Vincent Kinney

PHYLLIS LEFFLER: [00:00:00] Today is February 18th, 2022, and I am at the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society with Mr. Vincent Kinney, who we will interview today. With me are George Gilliam and Annie Valentine, who I think will be posing some questions as we go or at the end, and Lorenzo Dickerson, our videographer for this project. So, let me just start out by saying welcome and thank you so much --

VINCENT KINNEY: [00:00:29] Thank you. 

PL: [00:00:30] -- for coming here to do this, over hill and dale. (laughter)

VK: [00:00:34] Literally. 

PL: [00:00:37] So, I just wanted to start out asking you if you could tell us -- easy question -- your date of birth. Let’s start with that. I think you’ll be able to help us on that, right?

VK: [00:00:47] Okay. July 13, ’46. 

PL: [00:00:50] Great. And can you just tell us a little bit about where you grew up and a little bit about your neighborhood or the [00:01:00] church you went to? We’d like you to talk a little bit about your parents and what kind of work they did, if they were both employed outside the home, just a little bit about your personal background if you could. 

VK: [00:01:13] Okay. I was born in Cismont, and my earliest memories are of being in that extended household with my grandmother, my aunt, my mom and dad, my two brothers, and my sister in what is basically a five-room house. Yeah. And so, went to elementary school originally at Keswick Elementary, and from there, to Burley to high school before my senior year. 

PL: [00:01:58] Right. So, I just [00:02:00] interrupt you for one minute and ask if you could tell me how many siblings you had.

VK: [00:02:07] I have three.

PL: [00:02:08] And are you the oldest or the middle, or where do you fit?

VK: [00:02:10] I am the youngest of three boys. My sister is younger than I am. 

PL: [00:02:17] The youngest of three boys, and your sister is younger, so there four children --

VK: [00:02:21] Right.

PL: [00:02:22] -- in the household. My goodness. And what kind of work did your parents do?

VK: [00:02:28] Yeah. My dad, my earliest memories of him driving and delivering cleaning for, I think it was something like -- it’s a little green vehicle that he drove, something like Barratt and Norfolk or something like that. I don’t really know the real name. (laughs)

PL: [00:02:59] For a company? 

VK: [00:03:00] For a company --

PL: [00:03:00] He was a delivery --

VK: [00:03:01] -- here in Charlottesville.

PL: [00:03:01] -- person for a company. 

VK: [00:03:06] Let’s see. Yeah, I remember him having that vehicle most of the time. It was a little Willys Jeep, which he used to pick up and deliver laundry, and he had it on the weekend, so that was our only car at that time that I remember. But he had apparently his own car before that, that I hear stories about. (laughs) And what else do I remember?

PL: [00:03:35] So, he got to take this delivery van home and keep it at your house, and then you could use it for your own purposes.

VK: [00:03:41] Yes. My mom did domestic work within walking distance for the most part. My memories of her are, during that time, walking up into the little community of Cismont, working, doing [00:04:00] domestic work in one or two houses up there. And later on, she went to work for Miller & Rhoads, and she was an alterationist there. And later, her final years there, moved out onto the floor in sales, actually. And I think there were times, Miller & Rhoads had a tearoom on the top floor at that time, and I think she worked up there from time to time as well to fill in. And she filled in on the elevator from time to time. 

PL: [00:04:41] And you said you went to Keswick Elementary. So, what was that school like? What do you remember about classmates, teachers, things of that sort?

VK: [00:04:52] It was all the students from my community, as well as from Keswick, [00:05:00] and I think when I was in about third or fourth grade, they closed the school in Cobham, and all the students there, that had been a one-room -- a one-teacher school anyway, and the students came to Keswick from there. That school, Keswick, went first through seventh grade, so I did those grades there. 

PL: [00:05:26] Was that largely made up of African American students?

VK: [00:05:32] It was all African American.

PL: [00:05:34] All African American.

VK: [00:05:35] Yes. We rode a bus from my home, past the white school, to Keswick, and the white school, of course, was maybe a half mile from my home. 

PL: [00:05:50] Right. And do you remember as a child feeling that there was anything unfair about that or (overlapping dialogue; inaudible)

VK: [00:05:57] As a child, no, that’s just the way it was. [00:06:00] Growing up, things are as they are, and you don’t challenge them, and you don’t have any perspective about whether they’re good or bad or any of that. They just are.

PL: [00:06:13] Sure. You would’ve been eight years old when the Brown decision was made at the Supreme Court.

VK: [00:06:24] Fifty-four. 

PL: [00:06:25] Right. Do you remember anything being said about it around your home table, or did you have any expectation that anything would change? 

VK: [00:06:35] I do not. My childhood memories about anything, current events, racial, had to do with things that would -- I remember the Till’s killing down in the South there.

PL: [00:06:58] Emmett Till?

VK: [00:06:58] Emmett Till, yeah. [00:07:00] I remember that, and came to understand later, of course, his mother’s determination to leave the casket open. 

PL: [00:07:19] I remember so distinctly that Julian Bond, a man with whom I worked closely, said that Emmett Till murder, I think he was 14 at the time, and he said that stayed with him and most of his contemporaries because they so clearly understood that that could have been them. 

VK: [00:07:42] Yeah. Any time, even now, I know the difference that -- experiences I can have out there on the highway, anywhere. [00:08:00] I know that my experiences will be different from the white population. There’s an expectation, and so I have to make sure that I conduct myself in a way that saves my life, gives me security, not whether it’s good or should be that way or if it’s fair. That’s the way it is.

PL: [00:08:26] It just is. It just is, yes. Right. I understand. Was that something that was sort of taught to you by your parents, that awareness?

VK: [00:08:37] I don’t remember having a real conversation about that, but I do remember the first time I needed to put that in practice. That would’ve been 1975. I know the year because my wife [00:09:00] was pregnant with my daughter, and my wife and I were driving along in Texas actually, and got sideswiped by a man pulling a trailer, and he did it deliberately, and I knew it at the time. It was a Sunday. I stopped at a service station and called the police, and they stopped him in some little town, and they called the justice of the peace, and we had to have a little session to talk about that. And when the policeman came to where I was on the road, he had stopped the driver of the vehicle, and the two of them were in the front of the car. I was in the back. I ended up in the back, telling what had happened, [00:10:00] and the whole time we were in the car -- he was Mr. Chauncey. I still remember the name very, very well, and I was Vincent. And it chapped my butt, to put it mildly. He sent the other man to his vehicle to get something, and while he was out of the car, I asked the policeman, “Officer, why is he Mr. Chauncey, and I’m Vincent?” And my reason for waiting until he was out of the car was to protect anything that he might decide he wanted to do in the situation where it was two white men and one clearly younger Black man. And so, I let him have his ego to save my situation, [00:11:00] and fortunately, he was an officer who heard the message. And later, we went into town, sat with the justice of the peace, and I was Mr. Kinney after that, and he would look at me and say it every time. And that was several times. Clearly, I had learned that I needed to handle things in a way that avoided all altercation.  

PL: [00:11:28] Right. It’s a powerful story. Thank you for sharing it. If we can just go back for a moment to elementary school, did you stay at the Keswick Elementary School, until you entered high school, or was there something in between?

VK: [00:11:45] Yes. No, it was one through seven at Keswick.

PL: [00:11:50] And then you went to eighth grade at Albemarle?

VK: [00:11:52] At Burley. 

PL: [00:11:53] Oh, eighth at Burley. I see. Okay. Well, why don’t you tell us about your eighth grade experience [00:12:00] at Burley, and then we will take a pause and let you look through the (laughter) Albemarle yearbook [and carry on?], okay?

VK: [00:12:08] Sure. What do I remember about eighth grade? I think I was one of the better students. This is interesting. My brother and I were talking about this not too long ago. They had a homeroom set up, A, and at that time, through F in the eighth grade, and I came to understand later that there was some significance to that. 

PL: [00:12:44] Through F, through the letter F?

VK: [00:12:45] A through F. And as I look at, remember now the students, and if you have Burley’s yearbook [00:13:00] through that time, you will see a difference in the students from A through F. It is my belief that the A homerooms had the better students, or those who had performed better anyway. I won’t say better students. And it went from there, you look at the students who were in homeroom F, and there’s a racial aspect to this too because as I recall, that’s when they had closed the schools in Prince Edward County, and many of those students came to Burley, some of those students, as well as some teachers, and so the school was overcrowded. Homeroom F was actually backstage in the auditorium, [00:14:00] as I recall. Homeroom F had, I think, the most underprivileged students, the students that I think there were low expectations of. I ended up in homeroom A, and at that time, I was probably one of the better students in -- had the better grade point average in the county, and that’s what I think I remember about that situation. So, even though the school was all Black, there was a stratification based on something other than age and grade level. 

PL: [00:15:00] I know we haven’t really sorted this out, but do you think that was sort of based on sort of socioeconomic status mostly?

VK: [00:15:10] Yes, and performance to an extent, but there is --

PL: [00:15:15] There’s a relationship there.

VK: [00:15:16] There is a relationship there. I came to understand many years later about what expectation does to development or the lack of, say. 

PL: [00:15:33] Do you remember certain teachers from Burley who supported you, or what kinds of things were you involved in at Burley? I know it was just one year, so maybe not that --

VK: [00:15:47] At Burley, I was there for four years.

PL: [00:15:50] Oh, of course. I’m sorry. I’m glad we’ve clarified that. Right. So, what kinds of things did you get involved with in Burley? 

VK: [00:16:00] I was in the band and a choir, and that was about it. I wasn’t one of the social people, as we talked about a little bit on the phone when we talked. I thought part of it was my personality. I’m sort of reserved and especially during those years, not at all outgoing and lacking in self-confidence, actually, and so I didn’t put myself out there for anything except things that I could do and knew that I could do on my own, except in the band and the choir.

PL: [00:16:48] And in the band, you played the clarinet, I think?

VK: [00:16:51] Yes.

PL: [00:16:52] Because you told me that on the phone. And the choir. So, when you were in the band, [00:17:00] did the band travel along with athletic teams to go to various games?

VK: [00:17:05] Yeah, football games.

PL: [00:17:06] What do you remember?

VK: [00:17:08] I don’t really remember much about it. It was just a joyous occasion when we would get out and travel with the band, watch the game. And the greatest part of that was performing on the field during halftime, and I remember the excitement as we would practice for those things and put together a routine, and that was a lot of fun.

PL: [00:17:32] Were there any bad experiences that you remember as the team traveled around to other parts?

VK: [00:17:38] Nothing comes up for me. 

PL: [00:17:39] Nothing comes up for you. So, if I’m not mistaken, our indefatigable researcher sitting over there, I think found out that you were on the Burley student council? 

ANNIE VALENTINE: [00:17:55] It said something about SCA. Do you know?

VK: [00:17:58] I don’t remember. 

PL: [00:18:00] SCA, which we were thinking was the student council, that doesn’t ring a bell for you?

VK: [00:18:03] No, that doesn’t ring a bell for me. 

PL: [00:18:05] Okay. (laughter) We’ll trust your assessment of this. Okay, so were there special teachers for you at Burley who kind of really -- you said performance has a lot to do with expectation. Did that come through Burley School for you in some ways?

VK: [00:18:24] Yes. There were a few teachers that I remember. I remember Miss Walker. 

PL: [00:18:33] Teresa Walker-Price?

VK: [00:18:35] Yeah, I was in her homeroom, and I remember being in her typing class as well, skills that I still use. Miss Snowden, the chemistry teacher, and I’m trying to remember the name, the person, I was in her algebra class, [00:19:00] and I can’t pull out her name. Yeah. I don’t remember which year it was, going to the -- I think it was regional math and science fair, and George King, I think George King won second. I think he won second place that year in algebra, and I took honorable mention, as I recall in the region, and we both went to state, and I didn’t place. I don’t remember what he did. 

PL: [00:19:52] I’ve chatted with George King recently.

VK: [00:19:54] Have you?

PL: [00:19:55] I would like him -- we would all like him to do an interview. [00:20:00] I think he needs to be convinced of our legitimacy, so if you want to put in a good word after this is over. (laughter)

VK: [00:20:10] Is he here in town now?

PL: [00:20:11] He is. Yes, he lives across the street from where he grew up.

VK: [00:20:14] Is that right?

PL: [00:20:15] And we have interviewed Bobby King, his brother, who is also in that very same neighborhood now as well. So, yeah, that’s nice. Have you not seen him in many, many years? 

VK: [00:20:30] No, I haven’t seen him since high school. I don’t remember seeing him in the high school even. I remember, well, yeah, since high school.

PL: [00:20:42] I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you’re saying that your Burley years were good years, that they were supportive of you academically, and perhaps you said you weren’t very self-confident, but it [00:21:00] sounds like you feel like you got a good foundation for what you were going on to do elsewhere? 

VK: [00:21:05] Yes. There’s another teacher, and right now, I can’t pull out her -- she married Reverend Johnson. She was a Miss when I was her student, and I think she taught English. It was she that I thought that I would do something in English, (laughs) and when I went to college, I majored in English. 

PL: [00:21:36] You did major in English?

VK: [00:21:37] I majored in English, then realized I was out of place. (laughter)

PL: [00:21:44] Well, can you tell me about Reverend Johnson?

VK: [00:21:46] Yes. She married Henry Floyd Johnson. The Reverend R.A. Johnson was my pastor. He baptized me in the crick down by the mill, [00:22:00] and I learned a big lesson from him. He was just a supporter of mine. I have a recollection of being in church after the service was over, standing in the center aisle as a little kid with my mother, and he looked at me and said, “That boy is going to be something,” or “do something” or something to that effect. Years later, I remember working in -- I was in Norway at the time, sitting in my office, and I had one of those -- my work was a challenge, but I had one of those moments when I felt good about [00:23:00] where I was and what I was doing and the image of him saying to me, “That boy’s going to do something.” And through the years, as I would see him, after I was out of school and had nearly finished my career and had a relationship with him, he was still supportive, and he was important to me. 

PL: [00:23:25] That’s lovely. I think you’re talking about the power of mentorship and the power of community. 

VK: [00:23:32] Yes. It also speaks of the responsibility that we have to young people. We don’t know what impact we’ll have on them. What I described in church isn’t something that he would remember, but it impacted me, and we have a responsibility to young people then to conduct ourselves in a way that they can look up to because we don’t know what they see. [00:24:00] And that’s the most important message that I got from him through all those years of knowing him and loving him and becoming a friend later on, just a friend, not a student, not a pupil. 

PL: [00:24:16] That’s powerful. That’s lovely. Unless there are other things you want to add about your Burley years, I think this might be a good time to just do a little pause and let you look at the yearbook, just quickly, but I don’t want to rush you to that point. 

VK: [00:24:35] Right. No, that’s just fine. You know, something came up for me after you and I talked, and you had mentioned the relationships between the schools and things that went on. And my wife has told me a number of times that when she was a kid, her [00:25:00] stepfather would bring her to Burley games, and they would be outside the fence, watching Burley because Burley had such an awesome team and a good football team, and they would come and watch. That was her only interaction with or really seeing Black people. 

PL: [00:25:37] Where did your wife grow up? Where was she from?

VK: [00:25:38] She’s from Albemarle County also. She went to the school for a while that I went past to go to Keswick. 

PL: [00:25:48] But I think, from something you said just now, that she’s not African American. Is that right? 

VK: [00:25:52] Right. Yes. 

PL: [00:25:54] Okay, and her stepfather would bring her to the Burley games?

VK: [00:25:57] Yes, she and her brother. 

PL: [00:25:58] And they’d be outside?

VK: [00:25:59] Yeah.

PL: [00:26:00] Do you know why they’d be outside rather than inside?

VK: [00:26:02] I don’t know, but there wasn’t the mixing thing that was going on. It didn’t happen then. 

PL: [00:26:12] Do you remember the Burley team, a lot of buzz around the Burley team and how excited the community was about their winning --

VK: [00:26:20] Yeah. 

PL: [00:26:21] -- and their capacity? 

VK: [00:26:23] My dad would take us to the same area, outside. For some reason, we didn’t attend the games. I don’t know if there was a cost to it or not, but we would go from time to time and watch from outside the fence. I don’t know what that was about. 

PL: [00:26:43] But if you were in the band, were you not playing at those games? 

VK: [00:26:45] Well, this was when I was in elementary school.

PL: [00:26:47] Oh, in elementary school. Yeah. 

VK: [00:26:49] But when I was in the band, of course, I was there at the school. 

PL: [00:26:52] Well, we’ve heard that there was standing room only, so maybe you couldn’t get in because maybe there were too many people there already. I don’t know. 

VK: [00:26:58] Yeah, I don’t know what [00:27:00] that was about, but I know it was an awesome team for a lot of years. 

PL: [00:27:04] Yeah, it sure was. [Extraneous material redacted.] 

[00:29:00] we’d also love your help if you remember any good friends, Black or White, that you kept up with that you might be able to recommend for us to speak to as well. 

VK: [00:29:12] I didn’t have any friends when I was at Albemarle. Philip Brooks, Russell Robinson, and I hung out together in elementary school, but Russell has passed away. I think Philip is down in -- I think he’s still down in the Norfolk area. He and I haven’t seen each other in a lot of years. When I came back to that one reunion at Albemarle, there was Dan Kusic was the one [00:30:00] guy that I remembered, and he was the one person who befriended me when I was at Albemarle. The other person that I never saw again from Albemarle was -- her name will come up for me in a minute. But I remember in that year, nobody talked to me very much, and there were two people, who one at the beginning, near the beginning of the year, and the other at the very end of the year. 

[Extraneous material redacted.]

VK: [00:32:51] June Johns was the other person who had a kind word to say to me, and I just couldn’t pull out her name. [00:33:00] And I don’t know where she is. 

PL: [00:33:02] Right. Well, we can look her up, try to find that out maybe. Well, do you want to look more, or do you want to --

VK: [00:33:09] No.

PL: [00:33:09] -- do you want to carry on? Okay.

VK: [00:33:12] Thank you.

PL: [00:33:13] Thank you. Okay, so I wanted to ask you, when you graduated -- well, you left Burley to go to Albemarle High School in your senior year. Why?

VK: [00:33:41] There are several answers to that. (laughs) I had become aware by then that things were not right in the community. There were activities going on, and I had, during that summer, [00:34:00] actually taken part in a march. There was a restaurant, Buddy’s Restaurant (overlapping dialogue; inaudible). 

PL: [00:34:09] Yes.

VK: [00:34:10] (laughs) And my dad and several other people, both Reverend Johnson, Reverend R.A. Johnson, Reverend Henry Floyd Johnson, had demonstrated at Buddy’s Restaurant out there on 29. And Reverend Henry Floyd had gotten beaten up one time, and the climate in the county had changed from, there was awareness and activism at that time, and that was between my junior and senior year. So, I went and marched with them the next day. My parents allowed me to do that, and so I had now become involved. As I recall, there was [00:35:00] probably some weeks later when they had gotten together and decided that they were going to integrate the schools, and I volunteered, told my dad I wanted to go. Why? Because I knew how important it was then, and so I said, “Yes, I want to go.” My sister volunteered at the same time, and I asked her not to come. 

PL: [00:35:37] Was she older or younger?

VK: [00:35:38] She’s younger. She’s a year younger. My sister and I were very close, and I wanted, and I know all efforts were going to be to make it nonviolent, no matter what happened, if we could do that. And I knew the way to get me off of that straight and narrow would be [00:36:00] to do something to my sister, and so I asked her not to come. “I can maintain who I need to be if I know you’re okay.” And so, she didn’t come. 

PL: [00:36:15] So, this, the way you’re describing it, would you say it was sort of an act of sort of civic activism, social activism, wanting to be part of a larger effort to desegregate communities and schools? 

VK: [00:36:33] The first two -- not feeling that I need to be a part of it, but I wanted to be a part of it, yes, but I realized what it was about. I wanted it to happen. I knew that it needed to happen. I knew that -- I had come to understand by then that education couldn’t be separate and equal. As in most things, separate and equal wasn’t working, [00:37:00] didn’t work. It made no sense. Separate is inherently unequal. Otherwise, why separate? So, I felt that I could go and do that. At another level, I didn’t understand why I thought that I could do that. My personality was such that I didn’t take the lead in things like at school or social activities or civic activities. It just wasn’t who I was. But I knew that I was one of the better students in the county, so it wasn’t about personally my education, making sure that I got a better education. It was almost too late for me, going my senior year, but the bigger good, the greater good, I could take a part in for those who were coming along after me, make a difference perhaps. 

PL: [00:36:09] So, we know that for the first African American students who desegregated Lane High School, that there were proficiency tests that students need to take and needed to sort of qualify to a sort of board that would allow just a handful of people to transfer. Was there anything like that at Albemarle?

VK: [00:38:38] Not that I recall. 

PL: [00:38:39] You just applied and --

VK: [00:38:42] Yeah.

PL: [00:38:43] -- as far as you know, were accepted. 

VK: [00:38:45] Something in what you said strikes me as an admission that if certain students have to qualify, then something’s not right, [00:39:00] to prove that they can be, then there is a need to change. 

PL: [00:39:10] Oh, exactly. 

VK: [00:39:13] And everybody already knew that, of course.

PL: [00:39:15] Yeah. No, exactly. This was, I think, a mechanism to really limiting the number of African American students who would be allowed to enter the formerly all-white school as a way of sort of holding back the desegregation process. But the story you tell us is really fascinating because this came entirely from you. Nobody else was encouraging you to do this. It was just a decision you felt you should be part of this. 

VK: [00:39:46] Yeah. And all of us just volunteered. I know those of us who went to high school. I didn’t really know the students who were in elementary school at that time. But those of us [00:40:00] who were in high school volunteered, yeah, it was voluntary, and really it was, as I recall, there were five of us. And three were from one broader family, and then two of us were from other families. 

PL: [00:40:21] So, there was a James White, a Myrtle White, Daniel Garland, Madelean Johnson, and you. 

VK: [00:40:30] And me, right. Yeah. 

PL: [00:40:32] All those names are familiar. Did you look for one another in the school, or you were all in different grades?

VK: [00:40:38] There really wasn’t time. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone else that year while I was in school. 

PL: [00:40:45] Wow. So, what was that like for you?

VK: [00:40:53] It was a lonely year. My personality made me suited [00:41:00] for it, I think. I’ve always enjoyed my own company, and so I could get along okay, but I didn’t realize the price I paid until many years later, actually. As I mentioned, I had two positive interactions with students while I was there. One was Dan. I remember Dan saying to me one day, “If anybody says or does anything to you, let me know.” And I don’t remember him and I having any kind of relationship beyond that, but when I came back to that reunion, I wanted to make sure that I saw him. The other person was the day that I graduated. I remember walking across the stage, and I knew [00:42:00] all eyes were on me, and Reverend Johnson was there. My parents were there, and I don’t remember who else was there. But I had to be the biggest person I could be, walking across that stage. And June Johns went across ahead of me. She and I had never interacted before, that I recall, but she always seemed friendly, projected friendliness. She lived in Cobham, past where I lived, and when she passed the house, she would wave, but she and I never interacted in school. When I walked across the stage, she was still there, and she said something to me like, “You look like the most confident person in the world,” or something to that effect, [00:43:00] and I don’t remember what I said, if anything, but it was an important moment for me. 

LD: [00:43:16] Do you mind if I ask?

PL: [00:43:17] No, please, everybody should jump in as they think of things.

LD: [00:43:21] As you’re on this subject, I’m just curious because a few years ago, we recognized the Albemarle 26, and we did that ceremony and whatnot. I’m curious, when you were going through that, when it was 1963 - ’64 school year, and you’d be graduating that year, were you aware -- because you were the first African American to graduate from high school in the county -- were you aware of that then, or was it that prominent of a thing when you graduated then, or was it a kind of a look-back thing? 

VK: [00:43:58] I would say both, actually. [00:44:00] I knew when I walked across the stage what it meant. But as I look back on it, I understand what it meant to me. And there was a sacrifice. 

PL: [00:44:21] Can you explain that a little bit more? What was the nature of the sacrifice as you see it now? 

VK: [00:44:33] When I went to Burley in the eighth grade, my brother was a senior. My oldest brother was a senior. And there was something about being in the senior year that meant you were at the top of the heap, and you walked above everybody else, it seemed. And that was my perception of watching him and others in the senior class. They had all the stuff that we were about to [00:45:00] encounter, and we all looked up to them. I gave that up when I went to Albemarle. At Albemarle, nobody was ever going to look up to me, and so I was never going to feel that. They cancelled, as I recall, the prom that year. I remember Mr. Hurt calling me into the office one day and asking me, “If we have a prom, are you going to come?” And it’s a burden I shouldn’t have had to deal with, of course. And I have always regretted my answer to that. And I said something to him like, “I don’t want the other [00:46:00] students,” -- wow -- “to be denied because of me.” And I think -- and I hadn’t thought about this -- there was a realization of all of this meaning sacrifice. I knew it was for me, and it was going to be, [00:47:00] but it was a sacrifice for the white kids as well. Should I care? I don’t know. But I did, and I do. Adults put us through that, and none of us should’ve had to sacrifice. Can we take a moment?

LD: [00:47:31] Take your time. 

PL: [00:47:41] So, I’ll just tell you that in Annie’s research that she did, the Albemarle School Board had debated a possible ban [00:48:00] on school dances and sports and clubs in that year before the school integrated, whether they should ban those things because integration was coming. And at the end of the day, they decided not to do it, not to ban those things, but clearly that was in their minds, and you’re describing that sort of continuing tension over what it would mean for Blacks and White students to come together in activities. 

VK: [00:48:42] The thing of it was the students were ready. The students had a party, and I was there, and as I recall, [00:49:00] my sister came with me, and I think Philip Brooks was there that year, and we had a party in a restaurant out on 29, and as I recall, there was an entrance, and it may have been a basement-level place we went into beneath the restaurant. I don’t remember what it was or right now exactly where it was, but it was out there not far from where Buddy’s was, in that area, as I recall. And I remember dancing and having fun, having a grand time. 

GG: [00:49:48] It wasn’t (inaudible), was it?

VK: [00:49:52] No. It was up there just north of the university area there, maybe in the university area [00:50:00] there now. 

PL: [00:50:04] That would’ve been your senior year?

VK: [00:50:05] Yes.

PL: [00:50:06] So, what year was that?

VK: [00:50:07] That would’ve been ’64. 

PL: [00:50:06] Sixty-four, right, or ’65, right? You went in ’64, so the spring or so. Did you graduate in ’64?

VK: [00:50:19] Four. Right.

PL: [00:50:21] Okay, I got that. So, you also said when we talked that you were in the band at Burley but in the junior band at Albemarle. Did that sting as well? 

VK: [00:50:44] Since you and I talked, I’ve been thinking about that, and when I wrote you, the realization of what might’ve been going on hit me as I was writing that email, that I had traveled with the band at Burley [00:51:00] but didn’t travel with the band at Albemarle, and it comes from the discussion that you just talked about. There was this concern about students being together, and my guess is a less controlled environment away from the school, going on in buses together. The whole time I was at Albemarle, the students rode a separate bus. The bus picked up the students down in my community, the Black students, went to Burley, dropped off all the other students, and then made a special trip out to Albemarle. They were not on the bus together. I didn’t ride the bus. I had bought my first car that summer at the age of -- I’d just turned 17, and [00:52:00] so I drove to school. I went to school as I was going to go the rest of the year. The first day and every day, I drove my car. And the thing that stung at the end of that first day was, in the newspaper, when they wrote about it, two things I’d like to say about that experience. I had gone to Albemarle with my parents and visited the administration sometime during that summer, and we’d had a conversation, so I had a little bit of understanding of the layout of the school. On the first day, I drove. I parked my car and walked through the school, and when the bus arrived, all the students, many students, [00:53:00] were gathered in the lobby there, waiting for the Black kids to get off of this bus that was coming. Well, I was there too, inside watching, and nobody noticed me. I was just one of the students. When the newspaper came out about this event, whoever was writing the story put it as the bus coming and whatever happened, and one student came in the back door. 

PL: [00:53:36] Oh.

VK: [00:53:37] Yeah. 

PL: [00:53:38] That was an assumption, for sure.

VK: [00:53:41] It had to be put that way, as a putdown, and it did. And I wondered through the years, I would love to have had an opportunity to talk with, as an adult, the person who decided [00:54:00] to slight that 17-year-old boy like that. That was an adult doing that. I would like to have had an opportunity to speak with that person and find out what he got out of that, he or she; I don’t know who it was. 

PL: [00:54:23] So, I also remember the brief conversation we had on the phone. I said, “Did you make that decision to go to Albemarle High School voluntarily?” And you responded in a way that said, “Oh, yes, I did, but maybe I shouldn’t have.”

VK: [00:54:46](laughs)

PL: [00:54:47] But then I asked you if you regretted that decision. I don’t know if you remember your answer to me. 

VK: [00:54:54] I don’t. 

PL: [00:54:55] Okay. So, let me ask you again: do you regret that decision? 

VK: [00:54:58] No, not at all. [00:55:00] I think it was -- it needed to happen. If not me, then who? And in some ways, it was a precursor of what much of my career would be like. 

PL: [00:55:22] That’s what you said. 

VK: [00:55:23] Is that right?

PL: [00:55:24](laughs) Yes. Exactly. So, you’re consistent. (laughter) So, can you elaborate on that for us --

VK: [00:55:37] Sure. 

PL: [00:55:38] -- if it’s not too difficult?

VK: [00:55:50] My career was in geology, in oil and gas, and I’m trying [00:56:00] not take too much time, (laughs) but when I became a geologist, there were two Black PhD geoscientists in the country and possibly a third. Dr. Mack Gipson at Virginia State had started a department there, and the long story, and I’ll just give you a piece of it, education in the Black community didn’t include any, to my knowledge, much beyond the basic sciences, biology, chemistry, physics, but there were other things available. Geology was one of them. I hadn’t a clue about that. I remember in high school, [00:57:00] sitting in, I think it was a geography class, and we talked about the morphology of streams and the aging of streams and the cycles that they go through. And I remember having this incredible high about thinking about things in long term, and I was motivated by that. But I wasn’t exposed to it anymore after that. When I got into college, in my junior year, I tried English, found out that wasn’t right for me. I went into history and was somewhat excited about it. In my junior year, I met the woman who would become my wife, and we met -- my first wife. And I remember [00:58:00] I had to choose a science, and the choices that I had were physical science and earth science. She had already taken earth science, and she said, “You might like that, and if you do that, I’ll even give you my book.” I didn’t have any money buying books, so I was like, “Hey, this is cool. I’ll do that.” (laughs) And so, I went over there, and I fell in love with it, and I became a good student that year. When the papers were graded from the students after an exam, Dr. Gipson would take mine and set it aside and then grade everybody else’s [00:59:00] because my paper was always going to be the best. And it just was something that excited me finally in my junior year, and I ended up having to get the science and the physics and the math. Well, I didn’t get the calculus until I was in grad school, but finally I found something that excited me and went on to grad school, had never had a thought of going to grad school before that and ended up going into oil and gas exploration with Exxon. 

PL: [00:59:48] And your graduate program was at Amherst, right? 

VK: [00:59:51] Yes, UMass at Amherst. That’s where the other Black PhD geoscientist was. [01:00:00]

PL: [01:00:01] And you went to study directly with that person?

VK: [01:00:04] It was more of an opportunity in part created by him. He and Mack Gipson knew each other, and they were working diligently to get more Black students into their sciences, and so there was that connection. And going on to grad school, I went there and became the first African American to get a master’s degree up there at UMass Amherst. 

PL: [01:00:43] So, I want to backtrack just briefly. You went to Virginia State -- 

VK: [00:01:50] Yes. 

PL: [01:00:50] -- after that lonely year at Albemarle High School. 

VK: [01:00:54] I stayed out a semester. 

PL: [01:00:57] Oh, you stayed out a semester. 

VK: [01:00:58] Yeah.

PL: [01:01:00] So, what was the reason you chose Virginia State over other schools? 

VK: [01:01:08] To my knowledge, little else was available to me, and that was an exercise too. And of course, my parents couldn’t afford to send me, and so I had to get a student loan. You had asked me to talk about my parents before, and I told you what they did, somewhat. Daddy had a second-grade education, and he became my other mentor, actually, in how he approached things. I remember going to get a student loan and daddy saying to me -- [01:02:00] I had to have a cosigner, of course, and daddy said to me, “Yeah, I’ll sign. (laughs) I don’t have anything, so they can’t take anything. I know you going to pay it anyway, but here we go.” But he always encouraged me. I remember the day we were driving to Virginia State, my mother had finished at Albemarle Training School, and my dad admitted to me that -- I thought it was a pretty incredible thing -- he said, “I support what you’re going off to do, but I don’t know how to help you.” I don’t [01:03:00] know if parents comfortably say to their kids, “I don’t know how to help you. What you’re about to do is more than I ever contemplated or ever think I could do,” not that he didn’t think he could do anything with his hands, but it was a wonderful gift he gave me that day. 

PL: [01:03:33] For sure. Can we go back perhaps to that comment you made earlier, that being at Albemarle prepared you for the rest of your life and career? 

VK: [01:03:57] Yeah.

PL: [01:03:57] I mean, I know you’ve now said that [01:04:00] you were the first person of color to get a master’s degree in your field. 

VK: [01:04:10] The first African American--

PL: [01:04:11] The first African American. 

VK: [01:04:12] Yes. While I was there, there was a fella there from Nigeria, I think. Obi [Obadiah] Bwerinofa was his name. I don’t know. (laughs) So, yeah, he was at UMass, but he was African. Going into oil and gas, I was thinking about this driving over, what it was like then. The oil [01:05:00] industry was coming out of the doldrums. Exxon was ahead of the pack in trying to get Black students to head their way, and part of it, I think, was because of Mack Gipson in particular and Dr. [Randolph] Bromery up there at UMass. So, when I joined Exxon in 1972, there was nobody else around, and Exxon had done a good job of trying to get people, Black students, Black graduates, and there weren’t many to pick from. They had been supportive of me when I went to grad school. I was probably [01:06:00] one of the wealthiest students there (laughs) at the time. I had a fellowship already, and I got a TA in addition to that for three semesters, so it worked out well for me. When I decided to go and work for Exxon, there was nobody else around, and of course Exxon, as an institution, as a company, was establishing a culture that was more welcoming than I came to later understand other companies had. And my first couple years in Denver there were really good, but there was nobody else around like me. To cut to what you were asking about, I never had a sponsor. [01:07:00] I worked for five years with Exxon and impressed some people in the Denver office. They transferred me to Houston into producing, where I worked for a card-carrying bigot, and ultimately I requested a transfer. But in all of my years in oil and gas, I realized that I was working basically in an industry that had its roots in the Deep South. Its culture was Southern, even though Exxon was more metropolitan. My last years [01:08:00] were with Mobil after being in the industry seven years, and their culture was good old boy, and I never had a friend. I never -- in all of my moving around through the years, and I moved many times. I lived in Denver three times, I think it is, and Houston three times, went to New York, Norway, and all of those moves, it was almost like my first year at Albemarle, my year at Albemarle in terms of proving to people that [01:09:00] I deserved to be where I was. It was like starting all over again every time. The assumption with everybody else who got a promotion, they deserve this; they earned this. That was never the assumption about me. There was a corporate culture that I could never take part in. You knew what the rules were; everybody did, and then you knew what the culture was. I had to follow the rules. Everybody else could join the culture. And a few people would be open and honest with me, and they would talk about people coming into the company, and they’d call that person the fair-haired boy [01:10:00] because it seemed to be someone was anointed, and this person could do no wrong, and so there were allowances made for that person. He made a mistake, he or she, mostly he, and excuses were made. If I made a mistake, it followed me, so I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. So, the rules were different. The rules were like they were at Albemarle. I knew I had to toe the line. And I usually managed to win enough people over that I could get a promotion and move on, but then the process started again, and so that was my life in oil and gas. [01:11:00] But the thing of it was, I loved what I did, and I knew I was pretty good at it. 

PL: [01:11:15] Such a heavy weight to carry that you’re describing. 

VK: [01:11:28] Yeah. Yes. 

PL: [01:11:49] I want to go back for just a moment if I can to those Albemarle years and ask you, I know you weren’t an athlete yourself, but [01:12:00] were you aware of any Black athletes who would’ve played on teams in your year at Albemarle? 

VK: [01:12:08] No. There were only -- let’s see -- five of us there, and yeah, so I don’t think --

PL: [01:12:22] Yeah, there probably wouldn’t have been, many of them younger than you, in fact. 

VK: [01:12:26] Yeah. And if they got into athletics, I think it may have been after I left. 

PL: [01:12:35] You said to me in our original conversation, and you’ve said it again, that when you left Virginia, you expected never to come back. And I think what you said in our other conversation was that I think you said, “That’s just how strongly I felt that I [01:13:00] expected never to come back.” 

VK: [01:13:02] Right. In living in other places, and it was usually out in the community where I found acceptance, not in the company, I enjoyed life in a way that I just didn’t think I could have here. There were some hard memories from here around race. I’ll share something that happened to me. I don’t [01:14:00] know how old I was. I’m guessing 10, 12, something like that, and we lived out in a rural area out there. I had asked my mom and dad to allow me to come into Charlottesville to just go to a movie, and they consented, and it was a Friday, as I recall. And I rode the bus into town. And it was sort of my parents allowing me to grow up a little bit. They’d given me permission to do that, and so I rode into town, was going to go to a movie. I got off the bus and walked down the street and went down to the Jefferson, and [01:15:00] I walked up to the ticket booth out front there and asked for a ticket, and the woman in the booth glared at me. And I recognized what I had done. I’d gone to the white ticket window. I walked around to the side of the booth. The same woman spun around in her chair and sold me a ticket. It was one of those things that I would never forget. She had on [01:16:00] a brown dress with sort of blue-print flowers, and it was the side window versus the front window that I had to use. I don’t know what I saw that day, but that’s what I remember about that day. And it was a message about my parents didn’t have control over me growing up; a white segregated society did. They could tell me what or what not to do, beyond what my parents could give me. And so, on a day that should’ve been uplifting, liberating, [01:17:00] a sign of growing, I walked into Jim Crow. And because my parents had given me that, Jim Crow took it away. I never told my parents about that. I didn’t want to remind them how little control they had. And that was Charlottesville and Albemarle County that did that that day. Did I mention to you that I came back to a reunion [00:18:00] at Burley?

PL: [01:18:01] Yes. 

VK: [01:18:07] I still haven’t figured out if it was the 15th or the 20th. I think it may have been the 15th. And I felt like a senior, the senior that I had missed being when I was at Albemarle. Over a two-day period, it was such a joyous affair, and it was a whole senior year compressed into two days. With my classmates, I had fun that I never had at Albemarle. I danced, and it was a joyful time, and I realized then that I had missed all of that that I was so looking forward to [01:19:00] as a senior at Burley when I gave it up. I didn’t want to come back to Virginia. 

PL: [01:19:14] For good reason, clearly. But then you also told me you came back many, many years later to an Albemarle High School reunion.

VK: [01:19:24] Right. 

PL: [01:19:25] And why did you do that? (laughter)

VK: [01:19:31] I was retired at the time, and I was living in Costa Rica. I had retired to Costa Rica with my second wife, and turned out what a disaster that was. And we’d been separated for a couple of years, and I was trying to figure out, well, where am I going to go? What am I going to do with [01:20:00] the rest of my life, and can I look at Virginia again? How can I figure it out? There’s no place I’m attached to in this world, having lived no more than four years in any one place in all this time, and so I considered Virginia and this area, and I came back to that 40th high school reunion. I knew I wanted to see Dan. If he was going to be there, I’d see him. Let’s see; when I said the announcement had gone out, and a number of students some years before had asked me to come back to a reunion, and I never did, [01:21:00] and I really considered it. But how best to get a handle on what Charlottesville and Albemarle County has become in a short period of time? And so, I decided to come back. One classmate, when she learned that I was coming back, had contacted me, and we started corresponding, and she said, “When you get here, I’ll find you, and we’ll spend some time together. We’ll talk.” And so, I came. I had a grand time. I had made a point -- I was on a mission; I’m trying to find out, [01:22:00] if anyone, if people in Charlottesville are open to me, maybe it’s my class, and so I made a point of going around and spending two or three minutes with as many people as I could, which is not like me to approach people. And I did that and looking for warmth or rejection, warmth or rejection, and I was finding out who was who, the people who were around, and mostly I got warmth, and there was some rejection clearly identified. The question that so many of my classmates asked me, “How did you get picked?” And I shared [01:23:00] with them, “I didn’t; I volunteered.” And from so many of them, “We’re so glad you did what you did.” And so, it led me to think that things had changed. There was one woman that I met at that reunion who had caught my eye, and ultimately she became my wife. I wasn’t looking for anybody. (laughs) It took some prodding to make me even talk to her a second time, but that first woman who had contacted me kept saying, as we wrote after that, “Dana asked about you. Dana wants to know what you’re doing.” [01:24:00] And I had to think about -- it was the farthest thing from my mind up until then, am I ready for another relationship? And I just decided, well, okay, maybe, (laughs) and so I wrote her, and we started a relationship. 

PL: [01:24:23] Well, that’s a beautiful story. 

VK: [01:24:25] Pardon?

PL: [01:24:25] That’s a beautiful story, I said.

VK: [01:24:28] Yeah. So, out of that, one of my classmates became my wife.

PL: [01:24:33] What do you know? Amazing.

VK: [01:24:35] Yeah. But of course, she told me she had gone to Burley’s games with her stepdad. Turns out, as a kid, she had lived in the house near -- well, right across the fence (inaudible) from [01:25:00] one of the churches out there in Shadwell, Mt. Zion? Is that the church out there? 

LD: [01:25:13] Mt. Zion in Shadwell. Because you attended Zion Hill?

VK: [01:25:18] No, not far from Stone-Robinson there. 

LD: [01:25:25] Okay. Union Run?

VK: [01:25:28] Union Run, yes. Yeah, where she had lived in the hill right across the fence from Union Run. 

PL: [01:25:40] So, does anyone have things they’d like to add? Lorenzo always does. Annie usually does. George often does. (laughs)

LD: [01:25:50] I’ve got two. Curious as to how Reverend R.A. Johnson and your parents prepared you for [01:26:00] that one year at Albemarle High School. Did Reverend Johnson meet with your parents and that sort of thing? 

VK: [01:26:09] To my knowledge, in terms of preparing us as students, no. It was a movement that was going on that he was clearly in the front of. “Our students need to do this; we need to do this. Adults have done what they can. Ultimately, we’ve got to integrate these schools.” Beyond that, I don’t know if anything was ever said to us as students about going over there and what we needed to do, needed to be or anything like that. Nothing certainly was ever said to me in that regard. We had learned from what was going on in the broader society, what the moods were, [01:27:00] what the attitudes were, but nobody ever said anything to me about that other than what I had gleaned from current events of being nonviolent, which is why I asked my sister not to come, and making sure that we never gave anybody an excuse to say that we didn’t belong. But nobody ever said that to me. 

LD: [01:27:26] And you mentioned your father having a second-grade education. Did he also attend Keswick School up until the second grade, and why did he only go to second grade? Did he have to work? 

VK: [01:27:42] I don’t know. He grew up in Louisa and went to school there for the little bit he went, and beyond that, I really don’t know. Those are questions I wish I could ask him now. 

LD: [01:27:58] Thank you. 

AV: [01:28:00] Do you know why the desegregation of Albemarle High School and the other Albemarle schools happened in the fall of ’63 as opposed to before that? 

VK: [01:28:11] I think it was just a progression, and the Reverend Johnson and the other leaders got to a point where it had to be forced, and so they decided it’s time to do it. And my impression of Albemarle County anyway, and probably this is true of Charlottesville too, unless you made it very difficult for them to not make change, they were never going to do it, and so it had to take activism on the part of the Black community to do it. And the Black community had to come to that realization and establish [01:29:00] when it was right time to do that. But clearly, it wasn’t going to happen on its own, not for a long time.

AV: [01:29:10] So, what happened at that march you went to in the summer of ’63 that really helped change your mind? What was going on then? 

VK: [01:29:19] Out there at Buddy’s? 

AV: [01:29:21] Yeah.

VK: [01:29:22] It was the day after the violence had happened, and as I recall, we carried picket signs, and we marched around in front of Buddy’s, and at the end of the day, we all went home. Nothing happened on that day, but we were prepared for anything, knew that anything could happen. 

PL: [01:29:49] Did you know Paul Gaston? Does that name ring a bell?

VK: [01:29:54] No, it doesn’t ring a bell. 

PL: [01:29:55] He was a faculty member in the history department, a white faculty [01:30:00] member who was at Buddy’s that day. 

VK: [01:30:03] Oh, really?

PL: [01:30:04] And I think he got punched in the face, and he always talked about that as such a transformative moment. 

VK: [01:30:14] Was it? 

PL: [01:30:15] Yeah, for him, and I think he was a long-term activist, but Buddy’s Restaurant was what stuck in his mind. 

VK: [01:30:25] Yeah. Buddy’s became a symbol, I think, for --

PL: [01:30:31] Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. 

AV: [01:30:34] What were your relationships like with your teachers at Albemarle High School? 

VK: [01:30:38] Say again?

AV: [01:30:39] Your relationships with your teachers at Albemarle High School, what were they like?

VK: [01:30:52] I don’t really remember much about the teachers. I remember two teachers, [01:31:00] one because she -- I don’t remember what she taught. I think I was in a class of hers. But she interacted with my mother in Miller & Rhoads, and Mom would come home and say something about what Mrs. -- don’t remember. I can’t pull out her name -- had said about me and being at school there. The other, I remember, I just saw her picture in the yearbook. I can’t pull out her name. On the day that Kennedy was assassinated, and I was in her class, and she had gone out and came back in, and she was in tears, and she said the president had been shot. And then she came back again, and she was [01:32:00] really crying and saying that he had died. I remember that day, sitting there. The classroom was on the front of the school, and I kept looking around at the flag on the pole and thinking somebody should go out and pull that down, but my personality wouldn’t allow me to do that. But I thought that somebody should. 

AV: [01:32:31] Did you feel alone, much more so than when you’d had that support from the faculty at Burley from your teachers, or did you feel like you any support at Albemarle because of the teachers? 

VK: [01:32:52] I didn’t know how to read the teachers there, and so at best, it was neutral, [01:33:00] what I was getting. Yeah. 

PL: [01:33:05] George, you have anything you want to add? [PL to VK:] Is there anything you want to add to the things we’ve talked about?

VK: [01:33:19] Something I learned about myself. You asked the question earlier, why I went to Albemarle. I had already retired. I was teaching a class. When I left corporate, I wanted to develop -- and I did -- a seminar to talk with underprivileged kids about [01:34:00] operating in the corporate world, and I, with the help of my second wife, developed a seminar, and I first taught it at Prairie View A&M for a year about preparing for corporate life. There was a book that I had come across -- can’t remember the name of it now -- written by two grad students, as I recall, about Black experiences in the corporate world, and I had gone through all of the stuff that they described about the anger and the isolation and trying to belong and all the whole process you go through, trying to be [01:35:00] a part of a culture that really doesn’t accept you. And on the last day of that seminar, when the seminar was over, there was one student left, and he sat there crying. He had been a drum major in the band, out in front, and as we talked that day after the class, he felt he didn’t belong, insecure, he described to me. [01:36:00] And what I came to understand was that being out in front that way is a safe position to be in because the people around you will never question your confidence. And I wondered if at that time, when I went to Albemarle as a kid lacking confidence, if that’s what I had done. If I gone out in front, exposed myself knowing that I would never be questioned by the people who mattered to me about what my confidence level was, if that was the motivator for me going to Albemarle, because everybody looked up to me in my community. 

PL: [01:36:59] For having [01:37:00] done that?

VK: [01:37:00] For having done that. But I was very vulnerable, as he was, and feeling insecure about self. It took me a number of years to gain confidence in myself and realize that I could do anything I wanted to do. 

PL: [01:37:20] So, it’s a sort of double-edged sword?

VK: [01:37:23] Yes. Right. Yeah. 

LD: [01:37:28] And with you coming into Albemarle in ’63, being that that’s such an important year in American history, March on Washington, Kennedy, Vietnam, sit-ins in Greensboro, all these things are happening as you and the other four of the five going to Albemarle are coming in. What was that like for you with all these different things happening at that time? [01:38:00]

VK: [01:38:01] I was aware of all of that, wondering -- I wasn’t at the event -- how to be a part of it and realizing that I really was, and it was also like being in the corporate world in an environment where you’re not accepted and realizing that there are many, many people out there doing many, many little things that are important in their -- our -- lives that the rest of the world will never know. But it’s moving the needle. [01:39:00] It’s the big events that get the attention and gain the awareness, but it’s the people out there meeting the challenge on a day-to-day basis that make the change, make many of the changes, people you never heard of rising up in corporations. They aren’t leading the marches, but they’re facing the challenges in the environments that they’re in and having some success, and they are an example to others coming along. I receive messages on LinkedIn, “Do you know this person? Do you know that person?” And usually, [01:40:00] it’s some geoscientist, a Black geoscientist much of the time, and I’m watching their progress, and I know that there are are other people like myself who went before them and did little things, and we don’t know each other. We don’t know about each other, except I’m watching them. 

LD: [01:40:39] Thank you. 

PL: [01:40:41] Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for this. I so admire your courage and your willingness to be honest in front of people like me (laughs)[01:41:00] that you don’t really know. So, I understand that the things you’ve told us today have dredged up a lot of pain, and I just deeply appreciate your honesty.

VK: [01:41:15] Thanks. My oldest brother has asked me a number of times in recent years; he said, “We’ve never talked about your experiences at Albemarle,” and that’s what he knows about. And there just hasn’t been those times, I think in part because I haven’t talked about a lot of those things that they’re still secrets to be found. They’re revelations to be made, as happened the other day when I was writing that email to you. [01:42:00] And I’m still digesting it all. 

PL: [01:42:05] Yeah. I’m sure, for those sort of traumatic moments in life, we digest them for the rest of our lives in some ways, right? 

VK: [01:42:20] Yeah. I don’t know if I have been helpful in the project that you’re really working on or not, but...

PL: [01:42:30] It’s a beautiful interview for us to preserve. I guess the final question maybe -- I’m sorry we keep coming back to this -- but this project is called “Race and Sports”, and one of the presumptions of this project, when you do a project on race and sports, I’m not a person deeply involved in sports myself, [01:43:00] but the premise of this project is that somehow sports played an important role in bringing people together across a color line and therefore in activating a kind of acceptance of desegregation, integration. So, as people played together in sports or other ways, they learned about one another. They played to win, and so if they were winning, if you could contribute to the winning, you were valuable, and so that’s a kind of premise of the project. And you have a very important story to tell even though you weren’t involved in sports. So, I might just ask you about the premise of this project: do you think (laughter) that that’s a true premise? [01:44:00] Were there other things you were involved in that created that same kind of community, whether it was band or...

VK: [01:44:16] As you were talking about that, in sports, there are people who are the first as well, who go through prove that they belong, prove that they can and often have to do it better to be able to stay there, and then it opens up, the sacrifices that are made, the names that we all know getting into sports, of course. And I don’t know if there’s a [01:45:00] parallel at the high school level for that time; don’t know, or even the college level. I just don’t know for the sacrifices that the early participants made in order to create the opportunity for the benefits of the coming together. I don’t know. But I think sports is a vehicle for change. I believe that, but first the barrier has to come down so that everybody can appreciate that that opportunity is there. And there are famous people who’ve gone through and done that. 

PL: [01:45:46] Right. Okay. Thank you. 

VK: [01:45:52] Thank you. 

PL: [01:45:53] Deeply thank you. 

[Extraneous material redacted.]

END OF VIDEO.