David Wyant

Annie Valentine: Do you know why Daniel Garland was cut from the football team at Albemarle High School?

David Wyant: Let me why I was really upset about this thing.  We had 32 players.  He would have been 33 and everything.  And we had a couple white kids on the team.  They were almost -- like I said, they couldn’t chew bubblegum or spit tobacco juice and everything.  And Daniel had a terrible looking stance and everything, and he wasn’t a really good ballplayer.  But those kids were just -- they were equal to him.  And none of them were gonna play much, if at all.  So, to me, even then, when I drove, he told me what happened.  This is just the way I’ve been all my life, I guess.  And I’ve been taught because my mom and dad would knock me around if you felt that.  We grew up on a farm where everybody’s treated equal and everything.  My granddaddy Lambs was a tough, tough, tough man, but we all ate together.  We lived together.  There were Black folks that granddaddy had working on the farm that lived in the house with my grandma and granddaddy.  They had a bedroom up there.  There was no discrimination whatsoever dealing with that stuff.  So it ended up when Daniel -- I thought, Lord, that is so unfair.  And I told him just exactly how I felt in that thing, and I think that’s what bonded us two together.

Annie Valentine: But why?  Why was he cut?  You said it was so unfair.

David Wyant: I just think the coach didn’t want a Black kid on the team.  See, they were starting to integrate, but it was so unfair to him because when you look at those others that we had, why didn’t you cut them?  That was my belief.  I mean, be fair across the board, but my coach didn’t feel that way.