DISCLAIMER: This interview was recorded over the phone and transcribed by hand. As a result, there are some discrepancies in the transcript as shown by the blanks. If you would like to listen to Mr. Gilmore’s full interview, please check out the embedded video.
The Seminole: Could you tell me about how the integration of Seminole started; the process of integration?
Mr.Ricardo Gilmore: I think—it’s been a while—that we were in the second year. I think Ingrid, along with Ben Mayer, maybe one or two other folk. I was involved with integration. It was not to Seminole High School, but to what was then Sanford Junior High School. I integrated with several other students in the eighth grade at Sanford Junior High School so that by the time we got to Seminole, we had spent a couple of years with integration.
TS: What led to the integration of Sanford Junior High School and the rest of the county?
RG: The other students and myself were students with good grades, essentially, at Crooms, which is what Ingrid was talking about. We all were at the seventh grade at Crooms Academy. Many years ago we called it Crooms Academy. Many years ago my parents taught at what was then Crooms Academy, and it was named for the then-principal J.M. Crooms, and he was the principal when my parents taught there, so, you know, going to Crooms was kind of a legacy for me. Those of us who went over to Sanford Junior High School didn’t volunteer, we were selected to go.
TS: And who did the selection?
RG: Whoever was in the hierarchy at Crooms at the time—I don’t remember who the principal was at the time, but when I said I was selected, we were told schools were integrated, and we were chosen to go. At the point that that occurred, at least for me, I was in Sanford living with my grandmother; my parents and sister had moved to Fort Myers, FL where my father was the principal of Dunbar high school. My mother was a teacher there, so, apparently, whoever the principal was had called my parents to tell them that I had been selected so by the time I talk to my parents I really did not have the choice until I was told I was going.
TS: Was there any public backlash? Did you find any issues, even though you were so late after Ingrid, was it tough at all?
RG: Yeah. We had a ton of issues. First of all, let me say that the folk who went when I was still, her name was Juanita Harold, she was teaching our ____. She was a teacher at Crooms, her son was named Lou Charles Harold and Mrs. Harold, the first year we went to Sanford Junior High School, picked us up in the morning, took us all to school, and came back in the afternoon and picked all of us up. That was so we wouldn’t have to ride the bus. So many mornings, especially after the first few weeks at Sanford Junior High School, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go back there. But she took it upon herself to say, “No, you gotta go, you gotta do this. I’m gonna be home soon???” If it were not for her, I’m not sure all of us would have made it through that first year. Her son, Lou Charles Harold, is now a physician, and he lives in Orlando, and pretty much all of us who went in class ____ we all were able to finish school or finish college and be pretty successful, but that first year, everyday, people called us niggers, and people shot spitballs, threw straws, bottles—it was pretty traumatic.
TS: And how did you cope with that?
RG: Well, we drew strength from each other. We all kind of knew each other, but those who went in that first wave became very good friends and became very supporting of each other. So we just gritted our teeth. It felt—in a way—we were doing it for more than just us, and that’s why I think we were so __ to go. We didn’t choose to go. And now I totally understand Ingrid’s comment, in which she considered herself a Panther, and not a Seminole. But probably, in my class, because there were more guys, and we had more to talk about, we had an advantage. And we didn’t know we had the advantage at the time, but this is what made the difference for us, because eventually when we got to Seminole High School, we did consider ourselves Seminoles, if you will, by the time we got there, but a different kind of Seminole. In the ninth grade, a fellow named Marion Kurss? And some other guys who integrated a lot with me, and another guy named Kenneth Stapler, we went out for the football team and made the football team, and the difference between Ingrid and the other women who went with us, sports became a semi-equalizer, and I don’t wanna overstate that. It did not make us equal; it was a semi-equalizer. Because we could play sports, people were willing to accept us, and the way they did was kinda like this. It allowed them to say essentially “you’re not like the rest of them.” That was in the ninth grade. I think in the ninth grade, I think that was the first time that, for me, there were white people who I considered to be friends, to a great degree coming into 9th grade and going off into Seminole High School.
TS: How was it dealing with teachers? Were they all supportive and accepting? Did you find any problems there?
RG: Yes, ___. I remember specific teachers who I thought went out of the way to be supportive and try to reach out. The one I remember most, not at Seminole High School, but at Sanford Junior High School, her name was Mildred Coleman, she was a Latin teacher, and actually went out of the way to be supportive and help—I found that, to me, other people may name other teachers. There was, gee, I can’t say, ____, Mansley, I believe, Mr. Mansley was a science teacher who was very nice and very supportive. There were other teachers, especially at Sanford Junior High School, who, in my opinion, who as long as we were there, were specifically not supportive. They thought we shouldn’t be there, and in their classroom, in my opinion, I don’t think they did very much to protect us.
TS: And Ingrid said she had a police escort when she attended there. Were you afforded that advantage? Did you ever have anything like it?
RG: No, we were in the second year. Ingrid was definitely in the first wave. Well, when we came along, like I said, that first year in the eighth grade at Sanford Junior High School, was the toughest year, and that where I single out Ms. Harold. She would take us to school, she picked us up, she supported us ___bullying___and again, ___caught the nuance that was sowe didn’t have to ride the bus. The fact that we didn’t have to ride the bus that first year, meant that we weren’t in a situation when we were riding the bus and subjected to more harassment on the bus, or had to walk home from school. She basically picked us up from school every day that first year.
TS: So you were elected senior class president. How were you able to manage that? Was there that much support in the student body for you and the other integrators of the school?
RG: Well, keep in mind that by the time that I got to be a senior, we had been in the integrated system to some degree since the eighth grade. When I got to my senior year, several things had occurred. And again, I want to make it clear that my and some of the other male students’ experience may be a little bit different based on the fact that sports became, like I said, a semi-equalizer. That’s what made people start, to some degree, accepting us. And as a senior, I had been involved with Interact [club], and I was the vice president of Interact, again, and had had a lot of social interaction because of that. I had some very good friends who sort of bonded with me __ be my friend ____names____and they were excellent students and very smart, and they helped me promote my campaign for senior class president, and I had another person, a very good friend of mine was Jeanette Donne, who helped promote me for my campaign. So I had been starting out to run, I was encouraged to run, and then I ran. A lot of people did a lot, like those folks, to promote my campaign. I never thought I would win, and the most surprised person when I won was me. So, I think it was more an indication of times were starting to really change a little bit, and you know, during the time I was senior class president, it kind of felt like I had a lot of cooperation—a lot of the projects that needed to be done by our senior class president, friends helped me and helped manage that because that was something that__the senior class had to build a float for the homecoming parade, and I didn’t know anything about floats, so the people who had done that for several years and had connections could get the things we needed, so that kind of thing. Also, they could take care of it and get it done. And in that way, I experienced a lot of cooperation that helped make my year as senior class president successful when it couldn’t have been, and maybe a few years before that, it wouldn’t have been. But I guess we had been in an integrated situation for a few years before that—the things that changed and by that time, we kind of considered ourselves Seminoles. Let me back up and make one other point here, about a difference in some of my experiences and Ingrid’s experience. By the time we got to my junior year, the rivalry between Crooms High School and Seminole High School was starting to manifest itself. Those two schools, even though they were both in Sanford, had not played each other in sports. And that first football game, there were issues for us, because we were black, had gone to Crooms, and people questioned our loyalty to play against Crooms High School. And I was lucky enough to be so successful at football as a running back that, if I remember correctly, actually scored the points that allowed for the defeat of Crooms. And while I was proud of what I did for my team, I actually experienced some backlash from the black community at that point, about “how could you help Seminole beat Crooms?”
TS: That sounds tough.
RG: Well, it was, a little bit. But, at that point, it was, and that’s why I said sports made it a little bit different, I did what I was supposed to do to help my team win, and that’s what sports are supposed to be about. So, I mentioned Marion Kurss earlier, who was a basketball player as well as a football player, so he explored some of the same conflicts. I think that was the first year—our junior year—that Seminole played Crooms in basketball, also. The same kind of backlash. In our community, it seemed like you were going over to the other side. You got into the same trouble. That was not what you were supposed to do. That’s what you do in sports.
TS: Finally, because we’re about out of time, how do you think of the situation now? Do you think the improvement from before is significant enough? Do you think the work of desegregation is done?
RG: Well, that’s a tough question to answer, but I’ll attempt to answer it for you. There were some, obviously, some positives, and we, despite some of the odds, came to get a pretty good education. However, the plug, the culture____ not just at Seminole high school, but in general, the black community did not benefit as much as people would like to think they did from integration, and the reason why is that integration supposedly meant that there would be people going from a black school to a white school, people from a white school going to a black school, and making them equal in the type of education they’d get. That’s not what happened. Now, that conflict did never occur. You actually asked me ___, if being at Crooms High School, when we were at high school, never had any white students go to Crooms. So, Crooms was ___ during integration. During integration Crooms did not always get the funding, and attention that it should have gotten if they were equal to Seminole ____. Crooms is ___ at this point, because it’s still called Crooms, and it still is a technical high school, and I see it quite frequently, because one of my clients nowadays works at the Sanford Housing Board, which is right across the street from Crooms. I’ve seen Crooms, and this new incarnation of the technical high school, I’m happy that it’s still remained, in some way shape or form. Traditionally, in other situations, black high schools and black schools have been closed or changed into something else that changed the historic significance of the name or it had when we had a segregated society. So I’m happy that Crooms is still a technical high school. In the general black community, we may have gained some advantages to have access to better education; we lost in integration, the type of central community and the cohesiveness of community that was necessary in a segregated society. I don’t know if I’ve captured that in my story, but I think sometimes that people feel like, “Oh, everything about integration made things better for black folk,” and that’s not totally true. We lost our community and lost our strength of community.
TS: And do you think there’s anything that’s left to be done in order to further integration, even though it’s so far after that, and Seminole County has had its desegregation order lifted? Do you think—is the work done?
RG: I think integration has done its job, and I say that in the advance of society, despite what I’ve said I think of as negatives. However, the integration changed our attitudes, and integration made for a level playing field for black students of across the board, I think the answer’s no. So integration did its job to get society to support and adapt to it. We still have prejudice, we still have unequal learning opportunities. So, as a concept, integration did all it could do. We’re in a different place today, and even though race always masked it, America is always, always has been, and always will be, an economically-separated society. So what I think still needs to happen at this point is that people who are economically disadvantaged, more needs to be done to make the playing field level for them, because now things, for the most part, middle class black folk and middle class white folk and middle class olive folk pretty much all have the same general goals and general attitudes. ____ so our populations have different goals and attitudes than __. It’s the have-nots, it’s the people, no matter what color they are, who, especially in an economy like this is, who don’t have. If you look at it across the board, they’re the people who are normally in schools who are not doing well. Those are the people who are normally in schools that have F grades. Those are the people with teachers who may not be of the highest caliber…than other schools who are doing better. So I know that’s more of an answer than what you’re asking about, but to boil it down, integration did its job to do as much as it could do. I think now, if there’s anything to be done, we need to look at “how do level the playing field for economically disadvantaged persons, no matter what color?”