Reflection Paper About Whites

AJ: What did your parents tell you about whites?

Mr. Jones: I was thinking about that coming over here. They didn 't tell us anything. We just knew. They may have said while we’re walking down the street, ‘get out of the way. Look down. ' We always had to look down, because if you made eye contact there may be problems. So, we did that, when we were kids. There was never a big discussion about it. Everybody at church and around the community you knew. It was something intrinsic then. There something wrong and you had to do this, but things change and that 's good.

Chance: You said you were part of the group that first integrated Tuscaloosa High School, what was that like? What was the first day coming in like? How do they treat you?

Jones: My parents. Every Wednesday at the church there they would have a mass meeting. All the Blacks would come because Martin Luther King was doing things. The minister there, T.Y. Rogers was sent here by Martin Luther King, because one of the people at the church said, ‘we need a dynamic guy to come and lead our movement.’ So, he came here and started having mass meetings. They would teach us how to act. I could show you a picture. We would walk out of the church and go down to the courthouse, and we would go through throngs of white children, who would be over there throwing things at us, spiting on us. We couldn 't respond. You know little kids want to respond. But they taught us not to respond. It was really heartbreaking to have someone spit in your face and you want to go grab them, but we had to do that and it worked out alright. But now on that day I saw some hell of a things. Right out here at the church one guy came out, and the police hit him with that stick. There was teeth, blood, and everything. I said 'God! ' What happened, the ministers were going outside first to led the march. The police said that, ‘you 're not marching. ' When they got out the police started banging people. They would hit them with them sticks and stuff, so they were trying to get back into church. We, all the little kids said, 'no we 're not going out there. ' So, they started shooting tear gas all in the church. We knew that tear gas rises. One person said 'if you want to get out of the tear gas put your head in the toilet. ' I go 'you got to be crazy. ' But when that tear gas hit my eyes I was fighting for a toilet. So, we put our heads in the toilets. We realized, I’m maybe 10, 11, 12, 13 then, we really shouldn 't be there. We should let the old people do that, so I jumped out the window over by the cemetery there. I think one of the cops hit me with what they call Tasers now, but back then they had cattle prods. Every time I think about it now my knee shakes. I