Racism- Part Three

 Part Three-    

In 1967, my family moved from Kermit to Wichita Falls, Texas.  Wichita Falls was ten times the size of Kermit and I found my new elementary school lacking in a lot of things.  First, they had recess.  The last time I had recess in Kermit was the second grade.  Kermit had formal gym and physical education classes starting in the third grade. I was now in the sixth grade and was told we would be going out to recess for thirty minutes.  I was stunned. How demeaning it was to go from organized physical education to recess.  

 It never dawned on me as I looked around my class and my school that there were no black kids in my school.  I progressed to the seventh grade and again did not fully realize there were no blacks in my school.  I did learn the blacks in Wichita Falls had separate but equal schools on the east side of town.  The reality was the school buildings actually were equal.  The schools for the black people on the east side of Wichita Falls were built in the same quality and type as the schools I attended.  There were no grand demonstrations of people demanding the schools be integrated or demanding that anything be changed.  The state and federal government dictated a change however, and I entered my freshman year in high school attending S.H. Rider High School during the first year of school integration in Wichita Falls.  It was the fall of 1969, and I quickly continued to learn what racism looked like at a whole new level.  I learned the term racial strife and what that looked like in high school.  

1969 was a year of turmoil in the United States.  Many schools were integrating, and things were not going well.  There were fights in schools and people were hurt.  There were demonstrations across the United States.  The plans for busing the black kids to the white schools were put in place.  I knew the first day in high school was going to be exciting.  It was going to be like no other first day of school.    

I remember standing at a window with a friend on the second floor of my new high school watching as school bus after school bus parked at the curb beside the school and hundreds of black students exited the buses and made their way to the hallways of Rider High School.  It was a sobering sight for many of us.  Because of what the media was reporting, we did not know if this was going to be a regular first day or whether there was going to be violence.  As we saw the black students people coming in such a large numbers no one knew what to expect. The unknown was scary. 

Even though our political leaders called the whole process desegregation, the fact was Rider High School was still segregated.  The black students ate on one side of the cafeteria, the white students on the other. There was very distinct social isolation. In hindsight, there was no effort being made by either the black students or the white students to defrost the icy atmosphere of the school.  The other aspect of this situation was that the school administration and teachers did not nothing to address the awkwardness of the overall situation.  There was no leadership demonstrated by the teachers or those in authority.  Those 15 to 18-year-olds were left to work it out themselves. It was not always pretty.    

It was only a week or so before the first fight happened behind the tennis courts of the school.  A large crowd of students gathered just as school was out, and one black male student and one white male student started throwing fists.  It was short lived.  It did not appear much damage was done but word spread quickly, the coaches were on the way and the crowd dispersed.  

My second encounter with a violent situation had nothing to do with race.  I exited the band hall on the south side of the building.  That school building exit was about seventy-five yards from where the buses parked to drop-off the black students in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. Two of the black female students started arguing and then the fists started flying.  The girls were rolling around on the ground, trying to throw punches and throwing each other around by the hair.  In no more than two minutes, two teachers were running toward the fight.  There had to be one hundred other black students who had circled the two girls who were fighting, and they were watching the fight and cheering on the fight.  Suddenly, a call went out to the fighters and the whole crowd immediately headed to their respective buses. It was a site that was now burned into my memory.    

My third encounter with fists was personal.  We had five-minute breaks between classes, and it is inevitable one would need to visit a restroom at some point during the day.  I, with a friend, decided to go the restroom between classes.  As we entered the restroom, we were confronted by six black male students.  I knew it was time for us to leave when one of the black students pushed me.  My friend was in front of me, and I told him to duck his head and head for the door.  That was when the punches started being thrown. I pushed my friend out the door of the bathroom into the hallway as he and I were pummeled by punches around the head and back. We made it into the hallway which was beginning to see students go to their classes.  I grabbed my friend by the arm and told him we needed to go to the school offices and tell them what happened and who did it.    

As we rounded the corner at the end of the hallway to turn toward the school offices, the assistant principal was standing in the hall waiting for the students to get to their classes.  I walked up assistant principal and told him what had just happened.  After I told him about the slight beating we had endured and who the offenders had been, he told my friend and I to go to class. End of conversation.  No action taken. I was stunned.  I stared at the assistant principal.  He told us the second time, to go to our classes and that was the end of conversation.  We went back to our classes.  I sat there in class extremely disappointed there was absolutely nothing going to be done about the assault.  That left me questioning why we had adults in the school at all.  Was the assault not enough?  Did there need to be blood drawn before any action would be taken?  As the school year progressed, my friend and I only went to the restroom when we absolutely had to go to the restroom, and we did not go without several friends with us. Protection was now a necessity.    

The remainder of the school year was lived under an air of caution and a certain amount of fear.  Friendships were not being made with black students that first year.  Fear was an everyday companion in classes and while going to the restroom and basically anything else.  The black students were being given a very wide berth in their behavior, and they took advantage of the reality of the situation.  That would change.  

My sophomore year started and there was a black and white fight on day one.  It involved several students, several black students, and several white students.  That caused an impromptu meeting of a group of white students the first week of school during lunch in the school cafeteria.  About twenty sophomore guys met and talked about the problem with being attacked while at school by the black students.  The group decided that would all end.  If other assaults ensued, there would be resistance.  We were going to fight back.  

It did not take long.  About two weeks later during the break between classes another fight started.  The only problem this time was that two black male students assaulted two white male students. The white students knew karate.  The two black students found themselves in the hospital after a few minutes of hand-to-hand combat.  The sophomore year seemed to settle down after that day and actual conversations started happening between black and white students.  Two black students recently discharged from the hospital probably did not feel good about the experience, but the school seemed to change after that, and the tension seemed to start to subside.  Some friendships actually started to be made during this year and less time what spent fearing what might happen if we went to the restroom.   

The junior year started with very high excitement for me.  It was not because school was starting again and being able to see friends.  It was because I had been selected to be in the acapella choir.  I enjoyed singing and was glad to be free of a hard sophomore year in band.  We did our auditions for the choir and our choir director would be deciding who would be first chair, second chair and on down the line in each section.  I was made first chair of the baritone section.  I was overjoyed.    

The acapella choir had traditions.  It was the elite organization of the school and there were a variety of traditions the choir was built around.  One of the traditions we had was one I did not know existed. During all concerts and during one song each Friday in class, the choir held hands.  It was a symbol of unity and everyone in the choir working to be the absolute best we could be.  Our choir director began announcing to the choir the chair assignments and we all moved and took our places. After the assignments were made, to my right was the section leader for the bass section.  To my left was Victoria Farmer.  She was an alto.  She was black. I would now be holding hands with a black girl every Friday and during every concert.  It actually took me by surprise how I felt about it.  It was the unknown for me.  What would this be like? What would people think? How did Victoria feel about holding hands with a white guy?    

Victoria and I held hands on Fridays.  We also talked. We got to know each other.  As that first fall session progressed, we did not hesitate to hold each other’s hands.  We even shared an ice cream cone one day which surprised several people, me included.  Vikki and I were friends.    

Victoria and I had different chair assignments in our senior year, and we held hands with different people during our concerts and on Fridays.  We were still friends.  We still talked and nothing really changed.  At the end of our senior year, there was a final spring concert, and our choir director divided the concert into three sections.  The first section was the music we performed in the fall of the school year.  The second section of the concert was all the Christmas music we sang the previous December.  The last section of the concert was the music we learned for contest and other spring songs.  The choir would leave the stage after each of the first two sections and reenter. During the first break, Victoria found me.  When the choir came onto the risers for the Christmas music section, there was Victoria and me, standing side-by-side, holding hands.  Our choir director looked up into the choir as he always did and he saw Victoria and me standing with each other, holding hands.  He pointed at us and smiled.  It was a great moment.  

Years later I was asked to give a demonstration of a communication system I used in the hospital where I was working.  A group of nurses from another hospital were coming to see how it all worked.  The group visiting coming to visit my department exited the elevator to and I greeted the first two individuals and then stopped.  I looked at the other couple of people and told them they would need to wait for a minute.  One of the nurses in their group was Victoria Farmer. She smiled as I walked toward her and gave her a hug.  We talked for a minute but the friendship between us was still real.    

Several years later, I was stunned to hear Victoria had an accident on a busy Dallas, Texas freeway and died in the accident. My sense of loss was real.  My first real black friend was a girl from high school and now she was gone.    

I learned I could have a black friend.  I learned how nice she could be and there really were not a whole lot of differences simply based on the color of her skin or the color of my skin.  I learned she was smarter than me.  I learned much from my friendship with Victoria Farmer and I feel strongly she was brought into my life to make me a better person and a more understanding person.  I would call on my memories of Victoria Farmer through my many years of work.  I learned about the value of people and how I could overcome biases because of the good of other people.  

Racial aspects of life continued.  I became a registered nurse and began to care for people of all kinds.  I cared for young and old, men and women, blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians and all other kinds of people.  For me, it did not matter who they were, they all received the same quality of care.  I did not cut corners and respond any differently to any patients. Victoria had showed me there were not any differences.