Oral History with James Darnell Watkins, March 31, 2000 (Ms2003-011)

Kennelly: You are listed in the Bugle as being from Newport News. Is that

where you were born?

Watkins: No, actually I was born in North Carolina.

Kennelly: Where in North Carolina?

Watkins: A small town called Reidsville, North Carolina, which is near

Greensboro. I was there until I was three years old and my parents moved to

Newport News. So I was actually in Newport News from the age of three on. So as

far a birth place it was really North Carolina.

Kennelly: What did your parents do?

Watkins: My father was a laborer in a Newport News shipyard, and that's what

took him to Newport News. He was raised on a farm. He left the farm, moved the

family to Newport News so he could take job at the shipyard as a rigger at the

Newport News shipyard.

Kennelly: And what about your mother?

Watkins: My mother was just a housewife. No general job.

Kennelly: Pardon me?

Watkins: She was just a housewife. No job. Just a housewife. Nowadays you don't

say just a housewife. No, she did not 00:01:00 work.

Kennelly: How many children are in your family?

Watkins: Six kids, I'm the oldest. Neither one of my parents finished high

school, so I guess the opportunity for the oldest child to go to college was a

major thing. So I was the oldest of six; there were four boys and two girls.

Kennelly: Did you have a sense, when growing up, that you were expected to go to college?

Watkins: Later on, as I got into high school. Initially, I didn't know that that

was going to be an option for me. In my younger years, I don't know if I really

thought so much about college, but when I got into high school, it seemed that I

had the aptitude for at least the academics. It was kind of understood that I

would at least take the opportunity to try to go to college.

Kennelly: 00:02:00When you moved to Newport News, did you grow up in an integrated community?

Watkins: (he laughs) Well, growing up in Newport News in the fifties, especially

at that time, there was no such thing as an integrated community. No, we lived

in the projects. Most of the shipyard workers that had the kind of jobs as my

father did, we all kind of lived in what would be called projects. Unit-type

homes with partitions for families. Maybe about six families to a unit. That

kind of thing, you would really call the projects. And then, we eventually got

to the point where, as I entered the eighth grade the projects where we lived

were being torn down, and we were forced to move. When we were forced to move,

we moved into our first, house. We moved into a home that was an actual separate

unit, when I was in the eighth grade.

Kennelly: What was it like living where you lived? Was there a real sense of community?

Watkins: A real sense of community? Of course! I guess the one thing, that you

even hear about 00:03:00now, is we didn't have just one parent. We had a bunch of

parents living in the projects. You couldn't do anything without someone knowing

what you were doing and that you are James Watkins' son, at such and such a

place, especially if you weren't supposed to be there. You were almost raised by

a lot of different people, but I had both of my parents there. That was kind of

good, because some of my friends didn't have both parents there. I know it made

a difference in our upbringing. There were some difficult times, but I don't

know if I thought about it being very difficult. When you in that position, it

seems like everything is fine: food is on the table, and things were happening

that you thought should be happening. I knew we weren't well off because of

where we lived and knowing that there were some people that at least lived in a

house. I always equated the "living in the projects" thing to one type of

environment. Then we had friends that went to school with us that lived in

actually a separate house instead of a 00:04:00 unit.

Kennelly: Did it feel dangerous where you lived? Were there gangs?

Watkins: Were there gangs? I don't think there were any real gangs. If you

understood the Newport News environment in the fifties, what happened was we had

two predominantly black high schools in Newport News. One was Carver, where I

went to high school--George Washington Carver. The other was Huntington high

school. It happened to be a railroad track that separated the two. It was a

dividing line for the city that determined which high school that you went to.

Mostly what happened was if you went to Carver and lived on the Carver side of

the railroad tracks, you tried not to venture over to the Huntington side of the

railroad tracks because there was just this unity and you were not accepted.

There was this big rivalry from athletics to everything else between the two

high schools. There was also this "danger" of the fact that you might get into a

fight if you went on the other side of the railroad track and you didn't have

particular people with you or you weren't supposed to be there at a particular

time. But as far as 00:05:00gangs, I don't really identify with the fact that there were

gangs there. I know that there were individuals, certain guys in the community,

that you don't mess with. They were the fighters, the ones that -- you just

didn't mess with them. That was the only thing that I remember; things like

that. The other thing I would say is our biggest problem about being there was

not during the school year. You know, you went to school everyday, you got home.

At least in my family the rule was at dark, you came in. My parents were real

strict about that. Problems came in the summer time, when school was out.. Where

I was from in North Carolina, my grandparents still lived there. They still

farmed. Every summer, as soon as school closed, my brother, who is two years

younger than me, and I were farmed off to North Carolina, and we spent the

summers on the farm in North Carolina where I was born. I think that had a big 00:06:00thing to do with me not getting into some trouble that I knew my friends would

get in because they had idle summers where there wasn't a lot of jobs for young

black youth. So your summers were really just milling around, playing around,

doing things that mostly led to trouble. But we never did that, until I was in

tenth grade. Every summer from when I was four years old, literally four years

old, until I was in the tenth grade, every summer we would spend on my paternal

grandfather's farm. They were tobacco farmers, and we basically worked with them

in the summertime until it was ready for school to start. School always started

after Labor Day. You knew after Labor Day, it was time to go back and start

school again. We went back and did the routine and it happened every year like

clockwork. Then when I was in tenth grade, the only difference was I could get a

job because I was old enough. Then I was able to get a little summer job in

Newport News. Up until my tenth grade year, I thought I wanted to be a farmer. I

mean, I loved those summers on the farm. I thought I wanted to be like my

grandfather, I wanted to be a farmer, just like him-- raise tobacco, do all that

stuff like that. But there was something about turning sixteen that makes 00:07:00 you

realize that farming was hard work and that it was not fun anymore and maybe

there was something better to do. By then, I'd kind of developed and aptitude

for the fact that I was a fairly good student. 00:08:00I was then looking toward

something that required a college education. Even if it was in agriculture. At

one time, when I did realize that maybe I would go to college, I would go into

agriculture so college could develop me as the farmer that I thought I wanted to be.

Kennelly: What would you do on the farm?

Watkins: Once again, my grandfather was a tobacco farmer, who had a small number

of acres who did things the old-fashioned way. Other people had tractors, but he

basically had mules. I felt like this could have been taken to another level if

you were looking to do something like this. So I knew with a college education

that I certainly could come back, do it better than my grandfather had done it.

One thing I did know was I didn't want to be the type of laborer as my father

was. He worked hard, and everyday when he came home, he was smelly,-it was like

gosh dang I don't want to do that- his hands were always dirty, and even though

farm work was something 00:09:00similar, it seemed like growing things just seemed a

little better. I never understood why he moved from the farm to the city after I

spent all those summers there. It was always fun for us. Here we were city boys

coming back to the country just for the summer, but it was always fun for us. My

brother and I, we would cry when it was time to go back, and at times, we wished

we had stayed there year round. Maybe things would have been different.

Kennelly: And you just helped with whatever they were doing on the farm?

Watkins: Whatever in regards to the summer work. In the summer time, they were

raising tobacco, that's when there was growth. They were leaving the planting

portion to the pulling tobacco leaving it and hanging it on sticks and curing it

to take it to the market.

Kennelly: And you were stripping it and everything?

Watkins: All of that, every 00:10:00part of it. The younger you were, you did less

tedious things, but as you got older, they let you do more involved things. It's

like you moved up the ladder or chain. I went from a handing the leaves to the

people that were stringing it on a stick to eventually curing it, to driving the

mules back and forth, bringing the tobacco from the field to the barn. Which was

a big thing to do, a big responsibility. Eventually, you had to hang it in the

barn and be responsible for curing it and everything. But it was interesting,

and I thought it was the best thing since Swiss cheese for those years. My

grandfather and I were very close, sometimes closer than my father and me. Even

though I only spent three months year with him, we were rather close because I

enjoyed what he did. He was a very soft-spoken man, and I kind of appreciated

the type of person he was.

Kennelly: What was his name?

Watkins: Granderson Watkins. Actually, my 00:11:00son's middle name is Granderson, named

after my grandfather because I really felt that kind of bond to him. Now, of

course, my father's middle name is Granderson also, so you look at it either

way. But, he was Granderson Watkins. And I named my son in honor of my grandfather.

Kennelly: I just wanted to ask you one question about the two schools and the

railroad tracks. Was there an economic difference between the two schools?

Watkins: Oh no, on the other side of the tracks, there were projects too just

like on our side of the tracks.

Kennelly: It was just rivalry?

Watkins: Just a rivalry of the two schools. It was more of a rivalry of the

schools than your living environment or anything like that. Basically, there

were single family homes and projects on that side of the tracks too. That was

the dividing line that the city used to determine because at that time the black

students didn't go to the white schools. We actually passed a white high school

to get to our school because we were bussed to our school. So you didn't go to

the same school, and it was just kind of understood. Of course, later on, (I

graduated from high school in [19]67) around [19]66 and [19]65, there was a

freedom of choice where you could choose to go to wherever you wanted to go;

supposedly. At that time, there were very few blacks that chose to go to the

predominantly white schools. 00:12:00You could count them on one hand, the number of

students that went to the school that we passed. At that time, we didn't make

that choice as an issue because it was still kind of understood you knew

somewhat what your place was, I guess that is the best way to put it. There were

still certain places that you didn't go in the city of Newport News. There were

actually still a few little "whites only'" signs around certain places. They

might not have been sitting out for you, but you knew where to go and where not

to go.

Kennelly: Where were they?

Watkins: Restaurants and places like that. You knew that you were not expected

to go into this place because you never saw any blacks there. And it was still

the fact that there was freedom of choice, there weren't any white students

choosing to go to any of the black schools either. If there was freedom of

choice, what that meant was, if you were a black student you could choose to go

to one of the predominantly white schools. But none of the white students were

choosing to go to schools like Carver or Huntington, the two black schools.

Kennelly: Did you or your friends consider going to the white high schools?

Watkins: White high schools? No, that wasn't even a 00:13:00choice. When that happened

in [19]65, I was already a sophomore. To change schools after you were a

sophomore was no point. The freedom of choice was really meant for kids- when I

was in school there was no middle schools, when you left the seventh grade you

went to high school. So you could choose to go after your seventh grade year.

It's not like if you were in the tenth grade, you would choose to go to another

of the high schools. There were some families that challenged it and did put

some black students in the schools, but for the most part, the choice was meant

for seventh graders going to the eighth grade about to be in high school. That

was the intent, so I guess you haven't developed friendships or whatever, and

you could still say that you went through a high school starting in eighth grade

for your whole high school career. There were a number of some students that did

transfer over because the freedom of choice was challenged by a number of people

to the point that some parents did elect to put their kids into the Denbigh High

School or the Newport News High School, which was really the thing there, and

Warwick High School. They were the three schools that were majority 00:14:00white at

that time.

Kennelly: Did you have much contact with white people when you were growing up?

Watkins: Not very much at all. They didn't come into our neighborhoods, and we

didn't get an opportunity to go there, other than sometimes there were little

odd jobs that could be done. My father did some odd jobs on the weekends, and he

would take us with him sometimes to do yard work. So we would go into the

neighborhoods and do stuff like that. Plus the neighborhoods were completely

separate. It was like the projects and everything was downtown, and when you

left you had to cross a dividing line, and in this case, it was Mercury

Boulevard. When you went on the other side of Mercury Boulevard you knew it was

going to be predominantly white. Usually, if you were seen in those areas, you

were doing some kind of job. You just didn't go to those areas too often.

Kennelly: You didn't go to shop or go to a movie?

Watkins: The shopping downtown was really kind of central it was like in between

both areas. 00:15:00Like we would be coming from one side of town, the south side, and

going toward where the shopping areas were and the whites would be coming from

the north area back. The movie theatre in this part of town was for whites only.

Kennelly: So those were integrated as far as shopping?

Watkins: They eventually became that way, but there was a black shopping area

with black movie theaters. There was actually an area that was run by black

merchants and Jewish merchants. It was considered the black downtown, and you

didn't see many white people shopping there. It was mostly blacks that shopped

there. The other area was integrated, the main area that had the big stores.

They were integrated. You could go in and buy things. It wasn't a big issue.

Kennelly: Were you as a child conscious of experiencing racism? Were there

things that happened that were hurtful to you in that way?

Watkins: There weren't many things that happened like that because 00:16:00we got up and

went to school, a black school. We passed the white school. That's all we knew

was that we were going pass it. Until I was a senior in high school, we didn't

have any white teachers, so all of our teachers were black. Then you came back

home, did your playing in the evening, and that was it. So there wasn't a lot of

contact. My contact 00:17:00primarily came when my father did these odd jobs. Actually,

I had more contact when I went back to N.C. in the summers with my grandfather

because in a farming community, it was a little different. Even though, you kind

of knew your place, there was interaction that you really didn't have in the

city. There were certain overlaps that really didn't happen in the city. They

went to buy supplies at the same place. My grandfather also sold vegetables in a

little farmer's market on the weekends, and mostly whites would come to those. I

would see them more in that environment than I did in the city in Newport News

there just wasn't that much contact. Even when we had all the athletic teams, we

played in a whole different league. The black league, VIAA (Virginia

Interscholastic Athletic Association), didn't play the white schools. Even

though Carver-Huntington was the big rivalry because we were in Newport News,

Hampton had a black high school, Crestwood was the black high school over in

Chesapeake over on the Norfolk side. Each city had all black high schools. We

played all of those schools, never any of the white schools. So there was no

interaction 00:18:00even on the athletic field with whites. It was really different.

Kennelly: What was that first job that you had?

Watkins: I was a busboy at Vic Zodda's Pancake House on Jefferson Avenue in

Newport News.

Kennelly: Was that a black or white restaurant?

Watkins: It was a white restaurant. All the waitresses were white, and only the

busboys were black. Only thing I remember is that waitresses could get tips and

the busboys couldn't, but they shared the tips with us. It was an all right job.

Of course then after that, I was old enough to work in the shipyard in the

summers after my junior and senior years. That was actually the best job in town

for summer work because it paid better than any other jobs. So I was able to do

that a few summers and a few summers while I was in college too. After that

tenth grade year in high school, I didn't want to go back to the farm that much

to work, just to visit. It started to hit me that farming was hard work and

harder than I wanted to work.

Kennelly: 00:19:00You said you had some white teachers?

Watkins: We had white teachers at the school, but they only taught seventh and

eighth grade. I don't think they wanted to subject the white teachers to juniors

and seniors because there might be more conflict, but there was one white female

that came in that taught eighth grade. She was an eighth-grade homeroom teacher.

That's all I can really remember because after that, when I was a junior at

Tech, I actually came back on spring break. A couple of my teachers that knew I

was good in math would let me be a substitute teacher for them without even

getting my degree. Which was kind of interesting. There were also a couple of

other white teachers there, but I never got a chance to meet them and find out

what they taught. My senior year, there was one white eighth-grade homeroom

teacher, and I think she taught English.

Kennelly: At that time, if you rode the 00:20:00buses, could you sit wherever you wanted?

Watkins: Well of course, the school buses were all black. But the city buses, I

don't ever remember having to go to the back. I don't remember that, but I think

it was that way at that time. I think I was too young. That was the fifties, and

at that time we didn't do too much on the bus. If our parents would go

somewhere, we wouldn't go on the bus. But by the time I was in high school, I

did more riding the bus and by then, they had gone through the business with the

back of the bus, and you could sit anywhere you want to sit. So I'm not quite

that far back, I'm not that old. (He laughs.)

Kennelly: Was anyone in your family politically active?

Watkins: No. Oh no, not at all.

Kennelly: Was church important?

Watkins: Church was very important. We were expected to be there every Sunday.

Mostly from my mother, but not from my father, because he didn't go as much.

That was my mother's emphasis that we go to church. Now, sometimes it didn't

mean church, but Sunday school. But we are going to do something on 00:21:00Sunday. And,

that was always the case when- if you get into this part of it you'll hear me

reference a lot to my grandfather. Another good thing I 00:22:00liked about being on the

farm was that the farming community, at least in the case of my grandfather in

North Carolina, they only went to church once a month. They had a church Sunday,

like third Sunday or fourth Sunday. In my grandfather's case, it was fourth

Sunday, so when we were there, they were expected to do working things-they

worked seven days a week is what it amounted to. On Sundays, they wouldn't do as

much, but they would still do something on that day. I always felt like there

was less pressure to go to church when I was there in the summer because their

church Sunday was fourth Sunday, so that meant at worst we would only have three

Sundays we'd have to go if we only stayed there three months. I mean, if you

really looked at it as being bad to have to go to church. As a kid, sometimes it

was, because you most times wanted to do other things. But my mother was hard on

us, because it was either Sunday school or church. As we got further along, we

got a little involved. There was a boy scout troop in the church, and I got a

little more involved. So actually, it got to be fun. So it wasn't a matter of

making us go because it got to be fun. Surprisingly when I got older, it wasn't

a big deal.

Kennelly: Were you in a boy scout troop?

Watkins: I was a boy scout for a while.

Kennelly: Why did you decide to come to Virginia 00:23:00 Tech?

Watkins: Ahh! Good question. Well, they gave me money. That's the one thing and

partly because of a guidance counselor. It was the late sixties, and there was

this influence or an interest from the white schools in bringing in black

students, and we were aware of it. And the guidance counselor that I had in

particular was always kind of pushing that to the students that were members of

the National Honor Society, that there were these opportunities that weren't

there before. Being from North Carolina, and I mentioned that I was close to

Greensboro, I always had this interest in going back to North Carolina A&T,

which was North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro. It

was close to where my grandfather was, and it was back in North Carolina. And

there happened to be an alumnus of the school that was in Newport News and knew

about me and knew where my parents were from. He was always over my parents' 00:24:00house making sure that I was going to put in an application to A&T. I always

thought that I wanted to go to A&T because it was close to where my grandfather

was. So when my guidance counselor started putting emphasis on the fact that we

should look at opportunities at applying to predominately white schools, I

didn't really give it much thought because I knew that I was trying to go to

A&T. So my application had already gone to A&T, but she said I should consider

some of the other schools, and she mentioned Virginia Tech. I also applied to

Duke, which was also in North Carolina. I applied to Cornell and Valparaiso.

Then I applied to A&T and Howard University. So I applied to six schools. The

deal was then, and actually it's the same way now, that you apply to six schools

that were your primary focus, and you get your SAT scores sent to them. So I

applied to those and was accepted to them all and had 00:25:00scholarships to them all.

Kennelly: Goodness.

Watkins: Well I was the valedictorian of my class. Even though it was an all

black high school, valedictorian still meant something. It was interesting in a

lot of ways that there was that much interest. From an SAT standpoint, I didn't

do well on the SATs. I don't know if it was an interest in having black students

or whatever, each school -- Cornell was a full scholarship, Duke was a full

scholarship, and Tech at the time was full scholarship. Everything was full

scholarship, and then it was a matter of where you wanted to go. Well, I became

a little disinterested in A&T because of my mother. It's interesting, my mother

and father are from the same area in North Carolina. My mother knew that I

wanted to go because of my paternal grandfather and his influence. Now this

grandfather is my father's father. She felt that I would be more distracted, and

she basically told me that straight out. I was kind of surprised because as much

as my mother influenced me I didn't know that she would be that perceptive about

things with regards to me. When she pointed that out, I 00:26:00said maybe that wasn't

the way that I wanted to go based on what she was saying. The funny thing is of

all the colleges I applied to, which is different from today's world, I know--I

never visited one of them. Never been on the campus of anyone of the schools

that I applied.

Kennelly: I was going to ask you that.

Watkins: Now, I know with my kids, you go, you visit and take a look at it. I

never had done that. So when the thing came up then I was really thinking. I

didn't want to go to Cornell despite the fact that they were very interested in

trying to get me there for whatever reason. I mean they had people calling me

all of the time. It's not like I was an athlete or something. They had people to

really call my home. None of the other schools really called. Duke had me go and

visit an alumnus who lived in our community, and he gave me the little spiel

about why I should consider going and things like that.

Kennelly: A white alumnus?

Watkins: A white alumnus, yes. Of course Virginia Tech had no one to come. It

was just--this is the application and this is what we have to offer you and 00:27:00everything. In my mind I had narrowed it down. Valparaiso, I'd never really

heard of, I forget how and why I applied there. It was something that my

guidance counselor told me about the school. When I first left high school, I

was interested in going into engineering. So, because I was in engineering, that

had a little to do with Duke and Tech kind of being important to me. Once again,

never been on either one of the campuses and didn't really say that I

investigated their programs to the point to know that they were top schools in

engineering. Once again, I thought I was leaning towards Duke because it was in

North Carolina. It kind of boiled down to the fact that the scholarship that I

had gotten at Virginia Tech was interestingly enough the Rockefeller Scholarship

that they were giving to the black students at that time. It only cost $900 to

go to Tech, room and board and tuition my first year, and they gave me a $1,000

scholarship. I can do the math on that. They were giving me more money than I

needed to go to school. What is this all about? But it sounded interesting that

they would do that. I don't know if it was that much of a difference with regard

to Duke because they were giving me a little more money 00:28:00too. When I really

realized that I couldn't make the decision, I couldn't make the decision on

where I wanted to go, I flipped a coin. I literally flipped a coin. I mean, if

you want to say that Tech won out, Tech won out. I had gotten to the point that

I felt like I couldn't decide between the two, and I flipped a coin. My parents

don't know this or anything. They just thought that I made the decision that I

was going to go to Virginia Tech when I basically flipped a coin and Tech won

out. My first visit to Tech was when my father packed me up and drove me up

here. That was my first time being on campus, and that was how the decision was

made and how I wound up here.

Kennelly: Can you take yourself back to that time and talk about what your

impressions were when you first came here?

Watkins: It was big. I thought it was big, and I wasn't seeing enough black

faces. That was scary. All I was wondering on my way up was who my roommate was

going to be and how this was going to be. I knew we were going to be paired two

to a room, and 00:29:00that was in all the information that they sent me. I was a little

leery about that because I was coming from an all black high school, an all

black environment, and I was going to a predominantly white college. It was just

a little apprehension about what it would be like then. I remember the drive up

because my best friend was a track athlete who had gotten a full scholarship to

Purdue. It so happened that we had to register at Virginia Tech before he had to

go to Purdue, and he rode up with us. When he came, it was somewhat relaxing,

but all the way up we were talking about, "What is this going to be like? We are

going to have to talk about this? You are going to be at Purdue, and I'm going

to be down here. We're going to have to see what this is all about. "We weren't

sure that we made the right choice because we are driving up thinking that we'd

never been on the campuses, and we didn't know what to expect. But I was more

leery about oh gosh, I'll probably have a white roommate, and then we would have

to deal with some things. What is that going to be like? But then, we are all

going to college and all interested 00:30:00in education. Maybe it won't be so

different. Just a lot of things that I didn't know how they would be. I was

eighteen years old, leaving home for the first time, and really just didn't know

what to expect. Needless to say that when I went into my room and found out that

my roommate was black, it was a big sigh of relief. In some respects, that 00:31:00 was

one hurdle that we are over, now we just are going to take things from there. I

think my biggest apprehension was who my roommate was going to be. Once that was

over, it was just dealing with the other things.

Kennelly: So from your perspective you didn't mind being put with a black

person? That was good.

Watkins: Right, but interestingly enough, we--meaning the black students that

came in--later questioned that. There were seven blacks that were in

O'Shaughnessy on the top floor. We were on the top floor, which is the little

short floor. It was not a long floor, it was the top floor, it doesn't have as

many rooms. All seven of us were on the same floor. They paired us two to a

room. That means we had three rooms, each one had a black roommates, and the odd

guy, who was Larry 00:32:00Beale who you talked to on the phone today, had no roommate.

They had a shortage of rooms and people were looking for rooms but he had no

roommate. But they claimed that we were paired randomly in the rooms, and we

found that interesting that we were paired randomly in rooms and each had a

black roommate all on the same hall. Whether it was the selection of the other

people on the hall had anything to do with it or not, it was actually a fun

experience that first year with the people who lived on that hall. We didn't

have as many people to deal with as some of the other people that lived on the

longer floors with more rooms. It's a lot of things that would go through your

mind, and it goes through my mind now, why that particular room on that

particular floor in that particular dorm was for these seven black students.

There was actually an eighth black male student that came who refused to-and we

didn't realize this. All seven of us had sent in our picture with our

application. He refused to send his in and he wound up in Pritchard Hall as a

freshman with a white roommate. His name Dwight Crewe [19]71 was such that it

might have given you an idea that he was white and he wound up over in a

different hall with a white roommate. As far as 00:33:00random, we saw that as sure he

was random when you didn't have a picture to say well this a black student. But

once again, that's what the administration had told us, that we were randomly

assigned rooms.

Kennelly: Did he stick it out with the white roommate then?

Watkins: Well his roommate moved out. He wound up having a room to himself

because his roommate elected to move out. For maybe about half of the first

quarter, Larry Beale did not have a roommate, but he had a white roommate move

in later. Like I said, there was a shortage of rooms. We knew that all the time

coming in as freshmen. He did eventually get a roommate.

Kennelly: A white roommate?

Watkins: A white person, yes.

Kennelly: So it just wasn't those four rooms on the floor. There were other

rooms too where you were staying?

Watkins: Oh yeah, but our floor in O'Shaughnessy, was like a half a floor.

Whatever floor is the top floor isn't as long as the rest of the building. 00:34:00 All

the other floors right beneath the seventh floor and down were longer and had

more rooms. There were not as many rooms on our floor, so we were put in an

environment where there were fewer whites to deal with was our impression of

what it was. But when we started putting everything together, we all attached

that picture to that application like you were supposed to, and Dwight Crewe,

who wound up being over in Pritchard Hall didn't. Well he said, "I didn't send

any picture," and he didn't, and he wound up with a white roommate. But we were

told that we were randomly given rooms. I don't know if we looked at that as

being negative because from my standpoint it was a sigh of relief. That was one

thing that I didn't have to deal with that I thought I was going to have to deal

with. There were other things that I knew I was going to have to deal with

coming to Virginia Tech regarding the black/white relationship, but that was one

thing that I didn't have to worry about it after the 00:35:00 fact.

Kennelly: Did you stay with black roommates for all your time?

Watkins: We were on the quarter system then. The first quarter of our second

year we stayed in Lee Hall. After the first quarter you could actually choose

which dorm you were going to be in the next year so we elected to move into Lee

Hall, and you could actually choose your roommate too. My roommate my sophomore

year was a freshman named Robert Miller (class of 1972) from Lynchburg. So I

took Lee Hall, and we stayed there for only a quarter. Then, my roommate and I

decided to move off 00:36:00campus. So I lived off campus from the second quarter of my

sophomore year on.

Kennelly: Did you have any problems renting a place in town?

Watkins: No, not a problem at all. I thought it was going to present a problem,

because we moved out to what used to be Blacksburg Trailer Park, which doesn't

exist anymore. It used to be out on Jackson Street I think by the graveyard. We

rented a trailer. Evidently, there were a number of students that lived out

there and didn't seem to be any problem. We moved out there one quarter, and the

next quarter another black pair moved out there around the corner from us. So

really there was no problem with that.

Kennelly: When you moved to Lee, did the other young men that were kind of on

the block with you in O'Shaughnessy move over to Lee too?

Watkins: No, we moved to different places. They did 00:37:00choose roommates, but we all

decided where we wanted to go.

Kennelly: And how was it eating in the cafeteria?

Watkins: After a period of time, it was understood that most of the blacks sat

together. It wasn't by choice. We would literally sit at a table, and no one

else--not too many whites--would sit with us. It was just that kind of thing. I

don't know if I can say that I can recall anytime sitting down at a table and

having someone turn around and get up that I would even be conscious of. Most of

the time when we went in to eat, or even if I went in by myself to eat, I sat

down somewhere--I just sat where I wanted to sit. Whether someone sat there or

not, I noticed it or didn't notice it as being a big issue. After a while, it

didn't become a big issue to me. I think early on, there were certain things

that I noticed, but -- I don't say that I was that conscious of having a problem

with the cafeteria. 00:38:00Not that big of a deal, anyway.

Kennelly: What were the certain things that you noticed?

Watkins: Well, like I said, if we were at a table, I would know that probably no

one else will join us at the table. You could come in, and you would notice the

people. It is kind of bad when you can say that you think people are looking at

you, but I think I can really say that people were looking at you. I mean, there

weren't many of us to look at then. Most of my classes throughout my whole

career, I was the only black in the class. It wasn't unusual. With the numbers

we had and the size of the school, that certainly could not have been considered

unusual at that time. You did kind of feel like you were always noticed. When

you were the only black in the class, you certainly couldn't miss it too many

times, because it's going to be the easiest person to notice when they're not

there. That kind of stuff, that wasn't too big of a deal either because I did

not miss that many classes. As far as the cafeteria 00:39:00itself, I can't say that

there were any cafeteria episodes where I felt there was blatant animosity taken

out upon me because I was black. At least not in the cafeteria. There were

things that happened around campus. I would almost say that there was not a

month that went by that maybe I heard someone yell the "n" word out of a window,

where you really couldn't tell where it came from. As far as someone walking in

my face and doing something, that never happened. But there were enough times

that someone would yell it out of a window when you walk through the quad or

something like that, whether you were single or with someone else. That would

happen. During that period of time too, our biggest issue and the biggest

surprise that I had from a cultural standpoint and a shock standpoint, when we

came here the Confederate flag hung blatantly in the 00:40:00coliseum, Cassell Coliseum,

and "Dixie" was played so much. You just knew that was the fight song, and it

really was the fight song. Everyone stood up and cheered when that was played,

and the flag was waved. That to me was the biggest affront to my blackness than

anything else. For one, it was happening with the students that were here, and

actively the school was starting to--from my sophomore year on--recruit black

athletes. We knew that when they came, because they would talk to us about it,

that they were aware of that, and it was something that definitely would

influence their decision where they wanted to go because it influenced us. The

seven of us on O'Shaughnessy Hall at the end of our freshman year were going to

transfer. We had all made up our minds that we were going to transfer. From one

through seven, everyone was going to transfer. The big deal of it was the

Confederate flag and playing "Dixie" and the fact that there weren't many black

women here at that time. It was more of a shock than we thought it was going to

be. From the first week or two of being here and seeing it wasn't so much that

we 00:41:00felt like we were really accepted here, but we were here, and so what? It

was probably rightly so, that no one needed to make a big attention to the fact

that we were here, but that Confederate flag and the playing of "Dixie" was kind

of hard to swallow at times. Especially to watch the cheering, and the

screaming, and the yelling, and everything. As a matter of fact--we were talking

about this on the way up--a big change from the time we were here was the actual

elimination of the Confederate flag and the playing of "Dixie." It happened in

the 1970 and 1972 timeframe, and I think it made a difference in a lot of

things. As I was saying, we were all planning to transfer after that first year,

but also after that first year in 1968 was when we started Groove Phi Groove.

Now starting Groove Phi Groove, I 00:42:00often think back about his even when I was in

dental school about something that makes a difference as to whether you feel

like you made a decision on something, or is there something that you can really

put up with to get to your ultimate goal of getting your degree. Having some

organization that you can identify with or a group that you can identify with

outside of all of the organizations on campus that you never felt like you could

be a part of because there was never any interest. At least on my part, I was

never asked to join anything, and maybe it was my own fault that I didn't go out

and seek something. When we came to campus, there were no black athletes, that

is no basketball players, and no football players. Jerry Gaines came in with me.

He was the first true athlete, and he was in track. We rarely saw him. We had

been told that was the coaches' 00:43:00choice. They didn't want black athletes, and

they didn't want them here. If you didn't want black athletes, at the time when

there were a lot of super star black athletes coming around in other schools

that were visible, they certainly didn't want us here either. There was a

Confederate flag hanging in the Coliseum, and "Dixie" was played every time you

turned around so maybe it was true. But you needed something to identify with,

and maybe white students were identifying with the Confederate flag and "Dixie,"

but when we started Groove Phi Groove, we found something to identify with too.

It was an organization where we developed a bond. It happened at the end of my

freshman year which was kind of awkward in some sense because we developed an

organization thinking that we have something that we can identify with, we can

have some parties, and find some girls to come from 00:44:00somewhere. Then we found out

that there were some black women at Radford, and that was like, "Ooh, yeah!" At

least we could double the number if we go over to Radford and bring some people

over. So we had an organization that at first went out and rented an apartment

as an organization to have little parties for the black students. We had

somewhere where we could just congregate together and do some things off campus.

From that, we developed some relationships where we were looking at how we could

make that organization better. Each year, when they would bring in more black

students, we were able to convince them, which probably wasn't difficult because

we were the only black organization on campus. At least from the male

standpoint, most of the guys got interested, and we started developing. It

developed into something that was a comradery and that we knew there was an

organization that promoted something that we were interested in doing. Even if

it was just a matter of sitting around talking about a 00:45:00class or something to do

on the weekend. To me, it was a focal point for blacks in general on campus.

Even though at one time, we would go other places and every time someone says

that they met someone from Tech, they would say that they were a Groove. Well

there wasn't any other choice. If there were a member of an organization, it

probably would be that they were a Groove. There were no Q's, or no Alphas, or

no Kappas, or anything like that. That hadn't happened yet. But, by the end of

that year, when we all realized that we were not going to punch out, because at

one time we were so worried 00:46:00about being in a predominantly white environment

that we might flunk out. When we all realized that we did not flunk out, we

decided to come back. Part of coming back was going to be developing one was

working on our degrees. We felt like we could do that, and we weren't going to

be quitters. The positive thing about it was nobody wanted to quit. No one

really wanted to quit. They were just dissatisfied by some of the things that

they found here. Now that we had Groove, we could have a little something that

we felt like was our own, that we could identify with, and that made Tech

important to us. We just built on that. Going to class and working toward your

degree became a little easier I would say.

Kennelly: Did you feel like you were a pioneer with Groove?

Watkins: We had Stan Harris here. We had 00:47:00Byron Rimm. I came in 1967. The

beginning of my freshman year, when I got here there were some black faces here.

Of course, from a male perspective you kind of look for the female faces first.

There weren't many of those. That was the thing. I know Chickie Harper and the

others that were a year ahead of me, but there weren't many of them. That was

kind of a hard part. We were still in the South in the sixties, so it wasn't

like you felt white women were an option to date. You didn't really think about

that so much. As far as being a pioneer, I didn't really look at it like that

because Stan Harris was here, Bill Shelton was here, Byron Rimm was here. There

were some people in the Corps that we didn't see as much of because of the

things they had to do from the Corps perspective. We didn't see some of those

guys too often. We actually had some of those cadets like Byron Rimm, Steve

Pyles, Charles Beane, Eli Blackwell, Tom Dillard, Keith Pullens and Charles

Cartwright that were in Groove Phi Groove too. They were 00:48:00able to get away enough

to be part of the organization. But they were here, and we felt like they were

the pioneers, because they were here when there were even fewer blacks. I think

when we came we almost doubled the population, when our class came. Which brings

up something else I know that that's also the year that on the Internet page you

said there were forty-three blacks. I don't know about forty-three blacks. I

don't know if I could count forty-three. We keep trying to figure out where that

forty-three came from. It may have been that. If there were forty-three there

were probably some I don't know We really tried to figure out where the

forty-three was for the 1967-1968 year. I thought there were eight or nine guys

that came in with my year, maybe 10 because we did realize there was another one

in that class that was in the Corps, and three women I believe. That was about

it. According to the class ahead of us there weren't many more. We were thinking

it was more like 00:49:0030 at the most. Then again, it might have been forty-three.

When it said forty-three, I thought maybe they weren't counting black students.

Because one time, as I said earlier, we were really told the administration

weren't keeping track of who the blacks students were. We always wondered about

that because of the way we were paired up in the rooms. We said maybe we'll just

attribute that to the fact that maybe they really weren't counting who were

black students here at that time. But forty-three, we felt like forty-three was

pushing it between [19]67 and [19]68. Like I said, that was my freshman year,

and most of the guys we really got a chance to see. I know there weren't that

many women that came in that year. But the next year there were quite a few. I

think there were about twenty or thirty blacks that came here, but only three

black women that came in the next year, the [19]68 year. At that time, the

number came up that there were 100 blacks on campus, but there couldn't have

been 100 blacks on campus because only twenty-three or twenty-four came in. Even

if there were 00:50:00forty-three, that didn't even come up to 100. But as far as being

a pioneer, I guess pioneers would be like Essex Finney that came in early before

that. We were definitely early. We figured as far as graduates, we had to be in

the first twenty or twenty-five because there couldn't have been more that

graduated then. I guess if you were in the first twenty to twenty-five graduates

then maybe that is kind of being a pioneer, as far as being a black graduate.

Kennelly: I noticed that just looking at the pictures from the Groove, there

seems such a difference looking at the first image and then looking at the next

couple of images.

Watkins: They changed in appearance and everything.

Kennelly: The hair and everything.

Watkins: That was the Afro age back then. Of course, mine was supposed to be the

biggest at that 00:51:00time as anyone's. It was interesting. I noticed, and I always

was curious about when this first picture was put in here because it mentioned

something about being an organization of black and white students. Tom Dillard

and Steve Pyles actually are rather light complexioned, but there was never a

white member of Groove Phi Groove at Tech.

Kennelly: This is straight from the yearbook.

Watkins: I know that statement is straight from the yearbook. That was the first

year it was put in there. Of course, we had nothing to do with what was actually

written in there. That last line was not part of what we gave them to put in the

Bugle. Tom Dillard, who was in the Corps, people thought he was the first black

in the Highty Tighties, and no one really addressed that because of his

complexion. It may have appeared that he was white. I guess to somebody it might

appear that way. That last line was not the line given to them in the Bugle to

put in there. I think that was a line they put in there maybe to appease someone

else but that wasn't what was 00:52:00given to them to put in there. There never was a

white in Groove Phi Groove, but you were right, there were some changes.

Kennelly: I don't know if that was the times generally, or if it was peoples'

sense of themselves. From this kind of image to that, it just feels a lot different.

Watkins: When we started the organization. here, most of us were from the same

environment with, not a lot of money when we came to school. We went out to

Drapers Meadows where we (Groove Phi Groove) had that apartment the first time

and one of the guys stayed in it, but basically we used it for parties and stuff

like that. Then we actually went over there to Jackson Street, and someone

rented a house to us, so the next year we actually had a fraternity house. One

of the members lived there, but we would congregate there and, the guys would 00:53:00 go

over there in the middle of the day and night. Typical fraternity type of thing.

You would go over in the middle of the day, and maybe on the weekend you would

have some affair there. When we were in school, Muhammad Ali came to the school

to speak. Whenever they would have black speakers come, it was always a big

thing with the white fraternities to try to get them to come to their place

afterward and say something. Well, Muhammad Ali came to our house after he came

to speak. Everyone else was trying to get him to come to their fraternity house.

Muhammad Ali came to our fraternity house with this few black guys-- he changed

his flight home because he was supposed to have left out at midnight that night.

He changed his flight, stayed, and spoke to us until three in the morning, just

sitting around talking to these little black students at a little school out in

the sticks that I know he probably never heard of until he came there. We were

impressed by that. Godfrey Cambridge came to the school to give a program. He

came to our house. Dick Gregory came to the school, gave a program, came to our house.

Kennelly: Actually there's a picture of Myron Rimm (class of 1972)[with Dick Gregory]--

Watkins: Yes, that's Myron and the picture of the Human Relations Council.

Obviously, the 00:54:00organization Groove Phi Groove, that focal point helped a lot of

people identify with the fact that they did belong here. They could make it

here, and they made it through. A number of people made it through. A number of

the people in this picture you'll see tomorrow.

Kennelly: I wanted to ask more about that "Dixie," Confederate flag question. I

was looking at some Student Government minutes today, and I see there was a

proposal in 1970 to stop having "Dixie." I know there were students involved in

the Human Relations Council who were active in that. I wondered if you were at

all active in any of that?

Watkins: You have to understand, and I think I mentioned this one time when I

sent you an email the Human Relations 00:55:00Council was a predominantly white

organization when we came to campus. Then a few of the black students started

attending. As the black students started to attend, fewer white students started

to come until eventually the Human Relations Council became all black, but that

still was after Groove Phi Groove. That's why I said Groove Phi Groove was

really the first black organization on campus. Human Relations Council was an

organization that already existed at Tech and was University recognized, and

that was always a big issue--if you were University recognized. As we joined the

Human Relations Council, fewer whites started coming. This was also a time when

"hippies" were around, if you remember the term hippies as people who where were

a little bit more liberal thinking. A number of the so-called hippies stayed

active with the organization. By the time Myron was a senior, it was all black.

I think even before she was a senior it became an all-black organization. It was

somewhat of an advantage, if you want to look at it as an advantage. The black

students joined for an opportunity to be able to participate in something that

was campus recognized and feel like this was an organization that should be

pushing issues like the Confederate flag or the playing of "Dixie" and stuff

like that. Like I said it got to the point that 00:56:00then, when it became all black,

then it became another issue of "here are the blacks trying to make their

thoughts ours." If it had indeed stayed as it should have been from the start as

a true Human Relations Council where there was a mixture of all races, then it

might have seemed like there was an interest in trying to be fair for the

diversity that was already developing on campus. But it didn't wind up being

that way. It was sort of like what I said to you about the cafeteria table. If

you did happen to sit down at the table with a number of black students, the

white students got up to leave, and I know that did happen. Even if there are

instances I don't remember specifically, I know it did happen because I've been

told it happened often enough. This is the same thing that happened with the

Human Relations Council. When the black students started to join, the white

students didn't. It became a black organization purely by default.

Kennelly: 00:57:00Were there any community people involved in Human Relations Council or

any professors?

Watkins: There was a professor as an advisor if I remember correctly do you

remember who that was, didn't Nagan become an advisor when it was all black?

There was a professor here from South Africa [Nagan]--the Poly Sci

department--that later on became involved with it after it became all black,

probably because he was an activist as a professor anyway. I think he had some

views on apartheid and stuff like that were all well known. He became active in

it, but I don't remember in the beginning who the faculty advisor was when it

first started up. As a campus recognized organization there was a faculty advisor.

Kennelly: But there weren't community people?

Watkins: From Blacksburg you mean?

Kennelly: Yes

Watkins: No, this was a student organization.

Kennelly: Marguerite Harper said when she was involved in that, one of the

things they did was they had this test 00:58:00date where a white young man came to pick

her up for a date--

Watkins: Well I didn't know about that until I read about that in her interview

did you know about that?.

Kennelly: Were you involved in anything like that, like testing interracial

dating or anything like that as far as human relations go?

Watkins: No, I don't think that was even the purpose of getting involved with

it. Like you said, it was 1970, and that time frame where the Confederate flag

and "Dixie" became an issue, and the protests were coming from a small minority

of students on campus. Even though there may have been a number of white

students that might have supported us in that particular issue, I don't know

that it was that well known. It was written up in the newspaper, certain views

about certain things: the Confederate flag and "Dixie." I have to say the

majority of blacks were offended by it on campus. Especially when we 00:59:00did get a

chance to talk to some of the athletes they were trying to recruit and knowing

that they had the advantage of coming to visit and then letting them see this. I

mean, give me a break, don't you realize that someone must have a problem with

this if they at least want to mention it as an issue to them? Another thing I'll

bring up to about the Confederate flag--it was interesting enough, it was the

1971 year, and I graduated in [19]71. My class ring, which I elected to

purchase, had a Confederate flag on it, but after that they made it elective so

you could choose. It had become such a hot issue that they decided they would

have two ring choices. You could choose one with the Confederate flag or without

the Confederate flag. I don't know that the Confederate flag is even a part of

it at all now. But my class ring has a Confederate flag on it only because I

wanted to have a class ring from Virginia Tech. I felt negative about the

Confederate 01:00:00flag. I wish I had had the option. I would have gotten it off. But I

felt more about the fact that I wanted a class ring from the school that I

graduated. Even though I didn't wear the class ring much that had more to do

with me going on into dentistry. I didn't wear any rings when I started putting

my hands in people's mouths all the time. It was more not wearing it from that

standpoint than not wearing it because of any feelings I had about graduating

from the school. When I came to Tech the first year, as I said earlier, I felt

like after the first year I wanted to leave and I didn't want to stay here. It

was the worst place I'd ever been; I'd made a bad choice. In [19]71 when I

graduated, tears came to my eyes, because I had developed those comraderies

between Groove Phi Groove, people that had come here after me, the

underclassman, that I was really unhappy about leaving these mountains of

Blacksburg. I mean I really felt sad. Even though I knew I was heading on to

dental school, and I was 01:01:00going somewhere else, and there was another direction I

was heading in, but I was sad about leaving here. From hating this place to

really somewhat finding out I kind of loved it in a lot of different ways. It

had a lot to do with the people. From my perspective, it had a lot to do with

Groove Phi Groove. Of course I was very active in Groove Phi Groove, and I'm

sure you know I was one of the founding members, one of the charter members. The

six of us that were charter members had to go to Virginia State College to

pledge. We had to leave campus because you had to be pledged by another

organization. So the six of us actually went to Virginia State University in

Petersburg, and we had to go through our pledging period there and then we

formed our chapter here, the Gobbler chapter. Everyone else came after us. So I

did have maybe a little more of an attachment than some of the others, but part

of being a member of it was developing that comradery and a feeling of

belonging. It really influenced a lot 01:02:00of my feeling comfortable here on campus.

One time I used to think that living off campus made a difference for me too. I

didn't have to interact a lot. I could kind of go away from it. But that didn't

mean anything because there weren't many blacks living in Blacksburg back then

either. The black/white interaction didn't become such a big issue to me because

in class you were in class. Everyone was there for a purpose. It was just the

walking around campus and the going to the events on campus that you felt like

there was a true interaction where maybe there was some friction you could feel

sometimes. Like I said, when you would sit on a row. Because when we were in

Groove Phi Groove, we all had these jackets with G Phi G's on it, and maybe a

lot of people were wondering who are these guys? Is this some gang developing on

campus? 01:03:00But it was no different than any other frat walking around with their

frat jackets. We didn't look at it as being any different. I think after a while

no one else did. From an intramural standpoint, we had our own intramural team,

all black. We played all the intramural sports, any sport that they had. We had

an all black Groove Phi Groove team. Every year from when I was a sophomore on

we participated. The thing with Larry Beale being on the basketball team, we had

some very good athletes. Everyone was on academic scholarships. There were no

black athletes, so all of us were academics. Surprisingly, there were a lot of

good athletes in those very academic blacks they brought on campus. I would

venture to guess that a number of them could have played on some of the teams if

there was a feeling that you could belong. But we would sit back and we would

talk about the Confederate flag and about the "Dixie." We would talk to the

athletes that they would recruit and have them come in and see what their

feelings were about it. Some of them I know expressed their feelings to some of

the 01:04:00coaches at some point in time. I think that had a little bit to do with it

too. I think the coaches began to realize that something was going to have to

happen. I don't think the big part of having to change came so much from the

small contingent of blacks on campus, because we were a small percentage here. I

think it had to be the realization by someone, whether it be T. Marshall Hahn

and the rest of the administration, that something was going to have to change

with that, or they were going to have problems with recruitment of these

superstar athletes some of the other schools were getting. They weren't having

too much problem with getting the academic student that was interested in coming

here in engineering or something like that. The school was well known for things

like that. But if they wanted to get some of these athletes, they were going to

have to make those changes along those lines. And maybe we just happened to be

there at the right time to ruffle the feathers enough to make somebody realize

they had to change. When they decided to take the Confederate flag 01:05:00down, every

student there, almost every white student came in with their own little

Confederate flag at the basketball game. I'll never forget it. Here we were

happy that the flag was going out of the Coliseum, but every student had a

little flag. Their protest was "you can take our flag down, and we're going to

bring our own flag." I think they did it toward the end of the season, where it

was toward the last game or the next to last game. So it didn't happen long. The

next year we came back it wasn't there, and there were new students, and it 01:06:00 had

kind of fizzled down. It was a little less thing about it. Of course then came

the whole thing about having it on your class ring. All of that was in the

[19]70-[19]71 time frame. Like I said, there was enough of a protest in

[19]70-[19]71 that it didn't get done for our class. For the next class they did

have the option to get in on or off, and that was great. One time there was this

rumor that we were bringing black students from a predominantly black college to

come here to actually physically take the Confederate flag down. It was printed

in the school newspaper that that was happening. None of us had ever heard of

such a thing. I mean that was a ridiculous type of thing. They sent the football

team to sit under the flag to protect the Confederate flag I guess at that

particular game. 01:07:00One time we were wondering if it was to protect the Confederate

flag or to protect those few black students that were there that were supposedly

going to tear it down. That was never the case. I don't think anyone thought

about climbing up there to tear down the Confederate flag. When "Dixie" would

get played, everyone would stand up and cheer, and we would always sit, and we

would never stand. There were little incidents when someone would yell, "You go

to school here. Why don't you stand up?" It was like something wasn't clicking

with this person to realize why would we stand up to the playing of "Dixie."

There have been some things like that. In my particular case, I was at a

football game--I'll never forget it because Virginia Tech was playing Kansas

State. Kansas State was ranked in the country. They had two very good black

athletes. One ran the kickoff back for a 100-yard touchdown against Virginia

Tech. We didn't see many black 01:08:00athletes in the group that we had, and we were

standing up cheering. A student came back and shook his fist in my face. I'll

never forget it, his big Tech ring in my face shaking his fist at me telling me

I shouldn't be cheering for the other team like that and I shouldn't go to

Virginia Tech if I was going to cheer for the other team. But in a way it wasn't

so much cheering for the other team, it was cheering for this athlete that had

really made a great play. I guess that's the closest I ever came to fighting

someone. It was obvious he was intoxicated because his friends were grabbing

him, pulling him back more so than anyone holding me back. He was very

intoxicated as a matter of fact. That was the only real incident I had where

somebody got on an issue about something getting physical with me about being at

an athletic event. It wasn't so much about the flag or anything like that, it

was just the fact that I was cheering for an athlete on the other 01:09:00 team.

Kennelly: When you did those intramurals it was an all black team playing an all

white team. Do you think that was a good positive interaction for people?

Watkins: I think it was. We always had our little cheering squad because we had

some of the black females there cheering for us, and of course here we were an

all black team, and we always were playing all white teams. We had some good

athletes, and we were always winning most of our games. The thing that got to us

was the first year we formed a team, we were winning too much because the years

after that, the teams that were close to beating us merged and made another

team. They were very good players. This was particularly true in basketball. I 01:10:00remember basketball more because I know that happened in basketball. We were

always in the playoffs, and we would always get pretty high in the playoffs.

Then maybe a team from D. C. --D. C. always had some great athletes of every

race. There was this team from D. C. I think they were called the D. C. Club.

They had some real good players. I guess that on the athletic field maybe things

are always different. In athletics there's always a chance to elbow somebody or

fight somebody in any part of the game. I don't ever remember anything like that

happening in athletics. One of the organizations, for example, one of the Greek

frats would have a team, or one of the other organizations that's a recognized

organization of the school would have a team. Groove Phi Groove could have a 01:11:00team because we were one of the non-recognized organizations. I forget what the

title was. We were able to have a team that way. One time I thought they changed

the rule, and we had to play under the banner of the Human Relations Council.

Maybe that was the first year, we had to play under the banner of the Human

Relations Council. You had to be University recognized. That happened at first,

but after that it changed. As far as the intramurals, that was some of the fun

times. You would think there would be more instances because there were chances

to throw elbow or get in those little licks that you might have had some

personal grievance about. I can't say that I ever think that happened. Even on

the football field, flag football was an intramural thing. We had a flag

football team, went to the playoffs, and did real well in the playoffs. There

were never any instances that I would think would be physical. What could be

more 01:12:00physical than football? Even flag football because you still block and hit

people. Never a problem with that. With all our intramural teams, we always had

an all black team. At some point, maybe a lot of the white students thought that

maybe everybody belonged to Groove Phi Groove because there was still the issue

of there were a lot of these black jackets with G Phi G on them walking around

campus. Since there weren't many of us anyway, you might see most of the black

guys wearing one. At one point in time one pledge line we had once had eighteen

guys in it. We would go to some of the black schools like Virginia State,

Howard, or Hampton University. They wouldn't have eighteen people in line

pledging a fraternity. Here we are a predominantly white school, and we had

eighteen guys. Dirty Dozen and a half, that's what they called themselves who

were pledging the fraternity. We were the only game in town, but we did have one

of the biggest 01:13:00lines around, more that any other schools that were pledging

Groove Phi Groove. Grove Phi Groove at that time existed in most the minority

colleges. It actually still exists. It's not on Tech's campus now, but it does

still exist at most of the historically black universities.

Kennelly: Did you go to any of the school dances?

Watkins: I went to Ring Dance. Getting my class ring from Tech was a big thing

for me, so I did go to Ring Dance. I think that was the only thing I went to. I

went to Ring Dance.

Kennelly: Was it comfortable?

Watkins: Actually it was comfortable. My date is sitting right here. I have to

say because the issue comes up often enough when we get together in a crowd, but

Myron and I dated each other in 01:14:00college. We were comfortable at the ring dance.

The year I was there, Larry Beale was there; Steve Fox who will be here tomorrow

also went to this ring dance. So we had at least 3 couples there. It wasn't like

we were solo. There were a number of black couples there. I think that was the

only thing I went to as far as a dance here and there. They had other things at

Burruss Hall that we would attend. I don't know that we went to those as much as

far as the German Club, I don't remember that that must have been after I left.

Kennelly: Did you make any white friends?

Watkins: A couple of men friends. It's 01:15:00funny because that really was my freshman

year. Like I said they must have matched us up on that hall. A number of the

people we had on that hall were from the D. C. area, and whether feeling that

comfortable bringing people from the D. C. area-- I went to that same floor that

had most of the black male students. Maybe there was some reasoning for that.

There were a couple that were on that floor that were from my freshman year, and

like I said, I only lived in the dorm one quarter of my sophomore year, but all

of my freshman year. But I remember them more than any of the other people I met

in any of the other years. Because quite frankly, the rest of my time at Tech

revolved around the members of Groove Phi Groove, going to school, back and

forth from class, some of the relationships we developed with people at Radford.

Roanoke College when we realized they had black students, and they would come

over. All of the students coming from Radford and Roanoke College were coming to

Groove Phi Groove events. We were meeting them through those things. We would

have dances, Groove Phi Groove dances, at least once a month that were 01:16:00 attended

by other people, and that's where our contacts were. We had kind of developed

that little community within a community. It helped us maybe survive some of the

other things going on. It wasn't like people were asking us to be members of the

German Club or some of the other organizations. Those weren't memberships that

were made; we weren't asked to join those. Even though I know there were one or

two that would join here or there, but we weren't participating at levels where

we were comfortable enough to attend at that time. Probably because we weren't

asked, if we had been some of us might have been leery about joining anyway.

There was still that Confederate flag and "Dixie" thing. It seemed like

everything revolved around that.

Kennelly: You were 01:17:00a member of the Black Student Commission of the Student Government--

Watkins: Well that was kind of small I don't know if we even had more than one

or two meetings, and it was sort of like trying to deal with the issue of the

Confederate flag and "Dixie." It was really having our input and feelings about

it--that's all that it really was. I think at that time--I forget if we

had met with Dean Dean about this--it was sort of an organization that was put

together to get our input on the Confederate flag and "Dixie."

Kennelly: Through this organization did you really express your feelings about

the Confederate flag to the 01:18:00administration, or was it more like a subtle thing?

Watkins: It was more a subtle thing. From our aspect of Groove Phi Groove

actually presenting an issue, no we didn't. But if you asked any of the members,

which I don't know that many were asked, then they would have given you their

opinion. It wasn't like a lot of us were getting asked things like this.

Interesting enough, they might ask Jerry Gaines because Jerry Gaines was a

visible athlete, and he might get asked. He probably got asked things more than

we got asked things. He was a track star; he was the only black athlete that was

here then. Of course, Jerry would have a different perspective. Most of us came

from predominantly black high schools. Jerry was different in the aspect that he

at the time he was recruited to Tech had actually transferred to predominately

white high school. You know how I was telling you about the freedom of choice.

He had actually been transferred from an all black high school to a

predominantly white high school so he had had two years of experience of being

around whites more than 01:19:00most of us when we came here. There would have been a

different perspective from Jerry than from most of us. For example, I listened

to Chickie's audio on the Internet, and she had mentioned "Dixie" and the

Confederate flag, and said about her mother calling and asking about them. As I

said, I never visited the campus, and I think if I had visited and seen that, I

probably wouldn't have come. It would have been an easy choice and, I wouldn't

have had to flip that coin. I would have been at Duke University and not worried

about the issue at all. It did mean something to us. It didn't help to every now

and then have somebody yell "nigger" out of a window or something like that.

Like I said, no one ever got in my face and said it, it was always something

from a window where you never knew where it came from. I know there have been

some other instances with some other guys where things might have gone a little 01:20:00further or gotten physical from the standpoint of more yelling at each other. I

don't know that I ever really felt intimidated by being here or anything like

that. Once again, you went to class, and I don't think there was ever anything

in class that was intimidating other than the class itself, trying to get your

lessons, as anything else would have been. Still it was getting your college

education, and I think that was what everybody was about here, but you still

wanted to feel like you had a little life afterwards and you wanted to feel

comfortable with your surroundings. "Dixie" and the Confederate flag didn't help

that. Yet like I said, I purchased my Tech ring, and I knew the Confederate flag

was going to be on it, but I also knew at the time too that the change was

coming, and I could see it coming. I think the better came from it too.

Kennelly: Were any 01:21:00faculty sort of a mentor to you?

Watkins: I could not tell you the name of any faculty individual at all. I

remember T. Marshall Hahn was the president, and I had a faculty advisor. I came

in as an engineer and had one advisor. I changed from engineering after my

second quarter here and went into general science because I really wasn't sure

what I wanted to do, until eventually I decided I was going to go to dental

school and wound up majoring in biology. I went through some advisors through

the course of time. I know I don't remember any of them, and that may be my own

fault because basically they just helped me develop what my curriculum so that I

could get my degree. And everything necessary that I needed to go to dental

school. That was all it was all about. Once I knew what subject path I needed to

have, it was a matter of getting that subject and graduating. That was it. I

didn't really identify with any faculty there. From a class standpoint, there

was no one there 01:22:00that really stands out as doing anything special. I just felt

like I went to class, got my lessons, got whatever grade I got, and moved on.

There was no one that I can say was special. That's probably the best way to say

it. I only remember [Winston Percival] Nagan as the professor from South Africa

because I did take his class because the word had just gotten around about his

issue on apartheid. This was also the time when the anti-apartheid stuff was

really being pushed as well as a lot of the civil rights things. Just to listen

to him speak about some things that happened in South Africa was eye opening. I

mean we thought we had it bad, then we listened to some of the things going on

in South Africa, and that was just an interesting perspective. I remember him,

even though from my perspective I 01:23:00only really needed one subject from him so I

just took that subject. I knew who he was and would see him on campus. He

actually even came to our Groove house a couple of times and would interact with

us outside of being in the classroom. There was another professor that was a

graduate professor that did come, one that I would again qualify as the hippie

type, because every time I saw him he had the long hair and the sandals. That

was his routine. I think he was in sociology. I can't remember his name, I'm

hoping that maybe somebody this weekend might remember his name. He actually

came to the Groove house and interacted with us a little bit. Other than that,

that was it. I couldn't call a name of anyone that stood out special. I

basically just went to class and that was it.

Kennelly: Did you feel comfortable in class, you know, 01:24:00joining in?

Watkins: I think I felt comfortable there, but I know that I probably would have

participated more if I was at a campus with probably more minority students.

Like I said, most of the time I was the only black in each class, and somewhere

in the back of my mind sometimes I would think I don't want this question

because maybe it will sound like "oh that black guy, he's going to answer or ask

this question," and somehow I felt a little leery about that. I don't know that

that became so much of an issue for me. Obviously, it got to the point where it

was kind of understood that I was probably going to be the only black in every

class I went to. Once that was behind me, it really didn't matter. That wasn't

too much of a problem. It was just so different coming from an all black high

school with all black teachers for the most part and then coming to this

different environment. It was culture shock in a lot of different ways. I 01:25:00 think

it would have been better if there were no Confederate flag or "Dixie," I think

it would have been better. I guess in retrospect, when I look back on it, I know

it could have been better if that hadn't been something to have to contend with.

Like I said, I came in here hating the place, and I left here loving it. At the

first black reunion the school had in '88, Charlie Yates was the speaker. The

second black reunion they had, which I think was '89 or '90, I was the speaker.

Because I was the speaker, I expressed some of the same things you just heard me

say about the Confederate flag and "Dixie" just like here. And I thought about

that and I said, you know, we went from Charlie Yates in [19]58 or [19]59 when

he finished to me in [19]71 when I finished, and I knew there were some other

people in between. The same kinds of 01:26:00things I mentioned were the focus of us

being here and were the Confederate flag, "Dixie," and Groove Phi Groove. Those

were the issues; those were the hot items at the time. We would never have

thought about walking across campus and seeing a black student and not speaking

to him. The big difference I saw when I came here later on in [19]90 was you

would see black students walking around-- I mean I would venture to guess I knew

the mothers' name of most of the black students that were on campus, and you

knew where everybody was from because you knew everybody. If there was a new

black face, you wanted to know who that face was. That was the way it was then.

There were so few of us, it was easy enough to do that. At some point, they were

going to pass through the Groove house or at some point they were going to

interact with someone that was Groove Phi Groove or somebody Groove was going to

tell them about it. If it was a woman, oh gosh, you couldn't 01:27:00let the opportunity

of having a black woman not at least participate in some of your events.

Kennelly: But you got to know the students from Radford?

Watkins: Got to know the students from Radford quite well, what was it 17.2? The

story was you used to know the exact mileage from Tech to Radford campus, so it

wasn't "Were you going over to Radford today?" it was, "Are you going to make

the 17.2 today?" You knew the exact mileage, and you never said you were going

to Radford. It was, Are you going to make the 17.2? Some of the guys dated some

of the girls from Radford. Actually, one of the Groove brothers married one of

the girls from Radford. There were obviously some relationships that developed

there that lasted.

Kennelly: How did you find the town of Blacksburg? Were you comfortable in the town?

Watkins: There was a town of Blacksburg? Oh you mean that little stretch out

there. Small 01:28:00town, that was definitely a small town. Which I had no problem

with. It actually reminded me of the town in North Carolina where my grandfather

lived: Reedsville is like Blacksburg was. It was obvious this was a college

town, it was a town that revolved around the college. It just happened to be the

town where the college was. Roses was the department store that was right

downtown. We would go into Roses. I don't think we ever had a problem. We could

sit at the cafeteria and eat at the cafeteria there. But we always felt

uncomfortable there because we felt like we were always in the way. I don't know

that we had to go there that often, but being in town, it was a very open town.

Actually, the people were friendlier than I remember them being in Newport News.

As far as I'm concerned, the people were very friendly. Because we thought we

were going to run into a problem getting somewhere to live off campus that next

year, as people were having some problems with that. It was no big deal. When we 01:29:00first moved off into our trailer, we never locked the door. We would have some

of our Groove brothers that might come over, and they just want to come over to

nap or something, and we never locked our door. We never thought about locking

our door. It was always open. Sometimes some of the ladies would come over. They

would want to cook a meal or something. The door was always open. They would

just go in and cook a meal and not have a problem with it. We never had a

problem with anything Nothing ever was stolen. What they knew was that if we

were here, we were probably students at Tech. Whether they knew it because we

had on some Tech paraphernalia. Wait a minute that's got to be a black student

from Tech because they had never seen us before. There were only two or three

black families in town. 01:30:00I can't say there was any negative influence with regard

to the town at all.

Kennelly: Did you get to know any of the people in the town?

Watkins: We got to know the Snell family. They lived right across the street

from where we rented the Groove house. One of the black families lived right

across the street from where we rented the house that was our fraternity house.

One of them, Sydney, actually, he went to Tech and pledged Groove Phi Groove

later on. So we knew that family. Was it the Jackson family that lived at the

end of the street, that doesn't sound right? There was another lady that lived

at the end of the street that would come down to the Groove house every now and

then and ask us if there was anything she could do to help us. I think she had a

son that worked for the VA. Tech plant development here. We never knew what he

did. He wasn't like a laborer type or something. I just can't remember what her

name was right 01:31:00 now.

Kennelly: You had a church here you said?

Green: There was a black church in town and when they would have youth Sunday

since there weren't a lot of black youths in the community the black youth from

Tech would go over for youth Sunday and we had one student who would do the

preaching and preach the sermon and we would sing in the choir and everything.

Kennelly: Did you hear anything about a letter from the dean, or a memo to the

Residence Halls regarding interracial dating that was given to the white students?

Watkins: No, I never heard anything about that.

Green: Something discouraging interracial dating?

Kennelly: It stated that if you were going to have interracial dating, you had

to have a letter from your parents approving it.

Watkins: I don't remember that.

Green: I don't remember the details, but I do remember hearing 01:32:00something about

it, but we never saw it.

Kennelly: I was told it was given to white students.

Green: We never saw the letter but I heard there was something.

Watkins: I wasn't aware of that.

Kennelly: When Reverend Martin Luther King died April 8 of your freshman year, I

think there was a vigil to honor Reverend King. Were you involved in that?

Watkins: On the drillfield, right in front of the chapel. We basically were just

sitting there listening to some people speak. We took it as a sad time, and it

just seemed to have more of an impact-- Actually, it was a little surprising at

the number of people who attended. We were surprised from the black students

perceptive to the number of white students that were there. I have to say I know

I was in a positive way. Of course a 01:33:00number of them were once again, I hate to

keep referring to people as hippies, you could see there was a liberal mind with

regards to some other aspects of things. A large contingent of people who felt

the need to at least come express some concern that they were also saddened by

that event. But yes, the vigil on the drillfield.

Kennelly: Was there some problems with some students causing trouble about the

lowering of the flag?

Watkins: I heard about that, and I knew about that going on, but that part of it

I didn't have anything to do with directly. I just heard of it. I wasn't there

when it happened.

Kennelly: 01:34:00Was there any support from the administration in particular, anyway to

make you feel welcome?

Watkins: I can't say that anybody walked up to me and said anything. No, I can't

say that. My only real interaction with T. Marshall Hahn at the time had to do

with marching up to his house regarding a contest they had here one time. They

had this thing called the Ugly Man on Campus contest I don't know if that came

up with anyone else. Where the different fraternities, somebody would dress up

in some particular way, and then there would be a judging as to who would win

this prize as the ugly man on campus. It was a contest that was done every year.

One year, one of the 01:35:00organizations put up someone who had the appearance of

being in black face. They had these pictures all around campus of what looked

like someone in black face. We were very offended by it. A bunch of us marched

up to T. Marshall Hahn's house. He and his wife had us in, sat on the floor, and

we showed him the picture and told him our concerns about the fact that

something like this would go on, somebody would be in blackface with black

students on campus. He was very receptive and said as far as he was concerned,

these needed to be removed, and he thought it was offensive too, and they would

be taken down the next day. He didn't have to do that because we had already

taken all of them down when we came to his house. We had given him all, the only

one we couldn't get to was in Derring cafeteria because that was locked up. We

couldn't get to that, but that was the only one that needed to be taken down.

That episode, actually I gained a lot of respect for him because he could have

called the police on us. Here are some angry black students showing up on 01:36:00 his

doorstep in the middle of the night. He sat us down and his wife made tea or

something for us to drink. He listened to us and looked at it and said he was

concerned. Of course the organization which happened to be the service

organizations on campus, I forget their names. It was like a Greek name. They

actually had a black member. What had happened was he had put raspberry jam on

his face, but in a black and white picture, it had appeared as a black face.

What he said and what they said was this wasn't meant to be blackface, at least

that was what was described to us. This was raspberry jam, but when a white

student puts it on his face and his eyes, he looks like he's in black face, but

supposedly it was raspberry jam but it was in a black and white picture so it

appeared as a black face. Still it 01:37:00was offensive enough that they took the

pictures down, and there was an apology in the campus newspaper to the black

students for that appearance. That was about it. I'm sure that came from the

influence of T. Marshall Hahn telling the organization that it offended a

segment of students on campus. But did we have meeting with the administration

or even did the black students meet anywhere? You've got to realize there was no

black student union. We weren't congregated to say welcome, we're glad to have

you here. We were just here. Once we were here I guess it was just the fact that

we accepted you here, so I guess we must have you here, so now you have to do

what you're here for. I think we all took the responsibility that we were here

to get degrees, and we did.

Green: When they had the black government commission, the student government

commission, one other 01:38:00issue was during Kent State time there were a thousand

students gathered to walk up to the president's house. There were six black

females living in one wing of a dorm, and at the time we were sitting outside,

and about five black guys had come over talking to us. All the campus security

gathered in front of us on campus, and they wanted to know, What kind of trouble

was here? What are you doing? We told them it's not us you should be concerned

about. Maybe you should be concerned about the thousand students marching on the

president's house. But they came to the dorm because there were ten blacks in

front of our door. We were standing outside talking. Rather than be concerned

about the thousand marching on the president's house at that time. There was

some discussion about that that where's the focus when things get heated up, the

first place you run is where are my black students. They went into town that

night. They actually did some breaking of 01:39:00business windows because they marched

in town and marched to the president's house and everything. The campus security

went right to us because they saw ten blacks congregating.

Kennelly: You graduated from Tech in Biology in [19]71. What did you do after graduation?

Watkins: Went to dental school, I applied to Medical College of Virginia Dental

School and was accepted and went to dental school and four years later became a dentist.

Kennelly: Was that at VCU?

Watkins: VCU/MCV in Richmond

Kennelly: That must have been a big change to go to VCU from here.

Watkins: Believe it or not, you talk about pioneer, and you're probably going to

throw this pioneer on me again, but when we went to MCV, dental school is a four

year program, and they had a hundred students in each 01:40:00class: freshman,

sophomore, junior, and senior year. Or at least you start out with a hundred.

Well the year I started MCV happened to be the first year they had started

letting blacks attend again. So here I was one of two black students in a class

of a hundred with no upper class black dental students at all. Nobody in the

sophomore class, nobody in the junior class, nobody in the senior class.

Actually when I look back on it, Tech was a little easier in that at least I had

some upper class black students that I could say, "Okay what's this about?

What's going on here and there?" Another student that came from Virginia State

College entered dental school with me. They did have some black students that

had graduated from the dental school. One had graduated in the fifties, one had

graduated two years before we got there, and one had graduated a year before

him. There had only been three black graduates in the dental school when we

entered. We were number-- 4 and 5. His last name was Nelson--so I'll say he was

number 01:41:00four, I was number five that actually had gone through the dental school.

We had started a trend, well, I won't say a trend, but a decision had been made

that they were going to try to have a number of blacks in each class, and we

just happened to be the class that they started to have black students again.

There were two of us and no upper class. My next year, my sophomore year they

brought in two, my junior year they brought in two, each year they brought in

two black students. It was almost like that was the magic number out of a

hundred that they decided they were going to have. As far as preparation for it,

I felt very prepared for it from my Tech education, so that wasn't too much of

an issue. It was just that here I was again. At least there was no Confederate

flag or "Dixie." Although, MCV is right next to the block where the house of the

Confederacy is located, or the Confederate Museum, that's what it's called. It

was in the very next block from the school, but I didn't have to go in that. And

they didn't have a Confederate flag hanging out front. There might have been one 01:42:00inside, but there certainly wasn't one hanging out front, and it was in the very

next block. Then it was in Richmond too and Richmond isn't exactly a

predominantly white town. It's probably closer to 50/50, or it was at least then

as far as percentages. It was a little different environment being in a town

like Richmond than being in a town like Blacksburg.

Kennelly: Did you feel prepared going to college, or at least equally to the

other students?

Watkins: It was kind of interesting. I was valedictorian of my high school. That

says something about my high school in one respect and maybe about my feelings

about academics from another. When I got to Tech, I had taken college level

English and math when in high school. So 01:43:00when I came to college I had one credit

of already for college math and one credit for English as a result of doing it.

I came in and I thought this couldn't be too bad, I had taken those things and

had done well in those classes, but when I got here, it was a whole different

thing. I can't say I felt as prepared as I thought I was, and the stuff was

hard. Stuff that I had had was hard. It was harder than I remembered that it

was. Some of that I attribute to that I really did come in with somewhat of a

lack of focus that I had when I was in school because I was not comfortable. I

really was not comfortable. That was the black/white thing. I mean I was not

comfortable. It just wasn't the same. It wasn't like you'd look over and see

somebody that you'd been seeing for three or four years or you knew you were

going to see in your neighborhood. It just wasn't quite the same. After those

first couple of quarters, I felt better about some things, and I felt better

about being here once I got into the mind that I felt like I could 01:44:00hang more or

less. Then Groove Phi Groove came, and I was a little more comfortable with the

people here, and the friendships were there. Like I said, it was just the group

that came in. Maybe if it had been a different group of guys that had come in

with me especially or a different group of students, or maybe there was a

different group of students that were here. It might have even been different

from that perspective too. It was like the right group of students were

together, and the timing was right, and we all just seemed to mesh, and I think

everybody was supportive of everybody as far as the black students. I don't

think anybody was trying to down anybody. I don't think there wouldn't have been

a black student that I felt like I couldn't ask to do a favor for me. It was

like having a family away from home. Once I realized that, which took probably

the first year to realize that, and the Groove Phi Groove thing came 01:45:00along, it

wasn't so bad. It was hard, it was harder than high school was, there's no doubt

about that. I always kind of felt like high school was easy, and this was a lot

harder. I didn't realize how good of an education I got until I went to MCV

because it made things a little easier at MCV. It definitely made it easier to

deal with whites. Here I was in another type of environment where the percentage

was worse than it was at Tech. I didn't really have a problem with the

black/white thing there. I shouldn't say not a problem. I knew there was a

problem because dentistry is the kind of profession where, what's the best way

to describe this, I think there are a lot of old school mentalities. The reason

is that it's kind of a basic profession where a 01:46:00lot of things are done the same

along different ways, and there are a lot of professors in dentistry who feel

comfortable with the old way. I got the impression that I probably got graded

down more in dental school because I was black then I ever did at Tech because I

got the feeling that some people felt that I didn't belong there. I look back on

Tech as being an even better experience. If it weren't for the Confederate flag

and "Dixie" it would have been definitely a better experience. But MCV, I know

there were some professors there that really didn't want us there. The year I

started MCV was the year they had their first new dean. They had previously had

a dean that had been there almost forever. They named the school after him;

that's how long he had been there. He had a concept about the type of person

they were going to bring out of their dental school, and obviously with the

support of whomever, it didn't include 01:47:00blacks as part of the class. It wasn't an

issue then. I met him since then because he was dean emeritus, and I don't mind

calling the name Harry Lyons because I know he's a big name in the state. The

new part of the dental school is called the Lyons building after him. But he's

part of the old school, and there were some professors there with the old school

with him too. In dentistry you can physically do something with your hands and

look at it and compare it. I know there were some people who didn't do some

things as well as me that got better grades. It was unfortunate that that was

the case, but the fortunate part of it was it didn't hold me back. It was a

four-year program; I did it in four years. There were some other people in the

class that took more than four years and didn't finish on time, and some that

didn't finish at all. I felt prepared from the standpoint of Virginia Tech

helping me with that and I had no problem. Looking back on Tech, it 01:48:00 really

wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I wouldn't have wanted my child to go

through it like it was when I went through it. As I said for my speech when I

did the speech for the second year of the black reunion, I would've been very

happy, I would be very happy if either one of my kids had wanted to go to Tech

right now. I wouldn't have a problem with it at all. I would be proud if they

wanted to go. Whether it was because I went or whether they just liked the school.

Kennelly: Do you have kids who are--

Watkins: Yes, but they decided to go to JMU. My son is at JMU now, and my

daughter is a senior in high school. She got her acceptance letter to Tech two

weeks ago, but she's already let us know her first choice is JMU too. She wants

to join her brother at JMU. I guess I'm just going to miss out on having either

one of them come. But she did apply, but I think she applied only because she

knew I wanted her to apply. She did get her acceptance letter. Now, JMU is her

first choice; supposedly Tech is her second 01:49:00choice. She's a very good student,

so I wouldn't think she wouldn't get accepted into to JMU. Right now I'm just

thinking she's probably going to JMU. I tried to get her to come up here this

weekend to look at some things, but I think they're having an orientation the

weekend of the fifteenth or something. I think she and her friend are coming up

that weekend.

Kennelly: Did you have a scholarship to dental school?

Watkins: At the time for professional school they were loans; they were in the

form of loans. Bill Cosby had a Colgate scholarship loan that was for minority

students, and it was part loan, part scholarship the first year. Then the second

year, which happened to be the year that President Nixon had some problems with

the way some things were going on and the Republican Administration wound up

changing some of the programs and it became all loans. Actually, my last three

years were from the Bill Cosby loan 01:50:00program. Of course it didn't cost as much

then as a dental school education costs now. When I finished Tech, I didn't owe

any money as far as loans for school because it was all scholarship. When I

finished dental school, I did owe some,(about $8,000) but it was nothing like

what the kids borrow today to go to dental school its almost phenomenal. That

wasn't too bad. I went into the military after I finished dental school. I was a

dentist in the navy for two years. They would offset a certain percentage for

each year you did in the military, which was a good thing. It wasn't a big

percentage, but it was something. It wasn't so much than five years later the

loans were paid off so it wasn't that big of a deal because it wasn't a large

amount, and the interest rate was great, it was three percent only. That was the

other advantage of it too.

Kennelly: Where do you live now?

Watkins: I live in Hampton, which is the sister city right beside Newport News.

I actually went back home, because I had lived in Newport News. I went to Tech,

here, went to dental school in Richmond, joined the navy because I was single

and wanted the navy to send me 01:51:00somewhere to see the world. They stationed me in

Norfolk, so I never got out of the state of Virginia. When they stationed me in

Norfolk, the first year I was in the navy, I was a dentist in Norfolk, at the

main clinic in Norfolk for one year. They had four opportunities for dentist to

do independent duty at different stations. One was at Newport News at the

Newport News shipyard. The second year I was in the navy I was actually in

Newport News right at home. Of course, the second year I did get married.

Because I got married I bought a home in Newport News for the second year I was

in the navy. After that I went into private practice and just happened to go

into the city of Hampton because there was a dentist there who was looking for

an associate and I went into practice with him. He happened to be in Hampton.

Hampton and Newport News are like you don't know if you're in one or the other;

they're right there together. I even live in Hampton, we moved from Newport News

to Hampton about ten years ago.

Kennelly: What's your wife's name?

Watkins: Hardenia, Hardenia Watkins. She was a Jefferson. I met her at 01:52:00MCV. She

was at MCV working on her master's in microbiology when I was in dental school

so we met when I was in school and dated throughout dental school and got

married after my first year in the navy.

Kennelly: Were there a lot of black graduate students?

Watkins: There were black medical students and black graduate students.

Kennelly: What's her maiden name?

Watkins: Jefferson, she went to Virginia State which was the college then in

Petersburg in undergrad and actually did a med. tech. program in Washington

Center Hospital in D. C. She came out to MCV, got her master's in microbiology,

and went out to Western Carolina University in the western part of the state of

Carolina and taught there for two years. Then we got married, and she of course

then came to Newport News.

Kennelly: In your practice now do you have white and black patients?

Watkins: Yes, probably about 80/20 ratio, 80% black, 20% white.

Kennelly: Do you 01:53:00live in an integrated community?

Watkins: I live in an integrated community, right. It's integrated, but I live

on a private road with just two houses. It's my builder's house and my house. We

don't live in a housing development. It just so happens my builder owns some

property that was out away from everyone else, and he had a lot that he wanted

to subdivide so we purchased a lot, and it's just his house and my house. We

live off a private road, which happens to be in Hampton. It's just some property

that happened to be at the end of the city limits. The community around us is

integrated. But if you really look at where we live, it's just him and me.

Kennelly: Do you have white and black friends?

Watkins: Yes, that came more 01:54:00from the dental profession than anything else. Most

of my friends are dentists or physicians or professionals or most of them are in

some form or fashion just the community we move in. Now being from Newport News,

I have a lot of high school friends that are still there that are like teachers

or classmates of classes ahead of me, classes behind me. It was kind of an

advantage, being in my hometown coming back. People either know me or know of me

when I come back home like that. Most of my friends are either other dentists,

or physicians or lawyers or something like that. It's just the community; we

have a little community organization that meets. Most of them happen to be

professionals or either teachers or something like that. My high school doesn't

exist anymore. George Washington Carver was phased out. It's now a 01:55:00 middle

school, (the facility itself.) We still have an alumni association for that high

school as if it still existed. They have a number of meetings for the people

that graduated. The last class that graduated from G.W. Carver high school was

[19]71, which happened to be the year I graduated from college. The Carver high

school from [19]71 before they have an alumni association that still meets, and

on a local level, and a number of people I know are in that organization. Form

the dental profession, I've done a lot of things professionally in dentistry. I

think we talked about this before in an email. The Virginia State Dental Board

is a big thing in the State of Virginia. It's a governor appointment. There have

been two blacks that have been appointed to the dental board for the entire

history of the board, which has been a hundred years. In 1989, I became the

third black that was appointed to the board. None of them became president of

the 01:56:00board, but in 1992 I became the first black president of the Virginia State

Dental Board. As a result of that, I've participated in dentistry on the state

and on the national level on committees quite a bit. I've met a lot of other

people through those connections. Once again, they happen to be dentists. Just

dealing with dentistry from a professional standpoint. From that presidency of

the Virginia State Dental Board, the president of the American Dental

Association selected me to serve on the council and commission on dental

accreditation which is the national organization that does the accreditation of

dental hygiene, dental assistant programs throughout the country. I was the

first black dentist to serve on that board. They had a black citizen member, but

I was actually the first black dentist to serve on that board. It meets in

Chicago, and that's one of the main reasons I had the Chicago connection. I go

up there usually twice a year to serve on the committee in that 01:57:00respect. This

happens to be the 25th anniversary of my graduation from dental school this

year. We're having our 25th anniversary at the end of April in Richmond. Think

about all this stuff--it's been twenty-five years from dental school. Of course

next year is my thirty years from Virginia Tech, the year 2001. Gosh I didn't

think about that, I'm dating myself.

Kennelly: Do your children have black and white friends?

Watkins: Yes, because they went to integrated schools. All the schools are

integrated now, and both the kids have black and white friends. Both applied to

predominantly white schools. They each did apply to two predominantly black

colleges. My daughter had an interest in 01:58:00Spelman, and my son had an interest in

Moorehouse, but once again they didn't win out either. The choice was theirs. We

did have the advantage of visiting the campuses and things like that which like

I said I didn't have so they did get a chance to visit, and whatever they felt

comfortable with. Interesting enough, as negative as I was about the fact that I

couldn't get anyone to go to Tech, I was somewhat envious of the fact that they

really chose in JMU a school that was like Tech was when I first came to Tech:

about ten thousand students, a little higher percentage of black faces on campus

especially in the faculty and staff. I was mentioning this to some Alumni coming

up, that when I visited JMU's campus, it reminded me of Tech when I first came

to Tech, the size, some of the buildings are even in the same stone, the little

mountains here to there go back and forth to class. I kind of like the campus

too. But by the same token I would have wanted either one of them to go to Tech.

My 01:59:00son was accepted to Tech also. He applied; he was accepted. We had actually

paid the housing deposit for him to come to Tech, and he changed his mind at the

last minute, so Tech lost out.

Kennelly: Is there anything else you'd like to say that I haven't asked you about?

Watkins: No, I think you asked me about most of the things I probably would've

wanted to say. I found it rather interesting because Peter Wallenstein who did

the history book. I haven't read it from cover to cover or anything like that. I

was kind of looking for sections in it to see if he was addressing in his

history some of the issues of the Confederate flag and "Dixie." Surprisingly he

didn't. I just thought at some point if he revises it, he at least addresses

their 02:00:00impact on the campus. Once again it may be there, and I missed it. Also,

the black perspective because he had that section in there on the blacks on

campus, the black perspective on some of the things. I know Chickie Harper has

mentioned some things about it and Chickie will be here tomorrow too I'm glad to

hear that. I think I touched on most of the things I wanted to touch on.

Kennelly: Do you think the fact that I'm not black, that the interview would

have gone different or you might have felt freer to say things if I was?

Watkins: Actually I've been thirty years away from here now, and I've gotten to

be kind of old, I think. No, I don't think that would've influenced anything I

said or would've made a difference. I honestly don't think I could say anything

different. I didn't 02:01:00call on me or lock me into not saying particular things. I

might have even said the "n" word, and I said I wasn't going to say it. I think

I said it. I think I was going to refer to it as only the "n" word because it

was something we heard on campus. Surprisingly, I have to say too, that probably

happened the first couple of years I was here. Whether it was because I lived

off campus the next couple years or not and didn't have to walk through the

court area there as much in that period of time, I don't know. Maybe someone

that was there later might address it differently. I know I have spoken to

people who graduated later, and they have heard it yelled from a window too. I

know it has happened. But in every case, I think it's been the same way, someone

yells it from a window, nobody's gotten in anybody's face and said something

like that. Mentally I had this block that I wasn't going to say that but I

probably did.

Kennelly: Let me ask you about Groove Phi Groove? Groove is not a take off of a

Greek letter.

Watkins: Groove is not a Greek 02:02:00organization. Groove was a social fellowship;

it's not a Greek fraternity. I guess the best way to describe it is there are

fraternities and there are other organizations that are non-fraternities. That's

why it's called Groove Phi Groove Social Fellowship. It's not Alpha Phi Alpha

fraternity or Omega Psi Phi fraternity. They are actually fraternities. But

Groove Phi Groove never put on itself as being a fraternity. There are other

organizations that are not fraternities from that particular standpoint. Maybe I

will say this part, because even though I hate to mention it, I know that a

couple of our members including Myron's brother have now pledged another

fraternity called Omega Psi Phi. Groove Phi Groove came about because most of

the guys here that started it wanted to pledge Q, and I know the Q's will love

to hear this, you know Omega Psi Phi. It's just that Stan Harris, who was

instrumental in the organization, he was the one who made the 02:03:00contacts to the

people at Virginia State that got us to start Groove Phi Groove. He was trying

to make connections for us to start Omega Psi Phi. Here we were poor little

black students at school. We had limited resources to be able to do things. The

Omega Psi Phi fraternity wanted us to do some things we physically and

financially could not do to form it on campus. They wanted us to come down to

the place every weekend for a long period of time to pledge to start the charter

chapter. Because they did that we just got disgruntled with the fact that we

would not be able to do that. We had to study; we were trying to stay in college

too. Our parents expected us to study. When Stan Harris made contacts with

Virginia State's Groove Phi Groove chapter, they were more receptive to making

it easier for us to be able to pledge and start chapter. That's the reason we

formed Groove Phi Groove, because it was easier to start the organization on

campus. I will let the Q's know, and I know my friends who are Q's, Omega Psi

Phi, we had a 02:04:00couple. Myron's brother who was a Groove and now he's pledged Q

and Calvin Jamison (Admissions Office at Tech) who was one of the Groove's here

later on after us has now pledged Omega Psi Phi as a result of being able to

pledge on the graduate level and are no longer what we consider Grooves. But

Groove Phi Groove came about from us trying to form Omega Psi Phi on campus

first, but we weren't able to do it because there were too many restrictions and

restraints on how they wanted us to start. That will make the Q's happy to hear

that we wanted them first!

Kennelly: Myron is there anything you would like to add?

Watkins: I think she should talk about the Delta Sigma Theta sorority because I

know Delta Sigma Theta started their own sorority on campus at whatever year you

have in your 02:05:00history. Myron, Chickie Harper, and Sylvia Swilley, (Another young

lady coming to the reunion tomorrow came from California.) I want to mention

that Sylvia came all the way from L. A. to come to be with us. She's the one who

hasn't been back to campus in twenty-eight years. She was Myron's roommate her

freshman year. They pledged Delta Sigma Theta in 1970 by going to Norfolk to

pledge at a national convention. So they were really the first Delta Sigma

Thetas that were on campus. I think the rules were they had to have seven

members to form a chapter, and they didn't have that many..

Green: You had to be a sophomore and you had to have seven. At that time there

were only nine black females on campus, and you needed seven who had to be

sophomores to start a chapter. Marguerite Harper, it was her senior year, and

she pledged two days before her graduation. We moved our final exams up so we

could travel to Norfolk and go to the regional convention. Jim actually drove us

to Norfolk. My 02:06:00brother was graduating; Marguerite was graduating. We went, spent

a night there, had to take the national exam, got inducted in, traveled back to

Tech the next day for graduation only to travel home after graduation. We did

that thousand miles in two days just round trip up and down. We had to study for

national delta exams and study for Tech final exams all in the same time frame

so it was sort of hectic, but we actually had Delta's on campus as early as 1970.