TAPE INDEX. John West, miler, got to practice unofficially at white Central High School.

Transcription

1 james ross / 2 TAPE INDEX [Cassette 1 of 2, Side A] Tape begins with a lengthy description of life in Grier Heights, the community where Ross grew up. He talks about the people with whom he interacted, and about the schooling of the time. He stressed particularly that children grew up having learned "sense" in a variety of ways: "It was a sense of who you are. It was a sense of where you are. I mean this is the Deep South, and there are certain rules, so that whole thing of Jim Crow, that was a part of sense. Because it was dangerous for you not to have any sense about segregation and Jim Crow. And at the same time this message was given to you, there was also a message given to you that you are O.K." "At least in my family there was a very clear delineation between me and segregation. That while these are the laws and these are the rules that operate, there's nothing wrong with you. There's something wrong with the rules, but there's nothing wrong with you." "I got that very clear. I don't think anybody ever sat down and talked to me like that, but I got it very clear that there was nothing wrong with me." [Cassette 1 of 2, Side B] Second Ward High School football players had to walk to Pearl Street Playground to practice. Dressed at school, practiced, then came back and used bathrooms at school. Basketball played in auditorium, which wasn't regulation. He started Second Ward in John West, miler, got to practice unofficially at white Central High School. Played folks in Asheville, Winston-Salem, etc., but not county schools. Baseball was more of a county school activity. Street. Rivalry between Second Ward and crosstown school West Charlotte, west of Tryon West Charlotte played home games at Second Ward. "If West Charlotte came to play Second Ward in basketball, and they won the game, see, they had to get all the way to the west side of Tryon Street before they were safe. Now the players were O.K., because they could get on the bus. But the fans had to run the gauntlet. I mean they had to come out of our gym and go up First Street... You had to get from there all the way across the square. It was some terrible beatings sometimes of the West Charlotte fans. You had to be a real hard core West Charlotte fan to come to a Second Ward game, but they did."

2 james ross / 3 Queen City Classic, big football game between two schools, played in more neutral territory. "It was like Christmas and the Fourth of July and all that stuff rolled in one. It was like a holiday. Nothing happened in school the night of the Queen City Classic... The whole week was festive. And people put on their finery - people literally dressed up. Older folks dressed up to go to the Queen City Classic. And you'd wash your car and you'd put on your good clothes. And it was cold enough where you had to wear coats and that kind of thing. It was a big deal for little kids, for adults, for people who'd been out of school for years. It was a holiday almost for the African American community at that time." Describes excitement of walking up to the stadium. You'd find a place on your side. Pandemonium when teams were introduced. Because there was so much pressure, the teams usually didn't play very well, because first of all you played most of the games in the daytime. Also big crowds. Generally were pretty nervous. Recalls that West Charlotte coach, Thomas "Honey" Martin, was an "old fox" and hard to beat. The referees were very deferential to him. Half time had Miss Queen City Classic. After the game was over, older folks went to clubs, kids went to community. "There would be fights - there were always fights. All kinds of things were settled at the Classic." Boyfriends and girlfriends. A lot of them were community members. "It was all of the stuff rolled into one - it was a big deal." For a long time they didn't have a band, although West Charlotte did. "We were blood enemies, Second Ward and West Charlotte. There was no love lost between us for a number of reasons. West side against east side. Then uppity against lower. West Charlotte was perceived by a lot of people as the school." Description of locations of two schools and the way West Charlotte was fancier. Band, majorettes - everything was competition. "Bitter competition." Guys who can replay games down to the last touchdown. "Those battles are still fought." Calls a Second Ward-West Charlotte golf tournament he has organized a "bragging rights" tournament. Places where folks worked, such as at bowling alleys, sometimes same churches - all these were places folks exercised bragging rights.

3 james ross / 4 Question about cheerleading and integration: "That was one of the real sore points that never got resolved in integration. You would try to explain to people, 'here are two cultures coming together. And you need to appreciate these two cultures.' For instance, at African American schools, cheering had to do with how loud you could cheer, and how much rhythm you could put in your cheering and dancing, and athletic ability. So you had to be an athlete to be a cheerleader." Says that academics didn't have anything to do with it. Remembers issue after integration about having to have certain grades. That seemed to be sticking point. "And you could never convince these girls that this was something that was put in to keep them from being cheerleaders." "People were picked on the basis of athletic ability, so you could do the stunts and the cheering. And then how loud you could be. And then how rhythmic you could be, because these were not just rah, rah, rah. You would have to take whatever the latest song was, or the latest dance was, and then come up with some cheers that incorporated your school's name and some other things and put all that stuff together. So choreography, and you had to compose cheers. And you couldn't do the same things every year. I mean, nobody wanted to hear that stuff you did last year. And so you had to come up with new cheers. And so cheerleading was a big deal at African American schools. It took some very special people to be cheerleaders." Description of fields. Basketball games. "The noise sometimes would be deafening. Especially against the other team. And so when they were shooting, you would stomp on the bleachers... The gym was so small. You could only get - maybe you could get - I'm guessing you could get four hundred people in there. And if the fire marshal came, he probably would put everyone in jail, because you'd have people standing around. But you had those wooden bleachers that folded back for P.E. But you'd pull them out for the games. And they were wooden bleachers. And so when you started stomping, I mean the noise in there would just be deafening. Recalls pep rallies, where the cheerleader introduced the new cheers. "I'm not sure how you knew what the new cheers were... But there would always be enough folk who knew the new cheers, till the rest of the folk sort of caught on to it, for it to be a good deal. They had megaphones, and they would start these cheers. And sometimes you would build in the foot stomps with the cheers, once you caught onto it. "You also had some students who had cheers that cheerleaders couldn't do. And they were usually X-rated. You always had some loudmouth guys. You had seating places, you had sort of - how do I want to put this - You had a place in the gym where decent students didn't sit. (laughs) I mean, it just wasn't safe to sit where those guys sat. And they'd start some cheers down there. And they had a little section, if I remember correctly, in the Second Ward gym, it was on the First Street side of the gym, in the corner at the top back. These were kind of hoodlum kind of guys. And they had little cheers, and they also would throw things, and yell stuff at the other team. And that was the end of the gym where the opposing team sat. And so they would sit behind the opposing team. And so they kept something going on that end." Cheerleaders on the home side. Students were there. Remembered spontaneous cheers from the stands.

4 james ross / 5 Remembers being hot and sweaty. Remembers groups such as the Drifters and other groups whose songs were being used. "The thing that I remember would be the creativity they'd have to come up with to take the lyrics from a popular song, the melody from a popular song and then make it into..." Later on: "They would play music during the half-time. And kids would come out of the stands and dance. I mean you weren't supposed to, but... all of these good dancers would run down. And they only got about ten minutes, so you had to do all of your stuff in ten minutes." Then eventually played at the Park Center, and again a festival kind of thing, with music and dancing at halftime. Then had a dance after the game. Again, wasn't exactly safe to stay around. Recalls juke joints. Schools were nice because they were a place where could dance. Weren't all that many other things to do, places to gather. "It was part of the culture, and you were kind of expected to support the team in terms of buying a ticket and going to the game and cheering. That was all part of the culture. It was kind of the expectation that you supported the activities of Second Ward." Remembers baseball being the big deal in his neighborhood. More organized baseball. "Every community had a baseball team." "It was never quiet." Remembers tournaments held in the gym, with lockers, showers, etc. Remembers girls' basketball tournaments. "When they would have the girls' tournament, you'd get to see all of these girls,... we'd be lining up to go because you'd get to see all these girls from other parts of North Carolina. That was a big deal." Cheer as the flow of the game went. Ebb and flow. "The gym would not be quiet. Before the game started, people would be meeting and greeting and there would be this buzz going on." And again it would kind of depend on who the team was... Talks about laughing at teams from the country, who didn't have the right style shoes (Converse All Stars were big) "You had all of this kidding and getting on the other team. The minute the other team came in, then you started to get on them. Down in the corner - the hoodlum corner - it was brutal what they would do to people from the other team. So that's what kept the noise going all the time." Talks about the Eastside Improvement Association, politics involved in getting city officials to pay attention to needs of black communities. [Cassette 2 of 2, Side A]

5 james ross / 6 Continued discussion of Eastside Improvement association, other things. "You had the baseball game that was being played, and then you had this stuff that went on around in the audience that was very different from a football and a basketball game, because these were neighborhood people rather than student bodies. And you had two or three loudmouth agitators whose job it was to give the opposing team a hard time. And these guys were masters at what they did. I remember this one guy, Mr. Sam Izzard. He started talking in the first inning, and he didn't stop talking till the last inning... He had something for everybody who came to the plate. He had some kind of little rhyme or some kind of little 'you couldn't hit a bull in the ass with a lumberyard.' Or 'You couldn't catch an airplane if it fell out of the sky," or something. And I mean he had something for every inning." End of interview