Robert King

Yeah, they did.  They came and they wanted to know if I wanted to go to Venable.  And of course Mom and Dad came to me and says, “Robert, do you want to?”  And I said, “Yeah okay.”  I was leaving all of my Black friends and I was leaving the teachers.  First Baptist was the premier church in Charlottesville.  And that’s where the doctors, the mortuaries, dentists, doctors, anybody that had a business went to First Baptist.  So I was there.  Miss  Dosie Johnson, my first grade teacher, knew me when I was born walking into the church.  I mean, being carried into the church.  So these teachers knew me.  Mrs. Robinson, my second grade teacher, who owned a home out on Preston Avenue.  And if you may have heard of an area called Robinson Court, she sold them the land.  And then she moved into a retirement home.  She lived to be I think over 100.  But she was awesome.  And then Mrs. Virginia King, who married Ray Bell, she became Mrs. Bell.  And she was my third grade teacher.  So I was leaving all of that.  Everybody I just mentioned went to First Baptist.  So they knew me.  They would have, in hindsight, they would have taken good care of me.  So I decided to go be the route of integration.