John Taylor:
CLASS OF 1959
Little Rock Central High SchoolClass of 1959
Little rock, AR
John Marshall High SchoolClass of 1965
Los angeles, CA
Hall High SchoolClass of 1964
Little rock, AR
Bolton High SchoolClass of 1959
Alexandria, LA
Bolton High SchoolClass of 1959
Alexandria, LA
John's Story
My best memories of High School were at Bolton High in Alexandria, Louisiana for my 8th, 9th, and 10th grade. 50 years later I spent a year in Alexandria teaching at LSUA. I am in my 55th year as a teacher/professor. Currently I am a chemistry Professor at Florida State College.
Many of you at Bolton may remember me from my 10th grade state science fair winner in the earth Science division.
We moved to Little Rock in 1957 just in time to be caught up in the crisis of Central High. I completed my 11th grade there but became a member of the Lost Class of 1959 and did not graduate. My best friends were from Bolton so I added my name to the class of 59 there, but really, I am in the class of 59 at Little Rock Central High. 3665 kids in Little Rock had no high school in 1958-59 so I became a high school drop-out (rather "drop up". After no school for almost six months, 66 kids from LRCHS were allowed to attempt college at Little Rock University (now UALR).
I have no high school diploma, no GED, but three college degrees. I had majors in chemistry, mathematics and minors in physics and education. My story appears in a published book:
Finding the Lost Year: What Happened When Little Rock Closed Its Public Schools
(University of Arkansas Press) (Hardcover)
~ Sondra Gordy (Author)
Review
"Gordy's razor-sharp analysis of Little Rock's 'Lost Year' is wonderfully balanced by first-hand accounts of the often devastating effects on those students who could least afford to lose a year of their lives." - Grif Stockley, author of Ruled by Race and Blood in Their Eyes
John Taylor Story is found in the Afterward on pages 177-179:
John Taylor was a sixteen a year-old junior at Little Rock Central High during the 1957-59 school year. He describes himself during that time as a science nerd who was brand new to Little Rock and just trying hard to fit into his new surroundings. His father, a psychiatrist, was the new clinical director at the Arkansas State Hospital, and the two drove into the city the weekend of August 31 from Alexandria, Louisiana. The family was to have a house on the grounds of the hospital, but he and his dad were to bach it in smaller temporary quarters until his mother arrived after six weeks. Taylor was small in size, and he recalls now that for sixteen-year-old boys all that matters is going to school, doing your job of learning, earning good grades, and trying to be something your are not, an athlete. So I played in the band and did science instead. His experiences during the first year of integration revolved around his own new world, his classes, and the new white friends he had made. In 1997, as a long time college professor of chemistry, he began to tell others about some of those dark memories of eleventh grade. How I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. How I was part of the silent minority as my father talked equality for all...I was ashamed for never speaking up. Too scared. Too stupid, just a kid being a teenager wanting a normal school year. As for the Little Rock Nine, he says: I did not even know their names. They kept to themselves, and we kept to ourselves. I did learn one of the Nine name early in the year, Minnijean Brown, as she was a target for group of white students. At graduation, I learned the name of Ernest Green, as I was in the band playing that evening...I did not know who Martin Luther King [Jr] was or that he was in the stands. Just that Ernest was in danger of being shot at the ceremony and security was high at the stadium. The following year, when schools were close, he kept his two summer jobs to make more money for school which certainly would begin soon. He started two correspondence courses, one in English and one in solid geometry. After six weeks had gone by, he says, the hope of school starting was fading, and reality was setting in: There was no school. There would be no senior year. In October, he went with his mother to southern Louisiana, where two former classmates and their mothers offered to allow him to live with them. His father refused, offering him the possibility of living with the family of one of his former patients. I did not know them, but I should have gone. I did not want to leave home...I wanted to with the moms of my friends, not someone I did not know. When Raney High opened, John enrolled in physics and trigonometry for the second six weeks. Then he dropped out to go to college, after taking his College Boards. He began at Little Rock University (now UALR) as a college freshman at just seventeen years of age, one of 64 of Central High 535 seniors. He went from being an honor student in high school to a struggling B/C college freshman, attempting to survive without the proper preparation. He did well in chemistry, but he knew he did not have the conceptual understanding to continue in engineering. Since that time, he says, I have devoted my life to education, especially community college education, where underprepared adults come for a second chance to attempt postsecondary education in a caring environment. John has just completed his forty-forth year as an educator. In recent years, he has begun speaking in public venues during Black History Month, telling his story of life in Little Rock. He spoke in April 2008 at the eighteenth International Conference on Teaching and Learning. He begins each talk with the following, When you lose your health, your understand what you have taken for granted. When they take school from you, you realize the value of education, that education is a privilege and should not be taken for granted or wasted.
The above is what was printed in the book, below is the Response to the historian when she ask me to send her my story:
Response to questions by Sondra Gordy my feelings about LRCHS
The weekend of August 31, 1957 my father was driving me from Alexandria, Louisiana to our future home in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had just finished the 9th and 10th grades at Bolton High School in Alexandria. My father was changing jobs. My mother was left in Louisiana to get ready for the move in October 1957. He took eight weeks vacation from his job in Louisiana and began work in Little Rock a few weeks earlier in August 1957. He was sort of double dipping to pay for the move. It was an adventure. My father was a psychiatrist and since he was the new Clinical Director we were to live on the grounds of the Arkansas State Hospital. Our house was not ready, so they setup a temporary quarters across the street from Cottage #5, my home for the next five years. It was a smaller two bedroom vacant house. We had beds, dresser, and a kitchen table to "baced" it for a month. No TV, no living room furniture. We ate most meals in the cafeteria of the hospital with the patients. My father surprised me and cooked breakfast in the mornings. That was a first for him. He could fry the bacon, but messed up the eggs as he broke the yoke most of the time.
This was a bonding time with my father for the first time in my life. It was just him and me. Most Arkansas boys get bonding time with their fathers by going hunting or fishing. I never learned those skills. Instead I learned chess, bridge, and poker at 6 years old. My father was a great swimmer and he taught us swimming and diving. We also played tennis, but that is where sports ended for us. We did cultural things like go to museums, zoos, aquariums, etc. However, I was a squirmy kid, just wanting to go to amusement parks, play baseball, etc
I was registered to begin school on September 3 as a junior at Little Rock Central High School. I knew not what this year would do to the rest of my life. This year is one that is documented in the history books about the Little Rock 9, but very little is written about the rest of us. My family had no idea the turmoil that would follow in our new city and we had no TV for the six weeks that followed. I was clueless of most of the media, except we did take the newspaper and read about some things that had happened the day before, but I really did not understand the impact what was going on. At 16, all that matters is going to school, doing your job of learning, earning good grades, and trying to be something you are not, an athlete. So, I played in the band, instead.
The football players and the basketball players were our idols. The cheerleaders, of course, were the most beautiful and popular in school and the other boys were just crazy dreaming about them. They were the elite. I was just a little science nerd, kind-of-like Lucas in the 1980s Hollywood film, except I had a big brother, Big Dave, who was over six feet tall by the 7th grade, an all state high school football star. I was just a towering four foot, 11 at 16, except I lived in a medical family instead of a mobile home like Lucas.. After the 8th grade, I went to a different high school locally in Louisiana, in the sister city, just so I did not have to show everyone I was chicken by not going out for football. I had heart, no size, was not strong or tough and was just hamburger at football practice in Junior High School in Texas. I sat on the bench for three years, never played in a game and hated every practice. They called me Little John. My brother, Dave, graduated...Expand for more
in 1957, so my father decided it was time to move again, when I told him it was OK to move again. I told him to not stick around the Louisiana job (as it was killing him) and I also told him I did not care as I had only two years of high school left and was at a school some distance away. Of course, I had lied to him that I wanted to move (but he knew it). I was leaving all my friends, my puppy love (Miss Barbara Butch Knapp, a member of Classmates), my whole world to venture to Little Rock on Labor Day 1957. I even had my picture in the Alexandria Town Talk newspaper only a few months earlier as I won the Earth Science Division of the Louisiana State Science Fair in 1957, the only state winner from Bolton High.
My first thought about Little Rock was how beautiful the city was: Rolling hills and different trees. From the black land prairie of north Texas 1947-1954, the muggy pine forests of Central Louisiana 1954-1957, Little Rock seemed cooler in comparison. There was very little humidity and even breezy air. The doctor homes on the hospital were beautiful brick, lots of trees. The hospital itself looked like a prison, old big 1920s white buildings with iron bars, long replaced in the 1970s. The grounds were not fenced as the other hospitals where I had l previously lived. No gate guards. My friends could come and go without being scared. I was kidded about being the kid from the nut house at our previous two hospitals. However, I had few friends coming in the junior year. I was an outsider, shy, a felt strange is such a large high school with so much tradition.
My first day, I rode to school with my nextdoor neighbor, a senior Helen Jones. Her father was superintendent of the state hospital. Her mother drove a 57 Plymouth, and it had an air conditioner under the dash of the front seat. It was my first experience in a car with an air conditioner, except her mother smoked. Helen was also a music nerd, wore thick glasses, played in the band, and had great talent. I was not very good at trombone, started as a third chair and did not make the concert band that year. She tolerated me for six weeks riding to school and back until my mom arrived and began the chauffer duties.
The first and third periods as well as homeroom were band. I was in the marching band, and we had band practice before school and during homeroom on the practice field. We were not allowed to have music for the half time show of the football games. We had to memorize the music for each game. On Fridays, it was Hell. In third period, brass sectional rehearsal time, we each had to play solo the entire music for half time show that night for assistant band director, Ken Richie. He graded each of us on how we played and knew the music. I had never before had to play without the music.
For the two years before, we had great fun in the band, went on all the road trips to each football game, Baton Rough, Lake Charles, Shreveport. The bus trips were great. We even played at an all high school band day at LSU Tiger Stadium. But that 57-58 year was different, the band had to be perfection and it was. However, we made only one road trip to support our great football team, Pine Bluff, a whole hour down the road. However, the band screwed up our half time performance on a rain soaked muddy field where the lines were not marked very well. We broke early at the first 40 yard line for our first formation, and half of us went to the second forty to make our proper formation, while the other half was 20 yards back in the wrong place. It was a mess. Band Director Mr. A.F. Lape was furious. He chewed us out and said he was glad we had not gone away to any other games. Of course, our football team extended their streak and won. But we stayed home the rest of the year only playing in Tiger Stadium not making any mistakes.
When you look at Central, there is an eighth floor (fifth above ground) which was the band tower, one big room only, where the marching and concert bands practiced first period. During the last week of September, when the real chaos began, I left my trombone in my locker one afternoon, and took an empty case home. Got by the paratroopers, and smuggled my 8 mm Brownie movie camera in the case the next day into the school. I faced expulsion as cameras were banned in the school... During homeroom (we were not on the practice field as the troops had occupied the field until the football coach got it cleared a day later.) I shot maybe 20 feet from the Tower Window of the Nine being marched into the school. It was a short clip, and I was dared by a few of my fellow trombone players to do it. I got scared, put the camera back in case, when down to the third floor between bells, put camera back in my locker and got my trombone for 1st period. It was the gutsiest thing I did that year. I could have sold the clips to the media, but I was in fear of my father finding out, especially since I knew the secret would not have been kept. I have never shown that clip to anyone. Thanks to Ralph Brodie recent communication (Our Student Government President and true leader in our school who had the guts to speak the truth), I will find this clip, get it digitized, and place it on my web site to share, and send it to the new museum. (this has been done in 2017)
Now second period was a different story. We went to the far south wing to history. There was my 11th grade America History teacher who left a great impression on me. Her name, Miss Emily Peyton. She scared me to death, her tests were tough-oral, and she demanded nothing but respect. And she got it! She never used the blackboard, she never had a written test paper, never used an overhead, or a movie film. She would tell you the story of America. She could stare at you and you crawled into the corner, if you didn't focus. But she had a magic that I have never seen before or since.
Many signed my yearbook second period, as Miss Peyton allows us to do this frivolous act when we got our annuals. She even signed mine: Emily Peyton, American History (if I could ever forget). One of pretty/smart girls in the class, Anne Williams, wrote in my yearbook: John, It has been fun getting to know you this year, even though we did suffer through Miss Peyton history tests together. Lots of luck always-Anne Williams
When the schools closed the next year and Little Rock tried to bridge the closing with TV school, who gave the 11th grade America History class? Miss Emily, of course! When the Supreme Court force the schools off TV in the second week, the people of Arkansas responded in mass to the TV station wanting Miss Emily to continue the story of how America came to be. So, every morning for nine months for many years Miss Emily went to the TV station for "Good Morning with Miss Emily" at 6 a.m. and she told the story over and over with her eyes and facial expressions. In the 60s, I used to turn on the TV to Channel 7 (I think), turned the sound up and got ready to go to school. She was an inspiration. The talking head that hypnotized you! That mesmerized you! She belongs to the Hall of Fame for Great Teachers. During the 80s I visited the local TV stations to see if they could dig up an old recording on Miss Emily. I wanted the clip for the Disney Salute to Teachers. I had much conversation with Disney about creating a Hall of Fame for those that had passed. It never happened as their focus was today, and now they have ended the long running program in 2006.
During that fall, fourth period followed with Miss Irene Harrell English class. She was Ok, but I was too exhausted from third period band and Miss Emily class, all we could think of was lunch that followed. Since I was new, I was not put in any of the faster classes, now called honors. She was a good teacher, but her class had only a few bright kids.
I remember, a beautiful statuette young lady, Katherine Pearcy, who was very eloquent. She should have been in the school play or maybe a high stepper, but she was only a Southernaire and an Antoinette. However, the high stepper in the class was Virginia Parks and was also very smart. But I also should not forget another high stepper, Judy Green, who also had kind words for the nerd or a smart boy. My best friend was kind of a tough but good hearted guy, Calvin Taylor, who had to sit in front of me since Miss Harrell had us in alphabetical order. I helped him a lot, and we sometimes ate together.
Lunch was always interesting, as my best friend was Kyle Tisdale, another real science nerd. We were in the science club together, but he was a senior. Even though the school was in the national news in September and October 1957, science pride was set back with the Russians beating us to space with Sputnik. After that, we faded to the back pages of the newspapers. It was all about space those following months. Kyle was so smart; he explained a lot of science to me. Kyle was living with his aunt as his folks were in Guam and they wanted him in a top U.S. high school so he could go on to succeeds in a top college. Instead, in Guam he had a car accident, and after several hours appeared not to be hurt. He had brain breed and ended in the nursing home for the last 15 years of his life. What a waste of someone so special. (to be continued)
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