University of North Texas Oral History Collection

Interview with Harve King
Interviewer: Michele Glaze
Place of Interview: Denton, Texas
Date of Interview: February 10, 1992

Ms. Glaze:
This is Michele Glaze, and I'm representing the University of North Texas Oral History Collection. I'm speaking with Harve King this morning, February 10, 1992, at his residence here in Denton County. I am talking to Mr. King about his remembrances of his days as a student at the Fred Douglass School here in Denton.

Mr. King, could you tell me your full name, your age, birthplace, date, and your parents?

Mr. King:
My full name is Harve Dillard King. I was born in Farmersville, Texas, in Collin County. I came to Denton when I was thirteen years of age to go to the Fred Moore Colored High School. My father was Paul Lee King, and my mother was Minnie Lee King.

Ms. Glaze:
Mr. King, could you give me the date of your birth and how old you are at this moment?

Mr. King:
I was born on April 13, 1920. I'll be seventy-two on my birthday, which is next month.

Glaze:
You mentioned that you arrived in Denton when you were thirteen years old. Is it safe to say that you came in 1933?

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Could you tell me why your family chose to move to Denton?

King:
My total family didn't choose to move to Denton, Texas, in the early years. From Farmersville, Texas, we moved to Shepherd's Ranch in Plano, Texas. My father was a sharecropper, and my father and mother had separated at that time. So, I was about ten years of age when we moved from Farmersville with my father to Plano, Texas. My mother came to Denton at that time. I didn't go to school in Plano because this was during the summer, and I decided that I wanted to come to live in Denton with my mother. So, I left my father in Shepherd's Ranch in Plano and came to Denton when I was thirteen years of age.

Glaze:
How many children were there in your family?

King:
Eight children. Four boys and four girls.

Glaze:
Where did you stand in that [order]?

King:
I was the youngest of the eight.

Glaze:
How many of your brothers and sisters came with your mother and yourself?

King:
None with me because all the others had already moved to Denton with my mother. All those who were living at that time were already in Denton with my mother.

Glaze:
I think I missed something. Your parents moved to Shepherd's...

King:
My father.

Glaze:
You were with your father, and then you came and joined your mother. Is that correct?

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
When did your mother and the rest of your brothers and sisters move to Denton?

King:
I would say that was about 1930. I came in 1933. In 1930 my mother came to Denton, and then from that point some of my brothers and sisters were living in different places. That's when the brother next to me, Herbert was at Shepherd's Ranch with me and my younger sister. The three of us lived with my father in Shepherd's Ranch, but my sister and my brother left before I did -- maybe a year or six months before I did -- to come live with my mother in Denton, Texas. Now, the others... I had a brother who was deceased. I had another brother who lived in Houston, Texas. They were grown and married. I had a sister. She was here in Denton, and my older sister was here in Denton. Jessie Mae and Paul were deceased. My oldest brother and my third sister were deceased. So, in Denton were my two sisters, Bessie and Laura, and Christine moved here. My brother Herbert came before I did. He ran away (chuckle) from Dad and came to Denton.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) You mentioned that your brother ran away.

King:
Herbert's the one next to me. He lives in Oklahoma City now.

Glaze:
Why did he run away?

King:
He and my father didn't get along, and I think he was about fifteen or sixteen at that time. He and my father didn't get along, and he wanted to be with Mother. That's the main reason.

Glaze:
How did your mother support herself and her children?

King:
Well, my mother was a professional cook, a maid.

Glaze:
Where did she work in Denton?

King:
She worked at the University of North Texas. It was a teachers college then. At the University of North Texas, she was a cook at Oak Street Hall, I guess, from the time she came to Denton until her death. But then she was doing other maid work -- cooking and cleaning for people other than the University of North Texas.

Glaze:
How many of your brothers and sisters that were in Denton lived with her and also worked?

King:
All of us, really. My oldest sister, Bessie, who now lives in Seattle, Washington, also worked at the college.

Glaze:
What did she do?

King:
She was a cook, and my sister next to her did day work. My younger sister, Christine, didn't work. She had a handicap. She didn't work. Just my brother and I went to school, and we mowed yards and whatever we could find to do to help out.

Glaze:
When you said your sister did day work, can you tell me exactly what that means?

King:
Well, that's cleaning, ironing, washing for people.

Glaze:
Private families?

King:
For private families, yes. All up and down Oak Street.

Glaze:
Your sister Christine, you said, had a handicap. What was her handicap?

King:
Well, we always thought that she had polio. I guess as long as I can remember, when she was two or three years of age, on her left side... her left hand and her left leg... she dragged her left leg, and, of course, her left hand was sort of crimped like that (gesture), and we thought it was polio. But when she passed away in San Antonio in 1969, if I can remember, we had an autopsy, and they found that she had a brain tumor. That was the cause of it. We always thought it was polio, but she had a brain tumor -- the results of typhoid fever. When she was a young girl, a baby, she had typhoid fever, and that's what burned her brain. That's what happened to her.

Glaze:
How many members of your family had typhoid at that time?

King:
I don't know whether it was typhoid fever or not, but all I can remember is... being the youngest, I didn't know quite what was going on. I know that some of them, they would bathe them in vinegar. That was the cure, I guess, for fever at that time. I just remember they would get in a tub -- one of those big tubs -- and they would put vinegar in it and bathe them in the vinegar.

Glaze:
This is your brothers and sisters you're talking about.

King:
Well, the only one I can remember is my sister. I mean, I never did have any kind of a fever, but as far as I know, she's the only one that they did this for.

Glaze:
You mentioned that you were from Farmersville.

King:
Yes, on a farm.

Glaze:
Can you tell me where it is, approximately, and how it compares in size to Denton? In other words, back at the time that you moved from Farmersville, by way of Shepherd's Ranch, to Denton, how did it compare?

King:
Well, actually, Denton, McKinney, Plano, and Farmersville -- those four cities that we knew about -- were approximately the same size. Maybe Farmersville was a little bit smaller than Denton, but I would say Denton at that time may have had 15,000 people. Farmersville may have had 5,000 or 6,000. So, in terms of size, that's the comparison. In Farmersville, if you take [Highway] 380 going east, you get to McKinney, and you make a ninety-degree turn going east. In about eighteen or twenty miles, that's where you find Farmersville. Actually, McKinney, Plano, and Farmersville (gesture) form a triangle just like Dallas, Fort Worth, and Denton.

Glaze:
I see. What was the ratio, perhaps, of African Americans in Farmersville as compared with Denton?

King:
Denton had a few more. At that time, Denton had a few more blacks than Farmersville. Percentage-wise it was about the same... maybe 5 percent, 10 percent. That would automatically put more blacks in Denton than in Farmersville.

Glaze:
Surely. I would like talk to you a little bit about your economic situation with your mother having the majority of the children with her and working as a cook. What was your economic situation?

King:
Well, it goes a long way back. Now, when we were living in Farmersville, we all worked together -- all of us, which was ten -- and we had a grandfather with us, eleven, my mother and father, twelve, thirteen. So, that was about thirteen people in the family. Now, I'm very young at that time, so I don't remember too much. I know I'm six years of age, and we would go from Farmersville, Texas, to a little town about... it was eight miles going toward Plano from Farmersville -- Copesville. Now, we would leave Farmersville and go to Copesville during the week and pick cotton. This was all the family. We would pick cotton, and, actually, I remember the name. It was on the farm of Mr. Gamble. We would stay there in a little ol' hut, and we would all pick cotton during the week.

On Saturday we would come back to Farmersville and spend the weekend there, where we would live because we had a little shack -- a house -- in Farmersville. We had a house, a four-room house. That's where all of us lived -- in that four-room house -- because our means of income at that time... I think picking cotton was twenty-five cents a hundred [pounds]. Of course, during the summer and spring months, we would chop cotton and chop corn and do that sort of thing.

Glaze:
When you say you chopped cotton, tell me what that means exactly.

King:
Chopping cotton only means weeding. You have a row of cotton, and then you come up... weeding and thinning cotton. You would cut the weeds out and thin the stalks of cotton that would grow. If you had four or five on one stem, one root, it wouldn't get a good quality of cotton if that one root had to support five or six stems. So, you'd leave maybe two or three of the strongest stems there and cut the others off. So, it was thinning and actually weeding. That's what chopping cotton means. The same way with corn.

Glaze:
At this time, you said you had a grandfather.

King:
Yes, I just do remember my grandfather was Grandfather Samuels. My mother was a Samuels before she married my father. Her name was Minnie Lee Samuels King. But it was Grandfather Samuels. God, I remember him as... I don't know what old would be in those days. If he was forty or fifty... he was older than that. I bet he was sixty, between sixty and seventy, as I remember, but that was old to me in those days. He did live with us, and, actually, they came from Honey Grove, Texas. That s northeast of Farmersville. Honey Grove is where my mother came from. In fact, my father and their family -- my mother and father's family -- came from Honey Grove, Texas.

Glaze:
You mentioned that you had a four-room house in Farmersville. This is something that you owned. Is that correct? Did you own the property?

King:
Yes. Yes, we did.

Glaze:
How much land was that house on, and what did you do with the land that it was on?

King:
You mean in terms of now?

Glaze:
No, I mean at that time.

King:
It was just enough room for that little old four-room house to sit on. I imagine it was twenty-five by twenty-five [feet]. Now, wait a minute. It was bigger than that, as I remember. At the [north] side, it was maybe a hundred feet across. That was the north side, and as we went back east it narrowed down into a triangle and almost to nothing at the south end of the lot. But it was pretty long, as I remember. Of course, our house was beside a railroad track -- the railroad track going from Greenville up to Paris, up that way, and down to, I guess, San Antonio. But it was right in the back of our house (chuckle), and when the trains would pass, the dishes would fall off the shelves (chuckle). We would run out and look at the train. That was our entertainment. We always waited for the trains to come along because that was something to see. That really happened. I imagine it was as close as here to that fence there, which would be thirty-five, forty feet from our house -- the railroad track.

Glaze:
The land that you... your lot... did you grow vegetables?

King:
We didn't grow any vegetables because, actually, you see, in what we called sharecropping, we got plenty of vegetables in Copesville where we worked. They gave my father an acre of land. Well, they let him use an acre of land down there, where he could plant vegetables and food for us to live on. And, of course, he'd bring those back to Farmersville and live on those -- beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and things like that. That's how we lived when we were picking cotton in Copesville.

Glaze:
What did you do for meat?

King:
(Chuckle) Rabbit hunt. Rabbits and squirrels. There were chickens and, of course, hogs. We raised hogs and chickens, and that was our chief... we didn't buy any meat at the store.

Glaze:
Right. You said you raised hogs and chickens. Were those at Copesville or Farmersville?

King:
Copesville. Mr. Gamble would allow my father to have his hogs among the others, you see, as part of the deal.

Glaze:
When you were sharecropping, you raised hogs as part of the deal. I presume you had the cash crop of cotton. What else did you raise that also belonged to Mr. Gamble?

King:
Well, actually, cows, horses, pigs -- all kinds of livestock -- chickens. Everything belonged to Mr. Gamble, but he would allow my father... in with his, say, fifty pigs or hogs, he would maybe give my father one and say, "This is yours," and, of course, when we'd kill hogs, he'd give this one to us. The same way with chickens. If he had a hundred chickens, maybe in a year's time he'd give us a dozen chickens. If we got, say, three dozen eggs a day, he would probably give us a dozen. Actually, it was very little money that we got in terms of cash money. That was the way we were paid.

Glaze:
How well were you able to eat and live in that type of a situation?

King:
During that time, we lived pretty good because we always had a pot of beans with some hog jowls, and that was it. Some eggs and crackling bread, pig's feet, chittlins. You see, we ate pretty good on the farm -- better than we did when we all moved to Denton. That's when it was really hard.

Glaze:
How was your situation here?

King:
Destitute. That's just the word I come up with. Horrible. Inhumane. Degredating. You see, when we came to Denton, primarily my mother was the breadwinner because all the rest of us were trying to go to school, except my oldest sister, and my oldest sister had five daughters herself. When my older sister moved to Denton, she stayed with Mother for a while with her granddaughters, but then my sister moved to a place of her own, so that put her out of the picture altogether in terms of family.

Glaze:
And income.

King:
Well, yes, and income. So, Mother was the main provider for me, my brother, my sister Christine, my sister Laura, and, of course, there was some grandchildren... Willie Eugene Willis, who my mother raised and was my dead sister's son. He was just like my mother's own child. He stayed with us. So, you see, that was the family, and at the time, I can't think, but some more people stayed with us. In and out there, my nieces and my nephews staying with my mother, who she provided for.

Glaze:
So, this is mainly extended family that stayed with you?

King:
Yes, this is extended family that was staying with us. But, you see, Mother was the main source.

Glaze:
Now, this is at the peak of the Depression that you're talking about.

King:
Yes, 1933 -- that was the peak of the Depression.

Glaze:
How did your situation compare with the majority of the black families in Denton?

King:
I would say perhaps not quite as well because, you see, the other people -- the other minorities in Denton... see, Mother's the newcomer. Mother is the newcomer to Denton, and she's not well established yet. So, she didn't have as many contacts. She was the only contact with a white family where we got our source of support. But now, Erma...

Glaze:
You mean Erma Peace?

King:
Yes, she was a Bell. Now, the Bell family, in terms of average, they were above average in terms of black Americans in Denton, Texas. The Hills... have you ever heard of the Hills? They were there, and, I think, the Peaces were there. The reason for this... now, in Denton at that time, compared to today, they were the black professionals, such as the doctors and lawyers and professors in the black society now. They worked at the CIA -- the College of Industrial Arts -- TWU. They were cooks. They worked at North Texas. They were making ... (chuckle) if you were making a dollar a day at that time, that was good money for blacks during that time. But also there were other accesses that they had. They had food and so forth. So, you see, we were newcomers, and we didn't have that contact. The other members of the family were working for white people. Therefore, there was more contact and hand-me-downs. They would get... (chuckle) I remember I took a kind of test when I was a kid growing up. And [there was] a question on the test: "What color are bananas?" I said, "black."

Glaze:
(Laughter) Bananas?

King:
Yes. Yes. What are you laughing about? If that had been standardized in my culture, that would have been the correct answer. The whites would have failed that test because the bananas that I got were the ones that had rotted in the kitchen where my mother worked, and she brought them home. So, they were black when I got them. I didn't see any bananas in the store. I didn't go to the grocery store, you see. So, that's the conditions, and that's the discrepancy between I.Q. and... I answered that question correctly in my culture.

Glaze:
Yes. What kind of food did you end up eating here in Denton? In other words, how did she manage? How did she provide?

King:
Well, the basic food with me... now, some of the other blacks eat a little differently. For our family, it was beans and cornbread. We would still go out hunting. You see, it was primarily out here, this way.

Glaze:
Now, when you say "this way"...

King:
This way. Any way you go. Actually, where Selwyn School is now, we used to go rabbit-hunting out that way. Going toward McKinney, we used to rabbit-hunt out that way. Where the lake is, we'd hunt rabbits or opossums. Opossums and sweet potatoes. And it was that kind of food that supplemented what we had -- what we could buy. Actually, some of the people would raise hogs... some of the blacks would raise hogs, and we would get some of that. They would share with us.

Glaze:
Could you give me a comparison of how the black families were able to survive during the Depression in Denton compared with, say, Farmersville?

King:
Basically, the same. I would say that, in comparing Denton with Farmersville, in Denton they were a little bit above the standard of living in Farmersville because in Farmersville it was primarily living off the fat of the land. What I'm saying, by raising hogs, chickens, your own garden, you had that type of survival. But in Denton you had the colleges, you see.

Glaze:
How much slack did those colleges take up as far as cushioning the brunt of the Depression for blacks?

King:
Well, that was it. That was it! If it had not been for the employment opportunities of both the colleges, it would have been bad. I would say 60 percent or more -- now that's just off the top of my head; I have no accuracy on that -- worked at the colleges. Whereas you didn't have those colleges in Farmersville. The chief income was farming. But you did have a little construction here in Denton, and Denton began to grow quite rapidly with construction and so forth. But in Farmersville they didn't have that construction because Farmersville is primarily a farming community, agricultural community.

Glaze:
Now, this is a little of what we were talking about, but you mentioned construction. What can you tell me about the WPA and any of the New Deal projects here in Denton during the Depression?

King:
I know that they had the CCC camps. That's what we called public works or the CCC camps. I think they had one someplace in McKinney. I don't remember too much about here in Denton, because, probably, it depends on what age they were hiring. I think you had to be about sixteen, so I didn't get in on that. But I think in McKinney they had those projects. But that did help. As I can remember, some of the blacks here in Denton did take part in the CCC camps. That's what we called, as I remember them, public works. That's how I remember. But even in those days, I think maybe the whites got in on those jobs more than the blacks because I don't remember, in growing up, too many of my peers participating here in Denton in those kind of projects, in that kind of work.

Glaze:
I know I spoke with Oliver Clark. He mentioned that he had worked with the WPA here in Denton, and then he went off to Waco with the CCC camp.

King: Yes.

Glaze:
There were several others. Lawson Smith, I believe, was one.

King:
Yes, Lawson Smith. Of course, Oliver was maybe two or three years older than I, I think, but it was in Waco -- McKinney and Waco -- that they had the CCC camps, but not too many, as far as I can remember, were black young men.

Glaze:
You said McKinney. McKinney had a black CCC camp? Is that what you mean?

King:
I don't know if it was black. As I remember it, I don't think they were designated as black or white. I think they had CCC camps, and, of course, you applied to go, and you were admitted on the basis of your application. But at that time, maybe more blacks may have been there than whites, which maybe they were. I don't quite remember.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) A little shaky on that point.

King:
Yes, because really with me from thirteen, when I came to Denton living with my mother, I worked with my mother. Sometimes Mother would work for... let's see. I believe it was Mrs. Shepherd, Mrs. Ben Ivey, the Russells. My mother and sister were working for those people -- the Ben Iveys, the Russells -- and she [his mother] died in the home of... she walked in the back door of... she wrote children's books. She lived on Oak Street. Do you know where the Ben Ivey home is on Oak Street? Ben Ivey home?

Glaze:
Basically.

King:
There's that red house. Okay, the Taylors, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, she worked for them. I remember distinctly that we would walk from where we lived over to Mrs. Taylor's house. At 6:00 in the morning in the summers, Mother and I would put out a washing on a little rub board. Mother would use the rub board, and I would build a fire for that. While she was working for Mrs. Sharp and these people, I would be there and do some work in the yard. She would get me some yard work and sometimes scrubbing the floors and waxing and cleaning the woodwork. I would be involved in that. That was a livelihood, working with my mother. I didn't get to the CCC camp and involved in that.

Glaze:
You mentioned that you walked from where you lived. Where was it that you lived?

King:
It was East Oak Street. When I first came to Denton, we lived on Hickory Street, right by the Methodist Church there on the corner. Erma's church... where Erma goes to church. [St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church] They'd go to church there. It's on the corner of Hickory and... I forget the name of that street that runs that way. The Nixes and... we lived two doors...

Glaze:
Oh, that wouldn't be Hickory. That would be Oak.

King:
Yes, Oak. I'm sorry. That's Oak. I'm sorry. That's Oak Street. I think it was 1108. I remember that. That was when my daddy was giving me instructions on how to get there.

Glaze:
That was near Oak and Crawford then.

King:
At 1108 Oak Street. (Gestures) Here was the church, here was the church parsonage, and here was our house. That's where we lived. Later on, we lived on North Wood Street, but that's where we lived. From there out to... actually, it's almost to... I can't remember my streets, but the one going this way (gesture) close to the University. Actually, it was two blocks down from Oak Street Hall on the left. That's where my mother... Mrs. Sharp, I believe, that was. Mrs. Sharp... she wrote children's books. That was her work, and that's where my mother passed -- in her house.

Glaze:
She was going to work there, and she passed?

King:
Yes. My sister Bessie took her to work one morning. Mother got out of the car and said, "Bye, Bessie." She went in and got inside the door and collapsed. She was dead on arrival at the hospital.

Glaze:
What year was that?

King:
It was in 1968 -- January 12, 1968. Mother was seventy-three at the time she passed away. And it was strange. That night... you see, no one was living with my mother at that time but Bessie, my oldest sister. All the rest of us had gone. We were gone. Mother said, "Bessie, get me my box." Her box was where she put all of her receipts and papers and insurance policy. She said, "I want to take a look at it." Bessie got it for her, and she said, "Now this is where it is, and everything is in there when you all need it." That night before she passed away.

Glaze:
She must have had some inkling.

King: Or whatever. She passed. Where I built the fires under the old black washpot was next door at the Taylors -- in that house. I was very resourceful when I was coming up. Actually, I grew up with the work ethic. When I was too young to really work in the fields, when my daddy was plowing and I was about six years of age, he would... the old mule would get up, and the plow... if you've ever seen any of those old metal plows, it threw the furrows back, the dirt back, and he would say, "Son, just take those and throw them back over here." (gesture) I'd just get behind him, and I guess that's how I got my muscle. [Flexes muscle]

Glaze:
(Chuckle) Oh, that is a muscle!

King:
I've always been active, but, you know, I had that work ethic. Even though I didn't have to do that, he'd just have us doing things like that. So, I grew up with the work ethic. Just like now, I still have my landscaping business. I love work, and I could always find something to do. (Chuckle) I'd be walking down the street, and I'd see a brick with some dirt or some leaves in somebody's yard, and I'd go up and [raps on table] knock on the door: "Ma'am, could I... " (Chuckle) I must have come to Denton first between twelve and thirteen because I remember getting the last twenty-five cents from my mother to get my hair cut. That's the last money I ever remember getting from my parents.

It was tough, but looking back on it, I have no regrets. Really, I don't. That's just the way it was, and I'm sure that some blacks, even at my age, in my generation of blacks, would not like to publicize some of the things that happened to us. Not only was I born in Farmersville, I was born in the middle of a cotton patch on my mother's cotton sack, and a white woman, Miss Lottie Yeary, who lived next door to me, right there (gesture)... when I moved back to Denton in 1970, Mr. and Mrs. Lottie Yeary lived in that house right across the street. She was the one who put the first diaper on me when I was born in the middle of a cotton patch on my mother's cotton sack.

Glaze:
You mean your mother was picking cotton?

King:
My mother was picking cotton in the field. Well, actually, the next day she was still picking cotton. In those days, I guess, having babies was like cooking beans -- just that simple. That's the way it was done in those days, and, see, they had midwives. That happened to me. That's where I was born. Fifty years later, the man that we were picking cotton on his farm, fifty years later, I moved right beside him in Denton in 1990.

Glaze:
Wonderful.

King:
Of course, I'm digressing a little bit, so you may want to cut this. Actually, when I was considering coming to Denton... I came to Denton first in 1969, looking for a place to stay, when I was hired at the University [of North Texas]. I came looking for a place to stay, and, of course, I got around to looking at this house. Well, Mr. Yeary... and I didn't know this when I was looking for the house and bought this house. I didn't know that Mr. Yeary lived over there.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

King:
But he was curious, too. (Chuckle) This colored man -- and I was the only one out here at that time -- was moving next to him. So, I guess he really wanted to know who it was, and I met him. I think I saw him out in the yard or he saw me, and we met. We hugged, and we kissed. "Hi." "Hi." "Where's Paul?" "Where is Minnie?" "Where is Herbert?" Oh, we were just like family, and the word got out that "there's a colored man moving into our neighborhood." They were around with petitions. They had petitions here to sign who's against a colored man moving in our neighborhood. They really did that, and I'm not going to tell you who was behind it either, but they don't live too far from here (chuckle).

Glaze:
What year was that? In 1970?

King:
Nineteen sixty-nine. I bought the house in 1970, but I was looking in 1969. I finally bought it in 1970. Oh, yes, they were curious, you know. See, that's what happened in 1969, so we're not too far from...

Glaze:
I'm not terribly surprised.

King:
We're not to far from him. Actually, I think they took it to him [Mr. Yeary] to sign, and, oh, boy! He told them, "I've been knowing that young man since he was born. In fact, my wife put the first diaper on that boy."

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

King:
"I 'd rather have him here than some of you people. I mean, he really... oh, boy, he told them off. He sure did, because he knew me.

Glaze:
Well, let's get back here. I wanted to ask you a question. This has been very interesting. As far as the educational background of your family, how much education did your parents have?

King:
None. Well, you want it formally, so I'll answer it formally. (Chuckle) It depends on what you mean by education. You mean schooling.

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
You see, I consider schooling and education two different things.

Glaze:
Okay, how much schooling?

King:
I think my father had the equivalent to three years. The third grade -- formal education -- schooling. I think my mother had the equivalent of six grades of formal education.

Glaze:
Where did they get their schooling?

King:
Back in this county where I said they lived -- Honey Grove -- back there in those days, I think. They got a little education back there then, but that's it.

Glaze:
What about the schooling... I know you had a lot of schooling.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
The rest of your family. Can you tell me a little about your siblings' -- and then your education -- schooling?

King:
I'll start with my oldest brother, James. Now, the two oldest were a half-brother and sister. Their father was a Williams. My mother was married to a Williams once upon a time, then my father. James -- he's deceased now -- had no formal education. Now, Bessie, who's my half-sister in Seattle, Washington, went to school in Dallas, Texas. I think she was living with father, and she had maybe an eighth-grade education. Then Laura... they only had the tenth grade at Fred Moore Colored High School at that time. I think she finished there, and the next oldest, Jessie Mae, died early, so she only had a sixth-grade education. Then there's Christine. Christine had training. She did finish high school with a GED, but that's even after she was grown. She had some nursing training, but no certification.

Glaze:
They had nurses training?

King:
Yes, nurses training. Well, vocational nurses training in San Antonio, Texas. She was grown. But then there was my sister Laura in California. She is a vocational nurse. She's had that training. Then it comes to my brother in Oklahoma City. We're the youngest, now. He has a college degree.

Glaze:
From where?

King:
Texas College in Tyler. Me? (Chuckle) I've been to about every school in the United States. In my field, there's not a course that could be offered in any university in the United States that I haven't had in my field, which is educational administration. I got my bachelor's degree from Tyler, Texas, same as my brother, with a major in sociology. Then, of course, my secondary education, my master's, is at Prairie View A&M College, which is in educational supervision. Then all my graduate work has been strictly in educational administration from Prairie View, the University of Texas, Southwest Texas State University, Columbia University in New York. That's where I got my training, not my education. I got my education in the middle of that cotton patch. But that's where I got training. That's me. You know, I've been involved in that type of work all my life.

Glaze:
When you were in school at Fred Moore... at that time it was Fred Douglass. Is that correct?

King:
Yes, and then they changed it to Fred Moore.

Glaze:
When you were going to school at Fred Douglass and your mother was supporting all of your brothers and sisters, what kind of encouragement did she give you? I mean, you're talking [about] parents who had no education, siblings who had relatively none, and then suddenly you and your brother -- you especially -- are like super-achievers in the educational line, or the schooling line. How did that come about?

King:
Well, you see, that's why I have to make a great distinction between schooling and education. That's how I would avoid whippings. Everybody would get a whipping from my father but me when something went wrong. I knew how to get out of a whipping, because my father -- even he -- was interested in formal schooling. When we lived in Copesville, they didn't have a black school in Copesville. And, of course, we were young and picking cotton at twenty-five cents a hundred, so we couldn't make much of a contribution. I've never picked two hundred [pounds], and this is why Christine, Herbert... the three youngest were still with my father in the days that I mentioned. We would get up at 6:00 in the morning and walk to school in Farmersville. That's eight miles down a railroad track, not the highway. That was a shortcut, coming down the track. So, we would walk eight miles to school in the morning, and when school was out, we would walk eight miles back to Copesville, and it's 4:00 or 5:00. But in the summer, there's a lot of daylight, so then we would get our hoes or cotton sacks or whatever and work or feed the pigs.

So, my father was interested in education. He wanted us to go to school. And let me say how I got out of whippings. I was very, I guess, bookish. I don't know where I got that from. I guess it came because my next to the oldest brother, Paul... he was named after my father, Paul Lee, Jr. I saw him die. He was double-jointed. Oh, you talk about muscles! He was so strong. He could pick up one of these railroad railings -- just pick it up. Where it would take five or six men to do it, he was that strong. That was one of his problems. He strained or overworked his heart, and he died of heart failure. Because there was no doctor available, he died because he had no ambulance to come. He died right there, and I saw that.

Glaze:
How old was he at the time?

King:
About twenty. Paul was twenty at that tine. In baseball, I've seen him catch a ball from left field and throw it. Say a guy was on third base tagging up to come on home. I've seen him take a ball and catch it in left field and throw that ball to the catcher. They had cotton mill catcher's mitts -- stuffed with cotton seed. It wasn't made out of pure leather. Sometimes they would sew them together with some material. That's the way we'd make some of our ball gloves and catcher's mitts in those days -- stuffed with cotton seed. He threw that ball, and that guy caught that ball, and that stuff just blew all over the place. He burst that mitt with that ball. He could have been a Jackie Robinson. Anyway, I guess that inspired me, as I can see it now. I said, "I'm going to be a doctor." I think I believed that, because when I went to college, I was going to major in pre-med. But I think that inspired me in terms of trying to be somebody to help.

Let me go back to your direct question. I get distracted. Now, what was your question about? Schooling, and what did we do?

Glaze:
I was curious as to -- and I think you've pretty much answered it -- your coming from a family who had very little schooling, even your older siblings, and how it was that you were so inspired.

King:
It was handed down. As I say, we had to go to school -- the four younger ones -- myself, Herbert, Christine, and then Laura. Laura went to school here, so the four of us... now that's getting into 1934, 1935, and black people, generally speaking, are becoming a little bit more aware that formal schooling is a necessity. Herbert and I were pretty close together. In fact, he's three years older than I am, but we finished high school together the same year. I was promoted from the first grade to the third, and I was promoted from the fourth to the sixth -- I remember that-in Farmersville.

Anyway, when everybody would get a whipping because something happened and nobody would admit it, my daddy, in order to get the right person, would whip everybody. (Chuckle) Oh, yes! And I would always be last. I guess they always said I was the pet of the family. I was really my daddy's pet, because when he would get to me, I'd be sitting down with a book and pencil and paper in front of me, and I would look up, and I'd say, "Daddy, could you wait until I finish doing my homework before you hit me, please, sir?" (Chuckle) "All right, boy." Yes, I'd do that. I don't know if it was how I'd negotiate the system or what, but I knew that he would go to sleep, and the next morning he'd forgotten about it. (Chuckle) So, that's how I kind of got by with it.

I was always studious. I've always studied and gotten good grades. I guess I was a professional student all my life. When I would finish this program at the University of Texas, in order to try to get more, I'd go up to Columbia University. Then I'd finish something up there, and I'd come back down to Southwest Texas State University and get certification in counseling and guidance. I've always been studious for some reason.

Glaze:
All right, let's get to Fred Douglass per se. When you came at twelve, almost thirteen, years old, what grade were you in? And in walking into a strange school, how did that compare with what you had just left?

King:
You see, I went to school in Farmersville. I think I was in the sixth grade when I left Farmersville. I didn't go to school in Plano, because we went there in the summer. So, I didn't get a chance to go to school there. When I came to Denton, I think they put me in the seventh grade because of the way I was talking and so forth and because I had no records. (Chuckle) I didn't bring any records with me.

I remember Miss Ammons. I think that was around the fourth-grade level or something. I was in her class and stayed a day or two, and she told the principal, "Professor Moore, he doesn't belong in the fourth grade. He's higher than that." So, I think they put me in seventh grade, and that's where I think I started my work here in Denton, Texas -- in the seventh grade.

Now, you talk about inspiration! That brings up the difference between integrated schools and segregated schools, and that goes all the way up to the college level. The motivation that blacks... I think we were more motivated to get an education than the students are today. It wasn't based on economics, necessarily. You see, today it's based on economics, but then it wasn't based on economics. It was based on self-esteem mostly. This is what we want to do as an individual -- go to school, no pressure. The difference are the teachers. The teachers wouldn't let you fail. They would follow you home -- oh, yes -- to see that you went directly home. One of the teachers would take this group of girls who lived on Solomon Hill, and that teacher would walk home with them to see that they got home okay -- to see that there was no fighting and fooling around. So, actually, you must do it, and the teachers would see that you did. They would feed you. If you got hungry -- they had sack lunches, too -- they would share their lunches and things with the underprivileged children. Actually, in those days, our teachers were such role models that we wanted to be good for them. So, that is the difference. The teachers took a personal interest in each child. I think that's the major difference.

What real purpose the so-called "black schools" and "black colleges" serve today, I'm not so sure. Of course, with the economy and with the world like it is, let's face it. I don't care how good or concerned the teachers are at Texas College -- and I'm not going to tell you that cheaply either because -- you'd be surprised at the number of people, even in my generation and those younger, that finished Texas College, where they are today. In other words, going to black schools doesn't necessarily mean that you're not going to get as good an education. You see, there are two ingredients that go into the so-called education that we see today. First, it's what you are as a person. Next is the academic side. That makes up the total education. You see, in my day that's what made me (chuckle) probably in the top 1 percent of the administrators at the University of North Texas. It's not the academic training that I got -- even though I can give you a book answer for probably every problem that would come up in administration -- but it's that individual, that self, that ego. You see, when I came to the University of North Texas, I said to myself, "I'm going to be the best." That's just me. I'm going to be the best. At least I'm going to try to be the best in anything that I do, and certainly as an administrator. Of course, if I hadn't been one of the best, (chuckle) I wouldn't have lasted seventeen years over there.

Glaze:
Right.

King:
So, you see, it's motivation.

Glaze:
So, what you're saying is, there was little comparison between Fred Moore and Farmersville schools?

King:
Little comparison?

Glaze:
In other words, could you tell me, breaking it down... in other words, how different was Fred Moore School, Fred Douglass School, from your school in Farmersville?

King:
No difference. In Farmersville, you had two rooms. We only went through the eighth grade in Farmersville. There were only two rooms. I think from the first to the fourth was Miss Tillie Woods. Tillie Woods was my teacher. Then, (chuckle) old Professor Douglas. He was crippled. Old Professor Douglas taught from the fifth to the eighth. Two rooms. But, see, what we did, it was plain old reading, writing, and arithmetic. That was the curriculum. None of this science. It was strictly reading, writing, and arithmetic -- the three R's. That's what was taught in Farmersville -- only. See, that wasn't book learning; that was plain old, "Go to the board. Here's your problems for today."

In Denton, when we got there, the difference was that in Denton we did have the hand-me-down books from the white schools. That's where we got our books. I don't think I ever saw a new book at Fred Moore Colored High School. It was books that were handed down. The only difference then is that we did have, I think... and that may have been the reason that I got a little bit more interested... they had physiology. We read out of books, and we had geography. Now, I don't remember too much geography in Farmersville. But then we had some history here in Denton. All we would do is read. I remember that you wrote in a book -- up in the high school level now. Of course, they had a good program in math, but no science, and I wanted to be a doctor. I never saw a test tube in high school. So, we would read. We knew history because we would read it. You'd read a chapter, and then you'd explain it. Of course, in physiology, we would read it and tell about the parts of the body and so forth.

Glaze:
I was going to ask, who taught physiology?

King:
Professor Moore, mostly.

Glaze:
How many students would be involved in physiology? Was this something that you could select to take, or was this something that everybody took?

King:
(Chuckle) You didn't have any electives in high school when I was going to school. There were no electives. Everybody took the same thing. We had the English. You had your math. When they changed it to the twelfth grade, then you had to include all of those subjects. We had the math: geometry, trigonometry. English, you always had that. We always had history. That was it -- English, math. We had history, and our science was that physiology, and, of course, the girls had homemaking. Finally, the boys could take homemaking. But, you see, there can actually be science in homemaking. Homemaking could be considered a science. (chuckle) But, those were our subjects.

Glaze:
You mentioned history. I was curious about Carter G. Woodson...

King:
Yes, Carter G. Woodson.

Glaze:
... who had started Negro History Week back in the 1920s.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Now you were going to school in the 1930s. What did you have in Denton that might have reflected the Negro history or Negro History Week? Anything?

King:
Nothing specifically in terms of the curriculum. Now, of course, the black teachers taught us about George Washington Carver, Sojourner Truth. They taught us that out of their experiences, you see. So, we did learn it that way. It wasn't in the textbooks, but they would teach us that themselves, you see, the struggle and so forth. They would teach us about Tuskegee Institute. They would teach it.

Glaze:
So, you did, then, have some contact.

King:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, we learned about black history because, you see, had we not, I wouldn't have had the background about the blacks' contribution to America. I wouldn't have learned it out of the textbooks, because they did have it per se in that way. When I was going to high school, there was no mention of a black person unless it was a slave or something, but not their contributions. The mass-produced shoe was invented by a black man -- the shoes you've got on. A black man had that patent for the soles of a shoe. But you don't learn those things out of books. You pick those up, and, of course, we would read. There was no library that I know of. In high school I never saw a library.

Glaze:
What did you generally do for reference material?

King:
Books. What do you mean by reference? We didn't know what any reference material was back when I was in school. Reference?

Glaze:
Where did you go to look something up? Where did you get books?

King:
From the white high school. Nothing but book learning.

Glaze:
But what did you have other than textbooks?

King:
Nothing. Book learning. That's all we had -- book learning, and that is why I'm saying that book learning is not worth too much. That's all we had -- book learning. What do you think would have happened to my generation if we had had access to all the other information and knowledge? I'm prone to think that that was deliberate. They didn't want us to have that knowledge and information. If they did, don't you think they would have provided it for us?

Glaze:
What was the overall attitude like in Denton as compared to, maybe, where you came from in Farmersville as far as overall acceptance of the black population?

King:
Same. The only difference is some of it may be covert and some of it may be overt. But I think in Farmersville, it was more overt in terms of blacks in that community. This is just your place. This is just your place. It was just understood that I had to say, "Yassa" to a sixteen-year-old white boy. And that is true. When I was six or eight years old, I had to say, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to a sixteen-year-old white boy who was the son of the man who owned the farm we worked on. We asked Daddy, "Daddy, why do we have to say, 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir' to James? We're almost as old as he is." He said, "Son, because his daddy said you had to do it." He was training us -- training us, you know. I said, "Let's move, Daddy. Let's go to some other place." He said, "It would be the same there." See, you have no place to go. If you move from this farm to that farm, you're going to be treated the same. So, there's just no place to escape. We had no choice. If we didn't do it, he would say, "You, boy, get off my farm!" That's what would have happened to us. So, in those days, it was overt. They'd call you names. They'd tell you, "Come here. Do this, 'n*****.'" Well, in Denton a little later on as we go, see, you're outgrowing that. You don't do it overtly. In Denton it was the same thing, but it was more of a covert thing, you see. Actually, in Farmersville, you could be there in front of a lot of whites, and one of them would call you that name clearly, but, you see, in Denton (chuckle) they wouldn't call you that among a group of people because you had proof, witnesses.

Glaze:
So, everybody had to maintain their image.

King:
Right, so, that's the only difference. Now we do have civil rights, which makes discrimination illegal. It's illegal, but no act is illegal until you get caught. It's not illegal if you don't get caught. (Chuckle) All right? It's not illegal if you don't get caught. So, actually, today we have a recourse. In my day, if you'd hit a white man for anything -- I don't care what -- you would have been lynched. But now if they do it, you can pop him upside his head, and at least you go to trial and (chuckle) be tried by a jury or something. That's one difference. I can say it's not as bad because here you can go to hotels and restaurants and that sort of thing. But I'm still talking about as a folkway, as a custom. There's still almost as much racism in Denton, Texas, now as it was in my day. Now they can't do it legally, but in their homes and places, at the Lion's Club, and this, we are still sometimes treated that way. That's why I'm so bent on, (chuckle) "You can't discriminate against me." That's the way we're going to have to do it. You have Martin Luther Kings, but I say that in Denton, Texas, you're going to have some Harve Kings. (Chuckle) No brag. If some white guy would treat me unfairly, there's some white men I can go to and say, "Do you know what that guy did to me over there?" More than likely, they'll get a call: "Do you know Harve King?" Wait a minute. I can show you some letters right now. I've got one right over there (gesture) from some outstanding men in Denton, saying, "Harve, we want you to know that we appreciate the contributions that you are making to this community, the contributions that you have made to the University of North Texas." I've got one from a banker and some more saying, "Harve, we appreciate you," and saying, "You are a very special person." I've got that right there that I got in the past month. I got it from the mayor. What I'm saying is, if you had some Harve Kings -- and I just use Harve King -- or an Alton Thibodeaux, or I could use some Erma Bells, Peaces, you know, that we live... we have a certain level of education. We have morals. How are they going to discriminate against you? So, we've got to rise above the projects.

Glaze:
The project, meaning the housing project?

King:
Yes. If there were no blacks living in the projects, living in the community, you see what I'm saying? A lot of people can't go to the bank and borrow $25,000, and that's a form of discrimination. Now there's whites that can't do that, too, but it's more prevalent in terms of blacks. So, what I'm saying is, if we rise to a certain level, there would be less opportunity to discriminate against us. You see what I'm saying? And that's how we can eliminate discrimination. You wouldn't dare discriminate against me. You wouldn't dare because I could get me a lawyer. I may not win, but I can put your name on the street on the front page of the paper. (Chuckle) I'd get one of these banks, and I'd have your name on the paper right near the office.

Glaze:
I understand what you're saying. However, let's kind of get back to what we were saying in regard to...

King:
I'm only going to speak when you ask me a question.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) I'll bet.

King:
All right. Okay.

Glaze:
No, I'm teasing. Okay, we had talked a little about the classes, and you said you had never -- as far as science -- seen a test tube or anything. And the women had the homemaking.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
What facilities were there for shop or an equivalent of homemaking for the boys?

King:
In my day there was no facility for shop. In my high school days at Fred Moore School, there was no shop. Now, there was a reason for homemaking. There was a reason for homemaking, and I'll let you figure that one out.

Glaze:
Training the maids and the cooks.

King:
That was part of it. Why would they not provide a shop for the boys the same as the homemaking for the girls?

Glaze:
That I don't know. I'm going to have ask you.

King:
(Chuckle) Oh, yes, you do know. Yes, you do. But that's it. And, of course, actually in those days, the major income for blacks was TWU [Texas Woman's University] and North Texas. Cooking was a job. So, actually, that sort of treatment makes good common sense. "Let's teach these girls how to cook." They were willing to provide that because of the supply and demand of these types of services.

Glaze:
I guess what I'm looking at is -- as far as shop -- were there not some of the men working as janitors and handymen in and around the campuses and the homes? Why would they not have supplied shop?

King:
That's what I'm saying -- the demand in the community wasn't great. I remember that some of us were given jobs cleaning up the building. I know (chuckle) we had outdoor plumbing.

Glaze:
At the school?

King:
Yes. We had no indoor plumbing when I was in high school.

Glaze:
What was that like?

King:
Ugh! It was an outdoor toilet. You know what an outdoor toilet is -- with the moon cut. (Chuckle) I remember Professor Moore. It was getting so full and bad that -- it was about a four-seater -- then he had us dig a hole beside it. The same size. Then when we built it, we'd cut a tunnel to let it go into this one to go over here (gesture).

Glaze:
But that would be open?

King:
No, well, you've got the building. You've got a building, of course.

Glaze:
But what I'm saying is, if you dug a hole and made a trench, what siphoned off of one side into the other? Was that just left open?

King:
Well, you put a top on it.

Glaze:
Oh.

King:
You put a top on it and still have those four seats on top. It had seats on it.

Glaze:
I see. Okay. So, there were four seats for the girls and four for the boys.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Ultimately, they would have had to empty that, would they not? Who did that?

King:
Well, in those days, (chuckle) I specifically remember in Farmersville, "Shorty" -- we called him "Shorty" -- did it. He was a little short man. We'd say something nasty about him: "Get out your can! Here comes the man!" We'd say that, you know, kids, jokingly. But he'd have a wagon, and he'd have some fifty-gallon drums. He would go around the city -- especially the black neighborhood and, I guess, the white area -- and he would take it, carry it, and he'd take it off to the dump someplace. Evidently, I think at one point, they put in lime, and that's how they tried to destroy something, eat it up. I remember that. I don't remember the wagons in Denton, but I'm sure, even before my day, that's what they did. I think they now have some kind of chemicals that would rot or keep down the smell and so forth.

Glaze:
But still, I would imagine that that was a fairly nasty area, given as many students as you had.

King:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Glaze:
Where was that located in relation to the school, physically?

King:
Here's the building, (gesture) which in my day was nothing but a four-room white building. In fact, they took it down. Did you see it or have a picture of it down at the park?

Glaze:
No, I heard that it went down there.

King:
Somebody should have it. Alice Alexander [daughter of Professor Fred Moore and a long-time teacher at the school] should have a picture. But it was just a framed four-room building. This was facing that street here (gesture). This is the front.

Glaze:
That's Robertson?

King:
Yes, right back here. Maybe the same distance as to that house (gesture) up on the top of the hill. That's where it was -- the outhouse.

Glaze:
About 150 feet?

King:
Yes, 150 feet. So, that was our restroom. Ours [boys] was here on the left side. The girls' was over here (gesture).

Glaze:
So, it was on the back lot of the school, and the school faced Robertson.

King:
Yes, that's right.

Glaze:
Sort of back up that hill? Did it go up the hill?

King:
Yes. Oddly enough, the homemaking department was between the two. (Chuckle) Flies would come in.

Glaze:
In the homemaking department?

King:
Yes, they had the opportunity.

Glaze:
And that's where all the food was.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Which gets us to the word "food," which brings us to lunch. What did you do for lunch?

King:
Nothing. In my day there was no such thing as lunch.

Glaze:
You didn't get to eat at noon?

King:
No. Unless Mrs. Ammons or one of those teachers let us have a nickel, and we'd buy a candy bar or a Snicker.

Glaze:
But you had an hour for lunch, right?

King:
Not as such, no. We'd have a recess. We'd have a morning recess. We'd have a noon recess and then the afternoon recess -- fifteen minutes, an hour, fifteen minutes. But the recess and lunch, that was for us to play ball and that sort of thing, but not [to] eat. There were times, in the homemaking department, that Miss Hodge looked after us. She'd have a great, big pot of beans and things, and she'd let some of us come in and eat at that time. But in terms of going home for lunch, some of them may have gone home, especially those who worked at the CIA who could present a pretty good meal. But there was nothing to bring. What would you bring? A cup of beans and cornbread? That was all that you had. In my family there was no such thing as lunch. We'd have breakfast and supper, we called it. We didn't say "dinner." In my vocabulary, there's no such thing as dinner. It was breakfast or supper. You'd eat something in the morning, whatever you had, and then in the afternoon when Mom got off of work, she would bring us whatever she had... to bring it home. Some leftovers, whatever we had to cook. That's what we had for supper.

Glaze:
What time did your mother get home?

King:
Mother got home around 5:00 average, I'd say, when she got off from work at the college. See, my mother was the cook, and she didn't have to serve the food, so she'd cook it and leave it. She got off at 4:00 or 5:00.

Glaze:
I had heard sometimes that the kitchen staff would be able to bring food home. What kind of things could she bring besides black bananas?

King:
They were leftovers -- beans, the old bread, sometimes other fruits. Anything that they cooked. Spaghetti, meat balls. Anything that was left over that they didn't want to prepare for the next day, that was too old to use. Any of it could be brought home, so they would bring it home.

Glaze:
How often did she bring food home?

King:
Everyday, something. Had it not been for that, we wouldn't have been able to survive. That's why I'm saying that the difference in white people today and back there... I guess white people and black people were closer together than they are now. In those days, white people, even though it was "Yassa," they kind of considered us a part of the extended family. I know with my mother, they knew what we were trying to do. They knew me, trying to go to college and so forth. They would say, "Minnie, here. Take this home to your kids." They would automatically give, deliberately knowing what they were doing, to help feed the kids. So, that's why I say it was kind of better in those days than it is now in terms of companionship and humanity -- that sort of thing. Almost every day she would bring something home. Sometimes that would be the only thing that we would have for supper, if it was enough. Maybe some of it she would warm over, and, then, of course, she had a chance to supplement sometimes from other sources.

Glaze:
Back to lunch. You said that that was time when you played ball. Tell me about playing ball -- where you did it. What'd you do?

King:
There was not but one place to do it. I've probably got some grass burrs in me now. Okay, here's the school (gestures). Here's that railroad track that comes in front of the school.

Glaze:
Okay, that's down by Robertson.

King:
That's it. We played in front of the school. The girls were on this end and sort of on the side, and the boys would monopolize the front. During football season, we would play football. We practiced football. We played high school football, and that's where we would practice.

Glaze:
When you said the girls played on the side, was that up Mill Street?

King:
Yes, Mill Street and that way. There was a little something in the back. The girls played there, but the boys occupied most of the front. During the baseball season, we played baseball. During basketball season, we had some goals out there on the ground, and that was it. Sometimes it was supervised; sometimes it wasn't because you didn't need too much supervision. We knew (chuckle) if you got in a fight... of course, Professor Moore was always looking out the window. Many of the teachers stood and looked out the window, but mostly we supervised ourselves. I remember very few fights or something. We just didn't do it. We knew better.

Glaze:
How many boys would play ball at the noon hour?

King:
Well, most of the boys who were on the athletic teams. It was structured football; it was structured basketball. The other boys who didn't participate, they were over here (gestures) someplace doing their thing, whatever that was. We had some room on this side, too, for the boys, and those were the ones not engaged in athletics. They were doing something else. They were pitching horseshoes or something.

Glaze:
How many boys would be in..in other words, what percentage of the boys were on athletic teams?

King:
Ninety percent. Ninety percent of the boys, maybe a hundred. You see, sometimes you would have several teams. There were four teams, and what you would do, you would rotate. The first one who would score would be out, and the next team... so, that's the way in basketball. We would have two teams playing, and when you lose, you're out. When I was in high school, we had thirteen boys on the varsity football team. That's all. That's all the boys that were available. When I graduated, there were six people in my class -- four boys and two girls.

Glaze:
That was what year?

King:
Nineteen thirty-eight. There was my brother, I.D. Moody, and Clarence Nix, and there was Ernestine and Susie, the two girls. I was valedictorian.

Glaze:
So, you graduated before Mrs. King [Eleanor Woods King] did.

King:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. She didn't graduate until, I think, 1940 or 1941. I graduated a little ahead of time. I was seventeen. I graduated with my brother. He must have been about nineteen or twenty when he finished. So, I graduated a little early. Oh, yes, I finished two years before. She finished in 1940, I believe, because we married in 1941. Yes, about that time.

Glaze:
You said about 90 percent of the boys were engaged in sports.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
The 10 percent that weren't, how were they treated? How were they considered? [Mr. King dangled his hand back and forth] You're shaking your hand like "yuk." (Laughter) What do you mean?

King:
I don't mean it sexually.

Glaze:
No, I don't take it that way.

King:
But, I mean, that as far as the he-men...

Glaze:
The machos.

King:
The machos. They were just there, you know. They were just there. Not treated any differently, but they just were not a part of the rough-and-tumble. See, we were the rough-and-tumble guys, but they just sort of stood back on the sidelines.

Glaze:
Were they treated like nerds?

King:
Oh, no. We didn't know anything about that in my day. They just were not in our group. But we'd try: "Hey, guy, come on! Come on!" But we didn't treat them... because, you see, in my day we probably didn't know what that was. We never experienced marijuana and that sort of thing. Never experienced it. It wasn't there. So, they were treated fairly, and, as I say, they were so scarce. When I talk of boys, I imagine we had a hundred boys because I imagine there were two hundred kids in school. I really don't know. Not many over two hundred.

Glaze:
Are we talking about from...

King:
From first grade through...

Glaze:
Through the twelfth.

King:
Right. So, I'm saying that you start with a lot of them in the first grade. By the time you get to the fifth or sixth grade, you have lost 60 percent of the boys. You see what I'm saying?

Glaze:
At fifth and sixth grade, they've already dropped out of school?

King:
Oh, let's say seventh grade. So, how many high school boys do you have? You've got twenty-five or thirty high school boys. That's why we only had thirteen football players.

Glaze:
Tell me about your football team. What did you play, and who were some of those people?

King:
We were very athletic, very competitive. That's just the way it was. We played Paris, Gainesville, Sherman, McKinney, Denison, and we had the nerve to play Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas (chuckle).

Glaze:
How did the size of that compare to you?

King:
Well, they only beat us "seven t'six."

Glaze:
What?

King:
(Chuckle)

Glaze:
They beat you what?

King:
You see, they beat us 70-6 before they asked us...

Glaze:
Oh, no (laughter)!

King:
... before they asked us what the score was. We said, "Oh, it's a pretty tight game, just 'seven t'six.'"

Glaze:
Oh (laughter), you just kind of slurred it together, and it didn't sound...

King:
Yes, they beat us. I played halfback, but we had thirteen players, and I'm on crutches. So, I played safety. I just got way back. There was a safety on crutches, so we would have eleven men on the field, and that's how I played. This is true.

Glaze:
Why were you on crutches?

King:
Because I got hurt. I got my ankle twisted. I got hurt.

Glaze:
How long were you playing ball on crutches?

King:
Just that...

Glaze:
Just one game?

King:
Yes, just that game. I didn't play the next two or three games. In fact, we were district champions. You've heard of Tennyson Miller? I'd like to take you where he is. We called him "Coach." I was thirty-five years of age, and I was in the Army, came out of the Army, you know, in college, and I met him for the first time since high school. I was trying to smoke a cigar, and when I saw him... [quickly puts his hand behind his back] He said, "Oh, boy, you're old enough to smoke now." But, no, you see, you wouldn't be caught smoking in front of one of your teachers when I was in school. That's the difference. That's the respect. That's the thing that we had. I played basketball, football, and ran track in high school. You had to do all of those; you didn't have different teams. Every kid who was an athlete played on every team. We didn't have baseball. Track, football, and basketball were our three major sports in high school.

Glaze:
You mention basketball, and yet I heard that you had no cement. What did you do for... the basketball?

King:
The ground. We had hoops. We'd go someplace at the high school and borrow some hoops.

Glaze:
Are you speaking of the white high school?

King:
Oh, anywhere we could get them. More than likely they came from... and, they may have bought us something. I'm not saying they didn't spend a penny. Now, they had to spend some money for teachers, maybe toilet tissue -- if we had it -- brooms. They spent a little money on us. They probably even gave us some. You see, the black culture and the white culture had a good relationship. Now, Tennyson Miller was very aggressive. He cared for us. He would go to the white school and talk to the other coaches and say, "Do you have any old rims?"

Glaze:
Any old what?

King:
Rims. Basketball rims, we called them -- goals.

Glaze:
Were they words that you used at that time?

King:
Yes. Some of the words, when we get together, we use now -- making fun of.

Glaze:
Well, throw me one. What are you talking about?

King:
He "hiddid" it. "Man, he really 'hiddid' it!"

Glaze:
"Hiddid" it?

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Like he...

King:
Hit the ball hard. He "hiddid" it. Let's see another one -- "Killingflo."

Glaze:
What does that mean?

King:
"Where you guys, going?" "Man, we're going to the 'killingflo.'" Dancing.

Glaze:
Killing floor?

King:
Killing, K-I-L-L-I-N-G F-L-O-O-R. "We're going to the 'killing floor,'" we called it -- dancing.

Glaze:
I see.

King:
"Stone fox."

Glaze:
Okay, what is that?

King:
A beautiful woman. And the "eagle fly."

Glaze:
Okay, when you get paid?

King:
When you get paid. (Chuckle) When you get paid. Let's see... "HNIC." (Chuckle) You'd better be careful. "HNIC."

Glaze:
I don't know that one.

King:
"Head N***** In Charge."

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

King:
"Who's that guy?" "Oh, man, he thinks he's 'HNIC.'" We would use a bunch of them. Those were some of the things that we used. That was just our language in those days.

Glaze:
It was your slang.

King:
It was slang, yes. "Went to the 'wolfing tree.'" "Oh, don't pay attention to that guy. He's just 'wolfing you.'" It was lolly-gagging. That's the same thing -- just talking.

Glaze:
So, the "wolfing tree" is just where you lolly-gag?

King:
Yes. (Chuckle) That's our culture. It's English, but it's just the way that we do things.

Glaze:
Okay, now let's see. We were talking about your teams, and you said that the athletes played on all the teams.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
As far as track, where did you practice?

King:
We're improving now. Actually, when I first started out, we still ran around this area.

Glaze:
Around the school?

King:
Around the school.

Glaze:
On the grass or on the street?

King:
On the grass. When Professor Miller came... "Coach," we called him -- Coach Miller. I call him "Coach" now. When he came, they went to the... I don't know if it was the county or the city, but down in the park where the old building was -- the Fred Moore Park now -- with this grader, they had us grade a track. They had us grade that off, and, boy, we thought we were in high cotton. We got a track now even though it was still dirt.

Glaze:
(Chuckle)

King:
I guess, during my last two years, we'd go down to the park, and they had a football field in the center. That was our high school stadium or football field and track field. That's what happened. The city or somebody permitted us to use the county grader to do that. That's what we did.

Glaze:
Who coached the track? Did Tennyson Miller?

King:
Tennyson Miller. He is the only coach that I knew in high school. I wasn't involved before him. He's the only one that I remember. I got my high school participation athletically under him. See, we wanted to walk like him. He was kind of crippled. Well, not crippled, but he had a stiff leg. I think he broke it in high school. We'd get behind him, and we'd... [demonstrates the walk] Oh, yes, and try to walk like him. We'd try to talk like him. We called him "The Black Bear."

Glaze:
"The Black Bear?"

King:
Oh, yes. Behind his back, now: "Here comes 'The Black Bear." But he was loved. Oh, my goodness, we loved him. We worshipped that man because he was something else. He was something else. He was like a father to all of us. He was a father. He would feed you and whatever. But you didn't do any wrong because he'd get you and because of the respect that you had. That was discipline. There's no such thing today. You can't discipline anybody, even in elementary school. You've got some methods, but, see, that's the essence of America. That's the only way that America is going to become as it should be -- self-discipline.

Glaze:
The desire to do. Is that what you were saying? The desire to be?

King:
Okay, I'll accept that word. I'll accept "desire." "Determination." That would be a similar word or "committed to be." But that's it. "I'm not going to live in those projects for the rest of my life. I'm going to get out of here. I can't do it in a day, but eventually I'm going to be out."

What did I do the other day? Yes, I was in the post office. I had bought a book of stamps, and I went to the table to stamp my letters, and there was a full book of stamps right beside me. I'm looking around. I said, "Huh." I got almost to the door, and I said, "No, I can't take these stamps. I can't do that." I took them back and turned them in. Somebody else would have gotten them -- I know that -- or the person may have come back after them, but they probably would have been gone. But I just couldn't take them. Me, take some stamps? For five dollars? No.

I'm saying it's just something within that says, "Hey, do unto others," and that's it. All this religion and stuff is all right, but there's not but one religion in this world: "Do unto others as you have others do unto you likewise." That covers everything. If we had that, all killing would cease. You see what I'm saying? Now I'm not going to say I'm not going to save my life. Say you've got a gun and are going to shoot me. In self-defense, I may repeat. I can't run over an animal in the street -- a dog, even a snake. I can't run over a snake. If I see a snake in my yard, I may kill it, but if it's not threatening me in any way, no. I'm saying that's the utopia of our society.

In our day, there was discipline instilled by teachers and the community. Every adult person in your community was your parent in my day. They could come out and spank you. If they saw you doing something wrong, your neighbor could come out and spank you, and it would be all right. But most of the time, they would say, "I'm going to tell your mama on you! I'm going to tell your daddy on you!" That was it. It was community discipline, and that's what happened.

Glaze:
Speaking of discipline... we're kind of hopping around, but that's a point I'd like to talk about. You said that there was a great deal of self-discipline and sense of respect.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
What about the actual discipline? How common was that, and what methods of discipline did some of the teachers use?

King:
It was as common as it needed to be. In terms of discipline that warranted punishment, it was rare. But when it did happen, you would be punished, and in my day punishment was corporal punishment. You would get whipped with a board. Even in Farmersville, oh, my God, I was in the fourth, fifth grade there, and I remember a boy and I outside and had done this. [Assumes boxing stance] Fisticuffs.

Glaze:
Put up your fists.

King:
Yes, getting ready, and Professor Dagler (gesture), that's all he did.

Glaze:
Just crooked that one finger.

King:
That's right. We went inside. He didn't say a word, and he had a belt. He was left-handed. Three licks apiece. We were afraid, especially in those days, of our teachers, too. We feared our teachers. And that's what's wrong today. Kids have fear of nothing. In life to be successful, a successful person has to have something to fear. I don't mean to be afraid of, and I don't mean fear in terms of my life, but fear of losing a job. Why I tried to do such a good job wherever I went was the fear of being fired because being fired from a job was one of the worst things that could ever happen to me. In my marriage, (chuckle) I try to be a good husband because I fear divorce. Divorce, to me, is a form of failure. You made a commitment to do something, and you didn't do it. You failed, just like anything else. That's the difference. Discipline is basically fear. I would say 75 percent respect, 15 percent fear, and whatever that other 10 percent was. It was respect.

Glaze:
As far as the teachers, when you were at school, who were the most strict disciplinarians?

King:
In terms of Coach... of course, he was the coach, but that was in terms of athletics. I was only in school in Denton under Alice Banks [Alice Moore Banks Alexander] at that time, Eva Hodge, Ammons, Professor Moore, and Miller. Now, we did have Alcorn... that was the guy, Alcorn. He tried to be football coach. In fact, he had a fight with Isaac Ross. Isaac Ross wouldn't have fought Tennyson Miller. Those are all the people I had in school. Alcorn only stayed one year. Those are the only teachers I had.

Glaze:
Did you have Alice as your teacher?

King: Yes.

Glaze:
She was the one that had your first grade? I mean you started in the seventh...

King:
Oh, no, no. For some reason, I think they sort of tried departmentalizing, or it may have been that... because actually she taught first grade. I didn't have first grade under her, but I think she had a special class or something after school. She did some special work, and I think that's how I got with her. She was probably the kindest because she was so close. She was so young. She was young. Some of the girls, especially in high school, considered her as one of the girls. She was the kindest. Mrs. Ammons was a mother-type. Mrs. Hodge was the most stern. Then, of course, Professor Moore did discipline by... what? He was so refined, and we had so much respect for him. That was his key to discipline-the respect that he commanded. Of course, he sort of left it up to Coach Miller. The tough cases, he would turn over to Coach Miller. So, that was it.

Glaze:
Then what did Coach Miller do?

King:
Shoot, he'd bust your behind if need be. Of course, Professor Moore would let him make that decision of what kind of punishment you got. Sometimes Coach Miller -- most of them were athletes -- would actually say before you, even on the campus, "You get out there and run until I tell you to stop." He gave us very little of that. I didn't get it.

Glaze:
If he would say that, generally, what did that mean?

King:
What do you mean?

Glaze:
As far as laps at the track. In other words, are we talking ten laps? Twenty laps? What was normal?

King:
"Until I tell you to stop." And he could tell (chuckle) about how many you'd done. Then he'd say, "Give me one more." He'd be watching you.

Glaze:
In other words, he'd wait until you were almost exhausted and make you do one more.

King:
Yes, he'd look out and say, "That's enough," depending on what he thinks, in terms of health, was best for you. If you're an athlete, a hard-boiled athlete, he might tell you, "Give me ten," if he knew that you could do it. But, you see, they used good judgment. They used good judgment in terms of being with the kids.

Glaze:
With regard to track, what kind of uniforms did you have?

King:
I didn't get into this, but I remember that the boys would roll up their pant legs. I didn't. They'd roll up their pant legs. Here again, our helmets, (chuckle) football uniforms came from the other side of town.

Glaze:
When you say "the other side of town," do you mean North Texas or do you mean the high schools?

King:
Oh, the high school. See, the superintendent was involved in that. They wanted new uniforms, so they would...

Glaze:
How was he involved in that?

King:
Actually, Professor Moore would call him and say, "Hey, we need some more books," or "We sure would like to have some uniforms for our track team. Could you help us out some?" Then the superintendent would go to the coach or whoever and say, "Hey, we're going to get some new uniforms by this year. Just give those to the colored school." That's where we got them. That was the system. Of course, I remember mine; my number was thirteen in everything -- basketball, track, and football. We could get those hand-me-downs, shoes. Now I think we had, maybe, one pair of track shoes, maybe two pairs, for the little feeters and the big feeters. We may have had big footers. (Chuckle) But we may have had two pairs of shoes.

Glaze:
For the whole... ?

King:
For the whole team. When you say the whole team, we never had but six or seven boys on the track team, five or six boys on the basketball team.

Glaze:
In other words, though, your shoes did not fit your feet.

King:
Oh, no. There was a track meet down at Prairie View. This is when I was working at Dunbar in Tyler. My little ol' track team had one pair of track shoes. Coach Collins was going to start: "Get on your mark." I said, "Hey, Coach! Hey, Collins, my boy doesn't have his shoes on yet." I said, "Coach Collins, if you shoot that little gun and don't let my boy run, I'm going to kick your... (Chuckle) I tease him about that now. We tease.

Glaze:
So, everytime in Dunbar, they had to keep changing shoes everytime.

King:
And Denton was a little better. What I'm saying is, that's how we got our uniforms. This is the way. We had jackets with "D" on them. We were the Dragons. The homemaking department, by selling candy or whatever, raised enough money to buy us some football jackets for a couple of years.

Glaze:
These would be jackets that you'd wear like varsity jackets. Is that what you mean?

King:
A varsity jacket. Of course, we'd wear them to Sunday school, church, the prom. Oh, yes, we'd wear them everywhere. They were dressy. Yes, we did that for a couple of years.

Glaze:
What did they look like? Describe them to me.

King:
They were not leather like they have now, but it was more or less like your sweater -- that type of material.

Glaze:
A knit?

King:
Yes. We'd have some company make them for us.

Glaze:
What color would they be?

King:
Green and white. Our colors were green and white.

Glaze:
So, they were green. What color was the "D"?

King:
White. Green jackets and sometimes they would dress the white up with a little green and so forth. They were nice.

Glaze:
Did they have names? Did you have your name on it?

King:
Oh, yes, they had the names and the Fred Moore [Douglass] Dragons, and we were "uptown" now.

Glaze:
What about your own name? Were you able to put your name on it?

King:
I don't think we did.

Glaze:
Did you get to keep those?

King:
Oh, yes, they were ours.

Glaze:
The individual players.

King:
The individual players. You call it "lettering," you know. Now, for a while, we only got the letter. We got the "D"s. One time I think we got a track shoe. Financially, that's pretty good. It was getting up to 1938. In those days, we were sort of getting away from that "you don't count," because now we were really participating and going to the District. I don't think we ever went to the State. But, you see, we've got to kind of be up-to-date now, because in Denton, when they see some of these other schools like Sherman with the blacks schools, you can't have that discrepancy, and we didn't want that. So, our coach and Professor Moore said, "Hey, look." They had some... what do you call it? Some leverage now in asking for certain things. Here again, the politics. Ninety percent of the black athletes, let's say, their parents worked for maybe every board member. Do you follow me?

Glaze:
Oh, the parents of the black athletes worked...

King:
Their mothers worked for probably 90 percent of the school board members.

Glaze:
I see.

King:
Even including Mr. Patterson and those boys. So, they'd get to talking: "Minnie, how're things over at y'all's school?" Those black parents would tell it like it is. So, they would get together and say, "Hey, did you know?" in their bridge meetings and this and that. Those white women would get together and say, "Hey, did you hear?" "What does Mary say about it?" "Have you ever talked to Mary about that?" So, those white women, through their PTAs and through their meetings, would mention to... "How is it like this?"

Glaze:
So, they were instrumental, actually, in getting a lot of changes.

King:
Probably more so than the school board. Sure, they were. That's politics. Sure, that happened. Sure, it did.

Glaze:
When you actually had your track meets, would they be against just one other school, or would they be multiple schools? Where were those held?

King:
They'd be multiple schools. Now, we've had them here. Actually, it would be Plano, McKinney, Gainesville, Denison, Sherman. When we would have one, we may invite three schools. When Sherman would have one, they'd invite three or four schools in the district, and there were about eight schools in our district. But then you have what we called the district meet. That would be everybody.

Glaze:
That would be for the Negro Interscholastic League?

King:
Interscholastic League, yes. This is the Interscholastic League, and the winners would go to the State. I guess we were a Class B school. Most of the time, we were a Class B, and then we moved up to Class A. But then we'd have our District. I remember the District in Plano, the District in McKinney, and we had a District here. Usually, McKinney and Plano, Sherman and Denison, primarily. That's where we'd go for our district meets. Everybody participated.

Glaze:
In addition to the district meet, approximately how many track meets would you have per spring?

King:
Per spring? Five.

Glaze:
Five, plus the District.

King:
Because most every one of them would have an invitational. Sherman would have an invitational. We'd have a chance to go there. Sometimes, just to get a little practice, we might just challenge Sherman on a one-to-one basis. We'd challenge Sherman. We might do that sometimes.

Glaze:
When you held it in Denton, was this down at the park where you had that little track?

King:
Later on, now, I'll tell you what... we never did have a district meet at the university, but I think in my last year we used the same facilities as the University of North Texas. Where the library was that was, a track field. You know the entrance to the library?

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
That was a track field. Where the library is now, that was a track field. The east side of the Music Building, that was the entrance to the track field. We would go up and run. At the university you would see Elmer and Delmer Brown, and then they had the Rideout twins. They had the relay. Their name was Rideout, and I don't know their first names, but Elmer and Delmer Brown have pictures at the University of North Texas. I used to run track with them.

Glaze:
Really?

King:
At that time, that was Miller. At that time, we were moving up. Sisco and Stovall... those boys were famous football players there. Johnny Stovall...

Glaze:
Just a minute. Before you go on. We're getting to the end of the tape. [Tape is turned over] Okay, we've turned over the tape, and basically we were talking about track. We had talked about Elmer and Delmer Brown, the Rideout twins, Sisco and Stovall, who were football players, and then you went on with that. Are these people that you're mentioning with the Fred Moore...

King:
No, they were students at the university. These are white. They're students at the university.

Glaze:
I see, at the University of North Texas.

King:
And when we'd go to practice, we would see them, and we would just run beside them, along with them, and then just talk with them, and they'd talk with us.

Glaze:
I see, and they were track stars?

King:
Oh, yes. Elmer and Delmer Brown and the Rideout twins were national. They won the Texas Relays, and they would be on the 440 relay team. Yes, the mile relay -- together. Elmer and Delmer Brown, if I can remember right, were sprinters. They ran the 880 and middle distance. The Rideout twins were distance runners.

Glaze:
What about basketball? When you had your basketball season, where would you practice, and where did you play your games?

King:
Well, we would practice out there in front of the school. We had goals in front of the school. Many times, when we would go to some of the schools, it was the same thing. But at the end, I remember, in maybe my senior year, I think we were able to get some gyms. A few of the schools... either they had built their own gyms at the colored schools, or they would let us play at the white schools.

Glaze:
You mean inside.

King:
Oh, inside the gym. Oh, yes. I don't remember playing in a gym here in Denton. I don't remember playing in a white gym here, and, of course, we didn't have ours when I finished. Soon afterwards, they did build a gym at the school.

Glaze:
When you actually played your games, though, for your league, where would you play?

King:
That's where we would get, probably a white gym.

Glaze:
I see.

King:
Maybe one or two of the schools had a gym of their own, but we did play in gyms. If we did, we probably played in the white gym.

Glaze:
You're practicing out in front of your school on dirt. You don't have any concrete.

King:
That's right.

Glaze:
How does that affect your game when suddenly you're practicing, and you know how the ball responds on dirt, and suddenly you're inside a gym? How did you react?

King:
Well, the difference is that, you see, it's a motivating factor. Out here you're playing in hell; when you get inside, you're in heaven.

Glaze:
(Laughter)

King:
We played better because ... oh, man! Oh, gee!

Glaze:
The ball bounces (laughter).

King:
Right. So, it was just -- oh, my goodness -- something else.

Glaze:
Dribbling must be very tough on dirt (chuckle).

King:
Yes. So, we had the advantage, in playing from these adverse conditions to getting in the gym. Oh, my goodness. We didn't know the difference, I guess. It didn't affect us.

Glaze:
How well did you do in your basketball team?

King:
I will say we were the leaders. We were the leaders. We were perhaps the winner. Overall, Denton won.

Glaze:
Is this in the state or in your region?

King:
No, in the region. We probably couldn't compete in the state. I guess we could in our class. We may have gone to the State one time. I don't know. But, you see, we were it.

Glaze:
Now when you say the region, you've mentioned Plano, McKinney, Sherman, Denison, and Gainesville. Is that your region?

King:
No, that's the district.

Glaze:
That's the district. Then, how far did the region reach?

King:
The region? Where did we go? If I'm not mistaken, we didn't have a region. It was from the district to the state. I don't remember a regional when I was in school. The region would have to be Waco, and I don't remember going to Waco or even Dallas or Tyler to participate. We only had the District.

Glaze:
How often did you get down to Prairie View, and can you tell anything about your trips to Prairie View?

King:
Every year. In our district, we won enough to go to the State, and the State was held at Prairie View, I guess, every year. We would go every year with our track team. We wouldn't go with our basketball, or we wouldn't go in football. But in track we would go to Prairie View every year. (Chuckle) I remember it well. That's where we would go for our state meets.

Glaze:
Give me the names of some of your track team.

King:
The members of the track team?

Glaze:
Some of the names of the members and what they ran or what they did.

King:
All right. Harold Hall -- he's deceased now -- and the two brothers, Harold and Alfred Hall, who were what we call the distance runners, the mile. The mile and up is distance, and we didn't run anything longer than the mile. My brother, Herbert King, Clarence Nix, G.W. Foreman. Let's see. Who else was with them? Harold Nix. They were sprinters. I.D. Moody. He was a pole vaulter and high jumper. I'm the middle distance runner. I run the 880 and short distances. I think Harold Hall was a shotputter. That's just some of the main people in my day.

Glaze:
Where did Mitchell Jackson come in?

King:
Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Glaze:
Oh, don't forget Mitchell.

King:
Oh, yes, I forgot.

Glaze:
Oh, dear, you're in trouble (chuckle).

King:
Oh, I can't forget him because we were blood brothers, believe it or not. You didn't know that, did you? Mitchell and I are blood brothers.

Glaze:
I think you told me that one time.

King:
Cut our wrists here [Shows wrist].

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
Mitchell was a year behind us, but Mitchell was there probably the last year I played. Mitchell was the javelin thrower, shotputter, and high jumper. That's Mitchell. But he was a year behind us. I think my last year that he was a freshman, but he was there. Oh, my goodness, he was a football and basketball player! Of course, he was the biggest one. He was 6'4", and, oh, he was a big guy. All the rest of us... there was me, maybe a 136 pounds and 5'5". I was the smallest one. But Mitchell Jackson was there. He did the javelin. I think he did the hurdles and the shotput, and he did some running, too. But, oh, boy, he was good. He was one of the best in my day. He came a little after I did -- F.L.Haynes. But in my day, those were mainly the guys that we had.

Glaze:
What kind of team unity did you have?

King:
We didn't know anything else but team unity. We didn't know anything about conflicts in terms of now. We didn't have any of that. We had to depend on each other for survival. We shared, even when we all went to the college. Nix's father worked at the CIA -- the Nix boy -- and, of course, his father would send him food. When each one of us would get a box of food, they'd call everybody in, and we'd share that box.

Glaze:
This was at Texas College.

King:
Yes, that's at Texas College. But it was the same way in high school. If you had fifteen cents... when we went to the state meet and had a $1.25... oh, everybody had money. Everybody had money because if you bought a hamburger for a nickel, you'd take it and maybe break it in four pieces. The same way with the coaches. The homemaking department would fix us a box of food.

Glaze:
This is when you went off on your meets?

King:
Yes, when we went off on the meet, the homemaking department would fix us some food in some boxes. Miss Hodge would fix us some food. So, we were very close. There was no friction that you would consider major. If so, I don't know what it would be.

Glaze:
How did you get to your games? To your meets?

King:
(Chuckle) I remember specifically... what kind of car was that? It was Mr. Nix's. The Nix boy's father was going to go with us and help furnish transportation. All of us went in two cars. I think Coach Miller had a car, so he took about eight. This Nix was a one-seater. I don't know... Hudson or something. I don't know what that car was, but, actually, four were in the front with him, and then back here -- (gesture) that little thing back there in the back window -- I'm the smallest one, and I'm up there (chuckle).

Glaze:
Are you talking about a coupe? Like a coupe?

King:
Well, it was a coupe, but it didn't have a back seat like that.

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
It was a two-door with the front seat, and then that back here. That's where I was -- back there all the way.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) And you had to go how far?

King:
Prairie View from here is 250 miles or so.

Glaze:
My back hurts just to think about it (chuckle).

King:
We would stop and relax, but I'm so small... I'm the only one who can get back there (chuckle). But that's the way we did it -- two cars -- and that would take maybe ten of us. Two cars would take ten.

Glaze:
Gosh! I have to ask you about the "infamous" locker room.

King:
What do you mean locker room?

Glaze:
The coal bin where you kept your uniforms at school.

King:
Oh, God!

Glaze:
I mean... (chuckle)

King:
Well, that's it. That was it because we burned coal, and, God, I remember that locker room. There were some snakes in there. But our locker room was the coal bin where we kept the coal. I think we put some boards up there and had each person's name on the board on top, and that's where we would hang our uniforms. That's where we would dress and suit up for football. I guess I don't realize how it was until I look back on it. What you don't know (chuckle) won't hurt you. But that was it.

Glaze:
Was there coal in there as well?

King:
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, there was some coal in there. There was a coal floor. No heat in there. No heat. But that was it. It was the coal bin. That's what we used for a locker room. I had forgotten all about that. I really had.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) Mentioning cold... going back to the school itself, how comfortable was your school?

King:
Cold. Of course, the overall comfort, we had those bench seats. That's what we had.

Glaze:
Those are the ones that held two people per desk? Is that what you mean?

King:
Some of them held two. Some were double, and some were single. Yes, that's what we had. We didn't have chairs. Some of them have chairs now, I guess. We didn't have chairs, but, as far as I can remember, it didn't bother us or me. It didn't bother me. It was something that you accepted because you didn't know any better.

Glaze:
What did you do as far as heat per room? How did you get your heat?

King:
Oh, we had heat in every room. There were stoves. I think we had stoves because I know we had the coal. But did they go to steam heaters? I don't think so. But they had some kind of heat in every room. I remember sometimes, especially on the north side, that the kids had to keep their coats on all the time. But we had some kind of heat in every room. Here again, some of the older boys would be paid to come to the school in the mornings and start the fire and then to keep the fire going during the day. That may have been some of that public works we were talking about or the CCC.

Glaze:
Do you know who any of those boys were that got paid?

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
Who would they be?

King:
Some of the same kids. I got paid for the toilet.

Glaze:
That's when you had to dig that other... ?

King:
Yes, I was one of them.

Glaze:
Who paid you?

King:
We got our money from Professor Moore.

Glaze:
How much did you get for digging that?

King:
We didn't finish it. We worked on it a couple of days, and we quit.

Glaze:
Why?

King:
We couldn't handle it. It was too nasty. I think we got nearly through, and the stuff started oozing down. We quit (laughter). Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, because we didn't know when it was going to break (laughter).

Glaze:
And you didn't want to be there (laughter).

King:
We had to be down there working on it, and we didn't know when it was going to break. So, one or two times we scrambled out, out of the hole.

Glaze:
How deep did you have to dig?

King:
About six feet. You see, (gestures) this one was on this level. Well, one was on this level.

Glaze:
Okay, the upper.

King:
The upper. But we had to go below the bottom of this one, which was... and this one up here wasn't deep at all.

Glaze:
I see. So, it would have been like the lochs. They were stair-stepped.

King:
Yes. Finally, we said, "We can't do this."

Glaze:
Who all was digging?

King:
All of us. There were about four of us.

Glaze:
When you say all of us," all who?

King:
Well, Clarence Nix was one. I think Harold Hall was one -- Mitchell wasn't with us -- my brother, G.W. Foreman. I think he offered us so much to do it. I think he offered us ten dollars, maybe, to do it.

Glaze:
For the total.

King:
Yes. "I'll give you boys ten dollars. You all can split it." But, boy, we quit. We couldn't handle that.

Glaze:
Did he pay you anything?

King:
I don't remember. It was such a nasty thing that we quit. (Chuckle) But I think they got somebody to do it. Either that or they closed it up and just started a new one. I think they were talking about closing up and just starting a new one. But that was something else.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) Let's see, where were we? We were talking about starting the fires. Do you know the names of any of the boys that actually would come there early and start the fires?

King:
All of us.

Glaze:
All of this same group.

King:
The same group. You see, maybe to make it go round, he might say, "Okay, this week it would be [me and my brother]." The next week it would be Harold and Alfred.

Glaze:
I see.

King:
Next, it would be, of course, the Nix boys. They were pretty well taken care of. Mr. Nix and the Hills were probably the two most prominent black families in Denton at that time. So, Fred Hill... that's how he kind of got his start. His father probably left a little money because he was working at the CIA and the university, and you probably got your food. We lived with my mother on Wood Street next door to the Bells. Both houses are still there now. You look at those houses now, (chuckle) and they were elite houses in Denton, Texas, among the black families. The Nixes probably didn't have to do too much work, and the Hills, but all the rest of us -- all the kids that I named -- were involved in these activities. Some maybe a little bit more than others.

Glaze:
Did you ever spend much time at E.J. Milam's?

King:
What do you mean, E.J. Milam's? His house? Oh, yes. I guess E.J. and his father... my brother and E.J. were like brothers, but even though there's only three years difference in my brother and E.J., I looked upon him as a father. Oh, yes, we were very close. I'd go to E.J.'s a lot. You see, E.J. lived four doors down from where we lived, and, of course, E.J. would help us out. He would get hold of something and... you see, E.J. was "HNIC" at the university.

Glaze:
I see (chuckle).

King:
You understand? He was the "HNIC." President Matthews [President of University of North Texas] would call E.J. in and say, "Hey, what do you think about this or about that?" So, E.J. was responsible for me being at the university. He was responsible for that. Juanita [E.J.'s widow] is like a sister to us now. So, yes, I spent some time at his house around here, and, of course, we shined shoes together. E.J. took over his father's place at the University Barber Shop.

Glaze:
That was on the Square?

King:
No, no, on Hickory Street... at the university.

Glaze:
Oh, I see.

King:
Right across from... the red light that comes up this way? It's right on the corner over there. That's Hickory and Fry.

Glaze:
Okay.

King:
On the corner of Hickory and Fry, that's where I shined shoes when I was a boy, with E.J. His father... (chuckle) the old man was something else. He couldn't count money. He tried to beat me out of my money. I'd be shining shoes, and I'd say, "Hey, mister, for a nickel more I'll give you a spit shine." "Okay, boy, here." [spit sounds] You've got to know how to make it. Oh, yes. (Chuckle) "For a nickel more, I'll give you a spit shine." "Okay, here." I'd give him a spit shine. [NOTE: At the beginning of the month when the students had plenty of money, E.J. would sell a month's worth of shines for so much money in advance, and then he'd get these younger guys to help him out. They'd shine the shoes, and then the guy would say that he'd already paid at the beginning of the month. That might be what he was talking about the guy trying to beat him out of his money.] I liked E.J. E.J. was the cause of me being here at the university.

Glaze:
Do you mean as... ?

King:
As assistant dean.

Glaze:
What was your actual position at North Texas?

King:
I had two formal positions. At first, I was the assistant dean of students. Then I was promoted to associate dean of students.

Glaze:
And from what year?

King:
From 1969, the assistant dean of students, and probably in 1982 or 1983, I was promoted to associate dean of students.

Glaze:
When did you retire?

King:
In 1986. Seventeen years.

Glaze:
So, I guess in that period of time you saw a lot of changes.

King:
Oh, yes. I was under six presidents, and, yes, I saw a lot of changes -- academic, social, emotional, professional. You name it, I was there and right in the middle of it. I was on the side, but I knew what was going on.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) We touched a little on the Negro Interscholastic League as far as the athletics. Now, I know that there were other types of competition.

King:
Academic, oh, yes.

Glaze:
What kind of participation did you have in the academic competition?

King:
Oh, God, no, I wasn't an academician. You see, those were for the girls, and the guys... now, some of us did. Yes, some of us did. I think I participated in debate. I think they called it oratorical. I did a little bit of that, but I wasn't into that. We had two sides -- the athletic side and then, of course, the academic side. The teacher would choose those people. We had spelling contests, math contests. We couldn't participate in science because we didn't have any science. But we participated in the Interscholastic League, and, as I say, even then we were winners.

Glaze:
Well, I met David Williams from McKinney. He's now Dr. David Williams down in Austin.

King:
How old is he?

Glaze:
He said that he always had to block against Mitchell, and he [Mitchell] always ran over the top of him. He said that you guys were tough.

King:
I know. They called me "Little Train." That was my nickname in those days. He was probably with Mitchell. He's in that group. As I say, I'm three years ahead of Mitchell, but David Williams... I don't remember him as David Williams. Maybe if I would see him, but I don't remember him as David Williams.

Glaze:
I was just curious. When you went down to Prairie View, how did all of that take place? You drove in cars, and you stayed on the campus, is what I understand. Can you tell me a little about your experiences down at Prairie View with those competitions?

King:
They were very, very exciting -- very exciting. We had achieved something to be able to warrant the opportunity to go and participate. You see, you had to have won in the district to represent, I guess, the State, so it was really an honor for us to be there. The experience was to see those campus kids. That may have been an inspiration for us to go to college... seeing those campus kids playing tennis. I never saw a tennis match here in Denton, but those kids at Prairie View were playing tennis and all the activities. It was just an inspiration to us, and we enjoyed it immensely.

Glaze:
How long would you stay?

King:
It would be on Saturday, so we'd spend Friday night. That's about all. We'd spend one night in the dormitory there. I'm sure we'd come back after the events on Saturday, and I think it was just one day. We'd come back Saturday evening. Sometimes we'd get back home at midnight the same way, but it was a wonderful experience. You know, you're from a little four-room school here, and then you go and see that -- brick buildings (chuckle) and the cafeteria. We had to go to the cafeteria and eat. We had meal tickets, so it was really a motivating experience for us. Saying, "Hey, I want some of this."

Glaze:
How many times did you go down there approximately?

King:
I'll bet I went about three times. Maybe my freshman year I didn't participate, but in the last three years, at least, I went every year because I made the team and went every year. I met a few people. We'd go in and talk to the athletic director -- or that equivalent -- about a scholarship, but most of us went to Texas College.

Glaze:
When you say most of you went to Texas College, why did you choose Texas College?

King:
Follow the leader. As simple as that.

Glaze:
Who was the leader?

King:
J.W. Reynolds. If I can remember now, the first student who finished Fred Moore Colored High School went in 1937, I believe. J.W. Reynolds was in the first group, then Essie Jones. Now let me check this out. The first, I know, was J.W. Reynolds, Essie Jones. That was in 1937. I think those were the first two, and then 1938 was my brother, the Nixes, the Foremans, the Rosses -- that group. I was supposed to be with them, but I laid out a year to help my brother go. I know J.W. Reynolds was the first one that I can remember.

Glaze: You said you stayed out a year to help your brother go. How did you pay? Did you have scholarships? How did you pay for your schooling?

King:
You have got to remember that in that day, you got an athletic scholarship, and the tuition wasn't but six dollars a month (chuckle). That's what you got. You got tuition, and it was six dollars a month. That's how we got it.

Glaze:
But you still then had to pay for your room and board, or that was paid?

King:
No, for athletes that's room and board. I don't know about the academic scholarships, but that's what we got. They had the athletic houses. I lived in the fraternity house, but they did have an old house -- a shack-where the athletes lived. They didn't live in the dormitory; they lived in the shack... the house.

Glaze:
Was that considered better than dormitory or less than dormitory?

King:
Well, it wasn't better in terms of facilities, but it was prestigious because it's where the athletes stayed. That's the difference. When I went to the Army and came back, I lived in the dormitory for a while. The last year I was there, I think I lived in the dormitory, too, because they tore the other houses down because they were so dilapidated. I think maybe the city made them tear them down, so we lived in the dormitory at that time. Also, they were trying to expand, and I think the library... that's where the Kappa house -- where I lived -- was torn down to make room to build.

Glaze:
The Kappa house stands for what?

King:
The Kappa house was my fraternity house. You had two major fraternities that were on the campus at that time, and that was the Alphas and the Kappas. So, someway they finagled -- this was a long time ago -- they finagled someway, somehow, to let the Kappas have this house.

Glaze:
I see.

King:
I don't know how that happened.

Glaze:
Getting back to high school, we were talking about programs and presentations. What kind of speakers did you have at school for your graduation ceremonies and things of that nature? What kind of people came in to speak?

King:
As I remember, during the school year, we didn't have such things as speakers coming in. Now, we went out, in terms of our little choir. We had a choir. We could sing, and we would go out to the Lions Club to the Women's Club or something. We would go out, but I don't remember, formally, anybody coming in -- academic-wise -- to talk to us. During the graduation, we had our baccalaureate and, of course, commencement. We had speakers. Frankly, I don't remember who they were, but we probably had another high school teacher -- black. I don't remember a white person. Now, we did have the superintendent and some of the [school] board members and maybe a few of mothers' friends that would come and be there. But in terms of formal speakers, we never had an assembly program. No assembly program. That just didn't happen. In fact, we didn't have anyplace to assemble.

Glaze:
I have heard that there was a sliding door between two classrooms that they used to open up on Fridays sometimes.

King:
Yes, I don't quite remember that. That still may be a little bit before my time. I don't remember that too well. But that's standard, of course. I was principal of a school down in Tyler, and we didn't have but four rooms. We were a country school, and then we had the door. Somebody could remember that, but I don't. Sometimes, though, we had recess, and then Professor Moore would ring the bell. Everybody would assemble up here, and you'd have to stand in line.

Glaze:
In line?

King:
In line. Boys in line and the girls in line. I think there were some times when he had to go up on the steps when he would talk to us about something a little bit. That may have been the assembly that I know about. As far as an assembly program where you had a podium and a speaker comes in... [phone rings]

Glaze:
[Tape recorder turned off) We had the machine off for about five minutes for a telephone call. Just a few minutes ago, you mentioned having a choir.

King:
A what?

Glaze:
A choir. A glee club.

King:
Oh, yes.

Glaze:
To go out and sing at different places.

King:
It was a chorus.

Glaze:
Chorus, oh.

King:
We called it a high school chorus.

Glaze:
Tell me a little bit about that chorus.

King:
When Coach Miller came... Coach Miller could play a piano by ear because I know he played for us dancing. I think we sang a cappella. This was the kids, especially in high school now -- boys and girls. It was a joint thing -- boys and girls. It might have been Coach Miller, and Miss Hodge may have had something to do with it, but we developed a chorus of boys and girls, probably an equal number of boys and girls. We would practice. Primarily, we would sing spirituals and maybe a few other songs that we would learn. At the district meetings at night, they would have programs, and sometimes we would be on the program singing. What we did primarily is perform before various civic groups in Denton, Texas. I think we'd sing at the high school. We'd go to the high school and put on a program. We'd go to the Lions Club -- any civic group here in Denton -- and we would sing for them.

Glaze:
Do you ever remember performing at North Texas?

King:
No. Our group never did perform at North Texas, as far as I can remember. We never did sing at North Texas.

Glaze:
Speaking of performing for civic groups, Tennyson Miller told me about the "Three M's."

King:
Ah (chuckle)!

Glaze:
And I want to know about your tap dancing.

King:
I'm one of the "Three M's."

Glaze:
I know. I know.

King:
It was Mitchell, Moody, and Mickey. Mitchell, Moody, and Mickey. We do that sometimes now. All right. [Mr. King gets up to demonstrate.] It's just little routine dance. He could play the piano. Da-da... da-da... da... da. Da. Da-da... da-da... da... da... da. That's a little thing.

Glaze:
Your little shuffles and all of that.

King:
Yes, (laughter)! Oh, we were pretty good at that. The "Three M's" -- Mickey, Moody, and Mitchell.

Glaze:
Did you just dance, or did you dance and sing? What did you do?

King:
We danced. And let's see... [Proceeds to dance.] (Laughter) Boy, we could do it then. Sometimes Coach and all of us would meet each other, and then we'd do that little step. (Laughter) See, we were very dramatic. [More dancing] Yes, the "Three M's" -- Mickey, Moody, and Mitchell.

Glaze:
Where were some of the places that you did that?

King:
The same place. At programs here. When the chorus would go someplace, we would go with them, and that would be in between choiring. Charlesetta and myself tap-danced together. We went up to Oklahoma. We had a girl named Charlesetta Brooks-she's dead-and we danced for money.

Glaze:
For money?

King:
Oh, yes, Charlesetta and myself.

Glaze:
Where would you do this?

King:
At the country club or various schools in the district -- usually for whites. They'd hear about us someway, and we went up as far as Oklahoma one time -- I think Ardmore or someplace -- at a high school program, and we danced the jitterbug and we tap-danced. Oh, yes. I could have been a professional dancer. That's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a professional. I could have been a professional boxer. Oh, definitely. I could have been a professional dancer. I could have been a professional actor. You know, the opportunity wasn't there.

Glaze:
You say a professional actor.

King:
For money.

Glaze:
I know. But what kind of experience? Where did you do acting?

King:
I was involved in school plays.

Glaze:
Here in town?

King:
Yes, here.

Glaze:
Oh, tell me about some of your plays.

King:
We'd just have plays sometimes. I can't remember too much. At Tyler, in those country schools, we would have little ol' plays at the end of school. Of course, we'd have plays, and I'm doing the directing -- showing kids how to act -- and then at the Teachers' Association -- this is in Austin -- the teachers would put on programs every once in a while, and I would participate in those programs. I think it's just natural. My oldest brother could have been... what's his name? Redd -- the black guy.

Glaze:
Redd?

King:
The black guy.

Glaze:
Redd Fox?

King:
Redd Fox. Redd Fox didn't have anything on my brother. (Chuckle) You know, my brother says, "You going to say grace?" -- and this is formal grace at Thanksgiving -- he would say grace. He said, "Good God, good grief, come on y'all, let's eat." (Chuckle) He could just say, "Good morning," and it would be funny. He could have been a professional comedian. But for me, I'm an actor. If I look at you, I can cry if I want to.

Glaze:
Oh, don't (laughter).

King:
No, really. I have emotions; I can cry. Even at the University of North Texas, the teachers would say, "Dean King, we can't tell when you're kidding and when you're serious." Everything is the same. I'd try to joke with them sometimes. I'd say something: "We're going to have to stay late tonight, ladies." And they'd say, "Let me call home and tell my husband I'll be late." They said, "You sound so real." But I could have been a professional actor or a professional dancer or certainly a professional boxer. I wasn't too involved in that because, as I said, I'm outside in athletics.

Glaze:
So, that was where your main thrust was. You mentioned something about how important teachers were as role models and how important it was... in other words, how much you wanted to please the teacher.

King:
Yes, yes.

Glaze:
When you looked at the teacher as a role model-that was one of the few professional jobs that there were -- who were some of your other role models?

King:
Preachers never were my idols. I didn't like preachers when I was growing up because I was deceived by a preacher once. It was the citizens -- Zade Jones, the undertaker. Mr. Hill, who was leading a certain quality of life. He lived in a nice little painted house. And the Bells. Mitchell's mother, Inez. I called her "Mama 'Nez. " She was kind. Mrs. Bessie Ross, who lived next door. Mrs. Ross lived right in front of my mother's house up there now. Those kinds of people were the role models, and most all of the older citizens like Bobby Williams. I don't know if you've heard of Bobby Williams. E.J. Milam, his father. "Uncle Tommy" -- he's not my uncle, but I call him "Uncle Tommy." He owned a barbershop.

Glaze:
Tommy Craft?

King:
Tommy Craft, "Uncle Tommy." He owned the Tiger Barbershop and the ball club. I wanted to play ball like "Uncle Tommy." So, you see, it was just all around us. We didn't have to go looking for it. Now, they had "Shack Town." There was "Shack Town," but even in "Shack Town," it was not drug-infested. In "Shack Town" it was just the only place that people had to go to have fun. I think they gambled a little bit sometimes, but there were no drugs and all that kind of business. Tankersley, he cut my hair free, just like "Uncle Tommy." We looked up to Mr. Tankersley. His brother owned an insurance agency. But that's it.

Glaze:
You mentioned you could go to "Shack Town" for entertainment. I had heard "Shack Town" was pretty much where Mr. Skinner [Skinner Street was named after Joseph Skinner] lived and where Mr. Maddox [Maddox Street was named for Henry Maddox] lived and other people. What kind of entertainment was down there?

King:
When I say entertainment, this is where they had shacks. Now, when we say "Shack Town," this is where a lot of the old houses -- in terms of where they had the dancing and so forth -- were a little more shacky than the people who had homes there. We called it "Shack Town" because there was nothing but shacks. This is where they had some people trying to have a business, (chuckle) and they'd board up the windows and put a jukebox in there, you know, and sweep the floor, and they would call themselves having a cafe. They would sell watermelons and pop in there, and this is where they would have a little cafe.

Glaze:
Who were some of the people that had little cafes there?

King:
"Uncle Tommy" during that day. He's still got a barbeque pit down there and the barbershop -- Tankersley. There was "Deke" -- we called him "Deke" at that time. His name is Levi [Somebody]. I think one or two women had these little shacks -- two or three -- these little dance places. But that was the only place they had. That was it.

Glaze:
How old did you have to be to go dancing there?

King:
Obviously, kids didn't dance there. Fifteen-, sixteen- year-old kids just didn't go there. There was no age limit, but kids just didn't go over there. I guess they had some homebrew. They didn't have canned beer or bottled beer. All the beer probably was made... I guess they had beer there. But in my day, we don't remember alcohol. There were some bootleggers that would go to Dallas or someplace and get it and bring it in. Yes, that's where it came from.

Glaze:
Where did the kids go to dance?

King:
Didn't. At the end of school we may have had a dance, but we didn't [go dancing]. At least I didn't. I don't really remember, and I'm a good dancer. I guess my dancing experience came when I went to college. But here, we didn't have any high school dances. I don't even remember a high school prom. Where would it be held or what would we do? So, we just didn't have that sort of thing. Actually, the decision to do or not to do was not there when I was coming up. Drugs and alcohol just weren't there. I never heard of a marijuana cigarette until I started teaching at the University of North Texas. It certainly wasn't available at Texas College -- marijuana. That's what it would have been in those days. If they'd catch you -- anybody -- in fact, some of the adults who were dancing in "Shack Town," if they saw a kid, they'd say, "Boy, you get out of here!" They'd tell you, "Hey, boy, you get out of here!" That's just the way it was.

Glaze:
Right. You mentioned that there was pretty much community discipline. In other words, an adult -- whoever -- was your disciplinarian at the time.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
In the same vein, as far as getting support from non-family members... I know Juanita [Milam] has talked about E.J. helping different individuals.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
When you went to go to college, was there any help coming from the community? Anyone that you could say helped out in getting you to college?

King:
Not as such. Not in terms of an organized facility.

Glaze:
Well, say non-organized.

King:
Individuals?

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
You're talking about Tommy Craft. When I went to pay for a haircut: "Hey, boy, you keep that. Save it up to help you go to college." Bob Tankersley gave me a little thing that held dimes. He gave that to me, and he put the first dime in it. Everybody called me Mickey. I was Mickey here in Denton, Texas. "Mickey, Mickey, my boy, you get that full, and you'll have you five dollars. Here's your first dime." White people helped me mostly. The McCrays. He owned the jewelry store -- W.J. McCray Jewelry Store on the west side of the square. I started working for him when I was sixteen. His wife is still living. Oh, she's in bad shape. I called her my white mama. I call her my white mama now. I go out there to see her. In fact, I was out there the other day because she didn't have any food. So, I went and bought soup and crackers and took it out there, and I fixed it for her, and I said, "Now, I want you to eat this. Don't you tell me no." "Oh, Mickey." I said, "Oh, yes, Mrs. McCray, you're going to eat it." So, when she really wants me, she says, "M-i-c-k-e-y." I say, "Oh, Mrs. McCray, I know what you want. I'll be there in a minute." So, when she really wants me, she uses that type of voice and so forth. But when I was in college, I worked for Mr. McCray, and when I went back to college, they would help me. She would bake me cookies and so forth and send them to me. Every once in a while, he would send me something and say, "Mickey, here's a couple of dollars. I hope it'll help you." So, they helped me as much as my mother -- more than my mother did -- because (chuckle) I remember my brother wrote Mother a letter. I found that letter, and we lost it. When Bessie was living over here, we found that letter in an old trunk. The letter said, "Mama, I'm in need of some money. Could you send me six dollars?" He said, "If you can't send six, send two. I can make it." Oh, yes, I could make it off of two dollars. No, we didn't have any scholarships from the community. It came from either individuals, or I'd come home and maybe Mr. Hill or Mr. Nix would say, "Here, Mickey, is fifty cents, boy." Something like that.

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
Of course, the college had scholarships. On those scholarships, the athletes would get six dollars, and that would pay your tuition. But nothing here in Denton.

Glaze:
Let me see here. Talking about Fred Moore...

King:
Okay.

Glaze:
As a principal and as a teacher, what was his relationship like with the students?

King:
Black Jesus... rather a sacred man to us. You wouldn't dare lift a finger or a hand or say a cruel word to that man. Not only did we have respect for his knowledge -- and he was a very knowledgeable man... could speak Latin -- but always he was so immaculate in his dress and his speech and his personal hygiene and the way he treated us. I know he called the girls... he would address them as "Miss" -- Miss Eleanor. That's the way he would address the girls, and he would call us by name. I remember him being angry once upon a time. It was Oliver Clark. We were coming in from recess, standing in line, and who was this boy? Edward Johnson, I believe. Kind of a big boy, a little bigger than Oliver. Kept punching him, goosing him. That's one case. The other case was a bully.

Glaze:
There was a bully. This is Edward Johnson?

King:
No, no, I got mixed up. This was another case. Now, this is a bully... this kid was named Reynolds -- not J.W. Reynolds -- but this kid was overbearing. He was a, big kid. You'd be playing marbles -- a game -- with him. He would shoot and miss. He'd say, "Wait a minute. That's a slip. I get another shot." But if you were shooting, he'd say, "You've gone. You have to get back." Oh, he was just overbearing, and everybody was scared of him, really.

Glaze:
Was he large?

King:
Probably larger than the rest of us, larger than Clark. He got killed, I think, in the Army or somewhere. But, anyway, he was hitting Oliver behind the head, just hitting him, hitting him, hitting him, and Oliver turned around to defend himself, and he pulled a knife. Boy, Professor Moore got this, and I thought, "Oh, no! But for some reason, he (chuckle) pulled out a great, big ol' knife.

Glaze:
Professor Moore did?

King:
Yes, sir. And he pitched it to Oliver. It was this big (gesture).

Glaze:
That was about twelve inches you showed me. That is a big knife (chuckle).

King:
Oh, yes. He may have taken it away from some kid. That's probably where he got it. But he just had it. He threw that knife to Oliver and said, "Now, boy, you defend yourself," because he [Reynolds] had pulled one. Now, that's the only time I've ever seen him react to a situation. But that's why we liked him -- you couldn't help it -- because of the way he treated us.

Glaze:
Did you feel close to him?

King:
Oh, yes, all of us did. Oh, he was a father. We called him "Prof." Of course, formally we called him "Professor Moore." But when we were talking one to one, we'd call him "Prof." We called him "Prof," and, oh, his wife was such a wonderful woman. I've gone to her house, and I've eaten at her house a couple of times. He was just like a father to us. You talk about a role model! That's the way it was. And he earned that. Of course, in those days, you wouldn't dare try to bully or fight with a teacher. But he commanded that kind of respect from his students. I don't ever remember a student trying to sass him in any way. So, that's where we get that from.

Glaze:
What kind of methods of motivation did he use?

King:
Association brings about assimilation. Just association. The association was just a matter of him being there. He didn't have to say a word. You'd see him walk, the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he wore his hat, and the way that he was respected in the white community. It wasn't anything he taught or anything that he said directly. It was carriage. It was association.

Glaze:
How effective was he as a teacher? You've been in education. If you were to rate his ability as a teacher, what would you have to say?

King:
Considering the techniques that he had to teach, he was tops. The only thing he had to teach with was himself. He didn't have any teaching tools. But he was an excellent teacher mainly because we wanted to learn for him. We wanted to read well to please him. He elicited that from his students. So, in terms of teaching methods in those days, he was an excellent teacher -- excellent. We learned from him.

Glaze:
How did his techniques differ from Tennyson Miller's?

King:
There are three types of teaching. Relating it to counseling, in counseling there are three techniques. The first technique is what you call the indirect method. You listen to the person talk, and you say, "Uh-huh, yes, uh-huh." That's the indirect method. Next is the elliptic method. The elliptic method is, you just give: "You can do it this way, you can do it this way, or you can do it that way." Give them an example.

Glaze:
You give them alternatives.

King:
Suggestions. But now, the direct method... the indirect method is the "Uh-huh," and the elliptic method is any method you can use to get the point over. But the direct method, that's Tennyson Miller. The direct method is when I went through there and missed that tackle. I missed the tackle, and Tennyson Miller would say, "Come here, boy." Pop! Pop! Pop! "Don't do that!" I was kissing my girl friend in the hall one time, and he caught me. He said, "Mickey, this is no place for that. Don't ever let me see you do that again." He was a direct teacher. So, that's the difference between Miller and Professor Moore. Professor Moore would say, "Now, son, why don't you... you've got... you do [this] or you do [this] or you do [this]."

Glaze:
In other words, he took that second choice.

King:
Yes. Miller was direct: "I'll get your butt, if you don't, boy." [Moore]: "You're not going to fail. Now here are some things that will happen to you if you do fail. You need to do your best. You can do better." That's an example of the two types of disciplinarians in handling discipline.

Glaze:
I heard one time that Professor Moore was for pro-segregated schooling and was against integration. Did he ever express that to the students or make that known?

King:
Not overtly, not verbally, no. Go back to Booker T. Washington. That' s the difference between Booker T. Washington and Fred Douglass. Booker T. Washington was for segregation. So, the reason why Professor Moore might have been that way... number one is self-preservation. I don't know if he had the forethought or not, but when integration came in Austin, Texas, in 1965... just before I moved here, they integrated the schools, but there were no black principals left... very few. They took them out as principal, took them down to the central office, and gave them some high-sounding name, such as assistant superintendent in charge of public relations. That meant that when the blacks and whites were raising hell with each other, he was supposed to go out there and sit there and listen. So, maybe, if Professor Moore had that vision, that in that day, if they had integrated schools at that time, he probably wouldn't have had a job. He wouldn't have. They would have moved all the kids, and he would have been out. Now, I don't know if he thought about that or not, but that's one of the reasons why. And who is going to give that child some beans or a pair of shoes when they need it if they integrate? Who's going to take care..? So, I could speak, especially in those days, for segregation myself, if I had been an administrator in those days. So, he wasn't against it per se, but maybe he saw some of the pitfalls. Even some of the educators now... that's why we hold on to Paul Quinn, Bishop (except Bishop is gone). That's why some of us from the old school believe that these schools play a major role in the education of Afro-American students. I've heard that. Even when I was... the citizens laid that on him.

Glaze:
Oh, I didn't mean it as a "laying," one way or another.

King:
No, but heard that. I heard that. I heard that.

Glaze:
I was just curious...

King:
That's probably where...

Glaze:
... as to what motivation there may have been.

King:
There were some blacks, I can vaguely remember, who were against him in those terms. So, I think that's where it came from, and being principal, he's going to have some disgruntled parents who are going to try and find something.

Glaze:
Yes.

King:
I couldn't say that. I'd say, if so, it would be for the reasons that I just enumerated. It wouldn't be just because no blacks and whites should be together.

Glaze:
I was under the impression that he felt that there was value in the segregated schooling, and for that reason... I think one of the things was his experience with the impersonal nature of being integrated.

King:
Quakertown, for instance. Yes, if that came out in any way, that was it -- Quakertown. He was quite involved in Quakertown, as you know.

Glaze:
No, I don't know.

King:
Oh, yes. See, he had a business in Quakertown. That hasn't come out yet?

Glaze:
I didn't realize he had a business. What kind of business did he have?

King:
It was a barbershop.

Glaze:
In Quakertown?

King:
Yes. He had a barbershop in Quakertown.

Glaze:
Now, this was in addition to his teaching?

King:
Oh, yes. He was in Quakertown before he started teaching. [The 1913 Denton City Directory listed F.D. Moore as a barber at 12 South Locust, which is on the square rather than in Quakertown.] He was over there with a barbershop. I believe he cut the hair of white people. So, he might have seen that... suppose a black would come into the barbershop when a white was getting a haircut, or suppose the black is getting a haircut and a white comes in. Well, they could just say, "Hey, Moore, if you're going to cut the black folks' hair, we're not going to deal with you." I don't know that that happened, but I can (chuckle) reason. He [might have taken] a look at that and said, "Hey, you know, I can make more money doing this... ". Maybe he upgraded his barbershop -- may have moved it a little bit closer. I don't know. I don't remember that too well. Of course, that was just when I came to Denton. I think they were just doing that. You have your records. When did they start moving?

Glaze:
In 1922.

King:
Yes, okay. When I came in 1933 -- thirteen years later -- there was still talk. There was still some people over there when I came here because I used to try and court a girl that lived over there -- "Old Scrap," they called her.

Glaze:
"Old Scrap."

King:
That's Oliver's [Clark] wife's sister.

Glaze:
Yes, Logan.

King:
Yes, Logan. I used to try to court "Old Scrap" over there, you know, so I know. Oliver's wife used to cook us some beans, and she could really cook beans. We can't sit here and say, but those people probably had some techniques and reasonings for doing what they did. I can only assume by the reason of logic to say what I believe happened. But as a racist or whatever, "Prof" didn't believe in it... only in terms of what was best for everybody concerned. Maybe he considered that.

Glaze:
Right. This is a little off the subject, and I'm going right past integration. When they closed the school, what happened to all of the trophies? All of the memorabilia associated with the school? Whatever happened to that? Where is it now?

King:
Frankly, I don't know. I have no idea, to be honest with you, but I don't think it's in the white schools. I don't know. If we ever find out, I can tell you what they should do with it. I would suggest that they put it in Martin Luther King Recreation Center. Build a special showcase and put it down in Martin Luther King Recreation Center. I just thought of that. Where else could they put it? There's no other place, unless they could build a special trophy [case] at the high school. Just build one at the high school -- former Fred Moore School activities -- and put those trophies there. That probably would be the best place.

Glaze:
But you don't know where those physically are.

King:
I really don't know. (Chuckle) When Professor Moore died... 1952, wasn't it?

Glaze:
Around there... 1952 or 1953.

King:
Right, because they sent for me. I was in Smith County teaching. They sent for me -- Mr. McCray.

Glaze:
Mr. McCray sent for you?

King:
Yes, he's the one who called me. He said, "Mickey, I want you to come home. Professor Moore has passed, and they want you to take his place as principal." (Chuckle) He said, "The superintendent wants to talk to you." I came home, just because he asked me. But I told them, "No way. There's no way I would accept the principalship. No way."

Glaze:
Why?

King:
A thief finds no honor in his own hometown. That's what it was in essence.

Glaze:
Okay.

King:
"Little Mickey, little Mickey." All I would have had to do is just sit there. Wouldn't have had to do anything. You see what I'm saying? I wanted to make a name for myself in the competitive educational world. I knew if I came here, I wouldn't grow, I wouldn't expand. Oh, my mother cried: "Son, you need to come home and teach these kids left here." But it was for personal reasons that I didn't want to be principal -- for the reasons that I've given. Because everybody [said], "Hey, Mickey. Hey, Mickey." I just didn't think I could make a contribution because I had other plans. I had other goals -- from there to here (chuckle).

Glaze:
Who did they get to take his place?

King:
They got Redd. C.B. Redd. You've heard of C.B. Redd. They got C.B. Redd. He stayed there until they integrated. He was there when they integrated.

Glaze:
So, there wasn't, like, an interim principal.

King:
No.

Glaze:
He just took it and stayed.

King:
Right. I don't know. It must have been in the summer. It must have been. Of course, I told Miller I didn't want that because (chuckle) I couldn't grow.

Glaze:
Was (Redd) from here, or was he from...

King:
No, no. Redd was down in East Texas with me. I knew Redd before he came here. He was down in East Texas -- in my area. He either was at Arp with Collins... now, don't quote me. He was in East Texas. I know that. Redd was in East Texas because I knew him in that area. I knew him before he came with Collins. In fact, I knew Collins before he came here. So, no, I didn't accept that. They sent for me to accept that position, but I didn't want it.

Glaze:
You came back in 1969.

King:
Yes, to the university. In September, 1969 -- the beginning of the fall semester.

Glaze:
Okay, so that was only a couple of years after the closing of Fred Moore.

King:
Yes. I think Fred Moore closed around 1965 or 1966.

Glaze:
Okay. What was the feeling with regard to that closing -- with integration -- when you arrived?

King:
I believe it was positive. Personally, I didn't get any negative feedback. I think they wanted it -- the general community. Now, I don't know about the teachers, but I think the Afro-American community was pleased to see this. That's my feeling. Of course, I really didn't get any negative feedback. My sister, Bessie... the attitude was, "It's about time." That was the attitude. If I had to weigh it one way or the other, I'd say it was very positive.

Glaze:
I know that there were some people in the African American community that felt that they wanted their own school.

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
And some people have said that they were offended that no one wanted to use the Fred Moore School. In other words, it was just cast off because nobody wanted to come into the neighborhood or for whatever reason. Can you touch on that?

King:
Yes, I will say, certainly, you're going to have some opposition if you would integrate the University of North Texas and TWU. You're going to have some opposition. But I'm saying, in general, that it was a positive attitude. Now, using the building... for what? Who would want to use that building?

Glaze:
Well, at the time was that not in a lot better shape than some of the white schools that they did use?

King:
Oh, you're talking about the Denton Independent School District.

Glaze:
I'm saying that at the time that they integrated and chose to use the white schools as the schools, the Fred Moore School was in better shape than a number of the white schools were, and yet they didn't utilize the Fred Moore building.

King:
Oh, no. Of course, it's not as simple as that. I'm talking administratively, now.

Glaze:
Okay. I need it from that perspective.

King:
In terms of the administration, there are a lot of ramifications to be considered. Number One: busing-wise, money-wise -- you have few to transfer from here to there, whereas you have more to transfer from here to here. [Points to imaginary spots on the table)

Glaze: Okay.

King:
Also, you cannot disregard the sentiment and feeling of your constituents on both sides. That is to be considered. I'd have to be personally involved with that in terms of the facilities and the building-which [one] really is better -- and I'll bet you, in terms of a high school, that the facilities would be better, in terms of a learning situation, in that high school than it is in this high school. If you really want to be honest. Now, I'm not looking at the building. I'm looking at the facilities, and I'll bet you that the facilities are better. I don't care what you say -- the facilities are better over here [white school] in terms of equipment and all that sort of thing. So, to me it would be an administrative call as to whether I would get up before the school board and make my presentation as to what you should do. I think that had to be looked at, and a black parent just can't say, "It was better. Why didn't they do this?" There are many reasons why they don't do it, and sometimes they're not all together, 100 percent, based on racism and prejudice. That may be 51-49, but (chuckle) you can't call it equal. You can't deal in equal -- 50-50 situations in making decisions like that -- administrative decisions. Sometimes the pros can outweigh the cons, and the cons are going to outweigh the pros. You have to look at all aspects of it. To me that would seem reasonable.

If I was called in as a consultant in some other situations, being (chuckle) black and in the community and in this position. What do I think? I never was called in, in terms of what I think, because they may have said something to the effect, "You know what he is. Look where he is. He wouldn't accept a school when... ." But we've got to be fair.

That's another thing in terms of integration. We've got to be reasonable, and we've got to be fair. Sometimes it's not feasible to do what may be right to do, but sometimes it's not always feasible to do it, especially at this particular time, right now. We may phase into it or phase out of it, but that may be two or three years, and we've got to look at that.

Glaze:
We've been doing quite a bit of talking here...

King:
Yes.

Glaze:
... and I've been asking you a lot of questions.

King:
Off the subject.

Glaze:
Well, hey, (chuckle) that's okay. I wanted to give you an opportunity, without having to go off the subject, to bring up anything you want to. Is there anything, in other words, that you would like to say that perhaps I haven't addressed, or is there something that you want to add to something that we've discussed?

King:
Past, present, or future?

Glaze:
You name it. This is your tape. What would you like to add?

King:
Well, I'll wait until I get my book written, and then you can use my book.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) Okay.

King:
Because you know I am. Okay, let me go ahead, and then you can turn it off. It would be the whole spectrum of the past, the present, and the future. I don't say what should or should not have happened in the past. Sometimes I'm not so sure that some of the things that happened in the past -- now, I'm talking about my generation -- did not serve as a motivation or anger. Take me. I think where I am today was achieved -- among all the factors involved in my being where I am today -- anger played a part in that. I remember one specific incident, without going into detail, when I was working in the Austin Independent School District. I shook my finger in the face of the superintendent and the school board, who I thought were not being fair to me in a particular situation. I said, "Damn you! You can do this to me! You have the power to do this to me, but you cannot keep me down! I will rise above this!" As a school principal, "I'm going beyond your school system!" So just that one incident may prevail in this saying "yassa" to this sixteen-year-old white boy. "One day, I'm going to walk among you white folks, and you're going to call me Mr. King, Dr. King." I think these things played a part in my life, maybe subconsciously or whatever. That hunger -- I'm not going to be hungry all of my days. I'm not going to wear holes in my shoes all of my days. Now, I say that in terms of reference to me, maybe those of us who struggled and went to college, I think those things inspired us to achieve.

I think something has got to happen today, other than rap music and drugs or whatever -- the negative factors in our society today. Something has got to happen to motivate youth, white and black, rise to be in a position where you have the choice. I have the choice to get out here and mow a yard or cut a tree down or not to do or sit here all day and talk to you. But I invented that choice for myself. So, I'm saying that today something's got to happen to create choices in our society. If we don't do that, in the next hundred years, this country's going to be called Japanese America or whatever. We're going to lose out. That's my own thinking and philosophy. Now, some of these other things that are happening, I don't know what else... racism or whatever is happening. Sometimes we are the designers of our destiny. I'm talking about black people. No such thing as "I can't do this because of... " You may not [be able to] do it now "because of," but sooner or later you can overcome some of the adversities that we have. Housing... you can get out of the project. Simple. Bessie called me last night. She wants to sell her house. Jimmy Brown [a realtor] and a lot of these people... "Get out of that project?" Minimum wage... get a job at minimum wage, and you stay on that job a year. Save fifty cents a week as a pattern, and you can go to somebody -- Jimmy Brown -- somebody -- and say, "I've got two children, and I'm living in the projects now. I want a better way for my kids. I have a house over there that costs $10,000. I don't have any money now, but I've saved up $200. I'll pay that, and I'll pay you $50 -- whatever." Yes, it can be done. Get motivation, get desire, want to do it. It can be done. I don't have much sympathy with people saying, "I can't" "I can't find a job."

I'm saying the average citizen in Denton, Texas, can find a job in Denton, Texas, if they want to do it badly enough. Just like that kid who called me. Right now, if I had four guys that I could depend on to work eight hours a day -- I don't do much -- they could make money working just for me -- what little I do. If I had four good men, I would expand, find more work.

Welfare? I believe in welfare, but you've got to work for it. These young people, young blacks now, have got to become more involved with whites. It is not a matter of you over here and me over here. That's gone. Alton and I talk about that all the time, and because of the connections we have -- Alton Thibodeaux. You know who I'm talking about. He's Al Hurley's executive vice-president in charge of equal opportunities. We talk all the time, and we play golf. In our group, sometimes we have twelve of us, and we're the only two blacks. We get to talking. These guys are our friends. They're my friends. John Hargrove, Peter Lane, even Al Hurley, Bill McCullough of the bank. They respect me. That's the main thing -- I respect them -- putting yourself in a position where people respect you. These guys that I'm talking about, we really love each other as people, not black and white. John Hargrove... we love each other. There are some people in the community that it's just a matter of respect. They're not my personal [friends], but it's respect.

Jimmy Brown... of course, I worked for Jimmy Brown's (chuckle) mother-in-law, but it's a connection. The other day I was talking to the guy at the Sheraton Hotel about a little girl that I know that wants to work this summer. I went to this guy, and he's connected with the Sheraton Hotel. I said, "This young lady's going to need a job. She's going to want a job this summer." I said, "I want you to be thinking about it, and I'll contact you sometime in April because school will be out in May. You can help us, can't you?" He said, "Okay, Harve, I think we can work something out." Now, he's done this for Harve King. I went to a place the other day and said the same thing. "Harve, we'll see... " Probably I can get her a job at the bank. What I'm saying is, we need in the black community more connections, more into the system. I'm into the system. They did it because I've done them a favor.

Glaze:
The good ol' boy...

King:
The good ol' boy, oh, yes, and that's the system. The good ol' boy attitude, the good ol' boy system, that's it. That's not the only way, but that's a part of the American system. And African Americans have got to learn to get into it.

Glaze:
Now, it's networking. It's called networking.

King:
Right. It's networking. You can call it brown-nosing or you can call it what you want to, but give me enough out of it, and I'll be an "Uncle Tom." If "Uncle Tomming" is going to help this little girl or help that family get some food stamps, I'll be an "Uncle Tom." It's a game with me. I'm only playing a game. I'm playing the role of an "Uncle Tom." I know who I am, but it's got to get better.

Another thing I want to mention. Have you noticed this? The doctor [Dr. Jack Kevorkian] who helped those people commit suicide? The doctor who helped these women to commit suicide -- you've heard about that. There's a doctor who invented this machine. He hooked it up, and all you had to do is push a button. He put it there and everything and said, "All you have to do is put it in here and turn it on." The person did it, and they said he committed murder. Now, he's in court -- this is the doctor -- in chains. You've seen him.

Dahmer... you've seen him, haven't you? The guy who killed all those fifteen people. He walks in -- no chains. It's the system. The system is not fair. There is no true justice in America. So, I'm saying that you have got to learn the techniques, and even though you can be -- this doctor -- at your best, you're going to get involved in some of these situations. But you've got to do something to try to keep yourself out of these situations. So, I don't know how, but something has got to happen. We can't continue. Our education system -- they're crying, "Money, money, money," when money is not the answer to an effective education system. Money is not the answer to passing high on the SAT in Denton Independent Schools. Money is not the answer.

Glaze:
Where do you see the black youth, say, the African-American youth in Denton, as far as progressing or regressing with regard to education?

King:
I'm not in there, but from what I can see standing on the outside looking in -- just an observer -- I say that there is something to be lacking somewhere along the line. Where it lies, in my opinion, is they're not motivated. They're not motivated to reach certain goals, personal and survival goals. I don't think they're motivated. They're not being motivated to do that. I don't think that they're motivated to achieve. I'm talking about black students because I'm more aware, more observant. If you made a survey of [how] many black students graduating from the Denton Independent School District are in college, I'd like to see that. I would suspect that the percentage is very low, and you can't lay it on money.

Glaze:
With the two colleges here in town.

King:
I'm talking about anywhere. But irrespective of that, I'll bet you it's very low whether they go to the universities. I would suspect those who do finish, if they go to college, they don't go to TWU or North Texas. It's a crime. Something is wrong. You can't tell me our education system, our police, our parents... all these adults we've got can send a man or woman to the moon and do this and fly these planes and have these wars and so forth, and yet we can't discipline ten-, twelve-, fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old kids. Something is wrong. We can't handle them. Do you know why? We're not willing to say, "No more!" "No more, young people!" Whatever it takes for you to follow a certain set of rules, which is necessary for survival. There's got to be some order in your life. "Now, here are your choices. Here are your choices: You can do it because you feel it's right to do it. You can do it because your parents or somebody has gotten you to do it. You can do it over here on an island surrounded by fifteen miles of water on every side. You can do it there." Now, I mean, what else?

I'm just that much of a disciplinarian. That's why I was successful. That's why they called me "Mean Dean King." A boy would come in, girl, and I'd say, "You take this box of Kleenex because I'm going to make you cry me a river of tears." "Girl, you're acting like a female dog. Honey, I just called you an academic bitch." "Boy, son, your mama and your daddy are out here working and slaving to help you try to get some book learning, and you have to act like a fool." I said, "Boy, whatever I have to do to you, whatever it is, son, I don't know, but whatever I have to do to keep you here, I'm going to do it. Now, get your behind out of here!" Am I bluffing or what? I don't know. But I'm saying what's in my heart, and he knows that's how I'm feeling: "I'm saying that because I care about you." And that's the answer.

We're not willing -- adults -- to practice tough love. When I tell that girl that and when I tell that boy, "Boy, life's too precious, and I'm not going to let you do it. I don't care what I have to do. I'm not going to let you do it," that's tough love. I've gotten many letters from parents saying, "Thank you for your tough love for my son. He's straightened up. You made a difference. He talks about you, Dean King, all the time." I say that, and I'm talking personally because that's all I know how to talk, is personally. But those are the kinds of principles we need in the Denton public schools. These are the kind of parents we need. I don't care where -- if I see a child that's of school age, I don't care who they're with. I'm going to walk up and say, "Hey, why aren't you in school today?" If I'm in the grocery store and get close to a kid that's there during school hours, I'm going to say, "Why aren't you in school today?" And it depends on the answer they give me as to what I would say. If citizens would do that and say, "What's your name? I'm going to call your mama and call your dad and tell them you're out of school today." We don't care enough, and that may be why. We don't care enough about kids: "It's not my kid. I'm going to stay out of it." That's what we need today. That's what we need, but we're afraid, and that's my indictment to the adult community, the adult society. We are afraid to discipline, and/or we are not committed to discipline. If we were, we're just not going to have it, and that's the way it should be.

I've been pretty lucky, but there have been some eggs thrown on my car. That's no big deal, so I'm lucky. But that's a "no-no," and you don't do that. You may not stop it 100 percent, but when you catch a kid doing that, there's a way to discourage them from doing it. I can stop you, but we've got to find some legitimate (chuckle) way to discourage it. If I have to stop it, I can stop you. As I say, I can stop a kid from putting that stuff. Sooner or later, I'll stop you because I'll sit in my garage all night long, as long as it takes, until you do it again. Then, when you do it again, I'm going to get you. I was driving down this way [gesture], and a group of white kids... one of them kept jumping in front of my car. I had to go slow. He jumped in front of my car, jumped in front of my car. (Chuckle) I told him, "Son, if you do it again, I'm going to jump out of this car, and I'm going to take you home to your daddy!" I said, "I'm going to tell your daddy [that] the next time you do it, I'm going to whip your daddy's behind." Oh, yes. And I meant that.

We've got to do a lot differently than what we've been doing, and it's all off in the universities and education. Hey, they don't educate anybody at any university. North Texas and TWU aren't educating students. They're passing through, and they're getting a certain amount of information. Information per se is not education. At least they ought to teach them how to use the information that they're giving them -- the techniques of using what they give. They don't know how to use this information. In our society, every parent says, "I want my child to go to college and get an education." You can't get an education in four years. You can't get an education. You get a degree. Now, part of your education is how you use that degree, how you can market that degree, which is a part of yourself. You go to college to get an education. That's the fallacy of our educational system -- that you go to college to get an education, and when you do that, that's it. That's all you need. You can go to college and get an education with all "A's" on your transcript, and you can't hold a job a year. You're fired. I'm very critical of our education, and sometimes I think about running for the school board.

Glaze:
Maybe that's what you need to do.

King:
Sometimes I think about running for school board. Then they're going to say, "What's your platform?" What's the purpose of the school system? That's my platform. Teaching and learning. That's the only platform I've got -- the process of teaching and learning. Effective teaching, that's my platform. There's a way you accomplish that. The first way is parental involvement. I taught sixth grade one year in my career, and I always said that I never would teach a child unless I knew his parents. In a classroom, I would never attempt to teach a child unless I had shaken hands with his parents. Now, that's my philosophy of teaching. How can I teach your child when I don't know anything about his background or where he came from? I've got to know if that's accepted at home or whether it's not, and then I can teach him. It's as simple as that. Do his parents discipline with corporal punishment or what? I've got to know that before I can punish him. I need to know that if I'm going to teach him effectively.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) We could do another tape, couldn't we?

King:
Yes. Hey, do you want to help me write my book? Cut that off.

Glaze:
Okay, let me just finish this up. Mr. King, I just wanted to thank you...

King:
My name is Harve.

Glaze:
Harve, I wanted to thank you for taking your time today and being as open as you have been with your experiences and your thoughts, and we appreciate it. Thank you.

King:
Thank you for inviting me.

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