Football at a segregated school
Offering a glimpse of sports at segregated schools, Norton remembers playing an informal brand of football at his black high school, traveling the state to compete with other segregated teams. The team used handed-down equipment.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Kenneth Norton, March 23, 1999. Interview K-0440. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- BRIAN CAMPBELL:
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What kind of athletic teams did Ada Jenkins School or the Davidson
Colored High School have?
- KENNETH NORTON:
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Basically, basketball. We called ourselves playing football. We got some
old uniforms from Davidson College that were handed down from the
varsity to the JVs, from the JVs to the freshmen, and from the freshmen
they ended up with us. We called ourselves playing football, such as it
was in those days, just sort of make-up teams.
Mr. Poe was our basketball coach and he called me his player-coach.
During the war years he couldn't take off and he would send
one of the guys that drove the bus to drive his car and take the seven
of us to play wherever we played during school
hours. I was the court coach. I was fifteen or sixteen years old.
- BRIAN CAMPBELL:
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Did you play a lot of other schools around here?
- KENNETH NORTON:
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Yeah, back in those days we had a segregated program of course so we
played in Mooresville - I believe it was called Dunbar High School. We
played Huntersville - Torrence Lytle. We played Pineville, Clear Creek,
Plato Price was out towards the airport in Charlotte. Those schools have
all since been closed and integrated into an integrated school system.
