Kent Merritt

GEORGE GILLIAM: [00:00:07] Would you state your name please?

KENT MERRITT: [00:00:09] My name’s Kent Merritt.

GG: [00:00:10] And what’s your date of birth, Mr. Merritt?

KM: [00:00:12] December 16, 1951.

GG: [00:00:15] And you attended Lane High School. When did you enter Lane, and what were the years that you were there?

KM: [00:00:25] I started at Lane High School in the fall of 1967. So I was there 10th, 11th, 12th, which was ’67 through 1970.

GG: [00:00:37] And at what point did Lane High School start… Black athletes? 

KM: [00:00:48] I believe that would be 1963. I think we had a small number of [00:01:00] Blacks that entered Lane High School then. Of course back then because you had an option of where you went to school, Burley or Lane. And so there was a smattering of people that went to Lane High School -- chose to go to Lane High School.

[Extraneous material redacted.]

GG: [00:04:33] So what was the reason that you selected Lane as opposed to any of the other possibilities?

KM: [00:04:41] That I selected Lane? Well, I had no choice in 1967. Burley was shut down in 1967. So everyone went into Lane High School. But the reasoning beforehand was that Lane High School had better facilities than [00:05:00] Burley did. Now, I don’t know if that was true or not, but that was the conventional wisdom as far as integration, period, was concerned, to be honest with you.

GG: [00:05:08] And you had several distinctions at Lane. You were the first -- 

KM: [00:05:16] Oh, yeah. First Black class president there. Probably the captain of the football team.

GG: [00:05:25] And also academic-wise.

KM: [00:05:27] Well, yes. I was -- 

GG: [00:05:29] So you were kind of the triple threat.

KM: [00:05:31] (laughs) I guess you could say that in some sense.

GG: [00:05:38] I’d like to talk about the jump from high school, to college, to professional football. You went through that process. Can you describe for me how that affected you, [00:06:00] exactly what you did, and how it changed your life?

KM: [00:06:04] Well, I always expected to be a football player. That’s what we did. We had been playing football ever since we were kids. So it was kind of a natural progression for me to expect to play in high school and to go to college. Ultimately all of us wanted to be a professional athlete. Of course very few of us make it. We had no idea, or I had no idea, the level of commitment that it took in order to be a professional athlete. At the time UVA was not committed to developing players to that extent. So when I got to the Saints I was very undeveloped as far as a pro football player was concerned. And I just kind of naturally developed sprint and speed and that sort of thing [00:07:00] just because that was the way I was growing. But UVA had no real commitment to any athletic programs back in the early ’70s that I could point to.

GG: [00:07:14] If you had gone to one of the collegiate football factories, an Alabama or a Big 10 school, what would have been different?

KM: [00:07:26] Well, we would have had regimented weight programs. We would’ve had programs that developed specific areas of your body as a football player. I would have been committed to more quote/unquote “classroom” time, learning the game, and learning different offenses and defenses and that sort of thing. We would have had a different -- I mean it would have been another class, per se, that I would have experienced going [00:08:00] to some other programs.

GG: [00:08:03] You were recruited by some of those.

KM: [00:08:05] I was. I was. And I had planned on going to Penn State actually. But that was not encouraged a whole lot.

GG: [00:08:21] So how did it work out? What happened?

KM: [00:08:25] Well, at that time back in the early ’70s, a lot was going on. Civil rights was a big issue back then. UVA had no Black football players. And then here I come and others -- Harrison, John, and Stanley. Here we were Virginia kids, and we were in their backyards. And they knew -- I mean I think there was substantial pressure to integrate the football team. And I was the closest one here plus Dr. McCue [00:09:00] and others were not involved with Lane High School necessarily, but he was our doctor on the sidelines so there was a natural familiarity with some of the people associated with UVA’s program. We didn’t know at the time, but we subsequently found out about that. So there was some sort of an interaction between Lane High School and the university. But there was a lot of political issues involved in those decisions, more so than just a program in the school itself.

GG: [00:09:40] We’ll come back to high school in a minute, but to flesh out your story, what happened after you went to the Saints?

KM: [00:09:48] Oh, when I got there I was way unprepared. I mean the dedication to the sport was not the same as others. [00:10:00] I was not as strong as others. I mean I was fast. I was one of the fastest on the team, but I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t a student of the game as others who were there were. So that combination kind of led me to be unsuccessful in making that team.

GG: [00:10:23] How did that leave you feeling about UVA?

KM: [00:10:28] Well, I didn’t make that association necessarily at the time. In retrospect I can see that didn’t really help my aspirations about being a football player. But at the time I did not place any blame.

GG: [00:10:54] High school. Were the same considerations [00:11:00] at play in your choice of high school? Was there any effort to send you to one of the prep schools that prepares people for high school sports? Or was that route closed?

KM: [00:11:18] No. The only conversations I had regarding prep school was as -- I was a senior. And I was being recruited. Yale came down. That was one of their options as far as getting into Yale. But of course that was a non-starter for me. I wasn’t going to any prep school or anything like that. But there was no effort to send me to a prep school for athletic purposes.

GG: [00:11:50] So if you had gone through Little League and just the normal progression from, say, age 10 to age 18, [00:12:00] would going to one of those schools that prepares you for college athletics, would that have been part of the program?

KM: [00:12:08] I wasn’t -- we weren’t aware of any schools like that at the time.

GG: [00:12:14] So none of the military academies, or Fork Union or any of that?

KM: [00:12:18] No. No, they weren’t an option back then. We had no knowledge or desire to go that route at all. Plus we had substantial athletic programs here in the city or in the area. We played Blue Ridge and Woodberry Forest. And whipped them badly. So they weren’t -- and Miller School -- they weren’t somebody that we felt was good competition.

GG: [00:12:56] So you entered [00:13:00] Lane in 1966.

KM: [00:13:04] Seven.

GG: [00:13:05] Nineteen sixty-seven. You started at Lane in 1967 and played basketball as well as football?

KM: [00:13:17] Yes. And ran track.

GG: [00:13:22] Did you -- were you were a starter on the high school team?

KM: [00:13:26] Yes.

GG: [00:13:27] Your first year or your second year?

KM: [00:13:29] First year starter.

GG: [00:13:30] That’s very unusual. You must’ve been sort of well ahead of yourself.

KM: [00:13:34] I suppose. I was a decent basketball player. So I started then. I don’t know if you know, but I won the state 100-yard dash in ninth grade. So I wasn’t even at Lane High School.

GG: [00:13:52] (inaudible) moving.

KM: [00:13:54] Yeah. So I just [00:14:00] was fortunate in that respect.

GG: [00:14:03] Were you aware of any trash-talking or other racially-based conversations going on?

KM: [00:14:15] Not really. You don’t really hear that on the football field. Now, someone might -- another player might say something. But you’re so focused on your job as a player that I didn’t hear a lot of that. Some others might have, and I’ve heard others that have heard that. But that wasn’t prevalent. I would not say that was pervasive throughout my high school career.

GG: [00:14:46] How about any post-game too much partying?

KM: [00:14:52] Well, define “too much.” (laughter) [00:15:00] I don’t know about that.

GG: [00:15:08] The statute of limitations is well -- 

KM: [00:15:10] I know. It’s only been a half-century. But (laughs) I don’t know about that.

GG: [00:15:18] You majored in economics at UVA?

KM: [00:15:22] Yes.

GG: [00:15:24] What did you do with your degree?

KM: [00:15:26] I went to work locally for National Bank and Trust Company. Mr. Dabney, Hovey Dabney was the president. And he was a big supporter of UVA. And I had worked for him at National Bank in the summers as well. So after graduating I went to work for him and went through their mentoring development program. And I stayed there for two years and had [00:16:00] wanted to get out of Charlottesville, having been here my entire life. So I then went down to North Carolina for the Bank of North Carolina as a branch manager and worked down there for, oh, four years I think it was, in Raleigh, North Carolina, and wound up ultimately in Morehead City, in the Havelock area. And then came back and went to the Darden School. After that I went to work for what is now Bank of America, but it was NCNB at the time.

GG: [00:16:35] How long did you stay in the career as a banker?

KM: [00:16:39] Well, I stayed as a banker until early ’90s and decided that perhaps maybe I would want to do something else, because that’s all I had known. One of the reasons that I did go back to Darden was to -- the expectation that [00:17:00] I would get to do something else. But because my experience was in banking, that’s what naturally I was geared toward. So I went back into banking. So I never really got an opportunity to experience many other career paths. So in 1990 I decided to do something else. And I went into mortgage brokerage. Did that for 10 years until I went to finally work for UVA as an administrator.

GG: [00:17:30] And along the way you went to Darden Business School and got a master’s degree.

KM: [00:17:34] Yes. I graduated in 1983 from Darden.

GG: [00:17:40] In what field were you -- 

KM: [00:17:43] Finance.

GG: [00:17:52] You were on the record as saying that racial tension was significant in the stands [00:18:00] and sometimes even on the football team itself. You said that it was not blatant and racism wasn’t always blatant, but it was definitely there. And then you said, “I think we gained more respect because we were the playmakers.”

KM: [00:18:21] Right.

GG: [00:18:22] Could you develop that a bit?

KM: [00:18:24] Well, I think that -- it wasn’t so much among the team members as it was with the fans. I think there was a little bit of apprehension about having a Black quarterback. Well, I know that Harrison went through a hard time with that. And I think that some players might not feel that -- as accepting of us coming in and [00:19:00] supplanting their teammates in certain positions because we were second-year players. We might be supplanting a senior and that sort of thing. And I think that there was a feeling that if they just got a few good Black players that it would turn the program around, and it didn’t. I think that people were kind of miffed at that. So there were certain -- a lot of expectations that weren’t met. And when the expectations are not met, I think people get a little angry at that. Now, of course I mean when we started playing after every touchdown they would play “Dixie” and they’d wave the Rebel flag in the stands, which is very irritating and offensive. So. [00:20:00]

GG: [00:20:13] So what did the student body do to show their displeasure?

KM: [00:20:20] Well, it was not necessarily the student body. It was the Black students -- complained. We complained to various people that were there to kind of support us that this -- we just didn’t like this. I mean that was part of this whole desegregation process. It was bigger than a football field. It was larger than that. It had to do with an attitude throughout the entire university that was not tolerable. And other things. There were no social outlets for Black students. There were very few [00:21:00] Black faculty. So it was a myriad of things that were there at the forefront that were really challenges for a lot of us Black students.

GG: [00:21:19] Do you think that either the student body or the faculty was prepared to read through segregation?

KM: [00:21:32] I don’t think so. And I reflect on this more so now than I did before. When Burley was shut down and everyone went to Lane High School, there was a lot of discontent, a lot of fights, a lot of arguments. It was not a comfortable environment. But reflecting back on that, [00:22:00] I can understand why that existed. Because Burley had its identity. They had their clubs. They had their social networks. They had all the school-supported activities and that sort of thing. And they had their leaders in those positions. Then they came over to Lane, and they had none of that. They were completely shut out of all of those organizations. I guess they didn’t express it like that at the time. And in addition to that, the administration had no clue how to deal with it. It didn’t appear that they thought it out at all. I guess they thought or felt that the Black students coming over to Lane would be bettering themselves by that association, they’d be happy, hunky-dory about that. And it was anything but. But [00:23:00] in retrospect that’s probably why. If they had something that they controlled or they were a part of, that’s one thing. But you’re shut out of everything. You don’t have anything to say that you are in control of. It was awful from an administrative standpoint.

GG: [00:23:28] What about socializing after high school football games? Were there dances in the gym? Could you dance with a white girl?

KM: [00:23:46] I don’t remember. There probably was. I don’t remember. I do know that at Walker we had a dance. I had become friends with [00:24:00] a white girl. We were friends, and we were close friends. But I remember the principal coming up to me before the dance and asked me to stay away from her during the dance.

GG: [00:24:19] To stay away from the dance or just -- 

KM: [00:24:20] The white girl. Yeah. At the dance. “Could you just kind of stay away from her?” And I did. But I don’t remember too much at Lane socializing. I think basically the races just kind of socialized on their own because nothing sticks out to me along those lines. But I’ll never forget that at Walker.

GG: [00:24:48] It’d be hard to forget.

KM: [00:24:50] Yeah.

GG: [00:24:53] Every year I notice, and I see it almost every year, a group of Black players [00:25:00] are sitting at one table watching somebody’s iPad or (inaudible). A bunch of white people at the next table over.

KM: [00:25:10] Yeah.

GG: [00:25:10] So I ask them, do you not like each other? What’s the deal? There’s no getting together? “No, it’s not that,” they’ll say. “They’ve got their games. We’ve got our games. They’ve got their music. We’ve got our music.”

KM: [00:25:25] Right.

GG: [00:25:26] We don’t have a problem with them, it’s just, we’ve just got our stuff.

KM: [00:25:29] Exactly.

GG: [00:25:29] And it sounds like that maybe had its roots in the late ’50s and ’60s with all these efforts to sort of force integration.

KM: [00:25:39] Right. Then we were in school together, went to classes, did that thing. But we went home to segregated neighborhoods, alright. So our social network were in our neighborhoods. [00:26:00] I think it’s a little bit different today, although I’m a little surprised you saying that because these kids now live in integrated neighborhoods. So I would think that would be a little different. But you’re telling me that it’s much the same. That has to do with I guess cultural things more than anything else.

GG: [00:26:22] Well, and everybody has cars.

KM: [00:26:24] Yes.

GG: [00:26:25] And everybody’s in Facebook. And everybody’s got their idea of what fun is. So what else? What have I missed? What would you like to say?

KM: [00:26:47] Well, I don’t know. I think that as I was saying before, as [00:27:00] we get older I think that we would like more of a historical record written down about our experiences in going to UVA and that whole process. I was kind of surprised to find out -- well, I was contacted by a football player. He’s since graduated. And he wanted to talk to me about it because he knew nothing about us. He said by happenstance he ran across an article or some information that talked about the first Blacks that integrated the program at UVA. But it was just by happenstance. It shouldn’t be by happenstance. We’re part of the historical record of the University of Virginia. So he shouldn’t have to search those things out. I think that it should -- I mean we’re not promoting ourselves. We just recognize that we’re a part of that [00:28:00] history. And I think it’s important for those kids. Now, I was very impressed this kid sought us out. That just let me know that this information is important to these young kids. They need to know this stuff. So I think more of an effort needs to be made to write these things down so that kids can come along and read about it and be enlightened by it. Because otherwise they would think that we had no part in developing UVA or being a part of UVA. So if that were to happen, I think we’d all be a lot happier.

GG: [00:28:40] So as sort of a closing note, was desegregation successful?

KM: [00:28:50] In retrospect, it doesn’t appear to be, does it? There’s a lot of issues with that. The [00:29:00] conventional wisdom back then was that the facilities, the tools that you had to work with were better in a white school versus a Black school. And that’s true. That was true. For a long -- I didn’t know, for example, that our uniforms -- after our season, our uniforms were given to Virginia State. That’s what they use as their football uniforms. I didn’t know that. So the investment in the schools is uneven. The goal or the expectation was that the investment should be equalized, but it never has been. So from that standpoint I think that it hasn’t been successful. I think that [00:30:00] -- and I don’t know what it’s going to take in order to even the playing fields because I think that, for example, here in Charlottesville we had Vinegar Hill, which is the Black downtown. We went down there every weekend and got our hair cut, bought fish. Even the church was there, had various businesses around town. But when they razed Vinegar Hill it wiped away a certain amount of our culture. So we don’t have a lot of businesses to look up to for Black kids around town or an identity that they can focus in on. So that’s kind of why they kind of -- some of them kind of meander around and/or they grow up here, go to college, and never come back. And never contribute back into the community like we need. So that’s a long answer to your question, but in thinking about this thing, I don’t know [00:31:00] what could have been done better, but it should’ve been done better.

GG: [00:31:12] I think Jim Ryan is more dedicated to the notion of trying to make progress in that area than his predecessors have been.

KM: [00:31:23] Well, good. Good for him. A lot of what I hear sometimes about people is that they don’t fit. So they reject them because they don’t fit. Now, what does that mean? (laughs) What does that mean? Until that concept goes away or modifies or whatever, I think we’re just not going to make a whole lot of progress. You can make here and there or whatever, but [00:32:00] that idea of fitness is old.

GG: [00:32:08] Do you think that being an athlete, particularly for high school level, made your experience with desegregation easier?

KM: [00:32:18] Yes. No doubt about it. I think athletes have a certain amount of respect from others. People respect abilities. People like to see people win and be successful. I hate to say it, but you get a pass on some things as an athlete because they want to see you succeed. So I do, yes. There’s no doubt about that, that athletics [00:33:00] gave opportunities to some kids that might not otherwise -- now, on the other hand I think that being an athlete, you have certain qualities about you that are admirable. You don’t quit. You work hard in order to be successful and whatnot. You might be personable. You might not be. But some of them are. So there are qualities that you develop as an athlete that are admirable in all walks of life. So, yes, I think it helps. But I think that some of that is what makes them successful in the first place.

GG: [00:33:45] Lorenzo, do you have questions?

LD: [00:33:47] Yeah, I do. I have a few. First could you tell us just -- growing up in Charlottesville -- where did you live when you were a kid growing up here?

KM: [00:33:57] Until the ninth grade, [00:34:00] I lived in the Grady Avenue neighborhood. Most recently 12th and Grady until I moved here in the ninth grade. And my mother lived in this house. We were the first family in Charlottesville to integrate a neighborhood back in ’65? I think it was. Yeah.

GG: [00:34:25] Did they light a fire on your lawn?

KM: [00:34:27] Well, almost. The neighborhood tried to buy the house from the person that was selling it. They tried to discourage us from moving in. Now, we didn’t get a cross on the lawn, but, yes, I moved in here ’65, the same year that Walker was completed. We were the first class to graduate from Walker in the ninth grade.

LD: [00:34:58] Being that you came into [00:35:00] Lane in ’67 --

KM: [00:35:01] Yes.

LD: [00:35:02] -- and that was the year that Burley closed, I’m curious. Growing up here did you have aspirations to play for Burley, like knowing that history there and being around (inaudible) that played there before -- 

KM: [00:35:19] The answer to that is no. The reason being is that I went to Venable starting in the fourth grade. That was my environment, that integrated environment. My expectation was to continue in that environment. Now, I say that but I have to do a caveat. We never went to Lane High School football games, even though they were -- had a good football team. We never went to -- we always went to Burley’s games. There were heroes at Burley that we knew, and they were our [00:36:00] mentors. But I never really thought about going to Burley for some reason, principally because I guess all the people that I knew were going to Lane. So it’s kind of ironic in that respect, I guess.

LD: [00:36:21] For sure. Either at Lane or at UVA, I’m curious if you had, being one of few African Americans on the team, when you traveled to games outside of the area, what was that experience like? Was there any negatives to that, as far as eating at places after games, or anything like that as you traveled around?

KM: [00:36:45] I don’t recall that. I really don’t. But you have to remember, now, UVA was the last school to integrate. So every place else we went had integrated. Every place else. So [00:37:00] they were accustomed to having mixed teams in their facilities. I’m not sure about here in Charlottesville. But everybody else was integrated.

LD: [00:37:17] What do you remember of the destruction of Vinegar Hill, ’65-ish?

KM: [00:37:23] Oh, well, I was only -- was it ’65 it came down?

LD: [00:37:28] Yeah.

GG: [00:37:29] (inaudible)

KM: [00:37:30] I was thinking that it might. Because I was a little boy when that happened. I mean it was just an emptiness. It didn’t affect me as much as, say, if I were an adult or a little bit older. But that’s where we went. That’s where we went. We went in the barber shop, Bibb’s Fish Market was there, even though Mr. Bibb was a white guy. But he was a nice man. [00:38:00] Zion Union Church was there when we started church. A lot of different little places that sold things were there. So when that left it was just kind of an emptiness. I mean it was kind of -- but being a kid, of course, we kind of relied on our parents to take us where we needed to go and that sort of thing. We didn’t really venture out on our own back then. But it was like something that you expected to see was gone. And it was just kind of empty. It was just nothing there. For a lot of years, there’s nothing there.

LD: [00:38:50] Yeah, that was the last one that I had.

GG: [00:38:52] Annie?

AV: [00:38:53] When you went to the Burley games, was it mostly people from the Black community that you knew really well? Or were there people from the [00:39:00] white community in Charlottesville that were eagerly cheering on the teams?

KM: [00:39:04] There probably were. But it was generally a Black and white type of thing. It was the crowds at both high schools or three high schools including Albemarle were just packed with people. Were just packed. People were very enthusiastic about each one of the teams. Standing room only all the time.

AV: [00:39:36] When you were younger and when you were moving into the neighborhood as the first Black family, did you feel like you had support? Did you know anyone -- was anyone involved in the NAACP? Were there any groups of people that had mobilized at the time that were there to sort of help you out?

KM: [00:39:53] Not that I am aware. No. Of course I was in the ninth grade. So I’m not really [00:40:00] attuned to that sort of thing. But I had friends that I had made from going to Venable since the fourth grade. So I was in ninth grade now. So I’d known these people for a number of years. They were supportive as classmates. I’m not aware of anything that was happening above my level necessarily. So I’m just not -- ninth grade, just a kid.

LD: [00:40:40] Were you and Alex Zan at Venable during the same time?

KM: [00:40:43] Yes, he started first grade. And I came in the fourth grade. So he got there before I did, fortunately, paved the way. Him and Ray Dixon, who was a great friend of mine [00:41:00] and his sister Regina. We were all in the same grade and whatnot. Lloyd Snook came down in the fourth grade. I was his first friend down here in the fourth grade.

AV: [00:41:16] Did you have friends in the county that went to Albemarle that you kept up with? Do you know what their experiences might have been like?

KM: [00:41:23] Not really. For some reason we didn’t get to know kids from the county. Now, Burley did because of course Burley was a city/county school. So they had friends and acquaintances and that sort of thing that they knew. But of course I didn’t go to Burley. But no, I only got to know some people from Albemarle sporadically, to be honest with you. Looking back on it [00:42:00] that’s kind of interesting that -- I mean we’re not that far apart. Albemarle’s right here in the city. But we just didn’t know each other.

[Extraneous material redacted.]

GG: You remember a lot of stuff.

KM: [00:53:33] Yeah. It’s coming back to me in my old age.

GG: [00:53:40] Does it gnaw at you?

KM: [00:53:42] Sometimes. This whole issue about the discontent in the integration of the schools gnaws at me a little bit. Because at the time we didn’t understand why you were so upset. And they didn’t articulate it. They brought in Freddie Murray. You remember that name?

GG: [00:53:59] Sure, I remember Freddie.

KM: [00:54:00] They brought in Freddie Murray from Florida to deal with the natives. And that went over like a hot lead balloon. (laughs) Looking at it, it’s just they just didn’t do it. They just didn’t think about it. They didn’t think about it at all where it probably could have been an easier transition. They just didn’t think about it at all. I don’t know – 

[Extraneous material redacted.]

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