Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 31, 1994 TAG: 9401310268
SECTION: NEWSFUN PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY GLEINER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When Ivory Morton was a teen-ager, he couldn't go to Lakeside, a Salem amusement park, during the summer. He had to wait for the two or three days in September when he was allowed in.
Marylen Harmon became a really good sidewalk roller skater when she was a child because she was not permitted in skating rinks.
And in the days when Richmond had a AAA baseball team, Delvis ``Mac'' McCadden loved to watch some of the future Yankee stars play there. He really wanted to be close to the players, but he was only allowed to sit along the right field line.
All of these children, now adults, were not left out because they had done anything wrong; they were left out because they have black skin.
When these four were growing up, in the 1950s and '60s, Roanoke Valley schools were just beginning to desegregate - to end the separation of blacks and whites. It wasn't until 1971 that elementary schools in Roanoke, by law, had to mix the races together.
For many black students, that meant riding buses from their neighborhoods to schools in other areas. Some families moved so their children could go to desegregated schools.
Marylen Harmon remembers having few school materials, and textbooks with missing pages. ``We were given the leftovers'' at all-black G.W. Carver in Salem, but that did not stop her and other students there from learning. ``It made us a determined, self-motivated group of people,'' she said. ``We were pushed to be as good as anybody else.''
Outside of school, she was more limited in what she was allowed to do. Harmon never learned to swim because there was no place she was allowed to go swimming. ``We made our own fun,'' she said, ``because we knew we couldn't go to parks.''
She could not try on clothes in stores, nor could she return them if she found they didn't fit when she got home. When she bought an ice cream cone, she had to eat it outside, not sit inside with the white children.
When she got on a bus, she paid the fare, walked back out of the bus and re-entered by the side door because blacks were not permitted to walk down the center aisle. They also had to sit in the back.
``When we traveled, we would pack a lunch,'' she recalls, ``because we weren't allowed to eat in restaurants. In some places, we could go to the back door to buy our food.'' She also remembers not being allowed to use restrooms along the way. ``And we only traveled during the day.''
``We don't forget the past,'' she said, ``but we try to make things better.''
``I couldn't understand why people would shout things and take sides,'' ``Mac'' McCadden remembers. ''I couldn't understand why someone would treat someone else poorly.''
His mom, a teacher, thought it would be best for him to go to an integrated school, so the family moved. ``The kid next door had newer books,'' he remembers.
During early integration, McCadden and other black students believed they had to work harder to prove they were better so they would be treated as equals.
McCadden was even the target of racist remarks from other blacks because he did not attend a segregated (all-black) school. He really felt left out of both races because he is light-skinned.
He, like Marylen Harmon, remembers the same back doors of restaurants, the back seats of buses and different water fountains.
``People discriminate in many different ways, not just racially,'' McCadden said. ``It's important to be yourself and not compare yourself to others.''
When the Rev. Ivory Morton speaks to students, he echoes a similar message. ``Begin early to have dreams,'' he said, and be involved in positive things.
For a while, Morton's way of being involved was to rebel against some of the limits placed on blacks. He and his friends sat down in restaurants they knew they were not allowed in and wouldn't leave until the police came.
It bothered him, when he was a singer with a band, that he could perform in clubs in front of all-white audiences but could not go to those same clubs to listen to other singers.
Morton read Malcolm X's teachings and supported black power, a militant (fighting) way of trying to change things. He was angry at the treatment of blacks, but his anger turned to hate.
His name was in the newspaper more than once for fighting and sometimes for being arrested. Then he realized that he was infected with the same hate that some people had for blacks. ``Nobody caused me to hate,'' he said. ``I pleaded to God to give me one more chance.'' He became a minister.
Now, he tells others, ``If you're going to be the future, you have to pick up the tools that build the future. Get a knowledge of our [black] history, then world history, then become history.''
June Powell remembers moving to a mostly white neighborhood and ``sneaking out'' to play with her white friend next door. ``The kids got along fine; most of the problems were from the adults,'' she said.
She recalls that when she first went to Forest Park Elementary School in Roanoke, she and other black students were placed in the ``slow readers'' group. She also noticed that the pupils had different subjects, newer books and extra activities that she had never been exposed to before.
``I never paid much attention to the difference between blacks and whites,'' she said. She remembers sitting at the counter at a local drug store, something blacks were not allowed to do then. Several people were waited on before her, but she figured it was because she was a kid. She did finally get her turn and went back to that drug store often. They always took her order promptly after that.
A lot of doors have opened to blacks and other minorities since the 1960s. But there are still a lot of changes to be made.
Marylen Harmon said: ``My parents would say, `No, not today.' They would say someday things would change. I'm not so sure that in some things, someday has come yet.''
Marylen Harmon, who has a doctorate in education, is a teacher at Glen Cove Elementary School.
Delvis ``Mac'' McCadden is on the Roanoke City Council and is a district sales manager for USAir.
The Rev. Ivory Morton is pastor of Indian Rock Baptist Church in Buchanan.
June Powell, the ``slow reader,'' has a master's degree and works as a dietitian.
by CNB