. They were the only four Black guys still on the team as seniors, I think. I don’t recall. Maybe two or three others that came in. 

GG: [00:47:19] I thought they entered in ’69, didn’t they?

DS: [00:47:21] Their freshman season would have been ’70, I think. Yeah, ’70.

PL: [00:47:28] They’re a senior, and they’re still on the team but there aren’t a whole lot of other Black guys/

DS: [00:47:37] Right. And I’m trying to think back when I played, how many Black guys we had on the team. And it was certainly no more than 8 to 10, out of team of 80. So, 10 percent or less. Compare that to today. Compare that to today. 

PL: [00:47:59] And what was your sense [00:48:00] of the relationships on the team?

DS: [00:48:03] I think it was separate but equal, to borrow an old term. I think that we were teammates, and we did our time, just like with anybody else. You had your roommates, and that’s who you hung out with most of the time, and then, speaking for me, my spring of my sophomore year at Virginia, I played lacrosse, so I met a whole new group of people. There were no Black guys in lacrosse and took a long time for lacrosse to come around, but they have now, and hopefully will continue. It’s still pretty much a white preppy person’s sport. But I met a lot of great people there. Then, I joined a fraternity and blah, blah, blah, and my whole experience was a real -- I’ve got a lot of fraternity brothers from New Orleans, and Tennessee, and stuff. [00:49:00] And smart guys, and mostly very liberal thinking, but it astounds me how many are still stuck in the muck, so to speak, taking it back to how they grew up and where they grew up, Chattanooga, New Orleans, Memphis. 

PL: [00:49:19] So, was the coming of women to the undergraduate college a bigger issue than the integration, the coming of Black students?

DS: [00:49:27] No, I think the integration of Black students was bigger than women coming. But now you’ve got to remember --

PL: [00:49:37] They were already there by the time you arrived, right?

DS: [00:49:39] They were there. They were there. They were there. But there’s a thing going on at UVA now, with the Jefferson Council. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but several of the people on the Jefferson Council are people that I know from my time in college. And it still astounds me how many times you have to say, [00:50:00] the University of Virginia was founded as a public institution to survey the population of the State of Virginia, and I don’t know if you know this or not, the state of Virginia is a very diverse population, and that’s what this university -- it no longer is there just to serve White guys. It goes over real big at a cocktail party, a UVA cocktail party if you get on that topic. I try to avoid it if at all possible, because it’s a no-win deal.

PL: [00:50:32] Who was saying that?

DS: [00:50:35] The Jefferson Council has been formed by a very conservative group of people that tend to think that the that UVA’s woke, that the whole woke culture is going to break down the University of Virginia, and it might. It might. And [00:51:00] so be it. Whatever. Something’s going to break it down. You can’t keep going on forever and ever in the same rut, which is what happens. I don't know. You know, there was a thing that struck me during the campaign that struck me when people were going back and forth about critical race theory, and that’s such a hot topic. But there was a cartoon done, maybe in the New York Times, or maybe in the Washington Post, and it was an editorial cartoon, and it showed a white GI coming back from World War II and being able to take advantage of the GI Bill to buy a house. And then, next to it was a picture of a Black GI who fought in the same war, fought probably just as bravely, if not more bravely than that, and he could not take advantage of the GI Bill. These are things they don’t teach you, right? They don’t teach you. So, anyway. 

GG: [00:52:00] Do you remember any Blacks who in the year say 1970 or so, pretty close to after they closed Burley, did -- do you remember Blacks saying, “I’m so upset that Burley is gone. We don’t have a school we can call our own?”

DS: [00:52:28] I don’t recall. I don’t recall any of that. I mean, again, looking back at it, the whole bubbling started in the ’50s. It probably reached a crescendo in the mid-’60s, because of assassinations and the Vietnam war, that brought the flame up a little higher. And then, it almost seemed like it just cut off. And I bet if you go back and you study the history of racial strife in America, [00:53:00] which I’ve never done, but I bet if you went back, it’s like that. Maybe it’s like that in all social movements. Maybe the gas range gets cranked up for a decade, and then it simmers for a little while. It certainly seemed like, in our lifetimes, that’s been a little bit of the case. Slide over, Phyllis, if you need to get out of the sun. You’re getting your Vitamin D. 

GG: [00:53:28] Well, we’ve had a number of Black people lament that desegregation really lost the Black culture as it existed at that time. The same comment has been made about Vinegar Hill. Now, I always thought Vinegar Hill was pretty awful, looking at it. [00:54:00] But there are those that say, “Look, this was part of our culture.”

DS: [00:54:07] Right. Well, I certainly think, probably -- I tell people this all the time, I am not a Black man, I’m a White man in America, which puts me on the top shelf of the way things have been, up till this point, anyway. But I could understand that, George. I could understand feeling like we -- I think just some examples would be that if somebody like Frankie Swift told a story about working at the old Monticello Hotel, which is down across from the Albemarle County Courthouse, the high-rise hotel down there, and he used a bathroom that was for white people only. And he was 12 years old. So, that’s 1967. And he was called every name of the book by the old man who ran that place, [00:55:00] who I can only assume was an old, crotchety white guy.

GG: [00:55:05] He was. He was. 

DS: [00:55:08] He sounded like an ass. A complete ass. 

GG: [00:55:12] I think you’re giving him more credit than he --

DS: [00:55:14] So, you remember him. But can you imagine? He’s 12 years old. He’s bussing tables, he’s doing whatever he can do, he’s working. 

PL: [00:55:24] And there wasn’t a bathroom for him to use, probably. 

DS: [00:55:26] Well, there was, but it was way down in the cellar, somewhere, down where if you’re 12 years old, you’d be scared to death to go down. But the way this man talked to him, that’s living history to me. 

GG: [00:55:44] Do you have questions? 

LD: [00:55:46] I had a couple. I was curious if you remember the names of the six boys at Buford that you said didn’t come over to play at Lane.

DS: [00:55:58] Oh, at Walker. [00:56:00] The six guys at Walker. Yes. Bo Payne, Alfred Wilson, Moon Mason, I can’t remember Moon’s real name, but we called him Moon Mason. That’s three of the six. Bo Payne especially, because he and I would have probably played the same position, and Bo was a talented, talented athlete. Let me see if I can think of the others. I’ll wrack my brain and think of it. But I can remember three of them.

GG: [00:56:33] Three out of six. In the best year, Ted Williams never got close to that.

DS: [00:56:38] Three out of 500. I want to say TJ Walker was another one. He was primarily a basketball player, but back then, there was really only three sports. Four, track. You had track. So, track, baseball, football, and basketball was about all that was offered. So, most everybody played one or two of those. [00:57:00] 

LD: [00:57:02] And it’s interesting, going to Robert E. Lee, as well as Jefferson School, you don’t normally talk with folks with that had gone to both. I’m curious as to what that experience may have been like. How was that different for you, being at Jefferson versus Robert E. Lee?

DS: [00:57:23] Well, again, being very, very young and not really understanding why I was even -- probably oblivious to the fact that it was an all-white school, but they were all white schools until ’65, right, George? Wasn’t ’65 the year of integration in Virginia? 

GG: [00:57:39] Well, it was ordered.

DS: [00:57:41] Mandated, right. It was ordered.

GG: [00:57:44] Well, they finished a bunch of great court cases by ’65. But, I mean, the Brown decision was ’54, and then in Virginia, Massive Resistance was [00:58:00] declared unconstitutional in ’59. 

DS: [00:58:02] You know what’s amazing is, I never knew Charlottesville was one of the last cities, last school districts in the state to integrate. And I’ve read some stuff through the presidential election, and the back and forth of people on Facebook and other social media sites, about Loudoun County. And if you really go back and do your homework on Loudoun County, my God, it was frightening what that county did to resist integration.

GG: [00:58:37] It was the big money from Washington.

DS: [00:58:38] Bingo. Bingo. And there’s still a lot of that up there. There’s still a lot of that thinking, that mindset. So, my exposure, really, was kept pretty nominal in terms of other races until sixth [00:59:00] grade. And then, it was a full-frontal assault of what integration looked like, and I don’t recall any of it being bad, frightening, “I don’t want to go to school, Mommy,” until Dick spit in my face that mouthful of water -- no, I’m just kidding. We laugh about that now. He’s very active. You’d enjoy meeting him, George. Or, all of you guys would enjoy meeting Dick. He's been in the military, he’s worked in government, he’s run campaigns, he’s very active. And man, he lets the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama have it on Facebook on a regular basis. 

PL: [00:59:48] What about the mayor of Charlottesville?

DS: [00:59:51] He doesn’t comment much about Charlottesville. He might say something about, “That’s my hometown,” and, [01:00:00] “Look what’s going on up there in this situation.” Coincidentally, I walked through Lee Park today, and certainly being a child of Southern heritage and Southern history books, I grew up admiring and thinking the world of Robert E. Lee. And I actually found that park to be somewhat peaceful today, and it made me think to myself how long will that, I don’t want to call it myth, but how long will -- that take the statues down movement versus not taking them down, how long? You don’t hear much about it anymore. But that was a great park, I thought to myself. There were people walking their dogs, there are people sitting on the benches reading. I mean, it’s a park.

PL: [01:00:43] I agree. I drive by that park. The Historical Society is right across the street. I think, “Well, this isn’t so bad. This looks normal. What’s the problem?”

DS: [01:00:55] Finally. It didn’t look normal when you’ve [01:01:00] got yellow tape. But that controversy has died down, I think. 

PL: [01:01:03] Well, we had a major trial going on in town (inaudible).

DS: [01:01:06] True. 

PL: [01:01:09] And we’ll see how that comes out.

DS: [01:01:12] We have some major trials maybe going on in our capitol. 

PL: [01:01:17] That’s true, too.

DS: [01:01:18] I don’t know where anybody is on the political scale, but it would not hurt my feelings at all if Donald J. Trump spent a little time in the pokey.

GG: [01:01:27] It would be purifying.

PL: [01:01:28] (inaudible)

DS: [01:01:31] It would be. It would restore hope in an otherwise barren world, sometimes.

PL: [01:01:39] They just ruled, today, right, that the --

 

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