What was it like to go to Second Ward High School? It was great. It was
a big school. Going from elementary school to a high school, from grades
7 through 12, I mean, you know, we have grades 9 through 12 here in
public schools. But, you know, all your friends were there. You go, you
go early in the morning, you'd walk to school—they wouldn't—black kids
in the city didn't have school buses. White kids did, though. Some of
them. And we walked to school every day. You'd walk to school with the
same crowd, you had your little stores you'd stop by and buy your candy
for two or three cents. They had penny Tootsie rolls back then. You
can't buy a penny Tootsie roll at this point. I mean a big one, not just
a little midget piece. And you'd stop on corners, you'd talk to the
store owners, they'd get to know you. And you'd just walk. And it would
rain, you'd all laugh about how you're all wet, because there were no
school buses and you had to walk and your parents didn't have any car to
drive you. And when you get to school, you'd play before the first
period, you'd goof off, you'd see your friends. And you'd cry together
when there were problems, because we lost a lot of friends. They were
lost through some violent acts. You lost friends through dropout. You
lost friends through pregnancy, teen pregnancies. Probably almost fifty
percent, not quite fifty percent, almost fifty percent of the kids I
grew up with, in terms of first grade, second grade, third grade, by the
time we graduated, they were gone. For one reason or another. And I
always tell people, "Notwithstanding what you say now, there has been
progress since segregation, in terms of, now, desegregation." A lot of
people who are new in this say that the gap's too wide, or we haven't
made a lot of progress. But from my perspective, we have made progress.
There's a lot of progress to be made.
Page 8
But I got involved. I mean, I was in the band, when I was in the seventh
grade or the eighth grade. There was a white guy who runs a musical
instrument company, and he's like the son or grandson of Mr. Howren
[spells it out]—it was Howren Music Company, on East 6th Street. Right across
from the old public library, [unclear] you'd go up these old crickety steps. And my dad was buying me a
cornet, which is sort of like a trumpet. And he paid so much a week, two
dollars a week, three dollars a week or something like that. I bought
that in seventh grade. And I played in the band at Second Ward, from
seventh grade until about the eleventh grade. I don't know what
happened. We had a new band director, for one thing. L. Augustus Paige
was the band director for a hundred years, and then Mr. Cooper came
over, and I guess I didn't—we didn't get along too well or something. So
after all those years in the band, I think I left the band in eleventh
grade. But being in a band, you know, you had your band members that you
were friends with, you'd hang out with, you'd go around with. I was in
several clubs and organizations. The High Y, the Science Club, you know,
just a number of clubs and organizations. It was like a family.
Parents didn't participate that much in PTA. You know, when I reflect
now, and people tell me about parent participation, hell, we had
neighborhood schools, black neighborhood schools, but the parents didn't
participate in PTA. But there was a real sense of achievement, and a
sense to get a quality education. And the teachers had that. Just they'd
look at you and it was almost as if they wanted to wield a good
education into your head. And you knew that people cared about you. But
in terms of parent participation, it wasn't that great. I was a
single-parent guy. My father raised me, actually. My mom was an
alcoholic, and she left the home, probably when I was like five or six
years old. And he could not read or write. But he had a strong sense of
going to school. Certainly not going to college; it was just, graduating
from high school was his
Page 9horizon at that particular
time.
But it was families. I mean, things that you would do during the summer
months. People you'd associate with, you'd play with, you'd go to
parties with, you'd hang out with, didn't have cars like kids have
today, but you'd walk or catch a bus. Every now and then there was a kid
that had an automobile that you could get a ride with. But it was like
family. Little projects. You'd go, for example, to Ovens Auditorium when
Ovens Auditorium was absolutely brand new. You'd get on a bus, you'd go
over there and hear the symphony, it's like, "Mm, OK." Then you'd come
back and you'd hear your own rock and roll music, some other stuff, and,
"OK, let me stay at home, I don't know if I want to go back to Ovens
Auditorium." But it was just a family. The teachers—my seventh grade
language arts teacher, for example, lived about 3 blocks from my house
in First Ward before it was completely bulldozed. So it was just like a
community. I mean, you'd get in trouble at school, ultimately, you know,
my dad would find out about it, because the teacher was there to say,
"Arthur was cutting up." So it was like Heckel and Jeckel. Just a
different personality. I was a rabble-rouser at home, and I'd just try
to toe the line and give this false image to the teachers, I was such a
good guy.
But they were good people. Marjorie Belton was a guidance counselor
there; she's retired now. Her son, David Belton, is one of the vice
presidents for the Chamber of Commerce, and I always ask how his mom is.
And occasionally I get to see her. But she was always trying to keep the
high road for us rabble-rousers from the rowdy school. They had a big
fence around it. People always used to joke, "What's that fence for, to
keep you criminals in, or what?" But it was just a family atmosphere. We
did the very best could, we took all the courses that were offered. I
was on a college prep track where you took biology, chemistry, physics,
trigonometry, those types of things. And I didn't know, until probably
my senior year, just what the lack of resources were,
Page 10because we'd skip around. We'd have a physics laboratory
book, and we couldn't follow the book, because if we didn't have the
equipment to do the labs, Dr. Levi would kind of just skip over. It was
sort of disjointed, but he would go to something where we had the
equipment to do the labs. And I thought, I'm just doing what Dr. Levi
wants us to do. But it's just a family piece. We would go off to
represent the school on different occasions. We only played black
schools; they didn't allow us to play white schools at that time. So
we'd play West Charlotte, we played York Road. We played Plato Price
when I was in the seventh grade, and
[unclear] were high schools, but they closed probably by the time I got to
ninth grade. The county's black schools. So we'd go out of town to
Stephens Lee, up in Asheville, or we'd go to Atkins, up in
Winston-Salem, or to Dudley in Greensboro. We'd go to the black schools
to play sports. And that was exciting, because, you know, you got out of
Charlotte. I'd never traveled anywhere in my life, other than going to
Macon, Georgia, where my mom was from. So it was just a family
experience. Teachers really cared about you, in terms of just being a
person. Because they'd talk to you about your life. You know, what are
you doing, why are you doing this, why did you do that? It wasn't just
academics. And Shirley Johnson, Marge Belton, a lot of teachers are
people I still try to communicate with every now and then to let them
know I'm still kicking.
But it was just simply, Pam, a sense of family back there with Second
Ward. And you knew that you didn't have all the resources that West
Charlotte had, so it was like, you know, we're a family over here. And
when we would travel, believe it or not, the two schools would come
together. If we were at a state tournament or something in
Winston-Salem, or up in Asheville, West Charlotte would join Second Ward
and we'd be the boys from Charlotte. It was that crowd. So I mean, even
though I went to Second Ward, a great experience, right now when I see
my colleagues from West Charlotte that graduated at the same time I did,
it's like we all went
Page 11to the same school back then.
It wasn't Second Ward versus West Charlotte during those particular
moments. But certainly during the Queen City Classic, it was like a war.
I mean, you hated West Charlotte. You wanted to kill them. You wanted to
beat them up. But it was certainly a sense of pride, and people talk
about it even to this day. And as you talk about West Charlotte, I'm
sure one of the big pieces you'll see is the pride and the joy that
people refer to when they talk about the Queen City Classic. It was just
a great experience. But yeah. My senior year, I was editor of the
yearbook, so I got to roam around campus with the photographer taking
pictures. But I mean, it was just family. I was all over the place. I
wasn't as shy then as I am now.