LONGVIEW, Texas — I entered Longview High School in the fall of 1970, the first year of full integration. I was beginning my third year of attending school here, after my parents fled the winters of New Hampshire to buy a house on South 12th Street, right behind by what then was called Letourneau College.
It was a bit of an adjustment, going from a lily-white town about the size of Ore City — in a lily-white state — to the comparative metropolis of Longview, where skin shades came in a variety of colors.
I was happy to be here, playing basketball against tall black kids in P.E., batting leadoff in Dixie League baseball, selling newspapers up and down the streets that run east and west of downtown Longview to folks of all colors who lived on the fringes of the center of the city. I never regretted moving here.
Still, it was a serious change of life. The hub of Longview High School in 1970 was a solid three-story building (foolishly torn down in the 1980s). The campus was a cauldron of tension. Much of that came because the buildings were simply inadequate to house all the black students displaced from Mary C. Womack High and plunked down with the white kids into the LHS campus just off downtown.
Buildings teemed with students, a goodly portion of whom had been taught to, if not hate, at least regard with suspicion their counterparts with a different skin color.
And some indeed were taught to hate. Racist literature littered the halls. KKK pamphlets were thrown in my parents' yard, in what is now, ironically, primarily a black and Hispanic neighborhood. I sympathized with the black students, and participated in one ill-conceived sit-in in the cafeteria. I can't tell you for sure what we were protesting, but there you go.
I saw my share of fights that year, watched police officers patrol the hallways and the four-way stop, where much of the trouble seemed to occur as classes changed. I drive through that intersection occasionally now, on the way to grab a sandwich. My mind still sees it crowded with hormone-driven teenagers, especially the males. I felt as if at any moment things were going to quickly deteriorate. Too often, they did.
A few days ago, I flipped through the pages of the 1971 yearbook — the first produced after full integration. I'm not much on nostalgia. It took a while to figure out where the yearbook was stored because I haven't looked at it in literally decades.
I was one of four photographers for the Lobo. All four of us were white guys. Maybe that explains the glut of photos of pretty white girls. Black students are mainly represented in the football and basketball photos. The "royal court" was all white. Every club favorite was white except for the couple representing Future Homemakers of America.
Not surprisingly, the 1971 Lobo yearbook doesn't mention the fights, the racial tension, the graffiti on the walls, the bathrooms deliberately flooded by stopping up toilets — the chaos of that first year of full integration.
The only mention I found is on the opening page: "Just as growth and expansion followed the consolidation of Womack and Longview high schools, change was an integral part of increased enrollment. Once a school governed and controlled by an elite few, LHS became an institution where a great many people each participated in a few organizations, forming new groups, clubs and cliques."
I believe the folks in charge had good intentions. They just bungled it badly. Integration took far too long, and the people at the top were simply ill-equipped to handle the results of combining two high schools into one facility.
They didn't know how to deal with the Womack students losing their identities, no longer Panthers but now Lobos. Having to fight for spots in the band, in leadership positions in clubs, student council, everything except athletics — where, from what I remember and have confirmed since, black athletes were absolutely welcomed.
I know more than a few of you will wonder why I am bringing this up. Here's my answer: It is important to never forget how things used to be. Every time I hear someone say, "That segregation thing was a long time ago; 'they' need to get over it," my hackles rise. I am not that old, and to me it is like yesterday, when police roamed the halls and school buses were bombed. I was here. I lived through it.
We're still trying. We must never stop trying. Part of that involves remembering what happened, not pretending it never occurred.
Gary Borders is publisher of the Longview News-Journal. E-mail: gborders(at)longview-news.com.
