Vanish Into the Darkness

Dear Boo and Bubble,

When I became a faculty member at Eastside High School in 1970, I joined many of my former teachers at my alma mater, Wade Hampton.  My principal, John Durr, taught me English.  His assistant principal, Frank Sutherland, had been a math instructor.  Catherine Austell and Betty Beane Workman came over from the English department.  Mrs. Workman oversaw the publication of our yearbook, The Trevilian.  As you can see, there were many teachers with vastly more experience than I had just coming out of college.  That fact, coupled with the requirement of full integration of the faculty under the Supreme Court ruling, made it very difficult for Mr. Durr to consider me at all for a position in the History Department.

The only way he could justify hiring me was to have me accept some additional responsibility over and above my classroom hours.  He suggested that if I became the Pep Club advisor, he would give me the job.  I had served as president of the Pep Club my senior year at Wade Hampton, so this seemed to fit quite well with my skill set.  I agreed to do it.

The charter of the club stated that the group would support the athletic endeavors of the school.  This included the selection of cheerleaders, coordination of a Booster Club and organization of events for students to increase attendance at games of the various sports.  The athletic department had successfully fielded a football team during the summer, once it became known which existing schools would supply the students for the newly-formed Eastside.  When classes started, I had no time to waste setting up elections to decide cheerleaders and the name of our team name (ultimately decided as the Eagles). 

As I’ve explained before, this was the first student body ever assembled for Eastside and reflected a diversity never before seen in the public schools.  It was a blessing in many ways to be in a brand new school with no established traditions.  There were no outsiders.  But the situation did present its own challenges.  Those of us in any leadership capacity need to establish fair ways for any election process to reflect the makeup of the body.  For me, this was particularly true in establishing a cheerleading corps as they would become one of the most visible symbols to the broader community of how things were going at the school. 

The applications came in just as I expected – an equal number of white and black students.  We held open tryouts in front of the entire student body so everyone could display their talents.  On the ballot, however, I divided the candidates by race.  Students were instructed to vote for four of each, regardless of class year.  The top eight vote-getters would be the regular squad.  The next four would vie for two alternate spots in a run-off with no restrictions on voting.  My methodology might not pass muster today, but my underlying goal was to eliminate cliques and encourage the students to get to know one another.  For the time, the process worked fine and Eastside’s first cheerleaders were chosen without any consternation.  The only loose end to tie up was that of the alternates. 

As all of the football games would be that year, the first one was away.  In the tradition of my experience with high school football, I secured a Greyhound bus to take students to the game for a nominal fee.  That’s what we did all the time at Wade Hampton.  The bus filled up quickly, mostly with white students, but there were three black boys who also bought tickets.  In what I thought was a stroke of genius, I decided to use the occasion to let the four girls vying for alternate cheerleader to ride for free and lead cheers on the bus going down to the game.  They would then temporarily join the regular squad at the game and have another chance to audition.

We were all to meet at 5:00 PM in Eastside’s parking lot and head out.  Since school didn’t let out until 3:30, I just decided to stay and grade papers rather than go home and come back. In a show of typical chivalry, Great Granddaddy Schaefer asked if he could ride along.  He was concerned that the bus would return after 11:00 and he didn’t want me driving by myself that late at night.  I was delighted to have his company……and it was quite providential that we would share the experience of that night together.

Among the four girls vying for alternate cheerleader was a Sophomore who had come from Lincoln High School, one of two all-black high schools in the county up until that year.  I don’t remember her name, but I will never forget that about ten miles into the trip, she began shouting cheers traditionally used at Lincoln.  At first, the white students just observed.  By the time the bus arrived, however, the entire load loudly joined in – stomping and clapping to a raucous beat so much that I thought the wheels would rock off the axles.  Granddaddy and I were right in there with them.

The ride home, however, proved to be a little more somber.  The Eagles lost the game quite badly.  No cheering, just quiet murmuring.

When the bus returned to the parking log, students disembarked and headed towards the cars filled with waiting parents.  As they filtered out, the lot emptied and the bus pulled away, Granddaddy and I stood there alone with the cheerleader and the three black boys.

“Miss Kendrick, is the office open?” she asked.  “We need to call our parents.”

I found myself in a very awkward assumptive situation – I assumed because white students took buses to football games all the time, it must be universally true.  Come to find out, this was the first time these kids had ever even heard of such a thing.  I had foregone the conclusion that they would know to tell their parents to come to the parking lot to meet them.

Since this all happened before the cell phone was even a concept, I had to tell her “no.”

Thank heavens, Granddaddy was there. 

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll take you boys home.  Beth, you take her.  Does that work for everybody?”

Realizing that this solution was the only option, they nodded their heads.

Granddaddy and the boys piled into his car - she and I into my little two-door Mustang and off we went.  The night was steamy and before long my windshield began to fog up.  I turned on the defroster and the wipers so I could see where we were going.  It was pitch dark.

“Miss Kendrick,” she said, “I am so sorry.”

“For what?” I asked.  “You didn’t know how this works.  I’m the one who should be saying I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not that.  It’s about the cheering.  I just couldn’t help myself.  I didn’t mean to just take over. But that’s what we do at Lincoln.”

“Are you kidding me?”  I replied in shock.  “It was wonderful!  You had everybody so fired up by the time we got to the game, it was amazing.”

We rode along is silence for a while, only broken by her directions on where to go.  Finally she told me to stop, that she could get out and walk the rest of the way.  I couldn’t see any distinguishing markers, but I figured she knew her own neighborhood.

As she opened her door to get out, I stopped her and said, “Listen, the greatest thing about Eastside is that it is brand new and you students from Lincoln will bring your best traditions to the mix and all the other students will do so as well.  It’s not my school, their school or yours…..it’s our school.  So don’t you worry.  Be yourself.  You made a real contribution tonight.”

She thanked me, shut the door and vanished into the darkness.  I turned around and started making my way back.  I honestly would have hated to see in daylight where I was. 

As it turned out, she was elected as one of the alternate cheerleaders and I felt a little sense of pride at possibly having helped that to occur.