Copyright 2008-All rights Reserved
When I was growing up, there was one pool in Knoxville where Black people could learn to swim—on the west side at Edward Cothren Pool. In summer, Mama sent me to learn. Janice was usually there too. And Calvin, who eventually became her husband. Easy swimmers, I called those two. They stroked the water like they lived in it. I wasn’t an easy swimmer, but I loved being in the water, and so swimming became something special to me—something I could do well and loved.
One of the reasons I took to the sport of swimming, I think, was I considered it something all my own. Let me explain. Both my parents made their living as gym teachers and when I was growing up, people just expected me to be good at sports. Why? Because they assumed that the whole family would be good at sports. Like it was in the blood, so to speak. It wasn’t. Truth be told, Mama was really an English major in college. The only reason she had this job as a gym teacher because that was the only opening at Austin when she applied, and, thanks to old Jim Crow, Austin was the only high school in Knoxville where you could teach if you were Black. And that was really how sports came to be what she did for a living.
As for me, I was not good at your everyday sports. “Not good” is a kind understatement, “lousy” is a more accurate description. As a kid, I longed to be able to jump rope, my playmates singing chants to keep time while the rope slapped the ground. Didn’t happen. They’d be swinging the rope, I’d jump in, get tangled up, and fall. And forget Jacks. No matter that Evelyne tried to teach me how to play this game where you pick up as jacks as possible before the little ball hit the ground. No way. I could never master it.
I was great at climbing trees, at the swings, and at hand-walking Jungle Gym bars, but those weren’t group games, which I just couldn’t seem to pull off. Swimming, though, that was a different thing. I took to it like a natural. Not like me and softball. Not like me and volleyball. I have to admit that it was a point of pride with me that I could swim fairly well when most Black people in Knoxville didn’t know how to swim.
Even Daddy couldn’t swim. And he was Mr. Sports personified— the revered coach and gym teacher. The reason he’d never learned goes back to his mother who’d dreamed, one night, that he drowned. This scared her so badly that she’d warned him never to go into the water, and he never did. At first, Mama couldn’t swim either; she learned to swim along with me, but I was better at it because I got to spend more time doing it than she did. I can tell you, the best things about swimming, to me: number one, there were no balls that I had to hit or catch; number two, it didn’t require the kind of hand-eye coordination that was my nemesis; and, number three, it wasn’t a team sport.
Unfortunately, at Vine Junior High, I was faced with having to take gym, and those group games I was so bad at playing came back to slap me in the face, reinvented with a new name: team sports. This time, I couldn’t avoid them. Everybody had to take gym every year. And to make the situation even worse, Mama was my teacher.
In autumn, Mama had us playing volleyball. That was unfortunate because when I played volleyball, my feet inevitably tangled up as I looked up, reaching, with both hands, for the volleyball coming my way. My feet would tangle and that’s when I’d fall on the player in front of me, or I’d collide with the player next to me. The other team loved it. My teammates did not.
In winter, Mama had the class playing basketball. She’d point to a couple of girls to be opposing captains, usually somebody like Pansy or Rosalyn or Janice or Judy. Then, the captains called out the names of girls they wanted on their team. Do I need to tell you that I was always one of the last chosen? Always last—after Charlene and Bea. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and I got fed up with it, but I couldn’t really blame them. Who’d want somebody playing guard position who was so scared of fumbling and falling that she hardly ever moved around on the court? That meant girl I was guarding always got to make a lot of baskets when I was on the floor. My teammates, of course, didn’t like that.
Even the other losers in class who couldn’t play well enough to save their souls got disgusted with me. Folk got real savage about winning the game, you see. So, I resolved to do better next time. Next time came and I found myself guarding Juanita who was moving all over the court like a jackrabbit. I gritted my teeth with resolution, determined to do better, and desperately tried to keep up with her. She faked to her left, and darted forward. At that moment, I lunged at her, heavily off balance, tripping myself up and lurching into her.
Of course, Judy, who was refereeing the game, had to call a foul. She sighed and gave me one of her Judy-looks that said: "I want to cut you a break, but all you seem to know how to do is throw a wrench in the works." After Juanita got her free throw, scoring off my foul, we began again with her moving this way and that way, and me lunging around like a lumbering cow. It was beyond frustrating to me to try to guard somebody darting around on the floor. Why didn’t she stop moving so I could do my job?
Finally, in a reckless attempt to do better for my team, I simply snatched the ball away from her. Well, I can tell you that didn’t go over well. Not with Juanita, who started shouting at the referee to do something. Not with Judy, who was blowing the whistle at me in a long, aggravated screech. Not with my groaning teammates. Not with my mother, who looked at me like I was an idiot. In the end, I ended up on the bench for the rest of the period.
Come springtime, it was softball that was my nemesis.
Once more, I’d always be the last one picked for a team since it was widely known among my classmates that catching the ball was simply beyond me. Because it would have been plain foolishness to put me on one of the bases, I was always assigned an obscure outfield position.
One fine day, after they’d put me out there, Pansy made a hit that stopped both teams cold. Everybody watched the ball go up, up, up into the blue, looking as if it would outrace gravity and never come back down again. Eventually, gravity snagged it; and, slowly, it began to curve down to the ground. Down, and down, and down, it sailed, coming into the field area where Judy, Charlene, Beverly, and I were positioned. As I watched the ball, it suddenly occurred to me that I might be expected to do something... to-- Ohmigod!--catch this thing.
At this revelation, I looked to my right. Judy was running, eyes up tracking the ball as fell downward, her hands out to make the catch. I looked to my left, and there was Charlene, who, like me, lacked the athletic prowess to catch anything--there she was, caution thrown to the wind, making tracks for the ball, too. Behind me, deep in the outfield, Beverly was coming up, full steam ahead, legs pumping, dust flying, looking like the Roadrunner. I looked up at the ball again and trembled. What was I to do? This one, I calculated, was coming in like a cannonball—picking up speed as it dropped, so it would hit somebody or something—hard!
Here was my problem. Flying balls terrified me. I had gotten hit so many times when I was little, standing on the sidelines as my parents’ basketball teams played, that now, the moment a flying ball came my way, I froze, not sure whether to run, put my hands over my face and head, or try to catch it.
Staring up at the ball, I decided right then, it wasn’t going to be me trying to catch this thing that could maim me for life. Let the others come and get it. Let them get knocked senseless. There’d be no more flying balls going upside my head. This ball was not going to make me its target. Not today.
And I stepped back and out of Judy’s way. She caught the ball in a fluid, one-handed jump that was a beautiful thing to see. Her catch won us the game. Our team was still cheering as Mama sent me to the showers. And believe me, I was glad to go.
It makes for a funny story now, but back then, I wasn’t going to risk life and limb for a flying ball. Not then, and not now. No, sir. Not me. So, you can see what I meant when I say I was lousy at team sports.
But I’m not at lousy at swimming.
In the pool, the green-blue water laps at my arms; the smell of chlorine is strong and clean in my nostrils, and the feel of the water on my legs is like luxurious silk. I’m the only one swimming in the regular lane for lap swimmers.
No team members here. No group games. And no flying balls either.
Thank you, Jesus!
(end)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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.
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.
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