ONE AFRICAN AMERICAN’S EXPERIENCE LIVING IN TEXAS IN THE 1950S, 1960s AND 1970s

BY CHARLES H. BOLDEN

As black history month quickly approaches, I have been asked, “Why have a black history month?”  I would answer by saying to remind us of the roles Black Americans played in our history.  Most know that Admiral Robert Peary was the first American to reach the North Pole in the late 1890s.  Few ever knew that Mr. Matthew Alexander Henson, a black man, arrived along side of him.  Before Admiral Peary died in 1920, he had numerous accolades bestowed on him for his expeditions.  It was not until April 6, 1988 that it was acknowledged that Mr. Henson arrived along side of Admiral Peary.

Many never knew that back in the 1960’s a man named Gordon Parks was one of the first black movie directors and a pioneer in that art.  He paved the way for black movie directors like Spike Lee, John Singleton and Forrest Whitaker.  I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Parks in 1968 when he was in my hometown filming a movie called “Ledbetter.’  They filmed around Colored Town where I lived and at the old jail.

Most of us have heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, but few of us have heard of Dr. William Edward Burghart DuBois.  He was born in 1868 and died in 1963.  W.E.B. DuBois was the first African American to overtly fight injustice and for black freedom in America.  He graduated from Harvard in 1891 and was one of the original members of the NAACP when it was formed years before Dr. King. Many wanted Dr. DuBois’ legacy to die, but it was Dr. King who kept it alive.  Black history month reminds us of the unacknowledged contributions Black Americans have made toward the successes of this country.

I thought I would share with everyone my history and experiences growing up in a southern state during segregation times and under Jim Crow Laws.  I was born and grew up in a small Texas town called San Marcos, Texas.  It is a small town founded by a group of Franciscan Monks in the late 1700s and who built a small mission at the mouth of what is known today as the San Marcos River.  The town is rich in its own history.  In the early 1830’s an agreement between the governments of Texas and the Mexican State of Coahuila gave land grants to some Mexican families to come up and started a settlement in the area around the San Marcos River.  The first Anglo settlers moved into the area just after the end of the Texas Mexican war.  San Marcos became a trading post and stagecoach rest stop between Austin and San Antonio.

It is not actually known when the first African Americans moved into San Marcos and Hays County, which was named after Texas Ranger Captain John C. Hays.  Captain Hays commanded a Texas Ranger Company who was based in the area to protect the settlers from Indians and Mexican bandit raids.  There were numerous attacks by Comanche Indians and Mexican bandits.  Many Mexican bandits were angry, because the land that San Marcos and Hays County was built on was once theirs when Texas belonged to Mexico and was under the Mexican Constitution of 1824.  History has indicated that early African Americans who arrived in Hays County and San Marcos came as slaves.  It is believed that in 1855 the Berry-Durham School was the first in Hays County where African Americans were permitted to attend.  Many learned to read by studying the bible.  In fact churches and religion played a very important role in the life of African Americans during those early years in my hometown and into today.

After the Civil War, Congress passed a law that created the Freedmen’s Bureau, which was the bridge between slavery and freedom.  On June 19, 1865, many in San Marcos learned that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring all slaves to be free.  It was Union General Gordon Granger who brought the news of freedom to Texas slaves and it was his order that required all 22,000 slave owners in Texas to free the estimated 200,000 slaves to include those in Hays County.  We refer to this date as Juneteenth and it is a huge celebration in my hometown even today.  This is our day of freedom.  Many blacks prefer to celebrate Juneteeth as a day of freedom instead of July 4, because on July 4, 1776, we as African Americans were not free in the south.  We the people did not include us.  On June 30, 1872, Freeman’s Bureau was terminated by Congress. 

In 1876, the Public Free School Law went into effect and a school for colored children was eventually formed in San Marcos.  Fifty (50) colored children were the first to attend this school.  In 1897 Professor L.D. Simmons became the principle and Miss Kittie Smith and Mr. M.A. Dodson were his assistants.  My grandma Mattie Miller Calvin and my grandpa Lonny “Bo Pete” Calvin were born around that time (1892 to 1897).  They both were born, educated and grew up in Colored Town in San Marcos; my grandpa died in 1957 and my grandma died in 1969. 

As the population of Colored Town grew, there was a greater need for teachers and a much larger school.  The White school board purchased 7.3 acres of property on Endicott Street at Comal Street and the old colored school was moved there in 1918.  It was at this location that the San Marcos Colored School and eventually the Dunbar Negro School was located and stayed until it was closed in 1965 when schools in San Marcos integrated.  Everyone who grew up in Colored Town who was born before 1957 attended this school to include my mom, Dorothy Calvin Bolden, her brother, Lonny Calvin, Jr. and sisters, Emma Calvin Mayes and Cardie Calvin Moore and yes me.  I entered this school in the first grade in 1959 when it was called Dunbar Negro School named after Paul Lawrence Dunbar a noted African American author and Poet.

My experience growing up in Colored Town was a positive experience.  This was not just a community of many families.  It was a community of one big family.  We looked after each other.  If someone was ill, neighbors helped with caring for the children of the ill to calling a doctor.  Dr. Schive and Dr. Sowell were two doctors that took care of the colored folk in Colored Town.  We called and they came to our homes with their little black bags.  Most of our illnesses were cured by old remedies like Caster Oil and rubbing sab ointment on our chest.  We never went to a dentist, because there was not one who took colored patients before 1970.  Dr. Lewis Gilgrease became the first dentist in San Marcos to accept colored patients.  If our tooth decayed enough, my mother would just pull it with pliers.  My mother would give you a swig of Whiskey to hold over the tooth, which actually deadened the tooth.  She would then pull it. 

My father, Uncle LeRoy Mayes and Mr. Sammy Hardeman ran a little café/barbeque joint in Colored Town.  My father graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and was a veteran of the old Army Air Corp.  Even though he had a college education, all he was allowed to do in the military was be a cook.  He was a great cook.  He was such of a great cook that he became the senior chef at the Villa Capra Restaurant and Night Club in Austin, Texas.  The Villa Capra was the happening place for White Americans in the 1940s and 1950s.  My father cooked for President Eisenhower, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and others who visited Austin, stayed in the Driskell Hotel and ate and performed at the Villa Capra.  My dad arrived in San Marcos at Edward Gary Army Air Field (later renamed Edward Gary Air Force Base) in 1950.  Today Edward Gary is a job corps center.  He met my mom through my Uncle Linkston Moore in 1950 and they married in 1951.  I was born in 1953.    

My mother graduated from Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas.  Paul Quinn was supposed to be the separate, but equal school to Baylor University.  Paul Quinn graduated teachers and preachers.  Colored teachers could not teach in white schools when she graduated and there were too many black teachers for so few black schools.  My mom became a domestic servant for white families cleaning their homes, watching their children and washing their clothes.  You never heard her complain.  It was honest work and the white people she worked for were good to her and us as a family.

In the back of my father and uncle’s cafe, men played dominos.  They called it the Domino Shack.  I can hear them now, “RACK THEM BONES; BIG SIX DOWN; GIVE ME 20.”  My uncle had a little apartment above the café and Mr. Walter Brady rented it out.  Mr. Brady smoked some of the longest cigars I had ever seen.  Man when he got on his guitar and his harmonica he could play the blues like there was nothing else.  My parents or uncle always had some Nat King Cole and Sam Cooke playing on the Victrola record player.  We cannot forget a young Ray Charles and a young Bobby Blue Bland.  My dad liked Louis Armstrong and the Count Basie Band.  The Blues were king.  Every Friday night was 5-Star Shock night on KENS TV Channel 5.  We only had three channels we could get; KENS CBS Station San Antonio, WOAI TV NBC San Antonio and KTBC TV CBS/ABC Austin.  No cable!  5-Star Shock was a TV program that featured Vincent Price and Boris Karloff scary movies.  I would sit in my dad’s lap and just hold on tight.  I was four and five years old and those movies were scary.  See back then in Colored Town, parents were part of their children’s lives.  We had family nights where both the mother and father would do something with their kids around their homes.  In the 1950s there was very little colored folk could do in San Marcos outside of Colored Town.  We really were not permitted outside of Colored Town after dark unless we were working for someone.  We entertained ourselves.  Families were king.

We kids always played outside.  Our parents never had to look far, because we were either on Valley Street or on the Dunbar play ground.  Mr. Alonzo Hodge ran the colored little league teams.  We played other Negro little league teams from Kyle, Luling, Lockhart and Seguin, Texas.  Whites had their own teams in San Marcos and their own baseball fields.  There was no colored swimming pool in San Marcos.  We swam in the San Marcos River down stream from Rio Vista Park where the Whites had a park and swam.  Blacks and Whites never swam in the same part of the river.  The White’s portion of the river was upstream from the Black’s portion.  We often had hayrides from San Marcos 23 miles to Seguin and used the colored pool there.  Seguin had a colored swimming pool and a colored park.  Those hayrides were fun.  We would get on the back of a huge truck and ride all the way there.  I would always try to get up front.  We loved the pool in Seguin.

Colored Town was centered around five churches, the Dunbar Negro School and the Center; a social haven.  The churches were The Colored First Baptist Church, The Colored Second Baptist Church (now called Greater Bethel Baptist Church), Jackson Chapel AME Church, which we were members, Wesley Chapel AME Church and the Holiness Church.  On Sunday mornings everyone was at church someplace.  Choirs would sing and we would all do the church two step rock to the right then left.  After the singing, the preacher would tell everyone to be seated and to what scripture to turn to.  Then he would start to rock.  Men would sit and rock their heads back and forth and fan themselves while women would be dancing in the aisles with their hands in the air and tears coming from their eyes shouting Praise God and thank you Jesus.  I would ask my father what was happening and he would just say they are happy, because the Lord is present in this church house today.  Being only four and five years old, I always looked around to see if I could see him. 

I was also confused, because every picture I ever saw of Jesus Christ our Lord was of a white man.  I just could not understand why a white man would want to come to a black church.  I was always told that man was created in the image of God.  I knew there were white men, Hispanic men, black men and Japanese men, who I always felt sorry for, because this big Ape named King Kong and this lizard named Godzilla always destroyed Tokyo where the Japanese men lived.  Remember I was four and five years old.  With so many different men, I always wondered what the real image of God was.  Was he white, colored, Japanese, what?  I never found the answer.  After church, people would bring in Fried Chicken, corn-on-the-cob, baked beans, barbeque ribs, sweet potato pie, greens, corn bread and more.  We would all eat together as one big family.  We kids would play.  This was normal in Colored Town after church in Sundays.

I had two heartbreaks that entered my life during those early years.  In July 1958, my baby brother was born.  I was alright being an only child.  I had all the attention of my mom and dad, and I did not have to share with anyone.  Then this baby came on the scene.  I was almost five years old.  I just could not figure out where it came from, but I had hoped they would send it back.  The women in Colored Town would come over, bring food, help my mother and just hold this baby and say how beautiful he was.  I would say what about me?  Ain’t I beautiful too?  I could even do more than drink milk, cry and dirty my diapers.  If fact I could go to the bathroom alone.  I was a big boy.  My mother would say Charles, watch the baby.  I would think to myself why, it ain’t going anywhere.  Today, my brother is my best friend and the one person I know I can always count on.  My second heartbreak was the death of my father on March 8, 1960 at the VA Hospital in Kerrville, Texas of cancer.  My dad was special to me and he loved his boys.  I was almost seven years old then.  I felt cheated, because I no longer had a dad.  I grew up without a dad, but there were enough men in Colored Town that would give me a man’s size spanking when I needed it and were a surrogate father when I needed one.  We were all one big family.      
    
The Center was the social hub for all in Colored Town on Friday and Saturday nights.  You could hear James Brown, Stevie Wonder, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and others.  Everyone would dance and have fun.  Hays County was a dry county.  No alcohol was sold anywhere.  There was this one man who would come by and sell moon shine or white lightening out of the trunk of his car.  There were things stronger to drink than Pepsi Cola.   The Center was first constructed in 1873 as an annex to the Hays County Jail, which was located next door.  It was built to house colored prisoners.  In the 1940s The Center was purchased and turned into a USO Club for colored soldiers returning to Edward Gary Army Air Field from fighting in World War II and the Korean War.  The Colored USO Club was the only place in San Marcos colored soldiers could go to dance, have fun and meet the few ladies in the area.  In 1965 Edward Gary Air Force Base closed and it was turned into Edward Gary Job Corps.  The colored students at Gary Job Corp could also only go to The Center, but they were different than the soldiers; not well disciplined.  Fights became common place and The Center finally closed in 1967 as an entertainment hang out for colored folk.  Today it serves as a Black Heritage Museum.

My cousin Ollie Hamilton ran the local grocery story in Colored Town.  Wuest’s Grocery Store, a white-owned store next door to the Coca Cola Bottling Plant on San Antonio Street, was the only other grocery story in San Marcos that allowed colored folk to shop.  There was an H-E-B, but it was whites only until 1966.  Also near Colored Town was G&G Grocery Store owned by the Gonzalez Brothers.  Yes we did have Hispanics in San Marcos and they lived in what we called Mexican Town.  We could shop at G&G Groceries.  We could also shop at the J.C. Penny Store.  Lay-a-way was the big thing back then.  No one had credit cards.  I wish it was that way today.  Old man Tuttle owned Tuttle’s Lumber Company.  He was always willing to help us colored folk when we needed lumber and nails.  My father built our house on Centre Street with his own hands and Mr. Tuttle helped with lumber and nails.  Today Tuttle’s Lumber Company is still in existence where it was when founded back in the 1920’s.  We may have been segregated and looked on differently from the rest of the world, but we survived as a people and as a culture and we were self sufficient.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s colored people had to pay a Poll Tax in order to vote and they had to pass a literacy test.  Most could read thanks to Dunbar school and its teachers.  This was supposed to be for all people, but there was an attachment to this law that said if any member of your family was able to vote in Texas before 1866, then you were exempt from paying the Poll Tax and from knowing how to read to vote.  Since almost no colored people were allowed to vote in Texas before 1866 and most white people could vote in Texas before 1866, the Poll Tax and literacy law only affected the colored folk.  The voting rights act of 1965 struck down the literacy and Poll Tax requirements.         
     
In the 1950’s in Colored Town, polio was the illness of fear.  Three people I knew, two were cousins, came down with the illness.  They were my cousins May Bell Mayes and John “Pee Wee” Calvin, and Ms. Crayton’s daughter Delores Crayton.   Cousin May Bell died of polio in 1957 at age 7.  She was my Uncle LeRoy Mayes’ and Aunt Emma Mayes’ daughter.  Pee Wee is still living today and is 55 years old.  Delores Crayton is also still living.  Pee Wee brought nine (9) children into this world, been married to the same woman for over 30 years and has about 10 grandchildren.  Polio did not stop him one bit.  Today he is a music producer in Austin, Texas and has composed a number of songs.  He is the only person I know who could sit on a pitcher’s mound and throw a baseball a good 100 miles per hour with complete control.  I recently saw him a few months ago at his mother’s funeral.  Her name was Willie Katherine Moten Calvin.  I never knew that was her name until I went to her funeral.  We always called her “Bill.”  She was married to John Calvin Sr. who passed away in 1989.     

My education first started at Mrs. Katherine Hardeman’s kindergarten school for color children.  I started in 1957 and also attended in 1958.  Most colored children born after 1945 attended her kindergarten school.  In 1959 I started first grade at the old Dunbar Negro School.  Ms. Iola Smith was my first grade teacher.  She was also my mother’s first grade teacher.  Mr. Maurice Powell was the principle and if you screwed up, he would paddle you in his office with a yard stick then call you parents.  Try that in today’s world.  We were all straight A students, because we had teachers who cared and parents who were part of our education.  The teachers in the colored school did not teach for money; besides the pay was very low anyway.  They taught for the duty and honor of teaching, building character and educating colored children.  We had a strong colored PTA that supported them.  When colored teachers said open your books to page 2, it was an order enforced by the rule of getting your butt spanked.  When schools integrated and a white teacher said please open you book to page 2, we felt it was a suggestion backed up by nothing.  Many just did not do it.  It appeared that white teachers really did not care, thus most of us just played around.  Our grades dropped, because we had teachers in white schools that did not want us there and did not care.  We were forced on them and their displeasure showed.  At first, they never saw us as equal to the white children.

The colored school, first called Center Point Color School then renamed Dunbar Negro School, was grades 1 through 12 until 1957 when Brown Vs. Board of Education integrated San Marcos Junior High and San Marcos High School, thus grades 7 through 12 were transferred to those schools in or around 1958.  Grades 1 to 6 were not integrated into the white schools until 1965.  I attended an all black school until I started the 6th grade.   I had some wonderful black teachers who made every effort to ensure all of us colored children learned to read, write and do math.  They were great role models.  In 1965 when the rest of the grades integrated and we went to white schools, all of the colored teachers, except for Mr. Forrest Manjang, were fired.  There was no room in white schools for colored teachers.  Ms. Iola Smith started teaching in colored schools in 1932.  She taught my mother and me.  In 1965, after teaching for 33 years, she was forced to retire.  Mr. and Mrs. Powell moved away.  Ms. Callahan remained in San Marcos and Colored Town until her death.  Ms. Smith also remained in Colored Town until she died in 1975.  These were great teachers who were never given a chance to show what they could have done in white schools.  It is my belief that they would have been exceptional teachers and just as successful as the white teachers if not more.

I entered Campus Elementary school in 1965.  This was my first experience going to school and being around white students.  I was in Ms. Houston’s 6th grade class.  Campus was a unique school in that it was located on the campus of Southwest Texas State Teacher’s College (later renamed Southwest Texas State University and now Texas State University).  Yes we were 6th graders going to college, so we thought.  The black children were spread over three different elementary schools, Campus, Jim Bowie and William B. Travis Elementary Schools (Viva El Alamo).  The first few months in an all white school were difficult.  Many outside of Colored Town felt colored children were less than people and unimportant.  It was clear that we were not wanted there, but we were stuck with each other.  There were fights, but the fights were usually over something our parents said.  My first fight was with a boy named Arthur Murry.  He came into class one day and started just staring at me.  I asked him what the problem was and he said his daddy said all of us black children were monkeys and he was looking for the resemblance.  Those were fighting words, but it was his father who actually started it.  I think if our parents had just left us alone, we would have gotten along just find and accepted each other much sooner. 

Many white parents did not want their kids to play with us.  They always blamed everything on us.  Even though schools were now integrated, white kids had their lunch break then us black children.  They ate and we played then we ate and they played.  We were in an integrated school, but still segregated, because we did not eat or play together.  We just sit in a class room together.  Of course our parents worried about the presence of the Klu Klux Klan who fought integration at every turn.  Their motto was “White Power.”  That was fearful amongst our parents.  Some of the white kids whose parents were members of the Klan brought the beliefs of their parents to school.  Yes there were problems early on.

It was in 1965 that we were allowed to join the Mickey Mouse Club and yes I was a Mouseketeer.  M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E!!  In my home town we had two theaters, the Holliday and the Palace Theaters.  Black kids were allowed to go on Saturday mornings to the Mickey Mouse Club at the Holliday Theater, but we had to sit in the balcony while the White kids sit down stairs.  Black adults were allowed to go either theater, but only on Sundays and they too could only sit in the balcony.  It cost 10 cents to go in.  There were no black restrooms in the movie theater.  Everyone saved their coke cups.     

I spent my 7th and 8th grade years at San Marcos Junior High School in 1966 and 1967.  In or around 1967, James Brown came out with that song, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.”  The Black Power movement was strong.  President Johnson had signed the Voting Rights act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Many whites felt threatened by these new laws that gave blacks the right to vote and to have due process under the law.  Whites also felt threatened because of the black power movement.  The Black Panthers became more active and so did other groups like Malcom X and The Nation of Islam.  Many African Americans saw these groups as freedom fighters for justice while non-blacks saw them as terrorists.  Martin Luther King was a driving force that many Whites feared, but many also respected.  My mother was involved in the Civil Rights movement and an officer in the NAACP.  My mother, grandmother, brother and I sat together on the sofa in 1963 and watched Dr. King’s I have a dream speech on the TV.  Man could he speak.

Then came the riots in 1968 when Dr. King was assassinated.  I had entered high school by 1968.  Many of us started sporting what was known as Afros.  Yes I had one too.  The war in Vietnam had started and many black men from Colored Town were drafted and went to ‘Nam, as they would say.  We had two of those black men killed, “John Dipper Odem” and “Kenneth Styles.”  Dipper was killed when his helicopter hit a mountain and Kenneth was killed when he stepped on a land mind.  My mother used to say that these two brave men died for freedom, but for colored people in America at that time, there was little freedom as we were considered 3/5 of a person.  Colored people were still treated like second class citizens.  In 1968, schools may have integrated, but other aspects of life like restaurants had not.  There were still colored and white restrooms.  We still had a White cemetery and a Black cemetery.  Interracial dating and marriage was a violation of law even though the Supreme Court struck down laws forbidding interracial dating and marriage on June 12, 1968 in the Virginia case of Loving vs. U.S.  I might add speaking Spanish in public if you were Hispanic was also against the law punishable by a term in the County Jail; English or jail.

In 1966 I met my first white friend who is still one of my best friends today.  His name is Bobby Kinser, Jr.  His dad, Bobby Kinser, Sr., became our county Sheriff in 1964 and served in that capacity until 1972.  It was Sheriff Kinser who got me interested in law enforcement.  He was well respected in the black community.  The Kinsers resided at the Hays County Jail, which was only a few blocks from my house and just outside of Colored Town.  The sheriff’s residence was on the ground floor and the prisoners were housed on the top floor.  Bob and I would play basketball in the driveway of the jail and he was the first white guy to spend the night at my home in Colored Town.  In fact he was the first white guy to spend the night at anyone’s home in Colored Town.  Through Bob, I met other white friends; Vernon Farmer who’s Step-Father, Chester “Slue Foot” Reeves was the Senior State Trooper in Hays County, and Ken Hopson whose dad was a professor at Southwest Texas State University.  Through Trooper Reeves, I met his Highway Patrol partner, Ralph McClenden and Mr. Joe Davis, the resident Texas Ranger.  They shaped and enhanced my interest in law enforcement.  

For the first time, I was experiencing life outside of Colored Town and had friends who were not black.  With these new friends came an identity crisis for me.  The more I became close to my white friends and accepted by them, the more black friends I lost.  Blacks in Colored Town started calling me “Uncle Tom” and “White Boy Want-to-Be.”  This was 1967 and I had just entered high school.  I fell in love with country music and through Bob’s dad the Sheriff, I met country singer Willie Nelson.  My dream of being in law enforcement was laughed at by blacks, because blacks just were not police officers.  I was constantly told that white people were not going to let an “N-word” be a police officer.  My dream of going to college was discouraged, because my white teachers kept telling me that I was not smart enough.  Colored children just did not have the smarts for college they would say.  They felt I should be a grounds keeper, janitor or sanitation engineer (trash collector).  I started to hate being black, because if you were white, the world was yours for the taking and everyone encouraged you to do whatever you desired, but if you were black, all of your desires were discouraged and roadblocks were thrown in your way.  There was so much you were told you could not do being colored.

Then in 1969, I met a beautiful little blond white girl named Charlene Burke.  Actually she met me.  I was eating lunch across the highway from San Marcos High School at a drive-in called “Big Willies,” a hamburger joint.  She was there with some other girls and walked over and asked if she could sit down.  I said yes.  She had never met a colored boy before and I had never met any white girls.  We built a great friendship and actually fell in love, but a friendship and a relationship between a black male and a white female was forbidden by law.  The Principal of our school found out and called our parents in.  My mother said the Principal had ordered a halt to the friendship I had with Charlene or face expulsion and arrest.  We both were 15 years old.  I really started hating me, because I could not be with the girl I fell in love with, everyone said I was not smart enough to go to college and everyone said my dream of being a law enforcement officer was a dream that would never come true or be fulfilled.  I became a very angry person. 

My mother worked for Dr. and Mrs. Maurice Erickson.  Mrs. Erickson, Ruth was her first name, was the French teacher at San Marcos High School and Dr. Erickson was Chairman of the Economics Department at Southwest Texas State University.  My mother asked Mrs. Erickson to talk to me.  Mrs. Erickson told me to stop seeing myself as a black person and see myself just as a person.  I told her that I could do this if the rest of the world could.  She said social change takes time and all changes start with a pioneer.  She told me to be that pioneer, but let things change slowly.  She said at age 15 education should be my primary focus and not girls, regardless of color.  She said people laughed at my dreams because they had no dreams of their own.  She said others thought why should I have a dream when they did not.  She called it jealousy.   Mrs. Erickson told me to follow my heart and never stop chasing my dreams.  She said to stop listening to those who choose to tear down and listen only to those who care to build up and to encourage.  She said because I was a colored boy, reaching my dreams may be harder for me than for my white friends, but they are not impossible and are realistic dreams.

In 1970, Dr. Erickson introduced me to Dr. W.C. Newberry who managed a federal funded program called “Project Upward Bound.”  This was a program to help low income students prepare for college.  On June 1, 1970 between my junior and senior year in high school, I started taking college preparatory classes every day, Monday through Saturday.  Upward Bound also found summer jobs for us.  This program prepared me well.  Before I entered Southwest Texas State University on June 1, 1971, Dr. Newberry said to me, quote, “Charles never see yourself through the eyes of others, because the eyes of others may have a far less opinion of what your true abilities really are.  Always see yourself through your own eyes.  This will give you the strength to believe in yourself and your abilities and will give you the courage to fight for greater challenges that will lead to greater success and upward mobility.”  I have never forgotten those words.

I was accepted and entered Southwest Texas State University (SWT) in the summer of 1971.  This was a new challenge in life and a gift from God I thought I would never see.  I met a little known country western singer named George Harvey Strait who performed with his country western band “Ace in the Hole” at the Cheathem Street Warehouse on Friday and Saturday nights.  We graduated the same year in 1975.  Today, George Strait is one of the biggest country western artists in America today. 

My major was Criminal Justice.  This started my long march to achieve my dream of becoming a law enforcement officer.  Southwest Texas State (SWT) (now Texas State) had then and still has now the second largest criminal justice department in the U.S.  Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas is the largest.  Northwestern in Illinois and John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York are numbers three and four.  I started working as a dispatcher and traffic enforcement officer on campus.  Robert McKinney was the Chief of Police at SWT.  He was a retired Dallas Police Commander who was the Commander of the Dallas Police Detail supporting the U.S. Secret Service with protecting President John F. Kennedy in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated.  Chief McKinney also commanded the Dallas Police investigative team that worked with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service in investigating the death of President Kennedy. 

The Chief took an interest in me and helped me along the way.  I became a student patrol officer on campus and I spent a lot of time riding with the four State Troopers stationed in Hays County.  In August 1975, I graduated with a BS Degree in Criminal Justice.  Many people said I was not smart enough to go to college and that I should have been a grounds keeper, janitor or trash collector.  Colored children, as I was told, were not smart enough to make it through college.  In the front row was my mother with tears in her eyes.  Her boy did what people said he was not smart enough to do; graduate from college.  Another person who encouraged me and was in the audience when I graduated was a black man named “Sandy Coleman.”  In 1972, Sandy became the first black police officer in San Marcos.  Even he said continue to chase your dreams.

During my senior year in college, I went to a job fair.  The Texas Department of Public Safety had a booth at this fair.  I met a black trooper named, Joe Robinson.  He was the first black Texas State Trooper, hired in 1971.  Adolph Thomas was the second black State Trooper, hired in 1972 followed by LeRoy Young in 1973.  I was in Trooper Recruit Class B-75, which started on October 28, 1975.  There were 126 men and two females in B-75.  14 of us were black males and we had one black female.  God this was a tough school.  Boy did they lean on us black trooper recruits, as we were called, every step of the way.  We heard the “N-word” more than we cared to.  They did everything they could to try and run us off.  At one point we all decided to quit.  A white trooper counselor named, Jim “Old Blue” Shaw pulled us all together and asked a question.  His question was, if the white man tells us to leave the earth, where will we go?  We thought about that question and had no answer.  Mr. Shaw asked when would we stop running and start standing up for our rights.  He asked when we were going to show the world that we could endure any hardship thrown at any man.  He asked when we were going to stand up and tell the world that we had a right to be here.  Mr. Shaw then said to think about what he said and give it one more day.  Little did we know there was a positive reason for everything they threw at us.  We stayed in the school and endured the harassment and unequal treatment. 

Toward the end of the school, Steve Baggs, our physical training and self-defense instructor, pulled the entire class together.  He told white troopers recruits that we colored trooper recruits learned something that the whites never did.  We learned how to function as a team; as a unit.  We stuck together and watched each other’s back.  A team is a strong as its weakest link. If one of us was last on the runs, we all were last.  If one colored trooper required extra physical training, we all required it.  If one was struggling academically, we all studied with that person together.  We eventually learned that if we could not take the harassment and harsh treatment in that training academy, we would not have been able to take it out on the roads of Texas.  When I got out on the highways of Texas, I had to fight for respect on a daily basis.  This school prepared us for what was to come and they prepared us well.  I now appreciate all that they did to us.

In March of 1976, I graduated from Trooper Academy Class number B-75.  Again my mama was sitting in the front row with tears in her eyes.  I had achieved the biggest part of my dream.  I had become a law enforcement officer.  I was assigned to Katy, Texas; just west of Houston.  Before I left for Katy, my mama made me wear my state trooper uniform to church.  She gave a speech that day.  She told everyone that many had laughed at me for my dream of becoming a police officer.  She said many said the white man would never let a colored boy be a police officer.  She pointed at me and asked everyone to look at me, her son, in uniform as proof dreams can come true with effort, believe of self and hard work.  Many in my trooper class became leaders.  In 1988 LeRoy Young who was in the class two years before us became the first Black Texas Ranger in modern history.  A black man named Wilbert Scott is believed to have been the first Black Texas Ranger in 1865 and served until 1867 when it is said he was killed in a Comanche Indian raid out near Ft. Stockton, Texas.  This is still being debated.  In 2002, my trooper recruit classmate, Earl Pearson, became the first Black Senior Ranger Captain; the person who heads the Texas Rangers.  Eddy Williams, another classmate, became a Highway Patrol Captain in East Texas.  Class B-75 produced some outstanding leaders. 

In January 1980, and at the request of Texas Governor William P. Clements, Jr., I was moved from the Highway Patrol and into the Governor’s Office and on the staff of Governor Clements.  I was one of the first African Americans to serve any Texas Governor in a position of great responsibility outside of being the cook, maid, butler or gardener.  Also on staff was another African American named Joe Kervin.  Joe was an African American millionaire who built the largest office cleaning business in North Texas.  Maybe I should have looked at sanitation engineering (taking out the trash).  My mama was even prouder.  She would tell people that her son worked for the Governor.  My mother died on April 30, 1995.  In 1984 Governor Clements was defeated by Governor Mark White.  Governor White asked me to stay on board, which I did until I was hired by the Department of State in March 1986.  Not bad for a boy whose teachers said he did not have the smarts to make it through college.   

This year (2009), I will be starting my 38th year in public service.  In those almost 38 years of service and my almost 56 years of life, I have seen many changes in society and positive inclusions of African Americans into mainstream American life.  Various types of job opportunities opened up for African Americans to take advantage of.  Today, African American baby boomers have it better than our parents did.  What is still lacking for African Americans is upward mobility.  Stephanie Armour wrote an article last year for USA Today called “Minorities say Job Advancement Blocked.”  She gave many examples she received from minorities.  Many are true.  Maybe with the election of President Obama (I wish my mother could have seen his inauguration), outstanding performance by African Americans will be rewarded by upward mobility.  With God’s help and blessings, one day race will no longer be a factor in any aspect of life.  It will all be based on merit, performance and character.  I have no doubt that goal will be achieved.  We will all be brothers and sisters in the true spirit of Christ.