(352) 392 fba 002 jesse heard ... 002 jess… · raised me from six months old, really, until i was...

For information on terms of use of this interview, please see the SPOHP Creative Commons license at http://ufdc.ufl.edu/AfricanAmericanOralHistory.

Joel Buchanan Archive of African American History: http://ufdc.ufl.edu/ohfb

FBA 002 Jesse Heard

Florida Black Athletics (FBA) Interviewed by Raja Rahim on July 12, 2016

2 hour, 7 minutes | 58 pages

Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz

241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 https://oral.history.ufl.edu

FBA 002 Interviewee: Jessie Heard Interviewer: Raja Rahim Date: July 12, 2016 R: Today is Tuesday, July 12th, 2016. The time is approximately 1:30 p.m. I am Raja

Rahim, sitting down with an interview in the home of Coach Jessie Heard. Please

state your full name.

H: My name is Jessie B. Heard, Jessie Bobby Heard.

R: When were you born?

H: One, fourteen, 1933.

R: Where were you born?

H: Jackson’s Gap, Alabama.

R: Can you talk about your childhood growing up in that part of Alabama?

H: Yes. I was raised by a grandmother in a small town, I guess about two or three

hundred people before I left; it’s about one less. And it was during the—born in

[19]33, and that was some rough times back in the country. And a grandmother

raised me from six months old, really, until I was about eighteen. Left home to go

to college. I had what you might say a beautiful childhood, in that it was full of

love and compassion. She was a Christian lady, a churchgoing lady. And I didn’t

have any siblings, or any cousins, so to speak, on that side of the family, my

father’s side. And as I said, I went to church as a youngster every Sunday. Or, in

the country, they’d have meetings on the second Sunday, once a month. And I

would go and participate, and be in Sunday School. Got old enough, and I guess

help teach Sunday School, and was a junior deacon in the church. You know,

back in that day, they’d take a youngster and sort of groom him. So. And I got

involved with sports later on. Our situation was a little different. In Alabama, back

FBA 002; Heard; Page 2

in that day, you had a small county, so to speak, and you had one high school in

the county that would let you attend—all segregated—let you attend as a bona

fide high school; you could graduate from there. And it was usually in one city,

and these larger cities might have one all-Black high school, all-White high

school, but we went—as you would know—an all-Black high school. So, around

about the eighth grade, I got involved in athletics.

R: Okay, let’s go back and kind of flesh out some details, if you don’t mind.

H: Okay, you ask, mmhm.

R: Can you state your grandmother’s name?

H: Name was Fannie Eve Ornsby, O-R-N-S-B-Y. She was born on Christmas Eve,

so that’s the way she picked up that Eve. And back in that day, now, they would

have a long name. They would take in all the aunts, and her name was Fannie

Rebecca Jane Autura Lumpkin Mariella. All the old aunts had to have a part in

the naming of a child, you know—a girl especially. So that’s what she tells me.

We’re very close and I was with her all the time. You see her, you see me as a

little boy, coming up.

R: Do you know what year she was born in?

H: No, that might’ve been a secret. [Laughter]

R: And do you—

H: Her parents were slaves, I do know. Her grandpa and grandma were slaves. Her

grandpa was—I was with him when he died, he was a hundred and five when he

passed. And I was four years old, I was with him. Grandma was a midwife. She

delivered everything in the county. And that was a art back in that day, you


know? So, her grandmother was a schoolteacher in part. She was secretary of

everything she would attend, like churches and everything like that. So like I said,

she was a schoolteacher, in part. They didn’t have school all year. She went to

probably third or fourth, fifth, sixth grade, I don’t know. But anyway, you teach

school in the winter.

R: Did she tell you any stories about her parents and their time in slavery, that you

can remember?

H: Nothing more than, Grandpa came over from Georgia. There’s a county in

Georgia—in Franklin, Georgia, there’s a little city called Heard County.

Understand, they came from there long time ago. It’s right across the Alabama-

Georgia line, up in east Alabama. And they came over. And Grandmomma

belonged to some old people, some Burdens, I understand. Only story that

stands out to me, is that I was told a few years back from one of my cousins that

Grandmomma was a—Grandpa’ mother and daughter were sold. And they sold

them as sisters, not mother and daughter, to get more for them. They went down

south Alabama, around a place called Wetumpka, around Montgomery. And he

came over in Alabama. In order for him to get to Alabama, I understand he was

inherited by one of the siblings. They had to get permission for him to cross state

lines. So, that kind of thing. So, that was always intriguing to me. So, I appreciate

it. Other than that, she didn’t talk too much about them. This was just something

that floated through the family, back in the day. And they were farmers, really.

Like I said, she was a midwife, and grandpa was farmer. They had seven kids,


and my grandmother that raised me was the oldest of the girls: it was three girls

and four boys in that family. [Telephone Rings] She got it back there.

R: And so can you tell me a little what do you know about your mother and your

father?

H: My mother was—her name was Geneva Russell. And my father was George

Edward, nicknamed “Buster.” I heard he was handsome guy. Tall, as we say,

with light skin with curly hair. He was something. But anyway, my mother had me

when she was about seventeen, something like that. And it was too much for her

to handle. So, she left me with her little sister and brother, eleven and seven. And

my daddy came by, and saw me there with those little kids, six months old; he

picked me up and carried me like three or four miles to his mother’s house, and I

stayed there until I graduated from high school. Mmhm.

R: And do you remember your parents’ names?

H: Yeah. I was raised by my Daddy’s momma, and my mother’s people left that

area and migrated north, and around, and we have gotten back together. I was

about tenth grade before I really knew my mother—met her, so to speak. Ten

years old, I mean. So I got to know them since then. Her oldest brother is—I talk

to him daily—he’s ninety-nine years old. No he’s ninety-eight, be ninety-nine

Christmas Day. And I talk to him daily. We’ll do that for the last five years as long

as we live. We talk. If I don’t get him about noon, or something, about three or

four o’clock, he’s calling. Or he goes [inaudible 8:29]. His health is pretty good,

he’s a veteran. Yeah, I remember them. I didn’t live with her, like I said—my


mother. It all boils back to my grandmomma raising me, and the childhood, it was

something, in Alabama.

R: Can you tell me your father’s name?

H: George Edward. “Buster” was his nickname, everybody known him as Buster.

R: And your mother’s name again?

H: Geneva.

R: Can you talk about growing up in church? What church did you all attend?

H: Yeah, we were Baptists, Shady Grove. My great-grandmother and those founded

that church. On the cornerstone there, they built a new one about thirty years

ago. The other one fell down and they built another one. It might’ve been longer

than thirty years ago. And on the cornerstone, it shows Aunt Nancy, and Henry

Heard, some of the founders, the Tarber families. All the kids grew up in it, I

guess. Like I said, I was the only youngster on that side of the house on my

daddy’s side, but my grandmother, I’m the one that she raised. She had two kids:

my daddy and his brother, Uncle Bill. So church was a thing that I grew up in. I

had to go with her, and we would walk like a mile to church on Sunday morning,

Sunday School. And then, on second Sunday, we’d have service. A pastor would

come through, and on the first Sunday, after your church you’d go to another

church in the community. Second Sunday was ours, third Sunday, fourth Sunday

was a place called Mt. Olive. You always liked to go down there; they do a lot of

spreading of food on the ground, way down on the river, long ways. And a lot of

people who were sort of kin, you know? And you get to see a lot of people. I’d

see some little buddy fellas that we’d see in our little one-room school that we


attended. [Laughter] And it got to be, it was enjoyable. Looking back, it was

outstanding. Made a lot of friends, and they would do a lot of things. Worked

hard, and had a lot of good guidance, and met three or four people along the

way. It’s critical times that really helped me bounce along.

R: Okay. Can you talk about your childhood as far as education and school?

H: Momma was an educator—we all call her “Momma.” In fact, my wife of about

fifty-eight years, and my grands, they never saw her, but she saw a lot of time;

we called her “Momma Fannie.” Yeah, she was an educator. And she instilled in

me that “You must go to college.” In the country, they would have people sent

there by the state. They’d call them “home demonstration agents,” and their job

was to help the people in the community—Black—upgrade. The ladies was

taught how to can and conserve vegetables. Men was taught farming techniques,

and how to build outhouses and things. And that was a good program, and they

were some college-educated people, mostly from Tuskegee, which was not too

far from us. And that was inspiration itself because it was always—on Saturday,

when they’d have these meetings, they would always be dressed, and intelligent,

and looking good, and smart, and in charge of the program that they would have

at various people’s home. It was an inspirational-type thing. And Momma would

always say, “You need to be just like them.” And the lady was always, for some

reason, real pretty. She was a home demonstration agent. And the man was in

charge of helping the farmers. Give them tips on rotating crops and all that kind

of stuff. Making improvements around the place; they would build—I know

everybody got an outhouse built. You know, outdoor privy toilet built, because of


that program. And you furnished the material, and they’d have these work

sessions on Saturday, and they’d put up one. If you didn’t have material, and if

you owned the property—most people were sharecropping. Our problem at home

was were land poor. We had a lot of land, but we were just land poor. And they

would put up one. If you owned the property, they would put up one on the

property for you. And funny thing, you’d get a one-seater or a two-seater.

[Laughter] We would always laugh about that when we got older, you know? And

it was a great improvement there for that to happen. These are the things that

was embedded in you early on, from your parent pushing you, and help you to

get through that stage and phase.

R: Can you talk about your elementary school education and grade school?

H: Yeah, I went to a one-room schoolhouse. I was too young, I think, to go to

school. But we had a relative teaching, we calls ‘em Cousin Blanche. She lived in

another little town, and she would come by. Told Momma to let me—her son

carried her to school every day, about ten or fifteen miles. And, in fact, it was

eight miles the one way. He would carry her to school every morning and pick

her up in the afternoon. So, she told Momma, my grandmomma, that get me

ready and let me come to school and ride with her, about two days a week. And I

started doing that. And so, she was giving out some assignments, “arithmetic” we

called it then; “math” now. And somebody was saying three and two, and I

hollered out, three and two, five. She said I’m going give you some work. And

that’s the way I started school. [Laughter]. I knew three and two was five,

somewhere; I don’t know how I got that. But, we went to a little two-room school.


I don’t know whether you had first, second, or third grade, what have you, but

little fellows are in this room, and the big fellows over there in that room. So, we

went to that, and left there, and went to the what you would call a “middle school”

now in the next little town. And they did not run a school bus from—like, from

here, if you familiar with Hawthorne, five, eight miles away. I rode the Trailway

bus from sixth grade until I graduated. Skipped a town for the high school part.

So, about fifteen or twenty miles from where I lived. And they had a White school

in the next little town. Skipped that and went to Camp Hill High School, where I

graduated from. The kids there that went to high school rode that Trailway bus.

You got a book of tickets for about a dollar twenty-five. For six days, six trips. So

you ride, morning, noon, catch the bus. Rode it so much—I lived close to the

highway, and on a rainy day, I would catch the bus like, oh, about four or five

blocks from the house, so to speak. And the forks of the road, where one road

intersected the other. On a rainy day, the man would blow like a quarter-mile

away. I’d hear the bus horn, I’d run out side of the road, he let me on. I rode the

bus, like I say, from about sixth grade ‘til I graduated, really. High school. And we

had to pay for that. No school bus, looking back.

R: When did you get into athletics?

H: Well, as a little fellow, I was a pretty fair size, and a guy wanted me to be a

catcher. White guy. And knew everybody in the little community; he said, “Boy,

you want to play baseball? You ought to be a catcher!” Look at my hands and all.

So he’d set up on the porch and throw balls out, and I’d pick them up. He had a

crate of them, and I think he played ball somewhere back in his time. So he


said—they had a, on Sunday, in the country, you’d have Sunday baseball. And it

was a big thing. Everybody up at church would go to it. So they had me back

there behind the plate catching at about fifteen, I guess; fourteen, fifteen, or

younger. Grown man throwing the ball, Big Dave. That guy threw a ball so hard,

you couldn’t see it. Ball came down, went down along—[makes whooshing

sound]! Didn’t hit me, it went across. Scared me, and cut my brother. I went and

hid around the stump. That was the end of my baseball. [Laughter] So when I got

to high school, down in the ninth grade, bunch of bad little old boys running

around there and the principal, playing football. All right, remember now: after the

war—that was about [19]46, [194]7, [194]8, [194]9, back in that era, but this was

in, say, [19]50, [19]51, something like that. Principal put in football, some of those

veteran play. Some of us larger, younger guys was asked to go out. So he put it

in because it give us something to do, because we was just all over the place. It

was about ten or fifteen of us, started together and graduated together. We had a

hell of a team, in the country. So that’s really when I got started in it. And I was

looking some—I got a box out there in my place—I was looking at some pictures:

my first uniform I had on, then high school, and then college. We did a reunion,

back at my old school? They closed it. And they did a reunion a few years ago,

and they put that sequence of pictures in there. So, that’s really my first

involvement in football. Well, strangely enough, this is going blow your mind:

people don’t realize, we were segregated, in Alabama, as you would know. All

right. My second year, they hired a coach at my high school, and he died the first

week of school, Lenny Zias. Graduated, just graduated Alabama State. So, the


White coaching staff, at home at the White high school, would come over during

twelve o’clock and work with us one hour. He’d bring all four or five of his

coaches over there. Work with us one hour, during recess or lunch. And the

principal was our coach. He would come out there and stand on the sideline. And

these White guys would work with us. I’m sorry to say it, but I was known all over

Alabama the time I graduated high school. I tell you about Auburn and me. That’s

the way I got to head in through Auburn. They couldn’t take me. So they worked

with us, and we had a heck of a team. And they used to accuse him of having a

White team and a Black team. He was one-armed guy, Mr. Foshee. He had a

heck of a—White school was a heck of a powerhouse there. And we wasn’t bad

ourselves. He didn’t coach us on the sideline during the game, but his influence

during the week, with the whole thing—we didn’t know nothing about no football.

We was running, just running wild, man. But he taught us positions and all, and

put me in a fullback spot. I was a little fat, scaredy boy. And we went from there.

First game that we played a Catholic school down in Montgomery, like

Montgomery about forty miles from here. Went down and got off the school bus.

Guy run around and told the boys, saying, “I’m going break your legs tonight!” It

scared all of us to death. [Laughter] He got his leg broke. Yeah. But anyway, it

had been an old fracture they said, and that scared us. We said, “Oh, Lordy!” The

old folks didn’t want you to play anyway because they scared you’d get hurt. So,

that was my very first involvement early on in football, really.

R: During your brief time in baseball, do you remember the name of the White man

who recruited you?


H: No, he didn’t recruit me as such, he just—I can’t think of him. It might’ve been

Old Man Patterson, he was just sitting up on the porch out—you know, when you

live in the country, you always going by people’ house, and everybody knew you.

Man, these boys knew me by my middle name, really. “Boy, you going play

baseball, or?” “No!” Didn’t play no baseball. We played a lot of stickball, so to

speak, in the country. Paddleball, and make a bat. We had a girl or two that could

out-bat any of us. Rhoda, and another girl. But anyway, it might’ve been Old Man

Patterson. It was a long time ago, I was a little old fellow. “Pick it up!” He told me

how to pick it up, and roll it back up and put it there in the crate. He’d roll ‘em out

there, and all that. He found out I couldn’t make that baseball, that catcher. That

boy threw that ball too hard.

R: During Sunday baseball games, were there White and Black?

H: No, no, no, no.

R: Or they were separate?

H: Separate.

R: Each had their own game on Sunday?

H: Well, the Black people really was—country baseball was sort of a way of life, you

know. They had a heck of a team when I first got here out in Jonesville. Ross

brothers out there. A lady coached that team, Lattie Ross. The Dodgers. Man,

Lincoln’s baseball team really played there for them during the season. See, I

never did go out there, it was a juke, and it was a Sunday thing. Boy, it was a

place that—you would, just something in the South, Sunday baseball. Well,

they’d play in a pasture or something; you’d have a manager or something. And


half of them would have uniforms, half of them wouldn’t, you know? [Laughter]

No, there was no integration or nothing. Now, we had a little integrated football

going on from time to time, because we’d play against them, you know? Not

Black against White, but pick him, I’d pick him, I’d pick him, all of those little boys

together in the country. Got some good Sunday games, a boy named Sugar Fat

got knocked out one day and we left him there, and old people stopped it. There

was a drunk down there, and every Sunday he’d come down there and say, “I’ll

give y’all a quarter apiece if y’all line up out there and play with it in the pasture.”

Big ol’ bank that he set up there. And we’d play. Boy, that was a good time.

R: So, in ninth grade, you’re introduced to football. Who was the principal that was

also the coach?

H: A man named Edward Bell. The school is now named after him, it’s been closed.

But he was influence on everybody that he ever touched. He was a academic

guy, really. Alabama State, weighed about ninety-five pounds, a diabetic. But he

had more influence on me, than anybody other than my grandmother at that early

age. I caught him—he caught me just in time. Yeah.

R: What do you mean?

H: Well, at that stage, you know, we just wild country boys running around doing

nothing. Wasn’t getting into no trouble, wasn’t no trouble to get into. Just jumping

up and down all the time. And so he put in football, harness some of that energy,

I think. But over the years that wisdom and guidance that he gave me and

everybody else, it was tremendous. I was fortunate to come through during that

time, because he helped a lot of boys. There’s a kid that just finished his stint in


the Service, he talks to me about once a week, from Alabama. He came back

home from up in Michigan, and bought a farm back next to his farm, and he’s

having a good time. He say every day, and he calls me about once a week,

during about noon every other day. And this conversation going go to Mr. Bell, so

to speak. He was a influence on everybody, he was real smart. In the country, at

the country school, he taught us Négritude. We knew—when I got to A&M, I

found out we knew things like poetry, and terms, and Négritude, and all that stuff.

Because that was one of his pet peeves, and he had a class he’d teach juniors

that. You got it, too; you didn’t play around in there with it. I was telling why we

talk about old things all the time. And I used to sit up and nod, that shit with the

atom, you know? And he was diabetic, and wake up fussing, so to speak, and

explain something. And he taught that in physics—in the country, now. He was a

academic guy, and we were better off for having met him. And he took a lot of

interest in kids. They eventually named the school after him, after it burned down

and new school been built. And it closed a few years ago, and they made, I think,

a regional trade school out of it for the last three years. All brick, nice. Schools sit

there. They had a reunion this past summer. I didn’t go. Had something to do

with Lincoln. Kid called me and said the present superintendent came to the

reunion and congratulated them. The school sat there two years, not a window

broken, and not a word or any graffiti on the building. And it’s about as big as

Lincoln. And he said that was a showing of community pride. And we all

appreciate that.


R: Can you talk a little more about the reasoning for the White coaches from the

high school coming over?

H: Our coach died after a week there.

R: Coach Bell.

H: No, Coach Bell was the principal. He had hired a young guy from Alabama State.

He came in. I forget the guy’ name. Yeah. He came in to coach football and

basketball. The guy had meningitis, and died. So, we were out a coach. Mr. Bell,

was a story about him, I want to hit on him a little bit later. He was such an

influence, he got the White coach to come over with his staff. And they had to

travel about eight, ten miles from the other little town over to us, during lunch,

and work with us. And they did that just about the half the season. We played

Monday night football in high school. And the White team played on Friday night,

but we played on Monday night. And they would come to some games; never

saw them interact with us or nothing, but Monday you’d come back to practice—I

mean, Tuesday—he would talk to you about things that happened in the game,

that kind of thing. But it was a heck of a experience. He died a few years back, I

got the chance to see him once or twice. And he had some heck of a boys on his

team that were good friends, but we couldn’t pal around together. I went home

from A&M, and one was going to Mississippi State, a tailback, and he told me in

town one day, said, “Let’s go in and get us a soda in the drugstore.” I said, “Man,

you know they aren’t going serve me in there.” [Laughter] I never forget that. He

say, “Well, I’m not going in either,” you know, that kind of thing. So that’s the way

the White coaches got involved with us. Because we lost ours, and he came over


to help the principal out. He could persuade you, he only weighed about ninety-

eight pounds.

R: You want to share the story that you wanted to speak on with Mr. Bell?

H: Uh, yeah. He was such of an influence—an example: we didn’t have a gym. We

just had, it go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven rooms in the institute. The

little dining room downstairs and the trustees came in on Saturday and did some

work and made a little dining room. It had free lunch there, for us. I was always

on free lunch! [Laughter] We didn’t have a gym. Mr. Bell organized the churches,

and he would go to all the churches around in that part of the county. Lot of

churches be in the country. He had a plan. He told them a cement block cost

sixteen cent. A block like this house built out of. Somebody had worked up the

size gymnasium, that was a monster, that he needed. Somebody worked up how

many blocks he would need for that gymnasium. And he’d tell those churches

he’d need these many blocks or these many sixteen centses. He got enough

cement blocks paid for by people buying a block, two blocks, three blocks, or

buying a block for every member of your family, in various churches. Knew how

much cement he needed. They would give a donation for that. He talked the

Army into giving him an old barracks, air base in Montgomery. Organized a

building party. Farmers would go down on Saturday and carry a lunch. Some

ladies would go sometime, I understand—we were too little to let us go—and fix

a lunch down there for them. They would tear down a couple of old Army

barracks. Then people that worked that had trucks and things, they would go

down and get a load and bring them back and stack it by the school. Pull the


nails one Saturday or something. If it rained, the farmers couldn’t work? He said

ten or twenty of them would come over there in the afternoon and pull the nails

and clean the lumber and stack it. He built a gymnasium. Was no seats in it, but

a wood floor. It was a huge thing to us, in the country. On one end of it, he had it

roped off and had a stage. He went to Alabama State, and Erskine Hawkins, the

band director, came there and put on a concert for him, a building concert. We

had more White people there than Black. We was standing there looking at them

all night! [Laughter] So, that was the way—he was that kind of person. So you

see how he would influence us. Yeah, he built that gym by donations from people

in the community, and he just—well, that was the way he influenced people. He

is one of the people in my life that, you know, we pattern after, and we always

refer back to him. After I was fortunate enough to run into Coach Gaither after

that at A&M, and that’s a whole new chapter. Then my father-in-law, her uncle

had raised her—my wife’s uncle raised her. About similar to me. He was very

influential. He was a principal down there in central Florida for a long time, and

we were good friends.

R: So during practice in high school, was that the only time that y’all practiced that

hour with the White coach?

H: Yeah, we’d practice during noon. Everybody was transported on buses. I had to

catch that Trailway to get back home. That was fifteen, eighteen miles from

home. Yeah. Because next little town was eight miles from home, this town was

ten or fifteen beyond it. So, we had to get back. And all the boys farmed or

worked on a farms; they had a couple of school buses running from various parts


of that county. But they didn’t run to my end of the county. And they ran from the

little town, and then they’d skip a town and go to where our school was. So yeah,

that’s the only time we practiced football. During lunch hour, yeah. You know, in

“recess” back they called it then; your hour for lunch. And we’d practice football.

[Laughter] But we didn’t know any better, we had a good time.

R: Did you play any other sports during high school?

H: I played basketball. Being a boy you had to play everything. I ran a little track,

what little track they had. Wasn’t nothing but cross-country. On play days, or

thing like that, he would say, “Want you to make that big circle, about a mile,

mile, mile, mile.” Something like that, two or three miles, group of you. I guess it

couldn’t be called a marathon, but it was just… The Hollers lived over there, and

Wise down here; you’d make that big circle around, come back. Come in first,

second, or—boy, you’d finish, though! Then people’d be out there cheering when

you finished and all of that.

R: You mentioned—can you talk about some of the home games you remember

playing?

H: Yeah, I remember playing just about—home games we’d play on Monday night

in the little first city. Dadeville, they called it, that was the first city. That’s where

the White high school was, and they had a field. Then, the White high school in

the same town as my high school was in, Camp Hill, about ten, twelve, fourteen

miles apart. They got a team, and they had a field, so we started playing home

games there. So we’d play on Monday night up in Dadeville, and we’d play little

teams around. Some of them had some powerhouses in their early stages; they


were something! Veterans, and everything else. And we’d go up and play on

Monday night. Everybody around would come to the ballgame. It’s just

something, you know? Stands be full, and everybody knew you. There was a lot

of White people standing over like we stood when they played. We stood on the

hill over there and watched them. [Laughter] When we played, they’d be standing

over there, and they’d know you in their little city or little town, you know? Next

week or sometime, they’d talk about you playing and all. “Now, you ought to be

playing with So-and-so.” That was back before integration. “You and Jake and

those Kilpatricks ought to be in the same backfield.” They were something. They

were some terrible White boys. They were some kind of athletes.

R: What year did you graduate high school?

H: I graduated in [19]53. [19]52? Yeah, [19]53. I was the class of [19]52; start in

September, and then you graduate that spring in [19]53.

R: Can you talk about your road to college, how did you—?

H: Yeah. Playing ball in Camp Hill—I was a running back—and we were playing a

little town, Auburn, Alabama. And it’s a Black school at Auburn. And my principal

and all they’d gotten together some kind of way and had a little conference going,

I’d gotten to be a senior then. I was supposed to go to Tuskegee. We were like

from here to Ocala from Tuskegee. Through the back way, through the woods,

so to speak. And everybody had me going to Tuskegee. So, we played down in

Auburn one Friday, some kind of little championship game, or a little conference

championship. They had a big old boy down there, Bullet McGee or something,

they called him. He end up going to Morris Brown, I think. He didn’t stay long. So,


the coaches at Auburn came out to that game. And they saw me play. After the

game, he came over and talked to the principal—he and a couple of his coaches.

Shug Jordan was the coach at Auburn then. Stadium named after him and all

that. He was big-time SEC coach. So he would ask me, “Had I ever heard of

Florida A&M?” I had read about the—see they had the Black papers back then:

Chicago Defender, and the Pittsburgh Courier. Those our papers. We’d get them

and read all the print off of them, you know? And I’d read about Florida A&M; that

was foreign. So, I told him I had. He say, “I got a good friend down there that’s

coaching, Coach Gaither.” Okay. So, we talked a little bit. So, Monday—that was

a Friday. Monday, one little phone in the school, Coach Gaither had called our

little school. Guess Shug had went home and called him. And course, A&M had

some boys from Columbus, and Phenix City already on the team. Had an All-

American from Phenix City on the team. And a couple from Columbus, Georgia,

which is like from here to Hawthorne, if you’re familiar with Hawthorne down

there, from where we were living. So, Jake talked to the principal and then talked

to me a while. So we rocked on. And lo and behold, A&M played SIAC

conference tournament at Tuskegee. Basketball. And I went down to meet Coach

Gaither at the game. So I was in the barber shop—I always wore long hair—

getting a haircut. All the coaches was yapping. And Coach Gaither came in, and

the principal introduced him to me. I was in the chair and he told the lady, how

long before she be finished? She say, “Oh, I’m about finished.” He got me. He

told me he’d carry me out, and we went on down to where he was staying at

Dorothy Hall. And he talked, he said he wanted me to come to A&M. “Yes, sir.” I


went. It was no discussion. He say, “I want you to come.” I say, “Yeah.” He was

the type of person you didn’t say no to. Come, come, come. Direct, just like my

high school principal. And people would play for him with a broke finger—I did.

Or boys would play for him with a broke leg, but he was that kind of person. He

had that much influence on you because he was fair with you. So that’s the way I

got to Florida A&M. And it was very productive there. We played—I was there

four years, we lost four ballgames in four years. Three ballgames, yeah. And I

was captain of the team my senior year, and I made all-conference, and in the

hall of fame there, and the distinguished alumni about two years ago for my work

here in Gainesville. That’s the way I got to Florida A&M.

R: Awesome. Let’s talk a little more in-depth about that, in the sense of, do you

remember the initial conversation when he called your high school?

H: Yeah, he called. My principal sent for me. And I went up to the office—one phone

in the school—and he said, “The coach from Florida A&M want to talk with you.”

“Yes, sir.” And he talked. Asked me all about a little bit myself, my background,

and all. Said we didn’t have no film to send and all that. He was just going by, I

guess that Shug Jordan told him that I could run the football. He said—I was a

big back, he said, “I might need him.” So, he talked a while and just asked me

was I interested in going to school? And so, the principal said it’d be an honor for

me to go, because he knew about Florida A&M and Coach Gaither. So, guess

what? From that day on—that was in the spring. No, it wasn’t in the spring, it was

during basketball season. During lunch every day, when everybody else was out,

I was taking English. He had a tutor for me in English. A girl, Marynell, and


another old crazy girl, Roberta—the smartest kid I ever seen to be in the country.

Roberta, first time she saw a microscope—she went to Wayne State, on up to

stay with some relatives. I think she got a PhD, eventually. In nursing. She said

to everybody she saw a microscope, and everybody had left class, she eased

back in there to peep at those amoebas in there moving around. Said people

said, “Look at that country girl! She ain’t never seen one before!” [Laughter] But

anyway, they taught math and English during lunch. And I had to—boy, they

thought they were grown. We were all in the same class, seniors. But they

thought they were—if I didn’t show up or something, with the boys, they would let

Mr. Bell know, and you didn’t want that to happen! [Laughter] Yeah, they… So,

that was a boost.

R: You arrived at Florida A&M in what year?

H: In [19]53. The fall of [19]53. See I graduated in June [19]53, high school.

R: Can you talk about what campus was like when you arrived at Florida A&M?

H: Yeah, I can talk about that, because I got there at night, and I caught the bus.

Well, my uncle brought me from my little town, like Waldo, to Hawthorne, where

the principal lived, and we went to Montgomery to his sister’s. And I caught the

bus; he had brought me a ticket from Montgomery to Tallahassee. And I caught

the bus from Montgomery on into Tallahassee. And I got there about 8:30 at

night. And I was told to get a cab—I didn’t have no money, hardly. Couple

dollars, if that much. Never had any money. And they told me to get a cab, go on

campus: it’d be about two dollars. I had that. And got on campus, told the cab

driver where I was going—I got to know him real well later on. Reed was his


name. He used to tease me about it a lot after. Knew him real well before I

graduated. He carried me on campus. Told him I was a football player. Said, “Oh,

just brought some more up here.” I had a little suitcase, I didn’t have no big trunk

like everybody else that’s up here. I didn’t have, poor turkey. So, I saw a light

on. He said go on up there and knock on that door. Said one of the players

probably up there in the dorm. So I got my suitcase, I knocked on the door. The

biggest human I had ever seen opened the door. That guy was from down there

to way up yonder. He didn’t have on no shirt. He “Hey.” I told him who I was. Say,

“You a freshman?” I say, “Yeah.” He said, “Get on that bunk over there. I’ll see

you in the morning.” That boy laid on that bed, he hung off one end and hung off

the other end. We called him—later on, I found out his name was Jelly Sands,

they called him, from Miami. And he was upperclassman. So he woke me up that

morning—he didn’t wake me up, I wasn’t asleep, because I stood half the night

and looked out the window. All those palm trees, and that dew, and all that

moss? I’d never seen that before. Man, I was believing I just had died and gone

to heaven. [Laughter] But I went to lunch the next morning. He say, “And this is a

freshman right here from—where you from freshman?” I say, “Alabama.” “You

know Big Lee?” I said no, “I don’t know Big Lee.” Said, “That’s Big Lee right

there.” He was big, that sucker had a jaw that wide, old red boy from Phenix City,

Alabama. “I heard about you.” And Big Lee sort of took me under his wing. He

played lineman, and I was a running back. Nobody bothered me; they harassed

freshmen back then. But nobody bothered me, they thought I was a veteran

anyway. So I was Big Lee’s boy, they ain’t going bother me. So I went to


practice, and get this now: went to a meeting the next morning, they assigned us

our dorms and everything. Galimore, the greatest back that probably ever played

at Florida A&M, was my roommate. Came on a basketball scholarship.

Tremendous person. We were roommates, N.B. Young Hall, 210. Listen real

closely: Jake didn’t tell me to bring any sheets and pillowcases and things.

Promise me you won’t laugh when I tell you this, now. See, you smiling already.

[Laughter]

R: I promise.

H: So I end up at night, that first night there, Saturday night, sleeping on the

mattress. And the pillow. I didn’t have no bedclothes, no sheets or pillowcase,

nothing. So all the boys pass by peeping in there, they went to breakfast that

Sunday morning, and I came back from breakfast, they had made up my bed

with comics, funny paper. The whole pillowcase, the whole bed. So that Monday,

I went to practice, I just got on and laid down and turned my back to Gali, and he

turned his back, face to the wall. I tried to get a little shuteye. Went to practice

that Monday, old loudmouth of a quarterback, Wittgren Purcell—he dead now—

went and told coach, say, “Coach, you got a boy up there sleeping like Tarzan.”

Jake say, “Hell, is he naked?” He said, “No, he’s sleeping like Tarzan. He’s

sleeping on the mattress—somebody say he’s sleeping on the floor. That one

right there!” Jake come and say, “Hell, baby, they say you up there sleeping on

the mattress.” I say, “Coach, I don’t have no sheets and pillowcases and things.”

I didn’t. I say, “You didn’t tell me to bring any.” Momma had a few, you know.

She’d probably have gave me some more sheets and pillowcases. So, that’s how


poor I was. So I went on with practice, worked hard, learning. I got up from

practice that evening, went in the dorm, and went upstairs, and everybody there

looking in my room. I didn’t know what was going on; I was peeping too. He had

sent the trainer downtown and bought me this spread, pillowcase. Boy, the

trainers had made up the bed, folded everything left on the foot of the bed. That

was a pretty spread, it was a mayo spread, you know, that kind. It looked sort of

like this right here. When I look at this [inaudible 00:52:07] I thought about it. And

it wasn’t no big deal to me, I turned the cover back and laid down on it.

Everybody looking and, you know. [Laughter] So I got the reputation for being

Coach’s boy, from that thing on. But I didn’t—man, I was poor, I ain’t have

nothing. I had six dollars, two pair of shoes, and a pair of pants when I went to

college. Yeah.

R: Can you talk about Coach Gaither a little bit, and about who he was?

H: Coach Gaither was probably the greatest influence of me, and hundreds and

hundreds of more poor boys, of anybody in the state of Florida. His word was it. I

got to be real close to him as a junior, and as a senior. Real close to him.

Because if he opened his mouth, the boys at Jacksonville, Raines, or ex-principal

Tabb say if he opens his mouth, I was right there listening, and the reason I

would beat them all the time. Because if Jake was talking, I was paying attention.

But he was the type of person—he was a father figure, and he would go the

length for you; he would some things for you that they would say would be illegal

now, but he was that type of person. We did them in high school. You know,

helping a kid out. For example, some smart-pants up in the administration said all


the athletes must pay thirty-seven fifty for the registration. I went to him, told him,

“Coach,” I didn’t have it. My momma didn’t have it. Told him my grandmomma,

she was getting older, and she did a lot of washing and ironing in the country,

maid’s work, make your ends line up—not to meet. “So, she has scraped up

thirty-seven fifty and sent me.” I told him, I say, I need to go home, because

Momma can’t afford this. He say, “Hell, baby”—that was his password, “Hell,

baby”—“come on.” We got in the car and rode up Georgia highway, Thomasville,

and he gave me all this lecture and everything, talking. And he went to the post

office and mailed that back, and put some money with it. Made out fifty bucks

and sent back to her. She wanted to know should she have to pay him back, I

said, “No, Momma, he sent that.” So, to sum it up, that’s the type of person he

was. Another good example, when I went to graduate, I went back to Alabama.

Or, I got married right after I graduated, before she graduated. She was a student

at A&M also. Went back to Alabama, and went to the draft board. I got a

deferment back in the day; everybody was drafted. Went to the draft board and

asked the lady, told the lady I was back. I was out of school. And her son, Jake,

friend of mine, White boy. I said, “How is Jake?” “Oh, Jake went to the Army last

week.” I figured if Jake had gone to the Army, I was next. Because she had given

me two deferrals. So I called Tallahassee, and Jake tried to get me on a hardship

deferment, so he got me a job at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, for the

season. I was going to the Rams, to play ball. I had got that, should have went

on, because I didn’t go to the service until January. So, I came back to

Tallahassee. I had worked construction. There’s an incident that happened


before that—getting ahead of things. I came home with a B.S. in my pocket. After

four years. These boys didn’t graduate in four years. Me and Galimore, my

roommate, All-American, graduated in four years. That was our pact, we were

going to get out of there in four years. He went to the Bears and made All-Pro,

and everything. Got killed in a car wreck, his third or fourth year up there. I got

there back to Alabama, with my B.S. in my pocket. My grandmomma had an old

friend that was filthy rich. See, he drunk most of the time, she inherited Old Man

Estes’ estate. And he had more land and whatever, and money. Old late Estes,

Momma’s buddy. And she went off and got drunk and stayed a week or two, and

her yard grew up, and all. And they had that Johnson grass up there in Alabama,

it was about the size of this pencil. You couldn’t cut it with a mower, you had to

take a sling-blade or something, or a scythe, and cut it down, and roll it up. Cows,

and mules, and horses, and things loved it. Throw it over the fence to the

neighbors’ livestock. So she knew I was home, she came over there and asked

Momma, reckon I’d help her in the front yard. I needed some money to go to

another town to visit my Momma, I had gotten back with my mother and those,

back then, as a senior. And, I say, “I’ll make me ten or fifteen dollars and go on

up there.” Before I go there, report to pro camp, or either do something else. I

didn’t have no job or nothing, but like I say, I was going to the Rams. Got to work

there two days. Listen, now: I worked there two whole days. Walk a mile for a

little lunch, then come back over there in the afternoon. Worked there two days.

That White lady gave me two dollars. I hand it back, I said, “It’ll help you more

than it’ll help me.” Here I am now, with my B.S. in my pocket, and I done worked


there two days, and hauled that grass and junk out of there, and she didn’t even

give me lunch or nothing. She was drunk. And gave me two one-dollar bills. I

handed them back to her. Momma liked to die. “Ahh!” I say, “Momma”—the

words I used—“that heifer can keep that. I ain’t working for nothing.” So I

hitchhiked on up to north Alabama. Took my aunt, mothers and uncle. He was

back from North, and messrf around with them a few days, and found out I had to

go to the Service. So, I called Jake and went back to Tallahassee. I had got

enough change to get back to Tallahassee. Got the job at Lincoln High School in

Tallahassee. And, trying to beat the draft. Then got word that I was going in

January. So, I didn’t have any money. Coach Gaither, back then, carried me

down to the bank, and borrowed two hundred dollars. And opened up me a

checking account. Told me—I’ll never forget it [Laughter]—“Boy, don’t spend all

this in one place, now!” So, I had two hundred dollars I lived off until I got paid.

When I got paid, I got married. Up in Georgia. [Laughter] So we’ve been married,

what, fifty-eight, fifty-nine years, something like that.

R: And what is your wife’s name?

H: Yvonne. Uh-huh. So, that was the type of person he was. I could tell you a lot of

stories about Jake, but he was something to everybody. I mean, he helped

people. I mean, he helped poor boys. And there was some poor boys on this

team, too; I was one of them. It’s a friend of mine live down south, Gap Bell, we

called him, Gap. He used to get up in the morning and sing, “If I ever get lucky /

And win my train fare home / I’m going be long gone.” I tease him about it now,

because he was poorer than I was. I said I was the poorest boy at A&M. I was so


poor that I hurt that finger in the Florida Classic, and we came back—and I went

to the doctor that Monday morning, we came back to Tallahassee Sunday. Went

to the doctor. And the trainer wouldn’t carry me, so Jake had a utility car there,

and they sent me to the doctor. We stayed over there ‘til noon: I didn’t have

enough money to buy a hamburger, so we had to come back to the lunchroom

on campus. Way across town in Tallahassee. Boy, we were some poor ducks

back in that day! But, we were lucky.

R: Let’s talk—

H: Got here.

R: Let’s talk a little bit more about Coach Gaither, and, can you talk about his

coaching style, maybe his philosophy?

H: Yeah, Jake was an innovator. And in innovation, I mean that he had some new

things and new ideas. He is on record as being responsible for what they call a

Split-Line T. I was involved in that evolution of that phase of football. Because he

put an end in, in fact, where a lineman would line up, with a certain distance from

the next guy, the center and the two guards. A normal gap would be about a

arm’s length. So, they would be extending. The theory behind him was, he had

such quick, great athletes—this was before all of them went to Florida and FSU.

See, everything at Florida and FSU, half of that would be sitting on the bench at

A&M to tell you the truth, now. Yeah. You might not can digest that, but all of

them Famous Jameis and things? I don’t know quite they’d have played, really.

We had Bob Hayes, Willie Galimore, and them kind of people. So, people get

upset when I make that statement. Beause I know he wasn’t going play fullback,


because I was playing fullback. [Laughter] You know? So. Frazier, another All-

American. I played between two All-Americans at A&M. On the same team, same

time—which is, you don’t have too often. So, Jake’s style was, he utilized his

talent, and he had some great teams. I got some articles out there on him, when

he played against the University of Tampa, the first time an all-Black team played

an all-White team. Brand Kerser was a Miami quarterback that coached that

team. Jake invited Grambling coach, and Tennessee State coach—who he had

played in the Classic a few times—to that game. And Black couldn’t play White.

We beat Tampa. University of Tampa had a great football team. And they

eventually dropped it. But his style was—he wasn’t before his time, he was

innovative. He did some things like, we went to Georgia Tech, what they call a

option game. Anybody’ll tell you that it was taking advantage of the good, athletic

Black quarterback. Real quick, pitching the ball out to some nimble halfbacks and

things. Reading on the corners and what have you. We went to Georgia Tech

because Bobby Dodd, the coach there at Georgia Tech, founded the wishbone,

so to speak: the option game from a high school in Texas, which was

accidentally found. Georgia Tech coach Bobby Dodd perfected it. Jake went up,

and we stayed three days up there. And Dodd said that we couldn’t run it. Too

much speed. Can you believe that? We ran the heck out of that thing. And Jake

innovated some things off of it. The fifty-four defense that was world famous for a

hundred years, and they still run it, most of the places they running a four now,

and the three-four, and all that. Bud Wilkinson, Oklahoma, Como Jones and

Pete Griffin, at A&M, perfected that fifty-four. They innovated some things into it.


Everybody played the split-six, and the six-man front, playing six-man, six-on-six,

that kind of thing. But Jake and those was innovative back in the day, and did the

new things, and new ideas. New wrinkles and things. And it took on and caught

on. That was his coaching style. Plus, it was personal. An individual, or, the boy

was coached first. He raised his voice like once a year, and what he said then

was, “Hell, baby!” [Laughter] But he said it in a certain way where you sort of line

up, you know? Not about assignment being broken, or something like that.

Somebody didn’t go to class. And they policed each other. For example, a couple

of kids came in my senior year when I was captain. Mid-year. I had finished my

playing days. Boys kid me now. Say Jake brought me in the office, and brought

them in. They came in in January, from Jacksonville. He told me who they was,

and all. Introduced themselves, said, “If y’all need anything now, there’s the guy

there, and you see him.” I ain’t have nothing. This guy had a, one of them had a

brand-new Pontiac convertible his daddy gave him, graduation from high school.

He end up All-American, pro player after Florida A&M. Both of them did, really.

And so, boys had told me about it. I told him he had to park it. He parked it. And it

wasn’t no question. Parked it down there by the coach’s office.

R: What was his name?

H: Chandler. Tommy Chandler. And that was just the respect that they had for Jake.

Jake didn’t tell him to park it. I say, “Hey, man, you going stay here, and you

need to park that until you get straightened out.” So he did, and didn’t bother it

until weekends, or something like that. And then he finally carried it home, the

first chance he got. But that was the influence that—all that to say, the boys


looked out for the program. He had influenced us so that we built in, you know?

Boys coming in, we’d talk with them, and try to help them out and get straight,

because we wanted to keep it going. The legacy and all that. Plus, he had a

tremendous staff. The staff, everybody on the staff had played at A&M, under

Jake. ‘Course there was one coach, Pete, played, not under Jake, but he was the

defensive coordinator. And Macon Bodybuilder was—[growls] muscle! They

called him “Bodybuilder.” Macon Williams. Made All-American with Jake, from

Ohio. Backfield coach, my coach, was from Ohio. Coach Tootie Tookes from

Jacksonville, and Kittles from Jacksonville. After we left, one of my teammates

was on there, Bobby Lang was on the team for a long time, as he coached the

ends, and played end, along with us. But he had an influence on—if he touched

it. Not only the boys, the girls, the PE people. He was chairman of PE

department for a long time. And he taught one class, a seminar. Select boys and

all those kids in that seminar class, they went on for great things.

R: Do you remember the name of that seminar class?

H: Theory of Coaching, I think. And in that you can just—no limit. You didn’t do no

X’s and O’s. It was humans. [Laughter]

R: Can you talk a little bit about his approach to manhood, and what he tried to instill

in you all?

H: Yeah. One of his favorite sayings endures, I think. He would say, “There are

certain things that’s true today that was true and will be true a thousand years

hence.” He called them truisms. And he’d get into his thing, and talk about that a

while. And tell you all about—Jake was a ordained minister, I think that you’d


want to say. I got it in his Bible. [Laughter] At one time, and it resonated

throughout his whole career. He was a sick man at one time. He wasn’t

supposed to live. He had a one-dollar operation, one of a kind, on his brain as a

experiment at Vanderbilt, back when he first started at A&M. And I had a class

under Ms. Gaither, English. Now, boys stayed away from her. She’d get you!

[Laughter] You didn’t open your mouth, because they scared to say the wrong

thing. Split one, you know, or do a double negative or something like that. So it

was a joke around campus: “I’m not going to Ma Gaither! She’ll catch you.”

[Laughter] And you wasn’t going skip because she’d tell the man. She’d tell the

old man. And he’d call you down, “Hell, baby. My wife say—” “Coach—” “My wife

a liar?” “No, sir!” [Laughter] You know, that kind of thing. But it was more than an

honor to play for the man, it really was. Just like a way of life, really. I went to

summer school, two summers. Galimore and I, and we didn’t live in the dorm; we

got us a room down there. And a lady run the freshman dorm, Ma Jenkins, they

call her. We got a room down at Ma Jenkins. That was the hottest summer I ever

seen, hotter than it is here. No air conditioning there. And we had a job. We was

going work that summer. Man, we couldn’t find a job half the time, and I don’t

know whether they hid it or what, but we wasn’t looking for it too hard. [Laughter]

We were looking for payday though; we didn’t get paid if we didn’t work. It was

just one heck of a thing. So, that gave me the idea, and taught me that when my

humble beginnings, if I ever got into a situation like here, which was the luckiest

thing that ever happened to me, personally, he would reach out and help


somebody. That’s our theory. Reach out and help somebody. Help a kid. It has

paid off tremendously.

R: Can you talk a little bit about Coach Gaither as a disciplinarian?

H: Coach ain’t had many problem. Seriously. Yeah. You didn’t mess up too tough. If

you did, he didn’t have to do anything, because you got away. Shhoom! I seen

kids home first, where they knew they were in trouble. He’d go to bat for you. But

Lord, Lord! He would talk about you, to you. Yeah, he didn’t have a whole lot of

discipline problems. Not on the team while we were there.

R: Can you talk a little bit about your roommate, Willie Galimore?

H: Gali was a tremendous spirit and soul. He was from St. Augustine. He was a

perfect specimen, you might say. About a hundred and ninety, two hundred

pounds. We were roommates, from the very first. Was not good friends, because

we didn’t speak for the first week. He was over there on his sheets and

pillowcase, and I’m over there on a mattress, looking at the wall. You know? So,

we sizing each other up. Gali was not a football player. He came on a basketball

scholarship. But everybody that played anything scholarship-wise had to come

through the football program at A&M. So in the evening after practice and what

have you, we didn’t go to the girls’ dorm—I didn’t know where it was until

Christmas. We’d get in the hall and play football. Block and tackle in the halls.

Man come up there and say it was tearing up the dorm. Told Coach Gaither we

was tearing up the dormitory. We’d have it on in the halls. Pulling mattresses out

and run through them, and having a good time. [Laughter] Freshmen, didn’t know

any better. So there was a boy that came from a junior college in Jacksonville.


Sidney Gap Bell, the one that sang the poor boy song all the time. Big kid. He

was going to be all it. He messed around playing before practice with a guy from

Gainesville, Hog Head Neil they called him, and got hurt, hurt his knee. Couldn’t

start. Galimore started in his place. Made All-American that year, and the next

three years. So, that’s the way he got in there. And he got married his junior year,

yeah. Audrey. And so, we gained another roommate, so to speak. Audrey, she

was trip. [Laughter]

R: So after y’all first week of not speaking, y’all eventually became friends?

H: Yeah, I’m his oldest son’s godparent. Yeah, he was my best friend. I didn’t know

nothing about him, he didn’t know nothing about me, and he was laying over

there looking at me with no sheets on my bed, you know? “I ain’t bother that cat.”

[Laughter] It was funny, looking back. So the first year at Lincoln—I was here, he

was in pro ball—I brought him to speak to my football team, the banquet. And he

was not a public speaker. And he said “I got these notes, but I’m going put down

and tell you all about training camp.” And everybody [claps] patted. They wanted

to know about football, they didn’t want no speech from him. But yeah, he was

something. Then we picked up Al Frazier, the little back from Jacksonville. And

he made All-American with us. The whole backfield was an All-Conference,

which is something you don’t run across too often. And Jefferson, the

quarterback, is from Tallahassee. That’s who that jacket’s going to, there. It’s too

small for me. Hall of Fame blazer. Picked him up, and we were together, that

backfield, three years. Mmhm.


R: Can you tell us a little bit about the football success that y’all found during your

time there?

H: Yeah. It was unbelievable. Playing four years and losing three games. Somebody

said three games, I think it was one game in four years. I know we lost to

Tennessee State, and lost to Grambling in the Classic. And we were accused

of—during the high scoring era, high scoring meaning forty, fifty, sixty points on

people. The team was phenomenal. And I don’t know, oh, many people flunking

out, and losing eligibility, and things like that. Because it sort of was self-policing,

and you had seniors—in order to keep the legacy going, if you missed class or

something like that, they let the old man know, and you didn’t need to let him

know about that. Because he wouldn’t raise his voice, but when he get through

talking with you, you want to get somewhere and disappear. And they sort of

policed themselves, and we policed each other. And the respect you had for the

program and all that stuff.

R: What conference were you all playing in at the time?

H: We were in the SIAC: Southern Interscholastic Conference. They call it the

MEAC now. Mid-East Athletic Association. Consisted of schools. Now, Grambling

was the SWAC: Southwest. Tennessee State and all those people like that. And

Southern, those were the biggest in Black college sports. Black college sports

was something back in the day, because Alabama, University of Alabama, didn’t

have any Blacks. Auburn didn’t have any Blacks. So all of them went to Florida

A&M, Tennessee State, and Grambling. Grambling had more Black kids in the

pros than anybody else in the history. Eddie Robinson there; I got a chance to


meet him a couple of times, he played against us in the Classic. Came back

through, stopped at A&M to eat on the way back to Louisiana, and Jake sent for

me because he wanted to meet me. I was the captain of the team that year.

There was a boy on his coaching staff from the little town next to mine in

Alabama, and he had talked about me a lot to him. My beginning and all that.

And he wanted to meet me. So I went down and met him, and guy offered me,

asked me did I want to coach in college? I told him, “Yes, sir.” Jake said, “If he

coach anywhere, he’ll coach here.” Work with Jake! [Laughter]

R: Did y’all win any conference championships during your time playing?

H: Every time we showed up. [Laughter] National Championship.

R: And do you remember any of those games?

H: Remember one, I broke a finger in one. Cracked it. Tennessee State. We were

going for the national championship in that, we got beat 32-28. Last play of the

ballgame. Friend of mine, died last year I think that boy did. Substituted himself

in, we got a penalty from the one-yard line. He got hurt and came out, and a

freshman went in. He looked out there and saw that freshman on there, “Ohh, he

ain’t going do the job!” We got a penalty. We get on him about that, now. All right.

And we beat Maryland State and all them people. Like I say, those schools had

the big time players then, because they wasn’t going to the White schools. They

were all playing against us. That’s the reason these knees bad today, because I

was in a car wreck, train wreck every day. [Laughter] In practice and everything.

Yeah.

R: Do you remember the coach’ name at Tennessee State?


H: Big John Meredith.

R: Well you kind of gave us a background after you graduated from Florida A&M.

What year did you graduate from Florida –

H: I graduated in [19]57. Spring of [19]57. I was in the class of [19]56, the fall of

[19]56, and then the spring of next year, when you graduate.

R: And what did you get your degree in?

H: Physical education. Got a B.S. in that. I got a master’s in administration

afterwards, after I got out, twenty-some years later.

R: Awesome. So could you tell us how you got to Lincoln High, in Gainesville?

H: Yeah, I was with the Chargers, San Diego Chargers, and I hurt this knee. This

one right here. Really. And I came back, and we went to Alabama to visit my

grandmomma. My wife and the people that raised her, when we got married, they

adopted a little girl—Brenda. She was sixteen months old. So she just, they were

much older. They must’ve been in their fifties or sixties when they adopted

Brenda. And because they’d raised my wife, and they adopted this kid, and so

she just was ours, I guess. Everybody thought she was ours, because she

stayed with me all the time, and I wasn’t working. And I kept her, and everywhere

we went, she went. We went on to Alabama, Georgia, anywhere, she was right

there. So we were coming back from Alabama; her uncle, who was the principal

of a school down south, a middle school, sort of. And told the principal here that I

was back from pro camp. They was at a meeting somewhere, and I was looking

for a job. I’d interviewed a few places down south, and he wanted me to get in

touch with him. So, on the way back from Alabama, we stopped on Sunday,


about like this. He lived across the street from the school, they had just moved

and built that school. Been there a year. And I called him, we met him at the

school. And then he called all his coaches there. And they came over and met

me, and a couple more people. They had a guy named T.B. McPherson, he was

the athletic director, old coach at Lincoln back in the day when it was something.

T.B. was a legend. That’s who T.B. McPherson Park is named after. He was the

Lincoln legend. And a Southern legend. They played small colleges and things.

He had, really, a semi-pro team playing high school ball, they tell me. Because

he had this house over there on Fifth avenue, and them boys lived— [Laughter]

He was athletic director, so. He knew about me. So he said—he had a funny

stance: he locked his legs and knees, he had bad knees, and rock on them. And

it was fascinating to me. I was watching him. He was telling me all about the

school and all, and he going. I needed the job. And Brenda, the little girl was with

us. And I’m holding her up, and looking at him. And he was telling me, say, “Boy,

we want you. You want the job?” All right, she said, “Yeah, we want the job.”

[Laughter] I ain’t say nothing because I was watching him. He was a strange bird.

Anybody that tell you about T.B. McPherson, that’s a whole book itself. Anyway,

so I took it, and we came here. And I was assistant coach for the first year. Bob

Acosta was the head coach. He didn’t get the backing from the administration

that he should have.

R: And what year did you start at Lincoln High?

H: In 1960.

R: 1960.


H: Because I was in pro camp in [19]60, the spring of [19]60. I mean, the fall. And

my knee, so I came to Gainesville to get a knee worked on. Because they didn’t

have all that sophisticated knee stuff now. I was going to Orlando and getting

shots in it, and they sent me up to, not to Shands, but the trainer at the University

of Florida. He looked at it. So when they’d go to practice, he’d work on my knee.

Have me out of there before they got out of practice. White boy walking by

looking at me because I had been to pro ball, and they want to see how I look, I

guess. [Laughter] Anyway, I got second year, during the summer, Nealy made

me the head coach. So, we took off from there.

R: And who did you have your first initial meeting with when you arrived in

Gainesville, when you made your phone call?

H: Nealy, the principal. And he called T.B. McPherson, the athletic director. A

couple of the coaches. Joe Hightower was the defensive coach, and Bob Acosta

was the head coach. And they had lost a coach due to some kind of something

happened with him before I got here. I took his job, really. So, got in, and thought

I’d stay a year and go try pro ball again. But that one knee didn’t want to act right.

And plus, I found some kids that—I don’t know, just something happened, it

clicked. And they wanted—they were down so, here. Rock bottom. And it’s just

something about the kids, if you opened your mouth, they were just colorful. They

was ready. And T.B. had won so much here in the past. He’s known throughout

the state of Florida, really. Because they played play Tuskegee High School and

all them people like that. And Lincoln was known so. That’s reading the legacy of

Lincoln as it is now. I don’t know of no other high school who was like that. Those


people have heck of a reunions and things. So, I took over in [19]61, my first

team. I think we lost a couple that year. Albert White here—have you had the

pleasure of interviewing him?

R: Not yet. He’s on my list.

H: He was something; he’ll tell you about it. Albert was my first quarterback.

Couldn’t throw a lick. Sucker had a brain, though. I did some things with Albert

that took a long time to do. We put in some automatics and things. Albert was a

heck of a swimmer, other than being a student. And we had a good football team.

We had James Joseph, which was a legend around here. Kid that had some

rough times, never had a lick of problem with him. He was almost docile, but he

was supposed to be something with horns on, they say. But I ain’t never seen

Joe fly up or do anything. Had some discipline problems, but he was some kind

of athlete. Just as nice as he could be. But anyway, we won, and then we

needed some kind of way to rally. So I nicknamed them. The Lincoln High

Fighting Terriers, that’s the mascot. So I nicknamed them: “The Big Red.” And

that caught on. Saw a lady about a year ago, over to the cleaners. Told me,

“Coach Heard, I ain’t been to a ballgame since y’all closed Lincoln.” I say, “I

didn’t close Lincoln!” [Laughter] She say, “But it got to be opened.” There was a

kid, Charles Demps. I wish you could talk to him, he was a student. He said that

was a way of life, a cultural thing: The Big Red. It just caught on. The community

embraced it. Didn’t drop the name Terriers, but we needed some type of rallying

point with them.

R: And what made you come up with the name The Big Red?


H: All right. There’s something they did last year, or the year before. They did the

Coach of the Century a little surprise breakfast over to Lincoln; some old boys

got together and did it. Out there in my office, I got some things on my wall, I’ll

show you what they did. Well what happened, there was a program on the radio

every Saturday morning. A guy named Leonard Postosis. He would give a

synopsis of all the games being played in the United States on that Saturday.

And he nicknamed the Gators. He said it “Giant Water Lizards.” And he say

that—what’d he call the Razorbacks? The Hogs, you know. The Snouters, or

something like that. And he’d just name it. He call this team out of Nebraska, The

Big Red Thrashing Machine, that kind of thing. He had a nickname for

everybody. And that Big Red, we were red and white, just stuck some way, so we

got The Big Red. And then I drew up a emblem. Out there, it’s in cases out there

and all. Sort of like a crest. And boy, they bought into it. All the old kids there,

they bought in to it. And it just took off. Then the community got involved,

because of what we were trying to do with kids. We worked with kids just like

Jake did. If they needed us, we were there. Morning, noon, and night. My thing

was, a lot of those kids come from no home, broken homes, and you had to help

them in some way. Somebody helped me, so I owed it to them. And a example,

there’s a kid that comes here all the time that—won’t call his name, but

everybody knows him. He wanted to finish out his senior year. Mom and dad had

broke up. She moved out, left the daddy. Daddy was—. Came home from

practice one day, and hadn’t paid the rent; they put him out. It was raining. Came

back to my apartment and told me, “Coach”—stuff outside—“they put me out. I


ain’t have but eleven dollars to my name.” We went over to the renters, calmed

the man into letting him put his stuff back in, and paid him a week’s rent. Then

then I went to the boy’s aunt and asked her, could he stay there? Because he

was eating in the lunchroom. He stayed there and finished school. I sent him to

Alabama A&M. He hurt his knee and then stayed, but that kid is—Jesus, I

couldn’t have a son closer. You know. If you sneeze, he’s right here. But he’s

real successful in life, just goes to show that, help somebody. And a lot of them

like that. You got to reach out and help them. Boys, girls, and all. Buchholz was

the same way. When they closed Lincoln, there was two Black coaches in the

state of Florida in the big high schools: I was at Buchholz, somebody down

south. See, I named the school colors, the mascot, the paper, and everything at

Buchholz. That’ll never happen again. They named the field after me—last year,

or the year before, something like that. So, I’m just saying, Jake always said, let

your work speak for itself. If you can’t help somebody, leave them alone.

[Laughter] We were fortunate to be able to get that.

R: What was your approach to coaching, and your philosophy?

H: Help the kid, help somebody. Yeah, and respect him. That was a big thing,

respect everybody’s kid. He need as much respect as a grown person. You

know, a lot of people just, oh, you dumb bunny, you don’t know nothing, just treat

him like he was somebody. And my thing was, everybody is somebody. And too,

we used to say—Bob Acosta was the head coach before I got there, and he told

me if I took it he’d stay, and he’d give me the best support possible. And that

poor man did, he did. He just didn’t get the support upstairs that I did. Because I


didn’t bother upstairs, I stayed away from them people. I went through T.B., the

athletic director. So, we would always make it our business to treat the boy like

he was somebody. He was; he was important. He had no daddy, and some of

them had no momma. I instituted a thing, Parents’ Night. It didn’t go too well. For

one ballgame, like homecoming, I had two dads that show up. The main daddy,

and the stepdaddy that raised him. And both of them was drinking. And I’m fixing

to go on the field, and had some girls in charge of it—see, we used everybody.

Girl came and knocked on the door and told the trainer, “Get Coach out here

quick: got a problem.” Momma was fixing to line up to meet the boys coming out

of the dressing room, come down the sideline in front of the stands. Two daddies

out here arguing about who was going carry him. She told me that, I went out

and I said, “What’s the matter?” “That’s my boy there, I’m walking with him.” The

other guy say, “I raised him.” Them boys say, “Ain’t nothing—.” So I said, “Unh-

uh! Nothing walking tonight but mommas.” That guy wanted to get on my case. I

said, “Nothing walking tonight but mommas.” So from then on, it was mother’s

night. It wasn’t Parents’ Night no more. Because I know that they can’t have but

one momma, now! You might have one or two daddies out there. So that took on,

and you talk about support: them mommas would support you. So daddies got

split. They got together a Third Down Club. Third Down Club was designed to

sort of monitor and sponsor a boy. And we traveled, at Lincoln, in uniform. We

wore a red blazer, gray slacks, turtleneck with a dog head on it. On a Greyhound

double-decker. I’ll show you a picture before you go. And the boys that couldn’t

afford those blazers, they were purchased by members of the Third Down Club.


And each boy had a sponsor, sort of. But they had this rule where you couldn’t

have a boy on the team. These people made up of people that didn’t have a kid

on the team. They’d wear a cap with the boy’ number on it, and a lady came to

me and said, “Best thing that ever happened. You don’t get drunk and go to the

game now.” Because he got a boy on the field. Not his son, sponsored that boy.

Some of them would feed them, eat dinner with them, go to church with them.

And it just got to be, little things like that: Big Red, Mother’s Night, and Third

Down Club, and all the things like that. It just gave the boys some sense of

purpose. That was the most important thing: sense of purpose. It paid off.

R: Can you talk about the community support during the football games?

H: It was unbelievable. People would dress up. Fashion show, what it was. They’ll

tell you. [Laughter] People were wanting to know when it was homecoming,

they’d make arrangements to come back for that. And we got to where we’d play

one or two games on Saturday night. And they would dress up, and come, and

just have a good time. Kids go to the center after, to dance. Game night, game

day, we had curfew. We’d ride. Some people run over things, getting hurt,

running from us. And people’d say, “Hey, he went that way.” Tell on him.

[Laughter] It was a lot of fun, we got a big kick out of it. Eleven o’clock on

Saturday night. Center would close at eleven. And help them uptown. That was a

big thing, they didn’t have anywhere else to go. I mean, with the center, they

would dance, after the game. We had this thing: feeding the team. We traveled

like the Army. Everything we needed. Lunchroom would fix up a big old thing of

soup, and we’d have fifty-five or sixty bowls in one container. Saltines and things


like that. Pregame meal. After the game, we’d usually eat at the school. I had this

thing: I didn’t like to go on your campus. If I was playing your high school, I didn’t

have no restaurants I could go to as such, but I didn’t like to go on your campus,

before I played you. So, then we got where we could eat at a restaurant or

something, in certain cities. The Burger Boys and McDonald’s and all those

places was not in existence back then. You could to a Black greasy spoon, so to

speak. One in Orlando I would go to, and down south, further down, but those

are the little things in treating individuals like they were somebody that made the

program. And that program over there, it’s unique. People now, the reunions that

they have, you should attend one of them things. When they have class

reunions, woo! You talking about pride! They love that school. They love the

teachers, they love the principal—he was a classmate of mine, you know, Dukes.

And they was winning, that was the big thing. And they felt good about it. And the

best thing about it, they were not second to none in Florida—nowhere in the state

of Florida. We got beat a couple of times, in the state championship game. Miami

Mays. Tampa Blake beat us once. But they figured it was nobody better than

they were. No second-class citizen over there. Community felt like that. Those

guys would get off of work on a Friday, let’s say around two, and travel. We going

to Lakeland to play? That group would be there, man. Like, twenty or thirty cars.

When that bus pull into the stadium, they would be there. And boy, seeing that

kind of—Orlando? Looked like half of Gainesville would be there. We had this

thing that, if we were losing at halftime, we’d change uniforms.

R: Change the uniform.


H: Mmhm.

R: And where did you get that idea from?

H: I don’t know. That was my job, I mean, to do this. Yeah. Come up with junk.

[Laughter] And the kids would say, if we wore red, our excuse would change, and

if we’re not doing anything, “Let’s get pure and put on the white.” You change

uniforms, you couldn’t lose. Some kind of way they figured you couldn’t lose. It

was all about winning. Yeah. Community bought it, the kids bought it, and it

just—one of those things.

R: I guess also, just a little bit: can you describe, briefly, game day preparation for

you?

H: Yeah. Game day preparation, home and away was different. Home, everybody

would arrive at school. I can close that curtain.

R: No, you’re fine.

H: Too much noise for you?

R: No, it’s fine.

H: People arrive at school. You be dressed presentable. Game day. Sometimes

we’d tie up game day: they’d wear a shirt and tie. Had a couple of kids that didn’t

have shirt and tie. Older kids would make sure they had it. Example, I saw a girl

last week at the reunion. Her brother came out for the team, and they was not

quite—less fortunate, some of the kids. And asked her if she would wash and

iron him a shirt. And I told her I’d give her fifty cents. That boy came to school

starched and ironed the next morning. He was grinning from ear to ear. Because

he never had no nothing but a long-sleeved disheveled shirt, and all that kind of


stuff. We called him Scrap Iron because he stayed all disheveled all the time.

And a good kid, wanted to play ball bad. So game day, we were home, sometime

we’d tie down. On travel day, they’d dress in the travel uniform. Gray slacks, red

blazers, crew neck, turtleneck, black, with a big dog head on that thing. And the

big emblem on the thing. And get on that double-decker. Travel. Ride. And we’d

take a Greyhound to Ocala. They’d say it was extravagant, throwing away

money? We making it. Money was not a problem over there, that was one thing. I

mean, they have two uniforms, and a spare? We’d get a new jersey for

homecoming. Can you believe that? A jersey for homecoming. A red and white

one, that’s a pretty thing. We tried to wear the same thing that Florida wore,

jersey-wise. That kind of material. And boys took a lot of pride in the best

equipment, and best conditions. And we didn’t spare any money on it, because

they was making it. They closed that school, they had forty thousand in the kitty

in the athletic department. Saturday night, you couldn’t see the ground up at

Citizens Field, there’d be so many Colored folks. And the White people’d be

hanging on the fence down there. Because they was winning. And it just got to

be a community thing, and they bought into it. And churches—some members of

the team would be at somebody’s church on Sunday. I’d go with them most of

the time. Like we would go to Bartley Temple Sunday, we’d show up. Who

belongs to Bartley Temple, we would be his guests, you know. That kind of—

cheerleaders the same way, we treated them like players. Family thing, yep. So,

we would just have a good time.

R: Where did the money come from to support the—


H: Gate receipts.

R: Okay. I think it says—

H: You couldn’t see the ground up there on a game night. Home game.

R: And did administration and the principals support the athletics program?

H: Yeah, they had to! [Laughter] The man downtown was supporting it. How you

think a young Black man in the South was appointed to a all-White high school?

It was only another one in the state, and one was down south. I was the only

thing in the state of Florida. Head coach, now athletic director at a prominently

White, large high school, at Buchholz, when we started. He was supporting me

because he was an ex-coach himself, the superintendent. Yeah. And the

principal had no choice, as long as he was there. He wasn’t there the whole time,

he had enough and got another one.

R: And can you speak about the closing of Lincoln High?

H: Yeah, that was the biggest mess. Gainesville didn’t have the leadership it needed

back for the closing of that. The die had been cast. I knew that Lincoln was going

to be closed the year before. I knew where I was going. The superintendent told

me that I was going to a new school. I wanted to go to Eastside, because that’s

where all my family kids was.

R: Where did you go?

H: Buchholz, they sent me out there. And, only Black thing out there was me, and a

cat, Tom Coward, dean over there. They had a big thing for him last week over

there. He was a county commissioner and all, but been in a nursing home about

two years. They brought him home yesterday for two hours. I was over there


sitting with him. He was a dean at that time. So, the closing was a mess, really.

We played the season, and we were going in the playoffs for the state

championship. Lake City was in our district. So many jumbled-up people in that

district, and the winners. Now we had beat them Raines, and all those people in

Jacksonville. We the second school in the state of Florida to leave the Black

association and go in with the White schools. The Florida High School Activities

Association. We were second—Gibbs was the first one, we were the second one.

Okay. We were in line to get into the playoffs had Lake City lost. Lake City won

that night, and we didn’t make the playoffs. So, it was about fourteen or fifteen

teams in our district, and we were district runner-ups. Lake City end up being

district champs. So the crux of the thing is that we knew, before the ballgame—

we was playing Raines High School, big high school in Jacksonville. A

powerhouse. They had about seven kids on that team to be big-time scholarship

players, and that seven, I think they tell me all of them played pro ball or

something, off that Raines team that we played. Now. we were loaded. We were

absolutely loaded. Like a small college, Lincoln was. We recruit and raised our

own. And we knew that had Lake City lost that night, we would be in the playoffs.

And if they won, we wasn’t going play anymore. They was talking about closing

the school. The kids was not going let them close it as long as they could play.

You understand me?

R: Mmhm.

H: So, two things happens after a home game. We’d take in the uniforms, they turn

them in, the little managing staff had about ten or twelve kids. Had a senior or


two in charge of it. Take the uniforms in and check them off the list. Stack them

ready for the laundry that next morning. And hand the kid this chicken box.

Kentucky Fried box. After each game, we’d give them a chicken box. And that’s

what would happen. So that night, there was somebody monitoring the radio in

the stands. And in the dressing room after the game, somebody said Lake City

won, that we knew we was out. So we played Raines on a Thursday night, from

Jacksonville, Citizens Field up there. They came back to the school, told them

“Turn in everything.” Because they said, “We not coming back to school after

this.” I said, “Turn in everything.” They turned in everything they on. They stacked

in the floor, like Army-style. When we got ready to make a trip, everybody

stacked everything Army-style in the gym—“layout,” they called it, to make sure

you didn’t miss anything, or leave any jock, or socks, or something. You didn’t go

there borrowing and taking nothing from a rookie. A rookie was best-dressed

man on the team, because he wasn’t tore up. So, everybody turned in

everything. Even wraps and everything. Everything has a number, them kids

numbered everything. So they got their box and left. I went to school that next

morning, they were standing out there turning kids away. Say, “We’re not having

a school no more. They going close us? Make them close us.” So they told me to

go back home. I was living right here then, I had just moved here. We’d just built

a house. I turn around, came back. [Laughter]. And they tore it up, the halls and

everything. Cops came and all this. They walked out. So they marched and

demonstrated for a couple of weeks or so. But it was so well-organized. I had this

big bullhorn that I carried to practice every day; a boy came and borrowed it.


When they marched down the street downtown, from point A to point B, football

team, I understand, did not allow anybody on the sidewalks. They got lauded for

this, the police and everything, the city commission, congratulate them for

nobody would go in a store or get on the sidewalk. Them big rascals going down

the sidewalk, they’d get back in the street. And they did that for a week or so.

They’d play ball all day down there, McPherson Park. And then they’d go march

in the afternoon.

R: And they were marching for—?

H: Protesting closing the school. So they just, they closed Lincoln, and they said

they going build them two new schools over there. Fighting integration. A man—I

don’t have it now, but a man is writing a book on the closing of Lincoln. He’s

interviewed me four or five times. I had the extracts from it, and he did a final

thing and I misplaced it. But he went through it. And I had another thing, I tell you

I can’t put hand on it, where a guy followed me from first few days at Buchholz,

he got his PhD. He and a girl followed me step for step for a whole season. Every

booster club meeting, every practice, every trip. They wrote it up, and he was

trying to publish that thing at one time.

R: And can you talk briefly about your time at Buchholz?

H: Yeah. As I said, they hired a principal and they hired me. Superintendent told me

I was going there, but I wanted to go to Eastside. That’s where all the Black kids

were going to go. Buchholz didn’t have any Black kids, as such. They zoned the

country kids, Monteocha, up there into them. We had the university-influenced

crowd and the rural kids from Monteocha. It was two different animals. So, the


superintendent was all, we going double sessions, second semester. They didn’t

go back to schools yet. They were going do them in the spring, in the school. No,

they didn’t go back over there. After that last football game, didn’t go back. So

they hurried up and open up, integrated GHS, and surrounding schools that we

were pulling from. Buchholz went on double session at Westwood, and a little

school close to them. Eastside was housing Howard Bishop over there on double

sessions. And the principal there was raising sand at GHS, and around, and kids

walking out and fighting, and superintendent called a meeting as the principal

was going down there. And I read this story, trying to find a mascot, and I read

this story about this bobcat scaring a man to death that was camping. And it sort

of intrigued me, and I’d go over to the new building, went to this building all the

time, I didn’t have any classes or anything, after Lincoln. I was just assigned to

the new school. They assigned the teachers at Westwood, and I was assigned

athletic director and coach at Buchholz. And then I had the opportunity to help

design the gym and all that stuff that’ll never happen again. And, so I read this

story about this bobcat ,and I got my little group over there. And the school

colors, I went out to saw Florida play Vanderbilt, that old gold and black? And it

was beautiful at night. We were going with the Houston Oilers, that Carolina blue

and red, what we was going at. I wanted the panthers, but the Black panthers

was raising so much Cain around, I said, “I better leave that alone.” [Laughter] So

anyway, we copied the story of the bobcat and the man camping, how he made

all that noise, and the man wet his clothes there. Because he looked up and that

cat was right over him and all that. So, got me a picture of a bobcat and laid a


circle, laid it around the school. Kid get off the bus, my little group would hand

them that. They got ready to vote, the principal wanted the Golden Knights. He

want with the black and gold, but he wanted to have them kilts and all that kind of

stuff. Them dresses, I call it. Had the vote. Nine hundred students going to

Buchholz at Westwood. I think I beat him eight-eighty something, when they had

the vote. He had to go to the superintendent’s office with the assistant principal,

had the election that day, and he came back, everybody hollering, “Bobcat!

Bobcat!” He like to have a hissy. But we got to be. So, I was able to name the

school colors, the mascot, and then we got to the new school; they didn’t have no

newspaper, none of that stuff. And named that. And it never happened again.

One person do all that. And I got fired from Buchholz! [Laughter]

R: And how did that happen?

H: Lady principal. Politics. I had Roger Maris’ boy, and Dickey’s boy. You know

Roger Maris? I had them two rascals. Dickey’s old sorry boy. Sent him home.

R: Well I’ve kept you about two hours now, and is there anything that I’m forgetting,

that I didn’t ask? Or that you think that we should cover?

H: Ah, something flashed on me a while ago. I don’t know, I sort of rambled back

and forth. I was trying to follow your questions.

R: Oh, you’re fine, you did amazing.

H: Didn’t go, but—oh, yeah. Are you familiar with the jamboree that they have?

R: No. At Lincoln?

H: A jamboree is something where in football, three or four schools come together.

Instead of playing a whole game, they’ll play a quarter against me, and a quarter


against you. Okay. Now they’ve moved to where they’ll play a half. It’s not a

sanctioned game, but it’s a sanctioned activity. Wherein the Buchholz would play

Eastside, and then Eastside’ll play GHS, and GHS’ll play Buchholz, like that. It’s

just a night of football. They do it up north. I found out about it, and I was able to

bring it to the state of Florida.

R: And when did you do that?

H: Say what?

R: What year was that?

H: It must’ve been in [19]65, [19]60-something like that. Every summer I would go

north to visit my wife’s people in the Philadelphia area, and I’d go to a pro camp.

The Eagles or the Redskins or something like that, and spend two or three days.

And a lot of high school coaches would be there from up in that area. And plus, I

went to clinics all over the country, wherever they had a bigtime clinic. And they

were talking about the jamboree. And I asked a guy, what was that. And he

explained it to me. And I came back and asked a state man about it, he say,

“Yeah, Coach, y’all can have it and get together.” I didn’t have the mechanism to

run it, I didn’t have a Quarterback Club or nothing. So I talked to the White coach

who [inaudible 02:00:53], “Yeah, I heard about that, we can do that.” But he

wouldn’t play me. “I can’t play you. You got to get somebody else to play you.

Because we not integrated yet. I can’t play you. I ain’t got no reason to play you.”

So he got all upset, a big old [inaudible 02:01:10]. “You get out there and score

on me, I’d never live it down.” It was a big mess. So it was my idea, and we’d just

moved in the—and we were going two-a-days in practice, and I couldn’t get


nobody to play me. So I talked to the man in Palatka. White school there. “Unh-

uh, we ain’t playing no Black school.” Said, “Okay.” He went on and on and—

redneck. So, talked to the guy in Ocala. “Nah, we can’t play you.” And I told him, I

say, “Well, I’m going play in it, one way or the other.” So, the guy who had told

me he wasn’t going play me go on national TV and say he wouldn’t play me. That

was a White man, GHS. Rap Brown was down in Miami, raising Cain. You

remember Rap Brown, activist? I told them suckers, I say, “If I don’t play, Rap

Brown’ll be to the game.” [Laughter] I played. So.

R: Who did you end up playing?

H: GHS and Ocala. GHS—

R: And what year?

H: I believe that was [19]65, [196]4 or [196]5, something like that. Anyway, they beat

me seven to six. We didn’t do extra points.

R: And where was the game hosted?

H: Citizens Field. It was some folks out there. Somebody said, “I’ve been waiting

forty years to see this.” He dress fifty or seventy-five, I’d dress a hundred. We

traveled with a hundred kids. You came out, you could stay. I didn’t guarantee

you’d play, now; you could stay. You kept everything in line. So, that’s what that

roster, I was looking at that roster the other day. It must’ve been a hundred and

twenty kids on that roster, that last Lincoln roster. We’d keep them. Yeah. Go to

the Jacksonville, we’d carry two Greyhounds. Kept fifty on the field at one time.

Just before the game start, bring fifty more out. There was six points right there.

Shock value. That was our job, was sitting, and playing, and plotting. [Laughter]


Like a military operation. But back to this jamboree, felt so bad the guy down in

Palatka swore up and down he wouldn’t play no Black school. Old guy got to be

one of my better friends later on, the coach. In fact, he invited me to his

daughter’s wedding, and some beauty contest as a judge. Can you believe that?

Later on, Jesus! [Laughter] We okay now. And the guy down to Ocala, I told him

what would happen, he say, “Coach, I’ll play you.” Beat him twenty-five nothing

that quarter. I felt so bad about it, everything they put their hand on, they scored.

I said, “Jesus! I feel bad about that, really!” [Laughter]. Because he’s the only one

that played me, only non-Black one to play me. But, so that was an achievement,

getting the jamboree, being instrumental in bringing it to the state of Florida, and

participating in the very first one that was played. Because we played on

Thursday night, the jamboree up here. So it was just a few, then this caught on—

in fact, now throughout. So I just happened to think about that.

R: Thank you for sharing. And I guess one thing I also want to touch on: your time

with the San Diego Chargers.

H: I stayed there about—during the preseason, I got his knee. I got a thing in here

running around now, piece of chip. [Laughter] I had hip surgery in [20]01. I need

this knee worked on, you see how it’s swollen?

R: Were you drafted by them?

H: You wasn’t exactly drafted back in that day. Sid Gillman—see, I was going with

the Rams when I left A&M. And Sid Gillman left the Los Angeles Rams and went

the new league, the Chargers. And I got caught up in that. We had two or three

boys to go to the new league. Frazier went to Denver, the other half. But Gali,


Gali was drafted by the Bears, I believe. Because another guy came on after us,

said on record he’s supposed to be the first guy ever drafted out of Florida A&M.

I’ve got to check that. It’s not important to me, but, they didn’t draft you. You was

sort of a sleeper. Grambling had all those people up there, and they was taking

their people from Michigan State and all those places, big Grambling was

slipping them All-Pros in there right and left, you know? Them small school. And

they stayed heres for a while, and then they started going. The Redskins was the

last people to take a Black person. I got letters from the Redskins my senior year

at A&M. Somebody to tell me didn’t know whether I was Black or White, but I was

going to Florida A&M; they knew I was Black. They got where they was looking at

talent, and looking for certain things to fill. So yeah, that was a good experience

up there.

R: Okay, well is there anything else you would like to share?

H: No, whatever you think about.

R: Well, I figure this is a good stopping point. I appreciate you for talking to me!

H: Yeah, well, I hope I didn’t bore you, but—

R: Oh, no you did not! You gave a lot of great information.

H: But to give you a little background, now, that bower right there, I was telling you,

you could use that just to get it back to me if you don’t mind. I got a couple of

sheets. If you don’t need it, it’s good, but I mean, if you need anything off of it.

R: All right.

[End of interview]


Transcribed by: Daniel Minter, October 26, 2016

Audit-edited by: Ryan Morini, April 24, 2017

Final edit by: Ryan Morini, March 1, 2019

(352) 392 fba 002 jesse heard ... 002 jess… · raised me from six months old, really, until i was...

Documents