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Cross / Problems After Integration

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Cross: Another problem we had was that the blacks wouldn’t stand up for the school song. Pep rallies every Friday, first period. Now, you don’t even have to come to the pep rally. You can stay at home the first period, but all the blacks would come, and they would just sit. Don’t stand up for now school song. So, I told Ed I’ll take care of it. So, the next pep rally I just went up in the stand everybody was sitting down, and I said, “Hit the door. Get out of here. Hit the door.” So, I got them all out and it was kind of embarrassing that they got to leave. So, Coach Moffett, I saw him ten years later. He said, “When I saw you do that I said that’s got to be the bravest man in the world to go up there and put everybody out.” So, I did that. I made everybody sitting down leave the building. I met with them and I told them you don’t have to come to the pep rally, but if you show up at the pep rally, you’re standing up for the school song. So, if you don’t want to stand up, don’t come. That took care of that. They were all standing at the next pep rally. So that was one of the problems we had and then another problem, one of our assistant principals—I always told him, when you’re breaking up fights, just get one from behind and just pull them out of there. Don’t run up between them. He ran up between two black boys fighting and one knocked him out. Hit him in his forehead and Ed said, “I think Goodwin’s out in the quadrangle laying on the ground.” I ran down there, and he was laying on the ground. Been knocked out. He hated that all his—I talked to him about two or three weeks ago. He lives in Huntsville. He said they took him out of the principal’s position and made him—he was over some kind of, I can’t even think of the name of it. Where these kids go to these businesses and learn the trade. D.E., distributive education and something else. I can’t think of it now. He didn’t like that. He wanted to be principal, but after he got knocked out in the quadrangle, they just took him out of that position. So, we had to have meetings about the student council. I said, “Let’s just have two presidents. Everything. Two secretaries, whatever, just have two offices. Black and white. One black and one white.” So, we did that the first year and then for cheerleading, those uniforms were expensive. I talked to Ed, I said, “We going to have to pay for the blacks’ uniforms because they don’t have that kind of money.” He said, “Well, let’s take it out of activity fund.” So, we did. We took it out of activity fund. Paid for all the blacks because they have spring uniform, winter, all that. I didn’t know they had all that, but that’s what happened. We just paid for it out of activity fund and so everybody had uniform.

Interview Interview with Herbert Cross
Subjects Education › Secondary Education
Education › Education and Integration
Education › Education and Integration › Resistance to School Integration
Student Activism
Direct Action › Protests
Tags Lufkin High School, Lufkin, TX
Fighting in School
Public School Funding
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Interview date 2016-06-20
Interview source CRBB Summer 2016
Interviewees Cross, Herbert
Interviewers May, Meredith
Locations Lufkin, TX
Duration 00:03:53
Citation "Problems After Integration," from Herbert Cross oral history interview with Meredith May,  June 20, 2016, Lufkin, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/2403/problems-after-integration, accessed April 26, 2024