Veronica Jones

When I got at Lane, I didn’t have any racial problems on the softball and basketball team.  We also played sports at the city’s recreation, they had softball out at McIntire Park.  Again, we the only two Blacks on the softball team, and they had like 10 different female teams, and we was the only two Blacks on this particular team.  She played first and I played second.  The coaches would buy our cleats, buy our glove, come pick us up for practice, when we went out of town, paid for the hotel, they fed us.  I had no problem.  One of my white male softball coaches, you know what he did?  He bought me a typewriter.  Manual typewriter, when I was in school.  And I put it in my bedroom, didn’t have a dresser, I mean didn’t have a desk, but I had a dresser, and I was short so I sat on a stool, and my uncles drew the typewriter on a board, cardboard, and I would stand up there, and I learned how to type right.  So, when I started going to school, Mama said, “What you doing?”  I was practicing.  She said, “What you doing?”  I said, “I’m going to college.”  She said, “You’re going to college?”  She said, “I don’t have no money.”  And I said, “Mom you know them papers you signed a long time ago?  Those are finance papers.  I’m good.”  She said, “Okay.”  So this white coach picked me up, took me to college, for four years, and he would come and get me after, for each holiday, bring me back to college for four years.