Divided by color: Football fans were once split by race, now by schools' hues
LINEVILLE — As he looks out over a sea of football fans divided mostly by school color, Arthur “Coach” Oliver can remember a different football tradition in Clay County. One he wasn't always part of. He has friends and plenty of former students in Ashland, but he roots for the opposing Aggies. He even takes tickets at the door, because he can't stand to be away from the game. People call him “Coach” because of his time teaching and coaching at Lineville High School. But those jobs came after the county's only black high school, his alma mater, was shut down in 1969. Life was nothing like the integrated football frenzy that converged at Lineville High's Upchurch Field recently, because mingling of the races was simply not condoned. That's why under Oliver's red, long-sleeved polo shirt there always beats the heart of a blue and white Clay County Training School Bear. “If you ask any black person around my age or older, they can tell you about it,” said the 74-year-old. They could tell you about a time when segregation divided Clay County, and black children walked miles to their nearest school. But they would rather tell you about how the county's black community believed in education enough to establish a high school. They might also tell you how their parents' resiliency and the determination to get their children out of the fields they toiled in shaped the Clay County people see today. Like integration throughout the South, it didn't happen smoothly in Clay County. But many Training School graduates took risks to make sure integration happened beyond schools. As the official school historian, Oliver can reel off the names of the many accomplished graduates who broke the color line in the county. There's Ricky Burney, a Clay County commissioner. Fredonia Smith, a former four-term Ashland city councilwoman. Bobbie Steed, a current Ashland city councilwoman. All were Training School graduates who worked to make the county a lot less separate and a little more equal. As a 1952 graduate, Oliver makes the list as a former Clay County School Board member along with the Rev. Clinert Staples, a 1944 graduate of the school. Staples went to federal court in Birmingham to help create a District 5 for the school board so that blacks would be represented. Fredonia Smith, a 1942 graduate and former teacher, stood before a judge in Montgomery to integrate the Ashland City Council and the Clay County Commission. |
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She said she was determined to do something about inequality in Clay County and that led her to work covertly during the civil rights movement and to run for City Council. “There was something instilled in me that just always wanted to do something like that,” she said. “Most people didn't know it, but I was doing a lot of work secretly because there were things that would happen to people if things were known.” Smith finds it difficult to talk about those things, but she knows because of her work, she and all the generations of her family can go wherever they want and rub shoulders with whomever they want. Though a former Ashland city official, she chose to sit on the Lineville side at the Clay Bowl in support of her daughter. Staples, 82, said he believes Training School graduates were taught a strong work ethic that made them determined to do something with their lives. “There were really only three things to do: Go to church, go to school and going to the cotton patch,” he said. “Everybody had a responsibility.” Staples, who taught in Ashland and lived in Lineville, said it bothers him that young people now don't have the same sense of collective pride that he remembers. It was the kind of pride that made you too moral to steal from your neighbor, and it wouldn't let you walk away from doing the right thing. “All that has disappeared,” he said. But as a retired man, he finds much that makes him smile. His arrowhead collection, a garden full of collards and choosing to go fishing instead of fighting crowds on game day. “The kids used to ask me 'Who are you pulling for?' I'd always say 'I'm neutral,'” he said, with a chuckle. “I've always been that way, even when I was in school.” His former neighbor and friend Oliver on the other hand, can't help but cheer for his beloved Aggies, because today things are better than they were. When he looks out over the land where the original 1922 Clay County Training School used to sit and its replacement still stands, he remembers back to living just a mile from the school. “As a child, 70 something years ago, this was just a building,” he said. “There were no trees. Many of my days in class were spent looking across rows and rows of cotton. “It's hard to believe the growth and the change that's taken place.” He sees progress and believes the changes have been for the better. But he doesn't forget about that place in his heart. “It never leaves you,” he said. “It's in your bones.” Contact Markeshia Ricks at mnricks@bama.ua.edu or 241-1945. |
