CHapteR 6: Off to New York

CHapteR 6

off to new york

soon after I testified about the racist policies of the Alabama Educational Television station, I began to notice changes. State officials, who had previously been helpful and open with me, began not returning phone calls. Doors which had been open were now closed to Macon County school officials. These negative reactions on the part of state department of education officials were followed with harassing auditing by the state auditors, a process described in chapter 5. For more than a year, state auditors searched the books looking for any bit of evidence against me or the Macon County Board of Education that might be used in a legal case. None was ever found that could justify the time and taxpayers’ expense that this search cost. The auditors were at our offices for so long that their paychecks were actually delivered to our offices! Also, the whole crisis with deliveries of gasoline occurred following my testimony, and I believe it was orchestrated by the Wallace supporters. Meanwhile, Dr. Frankie Ellis, who had also testified against the state educational television station, was manipulated into leaving Tuskegee Institute. The state threatened a holdup of funds that somehow ended after she was displaced. Dean Hunter coincidentally resigned and transferred to his alma mater, Iowa State University. It is my belief that he refused to fire Dr. Ellis and his departure was arranged by the same people who were harassing me. With Dean Hunter gone, they could get to Dr. Ellis.

As the efforts to dislodge me by means of the auditors proved futile, a small group of local protesters arose. A few people even began to picket our offices, carrying signs up and down the street outside the office. I expect this tactic was more unnerving to my subordinates and supporters who had no idea why the

protest was going on than to me, because I did believe that it was motivated by the Wallace forces who wanted me out. In time, people noticed that two of the protest leaders, both women with limited incomes, were driving new luxury automobiles. It appeared obvious to me that funds were going into their pockets from an outside source. Again, the Wallace forces were suspected.

One of the protesters was Ann Buchanan, a paraprofessional in our Title I project. When she was elected to the school board several months later, she wanted to keep her job and hold her seat on the school board at the same time. State law, however, clearly prohibited school board members from working for the organization being supervised. Ms. Buchanan took her protest to court, but she lost her appeal.

These protests and the election of Ann Buchanan were public knowledge. But some of the things that happened were not, and I chose to keep them secret until many years later when I revealed the perniciousness of the attack on me to a select group of supporters during a visit to Tuskegee. One of the events that remained my secret was the apparent attempt to seduce me when I went, at an employee’s invitation, to his home near one of our school campuses and was greeted by his wife in a flimsy negligee. I beat it out of there and was not surprised when that couple left the county. I believed that this attempt to lure me into a compromising situation was designed to get me beaten or killed. Or at the very least, it could be used as grounds for legal action to have me imprisoned for many years. It was this event that convinced me that my enemies were dangerous to my health and the safety of my family.

My supporters on the school board wanted to insulate me from the efforts of some within the community to remove me. Apparently, they thought that I could continue to serve the school community without strong support from the school board. Consequently, they offered me a renewed four-year contract. I saw it differently. I knew it would be an uphill battle to continue the improvements we had planned without strong board support, and I was becoming concerned for the political atmosphere and even wondering about the safety of my family and myself. I accepted a two-year extension of my contract with the proviso that if the newly constituted board wanted to remove me, I would have at least until July 1977.1

The new school board members, consisting of Dr. Evans Harris (chair), Kenneth Young (vice chair), Ann Buchanan, Clara Walker, and Allen Adams first met on November 22, 1976. During that meeting, a resolution was passed expressing the desire “to terminate the contract of the Superintendent and to work out with him, if possible, a mutually acceptable agreement.”2

Mr. Adams resigned from the board shortly after the November 22 meeting. So on December 6, 1976, the board voted to end my contract after one year and additionally asked me to vacate my office on December 17, 1976, with the remaining six months to be paid me as a consultant as stipulated in my contract. I was also to be paid for consulting for an additional ninety-five days following the end of the contract year.3 The board members attempted to dismiss me from the meeting at which my contract was discussed, but I persisted in remaining based on Alabama Code, Title 52.4

Actually, I was never consulted during that nine-month period, so I was able to concentrate my attention on finding a new position and moving my family. Some people wanted to help me find a job that would allow me to work three more years and become vested in the Alabama Teachers Retirement System, but I had no desire to do that under the circumstances. I was ready to get out of Alabama entirely.

Some of the employees of the Macon County School System provided me with a lovely send-off, not officially, of course, but at a private venue, on December 19. Dr. Meharry Lewis, JoAnn Wright, Wilhelmina Baldwin, Mary Bronson, Dr. Ellis Hall, Consuello Harper, Lucious Jefferson, Mary J. Lightfoot, Marilyn Pajot, and Lindsay Ray comprised the steering committee for the event. They honored me with a banquet at which several of my family members were in attendance, along with local supporters. They graciously gave me a scrapbook of letters and memorabilia and an oil painting of my visage. It was a warm-hearted effort, but none of those present knew the real reason for my leaving at the time. I just didn’t believe it was the right time or place to lay that burden on them.

Well, one morning when I was going out to play golf, my wife Annamozel called me to the telephone and said it was long distance. The call was from a man that I did not know. He introduced himself as a superintendent of schools on Long Island, New York, who had agreed to be an unpaid consultant for the Roosevelt School District, which was looking for a superintendent. He wanted to know if I