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Lee / Education and Community Organizations

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Interviewer: So, you attended Booker T. Washington for elementary through high school. Lee: Through high school Interviewer: What year did you graduate? Lee: They integrated the schools in 1968. I didn’t go to Conroe High. I went up there. I stayed about a week. Then I went to Montgomery, Lincoln High. Lincoln had not—see is your camera still on? It blew out somewhere. Lincoln did not—had not segregated the schools yet, but you had a choice at Montgomery to go to the white school or stay at Lincoln High at the black school. So, it was about five or six of us, maybe seven left Booker T. and went up to Montgomery. Interviewer: So, you made the decision not to— Lee: I had relatives up in Montgomery. My grandfather, my mother’s people, my father’s people, all of them was from that area. I was the first born of six children in Montgomery, so that’s why I went to Montgomery. Interviewer: And were you in Conroe kindergarten through— Lee: Yeah, yeah. All the way through my senior year. Interviewer: What about you? Proctor: I graduated from Conroe High. Interviewer: What year was that? Proctor: 2000. Interviewer: And for both you, you’ve been in Conroe your entire lives? Lee: I don’t live in Conroe now. Interviewer: Okay. But— Lee: I grew up in Conroe, yes. Interviewer: In terms of community organizations that were important growing up, what were some of those? Lee: The churches. Booster clubs, the men had the booster clubs, but it wasn’t for the children. It was for the black men and you had black preachers conference. Then you had the association (inaudible). You had a lot of other things, mostly dealt with churches. It wasn’t anything like the NAACP what we have now today. It mostly was the churches, (inaudible) whatever happened around the school at the time that I was in school. Proctor: And it was probably about the same. The churches was the main benefactor as far as orchestrating something going on in the community. We had the Martin Luther King Center where they orchestrated the black history parades and different things where we used to start from the Conroe College. We had activities there when I was young too, before they shut it down, but mainly the churches.

Interview Interview with Charles Lee and Toddrick Proctor
Subjects Religion › Churches
Religion › Churches › Church Community and Social Services
Community Organizations
Community Organizations › Civil Rights Organizations › National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Discrimination or Segregation
Education
Education › All-Black Education
Education › Pre-K Education
Education › Elementary Education
Education › Secondary Education
Education › Education and Integration
Tags Martin Luther King Center, Conroe, TX
Booker T. Washington Junior High School, Conroe, TX
Conroe High School, Conroe, TX
Lincoln High School, Montgomery, TX
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Interview date 2016-07-21
Interview source CRBB Summer 2016
Interviewees Lee, Charles
Proctor, Toddrick
Interviewers May, Meredith
Locations Conroe, TX
Montgomery, TX
Duration 00:02:52
Citation "Education and Community Organizations," from Charles LeeandToddrick Proctor oral history interview with Meredith May,  July 21, 2016, Tammany, TX, Civil Rights in Black and Brown Interview Database, https://crbb.tcu.edu/clips/3127/education-and-community-organizations, accessed November 21, 2024