(This is also part of my contribution to Black History Month.)
1979: 6th Grade, Another New School
I can remember the first day of school for me
entering the 6th grade just like it was yesterday. I was nervous
about attending middle school and I was about to go to a school I had never
heard of until about a month ago at that time. I thought I’d be attending
Foster Middle School like everyone else, but instead I was being shipped to a
place called Judson Middle School, home of the mighty Blue Devils (so they
said). I was also nervous about leaving my sister behind at Jodie McClure
because this would be the first time ever we would be going to separate schools
and not the same school. (We wouldn’t attend school together again until we
were both at Longview High School, me being in the 12th grade and
her being in the 9th grade.) And for the first time since
kindergarten, I was going to be riding the bus to school rather than walking or
my mom taking me. All of these factored into me being nervous about my starting
the 6th grade.
However,
I was also excited because I would be changing classes on a regular basis for
the first time and meeting a lot of different kids. I would have seven periods
worth of classes, each with a different teacher and different classmates. I was
also excited about wondering which of my classmates from Jodie McClure would be
attending Judson with me. I had no idea if my entire neighborhood was going or
just certain kids- I was really naïve about the busing situation back then- and
although this sounds silly right now, I was also thinking about how I was going
to look and dress. I had never given much thought to the clothes I wore to
school, and usually I just put on whatever I grabbed first out of my closet.
However, this time I picked out my clothes real carefully (As I recall, it was
a light-blue Dallas Cowboys shirt with blue jeans), and I got to wear my hair
in a nice-sized afro. I assumed I was wearing an afro for good this time
because I had always worn a short haircut from the time I was able to get
haircuts. Needless to say, short haircuts were out and afros were in and had
been in since the late 60’s. (Even though they were on the verge of fading away
too.) I didn’t wear my glasses (because kids were still calling other kids who
wore glasses “Four-Eyes” and other bad names), and I thought I looked decent
for a change. So I was nervous and excited at the same time as the first day of
school rolled around.
I
was still disappointed that I wasn’t attending Foster Middle School, and I
truly hoped that my best friends from Jodie McClure- Marion Burton, Roy Craine,
Rhonda Jackson, Tammy Allen, Kim Harris, Robert Taylor, and Tracy George- would
be attending Judson also, and not Foster. As it turned out, Marion, Robert,
Tammy, and Kim would wind up going to Foster, while the rest would be with me
at Judson. That Marion, probably my “best-est” friend at Jodie McClure, would
be going to Foster was probably my biggest disappointment on the first day of
school, but I had learned over many years of moving back and forth that friends
come and go, and that we must always continue to be friendly and make new
friends as we continue the journey of life itself. Whatever. Anyway, my
experience at Judson would sorely test my ability to do so in the next three
years, and in going from an elementary school to a middle school, I was going
to have to make new friends galore.
The
trend for the next three years was set the first time I set my foot on and got
on Bus 55, probably the worst running school bus in Longview history. This was
the beginning of the trek across town from one end to the other end. When I got
on the bus, I saw a few familiar faces- Roy Craine, Wilbert Thomas, Rhonda
Jackson, Daphne Thompson, Charlie Templeton, Bridget Wallace, Lisa Miller, and
Shelby Murphy. I also saw a LOT of faces I didn’t know (I didn’t know any of
the 7th or 8th graders). And I saw….that there was
NOWHERE TO SIT. In fact, there were already seven kids standing in the aisle
when I got on. I figured this out later, but on the bus, there were 24 seats in
all, and there were 3 kids in each seat. So there were over 80 kids riding the
bus that morning, because like five or six more got on after me. Today, that
would be hazardous, unsafe, stupid, and totally ridiculous. Back then, it was
just ridiculous. I did NOT enjoy standing up the entire trip from my house all
the way to Judson, which felt like going from Longview to New Mexico back then.
And if I thought that that would be a one-time thing, I was very sadly
mistaken. I was in for a great many trips standing up, sitting on the floor, or
sitting and/or standing in the bus entrance. It wasn’t too bad that first day,
though. Everybody was talking all at once and basically having a good time.
Nobody hadn’t decided to be a bully…yet. The fights wouldn’t start until the
second day of school.
I
remember we travelled all the way up Eastman Road, and this was to be my first time ever crossing Highway 80 going
north on that particular road. I was wondering how we were going to get to
Judson going this way. There weren’t any traffic signals once we crossed over
into the north side of town (now there’s about five of them), and the bridge
crossing over the Loop hadn’t been completed yet. We had a HARD time crossing
the Loop, where there was only a measly stop sign at the intersection, and with
the traffic being what it was back then, it made it real difficult to get
across. That, combined with the raggedy state of Bus 55, would make us late
almost every morning. But we finally made it across, and after going a few
miles further and making a couple of left turns, we finally arrived at Judson
Middle School.
The
campus, at the time, was the biggest campus I had ever seen. I hadn’t been to
the practically brand-new Longview High School yet, and Foster had a big
campus, but Judson practically dwarfed it. There were four (actually five)
good-sized buildings, a big football field, some tennis courts, and a huge
cement courtyard in the middle of the school. The front building was called the
new building back then, there was the old building combined with the gym, the
annex building, the girls’ gym and choir building, and the band hall. And you
talk about seeing a bunch of kids! I’d never seen so many kids in one spot or
area before. And although there was probably more white kids than anything, the
black/white ratio looked to be almost kind of even. (Which was the purpose of
busing us black kids all the way across town like that anyway.) It was
exciting, and it got to be even more so when I saw a bunch of guys playing what
looked to be football on the concrete courtyard except they were playing with a
tennis ball instead of a football. I joined in and over time I would develop
the (bad) habit in playing the game I learned was called “Toss-Up”, where you
toss a tennis ball in the air and whoever grabbed it would run with it until he
was touched (or sometimes, tackled). If he didn’t get touched, he could run it
all the way for a touchdown. Then he could either run it back in the other
direction or toss it up for someone else to grab. My bus had arrived so late that
I only got to play for about 5 minutes and didn’t do anything. At 8:00am, the
bell rang, meaning it was time to go to my first period class.
My
first period class was Advanced Math, and it was somewhere in the new building.
I had an idea where it was located, but when I went and found the room, I said
to myself, This can’t be it. I looked
inside and had seen nothing but white
kids and a white teacher, and so I passed it two or three times always looking
in and hoping that someone I knew would show up, but no one did. The tardy bell
rang and I jumped in and sat down way in the back of the room. There were like
20 kids in there, but I was the only black sitting in the back by myself and
setting the Civil Rights era back some 50 or 60 years. The white kids of course
all acted like they knew one another and had known each other since they were
babies I’d imagined. This really made me feel much better. (NOT!) Then my
teacher, Mrs. Henderson, made me feel even more welcome by asking me to move
closer to the front of the room. I would grow to really like Mrs. Henderson
that school year, but on that first day of school I was thinking, This white teacher doesn’t like me.
Which was wrong, of course- I just didn’t know that yet. We all had to
introduce ourselves and say what school we came from, and I noticed that the
majority of kids had come from Mozelle Johnston Elementary. When I said I came
from Jodie McClure Elementary, they all looked at me like, Where the hell is that? Is that in Longview? Never heard of it. I
said to myself, 2nd period has
GOT to be better than this.
Forty-five
long, painful minutes later, the bell rang. It was time to go to 2nd
period. For me, that would be Advanced English with Mrs. Starr as my teacher.
Advanced English was right next door to my Advanced Math class. I went into the
room, and the kids I’d just left seemed to follow right behind me. The tardy
bell rang, and I thought to myself, NO…. Same kids, different room, different subject,
different teacher. Again, I was the only black kid in the room and I still
didn’t know anybody or have a class with anybody I knew. Needless to say, the
day was going downhill quickly. My excitement had turned into misery. I was
almost ready to go home and ask Momma to switch me to Foster somehow some way.
After
an instant replay of first period, it was finally time to go to my 3rd
period class, which was Regular Reading and Spelling (or Regular Spelling and
Reading). It was a regular, not advanced, class, and it was taught by a black
teacher, Mrs. Fricks. And I finally had a class with some black kids in it.
(Yes, although I was unaware of it at the time, the racial overtones were
staggering, to say the very least.) There were at least five of them from Jodie
McClure- Sheryl Perry, Danny Polk, Lisa Miller, Shelby Murphy, and Bridget
Wallace. I was happy about that and felt a little more comfortable.
Unfortunately, after having to take a couple of tests to see what our level
was, I was separated from the class and put in the back of the room, which
ironically was called the “advanced section”. I would do higher level work
separate from the rest of my class and graded accordingly, which meant that
this became another “advanced” class, with me being the only “advanced” student
that period. Interestingly, in all of the other Reading and Spelling classes,
there were at least five kids who got put in the advanced section for each
class. In one class, there were ten kids placed! My class was the only class
where there was just one….me…..sitting back there. But hey, at least if I
finished all of my work, I could get up and help some of my classmates, which I
did. And this kept me from feeling like a total hermit.
4th
period turned out to be my PE class, in which almost every 6th grade
boy had to take, and if my memory serves me correctly, I believe that there was
only one 6th grade boys PE class that year, and that there must’ve
been close to 70 or 80 boys in that class alone. Maybe more. So every 6th
grade boy was in that class, including my friends Roy, Tracy, Wilbert Thomas,
Charlie, Shelby, and Danny, and a friend I had made over the summer, a fellow
named Keith Taylor. This was going to be nothing like elementary school PE- we
were going to be expected to “dress out’ in white shorts and a white t-shirt
(white socks, too) and take showers. And no, I was NOT looking forward to that
at all.
My
5th period class took place after the last lunch. There were 3 lunch
periods, first, second, and third lunch, and I had the last lunch period. Once
the lunch period was over and the bell rang, everyone would head for their 5th
period class. This for me was Physical Science, and this class was located in
the new building also. (My 3rd period class had been located in the
annex building.) I came into the room and sat in the back on purpose, because
this class was full and there wasn’t hardly an empty desk. I didn’t know
anybody in this class either even though there were some black kids in the
class. A girl sat in front of me and she turned around and spoke to me and said
hello. I told her hi. She had a deep voice for a girl (that’s the first thing I
noticed about her) and she asked me what my name was. I told her and I asked
her what her name was. She said, “Vickie.” And that’s how I became friends with
Vickie Starts, and we would spend the year talking to each other in our Science
class.
My
6th period class would also result in a bit of history. I had Choir
this period, and yes, I USED to like to sing. (Emphasis on USED TO-) From the
start, I sat next to this real friendly guy who acted like he had been knowing
me for a really long time. He did look familiar, but I didn’t recognize him. He
told me we used to play together on the playground when we went to East Ward
Elementary. However, he was always in a different homeroom from mine, so he was
never in any of my classes back then. I remember playing with different boys on
the playground whose names I didn’t know back then, but this one (and later on,
another classmate would tell me the same thing, that he remembered me from East
Ward) remembered and knew my name. His name was Wray Wade. And like me and
Vickie 5th period, Wray and I clicked 6th period. We
talked nonstop and became great friends. Unfortunately later on, we and two
other black boys who sat at the other end of the room got into trouble for
talking so much. The teacher, Miss McFarland, decided to fix things by
switching Wray and one of the other boy’s seats. This meant that Wray switched
places with one of the boys. Here’s the funny thing- now this boy and I became
best friends that year and all the three years at Judson, and Wray and the
other guy became really good friends. However, we ALL were really good friends
that year and forward. So instead of Wray, that’s how Antonio Jackson and I
became best buddies, and how Wray Wade and Brian Robertson became really good
friends, and how we ALL became like the Four Musketeers during 6th
period.
7th period was the Special Interests
period, but for us 6th graders, we got moved around each six-weeks
to a different teacher, and determining on who the teacher was, you either
could talk quietly or keep your mouth shut and study or do homework. We
couldn’t sign up for art, tennis, games, etc. yet- We wouldn’t be able to do
that until the 7th grade. Then at 3:30pm, the final bell would rang
and we’d have to go to the turnaround by the boys’ gym to find our buses. I got
to sit down for the trip home this time, and that’s when I learned that the bus
went through all the neighborhoods from I-20 (the Front) to Wells Street. No
wonder it was so packed. We really needed two buses going through there, but
that would’ve been too much like right. The first day of school, for what it
was worth, wasn’t too bad, and it had obviously improved the second part of the
day. But, how long would it last?
