Knoxville Remembered Series: Old Austin

Copyright 2008 -All Rights Reserved

In my time, Austin High was the only high school that Black kids could attend in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jim Crow ruled as law and lord of the land in the South, and that was the way things were until public school integration in 1964 or thereabouts when the Knoxville had to cave in to the Supreme Court’s decision.

The original Austin was built at 327 Central Street in 1897 by the efforts of Miss Emily Austin who came South during Reconstruction, just as many Whites did, to teach Black people. That Austin was built to educate “coloreds” (the politically correct terminology in that day) from ages six to eighteen and it graduated students who completed the tenth grade; later, in the Roaring Twenties, Austin added the eleventh grade, and, finally, in 1936, the twelfth. By then, the city had constructed the Vine Street Austin, old Austin—the one I still dream about. This was the Austin where I grew up, where I was like a mascot, adopted by faculty, staff, and students. I called this one “old” Austin because by 1952, a new Austin went up right next door; then, old Austin became Vine Junior High.

At both Austins, my daddy—Coach “Dusty” George H. Lennon—was the Physical Education teacher, the Head Coach for football, basketball, and the occasional track and field event. That was his job way before I was born and he kept it until integration. When Daddy was Austin’s football coach, games in Knoxville were nighttime affairs because we had to “borrow” a White school’s playing field at night since we had none of our own.

On the afternoon of Austin’s games, the band paraded through the Black community down Vine Street, and on up—uptown—to Gay Street, majorettes strutting their stuff, drumsticks tapping a snappy beat, the Band Director, Mr. Cobb, dressed to the nines in white shoes, white socks, and a uniform suit of white with gold trim on his hat and epaulettes. Everybody turned out to see the band. Because everybody’s child went to Austin sooner or later, and it was likely that a band member or majorette or cheerleader was a sister or a cousin; and if kin wasn’t a band member or cheerleader, then perhaps one of them was your neighbor’s child, or the child of a fellow church or club member.

When we were very little, Janice Tate and I were the band’s tiny tot mascots, marching just behind the drum majorette. I remember we were still living on Mee Street then, so I hadn’t made it to second grade yet. I must have been in kindergarten, at least. Janice, too because she and I were always in the same class. We were small enough to be “cute” but not big enough to last throughout the entire march. I remember that Daddy would pace us in his car so that from time to time Janice and I could scramble into the front seat and rest for a few blocks before jumping out and marching again. I liked being the band’s mascot—liked marching to the rhythms of the drum line—like showing off my little legs, even though I was convinced that Janice had prettier ones—liked being recognized by the community folks—and I liked the attention the drum majorette gave us.

In a very real way, Austin’s band was our community property; all Black folks owned a piece of it. When they heard the “Street Beat”—a syncopated rhythm beat out by the drum line without accompanying music—they poured out of their houses and watched, beaming with pride, as the band marched by, not a foot out of step. They shouted compliments like—“ Go on, girl! Do yo thang, baby! Y’all know you tuff stuff!”—and sent the band, smiling, on their way to the next block. The community held them high in esteem; we just knew Austin had the baddest band in town.

White folk downtown on Gay street turned out too—bankers, merchants, sales girls, and shoppers alike. They loved the performance: a high-stepping band dressed in spiffy-looking, orange and blue uniforms, playing a toe-tapping-head-nodding-hip-shaking beat, and to top it off, they were led by a drum majorette—always good-looking, tall hat, short, peekaboo skirt, tasseled boots, showing off the kind of legs that White “cheesecake” movie stars of the time, like Betty Grable and Jane Russell, wished they had.

The band was always one of my very favorite things about Austin, where the world was all Black. To me, Austin housed a village—elders, griots, mentors, all of them, extended family. There was gangly Mr. Davis, the principal, and the pigeon-toed, bespeckled Mr. Ford, a musical genius who regularly turned out top-grade Choral Arts choirs. There was dark-haired Madame Stokes, our French teacher, whose eyeglass frames matched her colorful blouses—pink frames today, and tomorrow pastel blue or lavender ones. And, of course, there was Mama, the English major turned girls’ basketball coach and gym teacher. When I had to miss first grade, Mama would take me and my tricycle to school with her and I’d turn Austin’s gym into my own personal race track when no one was around. And when I got bored, I’d run outside and sit in the dust, watching Daddy and his boys at football practice.

That Austin, like that Knoxville exists now in my dream time. Integration marched in and kicked ole Jim Crow segregation out. And other things. For one thing, school integration killed off the jobs of a lot of Black teachers and coaches all over the South. I realize today, to my sorrow, that integration —in education, in public spheres, in the marketplace, to name just a few—killed a great many other things as well—among them our community cohesiveness, our sense of worth, and a lot of idealistic values based on something finer than greed and conspicuous consumption. Back in the day, Black folk championed integration—had high hopes for it, in fact. Who knew that it would backfire in our faces? When school integration came, for example, Daddy had seniority over other White coaches and teachers, but the powers that be swept that aside. Daddy’s track record as the “winning-est” coach in East Tennessee, Black or White, mattered not. The powers put him at the previously all-White Fulton High where he was to serve as assistant to the White coach. But that didn’t happen. Probably because the coach was too intimidated by Daddy’s winning record and experience to let him near the football field or the basketball court; so unhappily, Daddy ended up being study hall monitor all day, every day for the rest of his days until retirement. When Daddy died in 1980, The Knoxville News-Sentinel headlined his death calling him a “Giant Among Area Coaches” and The Knoxville Journal said “he maintained a brilliant winning record in both football and basketball.”

The Knoxville of my growing up—the one where I’d see a “White Only” sign over the water fountain at Kresge’s five and dime—exists no more. That Knoxville, where I only saw white people when I went uptown with Mama to go to the bank and pay bills, is no more. That Knoxville is gone. Gone is that time when we could only go to Chilhowee Park on Thursdays—the day when White kids and their parents stayed away because Black kids and their parents were allowed in to ride the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel. Our place to swim--Edward Cothern Pool, the only place we could go swimming to cool down summer’s heat--is gone. So is The Gem Theater on Vine and Central, serving up second or third run Hollywood B movies to us Black kids who could only see movies there or in the balcony of the Bijou. All of those things have vanished. Time rolled in and rearranged things--as time always does.

Yes, like the old song said: Time brings about a change. Time merged the two Knoxvilles—one White and the other Black—into one. Time changed Knoxville, just as time changed Austin so many times. The 1952 Austin—the one I graduated from—is no more. Now there’s another called Austin-East High School. Which was supposed to school both Blacks and Whites. Supposed to.

Change is not always easy to swallow. But life is change.

The city named the football field at Austin-East for Daddy while he was still alive. And I liked that. I like remembering Old Austin because that memory is part of what defines me. Austin's legacy is still around. And I like knowing that. It's good to know that there’s still an Austin around in Knoxville, Tennessee.