Racial Tension
Racial Tension
“I got a locker to myself. Why would I care?”
Phylissa Mitchell
“I was actually frightened to go into a class with all white kids.”
Garwin DeBerry
“I never told my mother. I felt like it was my burden at that age to carry.”
Corlis Turner Anderson
“You had to fight to present yourself as: I am worthy.”
Corlis Turner Anderson
“Junior high was an angry year.”
Corlis Turner Anderson
“The only reason you’re here is because the governor said we have to do this.”
Corlis Turner Anderson
“I was suspended from the squad.”
Corlis Turner Anderson
“I can’t say anybody was really happy about it.”
Phylissa Mitchell
“I thought that race was where people drove in a circle.”
Phylissa Mitchell
“It was the first time I had experience white hostility in such an organized fashion.”
Phylissa Mitchell
“Everybody else is the white sea all around us.”
Garwin DeBerry
“They don’t think we need a Black football coach here.”
Garwin DeBerry
“You keep on reporting what’s wrong.”
Julia Shields
Julia Shields
“Now, do I have to show you everything in black and white?”
Julia Shields
“My experiences will be different from the white population.”
Vincent Kinney
“Officer, why is he Mr. Chauncey, and I’m Vincent?”
Vincent Kinney
“I went and marched with them the next day.”
Vincent Kinney
“Adults put us through that, and none of us should have had to sacrifice.”
Vincent Kinney
Vincent Kinney
“How am I going to give you back that? There’s no justice there.”
Steve Helvin
Kent Merritt
Kent Merritt
Kent Merritt
“We were the first family in Charlottesville to integrate a neighborhood back in ’65.”
Kent Merritt
“It was just nothing there where Vinegar Hill had been.”
Kent Merritt
“And in Venable, that’s my first brush with discrimination.”
Kent Merritt
“A lot of it was based on fear and hatred.”
Kent Merritt
“They were in charge of everything at Burley before, and now they have nothing.”
Kent Merritt
“There was just kind of a sadness.”
Kent Merritt
“Things were pretty separate back then.”
Kent Merritt
“He was scared to death about his first day at Clark Elementary School.”
David Sloan
James Bryant
“I was getting my books out of my locker, and he called me the N-word.”
James Bryant
“I got up, I went out in the hall, and I boo-hooed and cried, in the tenth grade.”
James Bryant
“She was on the field cheerleading, and they were just calling her the N-word.”
James Bryant
“There was just so much every day, it was just drama every day.”
James Bryant
“The incident caused the schools to shut down because of the racial tensions.”
James Bryant
“So they were gradually, you know, bringing transfers in from Burley, which I think was smart.”
George Foussekis
“The whites never crossed Sixth Street. Blacks never came up into Belmont.”
George Foussekis
“You’re the best player, you play. That’s the way it should be.”
George Foussekis
“The way your parents raised you and their thoughts carried into one generation or another.”
George Foussekis
“Lane was a wonderful school, but it was falling down compared to Burley.”
Dickie Tayloe
“They went home and they told their daddy, and the daddy came to school looking for me.”
Charles Alexander
“I was considered a threat to the Virginia school system.”
Charles Alexander
“You do what you have to do and we’ll do what we have to do.”
Charles Alexander
“If this thing is going to work, then we had to be not as good as, but we had to be better.”
Frankie Allen
“First day you go to lunch, and you sit there, and you’re sitting there by yourself.”
Frankie Allen
“Is he good enough to be on the team?”
Frankie Allen
“It was a Black-and-white-type thing.”
Frankie Allen
Lloyd Snook
Lloyd Snook
Lloyd Snook
Lloyd Snook
“There was a lot of ugliness going on. And that was just reality.”
Lloyd Snook
Lloyd Snook
“It was very traumatic for the poor kids that were there.”
Steve Runkle
“It was when movement was going on, going up the steps, and you had this going on, stuff like that.”
Steve Runkle
“There wasn’t any sense of segregation.”
Jim Blackburn
“Some neighbors had called concerned because all these Black kids were running around.”
Jim Blackburn
“Don’t you dare start getting Black athletes on our football team.”
Jim Blackburn
“He was not interested in tokens.”
Jim Blackburn
Rod Gentry
“If there were no sports, I think the integration that occurred would have been way more painful.”
Rod Gentry
“Rock Hill parents did not want any kind of mixing with any other group.”
Rod Gentry
“I saw her throw his plate and silverware in the trash can.”
Rod Gentry
Peyton Humphrey
“He opens up his coat and he’s got a pistol in his hand.”
William Redd
“You know how you sense somebody behind you? I look up. There’s a police officer.”
William Redd
“Intimidation. Things like that happened all the time.”
William Redd
“As he goes out, the second shotgun blast. Pellets hit him all in his back.”
William Redd
“I went home and told my mother what I’d done, and she burst into tears.”
Clare Rannigan
“I would just turn my head away from the class because I’d have tears coming down.”
Robert King
“Do not be caught in Lee Park after dark.”
Robert King
Andy Minton
“I wasn’t the only student that was talking.”
Veronica Jones
“This is something that we have to do as a Black race.”
Veronica Jones
“And that was a very difficult time for integration.”
Byrd Leavell
“I don’t remember any instances, but for some reason, I was wary.”
Byrd Leavell
Darlene Quarles Robinson
Darlene Quarles Robinson
“Didn’t know it then, but clearly it was racism that was a part of that.”
David Sloan
“I’ve always been, what I call, a people’s person.”
Donald Byers
“We had to get out of there in a hurry.”
Keith Franklin
Chip German
“This was their place, their team. You weren’t necessarily welcome there.”
Wade Tremblay
“I tell you, two really good little ballplayers.”
David Wyant
“I just think the coach didn’t want a Black kid on the team.”
David Wyant
“That’s a tough transition for all.”
David Wyant
“And the mother yanked me aside real quick and said, “You don’t say mam or sir to those people."”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“They’d rather shut down than change.”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“Poor kid tried like hell, but she would never ever ever acknowledge him.”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“We got out of the town in the dark before the subpoena could be served.”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“Don’t let anything get you down.”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“Very few people showed up so we were snitching as much food as we possibly could.”
Mark and Nancy Tramontin
“It was an example of having to get to know a person before you judge them.”
Bernadette Whitsett Hammond
Bernadette Whitsett Hammond
Bernadette Whitsett Hammond
“There just were not many Black teachers there during my time.”
Bernadette Whitsett Hammond
“He could be in the band, but he could not perform with the band.”
Bernadette Whitsett Hammond
Nathaniel Garland
“You’ve done something bad. That’s taboo.”
Nathaniel Garland
“I think sports did help overcome racial tensions.”
Roland and Ronald Woodfolk
“Coach was the cohesive part that kept everybody together.”
Roland and Ronald Woodfolk
“She was still teaching after we left, and she did the black students the same way, gave ‘em Es”
Roland and Ronald Woodfolk
“Places that we knew that we couldn’t go, we didn’t go.”
Roland and Ronald Woodfolk
“You guys just, were just tolerated.”