Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today.

My guest is Don All Brick, author of blinded by the lights.

Texas high school Football and the Myth of Integration.

Don, thank you so much for being here today.

It is great to be here, Christi.

So I want to start by asking you to just introduce this book to us.

What's it about?

Okay.

So, I was on the faculty here at Texas A&M for many years, and I taught a course called the sociology, sports and, I was also helping the A&M football team with the recruiting efforts at this.

So this is a late 1980s, and one day I was on my way home from class and went by car field, which is where they practice this in those days, to watch a little bit of practice.

And when I went in, you know, it's just practice place is about empty.

And I sat down by a middle aged black man and start talking to him.

Found out he was from, he's an assistant coach at a high school in South Dallas.

And he was here watching the A&M team practice to get ideas for his own team.

And we just start talking.

They start talking about when he was in high school and he went to an all black segregated high school, in what they called the purview Interscholastic League, the PBL.

And, they talked about playing their games on Wednesday night or Thursday night.

He talked about how good their coaches were.

He talked about how great their teams were and how nobody paid attention to him, to him, for them.

And they had some really good players, which nobody noticed.

And so if they wanted to continue to play football in college, they had to go north or else to one of the the southern black schools such as Grambling or Prairie View, this man had gone to Prairie View and and then graduated.

He got a job as a coach.

And as I was talking to him, I didn't I didn't grow up in Texas.

And so I didn't know a lot of this history.

And and I was just fascinated and I thought, this is interesting stuff for my class.

And so I went to the library.

There's no internet in those days.

I read everything I could find, which wasn't a lot.

I started looking back at old, newspaper.

I had to put them on the microfiche and roll them through, and, and the more I thought about this, I decided I would write this book.

And so then I started interviewing people.

And, you know, this is maybe 1990, 91.

And, I interviewed, you know, scores of people.

I interviewed a lot of the coaches at the segregated black high schools, I interviewed Luther Booker, who is at Houston Yates and, Cliff Olson at Beaumont Hebert and, and some of Gordon Wood, who was at Brownwood, lots of really well known coaches, a lot of players who played in those days.

And I started writing the book and I got a pretty good share of it written.

And then, a couple things happened.

So I never finished it.

Number one, I talked to a couple of publishers and they weren't very interested.

This was 1990.

They said the integration of schools is solved.

It's it's not something we're concerned about anymore.

That's that's the past.

We best forget it.

And then also, my work at A&M, took me in a different direction.

I had four little kids at home.

I was really busy, and I just didn't have time.

So I put what I had in a file cabinet, sat there for 30 years, and, a couple years ago, I retired, and my son would often say, when are you going to finish that book?

That's I don't know.

And anyway, so after these 30 years, I pulled it out, blew the dust off it, read it.

And the first thing I thought was, wow, there's some really neat stories here that we should never forget.

And then I thought, well, I need to update this.

And then when I started, looking at what has happened, I realized that with the integration issue, we kind of ground to a halt about the 1980s.

And since then, we've what I call, Texas schools have re segregated.

And but by that I mean that we've gone backwards.

There's tens of thousands of Texas kids who, attend schools for all of their classmates.

Our minority and all of the classmates are poor.

And, and, you know, I thought this problem.

And so, so I finished the book and voila, it's done.

So why what what made you think you were so passionate about this?

Was that conversation that sparked it, or was it your students that you you talked with?

What what made you want to I mean, there's being interest.

It's an interesting idea.

But to to want to sit down and write and do all that research, you must have had a real passion for the subject.

Well, I think you're right.

Number one is the individual I talked to, and I. I can't remember his name.

I didn't pay any attention at the time.

It really sparked my interest.

And then as I read more, my interest grew.

And then, like I said, I was I was teaching this class and I was helping, the football team recruit.

And so these kids would come in, I would I would talk to him.

And, I knew that.

And everybody wasn't coming from a from an equal, equal footing with their background kind of thing.

And, so, you know, between these, I was just very passionate about understanding this and let other people understand this issue.

Wanting to shine a light on.

Yeah.

History.

Right.

Sure, sure.

I think it's interesting how you mentioned that you, you, you started this book and then kind of put it away and then came back to it in a way.

I want to say it's a little bit favorable, because maybe if you had gotten this idea a few years ago and started writing it, you would not have probably been able to interview or talk to a lot of the same people because, so much time has passed and we've probably lost a lot of these voices.

So how vital it is and how lucky you are that you started doing the research back then to to interview these.

You're absolutely right.

When I, when I pick up the project again, I would read it and see this person I'd interviewed.

And then by now we've got the internet.

Of course, I would look them up.

And what I'd find is their obituary.

And I realized many, many of these individuals that I'd interviewed in the, in the 90s, had passed on.

And like I say, if I hadn't started, then I never would have, obviously.

And so so I've got their voice, and yet I've also got, 30 years later and I can look at the changes that have happened since that's in as well, and talk to some maybe newer voices and get those perspectives.

Yeah.

Also probably I mean, it wasn't that long ago generally, but in the 90s it certainly wasn't that long ago.

So memories are probably fresher and recollections are probably clearer.

So you probably maybe got even if people are still around, maybe got some some more clear and fresh memories by doing it back then.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I was talking to the people who are on the front lines of this thing, and some of them are getting a bit older.

They've been middle aged and some of the kids who are players, you know, some of the early breakthroughs, they were kind of in their prime at that point in time.

And, and, a lot of, a lot of these individuals I interview back in the 90s, not only they told me great stories, but a lot of them with, cut out that had clips in the newspaper and they'd send me copies of those clips and, yeah.

So, so I got lots of really, really good information from these individuals.

And were you able to re-interview anyone, like, was there anyone you talked to back then that you spoke to a second time?

More recently?

Yeah.

There are a few.

There was, an individual who, was at Texas Tech.

He, he, he had, he was teammates with Junior Coffee, and his name was camp.

Actually, he became the chancellor at Texas Tech.

He's a congressman.

And well known individual around the state.

I talked to him back in the 90s, and then, I was able to talk to him again.

There was, a number of the people that I, some of the, for example, Greg Hill was a player here at A&M.

He took my class.

We talked quite a bit when when he was in my class.

And then, 30 years later, we went out to lunch again and interviewed him again.

And so his perspective could change.

That's.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, is I bet perspectives may have changed, especially if they were young men when you first saw them.

So much is going to change in your life from college to 30 years later.

So.

Right.

I imagine when you're on your 18 year old college kid versus, a 50 year old retired NFL player kind of thing, and a much different perspective on how things are.

Yeah, right.

Interesting.

That's an interesting.

So, when you were doing these interviews before or even now, were you traveling to them, were you calling them on the phone or maybe now you're doing zoom, but I'm sure it wasn't always that easy.

Some of them, I if they were nearby, I drove and, we'd sit down and talk some of them now, again, this was.

But we didn't have cell phones where, I remember Gordon Wood, who was the winningest coach in America during the 20th century.

He was out at Brownwood, and, I look up his number in the phone book, which we don't, and I just dialed the number and and.

Hello.

And and it was him.

And I introduced myself and asked him if we could talk, and, we talked.

Then I called back a couple other times we talk some more, but.

Yeah.

And in those days you could, they would they wouldn't answer the phone.

Now, if they sure hadn't done that, that would never happen.

You wouldn't be able to find the number.

And, you know.

Right.

Maybe you can find an email online, but I imagine maybe doing the same research for the same book so far apart, you got to see kind of how different technology.

Oh yeah.

And in some ways it's much easier.

You got the internet to find these things versus going to a library to look at these books and, and look at the microfiche, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And.

Yeah, and just looking up a number dial in it and having them answer the phone, it was certainly that that didn't happen in my recent interviews.

So certainly, so to to start talking about the book itself, you kind of, it's a slim volume, which I think is great because if you just want to kind of and then you have a wonderful, bibliographic section at the end.

So I feel like this is the perfect book to kind of whet your appetite for this topic, right?

It's accessible.

It's easy to read.

So if you're if you're new to this topic, like, maybe this is the book you wish you had had when you were first.

Interesting.

Oh yeah.

Subject.

Absolutely.

Because it'll get you it'll it'll kind of give you the overview, get you going.

And then if you really want to deeper dive, you can, you know, go from there, branch out to whatever particular topic interests you more.

So just to kind of start from the beginning, the, the first part of the book, you kind of talk about, you know, pre integration, can you kind of set the stage for what we were looking at before.

And yeah.

So your changes happened.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So the first chapter two I talk about what things were like in Texas prior to Brown versus Board of Education, how Texas law.

And the same with, state laws throughout the South required that the black and white kids attend separate schools and, you know, in the book, I talked to people who had gone through that coached and played played in that and, the white schools, played their football and basketball and other things in the u-i-l, which still exists today.

They weren't and the black schools were not admitted.

They had an organization called the PBL Peavy ill. Prairie View Interscholastic League or call that because our offices are Prairie View University.

They played their games, they had their state championships, the whole thing, just a parallel entity.

So so I, I talk about that and then I talk about, so in 1954, Brown versus Board of Education came Supreme Court decision.

A year later, Texas said that schools could integrate if they wanted to.

And so what happened in Texas, you know, throughout the Deep South, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, they didn't integrate at all.

Texas.

It's very different in in the East Texas, they fought it in, West and South Texas.

A lot of these communities had a very, very small black population.

They would have to, by law, operate, an entire different school for maybe 2 or 3 kids.

And so when this came, some people thought, well, this is the right thing to do.

And other people recognize this is going to save our school district huge amounts of money, right.

You say in the book it was kind of a relief for some of them that they could it's just it's more effective to just put all the kids in small school just.

Yeah, we got 200 kids in one school, three and another.

But we still have to have a building.

We have to hire teachers, the whole bit.

And so so they jumped at it.

And so as early as 1955 and then, then I talk about this, we had some of these schools at the integrated early, and the number of black kids playing high school football in these early years, 55, 56 was very small, you know, because there's, the districts it integrated were with small black population, so like, kind of thing.

But I had people talk about some of the experiences they had of, being left on the bus when their team went into the restaurant to eat, they'd have to stay on the bus and their teammates would bring them stuff out.

And there were there were games that were forfeited because the opponent would refuse to play against a a team with a black player.

There are teammates who quit when they joined the team.

So I got some of those those stories, and then I kind of, follow follow this story.

I kind of follow the the calendar through.

Sure.

And oh, go ahead.

I was gonna say, before we get into all that, I, I did want to kind of highlight, I think Texas is so big.

We always like to brag about how big we are.

And that doesn't just mean square footage.

It's like you say, it's culturally so different.

You know, we have East Texas, as you describe in the book, which and I think we all would agree, it's much more southern versus, you know, once you get past Fort Worth going and going west, it's very different.

And then the valley is a whole different universe.

And you, you don't dwell on it too much.

But, you know, you talk about the racial mix.

The racial makeup, that's what the word I'm looking for of this, of South Texas.

It's a lot more Hispanic forward.

So that's a whole nother element of of kind of a gray area thrown into what, segregated what's not.

So, I think just reading about how the different regions of Texas.

Right.

Handle this also differently, as you say, some are very quick to adopt, some resisted.

And then sometimes, as you just mentioned, it was the traveling.

Maybe the local community adjusted just fine, but it was.

And that's a story that we see even as integration continues throughout the 60s.

You know, one town will deal with it.

They'll they'll integrate, they'll they'll make their peace with it.

But then when they travel, restaurants and hotels and other schools, it's it takes a while for the entire state to kind of reach a consensus or.

Yeah.

Comfort with with it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And those are, those are the stories in the 90s when I was interviewing these people and they were telling me these stories that, wow, this is number one, the courage of some of these individuals, both, the white, white and the black kids that were really courageous and how they dealt with it and, and how they I mean, this it's I this is why I like how you use kind of football and, sports as this metaphor because it's about the team.

You know, once, once they interact with each other and see, oh, we're just like, you know, the team builds itself up.

And then they there was a I forget what school it was, but there's one story where they tried to protect their black player from even knowing.

The coach would say, I'm going to see if they can serve a team.

But really he was seeing if they would serve that one student.

Yeah, I mean, those stories of of coming together and building each other up are, you know, it's kind of a grim topic, but there is there's glimmers of wonderful hope and humanity in these stories as well.

And that was Kent Hansen, Texas Tech.

He was the one that would go into the restaurant and and what he was doing is protecting his teammate.

The will you serve my teammate?

If they didn't, they would they they don't have room for us and they'd go to the next restaurant.

Yeah.

So I just thought that there were some there's some wonderful stories of, of, of young men, you know, looking out for each other and, and trying to protect each other from, from kind of the coolness of, of what could be and, and that's, that's so that was lovely to read.

And another, you mentioned that I think, a lot of the anger and hate came from the kids parents, you know, that, the kids who quit the team because they were going to have a black teammate vast majority of the time, it wasn't the player, it was the players parents that says, I don't want to play them, you know?

And so, kids are pretty resilient, I guess.

I, I think so, I think so.

Well, let's move forward just a little bit.

You know, as you say, the 50s are kind of rocky or nothing's really happening.

But as every book about the 60s will probably tell you, the, the mid 60s, after the civil rights movement really got going and the Civil Rights Act of 64, that's when a lot of, of change really started happening pretty rapidly.

Yeah.

So, after the Civil Rights Act, the law, every school was required to at least publicly say that we are integrated and what most but many districts in Central and East Texas did is they they used to what we call a freedom of choice plan.

Brian, Brian Wright lived all these years.

They kept, Stephen F Austin High open for the white kids.

They kept camp high open for the black kids, and they says everybody's free to choose the school that they would like to attend.

Most of the black kids kept going to camp.

Most of the white kids kept going to, SFA.

And this was going on all over and pressure was was coming to me.

One of the really interesting things is, through 1966, the PVA, PVC bill was still in operation.

And so, the all black schools, you go to Houston, the Yates High and Kashmere High, and these schools, they were still playing each other and just, they'd have their own championship after 66.

All of these schools joined the U-I-L. And so in 67, for the first time, you had you had an all black school with black coaches, black principal, black administration playing these all white schools.

You know, before, I'd always been just a couple of black kids on a white team.

And this was this was completely different.

And again, there's some really interesting, stories that that that occurred there.

I want to highlight an interesting story that I thought was, was fascinating was the some of these black schools, they were told, oh, well, their coaches aren't as good.

Their fundamentals are weak.

You know, they were kind of told these bad things about themselves.

And so they were nervous to play the all white school because, well, we can't measure up.

But then some of the all white schools were thinking, oh, well, we've seen what their players can do on integrated teams.

What would a whole team, you know, it's so if people could talk to each other, they would see and they have some similar fears.

But when people are separated like that they don't.

And so that those, those differing perspectives that weren't that far apart was that was a fascinating story to read.

Yeah.

I remember in particular, Luther Booker, who was a really successful coach at Houston Yates High School.

He talked about, the principal coming into his office one day a week.

They were going to play an all white school for the first time.

And the principal says, man, I'm really worried we're going to get we're going to get blown out and we'll be completely, completely embarrassed.

And the coach, well, I'm worried about the same, because this was all new, that they'd never played an all white school and they'd been told it, they played loosey goosey football and all that.

And but then when the game started, they competed just fine, you know, and, and you see that across there were several stories like that that maybe this team would win.

That team would win.

But the games were close.

They weren't blowouts in either direction.

They were they were playing good football.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well I want to we're going to skip a lot of decades because I want to make sure we cover kind of the entire thesis of the book.

But I would encourage people to read the book because this is where you can see kind of the full, the full picture of what was happening.

But you mentioned at the start and I want to make sure we cover it, that it kind of stalled out a little bit towards the 80s and 90s.

Can you can you talk about why that happened?

Yeah.

So so in the book I talk about there's three reasons why, integration stalled.

Number one is that the courts allowed some of the rules that had forced integration to, to, erode a little bit.

So they weren't as effective.

There were other things.

And, you know, I could I could talk for a long time, but, there's economic changes going on, and there is demographic changes going on.

The minority population in Texas is growing very rapidly.

We're becoming a, more of a two tiered rather than middle class.

You have people with money, people with out.

So all these things are going on.

So so it became more more difficult.

And then, about the time I quit writing the first part, we began a process that I call resegregation, which I mentioned earlier in, in our discussion here.

Yeah.

Can you talk more about it and how I mean, it's I think we've alluded to the fact that schools are tied to where people live.

And if people don't like maybe the makeup of the schools or their children attending, some people will just move and that, yeah, this kind of shuffling and reshuffling of demographics is is what leads to this.

Right.

And so I think two classic case in points are, Houston School District and Dallas.

Right now both Houston and Dallas ISD are about 4% white.

And, with the erosion of a lot of it.

Anyway, if you were concerned about the school your child was going to, all of you, all you had to do is just move out to the suburbs and you could find a school that was, better, safer.

And another thing that was occurring here is not only were all the white people moving out of the the city, but, the middle class minority people were moving out as well.

And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of these, poor minority schools are in such bad shape now that, you know, we go.

So, anyway, I talked about this in the book that to me, when when I looked at these numbers, it was it was fascinating that, if you look at who are, who are the really successful high schools in football right now?

And I crunched, this is where my professor, background came in.

I put all these numbers in the computer and crunched the numbers.

And while I found that the the most wealthy schools in the state, those were, a very small percent of the of the students are on free and reduced lunch.

Number one, they're mostly white.

Number two, they win a lot of football games.

They win the most championships.

If you look at who wins the state championships, it's mostly them.

And number three, if you look at who are the hot shot recruits nowadays, most of them come from these wealthy schools.

A lot of the recruits are, black, but a lot of them are kids who, parents could afford to live in, in that that school district.

And, so the kids were able to, to go there.

These kids have the advantages.

They have the best coaches, the best facilities.

A lot of them, go to summer camps.

A lot of them have a personal coach.

And so consequently, the the schools that were doing really well in the 80s are not in, you know, the we could some of the wealthy suburban schools that I think Southlake Carroll, has won lots and lots of football games and they and they win golf and soccer and softball and baseball and everything out there.

They're good at everything.

The winningest coach in the the winningest high school football team in the 21st century is Aledo, in the west part of Fort Worth, another wealthy, predominantly white school, Austin Westlake.

You know, we could we can be sure.

And we're we're running really short on time.

So we're going to have to push pause there.

I would encourage everybody to again read the book.

There's so much fascinating data and and interesting stories in here.

But in our final minute, what do you hope people take away from from this book?

I guess two things.

Number one is why you wrote the book in the first place.

Let's not forget these these stories of what it was like and the the courage of the individuals who who helped break the ice and, and, helped this integration process in the first place.

And number two, let's, let's take a careful look at where our schools are now and recognize that, these, these wealthy schools, wealthy suburban schools, not only are they winning football games and producing, highly recruited football players, they're also the ones producing our scientists and our engineers.

And, you know, our medical professionals and all those kinds of things as well.

A lot of times, a person's outcome in life is a function of who who are your parents and where did you live?

And so which school did you did you have to go to?

And you know, the America that I love, as we believe everybody has, has a chance.

And let's let's give these kids a chance.

Well, that's a great place to end on.

Thank you so much for being here and talking about this, this this book.

It's fascinating topic.

That's all the time we've got for today.

The book again, is blinded by the Lights.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And I will see you again soon.