Barbara Collier
Clip 6—Desegregation
AH: After the schools integrated, was there any sense of tension or hostility?
BC: Okay, what happened when they integrated out schools, white people had come to the school I had been going to for like five years. I went to Parkview [Elementary School] from like kindergarten through fifth grade. In sixth grade, that’s when they integrated the schools so white people had to come to our school and they had to be bussed. They didn’t want to come. They thought our school was—well, it wasn’t in a, it wasn’t in a bad neighborhood. It was right next to the park. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. They just didn’t want to get on the bus and come.
Yeah, it was sort of tense the first couple of months. But I guess they got used to it after that. But my sister and I, we didn’t have to get on a bus. We just kept going to the same school. But yeah, I did kind of sense a little tension from the white kids because they had to come to our school. But I never had to go to theirs.
AH: What about the teachers, did they integrate too?
BC: Yeah, we got a few white teachers. They had to come to our school, too. But I didn’t really feel anything different.