The wars at our high school were not pretty. There were fights, rock throwing, name calling, injuries on both sides of the events. I saw a 17 year old white kid, a promising young football player, swing at a black kid, miss him, and his arm go through a plate glass window and cut his right arm to pieces, ending his football career and damaging his body for life. People were doing stupid things.
My father worked with blacks. He worked in a shop where there were black men employed. He never had a problem with blacks. He and my mother told me to go to school to learn, keep my mouth shut, stay out of those happenings at school. I did. I saw the dirty side of those fights up close though. It was sad to see people, some who were members of our church, fighting, screaming, yelling profanity, throwing rocks, bottles, sticks, and causing a riot because the did not want the school integrated. It was not a pretty sight.
The first group of black kids that came to our school were from the same family. They were all brothers and sisters. Their father was a black minister and a mover and shaker in the local NAACP. So, he used his own kids to be point for the integration of my high school. He did not use someone else's kids. He put his own blood on the firing line. The black kid in my homeroom was named Albert. My homeroom teacher assigned me to take him around and show him where everything was. This was my 9th grade year. Later that day, my name was plastered on the walls of the rest rooms as being a "N" lover simply because I showed this kid where the lunch room was, the bath rooms, where to go to gym class.
It was not a pretty sight watching what those kids went through. I don't wish that kind of hell on anyone. How those kids hung in and got through it was amazing. Albert graduated 4 years later with me. He had a couple of sisters who graduated before him. Now days, my old high school is about 60-70% black. Most of the whites moved away from the area as they graduated from high school and moved on.
Because of all the crap in the neighborhood around there now, there is an 8 foot tall fence around the school, with those three strands of barbed wire on top. Sad.
thanks for posting that.
Thank you posting that.
It was very interesting.
I had a similar experience with early integration in Virginia, but I learned one of my life's greatest lessons from it.
Our high school was integrated with 3 kids, also chosen by the NAACP, in a school of over 2,000, and you know they weren't treated well by everyone.
Although I was a senior, I had never met a black person my age. The young lady who was in my class proved by who she was that good character and inner strength aren't restricted to any particular group of people, any more than meanness and hatred are.
I have always been grateful to her for teaching me to judge individuals, not groups of individuals.