Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210003
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIENNE BEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I remember they did foreclose on our home," Robertson says. "The bank told my mom, 'If your child doesn't go to school in Floyd County this won't happen,' but I went and it did happen."
Robertson's mother "scrambled around to get money to pay off the house" and eventually borrowed money from June's aunt.
"I remember a couple of the ladies being told they'd lose their jobs [if they sent their children to school in Floyd County], " says Robertson, who now lives in Inglewood, Calif. "Some of the parents didn't go through with it because of threats."
"I could go through it again, it was worth it," Robertson says. Going to school in Floyd meant the days of rising with the sun, hour-long bus rides to Christiansburg Institute and coming home as night fell would be no more.
The first day of walking through the doors at Check High School, Robertson remembers feeling both "anxious and excited" as "everybody was just standing around watching the show."
"We had seen all this stuff that was going on in other states and that lent to the fear," Robertson says. "As we went in, I remember the press all around and I was thinking 'Oh, God, wouldn't it be awful to see me on TV getting beat up.'"
Some of the white students were familiar to June, having grown up together in the same town. "I remember seeing Judy Harris's face smiling," Robertson says. "If you find even one person who's nice, that will offset a lot of the negative remarks others might make."
June remembers a note on her locker: "The only good nigger is a dead nigger."
"We were the nicest bunch of kids they could have dealt with, well-mannered, well-dressed," Robertson says and then laughs as she adds. "But I think if I had to do it again I'd probably be a lot meaner."
Today, she is an independent contractor in the medical administration field who also helps organize local jazz concerts.
June says the struggle she went through with integration "makes you appreciate all you have."
"I have no regrets," Robertson says. "As a kid you suffer, no dances or this and that but when you look back on it, it wasn't that bad and my mother probably wouldn't have let me go to those things anyway."
"It may have been an unspoken rule," Robertson says of being barred from certain school activities. Other times things were made very clear.
"That first year Floyd High was invited to play a ball game at an opposing school," Robertson says. "That opposing school said blacks weren't invited."
She spoke to the principal and remembers him telling her "if we came they would cancel the game." In his defense, Robertson says "I think he didn't know what to do and I got the impression he didn't want to offend us but that's the way it was."
There are no bitter memories of Floyd in Robertson's mind. "I harbor no resentment, most of it then and problems now come from dealing with people who don't know or are not willing to change."
Did she feel part of the civil rights movement in January of 1960? "Years later you did" Robertson says. "At the time we were just going to school and doing what we were supposed to do."
by CNB