I was born in Birmingham, Alabama. I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. I
went to school, elementary—during those days it was
elementary, first grade through eighth and then high school. After I
finished high school I got my undergraduate degree at Tuskegee, then
Institute, slash University now. When I graduated from Tuskegee
Institute, went on to UAB in medical technology.
That was the beginning process—the federal government had had
problems integrating that school of medical technology. They, every
year, came to different black
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which ones of those students that were interested in medical technology
to see if they would apply to UAB. Prior to that time black students in
the State of Alabama, if they wanted to get a degree in medical
technology, the state, because of the segregated laws, would pay for
them to go to other states to do their internship in medical
technologies. At that time, and I guess maybe two or three years prior
to that, there was an attempt to integrate the School of Medical
Technology for UAB which had failed because the students would apply to
the school but they were harassed and ended up dropping out of the
program and going to other schools outside of the state to complete
their internship for medical technology.
After that I started working at the VA Hospital in Birmingham, got my MBA
degree from Alabama A&M University. Growing up in Birmingham
that was during the time we had segregated schools. You had a few
schools for blacks, many schools for whites. The black community most
often you had more elementary schools. When I first entered elementary
school in '54 the only high school for the City of Birmingham
was Parker High School. Later on, we got one high school that came into
the city, Jackson, only because they became annexed into the city. We
had Ullman High School. During the early '50s I think there
were many articles written that Parker High School was probably the most
populated high school in the United States. That was the basic high
school for blacks in this city. By the time I finished elementary
school, because of segregated issues to desegregate, the schools had
heightened. Then what the city thought they would do is build a new high
school, which was Carver High School, to relieve the overflowing of
Parker High School and at the same time satisfy the black community that
now we're providing more high schools. So you
don't have to worry about trying to
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integrate our white high schools. We're going to give you a
spanking brand new high school for you to concentrate on. Then after
they built Carver they came back and they built the Hayes High School.
Ultimately the situation developed that they had to integrate the high
schools anyway.
That took part during my ninth grade year in high school. Some of my
friends and church members that were in the tenth grade, a young lady,
Patricia Patton was one of the first students, outside of Reverend
Shuttlesworth's children, that was trying to integrate the
then Phillips High School. They all were a part of that initial effort
to integrate schools in the City of Birmingham. Past that point a few
blacks, once the school was integrated, would attend Phillips and some
of the other schools automatically. Prior to that we had a
few— the Graymont Elementary school was all white school.
There was an attempt to integrate that school. I think most of the young
children, the parents of those children eventually, so people up in the
North asked us, they had such a hard time in the school if they could
take their children out of the state of Alabama for protection.
That's what ended up happening to those children. Many of
those young people that was a first in integrating the high schools in
the City of Birmingham, once they finished high school, they left the
city. Because of the mental impact was not able to come back and settle
in the city. During that same time, during the '60s,
'63 was when Dr. King sent his plea out to children to become
a part of the movement. Early on we were just going to movement meetings
at night to hear what was going on.