Donald Byers

In North Garden, we all -- the Blacks had that -- the churches that they attended, the whites had churches they attended, and they were all in it -- and they still -- like they still are today as far as churches in the communities that you live.  Every community just about has a church in it.  And some of them had more than -- and I know right now that in North Garden, in South Garden -- North Garden, South Garden area, we have one, two, three right there.  We got three, three Black -- three -- what I call churches that mostly Black -- all Blacks attend, and you got about four or five -- four that whites attend.  You didn’t have as many churches back when I was coming up, but you had churches for each race.  As far as the sports is concerned, we had -- we formed a -- we had a -- probably formed league, a baseball league, a sandlot baseball league, which we had teams from different areas.  And sometimes, we had to travel, sometimes a couple hour almost -- well, an hour and a half to get to some of these places.  But we had a league that you played in, and it was a Black -- it was all Black up until I think in the late ’70s.  In the late ’70s, I think we -- South Garden had -- we had a couple of white guys that played ball with us on our team.  At the same time that we had the Black -- all-Black league, Charlottesville had a White league team over here, and they asked me to play ball with them also and so I was playing in two teams.  I was playing with my team, and I was playing with them also here in Charlottesville.

Phyllis Leffler: But that would’ve been after high school.

Donald Byers: After high school, that would have been after high school, yes.