University of North Texas Oral History Collection

Interview with Alfred Tennyson Miller
Interviewer: Michele Glaze
Place of Interview: Dallas, Texas
Date of Interview: January 11, 1992

Ms. Glaze:
This is Michele Glaze, and I'm interviewing A. Tennyson Miller today. I represent the University of North Texas Oral History Collection. I'm interviewing Mr. Miller today about his remembrances as a teacher at the Fred Douglass/Fred Moore School in Denton, Texas. This is January 11, 1992.

Mr. Miller, could you give me your full name, age, where you were born, your birth date, and little about your family?

Mr. Miller:
My name is Alfred Tennyson Miller. I was born in Fort Worth on April 13, 1913, so I'm seventy-eight and looking toward seventy-nine. I was the last of nine children. Of that number, only two of us remain. A sister, who was the second oldest, is ninety-one, and resides in Fort Worth, and I are the last ones. Her name is La Berta Phillips.

Ms. Glaze:
Could you tell who your parents were and what your father and mother did -- a little about their economic situation?

Miller:
My father was John Miller; my mother, Earthly Miller. They were from East Texas and came to Fort Worth, where I was born. At that time, seven of the nine children had already been born. Two of us were born in Fort Worth. My dad was just a common laborer -- worked at the old T & P [Texas and Pacific Railroad] roundhouse, where they serviced train engines -- and my mother did domestic work. When a problem erupted where my dad was working and he was relieved of his job, he then became a cement contractor and did that until -- oh, I guess -- the last twenty years of his life. He died at the age of sixty-four. My mother was born in 1880; my daddy was born in 1874. He was sixty-four when he passed away. She was ninety-six when she died.

Glaze:
Can you tell me a little bit about your parents' education? How much education they had and where they were educated?

Miller:
In East Texas, both of them went to the seventh grade. Seventh grade was about as far as most of them went at that time. The basic skills of reading and writing, English, basic mathematics, they possessed those skills to an appreciable degree. The oldest child was a boy. He went through college. There were three sisters who followed, and they went to college. Then the next to the youngest, a boy, went to college, as well as myself. So, out of that number of nine -- one died before she was able to finish high school -- there were six who did go to school, and three of the six finished.

Glaze:
When you say that your parents came from East Texas, can you be a little more specific?

Miller:
Tyler. My mother was born out from Troup and Tyler in a place...I think it's called Whitehouse. My dad was born in the same area, but he lived mostly in Winona, Texas. My mother, of course, was born on the farm, and when she and my dad were married, they began to migrate -- first, to Tyler and then to Fort Worth.

Glaze:
You mentioned that your older brother and sisters had gone to college. Where did they go?

Miller:
My oldest brother-the oldest one in the family -- was a pretty good athlete. His name was Lorenzo De Zavala. He went to Wiley College one year and then enlisted into the service during World War I. He was born in 1898, and he went into the service in 1917. When he returned from the service, he did not complete his schooling. The next to that one was my sister, La Berta. She went to Prairie View for a year and then passed her County Board and taught at I. M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth until she retired at the age of sixty-five. She was born in 1900 and retired in 1965 after forty-three years in the same school. She did go back to school in the summers and completed her bachelor's work. She taught English and journalism at I. M. Terrell High. The next to her was a boy who did not go to college. He went in the service. William McKinley was born in 1902. He died in 1973. After him, the next two sisters did go to school, and both were teachers. Mabel taught mathematics at I. M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, and Jewel taught the elementary grades and music in Stamford, Texas, and in Monahans, Texas, until she retired. After Jewel, a sister, Earthly -- my mother's name was Earthly, also -- died at the age of fifteen from some form of respiratory complication. We never did know what it was -- I didn't. I was the youngest and was spared the details of her illness. After her, there were three boys. The boy after her was an athlete. His name was James Monroe. He played baseball with the old Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Baseball League. Next to him was John Quincy Miller. We had a few beautiful names, and I could go over those names with you (chuckle). John Quincy went to Morehouse for two years. He did not finish. I went to Prairie View for four years, and I did finish. After that I went to the University of Wisconsin for a master's degree, and then did some work at [University of] North Texas. That's basically it.

Glaze:
Your father was a common laborer, and your mother did domestic work. How were they able to send so many children to college?

Miller:
Well, it didn't cost much to go to college. You've got to keep that in mind. My mother washed and ironed. My daddy was a common laborer, but he didn't send any of us to school. It was not difficult to go to school. If you could get down there, they would give you a job. You could work your way through. I went down in the summer. A friend, Vernon Hines, and I hitchhiked and ended up at Prairie View because that's the direction the car was going. If we had gone east, we might have wound up somewhere else, Wiley or perhaps Bishop. Anyway, they were building buildings there, and we got jobs. From then on, we could work our way. No, my parents did not send any of the boys to school, and the girls, after their matriculation, worked in the laundry and places like that. But that was a common thing. There was nothing unusual about that. As I recall, it only cost about $18 a month to go to school. Room was $6.00 per month when I went in 1931 through 1935 -- $6.00 for room and $12 for board. If you could work, as most of us did...I worked as a telephone operator. What else did I do? I worked for some people, keeping yards and things like that. As I said, that was a common thing. Sometimes, people like to glamorize that, but it was normal.

Glaze:
How active were you in school, as far as activities?

Miller:
I tried everything and did very well in them. I played football for four years. I was on the debating team for the last three years. I was in the band (chuckle) for two of those years.

Glaze:
What did you play?

Miller:
I played the tuba and then the trumpet. I learned to play the tuba because that was a school-owned instrument, and I learned to play the trumpet from one of the boys who had a trumpet. I played basically the tuba. You know what a tuba is, of course. The tuba and the trumpet were both three-valve instruments.

Glaze:
Sure (chuckle).

Miller:
By the way, two of my sisters also played piano, and I learned music from them, so it wasn't difficult. Also, in the second through the fifth grade at James E. Guinn Elementary School in Fort Worth, the music teacher taught all of us the rudiments of music -- the scale by notes and the keys and so forth. I think most of the ones who went to school back in those days knew a little bit about music -- never had any formal training, but had enough so one could pick it up and read music. Particularly, one could read the tuba (laughter). You know, the "umpah."

Glaze:
What brought you to Denton? Why Denton?

Miller:
Well, when you finish college, you go where you can go. You go where the door's open. I went to Vernon, Texas, the first year. My love for athletics made me want to leave Vernon because they did not have football. I coached basketball at Vernon. I didn't know much about that sport, but I coached it. Then Denton had an opening where they wanted a math teacher and a coach. So I took the job -- beautiful salary -- at $60 a month and taught a number of classes. If you're interested in that, I'll tell you about it.

Glaze:
Okay. Now, when did you come to Denton?

Miller:
In 1936. In 1935, I graduated from Prairie View, taught a year at Vernon, Texas, and then in 1936, I went to Denton. I stayed there until I went into the service in 1943, after Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.

Glaze:
What was the approximate size of the school at the time that you came?

Miller:
It was a six-teacher school. Professor Moore and I had the high school, together with Mrs. Hodge, who had the homemaking and two English classes. There were three who taught the entire elementary school -- Alice Moore Banks [Alexander] and Olivia Ammons and Annabelle Woods. They made up the elementary school. The high school only went through the eleventh grade. I taught arithmetic and mathematics in grades five through eleven, and the English in grades ten and eleven, and American history and world history in the ninth and tenth grade. And, I coached football and basketball and track and had a lot of fun.

Glaze:
When did they go to twelve grades?

Miller:
After I left. They evidently went to the twelfth grade in 1943 or 1944. I believe that's right. I went to the service in 1943. When I came out in 1943 -- I only stayed four months -- I went to Wichita Falls. That's when I left Denton. But, my work in Denton was the happiest I've ever had, I'm sure.

Glaze:
They had the four classrooms plus the homemaking?

Miller:
That's right. I had a classroom for the math and the English. The classroom next to me was where Miss Ammons taught, and there was a folding door that we could open up to make it kind of an assembly room. But, see, back in those days, the classes might be eight or ten people, so each always had, maybe, two or three grade groups. For example, I would have fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students in my room most of the time when they were not going to somebody else for a class, you see. So, for the basic skills of mathematics, the fifth grade was just as good as the eleventh grade because they did the drills the same way. So, they were pretty capable students, basically.

Glaze:
Are you saying that the fact that you had multiple classes per room that they actually learned more that way?

Miller:
Oh, yes. Well, I wouldn't have anything to compare it with, but their skills to me were beautiful. The mathematics drills that we would have the first day would be like, for example: "We're talking about four, double it, and add two, and multiply by five and get half of it and the square root of that. What would the answer be?" Someone would say, "Five." "Now when you get five, add one and square it. Where are you?" "I'm at thirty-six." "Add four and add ten and then double that and subtract one and divide by eleven. What do we have now?" "I've got nine." The fifth graders would answer just like the eighth graders (chuckle). I'd be walking around the room, and when I'd come to them, I'd say, "What is it?'' I learned that technique in Fort Worth. There was a teacher back down in the fourth grade -- I've forgotten her name -- Miss Asbury, I think. She was really dedicated. It was just a good attention-getter. When I'd turn to go to take the sixth grade I remember that I'd tell the eighth grade: "Look out there! That fifth grade's going to be smarter than you are, if you aren't careful." "Oh, no!" someone would reply.

Glaze:
So, they saw it as actually more a game.

Miller:
More so a game, that's right. Then, of course, they would branch out into their own...for example, the fifth grade would be working on fractions. The sixth grade would have had fractions and would be working on decimals with the fifth grader looking, too, until they're getting the decimals. The seventh grade would be working on percentage and interest and what-have-you, and everybody knows then that the interest on any amount of interest at 6 percent for sixty days could be determined by moving the decimal point two places to the left. So, by the time they got to the seventh grade, we'd almost be repeating -- it would just be repetition. Then I taught, of course, algebra in eighth grade, and then ninth grade was geometry, and tenth grade was algebra II, and eleventh grade was business math. We had a good time. It was real good. I learned, I think, more than they did. The English classes were good, too.

Glaze:
What were they primarily?

Miller:
English grammar and English literature.

Glaze:
Oh, you did get into literature.

Miller:
With a good assignment, you know, you'd learn poems and learn "Thanatopsis." L'Envoi -- you know, the view of death: "So live that when, thy summons comes to join..."You know, we learned a little English literature, like, "Get up and bar the door. Good man, ye spake the foremost word; you get up and bar the door." Do you remember that?

Glaze:
Not really (laughter).

Miller:
You don't? It's an Old English poem, and that was the fun part. They learned a little about Old English, also. The old man and the old lady were there, and it was cold and dark. She was cooking, and he told her to bar the door, and she said, "I'm busy, you bar it." This is paraphrasing. She said, "If it doesn't get closed in the next hundred years, I'm not going to be the one to close it." They made a pact that the first to speak would have to bar the door. Along came two strangers, and the place was dark, and one said, "I wonder if a rich man lives there?" The other answered, "We don't know." So they went in -- the door was open- and there sat these two people, you know, mute. They spoke to them, and they didn't answer. You know, they had made the pact. She had been cooking porridge, and they ate the porridge. Finally, they said, "Let's have some fun. You cut off the old man's beard, and I'm going to kiss the good housewife." I'm still paraphrasing. So, he said, "I can't cut off his beard. I don't have anything to wet the beard with." He said, "Wet it with the porridge." So, the man just couldn't stand it. When they were eating the porridge, she muttered to herself, "Muckle, muckle." Mumbled, you know (chuckle). When they started cutting off his beard, he just couldn't take it. He says, "Wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me you're going to kiss my wife and cut off my beard?" So, he spoke, and the last part said, "Up jumped the good housewife, and she gave three skips across the floor. 'Good man, ye spake the foremost word, you get up and bar the door.'" (chuckle) Of course, they learned a lot of poems. They knew all the verses of "The Raven." "Once upon a midnight dreary...." You know that. Everybody knew "The Raven" and "Annabelle Lee." Really, there was a lot of value in that. Now kids don't enjoy poetry. But, for the others to do it, you're also sitting there and listening. You might be in the back listening. We read some of the novels, but not too many novels because we didn't have any. You know, we didn't have any library.

Glaze:
What did you do for reference material when they were trying to write a paper?

Miller:
We had the encyclopedia. That was basically it. Frankly, there was not a lot of paper writing. They would do some book-reporting -- some -- but there was not much. They would report on the stories that they might be reading and the anthologies at the ninth grade level and world literature at the tenth grade level and American literature. We had American literature at the eleventh grade. That's where it was then. It had to reflect what was going on in America at that time -- American history and literature -- you know, showing why certain authors would write certain ways. Now, they liked, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere." A little Carl Sandburg was in there -- "Stopping at the roadside with the woods are lovely...dark and deep I have promises to keep." You know that. But, I think the ones that they liked and took pride in were "Thanatopsis" and "The Raven." Different personalities, different atmospheres altogether. Maybe, something like "Invictus" for what they called "black pride." "Out of the night...that covers me black as a pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul." Do you know that?

Glaze:
Who was that by?

Miller:
"Invictus." I'll tell you in a minute. "It matters not how straight the gate. How charged with punishment the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul."

Glaze:
Yes, yes, of course.

Miller:
That's "Invictus." I mentioned "The Raven." "Prophet," said I, "thing of evil, prophet still if bird or devil...." Did you have to learn that?

Glaze:
Not that specifically, but we did learn poetry.

Miller:
What they learned was that you don't really learn a poem; you just appreciate it. It's like if you go to the movies. You go to enjoy, and if somebody asks you six months later what happened, you can tell it because you didn't study it; you didn't make notes; you just listened -- just enjoyed it. As I said, you could almost teach whatever you wanted to. If they didn't know "The Star-Spangled Banner," You could teach it. If they didn't know it had four verses instead of one, you could teach that, you know. It was interesting.

Glaze:
You mentioned black pride. How much black history did you actually concentrate on?

Miller:
None at all. Of course, the regular textbooks had very little about it, but I could get materials. I didn't do it a lot of it, actually. I think it came later -- Langston Hughes, Carter Woodson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and dialect. We didn't really have a philosophy, frankly. You just did what you thought you could do, and you could show them that it didn't take a colored to learn or not learn -- you could learn. You know, "Think it over again. My lad, you have what the other best have had; you have two eyes and two hands, two arms two legs, two eyes and a brain to use if you'd be wise..." You know, poems like that. Those'll be Edgar Guest poems, I think.

Glaze:
You have me beat on that.

Miller:
Oh, I don't know. Well, all of his poems were character-building poems. Do you remember "The Bridge Builder?" Why are you building this bridge? You are not going to pass this way again." He said, "I'm building this bridge for those who are going to come after me." That was the moral of that one. The other one was...that's not the reason you came (laughter).

Glaze:
You'll give me my own class -- my private class (laughter).

Miller:
The salary wasn't much, but salaries weren't very much. I'm sure we didn't make what they made across town. I was working in Vernon for $55 a month for twelve months, and I went to Denton for $60 a month, so I could coach football for nothing (chuckle). One didn't get paid for extracurricular activities.

Now, I was fortunate in having gone to school in Fort Worth. I could type, and I knew shorthand a bit. If you know an ounce, you know so much more than a lot of other people, so they wanted that ounce. We had a little typing class in the evenings. I had a typewriter, and the kids would come up and learn the keyboard.

Glaze:
Where did you teach that?

Miller:
At the house.

Glaze:
Where were you staying?

Miller:
I was staying on Solomon Hill after I was married. Before I was married, I was staying right there by the school. You've heard of the Tankersleys? I lived right there with one of them. Bob Tankersley and I lived there together. I lived with the Lamberts -- Jim Lambert on Lakey Street. That was just around the corner from the school. There wasn't a lot to do, so you had a good time at school. I didn't have to go home until I got very hungry.

Glaze:
How many students would you have in your typing classes primarily?

Miller:
These are not typing classes, just students. "Anybody want to learn to type? Come on, let's learn."

Glaze:
What kind of typewriter did you have?

Miller:
An old manual, a Corona. Fannie Kate and Bobbie Louise's dad [Robbie Williams] had one, and sometimes we would do it down there -- typing. That was going on after I got married. I was teaching them typing. We just had fun. "Anybody want to learn this?" This would not necessarily be while classes were going on. Just like the Three M's. We did that after school. We'd put on a play or something in the evenings, too.

One did what would keep enthusiasm high. That's the way I was looking at it. I think the man who preceded me was afraid, and the boys would kind of jump on him a little bit. I think his name was Clyde Alcorn. I think my wife's brother might have been one of the ones, too, that jumped on him, and had Clyde Alcorn afraid. He was the one that I came after. So, I let them know on the first day: "We don't run over each other." (chuckle) I was strong enough that you couldn't pinch me.

Glaze:
You were what?

Miller:
Strong and solid enough that you could not pinch me. I didn't have any trouble. "Prof" was a little bit afraid of them. I think the boy was going to do something with one of them, and he jumped out the window or something. All of this was before I got there [Incident actually involved Clyde Alcorn, not Professor Moore].

Glaze:
You say, "Prof" had been a little afraid of them?

Miller:
Yes. I don't know if he was afraid of them. He really just didn't care a lot. You know, "Prof" was not originally a school man. I guess you've heard that. Somebody left, and they put him down there. He knew Latin. Well, he knew enough Latin to fool somebody. Everytime the superintendent would come out, he'd have a Latin class (chuckle). I don't know.

Anyway, back in those days, there was not a lot of money, and for those of us minorities, I guess you would call us -- whatever that is -- if you don't know much, that's all you can teach. You lived in it all your life, so there was no great change. There was no great social issue involved there. You just did what you did. When the time came to match up, you just wanted to be capable. I think we really got those kids starting to go to college when I was there. The boys went to college, and the girls went to college. Some of them might have had to work their way, but they went. They came back and taught -- C.L. Nix and many of them.

Glaze:
C. L. Nix, you said?

Miller:
Yes. Many of them. Vada Woods even went to school after that -- Vada Woods. She had graduated. Reva, my wife, went to school after we got married. I guess, it would be interesting to some people, but it was all in a day's work, and school was my life from the time I got there in the morning until maybe dark. When your classes were over, then you coached. Then, if you had some time, you would work with the cheerleaders or the little pep squad -- five or six people. By the time you graded papers...now, that's where I might have been the biggest idiot. I'd say, "I bet you can't work twenty-five [problems]." "I bet we can." "I'll bet you can't work a hundred." "I bet we can. "How many can you work?" And, I had to grade every one of them (chuckle).

Glaze:
So, in other words, you motivated them to do more, and then you got stuck with grading it.

Miller:
Yes, I got stuck with it. Some of the kids would help me grade them, and then they'd want me to find a mistake in somebody's mathematics problem. They were really good students. They were very good students. They knew all the basic algebra -- quadratic formulas, Pythagorean theory, and all of those. Everybody: "What's the quadratic formula?" What was it? "X" equals minus "B" plus or minus the square root of "B" square minus 4AC over 2A or something like that. Well, what does that mean? You can solve any quadratic equation if you know that formula. "How else can you solve it?" "You can solve it by factoring. You can solve it by completing the square. You can solve it by substitution and elimination." They were pretty good students, and, as I said, when you're teaching it to the tenth grade, the ninth grade is listening. I'd say, "If you think you can work it, you get after it." I'd say, "I'll grade your paper, too." Anyway, it was nice.

Glaze:
It sounds as if you enjoyed what you did.

Miller:
I always enjoyed teaching -- still do. The kids next door have come around since I've been here. Well, not anymore because I'm over the hill. And, I found out I'm not half as smart as I thought I was -- with the modern math and so forth. I had a lot to learn. I don't know much about a computer. I'm going to learn something about it (chuckle). I did enjoy teaching and all the things that we did. We had a lot of fun. If you talk with Elinor [Woods King], she'll tell you about her math. Ollie Mae Nix could do anything. D. L. Johnson is over in Fort Worth. Gladys Standifer came in the tenth or eleventh grade from Itasca and got right with the others. Well, they had a good time.

Glaze:
I'm confused. There were four main classrooms, plus home economics wing, and yet you had six teachers. How did that work?
Miller:
Oh, I know. Did you see the little annex? We had five teachers at first, then the little annex was just beside the wooden building. The clothing and foods room served as a regular classroom.

Glaze:
Is that the one that the NYA built, or the WPA or something? Are you speaking of that one?

Miller:
Yes. It's on the front just beside the wooden structure. Let me think about it. Annabelle was out there when we came. At first we had five, and then she came the next year.

Glaze:
When did they build that little annex?

Miller:
It had to have been built...you might check with Alice [Alexander]. I think they had begun to build it during the year that I first came and got it ready for the next year. They put a little shop out there-a very little shop! I had to teach shop, too (chuckle). Yes, I surely did. I had almost forgotten about that. But, Annabelle was out there. You have the name of a teacher who succeeded us. What was the lady's name? I understand she was a very good teacher, too, but I had gone by then. She taught with Mr. Redd.

Glaze:
I don't think I have her name, or at least I'm not aware of who you're speaking of.

Miller:
I was just thinking. The only ones left from the ones when I was there, and all before then and many after that, are Alice and I. We're the only two. Everybody else is gone.

Glaze:
When did Lucille Nix come?

Miller:
I think Lucille Nix must have come around 1945 or 1946. She was teaching up in Roanoke, I believe.

Glaze:
Did she come in when the Gilmer-Aikin Bill was passed -- when the consolidation took place?

Miller:
I don't know that that had anything to do with it, really. Annabelle went to California. I went in the service. I really don't know. She wasn't there when I was there, but I knew her. I'm thinking that she was from either Roanoke or Sanger. I believe she was from Sanger, but her home was in Sherman. You haven t talked with her?

Glaze:
Not yet.

Miller:
She came after that. I knew her because when we would have Interscholastic activities, her class or school would come down and be in the program with us.

Glaze:
You mention Interscholastic. That's the Negro Interscholastic League. Can you tell me a little about that?

Miller:
It was operated the same way as the regular Anglo or white Interscholastic League. The white one was operated out of Austin, and the black one was operated out of Prairie View, which was the state school. We had the same skills, drills and so forth -- the same contests -- except that they were segregated.

Glaze:
What were the skills? What were the contests?

Miller:
Athletics, first, were football, basketball, track -- down on that level. Then the other activities were debating, extemporaneous speaking, arithmetic skills, music skills. The music would be vocal solo, piano solo, quartet -- male and female quartet -- and then the mixed group of eight. They had band contests, but we didn't have a band. Large black schools had band contests, you know, regional contest and then state. I mentioned arithmetic and extemporaneous speaking. Basically, those were the ones in which we participated. I might be leaving off one or two. Debating, I did mention that. Spelling contests. The arithmetic went as far as slide rule drills and so forth. You would win on points. Denton won.

Glaze:
How well did Denton do?

Miller:
Well, in football we won the regional. That's as far as we'd go. In basketball we didn't do too well. I was the coach, too. But, in track we won. In arithmetic we won the state. We had to win in the district and then go to the state.

Glaze:
What year was it that you won in the state?

Miller:
In 1941 and 1942. Bobbie Louise and Fannie Kay were the contestants, and...what's the little girl's name? One was Venita Fox. Do you have any Foxes?

Glaze:
Not that I am aware of.

Miller:
She was a brilliant child.

Glaze:
Was this Al Fox's sister?

Miller:
No. She came to live with an auntie. She was a very smart person. They were "A" students in college.

Glaze:
Venita Fox. Are you talking about the one that lived with Ella Hampton?

Miller:
That's right, Venita, and she had a brother named William. He was also very smart.

Glaze:
Yes, and they're out in California.

Miller:
I didn't know where they were. Their uncle was a schoolteacher out in...I want to say Krum, but it wasn't Krum. It's kind of between Denton and Fort Worth a little bit. It wasn't Roanoke. He taught in a one-teacher school. Now, Miss Hampton taught, I believe, in a two-teacher school down in East Texas somewhere. She was a smart lady, too. I had a brother-in-law who, together with another lady, had all the grades down in Zavala. This was a brother-in-law of mine, Samuel Phillips. I found out that the kids learned so much from other. They respected the teacher. And, they always did because the community respected you. "Prof" this, "Prof" the other, you know. "If you don't do right, I'm going to tell 'Prof' about you." They had you do some funny things in Denton (chuckle) o

Glaze:
Like what?

Miller:
Oh, a little boy was running under a fence, and he didn't duck quite far enough, and he scraped the skin off the top of his head. So I had to take a needle and thread and dip it in some iodine and sew him back up.

Glaze:
What about a school nurse?

Miller:
What nurse? We could spell it, but...no, no nurses. No doctors. There was a hospital down there. What's the name of the hospital there?

Glaze:
There's Flow Memorial.

Miller:
Well, Flow wasn't there then. There was one down on the lower end of...as you're going to Denton from Dallas, it was right there on the main street going in there. It's about three or four blocks up. Anyway, if one had to go to the hospital -- the doctor -- you could go to the doctor in the evening. I never went to the doctor. If you had to go to the hospital, you had to go in at the side door. The black community lost one doctor before I went to Denton. I never knew him, but most of the people would go to Fort Worth or Dallas for treatment. My wife had to come to Dallas when she had a tonsillectomy. I didn't know her then.

Glaze:
I heard a lot about a Dr. Kimborough. Was he not there when you were there?

Miller:
Dr. Kimborough was at the Denton hospital I was referring to.

Glaze:
He seemed to have quite a few of the African-American patients.

Miller:
That's right. He was the first one to have them. Reva could tell you more about that than I. When I first came to Denton, Reva worked for...did you ever hear of Connie Woodford's Beauty Shop, which was right out there by North Texas State -- Connie Woodford and Mrs. Tinney? Did you ever hear of Thelma Tinney? Anyway, Reva went out there as a maid, and the lady taught her how to dress hair. She became one of the best. Once, Mrs. Woodford became ill [with appendicitis], and she wanted Reva to bring her something to the hospital. The lady at the door told her she'd have to go around [to the side door]. Connie Woodford almost broke a stitch when she heard about this, and she was a very influential person. She changed the whole thing. If you had a bill to pay, you'd have to go around the side and pay the bill, until she spoke out.

Glaze:
Were Connie Woodford and Thelma Tinney white hairdressers or black hairdressers?

Miller:
White. Connie was the hairdresser for North Texas State -- right across there at Voertman's. Then she died -- a very early death, too -- and Mrs. Tinney took over. But, Connie had a lot to do with it because of her affection for Reva. She said, "Wherever I go, you're going." So, the people wouldn't bother her, and Reva had a lot of good friends. If the other hairdressers didn't want to get along with Reva, she'd tell them, "You've got to go." There were some very liberal people, I guess you would call it -- whatever that is. Mildred MacCauley and a lot of folks around the beauty shop were just genuine people. Nothing really strained them up emotionally about race. Connie was really an angel.

Then there was a hotel. What was the one hotel in Denton?

Glaze:
I haven't been around there. I know there was the Lacy, but that was so long ago. I think I'm familiar more with the historical hotels. There was the Southern, and there was the Oatman Hotel. I don't know how long ago they were there.

Miller:
Someone else might could tell you about it.

Glaze:
Let's turn this off a moment. (Tape recorder turned off for several minutes] We were talking about that hotel.

Miller:
I was going to say the Goodhue, but Reva couldn't remember it, either. That's kind of a tangent to what we're talking about. But, there were some people-the Voertmans, Connie Woodford, Dr. Sampley and Dr. Smithey of North Texas State-they were really paving the way [for integration) with no noise being made. For example, back in 1938 I went to the coaching school at North Texas State, and that was only because Jack Sisco said, "You come on." Jack Sisco was the head coach out there at that time. Of course, I think you know I was the first one [black student) to actually go to North Texas State. But, there was no fanfare involved there. I went up there and talked to the president and others, and they said, "Well, come on. We'll be glad to receive you."

Glaze:
When you say you went to a coaching school, was this for white coaches, and you were the only black coach?

Miller:
Yes, that's right. Mr. Sisco and I were good friends -- a mutual respect. He would come to my games, and I would go to his. He was the college coach, and I was a high school coach. It was that way, really, with all those coaches. "Choc" Sportsman -- did you ever hear of Sportsman -- was over the track team, and they had some of the best track teams that there were in the small college circles. He was a very fine person. Then there was the one who coached basketball -- Pete Shands, I believe. They were just all nice people. I don't know. Fred Cobb was another. He was the golf coach.

Reva's mother worked for some of the wives of the school people and some of the ladies who were professionals. She would iron their clothes -- wash and iron clothes like that. Although she was working for them, they were very good friends. You know, they weren't the people that...you hear people talking about that they're mean to them. No, they would look after you -- come to see you when you're sick. If you were late, they would bring you home, because there was no bus service back in those days. They had to walk from Solomon Hill out there to wherever they were working -- both of those schools -- if they didn't have a car.

Glaze:
You're talking about coaching. Let's get into that a little bit. As far as physical education, I take it you did teach physical education classes?

Miller:
Oh, no. No physical education classes. We just had the basic courses, but the coaching was just an extracurricular activity. Oh, at recess time we would get together and play softball or something like that, you know, or pass-and-tag. Of course, the high school had an hour. They had forty-five minutes or something like that. They'd eat a quick sandwich, and then we'd go to play. We didn't want to eat; we wanted to go play.

Glaze:
Was football practice at the noon hour?

Miller:
No, no. All of my athletic practices would be after school, but this would just be activities that they would engage in. They played softball, and we'd scratch out a place to put bases and that kind of thing. The girls didn't play much. They didn't do much of anything.

Glaze:
Who would coach the girls or help them with the sports activities that they had?

Miller:
That was all mine.

Glaze:
You did it as well?

Miller:
Yes.

Glaze:
I see. As far as the actual sports teams, tell me about, say, the football team -- about your practices. Where did you practice? A little about your games, that type of thing.

Miller:
We practiced down on Lakey Street. You know where recreation activities are conducted.

Glaze:
At the (Fred Moore] Park?

Miller:
At the park, yes. We practiced at the park every day, of course. We had good teams, and the boys went to college and made first string quarterbacks and other positions. C.L. Nix was the first one to go to college on a football scholarship. Elinor's husband, Harve King, went on scholarship. Mitchell Jackson, have you ever heard of him? Sam Haynes?

Glaze:
How can you be in Denton and not hear about Mitchell Jackson (chuckle)?

Miller:
He was only a fourteen-year-old, and he'd be watching us practice, and I'd say, "Get in there and center the ball for us," because there'd be only fourteen or fifteen boys on the team. He became a tremendous athlete. He was a very good athlete, and so was Sam Haynes. They all went off to school and made first- string quarterbacks and first-string football players.

Glaze:
Where did most of them go to school?

Miller:
C.L. Nix went to Texas College; Mitchell went to Prairie View; Samuel Haynes went to Prairie View; G.W, Foreman, Herbert King, and Harve King went to Texas College. Then D.L. Johnson and M.C. Bell and Charley Jones and James Williams went to Prairie View. The coach at Prairie View said they'd rather come to Denton and recruit football players than Fort Worth because they knew they'd be clean boys (chuckle). Then they came out, and they coached and taught in the public schools in Texas.

Glaze:
You say you practiced at the park.

Miller:
At the park.

Glaze:
Where would you play your games actually?

Miller:
Well, we played our games at the high school stadium. They had never played at the high school stadium until I went there. The superintendent was R.C. Patterson, and he and I were talking about it, and I said, "Well, I'd like to come up there and play." They used to play in the...what was up there by the rodeo arena on Hickory Street? You know what I'm talking about, don't you? They played in a little place, and it was not good ball. Anyway, they let us play. I said, "It doesn't make sense. You've got a stadium out there and nobody in it.'' He agreed. They didn't give us any uniforms.

Glaze:
What did you do for uniforms?

Miller:
Well, the first jerseys we bought for $21.50.

Glaze:
Apiece?

Miller:
No, no, $21.50 for fourteen. They were just white sweat shirts, and we took some pasteboard and cut out the numbers zero up to nine and painted green numbers on them. From that we got some old uniforms from North Texas State. They were good, but the uniform was so big for little high school boys. Then we ran into a real bonanza. I came over to Fort Worth and talked with Luther Scarborough, the coach at Polytechnic High. He loaded me up with the best uniforms I'd ever seen. We didn't have any good uniforms when I went to Prairie View, either (chuckle). We, the boys and I, could hardly see each other [because the pile was so high]. These white schools played football with a uniform one year, and the next year they would use those for practice, and the next year they didn't need them at all. When I got there, I asked him if he had any old equipment. He had thirty-five or forty complete uniforms -- shoes and everything. I almost kissed him, and the boys almost kissed him, too. Anyway, they gave us the uniforms. It was black and gold, and I think that stayed with us from then on. That's why we called ourselves the Dragons -- Fred Douglass Dragons.

Our schools didn't go all the way to the state then. If they won in the district, that was as far as a team could go. Then, if you could make some games after that, that would be fine. We played Paris in the Chocolate Bowl. To show you how good the boys were -- we played I.M. Terrell and beat them, too -- Paris was the runner-up to the state in the big cities. We were in the little cities. You asked about the number of kids. I suspect we never had as many as two hundred kids in the total school...I'm sure we didn't. I'm sure that we did not -- maybe 180 to 200, and that's in grades one through eleven. Only about fifteen or sixteen boys played football. So, we only went to the district, but we played Paris High School. They wanted us to play them. It was around Christmastime. They were the runners-up in the big city schools, and we beat them 52-0 with fifteen boys.

Glaze:
So, you almost had to run all the boys all the time.

Miller:
You're right. Back in those days, you see, you didn't have two teams of players -- offense and defense. Now you have two teams -- offense and defense.

Glaze:
But, they played offense defense.

Miller:
Well, everybody did that back in those days. We beat Wichita Falls, and the principal at Wichita Falls said, "Anybody who brings fourteen boys up here and beats me, I want you to come up here." So, I left Denton and went up there.

Glaze:
So, that's when you went to Wichita Falls.

Miller:
Yes. I went to Wichita Falls and got a pretty good salary up there -- $87 a month. When I moved up to $110 a month, that was the first time I ever made a thousand dollars a year (chuckle). But, that wasn't bad, I don't think. Reva, my wife, was working most of the time as a beautician at the shop I was talking about, and she made more money than I did. She sure did. I don't think anybody in Denton on my side of town made -- any people that I knew -- over $120 a month. The undertaker might have if he got some good bodies (chuckle), and he wrote his own insurance, too.

Anyway, it was interesting, and those years were good years. They were learning years, and you learned about children. I guess I took a course in psychology in college, but I took it for a grade. I wasn't in college to learn about child psychology (chuckle). But, anyway, you learn about them, and I think they still appreciate us. I've got plaques on the wall from a couple of years ago to the "Best Coach in the World." If you call them now...it's like Elinor was telling you about Mickey. Harve King is "Mickey." Mitchell you knew about, and Moody was a boy named I.D. Moody. Those were some smart youngsters there. Ollie Mae, Fannie Kay -- they could go on to Sam Houston, Prairie View, wherever they could go, and be straight-A students. Venita Fox was another one. I don't know why, but they just took an interest in school, and that's when everybody began to go to college. After the first wave went to school, from then on that's all they'd think about: "I'm going to go to college." Before then, who went to college? [Addresses wife] Did J.W. [Reynolds] ever go to college?

Mrs. Miller:
Yes, I think he did. J.W. was a smart boy.

Miller:
Yes, he was smart. He was a natural musician.

Glaze:
Yes, I had heard about him. With regard to the athletics, you mentioned district and regional. Can you give me an idea of who was in your district and who was in your region?

Miller:
Our district was made up of these cities: Denton, Gainesville, Sherman, Denison, Greenville, Bonham, McKinney. That was the district. The winner in the district would go to a regional.

Glaze:
How far did the region go?

Miller:
That's as far as it went.

Glaze:
I mean, how far did the region extend?

Miller:
See, this was kind of the north-northeast, and the region from there would be toward the west. It would be, like, Stamford and Abilene, but most of those didn't have football. There was a time when we went to the district and won the district, and that was it.

Glaze:
And then you were able to go down to Prairie View?

Miller:
No, that was it for football.

Glaze:
Oh.

Miller:
That was the end of it. The small schools didn't go all the way to Prairie View. Now, where we gained our fame was when the larger schools would play us. They would schedule games with smaller schools to season themselves. We'd wind up beating them (chuckle). We wouldn't beat them all the time, but we did beat them. Our school [Lincoln of Dallas] beat the fire out of us the first time -- 70-7.

Mrs. Miller:
Was it Fort Worth where they knocked you in the head?

Miller:
Yes, I've got the scar right here.

Glaze:
What happened?

Miller:
Oh, we beat them, and I think they had been doing some betting. We were going into the locker room, and "BINGO!" Somebody popped me in the head. I don't know what he hit me with yet. It didn't hurt. It just stunned me for a moment or two.

Glaze:
Did they think it was an adult?

Miller:
A young adult. I would think so. I knew he was because my boys went out and tried to find him. I had to bring them back.

Glaze:
You did go down to Prairie View, did you not?

Miller:
I went down to Prairie View for the state track meet. That's when you win places in your district, and then from your district, your winners go directly to the state. We had state track meets. We won every one of them in the district. We didn't win every one in the state, but we did win the state one year in track. At the same time, I had the arithmetic team and the spelling team, and they won. So, I had them all.

Glaze:
This was the early Forties?

Miller:
Yes. Reva had to stay home on our trip to P.V. because I didn't have space in the car to take her. We borrowed automobiles to go, and we'd take seven or eight people in each.

Glaze:
Who were some of your better runners?

Mitchell Jackson, of course. James Whitlow ran the 440. Raymond Jackson threw the discus. A boy named William Fred Goodner was one of the sprinters. We just took six boys and won the meet -- James Perry, Mitchell Jackson, William Fred Goodner, James Whitlow, Raymond Jackson, and Y.A. Tankersley, who won the hurdle races.

Glaze:
What did Mitchell do?

Miller:
Whatever was needed. He ran the dashes -- 100-yard dash and the 220-yard dash and a leg on the mile relay. And, he threw the discus. Raymond Jackson was a better discus thrower and shotputter, but Mitchell threw the discus. As I said, he ran a leg on the 440, and he ran the individual 220 leg on the mile relay. He was just a big, ol' good athlete.

Glaze:
What about your spelling and arithmetic teams? Who were some of the participants?

Miller:
Bobbie Louise and Fannie Kay Williams, Opal Ford. See, we didn't have it when Elinor and Ollie graduated. Bobbie Louise and Fannie Kay Williams and Opal Ford won the arithmetic. Venita won it when she came along the next year. You didn't total up points; you just won whatever you took part in. We didn't have a debate team then. We didn't have any extemporaneous speaking then, just oratory.

Glaze:
Had James Jackson already graduated when you came?

Miller:
James got all of his beautiful training in Dallas. He left Denton, I think, in around the ninth or tenth grade. He came over here and was an outstanding track student and became a very brilliant -- very learned- person. He just kept going, and from there he went to college and then went to law school. He was very, very impressive. He didn't do his high school work in Denton, so we can't claim him. When I went there, he had just gone to Dallas to do his high school work. He was a good student and had gotten on the track team over there. So he didn't change back. He was a real trackman. That was his basic skill -- 440 yard dash and broad jump.

Glaze:
When you coached, what kind of assistance did you have from other coaches?

Miller:
None. Assistants? See, the only two men in the school were Fred Moore, who was then sixty-five or seventy years old, and I. I was twenty-three, -four, -five, -six, -seven, and -eight. I didn't have an assistant then. I had a friend who would come in and work with me sometimes -- Monroe Miles. You might have talked to Delores Miles -- Delores Bell Miles. Her husband, Monroe, taught out in Frisco, and when he'd come in, he'd come down occasionally and be with me. But, to say an assistant, there were no assistants. I was it.

Glaze:
What did they give you as far as facilities? I've heard stories about the old coal bin (chuckle). Tell me about the old coal bin.
Miller:
Well, when they gave us the uniforms -- Mr. Scarborough here in Fort Worth gave us such good uniforms-there was an old coal bin there. So, I got two or three of the boys, and we dug it out a little deeper and kind of made a den out of it -- made us a door and hung the uniforms on nails around it. It was pretty nice-sized thing, too, as I look back. The coal bin was up under the building -- the first room on the left as you go up to the frame part. Just on the left, we just dug right on out of the ground there. It turned out all right, and nobody would bother it. We didn't have to worry about locking it up because, if someone was seen with one of those black and gold jerseys on, the boys would take it off him and, perhaps, chastise him a bit. You know, that was the pride that the boys had in it, and everybody said, "This is ours."

Glaze:
What kind of support did you get from the school and from the community?

Miller:
We are talking about football? After the first game, we were razzle-dazzle. We gained strong support.

Glaze:
You were what?

Miller:
Razzle-dazzle, trick plays, passes and laterals, etc. They handled the ball like a monkey handled a coconut. To give you an idea, the Denton High School (white) was not doing very well, but our school, Fred Douglass, and North Texas State were the two schools that drew. We began to draw from all over. It wasn't just a black audience, so to speak. Everybody came, and the greatest compliment, I think, we ever had was -- in a way, I guess, you'd call it a compliment -- when the people were out there, and they were kind of chiding the superintendent because they never associated him with our school -- you know, mentally. They said, "Mr. Patterson, don't you wish that was your team out there?" He said, "Hell, that is my team!"

Glaze:
This is Mr. Patterson (chuckle)?

Miller:
The superintendent, yes. He never missed a game. After the first three games, he never missed a game. They had a little boy, a Mongoloid, John. You might have heard of him -- John Patterson. He was crazy about me, and he'd jump down on the ground. "Let's go! I'm swimming! I'm swimming!" I took up time with John -- took him swimming, too.

But, the whole day was school, from morning until night. If we had football practice, they'd meet up around my house at Oak and Wood -- right there under that light -- and we practiced in the evenings, at night.

Glaze:
Where would you practice?

Miller:
Right in the street. We wouldn't be tackling. We were just running our plays and that kind of thing. In track, if they went around the block four times, that was going to be your mile practice.

Glaze:
What kind of plays did you have? What kind of defense or offense did you use?

Miller:
We played good ball. There wasn't any one thing different except, as I said, the razzle-dazzle. Because we were small, we did a lot of passing and laterals. Do you know what a lateral is?

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
In other words, we'd make out like we were going to run the ball and flip it over to someone, and he'd catch it and it would go on that way. They would score. After we began to win...and we didn't win all the time. We couldn't beat the big schools right away. Dallas here beat us 70-6 the first year. But, anyway, after they got the feel of it, they began to win most of the time. I had don't think anybody was any smarter than he anywhere -- Sam Taylor. He taught physics, and he knew vectors -- blocking angles. I learned the science of football from him.

Glaze:
Back to teaching per se, what was the relationship with the students? It seems like you had a very good relationship with students. What was the relationship with most of the teachers?

Miller:
Not bad. The relationship was good. I probably had the better relationship because I did more things with them at the age where they liked to do things, that is, ages thirteen through eighteen or eleventh grade graduation. Those who were younger than that were watching. They were longing for the day that they'd be able to do those things, too. The coach always is in a beautiful position, particularly at a small school when there's only one coach. He has a title, but he doesn't have anything else. I taught all the classes, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. Every student in high school attended at least two classes that I taught.

Glaze:
So, you were really quite a role model then.

Miller:
Yes, whatever that is. No one is really good enough for that title. Doesn't that word scare you sometimes (chuckle)? I had a big influence. It wouldn't make any difference if it was in July at night. I'd say, "Hey, John, don't do that." "Yes, sir." In football, I could say, "Okay, we're going to bed at 9:30. I don't want to come out and see anybody." "Now, Mitchell, you're over here, and, Charley, you're over here. If you boys are running around, I'm going to have to talk to you." I'd say, "Ain't nobody going to run around." I'd blow the whistle: "Let's go!" They'd be at the park, but they'd be ready to go home. It was kind of a transferring of responsibility and authority, too, I guess, at the same time. If they believed in you, then you didn't have a lot of trouble. Lloyd Logan -- you have his name there somewhere -- his daddy wanted to know from me, "What have you got him doing?" I said, "Oh, yeah?" He said, "He's down in the room, and he says, 'One, two, hit it!' And, then he'd hit the wall." He was laughing about it. The boy was at home. He wanted to come up with fast hands. I said, "He 's learning to see the ball and not see it; but when the ball shakes, he goes." So he looked like this [demonstrates].

Glaze:
How late did you normally practice into an evening?

Miller:
When it's daylight. I didn't practice too long. We practiced maybe an hour-and-a-half or two. But, you had to be a lot of things when you just have fifteen boys if you're going to run something. I'd have to be on the defense, too, with the other four boys. You'd have to run the inside where you could fill up the line. Then we'd run the other way, so we'd have to get over there. Then we'd change over. This sounds kind of glamorous, but it really wasn't. They all did it, so everybody could play maybe two or three positions. "You go in at end and tell the end to go to the center and tell the center to come out. I want to talk to him."

But, football was my love. Track was my second love, and that was because track made good football players. In basketball anybody could beat me shooting the ball. I had never seen a basketball. I never saw a basketball game until I went to college. At Prairie View they were playing it out on the ground. They didn't have a gymnasium then.

Glaze:
That's what they said about when they played basketball at Fred Douglass. There was no cement. There was no concrete.

Miller:
No, no cement. We played on the ground, and we didn't win (chuckle).

Glaze:
What a surprise (chuckle).

Miller:
We did pretty good, but we didn't have a gym. Now, Plano had a little gym. Other schools had gyms. I don't know. We just had that little frame building, and "Prof" didn't care. I shouldn't say that. I don't know what the political situation was. Politics was something I wasn't aware of. I wanted to coach football. That had been my ambition ever since I was in college.

Glaze:
You had said that he wasn't that tuned in or...

Miller:
He loved the game and to count the money.

Glaze:
Money? What money?

Miller:
Well, there wasn't too much. You know, they charged twenty-five cents and fifty cents, I guess, to go to the games. But, we really began to make out pretty good -- do very well -- because we were playing out there at the high school stadium, and all those people would come to the games. There were not but two high schools -- our school and the white school. Denton High wasn't doing very good, as I told you, but North Texas had good teams back in those days. People were just hungry for athletics, and they liked our ball playing.

There wasn't any problem. Everybody wanted to play. Mitchell, for example, wanted to play, but his mother didn't want him to -- I went and talked to her -- because she said he could get hurt. I said, "Yes, ma'am, he could get hurt falling off this porch, but one thing about it is that I'll be there to pick him up." She became the biggest fan we ever had.

Glaze:
You mentioned that when you came to Denton, you were making how much -- -$60?

Miller:
In Denton? Fifty-five to $60.

Glaze:
How did that compare with the majority of the other teachers?

Miller:
Same salary, as far as I knew. I wasn't concerned about that!

Glaze:
You say that $60 was pretty general.

Miller:
Yes, that's right. There were no salary schedules at the time. I guess money wasn't really one of the things I was thinking about.

Glaze:
Were you paid every month? Did you get your paycheck through the summer as well?

Miller:
Yes.

Glaze:
What kind of certification did you have when you came to Denton?

Miller:
I had a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Arts (pre-engineering).

Glaze:
How did that compare with what the majority of the teachers had? What was the minimum requirement in order to teach?

Miller:
I have no idea, but all the teachers there had to have degrees. I don't know whether "Prof" had one -- Professor Moore. I never did know. But, Alice had a degree from Texas College. Eva Hodge...Eva Swan lived in Hempstead and had a degree from Prairie View.

Salary wasn't one thing I thought much about. When I interviewed for the job, the young fellow who had preceded me, they said, was effeminate. I don't know. He was a little-bitty fellow, and he did not command respect from his stature -- the way he walked or what he could do. He couldn't throw the ball, couldn't do anything. When I interviewed, the only thing the superintendent asked me was why I wanted a chance. I said, "Well, I want to coach football, and there's no football out in Vernon. And, I'd like to teach mathematics." He said, "What for?" I said, "I don't care what for -- anything in high school or elementary." There was an old arithmetic book called Stone's Arithmetic. You've never heard of it. It was the Blueback Speller of arithmetic. You've heard of the Blueback Speller.

Glaze:
Of course.

Miller:
If you could work Stone's Arithmetic -- if you could do that -- you were all right. He asked me about some of the word problems in excavation -- could I do that, you know, cubic feet. I said, "You mean those problems on page 248 to 265?" He kind of looked at me. I said, "Yes, sir, I can do them." So, he gave me one, and he happened to give me one that, while he was giving it, I was working it. [Facial gestures to imitate Fred Moore]

Glaze:
So his eyes kind of bugged out.

Miller:
Yes. I was his favorite person. He liked me. I didn't ask for anything. I didn't know how to ask for anything. You know, you didn't learn that. Like they do now, athletes can demand. I didn't sign a contract. He just said, "Come to work." I said, "I'll be there."

Glaze:
I remember I had read in the minutes of the school board that you had requested -- I don't know -- $9.00 or something like that to buy trophies for your players, and you had been turned down.

Miller:
That was in the minutes? I just wanted to get a letter -- a "D" -- and we were going to put them on whatever garments they had. I thought "Prof" asked for that. I didn't make the personal request, because I never went to the board.

Glaze:
Well, it was credited to you in the minutes, and I noticed that they turned that down.

Miller:
And, you saw how much they gave the other high school, too.

Glaze:
I noticed the discrepancy between the two high schools. I mean, that was kind of hard to miss.

Miller:
I think I was really dumb, as far as seeking things. You know, if you want to give it to me, okay. If you're not going to give it to me, okay. If you're not going to give it to me, I don't want it. I said, "I'm not going to petition you because you know what the needs are." See, in college we had no courses in administration, and I didn't know the inner-structure of school taxes and allocations for this, that, and the other. So, when I talked to Luther Scarborough, I just didn't know there was money for such material. I never even went to the other Denton school. It was kind of an off-limits situation, and I know it sounds kind of...you want to know. "Where were your guts?" But, guts wasn't a part of it. So, I came out, and I said...my family was kind of religious, and there was a scripture that said, "Show me your faith without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works." There was no need for tooting what you believe in. Others say, "You take what you have, and you make what you want." I never did have to ask for anything. Maybe "Prof" didn't, either, but I didn't have to ask for anything. I didn't think about asking for money.

The year before I went in the service, I had an offer at Ardmore, Oklahoma. I went up there -- I told the Denton superintendent, and I resigned -- about the 15th of August because I was going to coach. If you've ever been to Oklahoma, it's the most arid place you'll ever see in the summer -- dusty streets. Here, again, our people lived in a certain section of town -- no pavements or anything and dusty, no grass. I went up on August 15. The principal was a nice fellow. He, by the way, had courted my sister in college, and he wanted me because we had played Ardmore and had beaten them. That was a step up, and Oklahoma paid more and seemingly offered more. I met with the boys up there around the 15th of August, and it was such a dreary situation. I looked at the boys and where I was living, and the people there seemingly didn't eat. They were playing bridge, and I liked playing bridge, but they didn't eat anything (chuckle). I waited around for something to eat, and there was nothing to eat. Monroe Miles, my friend, went up there with me because he didn't have a job at that time. Anyway, I went up there on a Wednesday -- met with the boys and talked to them. I told Monroe, ''Boy, I don't think I like this." I called Mr. Patterson, and I said, "Have you filled my position yet?" He said, "No." I said, "I'll be there Monday." (Chuckle) So I went on back to Denton, and I got a raise. I went up to $88.

Glaze:
So when you left, you were making $88?

Miller:
When I left, that's right. I worked for $60 for two years and $66 for the next year or two and then $88. But, the thing that happened -- when I got the $88 -- that's when the war broke out, and I could have gotten a deferment. If one taught math or science, he didn't have to go.

Glaze:
Oh, an exemption-type of thing.

Miller:
Yes. But I didn't want to not go for that reason. I'd be the only "Jody" around here, so I went along and volunteered. The first four months I made that eighty-something dollars, and when I came back, the job at Wichita Falls offered me $120 or something like that.

Glaze:
And, off you went (chuckle).

Miller:
Not only that, it put me in a situation where there were state championships. I won the state championship in Wichita Falls the first year -- missed the second year -- and won again the third year. Then I started getting offers with colleges, and I said, "Ugh," and I didn't do it.

Glaze:
So you stayed with high schools your whole career?

Miller:
Yes, I stayed with high schools. The superintendent at Port Arthur had gone to Denton, where he would go to recruit teachers -- Anglo teachers basically, because of North Texas State and TWU. He had been there when I was there the last year, and two of the observers from TWU were out at Fred Douglass observing. They were in my class, and he came out where they were, and I was teaching. He asked me then -- this was before I went in the service -- if I wanted to come to Port Arthur. I said, "I don't know." He wouldn't say anything else, but he said, "If you do decide you want to come, let me know." I did put in an application, but then I went to Wichita Falls. He came back up there, and they told him I had gone to Wichita Falls, and he called me up there. That's how I went to Port Arthur after the third year at Wichita Falls.

Glaze:
I see. Getting back to Fred Douglass, I know a lot of the teachers took advantage of the summer schools for additional education. What did you do during your summers?

Miller:
I worked. The government was building Camp Howze in Gainesville. That was construction work.

Glaze:
What is Camp Howze?

Miller:
Camp Howze was one of the Army training centers. When Hitler was on the rise, and they began the defense build-up, I worked up there in construction. Then the next two summers, I worked at a shell plant in Fort Worth and drove a taxi.

Glaze:
What kind of shell plant?

Miller:
Making shells for...

Glaze:
Ammunition?

Miller:
Ammunition plant, yes. And, I drove a cab. That's what I did. I don't know. I didn't have an ambition to do a whole lot. I liked what I was doing in school work. I was driving my sister's automobile on the cab stand, and we did very well there. On the cab stand, a person could put his own car on the stand and pay $2.50 a week to drive it. Together with your license to run the cab, that cost about $5.00. We would make $100-$150 dollars a week. That was a lot of money. I was young and kind of courteous, you know, and had regular customers (chuckle).

Glaze:
You kind of liked that (chuckle).

Miller:
I sure did. I'd take them to the market and that type of thing. Maybe I'd take three or four of them to the market in one hand, and then I could reduce the unit price. They could go shopping down at the market for maybe twenty or twenty-five cents per round-trip -- five or six of them -- and I'd make a dollar, dollar-and-a-half. Gasoline was eighteen cents a gallon. That was a long time ago (chuckle).

Glaze:
It sure was (chuckle).

Miller:
You don't believe that, do you? It doesn't seem like that ever was (chuckle).

Glaze:
Yes. I believe that (chuckle).

Miller:
I was there because there were a lot of things I could do in Denton. I could be with my boys. I had a Boy Scout troop, and we'd go out to the lake and camp and that kind of thing. The people liked me, and that means a lot. They really did. I don't care where I was in the evening, somebody would say, "Haven't you had anything to eat?" I said, "No, I'm on my way home." "You come in here."

Glaze:
You mentioned that you taught typing after school, that you had this Boy Scout troop. We've laughed about the "Three M's." Tell me what the "Three M's" were and how that came about.

Miller:
The school had no activity for us. They never gave programs. What they would do is, if somebody came through, say, a little amateur magician, they would give a program and maybe charge a quarter. They would get fifteen cents, and the school would get a dime. This Mitchell, Mickey, Moody was a threesome that I taught to tap dance. I probably could go and hit that cue now, but (chuckle) anyway..."Da-da, da, da, da, da, da. Da-da, da..."[Singing to a beat] Now, that was Mitchell. "Now, Mitchell, Mickey, Moody, let's go."

Glaze:
And "Let's go?"

"Let's go." Then they'd go through a tap-dancing routine. They had a lot of fun. The girls could beat them, but they looked good, too, and they were trying. They were a tap-dancing trio. Ollie Mae and Charlesetta and Dorothy were my tap-dancing trio of girls.

Glaze:
Dorothy Redmon?

Miller:
Dorothy Redmon.

Glaze:
What was Charlesetta's last name?

Miller:
Brooks. That's the one who died. Ollie Mae Nix is over in Fort Worth -- Ollie Mae Belfrey now. But Elinor will tell you about her. They were just like that [holds up two intertwined fingers].

Glaze:
Where did they perform? Were there contests? You said the girls beat the boys.

Miller:
I mean, they learned the fastest. We gave a program, and we had jokes and so forth and singing. It was kind of, like, a minstrel show. Really, it was a minstrel show. I taught them jokes. I don't know where I learned them, but I learned them somewhere.

Glaze:
Where did you perform?

Miller:
I told you there were two rooms on one side [of the school] that had folding doors between them, and I guess they'd hold about seventy-five, eighty, a hundred people. So, they had to give the program three times. I think that's right. They gave it for the elementary and for the junior high and maybe charged, like, twenty-five cents -- something like that. The performers were so good that everybody -- when they heard about them -- was standing in the aisles watching them dance. Well, they had never had anything at all where kids really were involved. I was, supposedly, a pretty good church person -- which was fine -- and it was all very wholesome. They had a lot of confidence in our ability to learn a regular old clog step and the slides and the glides and whatever. We did it in Prairie View. We always had programs like that, and so I just brought them on to the Denton school. Every year there was a talent show at Prairie View. You were in part of it, but we were also looking and learning. You know, you were both a participant and a spectator. So, a lot of these scenes and acts and jokes and what-have-you, we picked them up there. Some of them might have been a little shady, but I didn't fool with the shady ones (chuckle).

Glaze:
So, in addition to your coaching and your teaching, you really put in a lot of effort and time on your own time.

Miller:
Oh, yes, at least six days out of the week, including Saturdays, There's no question about that. We'd even get together and go out and go fishing together. Kids were my life -- boys and girls. As I told you, we went to Carlsbad, New Mexico, with the parents.

Glaze:
Yes. Tell me about that. How did that trip to Carlsbad come about?

Miller:
It came about out of my curiosity. We were studying Texas history and geography, and Carlsbad Caverns came up. I said, "How would you like to go out there next summer?" They said they would like to. It might have been in January. I said, "If you can manage to save ten cents a week [I did some figuring] to where everybody would have at least $8.00, we could go in the summer." I don't know. We took two school buses. They didn't cost much. Parents went. We went halfway, and we stopped for eating and overnight camping...

Glaze:
Who were some of the parents that chaperoned?

Miller:
Mrs. Mamie Williams and Mrs. Roxie Rucker. I'm trying to think who they were now. Somebody in the Hill family, I think it was. I've really forgotten now. I can think about it, though, and tell you. Well, about three or four and I and "Doc" Mulkey, who was the driver. Funny thing, we got our tents from the Boy Scouts' headquarters. They let us use the tents, and we cooked on the way out. We had one or two teachers. I'll have to ask Alice because it's kind of shady in my mind. This was now 1941. We went all the way out there. Not only that, we did other things. We had school picnics at the end of school. We'd go out on a ranch there. I think the owner's name was Tom Cole. We'd get some barrels, and we'd have barrels of lemonade, and everybody would prepare food, etc. Just a lot of get-togethers. Nothing rowdy or anything. We'd even go swimming in the creek out there. I wish I'd have known you were going to ask that because I'd have searched my memory better. People were so nice to us. They would let us come out there on the ranch and spend a full day.

Glaze:
Where was the ranch located?

Miller:
From Denton going toward Decatur is west, isn't it? It was southwest because we could go right straight out Hickory street, all the way out to the end, and turn south and go in that direction about six or eight miles. It's still well-known out there, too. I know my age is catching up with me now because I don't remember the name of the ranch. But, somebody will remember. We went out there and took our school picnics there. Everybody went to that.

Glaze:
When you say everyone, are you speaking...

Miller:
All the students and the teachers and everybody. Different groups would make up lunch baskets and what-have-you. We got a barrel from somewhere and made a barrel of lemonade.

Glaze:
What was the morale like among the teachers?

Miller:
It was good. I think there were times when "Prof" might have felt that maybe we were taking over too much, but it wasn't bad at all. I'd always let him know what was on my mind -- what we would like to do -- and he was always for it. And, they were, too -- Olivia Ammons, Eva Hodge, and Alice. Morale was all right. We didn't have any trouble. We didn't have many fights and arguments and that kind of thing because the high schoolers kind of set a pretty good pace. Prior to that, there had been some problems, but when we got things started and had a good athletic program...athletics will do a lot. We had not altercations among students.

Glaze:
When you say they had problems, can you explain what you mean by that?

Miller:
There were parent and principal confrontations before I went there. I wasn't there and didn't know what the problems were.

Glaze:
What years are you talking about?

Miller:
The early Thirties up until the time I got there. One of the boys -- I think his name was Andrew Hardin -- and "Prof" had it, and the boy jumped out a window and came at him with a knife. They would have socials, and the outsiders could come in. Well, when I was there, they couldn't come in. They couldn't understand that at first, but soon they found out, and they quit trying.

Glaze:
In other words, some of the outsiders coming in caused trouble. Was that it?

Miller:
That's right -- caused trouble. Nobody, seemingly, would confront them. I would. I let them know that "this is the way it's going to be now. If you don't want to take it that way, whichever way you want to take it, we're going to take it." I sounded bad, but I wasn't bad (chuckle). I had a pretty good reputation. They knew I was not a weakling. I didn't have any trouble with the parents, but there was a Jack Young, and Annie Vernelle's husband was Clarence Jackson. Have you ever heard of him?

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
Jack Young was the son of an every-now-and-then undertaker. They came up, and I said, "You can't come in." He said, "I've got my money." "Come on. Let's go, boy." "What's the matter? I can't come in?" I just walked right out there where they were and stood right in the midst of them. "You can't tell me to get off campus." "One way or another, you have to get off the campus." I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't (chuckle). But, with the boys we had a lot of activities. Sometimes we'd wrestle and things like that -- the big, ol' boys.

Glaze:
Between the teachers there at the school, what kind of meetings or...how did you go about laying your strategy for the year?

Miller:
Oh, you're flattering. We had no strategy. I was going to teach the math and English, and Miss Hodge was going to teach some English and the homemaking, and "Prof" was going to teach the Latin and some history that I didn't teach. That was it. We had no faculty meetings to discuss content and context.

Glaze:
Any problems that you might be facing?

Miller:
Problems? No. Nobody was there but five or six of us. Had there been more teachers, you'd probably have had to have meetings, but we didn't have to have one. He told me one time, "I'm the principal!" I said, "That's right, 'Prof,' I know that. But, if you have to tell me, it scares you." I told him, "Never will you have to worry about my trying to usurp your authority."

Glaze:
How was dealing with "Prof" as an administrator?

Miller:
There was not a lot of dealing. He was all right. It was hard to get the picture that there was no cooperative action among the teachers -- no discussions about how we're going to go about doing this, that, and the other. We could count the kids, and there was a lock-step curriculum. There were no choices. Whatever grade you were in, you took those courses. No foreign languages. If I could work a little general science activity, fine, but there was nothing at all where you got together, except he did want the teachers to put on a program wherever you are to raise some money. I didn't do that.

Glaze:
Put on a program to raise money.

Miller:
Sell something to raise money.

Glaze:
Money for what? Anything in particular?

Miller:
I never knew, but I think it was so that there'd be an activity fund. Nothing in particular because we didn't promote anything. As I understood it, before I got there, it was a little shady. Now, I didn't see this, but nobody knew what happened to it. I said, "Well, what are we raising it for?" Nobody could answer. Sometimes they said we were raising it to get some materials for kids to work with, but they didn't have to do that because each teacher was kind of responsible for that. Now, the school board did send out drawing materials and some Crayolas and things like that for the lower grades. At my level, they didn't need any of that. They just needed textbooks and the rest of the material. Students furnished their writing material and what-have-you.

Glaze:
You mentioned something about a science project. What was science like there?

Miller:
As I said if we could work on a science activity. For example, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grade, they had health and science readers. In general science, what did we do? We didn't have anything to work with. We might discuss the earth's atmosphere, or we might discuss photosynthesis -- something like that. It was not a course as such. Sometimes, a discussion in our mathematics or in our English classes would project your mind into some kind of science correlation. That's when we would talk about the weather and the highs and the lows and the easterlies -- all those basic things. Of course, in math you would have problems that would have to do with temperature. That's when you could teach the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit. We let them know that one was five-ninths of the other less thirty-two, and the other was nine-fifths of that one plus thirty-two. Basic little formulas and that. That would come out of mathematics. Then you could understand why one scale of zero to 100 is the same as a scale from 32 above zero to 212. Now, the zero on one was 32 on the other, and 100 on is 212 on the other. Those things -- that's about all -- or you might talk about the annual rings on the tree.

Glaze:
What about the white teachers? What kind of intercommunication did you have with the white teachers?

Miller:
None.

Glaze:
What about with the white school board?

Miller:
None. Only with the superintendent. When he would come out and visit, that's when he assessed the progress of the school. You could tell when he enjoyed himself because he would stay in a class maybe half-a-day.

Glaze:
How often would this happen?

Miller:
Maybe in the course of a year, three or four times.

Glaze:
Was this an announced visit or unannounced?

Miller:
No, spontaneous, unannounced.

Glaze:
So, you never knew when he was going to come walking in.

Miller:
(Chuckle) Where "Prof" was, he could see, and he'd send one of the students: "Superintendent's coming!"

Glaze:
What kind of dress code were you expected to keep?

Miller:
The teachers?

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
Oh, I don't know what the expectation was. Our male teachers, when we were going to school, wore a coat and tie and what-have-you, and so did I when I began to teach. The ladies did have one problem during the war, and that was about stockings. The ladies had a hard time getting stockings. Did you hear about that?

Glaze:
I knew that they did.

Miller:
Oh, they did.

They invented nylon, I think. They tried occasionally to get me to go to Dallas, but I didn't want to go.

Glaze:
Go to where?

Miller:
Dallas. That's where they could get beer. Now, "Prof" was not a drunkard. He liked beer: "I like my beer," he would say. I think I'd never tasted beer.

Glaze:
You mean, until you came to Denton?

Miller:
I didn't taste it then. I'm thinking back as a child. Somebody in our neighborhood had something called "choc." It was kind of coffee-colored something -- a brew. "Choc." Home-brew. Ever heard of home-brew?

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
Have you ever seen it?

Glaze:
No.

Miller:
I think it's kind of cloudy. But, I didn't fool with it. It never did appeal to me. I don't know. We're not talking about it, anyway. Our own family was pretty strict. I never saw a drink of anything in my house. I think our brothers drank. I'm sure they did, but not in my house. When I finished high school I was fifteen, and I worked with my dad until I was sixteen, and I went to school when I was seventeen. That was during the Depression, so that side of life was one a lot of us didn't get to see much of because we didn't go out. Everybody went home. I could play piano, like I said.

Glaze:
So you filled your life with other things.

Miller:
Other things. I guess from crayfishing to swimming to playing something (chuckle).

Glaze:
You said there wasn't much communication between the teacher and the principal, etc. How did you feel as far as "Prof's" support of what you were doing?

Miller:
It really wasn't necessary. I didn't really think about it. Each teacher was responsible for his/her subject matter. Now, the year before I went to Denton, I worked in Vernon. The young man who was principal and I were the same age. We both went there at the same time. We were good friends. We taught the total high school -- he and I. There were three teachers who taught the bottom grades. He and I taught from seven through eleven. The others taught, like, one and two, three and four, and five and six. There was really nothing to talk about as far as curriculum and as far as impact and as far as courses of study and what to cover. My saying was, "We've got 240 pages in this arithmetic book, and I'm going to try to get 120 of them by the middle of the year." You did it yourself.

Glaze:
So, it was your own pace.

Miller:
It was at the teacher's set pace, that's right.

Glaze:
With "Prof" you made the comment about assuring him that you were not trying to usurp any of this authority.

Miller:
I think I know what you're talking about. Teachers are either liked, or they're not liked. If they call one's name too many times, and don't call the other's name as many times, there might be a little remark that he's trying to run things. It's nothing concrete, but you can sense a change by the way they're looking at you.

Glaze:
Was it a sense of jealousy?

Miller:
I think it would be that, in a way, yes. It usually happens to the one who is more visible -- whoever he is -- the person who is the most visible and who, by comparison, seems to be very, very visible. There's not much glamour in sewing on a collar on a dress in the homemaking room. But, there's a lot of glamour when you're doing the kind of things that everybody wants to see. They want to see football. They want to cheer track. They want to see the unusual, and they liked the people who taught those things. Even now, coaches can have a tremendous impact on youngsters because they are the most visible. You're talking about role models in the pure sense of the word. A lot of people will say, "I want to be like Miss Wright when I grow up. She smiles all the time, but she can be firm if she needs to. You always know who she is. She's not a chameleon." They could come to you and ask you some questions, and they can come to you for help. You don't mind sitting on the floor with them and showing them the answers to their question. I think when one establishes that kind of rapport, and someone else does not seek to establish that rapport...there's a difference between saying, "Come here, boy," and "John, come here." Well, you called his name or her name. One thing, a person needs to know is that their name is not just a matter of a form. They really want you to know who they are. "You're Miss So-and-So's daughter. Don't I know you?" One can establish himself or herself. You either can or you can't, I guess. That might sound like it's a little too horn-tooting, but I don't mean it that way. See, some people just go over better because of their involvement, and some people are quite aloof.

Glaze:
How would you term "Prof?" How did he relate to students?

Miller:
Oh, gosh, you shouldn't ask me.

Glaze:
Just from your perspective.

Miller:
From my perspective, I would say that...how do I want to say this? How did he relate to students? Maybe I should say it kind of like this -- minimal. He knew them, and they were okay and everything. He spoke to them and everything else, but they didn't necessarily walk down the walk together and talk. He didn't ever come in and say, "Hey, stop by. I want to tell you something. I want to show you something." His interpersonal side was not one that would make friends. He didn't make enemies either.

Glaze:
He was somewhat aloof then.

Miller:
Aloof is not a good word. I would say it was not his goal to make sure that teachers and students would be the best that they could be, whatever that was. There are many people like this, so it's not good to attach this to "Prof." There are a lot of people who really say, "I have a job to do, so I'm going to do my job, and that's it" There are other people who say, "My job also suggests that I get involved with this project, that I get involved with this person, that we have some good interaction. We do things, and we have some commonalities."

"Prof" was not a person who had -- I mentioned psychology -- who had not been involved as an adult with youngsters. He didn't do anything with them at church or on the picnic grounds and things like that. But, he was nice. There was behind it, I guess, a feeling of insecurity that might come because "I'm sixty or seventy, and that person is twenty-three, and that person can run all day, and I can hobble behind him." It just may have been part of his personality, but I wouldn't try to rate him negatively. Personally, my own morals say, "You just don't do these things." I didn't do it then. I had never been around anybody who was like that. Do you want me to tell you something? I don't think I ever saw him take a drink. I never was where beer was drunk or purchased.

Glaze:
In other words, you knew he went into Dallas to get his beer...

Miller:
And, I knew that sometimes his voice was thicker than it was at other times, and his eyes seemed to be a little more bloodshot, but for me to assume...I knew it. Everybody knew it, I mean, without seeing it. But, that might have had something to do with my attitude, you know.

Glaze:
How would you describe what you consider your attitude?

Miller:
My attitude was that if he was there, if he was a thousand miles away, it's of no consequence to me one way or the other. There's just things that need to be done. Just like when we had Interscholastic League, and they were gone, I said, "There's nobody here to help me do it, so I'll do it."

Glaze:
Who was gone?

Miller:
All of them.

Glaze:
What are you referring to?

Miller:
They went to Dallas -- to get the beer. I believe that the ladies...I know Olivia didn't drink, and neither did Mrs. Hodge, but they were "Prof's" teachers, and if he said, "Let's go," they would go.

Glaze:
All the teachers took off to Dallas to go get this?

Miller:
Yes. I'm not saying that they all drank: I didn't give it much thought.

Glaze:
When you say it was the Interscholastic League...

Miller:
It was the meet day -- Saturday.

Glaze:
And, they were meeting at Denton?

Miller:
At Denton, yes. We were the host school.

Glaze:
And, all the teachers were in Dallas getting beer (chuckle)?

Miller:
I don't know what they were doing, but I know he was. I'm sure that that's what he was doing. Well, they hadn't been involved in training the youngsters. Nobody wanted to teach them the rudiments of mathematics -- a little mathematics for them. Nobody particularly wanted to develop the spelling team. Nobody wanted to assume responsibility for training them. I say it in a kind of odd manner. I don't mean it that way. To me, there were things to be done, and the people came to visit with us, and I was there to receive them and set the program. Now, Mrs. Hodge came and, I think, made some sandwiches or something for them because they didn't have anywhere to eat in Denton. But, the rest of them didn't do much. Then, nobody really was expecting very much because, I think, before I went there -- I'm sure of it before I went there -- they were not really interested in competition all the way to the state level. It was just, "I teach what I teach, and then I go home."

Glaze:
I know, in talking to the archivist at Prairie View, it didn't seem like there were any records for the Fred Douglass School in Denton prior to, like, 1933 or 1934.

Miller:
That's right.

Glaze:
This would be just before you came.

Miller:
The school rarely went to state. They never did anything. But, it was just being organized at the lower school level of black school -- smaller schools. I knew we were in the Northeast District, but there was no one at the school who developed the program for participating in the Northeast District. Nobody did anything.

Glaze:
You mean, nobody in Denton or nobody in the district?

Miller:
Nobody in Denton. Plano was doing it, and McKinney was doing it, and Sherman was doing it, and Gainesville, and Denison. That's the reason I said, "Hey, we're just as good as they are." They had been having track meets, and, as I said again, the year before I went there, the man who preceded me in Denton -- Mr. Alcorn -- didn't do anything, and nobody encouraged him to do anything. Well, nobody encouraged me, either, but that was just a thing that I wanted to do. If Sherman has football and has track, and I have football, I'm going to have track, too. If they wanted to play tennis, okay, we'll play tennis. So, everybody could go at the same time. That might have been what it was.

They did go to the state meet one time before I went there. Erma Peace's husband was a long-jumper. I do remember hearing that. I wasn't there then. But, when I went there, nobody was doing anything. Was that 1933-1934? Ask Erma about that. I know C.J. Peace was a broad-jumper. I think he went to the state.

Glaze:
I'll check on that. I have been in contact with the archivist at Prairie View.

Miller:
They should have us winning the track meet in 1938 and should have us winning the arithmetic contest in 1938-1939 and 1939-1940 and being in the contest all the way from 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941. It'll be there.

Glaze:
I'll definitely check that. Getting back to "Prof" -- I don't mean to just keep zeroing in on him, but I'm trying to get a feel for that -- how approachable was he with new ideas? How amenable was he to new ideas?

Miller:
There's not a very good answer because I don't know what was new to him. There again, whatever one did in the classroom was what one was supposed to do. Whatever one did outside the classroom, he didn't have to discuss it except to tell "Prof" what we were going to do.

Glaze:
Were there ever any times that you, perhaps, started something, and he came in and said, "Tennyson, I don't like this or that?"

Miller:
No, never.

Glaze:
Nothing like that?

Miller:
Never. See, what I was doing is what is normally done in a school. Some things might not have been, like, taking them on this trip, but that was approved, and approved all the way up, too. It was just an idea that sprang from a discussion we had in school about natural resources and wonders -- sights to see and that sort of thing. Furthermore, "Prof" liked the activities very much.

No, that kind of confrontation was never involved, except I was kind of shocked when he said that to me about he was the principal. I'm not too sure what that was, and I said, "'Prof,' I know that." I never did really want to be the principal. So, it finally came that I was not interested in being a principal, but my life was going to be in football as a coach and mathematics in high school. I could relate very well with those, but not administration.

I went to Wichita Falls, and the man said, "Well, you're going to have to teach chemistry. The man you're replacing taught chemistry. Can you teach chemistry?" I said, "I never have tried it, but give me a book. [That was the beginning of June.] I think I'll be ready by September." I had a good time.

Glaze:
I think what we need to do is just flip this over. Just a moment. [Tape turned over] Okay, we've turned the tape over.

Miller:
I know what your question was.

Glaze:
Why don't you continue then?

Miller:
I'll just continue. I was talking to you. What's hard to understand in this kind of research is that when the schools were segregated, the most important thing in the black school was to put a man out there to be over it; and as long as there isn't any trouble, it's all right.

Glaze:
Are you saying that the main thing for the white school board was to do that?

Miller:
That's right. See, Mr. Moore was a barber. I think you've heard that. I don't know what his schooling was, and back in those days it might have been that one could pass the County Board exam. Back in those days, people like my sisters went to school one year, and then they passed the Board. That certified them for teaching -- the County Board. Then, on their own, they continued to go to school. So, I'm thinking that the only way Mr. Moore became the principal was that he was a barber downtown, and certain people liked him and said, "Fred, why don't you take over that school?" Now, Reva might know a little about that. As I said, I don't know if he ever had any schooling. I wouldn't say that he didn't. I don't know what school, if he had it, he was connected with. It was not with Prairie View; it was not with Texas College; it was not with Wiley; it was not with Bishop -- that we knew of. So, to answer your question, this could make the principal a tremendous egotist. If he's in charge, he's "it." Whatever he says, goes. So that can be a very rotten situation sometimes, particularly if you let it be that way.

The man at Wichita Falls told me one day, "You may be the coach, but I'm the coach of the coaches." I said, "You're not my coach." I said, "If you want it, you can have it. If you didn't think I could do the job, you shouldn't have called me up here." Well, down in Port Arthur it was the same way.

The older principals -- I'm talking about the principals of the so-called black schools, minority schools -- ran the schools. As long as they had it okay, then the superintendent was all right, and they reported to him. If something came up where there was a large professional argument, the superintendent let the principal alone. As long as that doesn't come up, you're all right. Most of them, however, were both capable and dedicated and had a strong positive influence in their communities.

In case of Denton, a five-or six- teacher school, there was nothing to meet and talk about. Nobody has anything in common. No two people teach the same subject. There's only one teacher for every subject, and he's the chief cook and the bottle-washer and the janitor and the curriculum expert and everything else. That's the way it was. Now, that's in the small town. In the large town, it would be different. I think that answers your question.

It is hard for some to understand why nobody knew what anybody else was doing, but that was the only person doing it. I was the only one teaching mathematics from the fifth to the eleventh grade. If I didn't know it, didn't anybody know that I didn't know it -- that is, day in and day out. A lot of people back in those days could be gone, and nobody'd even worry about them. But, if you have pride in it, and you want them to be knowledgeable, then that's the individual initiative. I think anybody whom I taught in Denton or Wichita Falls or wherever, I think if you would ask them -- if you would ask Elinor or anybody else -- and I don't see them -- I think they would say the same thing. If they did gravitate toward me, it was because they thought I had something that would be good for them and had it in a way that they could enjoy learning it. There were teachers, I guess, who said, "Well, Tennyson Miller thinks he's running everything." But, I don't think there were many of them because nobody wanted to do what I was doing, anyway (chuckle). I wasn't in anybody's way, and they were not in my way. Whatever Mrs. Hodge was doing back there in the homemaking, that's fine. Every now and then, they'd cook something, and I'd smell it, and she'd give me some (chuckle). It was this way in the small schools, is what I'm saying.

For example, in the school in Port Arthur where I was the principal, there were fourteen English teachers for four grades. So that's what? Three-and-a-half teachers per grade, so they had to discuss at what point they were going to go from grammar to writing essays to whatever they're going to do -- when they were going to switch from something to literature. They had to kind of lock-step it. So, you have to kind of be together. You've got to have in mind how many units you've got to cover and how deep you're going to cover them. If there's something you couldn't skip, whether it be progressions in mathematics or whether it be viscosity in chemistry, and when you have a lot of people, there is a need for it. But, in the small schools where I was...even in Wichita Falls, I had all the mathematics in high school and two chemistry classes while I learned chemistry (chuckle). But, the first year I had to learn it, and I did, and I learned it very well. My high school chemistry teacher hadn't done very much for me, and the college chemistry teacher had not taught it in a practical way -- in a high school way. There in the high school, no two people taught the same subject at the same grade level. In other words, if I have Algebra I and Algebra II and Geometry and Solid Trig and two Chemistry classes, those were the only two classes in chemistry, and those are the only classes in each of these grades in mathematics.

Glaze:
In other words, you were really on your own as far as the content and the pace at which you taught it. So, "Prof" had his Latin class, and he was the contact person with the white school board. It was up to him to sort of bargain and sort of ask for whatever the school needed.

Miller:
That's right, in addition to what he taught. I don't think he had to teach a full day. We had cut-up periods, but it was up to him. He as the principal of the school, was the contact with the school district for Fred Douglass School. That was not unusual. That's just the way things were.

Glaze:
How effective was he in getting what the school needed? In other words, was it up to him, as far as what felt they needed, or did the PTA get involved? For instance, materials, extra teachers, extra books- things of that nature -- was it strictly what Fred Moore decided was needed?

Miller:
The school board decided about the books. The school board adopted the textbooks. For the materials, if there were any to come, to the people in the second, third, fourth, fifth grades, they would be determined at the central office -- what you're going to send out to everybody at that grade level. When the textbooks would come, as far as the textbooks were concerned, if the school district had adopted a Mallory Algebra or a Stone Arithmetic or an Ely Chemistry or whatever, that's what we would teach from. But, you see, if you think about the curriculum, you knew what you taught at each level. You got a fifth grade arithmetic, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade general mathematics, ninth grade algebra, tenth grade geometry. But, in the big schools, they could elect not to take things. In the small schools, there was no electing involved: "You either have to take this, or you go home. That's all we can offer you." It's kind of like eating. If you don't have anything but beans, you eat beans. You don't have a broad selection. I can go to a cafeteria, and I can fumble around there for a long time, trying to decide what I want. It's kind of like in our football games, where they used to sell cold drinks. They'd sell Coca-Cola. I said, "What kind do you want?" "He wants Coca-Cola." (chuckle) Not that that would do it.

Glaze:
I guess what I'm asking is, weren't there times that you looked at what the white school board had decided you needed and said, "Wait a minute, guys, this isn't working. We need something else." Would that have been "Prof's" job to say, "Wait a minute. You're not giving us enough, or you're giving us the wrong thing?" Did he stand up for the school?

Miller:
That was not within his province. Actually, we had no comparisons with the white school. As I said, you've got a lock-step curriculum in high school. So, you count the number of people in the ninth grade, and you know how many textbooks you need, plus four.

Glaze:
Wait a minute. When you say lock-step, were you taking the exact same classes that were offered in the white high school?

Miller:
I was teaching the exact same core classes. Now, let's say the entire high school population that was there was five times mine, well, then they may elect to take chemistry or physics or biology or physical science or what-have-you at seventh grade level. But, we had no choice in a small school. When you get to the fifth grade, you take United States geography. When you get to the sixth grade, you take Texas history. When you get to the seventh grade, you take United States geographical history. When you get to the eighth grade, there's no question whether or not you take earth science or life science or general science or physical science. The seventh grade is earth science. The eighth grade is life science, and the ninth grade is physical science. Now, if you want to, in a big school, you can say, "I don't want to take biology. I want to take chemistry." In a small school, if you did want to take biology, and somebody wanted to take chemistry, well, we can offer biology this year. Next year, we don't offer biology; we offer chemistry. So, the point is that there's not that opportunity -- there's not even that need -- as long as schools were segregated. Integration brought the schools together. Now, instead of having one section of the ninth grade, there are fifteen sections of the ninth grade. If you want to take a foreign language, and there were five foreign language classes per teacher, you've got five classes that want to take French. You've got five classes that want to take Spanish. You've got five classes that prefer taking homemaking, and five classes that want to take wood shop, metal shop.

Glaze:
But, this is way out of the class of what we're talking about at Fred Douglass.

Miller:
Yes, it is.

Glaze:
So, there was nothing that Fred Moore could ask of the white school board. In other words, he was powerless. Is that pretty much what you're saying?

Miller:
I wouldn't say that. I'm saying that was of no concern to me. No, he was not powerless. I don't know if he was powerless or not because I didn't know anything about the school board meetings. I will say this, that there was nothing that he could say beyond this: "At the ninth grade level, we're going to have four classes. We're going to have a class in English. We're going to have a class in mathematics. We're going to have a class in social science. We're going to have a class in science. Those are the four core classes. We do not have enough students to have foreign language." Now, what I'm saying, if that's all you're going to have, then the only thing to do is the count. Every ninth grade student would be taking that course.

Glaze:
Sure. I realize that.

Miller:
Is that still not answering your question to your satisfaction?

Glaze:
I guess so. I guess what I was looking at was that Fred Moore did not really have the opportunity to go to bat for the school and try to get more facilities. For instance, "We have an old piano. We need a new piano. We need a typewriter."

Miller:
Or, we have some old desks that are broken down.

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
Well, here again, if you think in terms of Professor Moore, a person who had not been trained as an administrator, then the superintendent would decide whether or not you ought to throw those old desks out and get some more or whether or not we want you to have anymore. He didn't have anything to do with it. So, what the principal did, he was the collecting agency for the attendance because the attendance determined how much money would come into the school district. He would be the person who might want to know why so many kids were not coming to school. There again, that translates into money. But, the teacher who is teaching is more concerned about why she is not at school than he is, because the teacher's motive is different. When you're not here, and I introduce something -- I'm introducing roots and radicals and surge -- if you're not here the first two days, I don't want you. You can't afford to miss because you're not here when we're getting started. You can't catch up. Now, a good principal would be concerned about that, also, maybe, in a large school. I'm not saying he's not a good one, but there's not that much concern in the small, five-, six-, seven- teacher -- one-teacher-per-grade -- school. That teacher, if you're teaching all subjects in that grade, you say, "Well, I just want the fifth grade books for each of these courses."

Glaze:
You mentioned something about if you introduced a particular theory or concept and someone was not there. Say, the cotton-picking season. I don't know if it was still there when you were there, but at least in days before, there would be a number of students that wouldn't be there. How did you get beyond that?

Miller:
I'll go to my cotton-picking days. Sometimes they would issue your books to you before you would go to the cotton patch. Then you know you'd better come in and be ready. This would not pertain to somebody in chemistry. The cotton-picking children would be in the lower grades. You're in the fifth grade, and you take whatever you take. You're going to review that when you go into the sixth grade -- what we had in the fifth grade. Do you understand? If you're in chapter three, when a kid comes in from the cotton patch, then you're going to review what you did -- as you were going to do, anyway -- some of what you did in chapter one, something of what you did in chapter two, to make you ready for chapter three. Now, the person who wasn't here when that was done will at least begin to get introduced to it when you're reviewing -- when you teach day in and day out. "What am I going to teach today? This is what I'm going to teach. But to be sure we're ready, I'm going to talk about we said yesterday, where I left off." Any teacher, if you're going to have any kind of connective learning, you must go back to the key things that we were introduced yesterday. "Since you didn't see this after 10:00 yesterday, and it's 10:00 today, we'd better go back and take a look at it." You have to do that all the time. In arithmetic you have to have a drill. You have to go back.

Glaze:
In other words, those students who were picking cotton were not that terribly behind, then, when they came back.

Miller:
We were never behind. One reason we were never behind was because there were so many in our family that, whenever you had some time off out there, you did things.

Glaze:
But, say, your students when you were at Fred Douglass, the students that picked cotton...

Miller:
They had stopped picking cotton then.

Glaze:
Oh, they had? When did that stop approximately?

Miller:
I don't know when it stopped in Denton. They weren't doing it when I got there. In Vernon, Texas, they were still going. They would be out maybe about the first three or four weeks of school. When Reva [his wife] was in Fred Douglass, some were gone to pick cotton in September, and she was the only child in her class during that time. So, she and the teacher had a good time. If everybody's behind me, then there's no problem. If I'm behind everybody, then that's the problem, as I recall cotton-picking days. Everything is so repetitive at the elementary level. You teach the same grammar in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grades. You're just stretching it out a little bit. You just broaden it. You're going up, but you always come back and still have to know what a noun is and what a verb is and what is a declarative sentence, and how to conjugate a verb.

Even in your textbooks -- the textbooks that they have now, even -- whenever you go from one chapter to another, as you go forward you have a review. At the end of what you're presenting, there's going to be a big summary quiz, so to speak, or a series of problems. Then when you go over to the next phase, you recall that in this situation we said such-and-such. In other words, what you do grows out of what you've done. If you can't grow out of what you've done, then there's no need (chuckle) of getting ready to do something else. Do you understand that?

Glaze:
Sure.

Miller:
A good teacher will always review, and that was one of the advantages when you've got a little school and you've got two groups sitting in there. Eight or nine here. You've got to be quiet. If you've got to be quiet, you're going to be attentive. In the small schools -- I've never really been in one as a student -- I just bet you I could learn a whole lot. I think you learn more from your peers about certain things many times than you do from your teacher.

Glaze:
What kind of discipline problems did you run into at Fred Douglass?

Miller:
Obedience problems? None.

Glaze:
Not really?

Miller:
No. And, we'd spank. "You missed that thing yesterday, and you come up here [makes spanking sound by clapping hands]." It was too small in Denton. I didn't have any trouble. [Addresses wife] Did you ever hear of anybody having any trouble? I never did. Elinor had a little sister named Minnie. I think Minnie probably exasperated me more than anybody. But, we didn't have any problems. I really didn't. I didn't have any problems. The parents liked me, I would think, and I could kind of do most of the things I wanted to. I think it's because it was a small school. I never did have any problems teaching. I would have problems now. I couldn't handle it now. Everybody bringing guns to school or crack (whatever crack is).

Glaze:
Yes, it's a whole different scene.

Miller:
When I was coming up, "gay" meant everybody was happy.

Glaze:
(Chuckle) Right.

Miller:
Did you ever sing, "Good morning to you, we're all in our places, sunshine on our faces, and this is the way to be happy and gay." You say it now, (chuckle) and you're in trouble.
Glaze:
What about WPA projects -- programs during the Depression? I know there was talk at one time of a school lunch program through the WPA in Denton.

Miller:
Denton didn't have a lunchroom. Fred Douglass didn't have a lunchroom.

Mrs. Miller:
We used to get something, though-some kind of program.

Miller:
Was Eva Hodge over it?

Mrs. Miller:
Home economics.

Glaze:
I understand that once the home economics wing was on, there was some food available there.

Miller:
We never had a cafeteria worker, cafeteria manager, cook. Now, Mrs. Hodge, that was what she did. She had a few classes and did some little preparation, but it didn't involve a lot of people. As far as having commodities and a storage and that kind of business for food through WPA...I went there in 1936. I was trying to figure out what I did for lunch. I know we didn't have anyplace where we sat down and ate and somebody washed the dishes and cleaned the pots and that type of thing. We didn't have anything. What'd they make? Wiener sandwiches or something like that?

Mrs. Miller:
I do remember we had some kind of little something, but I'm not sure.

Miller:
We didn't have a lunchroom.

Mrs. Miller:
No.

Glaze:
What about things like Victory gardens or community-oriented programs? Was there anything that was involved at the school, like a canning project or a sewing project that was WPA-based? Are you familiar with anything like that? You're smiling. I...

Miller:
No. I was thinking about (chuckle)...

Glaze:
About what?

Miller:
About your being naive (chuckle).

Glaze:
I'm being naive? (Chuckle) Okay.

Miller:
Lordy! Here again, thinking about the basic structure of the school, each person had his own cubicle, and each person had his own assignment, and his assignment did not carry him outside of that cubicle. When recess was over or when lunch was done, somebody rang the bell, and you go back. The WPA should have been there in strong force at that time, but, here again, I'm just out of college, and I don't know much about it. It's not in Denton, and Fred Moore has never been associated with it. It is possible that the white school got a lot of help, but they were not too poor in Denton back in those days. Most of them, I guess, did very well. Even our people who worked at the colleges didn't make much money, but they got some commodities and some kind of help and stuff like that. So, I don't know. Even when I went to Wichita Falls, I didn't know much about the WPA. It could have been that I was so wrapped up in what I was doing that I didn't know. We had a lunchroom there, but as far as the machinery of how it came about...I just knew we could get a lunch for twenty-five cents. That's all, you know. Now the school in Wichita Falls received commodities for the students lunch. There were times when they [Denton] might have had some surplus commodities that they knew what to do with, but they didn't have a cook. Wichita Falls had a cafeteria manager and a cook. A sweet lady taught homemaking and cooking and managed the cafeteria. That's the way it was in the schools. Even Wichita Falls didn't have a big school, so there were not five homemaking classes. She might teach homemaking in one class in the morning and one class in the afternoon and then look after the lunchroom in between.

Glaze:
As far as Denton went, you had come out of Fort Worth, and you had gone down to Prairie View before you came to Denton. How did Denton compare? How were people doing -- the black population -- in Denton as compared to some of the other areas you had been in during the Depression? How did they weather the Depression?

Miller:
My own assessment of just the regular black population is that they had been around the colleges enough for their diction to be good -- a lot of them. I think the college had had an influence on the black population -- I really do -- because there was a time when a lot of them lived over there, and everybody who had a decent job worked at one or the other of the two colleges or worked around some organization that was associated with them. I'm sure there were poor people in Denton, but I never saw anybody who would be hungry.

Glaze:
Are you saying that the existence of the colleges carried the black population through the Depression without terrific effects?

Miller:
Yes. My understanding was that a lot of the people who worked at the colleges had permission to bring food home, especially food that was left over from the serving area.

Mrs. Miller:
Yes, they would. The dieticians would give it to them.

Miller:
They were paying them $14 every two weeks -- something like that.

Mrs. Miller:
She [the dietician] didn't want anybody to know that she consented.

Miller:
TWU was really the elite school. They would open barrels of chicken, as I understand it -- I never saw these goods -- and had good preparation; but if they had some left over, they didn't use it again. Is that right? [To Reva]

Mrs. Miller:
They didn't use anything again out at TWU.

Miller:
This was moreso at TWU than at North Texas State. But, somehow or other, some uncooked chickens would get in there (laughter).

Glaze:
Somehow (chuckle)?

Miller:
But, it was to the knowledge of the lady who was in charge. She knew it. "We're not paying them enough, so we'll do this." Now, I don't know how that permeated the entire community. I just never knew of anybody being hungry. Food was so cheap back in those days. My own salary was $60 a month, and Reva would make more -- $60, $65, or $70 a month. We just didn't live bad. We lived with her mother, too, by the way. Did she stop working while we were still there? [Addresses wife.]

Mrs. Miller:
No.

Miller:
No. She would do her ironing, but, anyway, food was no big problem. Nobody had any transportation -- about three or four automobiles over there, and that's about all for the whole population. Mr. Hill had a car. Mr. Zade Jones had a car. Fred Moore didn't live over there. He had a car. George Williams had a car, and Clarence Nix had a car. Theodore Thomas had one, but that's all. So they walked to work, or they got rides to work.

Glaze:
Didn't the Logans have a car, too?

Miller:
No, they didn't have one. Mr. Logan didn't have a car. Up on the hill, Mr. Jackson had a truck or something. They say he had a lot of property. He worked at both banks, or one bank or something. He was down to the bank.

Glaze:
Which Jackson are we talking about?

Miller:
The one up on the hill -- the one up behind the school there. Not Peter Jackson, but this was a Jackson who had a lot of property. Did you ever know where the Hodges lived? What's the street up there behind the school? Is it Mill Street? Hill Street? Right up behind the school.

Glaze:
There's a Mill and Hill and a Crosstimbers, I think.

Miller:
It wasn't Crosstimbers. It might be Mill Street. Well, one of them. [Addresses wife] Well, Baby, Lakey ran into Mill Street, and the Woods lived on Hill street. Anyway, it was right behind the school, His name was Arthur Jackson? What was his name -- Mr. Jackson? It was supposed that he was very well off, and he had maybe a couple of rent houses and a big conglomeration of something up there on top of the hill. I don't know what was up there.

But, I didn't know anything about anybody being hungry. Even people like Mr. Sacks, who dealt in hogs and things, I thought they always had enough to eat. Maybe, except Reva, we didn't have any clothes (chuckle).

Mrs. Miller:
I had plenty of clothes because my Aunt Madie worked for a rich family in Fort Worth.

Miller:
She had clothes, clothes, clothes. Mrs. Bell did a lot of sewing for her family, and they were always well-dressed.

Glaze:
Now, are you talking about Willie Jean Bell?

Miller:
Yes. She could make clothes. She was a good seamstress. [Addresses wife] What was Inez? They worked, didn't they?

Glaze:
Are you talking about Inez Jackson?

Miller:
Yes. What about Miss Caraway? She had a job, too, didn't she?

Mrs. Miller:
Yes. I can't remember where.

Miller:
I can't think of anybody. B.B. Young, if it had not been for Clarence, I thought he might have had to do a little hustling. The people that lived down on the corner in front of the church -- Mrs. Pappy Reed -- it looks like they did all right, though, as far as we knew.

Mrs. Miller:
They didn't have much, but they had enough.

Miller:
It's one of these situations where, if everybody's poor, everybody's rich. You know, you're poor, but you're rich by comparison. If you have something, and I don't have it or visa versa, then there's something between us. There's something dividing us. But, I suppose that the people who were the most well off were Zade Jones, T.C. Hill, Clarence Nix, George Williams, and Bob Tankersley. Everybody had a job of sorts, I think. Now, I don't know about the folks down in Shacktown -- there were some dice shooters down in there -- but I didn't know of anybody being real, real poor. Essie Lou Graham...was that her name? The one that had the cafe. She wasn't poor. She had a cafe down on Prairie Street near the church. Does that answer your question?

Glaze:
Yes. Well, I've been asking you a lot of questions today. Is there anything that I've missed that you would like to say with regard to your days at Fred Douglass? Something that, perhaps, you feel we've given the wrong impression or something of that nature?

Miller:
Well, I don't know about that because I don't know how you're going to edit it. But I did not want to infer an extreme negative concerning Professor Moore. To me, he was a nothing (chuckle), as far as what I had to do. He was not negative, nor was he positive. He was just glad to go along with me because what I was doing was good for the school. We had others who did some things -- maybe not as much as I because I was the most visible one. When you coach the football and coach the basketball, and you coach the track, and you teach all the high school math...these were just things I wanted to do. If a kid wanted to learn to type, if we could help him, we would. I was not a pianist by being instructed to play. It was just ding, ding, ding. What else? Like, the little tap-dancing, stuff like that, it wasn't a big part of what we did. The biggest thing we did was school work and athletics. When we had time off, in the summertime, we'd go out on our school picnics to Cole's Ranch. That was the name of the place. Have you heard of it?

Glaze:
No. What was this?

Miller:
Somebody told us we could go out there. Was it fishing? A co-owner asked us what we're doing, and we told him. He said he didn't care who told us, to get out. But that wasn't a school activity. We had a school picnic where there was barrels of lemonade and stuff. Somebody will remember that. But, these were the things we just doing. We went to the picnic. I kind of arranged it.

Glaze:
You mentioned something that we haven't hit on. It's not directly associated with the Fred Douglass School, but I'll ask it. You were the first black to attend North Texas.

Miller:
Right.

Glaze:
How did that come about?

Miller:
I had been going to Wisconsin. I had gone one summer to the University of Colorado -- you know, going beyond the bachelor's degree.

Glaze:
When was that?

Miller:
Nineteen forty-eight. In 1949, I went back.

Glaze:
Back to where?

Miller:
Colorado. There was a most inspiring professor there, His name was Dr. A.S. Barr, the author of a number of books, including one on teaching methods of math -- Barr, Burton, and Breckner. Goode, Barr, and Skates [books on school administration and organization]. Barr was an editor for the Journal of Educational Research and Journal Education Psychology. He was just a brilliant person -- an elderly man. He was a visiting professor at the University of Colorado during my summer there. We were in his class, and his class was on instructional leadership. He was just such a beautiful person to me. What he said was, "This book has over 1,200-some pages in it on research. We're going to get through this book today; then we're going to enjoy ourself." He would always have some good anecdotes. He said, "Research is a matter of thinking about something and seeing if you can do something about it. Then, in looking into it, you say, 'It looks like something worthwhile.' Now, if you're going to do research, it's a simple thing. Historically, has it ever been done? [What you're talking about doing] Horizontally, is it being done? If it has never been done, and it is not being done, then it might be a good o something to take up." He said, "Now, get all your information. If that's not enough information for you, and you're not too sure what you want to do, do like your mama used to do when she was cooking a cake." He said, "She'd cook up little samples, and she'd taste it. 'I've got the right amount of vanilla flavor in it, I've got the right amount of sugar in it, and I've got everything in it. So, I'm going to make the big cake.' But if she tastes it, and she put soda in there instead of baking powder and has little lumps in it, she says, 'I don't want to make this cake.' So you experiment until you come up with the correct way. You try little samples, and if it works you spread it out. Then you finally come up with something that's worthwhile to you and everybody else." He said, "Basically, for all I've said, you see it with your mind, see if you can come up with something that provokes you in the middle of the night."

One thing that provoked me -- and I never did do it -- was to ask why we have to have school just nine months a year because people used to pick cotton a long time ago back on the farm. But, we' re not back on the farm. Nine months a year the school sits up there on the hill. We're crowded. We had eighteen temporary buildings and muddy from one place to the other in Port Arthur. Then when school is out, it's just sitting up there. You know, you just spread them out. Three-fourths of them go every quarter and change, and you've got a fourth of them who could get jobs. Then you've got a new fourth who could take the jobs they had when they came back to school. You've got a good economy, and school is going on all the time. It's just a matter of the activity program. Those that like some activity, go in the summer; those that like another activity, go in the winter. Teachers should be the same way.

Anyway, he said that's what it is. He said, "The most important thing is, what is your attitude?" He said, "You've got to worry about time." He told a story. He said, "I've got strawberries up in Wisconsin with a short season of strawberry production." He said, "The man was out there with his strawberries, and he was working this thing with his hands and working this part with his foot on his machine. He got to thinking, 'You know, I believe I can get this thing to where I can do all of it right here with one gear. I can plant the seed. I can make the row. I can plant the seed. I can cover the row up!'" What do they call it? A combine?

Glaze:
I believe so.

Miller:
So, anyway, Dr. Barr said that this man went home that day at noon. He got to thinking about it. He got his pencil and paper out. He made a sketch, and it looked pretty good. When he finished doing that, he took it to an engineering firm, and they looked at it. It looked pretty good, and they worked on it. About six months later, he came up with it, but the grass had eaten up the strawberries (chuckle).

What he's saying is that whatever you're going to do, don't spend so much time thinking on it that you forget what you're doing (chuckle). That's a good project, but the grass ate the strawberries. Whatever you're going to do, if you're going to work it within a given length of time for it to be productive and for it to produce, then fine.

Glaze:
Now, I'm getting confused. We were talking about going to North Texas. You said that you had gone...

Miller:
(chuckle) Oh, bless your heart.

Glaze:
...to Colorado.

Miller:
I had gone to Colorado. Okay, Mr. Barr -- and I got off on him -- was at the University of Wisconsin. I went to the University of Wisconsin and finished my master's work.

Glaze:
Oh, you had met him at Colorado, and that that had enticed you to...

Miller:
Followed him to Wisconsin. His attitude was such that I kind of left feeling that if you really wanted to do something, it can be done. So, I went and talked to the president [Matthews]. This was in 1954, and the Brown vs. Board of Education...

Glaze:
You're talking about the president of North Texas?

Miller:
North Texas State. Well, I had been in Denton, and a lot of people knew of me or Reva, one [or the other]. I said, "I'd sure like to go to school." It cost $900 - $1,000 for me to go. I said, "Of course, it's coming [integration], and I think you know it. One thing about it, since we're plowing new ground, we both can guarantee each other that we will plow it in the most gentle way possible.'' It kind of impressed him a little bit. He said, Well, I know you're right." I went on back, and I got a call from him, saying I could enroll. I was there three weeks before school opened, so I enrolled. I can't remember the dean's name, but he carried me around, and everybody was looking. Didn't know whether or not I was a meat inspector (chuckle). I enrolled, and if something went wrong, he said, "Well, he's all right."

I played golf. Let me tell you this. When I didn't have anything to do, I'd go out there and just hit the ball around. One day going to my class, somebody said, "Hey, n*****, how you doing?" The next day, "Hey." I was out there hitting the ball, and the same guy said, "Do you remember me?" I said, "Yes. Didn't you holler at me the other day?" He said, "Yes." He said, "I apologize."

Glaze:
So, in other words, by not being real pushy, everybody just accepted you?

Miller:
Yes, by not running around with a chip on my shoulder. I was pushy. I wanted to go to school, and I told them it just doesn't make sense for me to go...I said, "I don't represent the NAACP. I don't represent anything except myself. I've been in Denton." I think he did some research, and my reputation was good. I may have told you this, but when I went into service from Denton, there was a Colonel Owsley from Denton.

Glaze:
Alvin C. -- that one?

Miller:
Whatever. I guess so. Now, I didn't know this, but he was in intelligence or something. Anyway, you'd take a battery of tests. At that time, if I had ever been sharp, I was exceptionally quick on anything. I think he told them that I made one of the highest scores that had ever come through there or something like that.

Mrs. Miller:
He met me. I was coming from work, and he told me about the test you took.

Miller:
Well, that was kind of funny. I was wondering why they were looking at me. It was a good test. It was about a four-hour test, and I was, I guess, through with it in about an hour because they said to just move right on. I think that's what he told somebody -- what he'd been telling somebody who wanted to know who was this black guy from Denton. So, they knew me there. Mr. Patterson knew me, and I was pretty well known in Denton because of my football coaching. The word got out. So, when I enrolled, you take your battery of tests to enroll in a post-graduate degree -- Miller Analogy Test. You've taken that?

Glaze:
I did not have to take that.

Miller:
Anyway, the score was all right.

Glaze:
You were working on your doctorate?

Miller:
Yes, working at it. I never got it.

Glaze:
Now, it was in education?

Miller:
In educational administration, right. What happened was that the superintendent at Port Arthur gave me a job every summer (laughter). I had jobs I had never had before. I was head of curriculum development one summer. I was supervising construction of some buildings at school. When I went to North Texas State, it came out in the paper, and one of the board members asked him what I was trying to do.

Glaze:
Looking at your motivation?

Miller:
Yes, in going to school. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't even thinking of the promotion that might come. Anyway, I went the first six weeks, and then a lady from Sherman came and enrolled, and she was a pretty good student. About two years after that, there must have been about 100-150 people. At first they would only let you in at the post-graduate level. Then some got in at the graduate level, and then one of the persons responsible would be a couple of those good football players. The coach always wanted good football players. They had a boy named Haynes. Have you heard of him?

Glaze:
Yes.

Miller:
He was a good player. I coached his brothers, too, by the way -- F.L. and Sam. So, that was it. He was such an outstanding football player.

Glaze:
You're speaking of Abner?

Miller:
Abner Haynes. That's right.

Glaze:
Had you coached him at all?

Miller:
No. He was in the sixth grade when I left Denton, but I coached F.L. and Samuel and Neaul. Abner would have been the next one. These were good. F. L. got killed at Prairie View in an automobile accident. Sam played quarterback at Prairie View, and Neaul is the bishop over a church. Neaul was a good student. The girls were good students, too. Anyway, Abner enrolled. They wanted him. Of course, coaches were always glad that this was happening because they knew they had missed a whole lot of pretty good athletes. And, Abner was really a good athlete, so that helped it, also. He was one of the first ones at the undergraduate level. If you're successful, nobody really bothers you. That was how it happened.

Glaze:
When you went to school, when you started out, what semester was it?

Miller:
Just summer.

Glaze:
So, you didn't actually stop teaching to go?

Miller:
I never stopped teaching.

Glaze:
You just did it in the summer?

Miller:
That's right.

Glaze:
Well, I really want to thank you for being so open with your information.

Miller:
You take your red pencil (chuckle).

Glaze:
No red pencils involved. None at all (chuckle).

Miller:
Well, I'm glad you came. One thing does bother me a little bit. I've had some observations lately that kind of bothered me, one of which was our new Supreme Court Justice [Clarence Thomas]. We can all make up some big lies about how good we were when we weren't -- with only me to tell it. Then I had some people that I knew who aggrandized their prowess. I was just thinking about it the other day, and now here you come. (Chuckle)

Glaze:
In other words, you had to keep it humble (chuckle).

Miller:
I try to. Well, yes, but to tell you the truth, I did have a good time in Denton, and I did have success. I think my success in Denton had a lot to do with whatever else happened to me at my level of performance -- whatever it was. I never did aspire to have a lot of fame. But, from that, I think it did kind of help give me confidence in Wichita Falls and Port Arthur, and then president of the State Teachers Association and then to the federal government as Advisory Specialist in School Desegregation.

Glaze:
When were you president of the State Teachers Association?

Miller:
Nineteen fifty-six. The Teachers State Association -- now that's black. The State Teachers Association was Anglo. That was where we began maneuvering toward one association.

Glaze:
That's one of the things that somehow I got beyond. When you were at Fred Douglass, how active were you in the colored State Teachers Association? I believe that was the name. You're making a sign of zero with your fingers.

Miller:
I was not very active.

Glaze:
What about Fred Moore and the rest of the school? Another Zero?

Miller:
They'd take off, but they wouldn't go (chuckle).

Glaze:
They'd take off. What do you mean? They physically would go down there, but not participate?

Miller:
No. They'd physically not be in school. You know, we had days off. But I don't know whether or not, they...Eva might have gone. This was always around Thanksgiving, and I was always in football. There was always football because the Association met during the Thanksgiving week. I would be in preparation, and then when we were winning, I would have a game beyond that. You know, if you don't win, your season ends. If you win, you go ahead and play some more. There were times -- one or two times -- that I didn't have scheduled a game until that time. Then somebody who had won somewhere else wanted to play us, or we wanted to play each other. I mentioned the Chocolate Bowl. That was one of them.

Glaze:
Who put that on?

Miller:
Paris did. They invited us to participate because of our record.

Glaze:
Was it always held in Paris?

Miller:
No, no.

Glaze:
Who was the sponsoring organization?

Miller:
Gibbons High School along with the Paris Chamber of Commerce was the main sponsor of it. You see, they had a good team. It was one of their first good teams, and they went all the way to the state finals in the big league. We won our little district in the little league. They wanted to know if we would play them. We had kind of loose rules. You could do that kind of thing (chuckle) -- loose rules as far as when your season would end. We just played, like, an eight-game season with our regulars. We would make up a game by playing Dallas or Fort Worth schools to give us a ten-game schedule. We played ten. You know, I have a tendency to get away from what you're asking me (chuckle).

Glaze:
I haven't complained a whole lot (chuckle).

Miller:
You're a nice person.

Glaze:
Well, thank you. As I say, I think we're all done here.

Copyright © 1992 The Board of Regents of the University of North Texas in the City of Denton

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