University of North Texas Oral History Collection

Interview with Mitchell Jackson
Interviewer: Michele Glaze
Place of Interview: Denton, Texas.
Date of Interview: July 17, 1993

Ms. Glaze:
This is Michele Glaze. It's Saturday, July 17, 1993. I am interviewing Mitchell Jackson as part of the Fred Douglass/Fred Moore School Reunion. I'm representing the North Texas Oral History Program, and we are here in Denton, Texas.

Mitchell, could you give me your name, your age, your birthdate, birthplace, and your parents' names?

Mr. Jackson:
My name is Mitchell Lee Jackson. I am seventy years old. I was born on September 10, 1922 in Denton on Bell Avenue in old Quakertown. My parents were Inez Alexander Jackson and Parmalee Jackson, who was the paternal part of it.

Ms. Glaze:
You say that you were born in Quakertown?

Mr. Jackson:
Yes.

Ms. Glaze:
Where?

Mr. Jackson:
On Bell Avenue, just north of McKinney Street.

Ms. Glaze:
Can you tell me when your parents' families arrived in Denton? Do you have any information on that at all?

Jackson:
No, I don't have any. I don't know when they arrived here.

Glaze:
How large was your family?

Jackson:
My immediate family was just my father and my mother and my brother and myself.

Glaze:
And your brother is... ?

Jackson:
James Lewis Jackson, who is older than I am.

Glaze:
I'm kind of interested in the economic situation a little bit. What was your father's occupation and also your mother's, if she worked?

Jackson:
My father was a cook. At the time that I remember, he was working at... well, they called it the CIA [College for Industrial Arts]. Then he left the CIA and started cooking for private individuals.

My first knowledge of my mother's employment was... I don't want to call her a maid, but she was a cook and a cleanup lady for a family living here in Denton. I think the family's name was Cristal, the Jack Cristal's.

Later, my mother's employment involved working for North Texas State [College], and she was working out in the Marquis Hall. She worked there for several years.

Glaze:
What did she do at Marquis Hall?

Jackson:
She was a cook. She was designated as the meat cook at Marquis Hall, in the kitchen, along with other ladies that were doing the cooking. Bessie Ross was the vegetable lady; Mrs. Gladys Maddox was the pastry person. All of the other people that were in there were men. They worked on the dish-washing machine and things of that sort. Bessie Ross also was the person designated to prepare for special parties that were sponsored there at the Marquis Hall facility. But, my mother was the meat cook. She had to shoulder quarters of beef from the walk-in refrigerator out to the block, where she had to cut the individual pieces of meat that she was going to cook. I learned this when I would go out there in the summer to work for myself. When I discovered that that was what she was doing, then I insisted that she not do it anymore. So, while I was hired to work during the summer, then I would be sure that I carted all of the meat out of the walk-in box.

Glaze:
You carried it out?

Jackson:
I carried it out so that my mother would not have to do that.

Glaze:
I see.

Jackson:
Then, I guess, my mother was tired or whatever and decided to move away from Texas, and she went to Tucson, Arizona.

Glaze:
When you say that your mother worked when you were a child... your father went to Dallas or something. Could you tell me how that worked? When did he go?

Jackson:
To be quite blunt and frank, he to have left during the first and second years of my life because I can remember his coming home from Dallas. He would tell us that he was riding the Interurban that used to run from Denton to Dallas and back. But he was not living at home then, so he had to be living away from Denton.

Glaze:
What was he doing? What kind of job did he have at that time?

Jackson:
He was still a cook. He had been a cook for a long time and became extremely proficient -- very good -- and -- his services were in demand in Dallas at that time. People would want him, and once he would do a job for them, they would try to hire him on as the individual cook for that particular family. But he found that he could make more money by going from job to job. He would do that -- maybe two days at one place. He was away from home, and it was Inez, my mother, who was the salvation for both me and my brother.

Glaze:
How common was that for, say, the father -- I know several people have said that -- to work away? I mean, was this something that happened quite often?

Jackson:
Yes. I think it was the economic process or lack of an economic development in the U.S.A. and particularly in Denton, Texas, at that time, because the only jobs that were really around, as I remember it, was the CIA, which later became known as TWU [Texas Woman's University] and North Texas State. Those were the major employering agencies in Denton. There were others who followed the farm trade. They would go out and sharecrop or do work for farmers, and on instances they would take their children to work on that same farm with them. Some of them stayed on the farm. Some of them were given the designation as a sharecropper, but I have yet to see the benefits that the fathers or the families derived from their sharecropping. Some of them worked as hand car wash people with the Ford Company -- Ben Ivey Ford Company here -- and the Chevrolet person, but that was only a few. Most of the other work was done at the CIA and North Texas State.

Glaze:
With your mother pretty much being alone, with your father being in Dallas and working, how did she manage that when you were small? I realize, once you were older, that it was easier, but where did you go? Who took care of you?

Jackson:
As I remember it -- oh, that's been so long (chuckle) -- Bessie Ross had some children: Isaac and Celia Mae and Reva. Sometimes they would keep us. There was another family -- Jerry Cooper. He had a daughter named Thelma. Sometimes I remember having stayed with her. Then there seemed to have been a practice -- for the want of another word -- of the people who lived in a particular area, such as where we were, since we were totally isolated -- I don't want to say segregated; we were isolated from the other parts of the city -- that the mothers, when they were not out in their employment, would maintain the children of the others that were not there. Not only did they maintain them to see that they were taken care of so that there would be an adult supervisor, but I can remember, as I grew older, they would share foodstuffs. If one family was a little lax with their provisions, then the mothers -- and I say this emphatically -- the mothers -- got together and shared the tidbits that each of them had and put it together and fed all of us that were in that general area. I can remember seeing Annie V. [Jackson, then Cochran], Inez, Bessie, Minnie Hamilton, and some others preparing that meal for us and calling us in. Mrs. Hamilton was Harve King's mother. They would stand in the kitchen and watch all of us eat. If, perchance, there was something left, then they ate. But they flatly refused to eat anything until after all of those children were fed -- and sometimes we numbered five, six, or seven. Then they would partake of whatever was left. It was those mothers who taught us how to take a spading fork and dig the ground in our yards where we were living, throw out the grass, and dig up gardens. They would can foods from the things that we grew. But the mothers, by and large, were the salvation of all of us.

My father was in absentia, as I said, the first eighteen years of my life. I guess, if you would piece each time that he was at home, it would not extend over sixteen or eighteen months. It was really my mother that took care of my brother and myself. Later, my father's brother took my brother under his wing and used to do an awful lot of things for him -- my Uncle Shelby.

Glaze:
Shelby Jackson?

Jackson:
Shelby Jackson, yes. He took over and sort of took James under his arm and did a lot for James, while I stayed at home with my mother.

Glaze:
I see. You mentioned that you were born on Bell Avenue in Quakertown.

Jackson:
That's right.

Glaze:
You were born just about the time that they were moving.

Jackson:
In the transition process, that's right.

Glaze:
Where did you move? Where did you live once they had left Quakertown?

Jackson:
We moved over to a place that then was called Solomon Hill. I guess it's still Solomon Hill -- on the hill over there where Annie V. and others live now.

Glaze:
So, what street?

Jackson:
I lived on East Oak Street.

Glaze:
We were talking about the length of time that your father was there. So, your mother was pretty much the person that took care of you.

Jackson:
She was.

Glaze:
We're going to be talking about the school, and I'm curious... can you tell me how much education your mother had?

Jackson:
I think she said she went through the eighth grade. My father -- I don't know. I never heard him mention how much formal education he had, but I know my mother went through the eighth grade.

Glaze:
Where did she go to school?

Jackson:
I don't know. That's something I don't know. My mother's family came into Denton from the Seagoville area, south of Dallas. Her father had much land then -- a farm and all that stuff -- down in that area. To my knowledge, as I remember, they came into Denton from the Seagoville area, and there's a street down there now named Alexander, which was named for her father, James L. Alexander.

Glaze:
I see. Your mother didn't have much education herself. What type of incentive did she give you toward education? In other words, how did she feel about education for, say, yourself and for James?

Jackson:
She thought it would be the salvation for both of us, and she was instrumental, and, let's say, she continually talked to us about going to school, finishing high school, and then matriculating in some college or university. Without a doubt, my mother saw the advantages of both my brother and myself having that formal education. She taught it; she preached it; she emphasized it. Although she was not too far advanced in chronological education -- the eighth grade -- she was still able to help me with my homework and things when I came home. I remember she was always very tired when she would come home, but never too tired to assist me when I needed it. She would not allow me to pass through too many days of a week without saying to me that I had to be ready for school and be sure that I was ready because she had to leave home early every morning. There were no buses or things of this sort, so she had to walk from Solomon Hill out to West Oak Street where she was working. She always wanted to be sure that I was ready to go to school and go to school on time.

Glaze:
About how far did she have to walk?

Jackson:
Well, let's see. You know where we just left Solomon Hill.

Glaze:
We were at Crawford [Street] and McKinney [Street].

Jackson:
Let's just bring it over to Oak Street [one block over from McKinney]. She had to walk from Wood Street and Oak Street. We were two houses off of Wood, on Oak, and she walked all the way from there, by the train station, across the square, and then out Oak Street to the Cristal residence, which was about, I guess, 880 yards or maybe a mile.

Glaze:
So, we're talking, maybe, two miles that she had to walk?

Jackson:
Back and forth, everyday.

Glaze:
I see. You've had all of your [elementary and secondary] education at Fred Douglass. Is that right?

Jackson:
Yes. We started at... I guess people call it kindergarten. I guess that's what it was at the time. When I first went to school, Mrs. Alice Alexander was my primary teacher -- the first teacher that I had when I went to school.

Glaze:
How old were you, and what year was that?

Jackson:
Let's see. I was born in 1922, and I started when I was six. I guess it was six years after 1922.

Glaze:
So, 1928.

Jackson:
In 1928 or so. When I went into school, I actually remember going into Mrs. Alexander's room and loved going to school. Usually, when children go to school, they are somewhat apprehensive until they reach there, and they spend two or three days or a week or so. But I was happy when I got to school, I can remember. It had to be because of the effect that Mrs. Alexander had on us as children. She was not only a teacher to us, teaching the academics, but she put forth an awful lot of effort to maintain a good relationship among all of the students that were in her class at the time. She was a friend. She was a play person with us. She supervised us. She was a teacher. Whatever it was that she thought that we needed, she was there to provide for us, and we drew an awful lot of inspiration from Mrs. Alexander, [who was] then Mrs. Banks. She was a very, very effective lady in her teaching and her being around the students that were under her.

Glaze:
When you were in her class, how large were your classes? Approximately how many children?

Jackson:
It had to be, I guess, about twenty. Twenty or twenty-one -- not over twenty-five.

Glaze:
How many classes were in that room?

Jackson:
In that particular one, there was only the one because she accepted all of the children in the very first year of their matriculation. Then she kept us up until about the second grade. That's what she did. Then we were turned over to Mrs. -- her name was Seay, but her name was Mrs. Ammons when she left here -- Olivia Ammons. Then we left Mrs. Ammons and went to Mrs. Hodge.

Glaze:
So, you had Mrs. Hodge as well.

Jackson:
Oh, yes. Then [Clyde] Alcorn was a teacher that came. Then, when he left, Mr. [Tennyson] Miller came. When Mr. Miller came in, he changed the thinking, particularly, of the male populous of the school. He took over at the teenage level of the males like Mrs. Alexander did when she got us as little things, and it was through the the exhibitions of those teachers that we had -- Mrs. Alexander, Mrs. Seay or Mrs. Ammons, Mrs. Hodge -- that we learned to aggressively pursue the educational pursuit.

Glaze:
You say that Tennyson Miller changed the outlook, so to speak, of the boys, the males.

Jackson:
Right.

Glaze:
Can you explain a little bit what you mean by that?

Jackson:
The unknown to most of us -- and I say most of us -- was that the fatherly image was not there for us. Yet, we were not sage enough to understand what that was. When Mr. Miller came, he gave to us that something that we were needing as a male image or a masculine image, and he transformed us from being a quizzical bunch of young fellows into accepting the fate that we had and not knowing that we didn't have that paternal process there. Mr. Miller fulfilled that in his manner. He didn't try to become our father, but he was constantly teaching us the male role in the home, the responsibility of the males as we were growing up, the things that we had to do -- or should do -- at home, the things that we should take away from our mothers and do for them, and then to get a better grip on who we were.

I didn't know that I was missing my father because I hadn't seen him. When I would get ready to go to an affair at the school and I had no clothes to wear, Mr. Miller loaned me a pair of his trousers and a pair of his shoes and his coat, so when I would get to the affair, I did look fairly decent. Then, when I came home from that affair, I immediately got out of those clothes, hung them up, and then the next morning I took them back to Mr. Miller. That same Mr. Miller would not accept those clothes the next morning, but he would take four or five of us and put us in his car and take us out fishing.

Glaze:
Wait a minute. What do you mean, he wouldn't accept the clothes?

Jackson:
Well, early in the morning was not the time for him to accept the clothes. We were on our way fishing.

Glaze:
I see.

Jackson:
The returning of the clothes had to wait until after we had gone fishing and had our fish.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

Jackson:
So, when we came from fishing, he took the clothes and took them back.

Glaze:
Where did you go fishing?

Jackson:
Oh, we went a lot of places. Mostly, it was on the big lake. It was out McKinney Street, about six miles out. We would go all around that lake.

Glaze:
Would that lake be Lake Lewisville now?

Jackson:
Well, maybe a part of it is. Lake Lewisville grew up later when the people from Mississippi came in and built that dam and all that stuff, but prior to that we just called it Lake Dallas. That's all it was. We went straight out McKinney [Street], and later on we would learn different routes to get around to various parts of the lake. Sometimes we would go through Frisco and come down to the lake. Sometimes we would go out to Mayhill -- I can't think of the name of the street. We'd go out the McKinney Highway -- out Route 24 -- and go past Little Elm, and on the hill on the other side of the Little Elm, we'd make a right turn and go south and then work our way back down to the creeks that ran into it.

But Mr. Miller was the person who took us. Not only did we fish, but we learned about the trees, the shrubbery, the danger of the kinds of snakes around there, the kinds of snakes in North America that were poisonous to us. Then, if we were sitting on the lake and would see something over there that looked like a better fishing place, he's the one that taught us how to swim. We'd jump in the water with our fishing poles and swim to the other side and fish over there and then swim back and then get in the car and come home. He also would take us early some mornings, and we'd walk to the lake.

Glaze:
Walk?

Jackson:
Yes. It was, I guess, a test of the endurance of us. I guess it let us develop, and he enjoyed the walk. We played and we threw rocks. We threw rocks at whatever we would see -- birds, snakes, lizards.

Glaze:
When Mr. Miller came, approximately how old were you? About what grade were you in?

Jackson:
I was in the sixth or seventh grade, something like that.

Glaze:
Sixth or seventh.

Jackson:
Yes. I was considered a weakling. Okay? There was something about me that I couldn't understand. My mother didn't know, and nobody else could understand what I had. Sometimes I could be leaving home -- we had to walk from Solomon Hill to Fred Douglass School -- and sometimes in the morning on the way to school, I would just pass out. Some of the other fellows that lived nearby would get a wagon and put me in the wagon. They would either pull me to school or take me back home. It happened on occasion, and my mother would tell me it was because I had bad tonsils.

Glaze:
(Laughter) Your tonsils made you collapse?

Jackson:
That's right. And my throat would get sore, and it would swell up until it was almost closed. Then, when Mr. Miller came and was the coach, the friend, the whatever, I was too small and too young to play football. But we didn't have too many people playing ball at that time, and he'd always say he'd need a center and asked me if I would hike the ball for him.

Glaze:
A center?

Jackson:
Yes, and I would get hold of the ball and snap it back to the backfield men. From that I lost all of that whatever it was, that weakness, and it developed me and made me do things like that. I grew into a very strong young man, young person, teenager, who participated in the athletics.

Glaze:
Having heard so much about your exploits on the football team...

Jackson:
(Chuckle)

Glaze:
... and on the track team, now to hear that you had been a weakling is a little hard to accept.

Jackson:
Michele, you won't believe it. At my first football game, my mother didn't even know I was playing. I weighed ninety-eight pounds.

Glaze:
Ninety-eight (chuckle)?

Jackson:
Ninety-eight pounds. From that year, I grew from 98 to 126 pounds. The next year I went to 176 pounds, and in my senior year I went up to 190-something and wasn't fat.

Glaze:
That was a hundred pounds you gained in four years.

Jackson:
That's right.

Glaze:
That's very interesting. Were you just growing height-wise that you gained so much, or were you just putting on weight?

Jackson:
I was growing height-wise. I was always tall and skinny, but when I started in the athletics, I began to fill out.

Glaze:
Excuse me a moment. We're getting toward the end of the tape. I think we're going to have to turn it and put it on the other side. [Tape turned over]

Glaze:
Okay, we've turned the tape around. You were talking about weight and changing so much in these four years.

Jackson:
Well, I had played that first game of football -- and my mother didn't know it -- and, as it would be, I got hurt. She was sitting in the grandstand and saw that person out there lying on the ground and made the statement, so I was told, that she was sure glad that was not her son. Lo and behold, when they brought me to the sideline, it was me.

Glaze:
It was her son (laughter).

Jackson:
But I really wasn't hurt bad; I had the wind knocked out of me. I got up, went back and played the game, and from that year until I graduated and went down to Prairie View, my mother, who did not want me to play football, would not allow me to miss a football practice.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

Jackson:
"You have to go to practice. You can't miss practice. Have you done your homework?" I said, "Yes, I did it in school." And I would do my homework at school. For some reason, school work was not hard to me. I could do it in a few minutes time between classes or a change in classes. If I had a homework assignment, I would whip it out right quick, so the rest of my evenings, when I came home from school, was free to do whatever.

The next year Mr. Miller started teaching us because we were considered -- we were a class B school -- small people. He told us that since we were small, we had to do two things to defeat other teams. Firstly, we had to be real swift, very fast. And we had to be good thinkers. If you couldn't out-think the other athlete, then you were going to get beaten. Weight wouldn't make any difference. If we could be faster than they are and think faster than they, then we could win an awful lot of games, and it came just as he stated it.

In my instance, I started growing and putting on weight. I became extremely fast, and I began to run over people on the football field. In running over the football field, people began to take notice of me. I followed years, I think, behind C.L. Nix, Jr., Herbert King, a couple of years behind Harve King, and Harold, who was C.L. Nix's brother, and Isaac Ross. Those two or three years difference made an awful difference in the performance of us because we did start thinking. We took that from Mr. Miller. I was Class B State Champion in the 220-yard dash two years in a row. I was the Class B high-point person at the state meet.

Glaze:
What does that mean by "high point?"

Jackson:
High point means that my individual races accounted for more points than any other individual. I won the 220; I putt the shot; I threw the discus; I threw the javelin; I ran on the relays. All of the total points I made in that meet put me above all the other folks from the state at the Class B level. As a result, they give you a trophy for being high-point man. Mr. Miller took six of us to Prairie View, and we won the state championship. We won it down in Prairie View.

Glaze:
Six? The whole team?

Jackson:
Six people. And we did that about three years that we went down there.

Glaze:
That was yourself and Harve King...

Jackson:
Well, we did this, I think, after Harve.

Glaze:
I see.

Jackson:
It was myself, William Fred Goodner, Willie Bolden, and James Whitlow. Let me think now, who that other person was. Bennie Lee Darty.

Glaze:
That's a name that I haven't heard before.

Jackson:
And we amassed all of that glory unthinkingly. We didn't get the big head or anything; we just performed because Mr. Miller built that in us. Our football teams were good; our basketball teams were good. The same fellows that were playing football played basketball, and they also ran track because we didn't have that many. I.D. Moody was a part of that first group. He didn't go down and win any of the championships with us, but he was on the team with C.L. Nix and Herbert and Harve and all of those fellows. But I think the thinking that Mr. Miller instilled in us is the thing that made the difference in those that came through during my time.

Glaze:
There's something that I'm curious about. This is three years after I've started researching and everything that I finally meet you. Yet, you're sort of a legend. I mean, you talk about anything at school -- I mean, whether you're talking to a male or to a female -- and you talk about sports, and Mitchell is all that you hear. Going from, as you said, a weak young boy...

Jackson:
Yes, very weak. Yes.

Glaze:
... suddenly you become this larger-than-life hero, and I think this went on in college and whatever.

Jackson:
Yes, I did that at Prairie View.

Glaze:
What did that do to your self-esteem? I know you said you didn't get a big head, but tell me what that did you as a person?

Jackson:
Well, the one thing that it did, mostly, was to make me focus on what my mother had told me: "You have to finish school. You must go to school. If you are to be an athlete -- you know I'm not able to pay for a college career -- you might get a scholarship. That entered my mind in my junior year. Then I began to place more emphasis on doing that. In that same year, there was a young lady going to school with me, Emma Haynes, and another young lady that had come into Denton named Annetta Corliss and then D.L. Johnson, whom I'm sure you've met.

Glaze:
Yes.

Jackson:
Emma, Annetta, and I used to vie with each other in the classroom. It was important to me not to let any females beat me in class (chuckle). I don't know from whence it came. I knew I was physically adept, mentally adept, and, somehow or another, I think the teachers in our school developed this competitive aspect among the three of us. I just would not allow them to beat me. There were two young ladies -- Harve King's wife, Elinor [Woods], and Ollie Mae Nix -- who were a year ahead of me in school, and we went to some classes together. Whenever they would hit a stumbling block, somehow or another they would always come to me: "How can we manipulate this?" "How can I do this?" "What does this mean?" "Prof" -- Mr. Moore -- was teaching Latin, and it was a crazy subject.

Glaze:
Crazy subject?

Jackson:
Crazy subject. I say crazy subject because from that day until this one, I have never seen anyone go around speaking Latin. But that Latin taught me prefixes and suffixes and developed my vocabulary for me. I don't know how I recognized it, but it happened. I used to help Ollie and Elinor with their Latin class, and I helped James Whitlow with his math class. I would meet some nights with three fellows here to do homework -- what we called business arithmetic. Sometimes one problem would cover three or four notebook pages to get to the end of it. I'd do mine at school. Then I would meet with these other fellows at night.

In the process of vying for the valedictorian of our graduation class, I won it. It wasn't given to me. I won that one here, and Emma was angry (chuckle).

Glaze:
Who was the salutatorian?

Jackson:
Emma Haynes. Emma Haynes was the salutatorian. I was the valedictorian.

Glaze:
What year was that that you graduated?

Jackson:
May of 1941.

Glaze:
So, we're talking just about the war.

Jackson:
Yes. I went to Prairie View in September, 1941. As a freshman, I made the first-string football team; as a freshman, I made the first-string basketball team, and as a freshman, I lettered in track. I was the first freshman in the history of Prairie View to garner three athletic letters in his freshman year. That had not been done by a freshman at Prairie View. I was extremely proud of it; yet, it didn't hit me until about two years later.

Glaze:
Hit you as far as what you had accomplished?

Jackson:
That's right. It didn't hit me. But I never wanted to be dumb. I always wanted to excel in class. I just had to excel. I'll tell you what. I was enamored with Ollie Nix. Okay?

Glaze:
I've heard (chuckle).

Jackson:
Oh, yes? And I just could not prove a failure in anything that was presented where she was in the audience. I wouldn't let anybody outrun me, nobody out jump me, nobody beat me in the classroom. I just had to be that all-encompassing male individual where Ollie was concerned. I'll have to give her credit because she was the one who made me decide that I wanted to do some of these things, such as running over people on the football field, running around people on the football field, eluding people on the football field, catching somebody that was two or three yards ahead of me in a race, making a basket when it had to be made in basketball. I made All-Conference everything. I actually ran, as David Williams says, over him. He didn't lie.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

Jackson:
Michele, I don't know where I got it. I don't who taught it to me -- if it were taught -- or if it was a natural tendency that I had, but I ran with real high knees on the football field. It carried over into track, which was also good for me. I had to slow it down when I got to basketball because my steps couldn't be as high. Mr. Miller helped me figure that out.

Glaze:
Did he coach all three sports?

Jackson:
Yes. Mr. Miller coached all three sports, as well as math, to us. I used to sit in Mr. Miller's math class. We would have our daily recitations. He would teach us something, and then at the end of that week, he had a test going. At the time we didn't have all the paraphernalia that's out there now for teacher assistance, so he had to write his problems on the board. We'd take a piece of paper and a pencil and sit down and write behind him. When Mr. Miller wrote his last problem on the board in that test, always, less than two minutes later, I was handing my paper to Mr. Miller because I followed him as he put it on the board. I would work it right down with him. He taught me one thing, specifically about math, which carried over into the other subjects, and I didn't know I was doing it, but later on I began to understand that. He said, "Everything has a rule. If you read this rule and understand this rule, you can apply it to all of the problems we have in this chapter." He would take his time and teach the rule to us. When I learned that rule, all the rest of the problems just came easily because I applied that rule, all of the steps. I did it also in English.

Glaze:
The way you talk about Mr. Miller, he was not just a teacher. Now, this was a teacher, where it was encompassing, it seemed like, in so many areas of your life.

Jackson:
Excuse me. [Mr. Jackson wiped his eyes.]

Glaze:
Do you want me to turn that off? [Tape recorder is turned off for about three minutes while Mr. Jackson regained his composure.]

Jackson:
He came at a time when we needed a person to do things, not for us but with us, and to teach us how these things should go. When I think about all the things Mr. Miller did [weeping], shoot, I just get maudlin, and it sinks in because I had no father. I didn't know him. I knew I had a father biologically, but I had nobody around me. My uncle had taken my brother away, so I had no big brother. It was just me and my mother. Then, all of a sudden, success was ingrained into me. It had been taught to me by my mother from way down, but I can not minimize the importance that Tennyson Miller played in my life. I don't think I would be here.

Glaze:
You mean you wouldn't be the person that you are today?

Jackson:
That's it. I had every opportunity in the world to digress and go other ways. I couldn't see me cursing in front of Tennyson Miller. I couldn't see me calling him Tennyson; I have to call him Mr. Miller. I couldn't let him know that I had failed in doing something. He just was that kind of individual, and it wasn't just for me. It was for several of us. D.L. Johnson said the same thing today. Willie Bolden, who has passed; I.D. Moody and C.L. [Nix], and a whole lot of us. You know, we just didn't have it. Michele, I was poor. That's a good word. My family was poor. My mother could not give to me those things that she wanted me to have, and, I guess, the things that I wanted. I used to go hungry for three or four days because there was no food in my house, and I was too proud to go somewhere else to eat.

Glaze:
For three or four days you were hungry?

Jackson:
Yes. I would be so glad when the time came to play a game of football because they fed the football players after the game. Oh, I "put on the dog" (laughter).

Glaze:
"Put on the dog."

Jackson:
I ate. I really did. But I was too proud to let anybody know that. Firstly, I wouldn't inflict it on my mother, and, secondly, I didn't want anybody to know that we didn't have food in our house. I used to make cornmeal mush out of cornmeal for breakfast; eat it; and with that which was left, I would pour cold water on it and let it set there. Then, when I'd come home for dinner, I'd pour that cold water off -- most of it -- and I'd reheat it, and that was my dinner. But nobody knew that. I would not allow that to be known outside of my home.

I used to get up every Saturday morning, and I washed the clothes, and I cleaned the house, and I ironed the clothes. Then I was free to go out and do whatever else it was I wanted to do. I had to iron the sheets that go on the bed, pillowcases that went on the bed. That's what my mother taught me, and she had her reasons for teaching me, and today I am so proud of it.
I can iron a shirt today, at seventy, and still not have a "cat face" in it.

Glaze:
You can do what?

Jackson:
Iron a shirt and not have a "cat face" on it.

Glaze:
Oh, a "cat face."

Jackson:
Yes. I can do it. I can iron a sheet today that will go on your bed, and it won't have a "cat face."

Glaze:
No "cat face."

Jackson:
That's right. She would not allow us to do it halfway. We had to do it all the way. All of this, I gleaned from Inez because I was with my mother all the time. Like I said, my uncle took my brother, but I was with Inez all the way. Inez did it. Then here came Mr. Miller, and he supplied me with something I needed, and I didn't know what it was. I think the world of the coach. Then he married my cousin, Reva, who lived next door, which brought him closer to me. Then, there was another cousin that I had, J.B. Smith. J.B. Smith lived on one side of me, and Tennyson lived on the other. From J.B. to Tennyson and back to J.B., everyday I had that camaraderie that was there -- that was needed for me. I could plant my garden and talk to Mr. Miller; I could plant my garden and talk to J.B. If I wanted to know anything that was puzzling me -- that I didn't know anything about -- having to do with masculinity -- I could talk to either one of them, mostly to Mr. Miller. We developed something that was not just not coming from a teacher or a coach. There was a friendship that developed. I couldn't describe it in words -- what it was -- but I knew what it meant to me. Had it not been for Tennyson Miller and those things that my mother gave to me early, I would not be, like I said, like I am today.

I did graduate from college. I had a hiatus in-between. I spent two years in Prairie View, went into the service and spent three years, and came back to Prairie View and did one semester and couldn't hack it. I was crazy. So, I left Texas and went to California. When I got to California, everybody that I saw was going to school. Two weeks after I got there and settled down, I went to George Pepperdine College and enrolled in George Pepperdine College.

Glaze:
George Pepperdine? Is that in L.A.?

Jackson:
It's in Los Angeles. Now it's called Pepperdine University, but it was George Pepperdine then. I started all over. They gave me very few credits that I had taken down here at Prairie View when I got to Pepperdine, and I graduated from Pepperdine in three years while working and raising a family. In three years time, I had graduated with a bachelor's degree.

Glaze:
One thing I was curious about. You left Fred Douglass and went to Prairie View, and then you also had Pepperdine. How well-prepared for college...

Jackson:
(Chuckle)

Glaze:
... were you when you left Fred Douglass?

Jackson:
Not too well. For general courses, yes, I was ready, but beyond those general courses, they were not taught to us. Michele, I realized that because, in my senior year at Fred Douglass, I was offered scholarships -- one to Indiana University, one to Ohio State University, and somewhere else. Then Sam Taylor, who was the coach at Prairie View, came through Denton and sat down and talked to my mother. I was destined to go to Texas College because that's where C.L. Nix had gone and Herbert King had gone. I wanted to follow the fellows from my home. My mother said, "You are not going to Texas College. You're going to Prairie View." I thought of Ohio State. I thought of Indiana University. I got a catalog from either one, and I determined that I was not ready for Big Ten academics.

I had no doubt about my athletic abilities, but, academically, I would have been a failure. I was too far behind, and I realized that. That's one of the things that I did not get. We had no general sciences, no biological sciences, and the only foreign language we ever knew was Latin because that was "Prof's" thing. But there were so many other things. We didn't know social studies or anything except teaching what Texas wanted you to learn. We had a little civics. We didn't know government as it really was at that time. Hey, I wasn't ready.

Glaze:
Other than the science that wasn't there and the other subjects, what about the library? What did you do when you got down to Prairie View, and suddenly you're faced with the library? I mean, there were a lot of things that were not here in Denton. How did you make that transition?

Jackson:
Not wanting to fail and knowing that I had to find the source of an awful lot of information that was to be put before me, I went to the library and talked to the librarian. At that time, it was a lady named Mrs. Jackson -- no relation. She took time to teach me what the library was, its purpose, and the reasons for it being there at Prairie View. From that, I made it.

Glaze:
Had you ever been in a library before?

Jackson:
If I had, I didn't know anything about it. We didn't have a library. Library was a word that we read, nothing that we ever visited or went to. We didn't have a course in library science or anything. We were not allowed to go to anything on the other side of the tracks. That was all-white. We were not that, so we couldn't go. There was no library at Fred Moore. Other than the good teachers that we had in normal academic subjects -- math, English, homemaking -- here wasn't too much for us. We had no gym. We used to play our athletic games -- basketball and stuff -- on the ground. We had no locker rooms. We used to dress for football in a basement under the old school. Our school only had four rooms and a home economics room. That's all that we had. We didn't have anything else, so we dressed for football in that hole under that thing. We'd come out of there and go to practice or go get on the bus and go play a game. No library. No science. We didn't know what a microscope was, only what we'd read in the books. No specimen that we could look at under a microscope. Just nothing. But we didn't know it.

I really discovered it, as I said, when I got those scholarship offers. Coach Bo McMillen came to see me, and I promised him that I'd let him know whether or not I was going to accept the scholarship. Then I began to think, and that's when I began to understand that I was very short academically, not mentally. I had not been exposed because of the curriculum that we had here at Fred Douglass.

But everything else that was necessary for an educational process, we had -- everything. We had a small school, a few teachers, a close relationship with all of those, and they were seriously committed to teaching us. They taught us the best that they had.

I remember one of the superintendents here in Denton came out to the school and complained to us that we were using too much toilet tissue. It's the truth. He sat us in a meeting and told us all that he was going to teach us how to use toilet tissue. But he didn't come down and bring us books to start a library or anything of the sort. I don't know about him. God rest his soul, if he's dead.

We didn't know it was hard, Michele. We accepted what was there for us until Tennyson Miller began to tell us to start thinking about things. Then we transcended athletics to our class work to things that were out in the world. Then we began to read the papers. We began to buy new books and read the books. We didn't have a library where we could go to and take a book out. There was none in Fred Douglass, and I don't remember anybody in Fred Douglass ever having asked for a library.

Glaze:
That's one thing I wanted to ask. I hear a lot about "Prof" [Moore]. As you think back -- your relationship with "Prof" and what he supplied you and what he failed to supply, so to speak -- can you address that?

Jackson:
Yes, I can. And I can do it gladly, willingly, and directly. Firstly, he presented himself as a very well-rounded educator. Secondly, he was an impeccable dresser. Thirdly, according to the times we are talking about now -- the era, the decade -- people were not asking for too much for black students, and "Prof" was no exception. He didn't ask for a lot, that I knew of. I could not say that he was not meeting with the superintendent and asking for these things to be placed into our school because we were not privy to that kind of information. I can say that it didn't come while he was in his tenure with us.

Personally, I found him to be a very likeable individual. It was through "Prof" that I learned to disagree with authority. "Prof" and I used to have tremendous arguments together -- back and forth with each other. Usually, it was an hour or two hours at the most that I would go back to "Prof" and apologize to him for what I had said to him. I was never one to just accept everything that somebody was telling me. If I couldn't put in that rebuttal, then I would be crazy for a long, long time. So, I began to let it out, and I let it out personally with "Prof." From that, "Prof" and I developed a high respect for each other -- personally, that is.

I didn't know what the school curriculum should have been involved in, but I don't think it was "Prof's" intent not to give it to us. It just wasn't forthcoming at the time of his tenure. I think we were better off having Fred Moore than we would have been had we had somebody else. We were close to his family, knowing them personally. We knew his daughters. We knew his wife. "Prof" was a concerned individual about his students, but I don't think the time or the era for the growth of African-American people had advanced enough, such as it is now when people are demanding things and receiving things. I believe that if it had been done during that period, then we would have been better equipped when we graduated from Fred Douglass to go to an institution of higher learning and go with the confidence that we could do a successful matriculation.

Glaze:
How would you compare what you had at Fred Douglass with a number of the schools that you competed with? Did you get close enough to any of them to see that you either had more or had less? Did you see any difference there?

Jackson:
Not until I had come back to Texas and started teaching. When I went into the teaching field in Texas, then I began to see where one school had a little more than the other, where one school offered a little more the other. Then I could draw the comparison with what we could visually see on the various school campuses that we went to. For instance, some of the schools had gyms; some of them didn't. Then I compared that to Fred Douglass, where I came from, and then I looked and saw the same thing prevailing then that I had when I was coming up. Then we would go to another school that had a gym; they had an oval track; they had sciences classes and the laboratories and libraries and all that kind of stuff. Then I compared that to Fred Douglass. That was far different from what I had when I came up. If the schools at which I taught were lacking, as the result of my Fred Douglass experience, I asked the school principals to start asking for things that we needed at the schools to make our schools better. When I was at McKinney -- I taught over there for five-and-a-half years -- so much was missing.

Glaze:
Missing more than over here?

Jackson:
Yes. Well, let's say, at the time I went there to teach. I didn't know what was here at Denton because the principal then, Mr. Redd, did not want me teaching in Denton. I was a sassy kind of teacher -- sassy in that I asked questions and did not accept everything that the principal told me. I would not do things against students that the principals would want me to do. I would flatly refuse and tell them so. I did the same thing over at McKinney. I reared back at the superintendent over there because he wanted me to do certain things. He even had the audacity once to tell me that I had to change my friends. This was the superintendent that was at McKinney.

Glaze:
This was a white superintendent?

Jackson:
Yes, a white superintendent, and I said to him then... well, he called me from school first about 1:00, and the principal of the school then told me, "Mr. Pearce wants to see you." So, I told him, "Well, I'll see him at 3:00, okay?" "Well, he wants you out there now." "Well, you tell him I can't come now. I've got classes to teach today." I finished teaching my class. When I had serviced my students, then I got in my car and went out to see the superintendent. This is what he was telling me. Somebody from the city had told him that they had seen me in another man's house when he was at work, and, as a result, my name was being spread around the community as being a bad person. So, I was going to have to change all of the friends that I had. I sat and listened to him, and I asked him, "Is that all?" He said, "No, that's not all." I said, "Do you have anything else to say to me about why you called me up here?" He said, "No, that's it, and I want you to respond to it." I told him, "I don't have anything to say to you.'' So, I just got up and out, and he stopped me. He said, "Wait a minute! You can't walk out on me like that!" I said, "I'm not in your classroom. I am not your child. I happen to be black, and you happen to be white. You are not my father, and I am not your son! You can have your class, but you can't have me." I walked out.

Glaze:
Where did that come from? Did that come from your mother, or did that come from Tennyson? Where did that come from? That was gutsy.

Jackson:
I think it came, mostly, from Tennyson. My mother was submissive and did not want to rankle anybody -- keep everybody happy -- and you can't do that. It was Tennyson who told us to think and investigate. So, I think an awful lot of it came from him. Then I developed a lot in the learning process as I was growing up, but I could not allow that to happen. I did not want to lose my masculinity. I would not allow anyone else to challenge that masculinity in that respect. If I were not performing in the classroom to his satisfaction, then he had something to say about that; but from the time that school was out, my life was mine. I knew enough not to be a "bad person" -- the term that they used in our community. I knew that there were too many young people looking at me, but I was not going to let anyone tell me who I could be friends with -- nobody.

I told him if he wanted his job, he could have it, but he couldn't have me. And he let me work another year. We were getting one-year contracts to work. Then another principal came in over there at McKinney, and he asked me to do things against students that I wouldn't do. Then the next year after he got there, I did not get a contract because I wouldn't work against the students.

Glaze:
In what you're telling me, as far as what you derived from teachers, that was the highest, and yet what you were being given, perhaps, educationally, if we're talking curriculum and the extras... having been a teacher and seeing integration, what is more important? Granted, the best thing is great teachers and a great curriculum and all of it, but given what integration brought about in what you had, which is better?

Jackson:
I would not like to have to answer that question about which one is better since it should be a question that should not need to be asked in the first place. So, rather than tell you which one was the better, let's delve and continue to struggle along with combining the two of them together and make them one. Then I won't have to answer a question like that about what I did not get at Fred Douglass and what's better out there.

Glaze:
No, no, no. I know. But what I'm saying is, so many of the people I have talked with seem to talk in some way, nostalgically -- not for the good old times but for the personal touch. I guess what I'm saying is, there have been so many people who seem to feel that, even though some of the things were better, a lot was lost.

Jackson:
Yes.

Glaze:
Do you feel that way?

Jackson:
Yes.

Glaze:
And, granted, as I'm saying, ultimately, of course, the best thing is to have the wonderful, concerned teachers and to have that which goes with it. I don't mean to say one or the other, but in retrospect how do you look at what was gained and what was lost in integration?

Jackson:
(Chuckle) Integration has been, and still is, in the political arena. It does not address the questions of equal schooling, equal opportunities, all of the things that people glorify when they use that term, integration. Integration has been a misnomer and is continually used as a misnomer, or -- I'm sorry -- I view it as that. Although there have been some gains, there have been some losses, also, in the process of integration. I think integration, particularly when we are dealing with lower education, has been a total failure because it was not done in an educational concept. Rather, it was done in a political concept. Politicizing of education will never be good. As I see it in America, it just won't work if you continue to politicize it. Unless you do it to benefit the students, the reason the schools were developed at first, then it's not going to work, it will never work, and it will continue to be a ploy to be used by the politicians.

Michele, if you've noticed it yourself, the higher up you move in the school system away from the students, the larger your salary becomes. It's an odd fate, an odd quirk of fate, that will allow you to draw more money as you go up the ladder and away from the students, who are the reasons for your being in the higher and loftier positions. Your salary increases the further you get away from the students, and the students are benefiting less. So, the school systems have turned it around, and the school children then become only a statistical figure for the ADA and not for what the students themselves are going to gain and how much better they are to serve this greater community. I think integration is non-workable at this state where you talk about education.

If you talk about integration for adults, hey, it's great. Our salaries have increased, and jobs are created, and "perks" are developed (chuckle). You name it.

But that's how I see integration in America today. It's not working. Let me cite an example. They developed a thing called Title I. Now it's called Chapter I for disadvantaged children in America. The Title I concept said that every child that used government funds had to grow one month for every one month's instruction.

Glaze:
They had to do what?

Jackson:
Grow.

Glaze:
Grow?

Jackson:
One month, academically, in the classroom. They had to grow one month for every one month's instruction. In other words, if a student started at a certain level in September, and he was taught from September to October, that child had to have one month's growth, measurably, in that month of instruction. If he was taught for two months, he had to have two month's growth. The Title I concept did not address the level at which the child was performing prior to his or her advent into the Title I program. If a student is two years behind in September, and he grows one month for every one month's instruction, at the end of that nine months, he's still two years behind because they did not build into that program catching up and bringing the child up and then have that growth take place. That thing failed. It's a great money-making thing for school districts.

Now, they are employing all kinds of... let's say that bilingual education gets a special fund. If you're an Indian, you get a special fund. If you're in a busing program, you get a special fund. The school gets an additional fund if it accepts you from coming from the ghetto. These are all monies that are going to and from, and all going away from the students, and the students are not progressing. What do they call it? What kind of program? I've forgotten it now. Whatever it is, it means that they are putting extra resources at certain places for certain students who have been proven to be disadvantaged. The school districts get it.

Glaze:
I realize we're in kind of a time situation right here, so I'd like to have you sort of pull together your thoughts on what we're discussing on current education, and then if there's anything else that you feel like you want to say in this interview. You know, we've been kind of directing it in some ways. This is your interview, and I want you to say what you want to.

Jackson:
Let me be as quick and as succinct as I can. Firstly, I want to thank you for developing whatever the thing is that you're doing for old Quakertown, for Denton. I am overjoyed that somebody has finally sat down to write the historical growth that will also include the numerous fabrications as it relates to the growth of Denton and Fred Douglass and Fred Moore and all. There are those of us who love to see not our names but the source of our beginning in academics, matriculating in school, and people who really brought forth these things; the problems that developed with the people when they were cast out of old Quakertown and kicked out on old Peach Orchard Hill and put over on Solomon Hill.

In the end, we know that two things were very evident. The powers that be that were ruling in Denton at the time did it for one reason, and that was to separate the blacks from the whites and to move them as far as they could away from that territory over there on Bell Avenue and up toward CIA, as it was. But even more than that, as people read what you developing, and if you ever put it out in print, people would really understand not only the mass movement of the black people out of Quakertown and in Denton, but they would also really realize and recognize, and, hopefully in time would speak to the economics that were involved in that whole process. The taking away of the economic stability of those black people out of Quakertown and moving them around -- the taking of the lands, the nonpayment for all of those lands, the rules of eminent domain, if it were used in those days -- they just took stuff away from us and placed us in one hell of a category. I think this that you're doing is going to point to that, if people are willing to look at it. I know what I've heard about the stuff that you have written, so I hope they will look into it and find it.

Secondly, I have no regrets about having attended Fred Douglass. I have very fond memories. I think I was extremely successful in my matriculation at Fred Douglass. I was among the fortunate to have had good teachers who cared about us and who taught us and taught us beyond the classroom level. I think I am better off today because of what I went through when I came up at Fred Douglass.

As I read about education system in Denton today -- and I am not privy to the actual happenings because I have not attended or even visited the schools -- I do see a continuation or a proliferation of -- do you want to call it -- the ghetto. The integration process in the schools in Denton is a part of the same things that are being practiced all over the United States. Until all children -- irrespective of their nationality, racial ethnicity -- can all be placed into the category that says "school child," then the term "integration" is not going to affect them positively, but it is going to continue to affect those adults who are in the administrative and the managerial sections of our school districts. They are going to continue to reap the great benefits, and the kids are still going to go down the tube. That's my actual thought and my actual belief about the integration process in America.

I don't think politicians are going to ever want to change it because it is going to take away from them. If a politician can't talk to increase his or her own identity and his or her own benefits, they are not going to be politicians. We suffer in American because the old statement, "No chain is any stronger than its weakest link," is an axiom or an adage that still applies in our educational pursuit in America now. As we see it today, Clinton is having hell. Bush had hell. Reagan caused us to go into a hell a lot more. And we're still not progressing. We're being thought less of, as a nation, now than we ever have in the history of America. Until we can bring all of these forces together that's in America, we're never going to have a real good America like we all dream. It isn't the good old American way as people would have us believe it is.

We're making some progress, I think. There is an understanding that is going on now between the ethnicities in America, but they can't get me to believe as an individual that America is so great when they continue to practice the... well, to cite an example, and I don't want to say the word... I'm going to get it off right now. Cubans can come into America, and Asians can come into America by the boatloads. Haitians can't come into America. If people were to view the history of America of those people that are coming into America -- are being let into America -- if they'd look at the history as America has gone over to do battle against other nations, they could see then that if you were a person of color, then you're being ostracized. Grenada just happened to have been black, and they blew it up. They went after Khaddafi, who happened to have been black. The Haitians were not allowed to come in because most of them are black.

Something is wrong. Integration, segregation. I don't know. There's an awful lot of proliferation going on in America. Somebody, eventually, is going to have to straighten it out, if, in fact, we are going to be a real strong nation. And, mind you, I am an African-American. I am originally an African. I live in America. I was born in America, and I am an American. I give American benefits to America, and I expect American benefits to me. I ain't going nowhere else.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

Jackson:
I'm at home, you hear? I love it, but I want it to love me, also. And I want it to love me because of what I can help it do, and not because my color happens to be of African hue. I ain't going anywhere else because I love it over here. You hear? Believe you me, I am an American. I served my time in the service for all America. I have paid my price as an individual. I have chosen to have served.

But keep up the good work you're doing, and please let Fred Douglass and Denton and Quakertown come out. I hope that the folks in Denton and around will really grab it and take it for what it's really worth. I know there are no rectifications that are going to come to those old people that were in Quakertown and were moved out. My family -- my mother's side of the family -- is into that situation. Their land and things were taken -- down by Seagoville. They haven't received a thing for it. Nothing except one street in Seagoville.

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