Nathaniel Garland

PHYLLIS LEFFLER: Today is the 15th of February, 2023, and Mr. Garland is with us.  I am Phyllis Leffler.  Lorenzo Dickerson is our videographer today.  We’re doing an interview in our No Playbook series for the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society.  Thank you so much for coming out and being with us today.  We’re going to start with some very, very simple questions.  (laughs) I know you can answer these questions.  First one is, can you tell us your date of birth?

NATHANIEL GARLAND: [00:00:33] Nine 22, 1951.

PL: [00:00:37] Nine 22, 1951.  And I remember when we talked, we talked a little bit about where you grew up, so do you remember a specific address or a place?

NG: [00:00:51] Well, it’s interesting.  I don’t know what that address is initially, but my formative years from eight years of age on, I was in Cismont, Virginia.  [00:01:00] And oh, my God, it’s on Route 22.  I forget what the actual address was.  Huh, wow.  PO Box?  No.

PL: [00:01:21] That’s all right.  We don’t --

NG: [00:01:22] It escapes me.

PL: [00:01:23] We don’t need the specifics.

NG: [00:01:23] Yeah, it’s been that long since I’ve been there.  (laughs)  Wow.  And the property’s since been sold and so forth and so on, and I’ve not lived there for quite a few years, but it was very good.

PL: [00:01:37] Can you describe what your neighborhood or what that lifestyle was like for you?

NG: [00:01:43] When you’re coming down Route 22, 231 and 22 branch off, and 22 goes to the right.  And we were the house that sat up on a hill, so we had this wonderful tradition.  We whitewashed that house, and there were rocks.  My [00:02:00] auntie may have had flowerbeds.  She had rocks that lined them, rocks that went down to the driveway to the end of the road, and we had to whitewash that every year so that it looked pristine.  We helped her in her flowerbed, and my uncle is an interesting guy.  Been in a little bit of everywhere in the military and stuff, and so he got us to go down in the woods with him, and we would dig up these trees.  Now, we planted these white pine trees, and if you go down by that house, to this day, those trees line that hill.  And even now when I look at it, the tops of them are even, but the hill slopes like this.  And we physically planted those trees.  We’d dig around them, put a burlap sack under them, and we’d bring them up in a wheelbarrow and we planted them.  And they’re still there to this day even though the property’s up.

PL: [00:02:55] What are the names of your aunt and uncle?

NG: [00:02:58] James White, Sr. [00:03:00] and Myrtle White.  They’re both deceased now.

PL: [00:03:09] So there is a Myrtle White who I think lives in Florida.  Is that --

NG: [00:03:17] She’s Myrtle Johnson, but she was --

PL: [00:03:20] Is she kin --

NG: [00:03:20] -- Myrtle Ann.  She’s the daughter of that Myrtle.

PL: [00:03:23] So she’s kin to that --

NG: [00:03:25] Yeah, uh-huh.

PL: [00:03:26] So did you grow up with your aunt and uncle?  Were they --

NG: [00:03:28] Yes, I did.

PL: [00:03:28] -- your guardians or parents?

NG: [00:03:29] Because what happened was we were living in (inaudible), and my uncle, George Mills, was living in the house beside the house that we were living in.  It was my mother, myself; my older brother, Daniel; and Anthony, Larry, and then Julius was born.  My grandmother had come up, and she had a stroke.  And when she had that stroke, she became bedridden, [00:04:00] and so we would hear her in the night.  “Oh, somebody help, Sally.”  My mother’s name was Sally, and if my mother wasn’t in the house, we would go in and say, “What do you need?”  And we would give her water in a glass that had a bedstraw.  I’ll never forget it.  Every now and then, if Mama wasn’t present, we’d have to slide a bedpan under her because she was truly bedridden, and wow.  We had neighbors around and stuff, and Mother raised us to be like this.  As you came down the driveway, it’s one, it’s two, it’s three families, and then there was a family they built down behind us.  If the lady up there was sick, you went by and knocked on her door and said, “Hi, I’m so and so.  Is there anything I can do?”  At that time, we had wells and springs.  We’d get a bucket of water or whatever, and my mother would always send a can of juice.  And as I get older, I think about it.  At the time, I said, “This is stupid, (laughs) taking a can of juice up to this [00:05:00] lady.”  And it was her idea of being neighborly and showing that, “Hey, we could help.”  And one day, when I came home, it was the first time I had any trouble with any of my neighbors.  I had a little red wagon; my mother had saved and bought me one.  And the neighborhood kid, he had that wagon over there with a hatchet chopping holes in it because they were poorer than we were.  We were poor, but we weren’t aware.  And when I got close to him, he threw the hatchet back, so I went home and I got the can of kerosene, the one I had just borrowed from the neighbors to start a fire.  I threw it on him, and I chased him around (laughs) because that was the one thing I was about as a kid.  If you hurt me, I was going to get you.  I just didn’t do well with it.  I had a brother, my older brother, and we haven’t seen him for over 20 years.  We don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but we would fight all the time [00:06:00] like siblings.  And the last fight we had, we were in the yard, and he was winning.  (laughs) And I hit him with my best shots; I thought I was pretty stout. And he knocked me down that last time I got up, and I took a rock, and I threw that rock.  Boy, the aim was right on it.  Caught him on the head, down he went, and Mother came out crying.  And she wore me out.  Hey, the switch was begging for mercy, but this is the kind of stuff that was in the neighborhood.  The neighbors were all okay.  I thought I just turned that off.

PL: [00:06:46] Is it possible to turn that off?  It would be helpful.

NG: [00:06:49] Yes.  Mrs. Ray was in the first house, Grace -- don’t even remember all the names.

PL: [00:07:04] But you were starting to tell me why you lived with your aunt and uncle, so I didn’t quite understand that part.

NG: [00:07:10] Okay, let me fast forward to that because I got caught up in reminiscing, in a sense.  One day -- well actually, one night -- the sheriff’s deputies come.  My mother’s crying, and they’re taking her away.  It was after my grandmother had died, and what had happened was that thing of where they would call, “Sally,” my mother was still hearing that.  She was having audio hallucinations even though my grandmother had died and passed, so what my uncle did was said, “Hey, she’s had a mental break.”  Technically, she had, and they took her over to Central State for a while.  And when they did that, we were split up.  My older brother and I went to live with James and Myrtle White.  [00:08:00] The other three went to live in Orange County with the Dades.  And we would visit each other and all of that stuff, but that’s why I was living in Cismont.

PL: [00:08:14] So you had five siblings.

NG: [00:08:16] It’s five total, but at that time, it was only four because there’s seven of us totally.  Daniel, Nathaniel, Anthony, Larry -- Julius is dead; he drowned.  And I had a sister, Cynthia -- she died recently -- and my brother named George who lives in Michigan.

PL: [00:08:37] So seven of you and one girl?

NG: [00:08:40] Yes.

PL: [00:08:40] (laughs)  That’s quite a family.

NG: [00:08:42] She had the girl and tried again and got another boy, so (laughs) she stopped at it.  She stopped.

PL: [00:08:50] You’ve described really nicely the way of life, the dynamic within your family, [00:09:00] and all of that.  Do you remember activities growing up?  Did you attend a church?  Did you have --

NG: [00:09:08] Yes.

PL: [00:09:09] -- friends in the area that you would get together with?  Did you --

NG: [00:09:11] We did.  In fact, recently, we went out to the nursing home and sang with a guy who I’ve been friends with since I was eight years old.  His name is Massie Lorenzo Jackson.  It was for his seventy-fourth birthday.  He was in Baltimore with some grandkids and a daughter, and had a massive stroke.  It was his third stroke and second heart attack, and he’s partially paralyzed on one side.  And so we went and sang with him because he sang in an R&B group with us in the group that we started called The Inspirations.  There was a lady named Bessie Francis Scott, and she left her home to the church.  And she had been on Broadway and sang in all these [00:10:00] fancy choirs and stuff in New York, and one day, she heard us sing.  And so she said, “Hey, come on down to mine’s.  We’re going to do something.”  We were looking at her like, “What?”  My aunt Myrtle says, “Y’all, go down there.”  She stands us up, and she takes a pitch pipe.  And she blows that thing, and we started to sing.  We were already singing ourselves, but then she told us to sing with a piano.  And when we’d go to churches that didn’t have one, she’d give us our key, and we would sing.  And we did that from that time forward.  Massie, whom you’d asked about as a friend, he was singing individually.  He’d heard us sing one day, and he said, “I want to be a part of that.”  So it was James, Walter, myself, guy named Richard Bates -- he was killed in a car wreck -- and Massie joined.  James Yates was there at the time, but he had difficulty maintaining pitch, and so eventually, he kind of [00:11:00] got a little frustrated.  And he stepped away, and Massie replaced him in the group.

PL: [00:11:05] So you’ve been singing your whole life, really, with --

NG: [00:11:07] I really have.  The one that I talk about that called the police for my mother, he was probably Lou Rawl-ish type stuff.  This guy was phenomenal.  And singing was also my escape.  Something wasn’t going right?  I’d hum a tune, or I’d go off in the woods and I’d sing or whatever.  I noticed that when you’re doing meditation, it’s, “Hum,” and all that stuff.  Well, there’s something to that.  It has a thing that goes on in there, and for me, it’s okay.  What’s scary is whenever I listen to myself recorded, that doesn’t sound --

PL: [00:11:50] Well, then don’t listen.  (laughs)

NG: [00:11:51] Yeah, doesn’t sound right.  Everybody else is going, “Wow, I love your voice.  It’s melodic.”  I’m going, “Nah.”  (laughs)

PL: [00:12:00] So can you tell me a little bit about the schools that you attended?

NG: [00:12:04] I can.  I first went to school in a place called Dry Bridge.  It’s in Ivy, Virginia.

PL: [00:12:11] Dry Bridge?  That’s the name of the town --

NG: [00:12:13] Well, it’s --

PL: [00:12:14] -- or school?

NG: [00:12:14] -- the name of the area.

PL: [00:12:15] Dry Bridge, okay.  Uh-huh.

NG: [00:12:17] And the name of the school is Terry Elementary.

PL: [00:12:21] Terry?

NG: [00:12:22] T-E-R-R-Y.

PL: [00:12:23] Thank you, uh-huh.

NG: [00:12:25] And when you’re coming across to me from Central Bridge coming up, just as you get to Ivy, you hang a right -- it’s at a angle -- and then you take a right at that road.  And it goes up, and there sits a two-room schoolhouse.  That’s good stuff.  (laughs) I’m talking about wood stove, pump outside, (laughs) bathrooms down yonder.  And it was pretty funny because what happened was my older brother’s five years older, so I went up to the bus with him one day, [00:13:00] and I got on the bus.  I wasn’t supposed to, but I did anyway, and nobody worried about it.  “Sit down!”  So we get to school, walk in, and the lady said, “Who do we have here?”  I told her what my name was.  She looked at me, and she says, “Can you read and write?”  I said, “Yes, ma’am.”  She said, “Show me.  Go to the board.  Put your ABCs up,” and I did it.  My birthday, because it’s September the 22, I would’ve waited until the next year to attend.  Her name was Miss Perry.  She said, “We’re going to keep you,” and that’s how I went to school.  And I --

PL: [00:13:42] So what kind of a bus?  Was this a public bus, or..?

NG: [00:13:44] Yeah, one of those big yellow ones.

PL: [00:13:46] Not the --

NG: [00:13:47] Bus number --

PL: [00:13:47] -- school bus?

NG: [00:13:48] Yeah, a school bus.

PL: [00:13:48] Oh, there was a school bus that came --

NG: [00:13:49] Bus number --

PL: [00:13:50] -- to get you.

NG: [00:13:50] -- sixty-six.  Oh, yeah.  And they’d come and get you every morning, even when I lived in Cismont.  That’s how we got to school.

PL: [00:13:58] It’s a long [00:14:00] distance, isn’t it, from Cismont to Ivy?

NG: [00:14:02] No, Cismont, I went to Rose Hill.  From Rose Hill, we went to Stone-Robinson, and from Stone-Robinson, I went to Albemarle High School because there were no middle schools or junior highs.  They were building Jack Jouett when I was at Albemarle High School.

PL: [00:14:23] So are there particular teachers or people that you remember?  Did you feel supported in that school environment?

NG: [00:14:32] Yes, it was good.  It was pretty interesting.  There was this guy.  I still never figured out how that kind of worked, but his name was Julian King.  And he would make the circuits, so I had met him up at Ivy because he would come and talk about physical education and different stuff.  When I got to Albemarle High School, he was there as the assistant principal, and I had one of my scariest [00:15:00] experiences.  I have to tell this.  I had heard that Mr. King had died.  This was after I had graduated from Albemarle High School, and I used to ride, avid bike rider.  I used to ride my 10-speed 15, 20 miles a day.  And so I was sitting at the 7-11 at Barracks Road, and I’d just gotten in.  I stopped and got a drink.  And I looked up, and there he was.  I said, “But he’s dead.”  And so I said, “Mr. King,” and he said, “Yes.”  My heart literally skipped a beat.  And he said, “No, not Julian.”  He said, “I’m his twin.”  He said, “We never got along,” he said, “and I’m in town for his funeral.”  (laughs) They’re identical.  They looked just alike; same size, same everything.  I was like, “Oh, my God, I’ve seen a ghost, the first time ever.”  (laughs) But anyway, [00:16:00] when I got to Albemarle High School, well, tell you what: you said teachers or influence.  When I was at that original school, Abe Perry’s mother, Miss Perry, very influential.  She was very nice, very encouraging.  There was only two teachers.  Daisy Banks was the principal/upper, and Miss Perry taught the lower ones, so I think one, two, three, four was on one side of the door because all they did was collapsible doors.  And when they pulled the doors, they divided the school.  When we had an assembly or something like that, they pushed the doors open, and you could see everybody.

PL: [00:16:40] This is at Terry Elementary?

NG: [00:16:41] Terry Elementary --

PL: [00:16:42] That’s what you’re [talking about?]?

NG: [00:16:42] -- at Dry Bridge, Virginia, yeah.  And so when I left there, I went to Rose Hill, and Rose Hill was interesting.

PL: [00:16:51] What grades would that have been?  Which ones?

NG: [00:16:54] Had to have been third, fourth?  That was probably the fourth grade.  [00:17:00] Yeah, fourth or fifth grade, and there was a lady named Miss Rosalind Carter.  “Nathaniel!”  (laughs) She was one of the few people that called me Nathaniel.  Most people call me Nat.  When I got to high school, I had other names from playing sports and stuff, but she always called me Nathaniel.  It was never Nat.  Very strict, but she was very big on doing things, and she kept telling me that I had more in me than I was giving.  And I kept looking at her like, “What is this lady talking about?”  Because I wasn’t comprehending those kind of things in those days.  What I understood was what everybody else did: you turn in your homework, you write, you go to the board, you recite what you’re supposed to recite, you do what you need to do, and that’s how you’re judged.  You get a letter grade: a A, a B, a [00:18:00] C, a minus, or whatever.  And so to have that at that time was very interesting.  I really didn’t judge people if they were pretty or whatever, but she was very nice, very pleasant.  But she was always, “Nathaniel, Nathaniel.”  But the one thing I did do was when my brother broke his leg, the kids would pick on me because my hair, when it grows, is very soft and curly.  And it gets into big curls, and they talked down.  “Hey, yo, Curly.  Hey, he’s a sissy,” so we tried out.  And so when my brother broke his leg, I was there by myself, and so nobody was there to defend me or take up for me.  So I had to fight for myself.  So one day, I came home with some new little light jeans that you wore back in those days, and I had mud on them.  My mother said, “You fight your brother [00:19:00] around here.  You come home looking like that again and the other kid is not looking as bad, I’m going to tan your hide, mister.”  That’s all I needed: a license.  (laughs) So when I went back to school, I became a terror.  (laughs)

PL: [00:19:15] You became a...?

NG: [00:19:16] A terror.  If you --

PL: [00:19:17] A terror.

NG: [00:19:18] -- struck me or cornered me -- that’s where that came from -- I would fight you.  I didn’t care if you were bigger, older, didn’t matter.  And that’s where I learned about rocks and pieces of coal and stick, if necessary.  Whatever it took to make sure you understood that bothering me was not good.  And it’s pretty interesting because that’s what I told my sons.  I said, “Hey, if they jump on you, don’t start it.  If they jump on you, let them know that that’s the wrong thing to do.”  So anyway, I made it through that and met some people.  Over the years, I re-encountered them as I got to Albemarle High School because there was only the one high school at the time in the county.  So people came from as far away [00:20:00] as Greenwood and Afton and places like that, Cismont, Keswick.  We all came together.  Black and white – Earlysville and  Albemarle.  Let’s go to Stone-Robinson.  Stone-Robinson?  That was a eye-opener because there were white kids there that were roughly the same size as me.  Because I was a tall kid, but they were 13, 14, 15 years old.  Because they had been held back or they didn’t come to school during harvest time because they lived on big farms and stuff, or they went into the hills and helped cut pulpwood with their parents.  Well, I didn’t know anything about that.  I knew about pulpwood, but I never went, and so when I got into fights with some of these kids, I lost a couple times I went.  And a guy named Nelson Talley -- you talk about different people -- he grabs this one kid.  He says, “Hey, what are you doing fighting him?”  [00:21:00] He said, “He as big as me.”  He said, “Yeah, but he’s 11 years old.  You’re 15.”  “Well, I didn’t know.”  This kid had been working on the farm, and so he was in great shape, but we looked at each other.  “We’re about the same; we’ll do this.”  Wow, was that an eye-opening experience, and that’s how life works.  You learn these things by doing, but I also met kids there that I enjoyed their conversation with them.  They were curious about me.  And some of the teachers were very interesting.  They taught you they had strict rules, and Nelson Talley stood out because he took care of the recess and the physical stuff.  He was a tall guy, and he was always trying to make sure there was a sense of fair play and fairness in what we did.  And he would explain things if you didn’t know.  I guess I probably had a bewildered or perplexed look on my face sometimes, and he said, “Listen, Nathaniel, [00:22:00] lada-dada-da.”  I’d go, “Okay.”  It made sense.  (laughs)

PL: [00:22:04] What years were you at Stone-Robinson or what grades, if you know them?

NG: [00:22:08] Seventh grade.

PL: [00:22:09] Just one year?

NG: [00:22:10] One year.

PL: [00:22:11] Uh-huh.  And I want to get into your involvement in sports before you get to Albemarle High School, but I think I want to ask a different question first.

NG: [00:22:26] Ask, please.

PL: [00:22:27] So you’re born in ‘51.  The Brown vs. Board of Education decision comes out in ‘54.  You’re three years old.  Clearly, you’re not going to know anything about it.

NG: [00:22:37] I’m trained to know.  (laugh)

PL: [00:22:40] But as you’re starting to go to schools like Rose Hill or Stone-Robinson, was there any talk in your home about this desegregation process or integration process?

NG: [00:22:54] Yes, it was in the home, but I also had these experiences when I would get on the bus with my mother and go to [00:23:00] Charlottesville.  When we got on the bus, and the bus was full, “Honey, step back.”  There was a line on the bus that I couldn’t stand in front of.  When I went down to the bus terminal, which was downtown in Charlottesville then, there was a white water fountain and there was a colored water fountain, and I made sure that I went to that one.  And so these things stood out.  The Branchville Pool Hall was there on Main Street and of course, I was too young looking in, and they go, “Nah, you can’t go in there.”  So we went to Vinegar Hill.  That’s where Radio Barbershop was, and we went to get our hair cut and so forth, and so that’s where the stores were.  And Bull’s shops and all that went down and of course, Vinegar Hill was razed to make way for urban renewal development.  All of that stuff went away.  And so yeah, I was familiar with it, and I knew that there was certain that I didn’t do and I couldn’t do, and it would cause problems for my mother and possibly cause [00:24:00] problems for me.  When you went to the stores in Crozet or whatever, I’d be in my mother’s arms.  “Honey, no, we don’t go in there.  We only go here.”  And you sort of understand it, but you sort of don’t understand it.  It’s a rule.  Mama says, so you follow that.  But as I got older, I would hear about, “Yeah, you know we don’t,” and I’ve asked a couple times.  “Why don’t we go to school just like--”  They said, “No.”  And I did know this much: I knew what separate, but equal meant.  They said, “Schools are separate, but they’re equal.”  Well, when I got to Stone-Robinson, I found out that wasn’t true.

PL: [00:24:44] In what sense was it not true?

NG: [00:24:46] They were expecting me to be further along in my math and reading, and I wasn’t, but I was a quick learner.  I had the ability to acclimate, and so I did okay.  [00:25:00] Now, me being technically a ward, I didn’t think about this.  I was in the family dynamic, but I’m sure she got assistance, what you call food stamps and whatever nowadays.  But a meager check was probably cut, and I didn’t even think about that.  I think about that in retrospect.  I don’t think about it because I’m living.  This is my thing, so this is the family I’m in, and I’m involved.  I’m engrossed myself.  I’m not thinking, “Oh, I’m a welfare child.”  They’re my family, but James White was my great uncle, and so I’m thinking, “Wow, this is my family.”  I’m not thinking, “Well, she gets something, some help, some stipend to assist in rearing me [00:26:00] and helping with me.”  I didn’t think like that.  And that’s what Aunt Myrtle said: “You’re part of this family, boy.  We love you.”  So I got whipped like everybody else.  (laughs) There was a pecking order, and I fought everybody that came along.  When the cousins came in from Detroit, the Hayes boys were big, all of them, 6’3”, 6’4”.  And my grandfather had a nickname for me.  Dallas Carlson, he called me Snap.  And so one day, when I got older, I asked him why he called me that.  And he said, “(laughs) Because you have the fastest hands of all the grandchildren.”  Ain’t that something?  That’s because I did.  I would fight anybody.  It didn’t matter.  If I felt that you were putting up or teasing or bothering me, I’ll get you.  I’d figure it out.  And part of that was about being respected because with boys and children in the neighborhood, we shot marbles.  We [00:27:00] played stickball.  We did all those things.  And of course, every so often, a fight broke out, and everybody would encourage it.  They did break you up before y’all tried to kill each other, and after a while, you learned to respect that person because they stood their ground.  They stood for what they believed in.  And if you accosted them, they would fight you.  That’s all that mattered.  It didn’t mean that you had to win all the time or anything like that.  It meant that you were willing to fight.  And that’s what I learned over time, was if somebody bothers you or whatever, you have to learn to stand up.  As I got older, the fighting part had to leave.  You had to stand up with your mind.  And I had heard something that was said to me many years ago, and I still keep it back tucked in.  It said, “You got to learn to be a fish with a bicycle.”  And I said, “That is the dumbest thing I ever heard,” and the guy said, “No, it isn’t.”  Said, “A fish with a bicycle can move in more than one element.”

PL: [00:28:00] Can move in..?

NG: [00:28:01] Move in more than one element.

PL: [00:28:02] Element.

NG: [00:28:03] And that’s a philosophical thing, and I get it, and I understand it now.  I have to be multicultural, and that’s one of the things that I learned over the years as to why people were different.  I would watch girls that I grew up with.  They would leave and go to Detroit or to Baltimore or whatever, and when they would come back, their auntie or their cousin had a baby.  They didn’t, but that baby was theirs.  That baby wasn’t Auntie’s or whatever.  That’s so that they kept their reputation as who they were in their place.  That’s the part of the [00:29:00] learning process.  See, I didn’t understand that.  “Good girls don’t.”  Really?  And we were so young and naïve that we weren’t even aware of what was really going on with some of the girls because that generally happened with an older boy, generally from somewhere else.  He came in and, ooh, they were all fascinated with him and, “Ooh!”  But anyway, as a part of the growing process, what I found was that I was a part of the family.  I was treated somewhat different in certain things, but not in all things.  I knew that my aunt cared about me; my uncle did too.  He drank sometimes, but he was a hardworking guy, mostly construction.  My Aunt Myrtle was a professional cook.  In today’s parlance, she would be called a chef, and she cooked at St. Anthony Hall at the University of Virginia.  And in the summer, [00:30:00] she would cook at Oakland School.  That’s there now.  It was there in the summer.  It was started by Miss Margaret Shepherd, her daughter, and a man named Nicholas [Solaho?] from Florida, and they help people that have dyslexia and so forth and so on.  And they’re the first ones to start that.  John Cameron Swayze and all the people from TV, their kids came to that camp.  They rode horses and all that, and I worked in the kitchen with my aunt.  I was her kitchen assistant.  I started off as a pot washer, and then as she found out that I could cook a little bit, she said, “Come over here, boy.”  And I was at her elbow learning to cook.  I did that for three summers, and after a while, part I didn’t like about it was that it was out in Fluvanna County, and I was away from everybody.  And by the time we’d have to travel down there, have our day, and then travel back, well, everything was done.  The fun stuff was done.  [00:31:00] And that was only the summer, though, but I started to work at UVA.  Had to get a worker’s permit.  I worked in housekeeping.

PL: [00:31:11] How old would you have been then?

NG: [00:31:12] Fifteen.

PL: [00:31:13] Fifteen.  While you were still in high school?

NG: [00:31:16] High school, because I graduated when I was 17.

PL: [00:31:20] Wow.

NG: [00:31:20] See, so I was in --

PL: [00:31:22] All right, can we go back for a minute?

NG: [00:31:24] Sure.

PL: [00:31:24] How did you get involved in sports?

NG: [00:31:27] Sports was what we did naturally.  You got to remember that you got boys, and my house is Walter White, James White -- actually, Margaret was a tomboy then too.  She could play baseball and stuff, then you had all the community.  You have Otto Bates, George Bates, Richard Bates.  You had James Yates, which was Doc.  All these kids, male kids, oh, we played everything.  We played marbles, we played basketball, we played football, we played [00:32:00] flag and tackle, and it was what you did.  And you footraced down through the fields and the lanes and so forth and so on, and we tried everything.  And of course, when you had a chance, we even had little basketball hoops up, and I look back.  One was sort of still up there in the country, and I was like, “Man, we played basketball?”  But we were learning, and all of us played high school sports.  George Bates played there, and then he went to Dartmouth.  Richard Bates went to St. Paul’s.  James went to St. Paul’s; he was the anomaly.  He played golf.  (laughs) He’s decent at baseball, but he played golf.  I played football and ran track.  Walter played football and ran track.  Otto and George, both football and track.  [00:33:00] Otto Bates had the tree service.  That’s how it was, and there was intramural sports at Stone-Robinson, so you could get on a little team there and play a little football, dodgeball, softball.  Those things were present, but that was it.  All the other stuff was community, and I played on a little team that we had playing baseball.  We would play in North Garden and Covesville and those places like that, Keswick.  We played against each other, and we were all young then.  And that was outside of school, that was organized.  Everybody had a community center, and everybody had a little team, and you played.  We didn’t have no track or anything like that until you got to school.  That was organized, but we all ran.  We learned to run from each other.  We learned to run with each other.  That’s a part of how it works.  It’s a communal thing.  Everybody gets together and plays.  Sometimes you’d have [00:34:00] some great games.

PL: [00:34:01] But where?  You’re living in a sort of rural area.  And when we talked to people who lived in the city, they said, “Well, we all gathered at Washington Park.  We just generally went there.”  So where did this happen?

NG: [00:34:19] Well, there was a field.  Miss Mamie Burnett had a field where we played football in, and when we wanted to play baseball or softball, we would try that sometimes, but that was bad.  We even played football in our front yard.  Charles Winkie made one of the greatest catches I’ve ever seen.  He also broke his ankle because we lived in -- at the highway, there’s a bank, and he’s been down that way, I’m sure.  Charles Winkie made a catch going over that bank one time, his concentration on the ball, and he had a four or five foot drop, but that’s what I’m saying.  (laughs) We had a sleigh ride because we lived on a hill and the [00:35:00] highway ran down it.  We would go out there.  My Aunt Myrtle, we’d take her watering pot, and you’d put your galoshes on.  And you’d do your sleigh run and hit the highway, and rev on down.  And one of my most wonderful, worst winters ever, she said, “I don’t want y’all to go on that highway, boy.”  “Yes, ma’am.”  We couldn’t wait for her to go to work.  We were out there, (laughs) got that sleigh right, that sandpaper, get them runners slick, running start, bam!  Down through there we went out into the road.  All the sudden, all you could hear was, “Shh, boop, boop, boop!”  It was a trailway bus.  (laughs) We have to ride to the bottom of the hill all the way into the branch.  My aunt comes home that night.  “Y’all didn’t go out there in that road, did you?”  “No, ma’am.”  About 4:30 that morning, there was a rush of cold air.  She was in there.  [00:36:00] “Y’all lying!  You told me--” “What?”  “[Top?] and Lucille Brassfield was on that bus, and they said the bus almost hit y’all.  They couldn’t wait to call me and tell me that you all had disobeyed me.”  (laughter) And that was the wonderful thing too about it.  We had a sense of community.  I have to get this in: we were on the athletic bus.  My cousin, James, drove the athletic bus, so we finally made up in our mind we were going to skip school that day.  So we’re riding down through downtown Charlottesville, right about where Lisa’s Bakery was.  He had to stop the bus, and all the time when the school bus stops, they always open the door.  Never understood all of that, but that’s safety, and up on the bus steps our Aunt Myrtle.  She had been downtown paying a bill, and she said, “I guess y’all boys are riding around a little bit before you go into class, right?”  “Yes, ma’am.”  She said, “You know I’m going to call Mr. Hurt, and you better be there.”  Well, that took care to skip school, so we went on to school.  (laughs) [00:37:00] And times when we worked or we -- I don’t know what you would’ve called it -- went somewhere we wanted to play, sometimes we played at school.  And when I say school, we went to the rec center sometimes and played basketball.

PL: [00:37:14] What (inaudible)?

NG: [00:37:14] Carver Recreation.

PL: [00:37:15] Carver Rec.

NG: [00:37:16] Yep, we did that.  Sometimes I did play at Washington Park because sometimes I would spend a night in town with my uncle who lived on Langford Avenue.

PL: [00:37:28] Did you just say you rode the athletic bus?

NG: [00:37:32] Yes.

PL: [00:37:32] What is an athletic bus?

NG: [00:37:34] So when you finish track and football and all that, they would have certain kids that they would allow to drive the bus.  And they would make little stops and drop you off.

PL: [00:37:46] I see, but that would’ve been after school?

NG: [00:37:48] After school, but of course, James had the bus.  The bus, he would take home.

PL: [00:37:52] Oh, I see.

NG: [00:37:53] So of course, hey, we were going to pull the trigger, boy --

PL: [00:37:57] I get it.

NG: [00:37:57] --  (laughs) [00:38:00] We going to sneak like everybody else.  Weren’t even sure where we were going.  That’s why we were riding in the bus.  Short-lived.  (laughs)

PL: [00:38:08] Tell me about Albemarle High School and --

NG: [00:38:11] Albemarle High School.

PL: [00:38:11] -- what that was like for you.

NG: [00:38:12] Interesting thing.  I walked into Albemarle High School, all of 12 years old --

PL: [00:38:19] Wow.

NG: [00:38:20] -- looking around.  When you walk through the door, there’s a stairway that goes up this way.  Hallway goes that way, principal’s office, and straight down, it goes down to the cafeteria.  Well, the kids were on the -- when we walked in, they said, “Ooh, boy, we’re going coon hunting tonight.”  Well, down there where I come from, the Gibson boys and everybody coon hunt.  They had some of the best coon dogs in Albemarle County.  They weren’t talking about those kind of coons with the ring tail.  They were talking about -- we got the spitball treatment.  We got all that, and [00:39:00] once again, it was kind of strange.  I didn’t have a book for one class.  And I’ve never seen her since -- I don’t know if she’s alive or dead -- it was a girl named Laura Jensen.  And she said, “Nathaniel, you can look over my book.”  And when she said that, everybody in the class was like, “You’ve done something bad.  That’s taboo.”  She was just being nice.  And I had one or two other people that I met that were okay at the time, but they were different.  I always thought of it this way: they had enough money or even maybe they were secure enough in themselves.  They didn’t seem to fear us because a lot of kids, they really did, yeah.

PL: [00:40:00] They pulled back?

NG: [00:40:01] Yes, but a lot of others didn’t, and that’s where athletics was good to me.  I think if I had used my mind a little bit more, I would’ve done even better, but the athletics worked.  You could comprehend what needed to be done, follow the explanations.  You had a playbook; you could read it.  Gymnasium used to start at a gym.  Everybody took gym in those days, and so you found out that you could run and jump and do everything that everybody else could do.  And that was a sense of equality without any words being spoken, and then you got decent grades in school.  I found that some kids -- it’s not that they can’t learn, but in certain environments, they’re intimidated, and their learning juices doesn’t kick in.  In fact, it numbs [00:41:00] them, and I’ve been in that way myself.  It’s almost like an unknown fear just won’t let you use your mental capacity, and I think that’s what happens sometimes when people are thrust into environments where they feel uncomfortable.  It’s like they don’t use their full capacity.  Once you get to the point of where you can do it -- I gave this explanation once when I was in one of my classes.  I was in the ninth grade, and the lady said, “Nathaniel, why do you act the way you do?”  And I said, “Well, whenever you’re feared and hated any time you walk in somewhere,” I said, “it starts to wear on you.”  And she said, “What are you talking about?”  I said, “Well, this black skin I have?  I didn’t ask for it.”  I said, “But yet  everywhere I go, I’m judged by it,” I said, “and it bothers me.”  And she just sat and looked at me.  She couldn’t [00:42:00] comprehend what I was talking about and simply because she couldn’t be me.  She didn’t walk a mile in my shoes, and I guess because of the fact that she had never encountered it, and I was probably the first black student she’d ever taught, it was foreign to her as well.  I have --

PL: [00:42:21] Can I ask, how do you know that was foreign to her?  Did she challenge you about your statement?  Could you --

NG: [00:42:27] No.

PL: [00:42:27] -- just tell from her --

NG: [00:42:28] I got a blank look and no response.  You know what?  Let me fast forward, and this is important that I get this in.  When I got to the twelfth grade, I started to apply to schools, and I got my responses back.  Accepted to Virginia State, Delaware State.  Hampton didn’t respond.  There were five schools, and I don’t remember them all, but what I do remember was this: [00:43:00] I was told, “Any school that doesn’t accept you, write and ask why.”  And the letter that came back from each of them said, “Not enough college preparatory courses.”  Okay.  So I go to my guidance counselor.  At the time, it was Miss Flornes.

PL: [00:43:22] Miss...?

NG: [00:43:23] Flornes, F-L-O-R-N-E-S.

PL: [00:43:26] Flornes, thank you.

NG: [00:43:28] I said, “Miss Flornes, why wasn’t I given these classes?”  She said, “Nathaniel, because nigras don’t go to college and become intellectuals.  You all go to the military, you get married and have kids, and you get a job and get on with your life.”  So just like I’m sitting now, I said, “Would you come with me a minute?”  She said, “Where are we going, Nathaniel?”  Mrs. Dofflemyer was the head guidance counselor.  I said, “I would like for you to tell her what you just told me.”  She said, “Of course,” and she [00:44:00] repeated it.  And when she did, Mrs. Dofflemyer broke into tears and started to cry.  She said, “You don’t understand, Nathaniel.”  I said, “I really don’t.”   When we were in government class, Mrs. Virginia Beard said, “I want you nigras to start.”  And I looked at her, and me, Ruth Chapman, several of us, went to the guidance counselor and took her.  We said, “Now, would you repeat that?”  She said, “Repeat what?”  I said, “Why do you keep calling me a nigra?”  She said, “My grandfather had slaves, and I’ve been calling you people nigras all my life.”

PL: [00:44:42] Wow.

NG: [00:44:46] “There’s nothing wrong with it.”  Now, I’m saying there were tears in my eyes because I can’t jump on and beat this old lady up, and she’s coming from a place of truth.  This is what [00:45:00] she knows.  And I, through integration, had been thrust upon her, and under that contract, she has to teach me.  And some of this is me looking back in retrospect, but I comprehended some of this then.  She was as uncomfortable as I was.  She probably wanted to say more or say it in a different way, but she was an educated woman.  She was an educator.  So we did encounter that, but most of the teachers were very good as long as you came to their class, did the work, showed up.  And the coaches probably were the better people because what the coaches did was they treated you all like men if you did your job, (laughs) and it was universal.  It was easier, I’m thinking, but for those people that had to deal with you differently -- [00:46:00] now, at Albemarle High School, I had certain teachers that were really great. I met a lady.  She was –

[Extraneous material redacted.]

PL: [00:46:17] This is really important, what you’re telling us, thank you.  I know it’s hard sometimes to look --

NG: [00:46:21] It is because some days -- as I’m sitting here now, I’m getting a physical response, but I didn’t think I would.  Because I haven’t talked about this stuff in, I don’t know, [since I -- so anyway?], that blue jay done ran all the rest of them birds off that bird feeder.  That’s what my... (laughs)

PL: [00:46:40] You’re focused on the bird feeder.

NG: [00:46:42] Yeah, it keeps me...

PL: [00:46:44] Yeah, no, I appreciate it, and part of the reason we’re doing this project is that as hard as I think it is sometimes, we really want to preserve this for future generations.  [00:47:00] We really want kids in schools to be able to hear some of these stories and to learn from the elders because they don’t really know anything about this, I hope.

NG: [00:47:13] Well, it should be because I was listening to something that -- a preacher came down to church –

[Extraneous material redacted.]

NG: [00:47:31] So Em Hunt was a lady I took a business edu-- I forgot what she taught me, but she said her skin was of a ruddy complexion.

PL: [00:47:47] Of a...?

NG: [00:47:48] Ruddy complexion.

PL: [00:47:49] Ruddy.

NG: [00:47:49] She had short, red hair, almost a nondescript person, but she told me some things that I keep.  She [00:48:00] said, “Nathaniel, I notice that you wax loquacious sometimes.”  And I went, “What’s that mean?”  She said, “It means talkative, honey.”  She said, “Listen to me.”  She said, “Get you a dictionary, keep it with you.  Learn one new word a week.”  She said, “and if someone says something to you, and you don’t understand what it means, make a note and look it up, okay?”  She said, “If your life or your days are not going well,” she said, “take your five by seven note card.”  She said, “Draw a line down the middle.”  She said, “Fold it.  Write on one side five things you must do that day.  ‘Get up, wash your face, da-da-da-da-da.’”  She said, “On the other side, write down five things that you want to do.”  She said, “Every day that you get up, you accomplish the five things on the front side and at least two of the ones on the backside.”  She said, “Your life [00:49:00] will progress, and you will flourish.”  I said, “Eh, that’s okay.”  To this day, I have a pack of five by seven cards, and I do it.  Whenever my life gets really cluttered or I’m having issues with time constraints or I have a lot of things to do, that’s my go-to.  Also, what she didn’t say to me was that it’s convenient.  You can stick it in your pocket.  That’s why the phone has become such a big deal.  It’s because it’s right there.  Everybody has them.  It’s stuck in their pockets; it’s whatever.  That phone is a part of your life.  There’s pictures on it.  It records.  It’s a two-way communication device.  So what she encouraged me to do was to learn.  I didn’t comprehend it at the time.  She was encouraging me to learn, and [00:50:00] I found out that that’s really what it’s all about with college and all this stuff.  As you go forward, sometimes there’s a certain amount of remedial that’s in all of it.  And then after they find out you can process the information and learn, then you go forward. Life in and of itself has a similar dynamic because if you don’t grow and learn from your experiences, you don’t know how to process information, compartmentalize it, and then utilize it, then it is of no value.  And so as I learned this, I, in turn, helped with being a Sunday school teacher.  I did it at Unity Church and so forth and so on because they tell me I have a way of speaking and explaining things that people comprehend, so I learned from the teachers who taught me those things.  And the last thing that Em Hunt gave me that I always cherished was she said, “Nathaniel, you use that experience,” and I’m talking about [00:51:00] with the guidance counselors and so forth, “as negative reinforcement to a positive end.”  And to this day, I cherish that, and I try to tell people that.  Sometimes the negative experiences that you have, they should drive you away from having them again, to have them constantly repeated in your life, and should motivate you to want to do more and better with the life that you have.  We’re all afforded a certain amount of opportunities.  As long as I’m breathing, as long as I’m cognizant and aware, I have an opportunity to learn.  And those experiences that I got there are where people look at me and disvalue me, and I always say this: I’m not what I look like.  And people say, “What are you talking about?”  I had a lady named Mary Bergman one time.  Her brother and I were friends at UVA, and I was there, and he attended school.  And we were playing chess one day, [00:52:00] and I beat him, and she went, “Bob’s a good chess player.”  And I looked at her, and she was a nursing student.  I said, “Don’t tell me.  Do you think I’m supposed to go (inaudible)?” And tears ran down.  She said, “Yes.  You’re a big old guy,” she said, “but you’re articulate and explain yourself.”  She said, “And you play chess, and you listen to music.”  I’m big and black.  That ain’t supposed to be happening, and that’s what I told my son.  I said, “Look, don’t let them do it to you.”  Well, he’s a big kid as well, and I thought something was wrong with him.  He would tower over the desk and disrupt school, so I took him up to UVA and had him tested.  (laughs) Lady came back, they kept him back there four or five hours.  I said, “Is he okay?”  She said, “He’s fine.”  I said, “What?  There’s nothing wrong with him?”  She said, “No.”  She said, “Your son is lazy.”  She said, “He’s very, very, very bright.”  [00:53:00] She said, “When he gets ready, he’ll do it.”  She said, “Reminds me of somebody else I know.”  This happened while I was in school too.  Worked for a man named Dr. Douglas Eastwood.  Dr. Douglas Eastwood was the head of anesthesiology at a place called the University of Virginia Hospital.  He’s since died; his son sent me a death notice.  He took me under his wing, and I worked at his house.  And he always wanted me to show his sons how to work, how to cut grass, how to sharpen axes, how to do that.  And at the end of that, he shook my hand one day and said, “Nathaniel, you don’t understand it.  You have a natural proclivity to work leadership and teaching.”  He said, “I sure hope you realize your gift one day.”  After that, he left here and went -- I don’t know where he went -- to some other big hospital, and I didn’t see him anymore.  See, people like that in my life [00:54:00] gave me little things that I hang onto, and I remember them.  They’re nuggets that I reach back and I get.  And even growing up in Albemarle, there were times some people ran and came down the road.  “Hey, nigra, go!”  And they’d shoot guns out if you walking near dusk, and you had to be careful not to go into certain areas because you were just inviting trouble.  I never went up there, but I always remember one my uncle told me.  He said, “I went up to Sheffield Holler with a buddy of mine one time.”  He said, “There was a sign that said, ‘Don’t Be Here After Dark.’”  He said, “Ain’t that the stupidest sign ever?”  He said, “Not if you black it ain’t.”  (laughs) He said, “They’ve given you fair warning.  Don’t be here.  Anything might happen.  It’s not saying any particular thing’s going to happen.”  So it’s in life like that.  I wasn’t going to go in certain places.  I wasn’t going to invade people’s privacy.  I cherish the fact that when I was playing football, [00:55:00] about the ninth or tenth grade, Tom Lanahan invited me to go to dinner.  He lived right on Pantops.  He wanted me to come in and meet his family.  He wanted them to see that I was just like him.  I didn’t quite understand the fact that they put brown beans on the plates.  You’re supposed to put them things in a bowl, but (laughs) the cultural difference, little stuff like that, to me, was funny because she takes those, and she -- they were good.  And they were just (inaudible) --

PL: [00:55:36] Can we just for a minute go back to Albemarle High School more specifically?  And I think I have just two questions.

NG: [00:55:46] Sure.

PL: [00:55:46] One, I know when we talked, you told me that Coach Moore came over from Burley --

NG: [00:55:54] He did.

PL: [00:55:55] -- but my question, really, is what was it like [00:56:00] for you on the teams?  You’ve talked now about Tom Lanahan, but was the team the means for greater camaraderie and equality?  Or did you ever feel on the teams that you were also being seen as different?

NG: [00:56:23] I initially did feel different, but after I brought my physical prowess and that fire that burns within me to bear, after one day of practicing, after I had twisted a few fingers and knocked a couple of people almost senseless, the coach said, “I got to give you a nickname.”  He says, “You’re a special guy.”  He said, “I’m either going to call you Large Father or Big Daddy,” and that has stuck to this day.  And he was talking about a man [00:57:00] that was an actual man.  His name was Gene Lipscomb, and he played for the Baltimore Colts, and they called him Big Daddy.  And he was a mean guy on the football field, and that’s where they learned that I bent helmets and I’d tear you up because when we’d get bull in the ring or one-on-one drills, hey, I could be hit, but I could hit just as hard as anybody else.  And I gained a lot of respect from the coaches as well as my fellow players, and they’re guys to this day.  It was really interesting.  I was outside of the C&O one day washing the sidewalk, and John Sanborn -- well, we call him Tito.  His name is John Sanborn; he owns a office machines place around here.  He drives by, and he stops and gets out.  He said, “Big Daddy, man, what’s going on?”  I said, “Man, it’s my part-time job.”  He said, “Oh, okay, man.”  He says, “Man, we went through Albemarle together, graduated, man.”  He was concerned.  [00:58:00] There were other guys that I went through school with.  They didn’t care where I was at, but a lot of those guys gained enough respect for me over the years, and they accepted me as an equal.  And so I value that experience that I had playing football there, and it allowed me to get a scholarship to college to play for Delaware State, which I played for a couple years and got my ankle tore up.  I had an opportunity to meet Roosevelt Brown and some other people because he came down in person to recruit me for the New York Giants, and I told him, “Sir, I got my ankle tore up.”  And I met him later on in Charlottesville again, and he remembered me.  I thought that was great as a hall of famer.  Roosevelt Brown Boulevard is here in Charlottesville.  Nice guy.  And little things like that, I cherish that.  My cousin went on to have great success.  [00:59:00] He was in a different system from me.  Had I not got my ankle tore up, I probably would’ve had an opportunity because I had three teams looking.  I had a shot too, and then I got sick.  Oh, God, I caught infectious hepatitis.  I was the first one.  Kept getting sick, falling out of class; they sent me home on quarantine.  I came home on quarantine, went back for two weeks to get some affairs straight.  A lady named Miss McDonald called me.  She had been involved with our case when I went into foster care, and she said, “Your brothers, Larry and Tony, are having trouble in Orange.”  My other brother had, prior to that, drowned in Lake Orange, Julius.  She said, “Nat, if you have a place, we’ll make special provisions if you would just take custody of them.”  So when I was 20 years old, [01:00:00] I signed a document, I took custody of my two younger brothers, and we got on with our lives.  And I never went back to school.  I’ve taken courses at Piedmont.  I’ve taken Culinary Arts courses, I’ve taken [Team?] Education courses, and so forth and so on.  I still enjoy the fact that I can still learn and my mind still works.  And to be honest with you, I do kind of hold out that one of these days, I’m going to be like one of those 80-year-old grandmothers that walk across the stage and say, “I got my degree, man.”  Because I’ve got, I don’t know if it’s 30-some hours complete, but it is what it is.

PL: [01:00:41] Yeah.  Boy, you’ve had, it sounds like, a full and rich life with numerous challenges too, so...

NG: [01:00:51] It’s interesting because we would go up into the neighborhood of Cismont and work, and I met people [01:01:00] up there that were really great.  I met Dr. and Dr. Hunter.  One of them worked with crutches, and one is a pediatrician?  I forget what the other one is, but they’re both doctors at UVA or they were, and very encouraging.  “Come in and sit down, Nathaniel.”  “You’re kind of got me off my game here.  Y’all want me to come in and talk?”  And I worked for the Yates-Smith family and other people where they would give me a key to their house and say, “Look, after you cut the grass, I want you to come in and clean and do this and do that.”  That was important to me because it showed trust.  They allowed me to come into their home; I had a key to their abode.  And as I’ve gotten older, when my wife and I were having some issues years ago, Dave Simpson, who used to own the C&O restaurant -- he’s since died -- he did the same thing.  He said, “Look, man, if you and your wife are having problems, here.”  I said, “What’s that for?”  Said, “That’s the key to my house.”  [01:02:00] He said, “I got a girl living with me.  I’m going to marry her,” he said, “but call before you come.  And if things get ugly, come on up.”  See, I treasure that.  I value that.

PL: [01:02:13] Right.  I want to ask you directly about -- this project is a lot about understanding how sports fits into the larger picture of integration.  So I know when we talked on the phone, you talked about this a little bit, but do you think sports is a way, or was it a way, to overcome race divisions --

NG: [01:02:46] Yes.

PL: [01:02:46] -- at Albemarle?

NG: [01:02:47] And let me tell you why.  Sports does certain things.  First of all, it lets you know that, “I can do what he does,” or, “I can do what you do, and if I can’t, I can watch you, and I can learn.”  [01:03:00] That allows me to grow, it teaches me organization, and it teaches me to work within a framework of a team.  I become a part of something.  And it also -- this is the thing that sports does -- teaches you that you can do more than you think as a part of something larger than yourself.  You see, I played with a broken hand, fingers that were busted.  When we were playing in our last game, I watched that same kid -- Tito, John Sandborn -- kid stepped on him and spiked him, and you could see that he literally did like this.  And they said, “Come out of the game.”  He said, “No.”  They took these fingers and taped them together.  You saw them stick that bloody hand up in the air.  We marched down the field and scored with ten seconds on them.  Last undefeated season at Albemarle High School.  I was a part [01:04:00] of that team.  You don’t teach that.  That come from camaraderie, a team effort.  “We’re going to win, we’re going to go forward, and I am a part of this just as much as he is.”  And no one can separate you from that.  That experience is yours; it’s unique.  That’s why when you see those guys out there winning Super Bowls and winning NCAA championships, flag football -- I hear my daughter, to this day, talk about, “Yeah, I played [inaudible] with the girls.  I played football.”  I’m like, “Really?”  I say it like that, but I understand.  That was her and her girlfriends.  Boy, and they was out there doing it.  And it’s the same thing anywhere; there’s something about it.  It’s like when you’re in church and the same things -- man, I used to sing in the choir.  Well, I’m a part of this or that.  And even when Jesus sent the disciples out, he sent them out [01:05:00] two by two.  He didn’t say, “You go over there, and you go over there.”  We support each other; it’s imperative.  It’s how human nature works.  It’s just how it works, and when you got a part to be on that team, your blood runs red just like theirs do.  When somebody hits you hard enough, it hurts, and you remember that.  It’s internal.  It happens physically, but it’s intellectual at the same time.  And to answer directly what your question is, yes, it can be a vehicle because what happens is people that you normally wouldn't speak to or associate with, you find that you will become a teammate with in sports, whether it’s on the track or whatever.  And even when you and that person aren’t the greatest whatever, when you see him running down that runway to do the long jump or the pole vault [01:06:00] or whatever, it’s a part of you that’s rooting for him to do it, to succeed, and it’s just natural.  It’s in us.

PL: [01:06:13] Thank you.

NG: [01:06:14] You’re welcome.

PL: [01:06:14] Yeah.  Were you involved, as a high school student, musically with any groups, or...?

NG: [01:06:24] Oh, we sang.  We won most of the talent shows and stuff around here.  (laughs)

PL: [01:06:28] But at Albemarle?

NG: [01:06:30] Yeah.

PL: [01:06:30] You were in the choir at Albemarle High School?

NG: [01:06:33] Yeah, I was in the chorus.

PL: [01:06:34] In the chorus at Albemarle High School?

NG: [01:06:35] Yeah.  Cynthia DeSue.  “Stand up, Nathaniel, come on!”  (laughs) Yes, I was in the chorus there.  Oh, my God.  We called ourselves then, at that time -- it was James and the Flames.  And we said, “Wait a minute.  There’s already a James and the Flame: James Brown and the Famous Flame.”  So we changed our name to The Shades of Soul, and it was myself, [01:07:00] Walter White, James White --

PL: [01:07:01] Shades of Soul.

NG: [01:07:02] -- Massie Jackson, and Richard Bates.  Richard got killed in a car accident after we graduated.  The band?  Bobby Coleman on bass, Wayne Brown on drums, Willie Pritchett on saxophone; Gary, I want to say, [Parnau?] on trumpet player; guy that wrote, arranged, and played keyboards, Gentry Excavating & Equipment, Wayne Gentry.  He’s won all the battle of the bands up and down.  He was the coach.  He’s a top notch musician, but him and his father and everybody all have heavy equipment companies, and he still does.  If you see his trucks running around in there, it says Wayne Gentry Excavating.  Same guy that used to play keyboards for me.

PL: [01:07:50] Was this an all African American group, or were there --

NG: [01:07:54] All the guys that sang, yeah.

PL: [01:07:56] All the guys that sang?

NG: [01:07:56] All of us, the vocalists.  The guys that played in the band, they were all [01:08:00] white.  (laughs)

PL: [01:08:01] Just heard that same story.  I just heard it from someone called Larry Kent.  Do you know him?  He graduated from Albemarle as well.

NG: [01:08:10] Yeah.

PL: [01:08:11] And he said he did the same thing, but he wasn’t part of your group?

NG: [01:08:17] I’m trying to think.  Did Kent do anything?  I know who Larry Kent is; I know him well.  I saw Bobby Coleman the other day for the first time in years, and he goes, “Don’t act like you don’t know me, man.”  “[For what reason?]?  Bob Coleman!”  He said, “That’s right, Big Daddy.  How you been?”  (laughs)

PL: [01:08:38] Wow.

NG: [01:08:40] That’s pretty interesting.

PL: [01:08:40] This is terrific.  Let me pivot here to Lorenzo because we’ve kept you talking for a long time.  What questions do you have and would like to add, Lorenzo?

LD: [01:08:52] Let’s see.  I have a couple.

NG: [01:08:56] Go on.

LD: [01:08:58] I’m curious [01:09:00] because you are one of those first 26 students to desegregate the schools in (inaudible) Albemarle.  So going from Rose Hill to Stone-Robinson, what do you remember of your aunt and Reverend Johnson during that time getting ready to go to school?

NG: [01:09:20] Very encouraging, and --

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NG: “You’re as good as they are.”  The word wasn’t used to diminish, but, “don’t you let them look down or talk down to you, and you do your best at all times.  At every opportunity that you’re given, shine.  Be your best.”  And that was great, like I said, because in our church, we were encouraged always.  Here was a woman that had been in New York and all [01:10:00] these choirs and stuff.  She thought we could sing well enough to put us as a group, and we traveled.  We went to Baltimore and Washington, DC.  We went to all the local churches around and sang, even the Pentecostal churches, which was an interesting experience the first time we went in there.  They were pounding on the drums and jumping up and dancing and carrying on, and I said, “Hold it, we ain’t --” and after a while, I figured it out.  They were just worshiping, (laughs) but my pastor who passed, Reverend Johnson, and their pastor then, formed a bond, and we do Friends & Family Day.  That’s been going on for almost 50 years where the Pentecostal church comes to us and we, in turn, go down there and spend --

PL: [01:10:45] And the name of the church?

NG: [01:10:47] Oh, House of God.

PL: [01:10:48] House of God.

NG: [01:10:49] And our church is Zion Hill Baptist.  We celebrating our 152nd anniversary.  We’ve been doing it for a little while, I tell you.  [01:11:00] (laughs)

LD: [01:11:01] I’m curious.  With you coming into Stone-Robinson in ‘63, what year did you graduate from high school?

NG: [01:11:08] Sixty-nine.

LD: [01:11:09] Sixty-nine.  You would’ve been in school when both Kennedy and Dr. King were assassinated.  Do you remember those two times?

NG: [01:11:18] Somber times, especially when Kennedy was assassinated.  King, it was there, but when Kennedy was assassinated, it was like people lost hope.  There was a guy who had a driving determination to try to make things right.  He had the courage of his convictions, and he played it out to his death.  The same thing happened with King.  Took them a while to really see who King was because, [01:12:00] let’s get real, the color of his skin.  See, that does it for so many people.  When I walk through the door, and I’ve done it before, they see me, but after they get to know me, I have people that are still friends of mine from 50 years ago, 60 years ago, and it’s great.  They had a chance to see me, and King was doing it for everybody.  He wasn’t just doing it for us.  It was for us mostly because that’s who he was.  He didn’t get up in the morning and look at himself, “Oh, well.”  I like that girl who was with -- was it the NAACP or whatever?  She said, “I think of myself as a Black woman.”  Wait a minute, but you’re obviously Caucasian.  My daughter thinks of herself as a single, white female.  That’s the new thing now.  Be who you want to be.  [01:13:00] That’s not reality.  Reality is there was a man who adhered to his convictions.  He studied, he had a strong faith, and an indomitable will.  And he wanted us to get off of our knees to get what was supposed to be a part of the American dream, be judged by the content of our character, and not the color of our skin, and that’s what he believed in.  And he believed in doing it by nonviolence, and it cost him his life.  I find that even the most steadfast person will crumble, or they will cower sometimes, when put in certain situations.  That’s the deal with Jesus when they brought him in there.  “Who do you say?  So say they.  They say that’s who I am, king of the Jews.  That’s what they say.”  What he did, [01:14:00] though, was he had this barometer to operate within, and that’s what King did.  He operated within the law.  “I can demonstrate.  I can march.”  He knew the constitution backwards, forwards, and sideways.  And when that happened, yeah, there was a certain amount of sadness and unfortunately, there were a few people who you could sense that it wasn’t bothering them that much.  When Kennedy, it was like somebody threw a wet blanket on them and said, “Hey, yeah, your dream just died.”  King, not so much, but with the African American students and certain ones of the white teachers and administrators, you could see that they too were moved and bothered by it.  And I was in the midst of it.  Of course, for me, it was devastating because I thought the guy walked on water.  I didn’t know that I could [01:15:00] do it too.  I just had to freeze it, but people don’t get it when I say that.  Within us all is this potential.  When we’re born, you, me, all of us, we’re complete.  We have to hone it, we have to work on it, and then we have to allow it to blossom, but it requires a certain amount of sticktoitiveness, focus, and a deep faith in courage of conviction.  If you never have those things, you’ll never reach your full potential.  I don’t care who you are.  And King had a dream, but he had more than a dream.  He could see it.  That’s the beauty of some people: they see it.  The Temptations, when he formed a group, he could see it.  He knew it, he wanted it, and finally, there was music on the radio.  It’s happened; it’s brought to [01:16:00] fruition.  You have to be able to do that in life, even me now.  I got some things that I got going on physically that’s not allowing me to do what I -- but when I came back to this area, I had three things I wanted to do.  I wanted to get a job where I made at least $1000 a week, I wanted to be an executive chef because I knew I had the skill, and I wanted to have a wife and family.  I’ve had all those things.  I was the executive chef at Holiday Inn on 29 North for 10 years.  My salary I negotiated was $43,500 starting because that’s what I’m worth.  I’ve worked in kitchens where the guy who was the chef couldn’t cook his way out of a paper bag, but somebody gave him the title.  Mine comes from being self-taught and working my way up, and I can do what [01:17:00] they do.  And so these are things that are important to me, and that’s why, at some point, I want to get that degree because I feel incomplete.  I really do because while playing two sports, Coach made me stop playing basketball.  Because he said, “You came here on a football scholarship.”  I managed to carry a 3.35 with 21 hours at Delaware State College, so I know my mind works.  I just need to get myself back and be focused.  Clear the clutter.  That’s one of the things about anybody who goes forward: you have to organize and clear the clutter because if you don’t, you just trip over things.  I use the [inaudible] because I know it works.  I’m a recovering person.  I’m over 20-some years clean, and the first thing they told me was,  “Keep it simple, stupid.”  They said, “Don’t let that magic magnifying mind of yours get in [01:18:00] the way.  Don’t drink, go to meetings, and pray for like-minded people.”  It works.  You surround yourself with certain people.  When you were in college, you surrounded yourself with certain people.  There are certain people you stayed with.  If you had a problem, you talked to them.  Those are things we need to do in life, especially nowadays because this integration thing?  It’s come full circle.  It’s happening in different ways now.  It’s not about your race.  The internet is making it about what you follow.  They were talking about young girls, the one I was listening to this morning.  What I do is I get up and I turn the TV on, and I listen to it like a radio because when I grew up, we didn’t have television at first, so we had radio.  [01:19:00] I listened to the shows like Perry Mason, all that stuff; it was on the radio.  So I can do other things, but I’m always listening, and they said something like, “20 percent of all teenage girls have had dark thoughts or considered suicide.”  I said, “Oh, my God.”  Man, at that age, you’re ready for life.  You’re going to grab life by the neck and wrestle it to the ground.  No, they’re going, “Oh, my God, I’m not pretty enough.  I’m not good enough.”  Something’s wrong.  There’s something that’s coming out of that thing.  A young girl recently just testified before Congress, and she said she thinks that the internet unfiltered is a weapon of mass destruction.  I hear her loud and clear, and it’s because people aren’t forming relationships with their peers, with their groups.  See, that fighting [01:20:00] that I did?  I respect Otto Bates because man, he can take a punch, and he hits pretty hard too.  They don’t do that anymore.

LD: [01:20:10] I want to show you this because you mentioned the bus.  That’s Terry’s school from years before.

NG: [01:20:21] Get out of here.  Ain’t that something?  The bus number I used to ride at Terry’s school was number 66.  You done really did some research here, fellow.  That’s the other thing.  People say, “Man, you were doing all this stuff?”  I go, “Yeah, and the unfortunate part is it’s all true.”  (laughs) The groups of the families that lived around -- there was a guy.  You probably heard of him because of all the stuff he went through, Sherman Brown?  He got that lengthy sentence for supposedly killing the girl, but they said --

LD: [01:20:53] That’s because of a (inaudible).

NG: Okay.  And I was at a party -- in fact, it was the year they [01:21:00] closed [Maxtrax?] -- and a girl walks up to me, and she kept looking at me.  And I said, “Miss, is there something wrong?”  She said, “You still got that pretty curly hair.”  And I’m like, “What is this?”  And my wife was with me.  She said, “I’m Rose Marie.”  I said, “Rose Marie Brown?”  She said, “Yes.”  The last time I’d seen her, it was at Dry Bridge.  I said, “Oh.”

LD: [01:21:26] Wow.

NG: [01:21:27] Yeah, Verna, Sherman, Rose Marie.  Francis [Lucky?] too.  Andrew, Percy, Whitie.  There’s another young boy, Ira.  These people were there from the time, and we were talking about -- I’m six, seven, eight years old, but I still remember who they were because --

PL: [01:21:50] That’s amazing.

NG: [01:21:51] -- they were an intricate part of my life.  Earlier, what were we talking about?  Earliest memories?  Now, there are other people in that [01:22:00] I don’t know if they're nondescript or what.  I don’t know what that’s called, and I took Psychology and all that stuff and Philosophy.  I couldn’t recall them if I had to, but they’ll remember me because that’s what happened at my fiftieth reunion.  They walked up, and a girl hugged me.  “Nathaniel, you don’t remember me?”  And I was like, “No, (laughs) no I don’t.”  But she remembered me, and not because I was some whatever, but she just remembered who I was, and I was in her life in that way.  Any other questions you guys want to ask me?  I don’t want to waste your time.

PL: [01:22:35] I was just going to ask you about your views of where we are in terms of race relations today.

NG: [01:22:43] You know what?  It’s interesting.  I have a step-grandson who’s 19 years of age up at Shenandoah University right now.  He went up there, and he ran home, and now he’s back up there because he played football at Albemarle, football and lacrosse.  [01:23:00] They were high on him, but I don’t know what happened.  “Granddad, I don’t know if I really like football like I used to.  They going to get me up, and I have to do two-a-day practice.”  And I said, “Boy,” I said, “can I tell you about an experience of a young Black man?”  He said, “Okay.”  I said, “This young Black man was 17 years old.”  I said, “He got a opportunity to go to college.”  I said, “When he came to his aunt and uncle who were his default parents, they said, ‘Honey, we don’t have any money for you because we have Walter and James and Myrtle if they want to go to school.  They get to drink first, but you work hard and you save your money, and something will happen for you.’  So I went and got on my knees, and I prayed.”  And as I told you, old AP Moore was there, and he said, “Boy, what’s wrong with you?”  I said, “Man, I want to go to school.”  I said, “I’m getting letters, some of them not accepting me.”  He said, “Don’t worry about it, boy.  Things are going to work out.”  [01:24:00] Just like that.  And this was the coach that, after he watched me get in a fight down out on the football field one day, he said, “I keep a two by four I keep in my car for people like you.”  (laughs) Same Moore that was the sax player for the Dave Matthews band.  That was his son.  So anyway, “What are you talking about?”  So I applied to Delaware State College.  I get a letter of acceptance, but along with that letter comes a offer to play football.  Full ride, tuition and books.  I got on a bus and went to State Road, Delaware.  Got down to Dover, Delaware, and caught a cab up to the school.  Didn’t know anybody.  It was just me, and I got up in the morning, and I ran behind that Volkswagen.  I went out there in the day, and in the evening, when you went out for your third practice, the mosquitos that [01:25:00] bit me made me bleed.  They were black tigers, and when I relate this story to somebody -- the gentleman that used to own Ray’s Electronics down at McIntire Plaza, he said, “Silver Lake, huh?”  I said, “What?”  He said, “I’m the guy who used to fly the yellow plane.”  He used to spray for the mosquitos up there.”  He said, “The worst mosquitos north of Florida, in Delaware, Dover.”  Didn’t notice it, but all of that came together.  Now, back to what your direct question is, the internet has played a big role.  What has happened is it’s accentuated some of the worst parts of race relations, and I wonder sometimes if it’s genuine, as far as individuals getting to know each other, getting to learn from each other, getting to take the best part of each culture and incorporating it.  That’s how humanity grows.  [01:26:00] You see, I was having a conversation with some of the people over at UVA one time.  I cooked at Darden for 18 and a half years, and the kids would come in, and they stayed away from each other.  They went to school together, but they were over here with the confederate flag; and the other one’s over here with the red, black, and green; and the other's over here with the piercings and the tattoos.  And I said, “Stop it.”  And I said, “What’s wrong with you?”  I said, “Man, y’all are supposed to learn from each other.  You’re supposed to play together, grow together, smoke your weed, drink, act stupid.”  I said, “At the end of the day, when you go back home, you all, individually and as a society, have grown because of your inner reaction.”  Race relations in this country was moving forward.  To some degree, it’s still doing it, but it’s doing it in micro, and it wasn’t with Donald Trump.  [01:27:00] It was with secret societies and individuals in cliques and backrooms.  They have a great fear of race relations going forward and coming together, so what is happening is they’re fostering the breakup.  The FBI did a book; I don’t know if you can get it.  You might have access to it.  I’m not that literal with it.  It was called The Branding of America, and the reason I know is, is because a police officer let me see some excerpts from it.  Their fear was that those immigrants were going to take this country over, and the white people were going to lose their privilege.  And they’re pushing it now; it’s called Christian Nationalism.  I’m a History and Political [01:28:00] Science major pre-law, so I’m aware of who I am, where I am, and what’s going on around me.  I don’t talk about it much because you got to be careful what you say around certain people.  Because they don’t like hearing it, and you aren't supposed to be aware of it.  I am aware, painfully, of Christian Nationalism in this country.  I’m also aware of the various phobias that’s causing us to look like we’re coming together, but we are like this.  In the long run, it won’t work.  The thing that needs to happen now is a true come to Jesus moment or to identify and say, “I am an American.”  Without that, we’ll keep going down the road.  [01:29:00] That’s what I know, and that’s what I see.  I see interracial marriage, I see all of that.  Even a lot of that isn’t about, “I love this person.  Boy, something about him, I cherish and treasure.  I want to see what it's like to have one of them pink toes.” Or, “Ooh, I heard this, that, and the other.  It’s true, it’s true.”  I watch Blazing Saddles too, but the thing is that it needs to be a genuine acceptance of you and me and him as people, as equals, and this, I know.

 

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