In Race #2, I talked about my views of Blacks during my elementary school years. What about during high school?

I don’t think there was a great lag in integrating St. Louis area schools after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board in 1954. I remember a gray morning in an eighth grade class when, without any advance notice, much less preparation, an administrator came into the class with two nervous and shy Black girls, and announced “These are Ella and Charles and they are joining your class.” I don’t remember anything that was said after that. I remember the teacher showing them seats. I don’t remember anyone saying anything to them one way or another. I remember looking at the girls and wondering which one was Charles, and why.

I never learned which one was Charles and which was Ella. I never talked to them. I don’t know if anyone else did. I also don’t remember them in the class the next day, or at any time after that.

Were they only at school one day? Where they in school on subsequent days and I just don’t remember? Did they stay in school but switch to a different class? I remember it was all sort of a mystery, and I remember being curious, but not curious enough to ask anyone, and certainly I wasn’t looking at moral implications then. If I ever spoke about this to anyone, such as my parents, I don’t remember.

Ella and Charles were two of the three African Americans brought into the 8th grade that day. The other, a boy, did stay with us, was fairly popular throughout high school, even at one point becoming a class officer if I remember. He was friendly, and an athlete. I don’t really know what happened to him. He is not in our yearbook. I don’t know if he graduated with us. I have no idea where he is now. (I have tried to Google him to no avail, but someone with his name plus “Sr.”, who was born in 1917, died in 1985 and is buried at Jefferson Barracks Military Cemetery near St. Louis – that could be his father.)

Ella and Charles clearly did not last at the school. And I am sure it wasn’t their fault.

There were no other Blacks in my high school class. In looking at my high school yearbook, I see only three Blacks pictured in the classes of 1961 and 1962. They are all male. I assume that all of the Blacks at Ladue lived within a small area at the very north end of the school district called Elmwood Park, which was an historic Black community. Nowhere else. Remember what I said: St. Louis was completely segregated.

I realize that I have no idea where the Elmwood Park kids went to school before integration. Because there was no “colored school” in the Ladue district, I assume that the Black school districts were drawn somewhat differently.

There was a Black elementary school, the Attucks School, in Clayton, the county seat suburb to the east of Ladue. I remember that there was a Black neighborhood in Clayton when I was young, sort of around Carondelet and Bonhomme and Hanley. But those small frame houses were sold and demolished as the Clayton business area expanded. They are long forgotten.

The Attucks school was sold by the county and became a Polynesian restaurant (I think it has been torn down). Not that I can tell you what they served at a Polynesian restaurant, but I know they served Mai Tais in the bar. I remember, during college years, being with a friend from my high school class. We were in Clayton and hungry, and I suggested that Polynesian restaurant as a place we could go. “No”, he said, “I would never eat there.” “Why?”, I asked. “Because it used to be a colored school”, he replied. “What does that have to do with anything?”, I next asked. His response? “I’m not prejudiced, but I would just never eat in a building that used to be a colored school”. That’s the story of America in a nutshell, isn’t it?

But there were worst things afoot in Clayton. Here is where my memory fails me as to exact dates. Was I in junior high or high school? Clayton has a very well used park, Shaw Park, and a highlight of that park was the Shaw Park swimming pool, where I first learned to swim. The pool had always been a whites-only pool (of course), and it was announced (perhaps it was the result of a law suit; I don’t remember) that the net year when the pool opened, it would be open to all, regardless of race.

Well, that was too much for the good citizens of Clayton, whom you would expect to be an open, liberal lot. So a big to-do ensued, and to satisfy both the residents of the city and the law, the City Council made its decision. The pool would close. As I recall, it was closed for two summers, devoid of any water, much to the dismay and the amazement of many.

Anything else I remember about contacts with Blacks during those years? Not really. Maybe one more incident that I can’t date precisely. There was a showy (pink Cadillac convertible with pink interior) and popular Black disc jockey in St. Louis (whose audience I think was primarily Black as well, although I am not sure of that), named Spider Burks, on radio station KXLW. The KXLW studio was in Clayton (thinking about that now, it surprises me), in the basement of a retail strip on Forsyth just south of Maryland. One day, I was walking through Clayton with some high school classmates (don’t remember at all who any of them were) and we decided to go and see if we could watch Spider Burks in action. To our surprise, not only could we do that, but he invited us in the studio, introduced us and asked us some questions. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any of this very seriously and we (I think I include myself in that) began to give silly answers and start giggling. After he introduced the next record, he politely (not) asked us to leave. I was very embarrassed about that – but did nothing. I certainly don’t remember sending him an apology.

But that was it. No social contact with Blacks. No contact at all that I can remember.

(An aside: Some time ago, you could call someone African-American or black. Then we learned that African-American was not sufficiently politically correct, and that “black” should be spelled with a capital B (“Black”). All media began to use Black, and some media also began. to use White. I used Black in this post, but – truth be told – I don’t understand why it should just be black. If we are trying to build a society where racial differences matter less than they do today, capitalizing the names of Whites and Blacks sends the absolutely wrong message. IMHO)