VOL. 2 NO. 6
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February 10, 2014
IN THIS ISSUE
Diane Dozier: a teacher
Norbert Stovall stands in front of the gold record for the Christmas recording he made with Willie Nelson.
Jake Mabe remembers the late Diane Dozier.
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Photos by Betsy Pickle
See Jake’s tribute on page 4
Haslam plan funds the dream High school graduates could attend two-year colleges or tech schools free of charge under a proposal by Gov. Bill Haslam. “Tennessee Promise” makes college accessible to all and will change the face of Tennessee.
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See comments on page 5
Forging a new future at
QB tourney ahead Marvin West writes: This is a very exciting time for Tennessee football fans. With the coming of springtime, they can look forward to a once-in-a-lifetime quarterback tournament. Never in my 60-something years of monitoring the Volunteers has there been such four-way uncertainty.
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See column on page 5
Meet the knitters It’s no surprise that First Baptist Church’s knitting club is focused on serving the congregation. “The preacher always says (our work) is a symbol of how we wrap our love around the babies,” says knitter Mary Johnson.
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Read Wendy Smith on page 3
NEIGHBORHOOD BUZZ
State of the Schools address Superintendent Dr. Jim McIntyre will deliver his third annual State of the Schools address at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 11, at Hardin Valley Academy. The event is open to the public and Jim McIntyre refreshments will be provided. The address will overview academic progress in Knox County Schools, update on implementation of the five-year strategic plan and outline educational goals for the coming year. The address will be broadcast live on KCS-TV, Comcast Cable Channel 10 and AT&T U-Verse Channel 99. It will also be broadcast live on WBIR’s 10News2. On the web, it will be streamed live at knoxschools.org, and wbir.com. It can be heard on WKCS radio 91.1 FM and WKCS Retro Radio.
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By Betsy Pickle Of all the victims of the Henley Bridge closing, one of the most notable was Big Mama’s Karaoke Café. “When the bridge closed down, it killed all the traffic,” says Norbert Stovall, who ran the popular attraction for 10 years. “It killed the café,” says Allen Wright, Stovall’s nephew and longtime business collaborator. But in true phoenix fashion, the death of the café led to the birth of something new and seemingly better, yet dear and familiar. Stovall spent his early years producing gospel music. Now, he and Wright are at it again in a South Knoxville home studio that’s expanded many times over since Stovall first created it in his
Big Mama
mother’s basement. (His mother was Big Mama – Frances Stovall – who moved here from Nitro, W. Va., in 1976.) With Big Mama Productions, they are once again producing gospel music – actually about anything that falls under the Christian-music umbrella. But there’s more. “We developed an online TV series about a year and a half ago, and over the past year we’ve done over 58 groups and 300 music videos and songs for this web show,” says Wright. “You can only see it
Allen Wright and Norbert Stovall are happy to be working in the studio together again.
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Robinson retires after lifetime of ‘firsts’ By Betty Bean Theotis Robinson’s personal history has been tangled up with that of the University of Tennessee as far back as he can remember. A lifelong fan of Tennessee athletics, he remembers attending football games with his father, who cooked for the training table and received tickets to home games as part of his pay. “He would go in at halftime and check on the (post-game) meal, and he’d bring me back a sliced turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato and a pickle and a Nesbitt’s Orange. That was 1951, ’52 and ’53. I saw Jim Haslam play. He was captain of the team in 1952 – of course, that was before he was Jim Haslam,” Robinson said. He doesn’t remember noticing that there was nobody who looked like him on the football field. “Look – I’m 10 years old. I’m growing up in the segregated South. It was just normal for me to see that kind of thing – nothing out of the ordinary.” And he didn’t have a clue that he’d make history nearly a decade later by forcing UT to admit him and two other black students as undergraduates, much less that he’d eventually be named UT’s vice president for equity and diversity, a job he held for 14 years under almost as many presidents, beginning with J. Wade Gilley. He retired Jan. 30, but still has an office up on the 8th floor of Andy Holt Tower– named for the
university president he met some 50 years before. “It was the summer of 1960, and I read an ad talking about the things that were wrong with Knoxville,” he recalls. One problem was that UT didn’t admit “negroes” to undergraduate school. Robinson applied, only to receive a rejection letter saying the college did not admit “negroes.” This was odd, because he had not stated his race nor the high school from which he had graduated. “They had my return address, which was only three or four blocks away from (all-white) East High School. Our neighbors on both sides were white, so they were clearly screening very closely for ‘negro’ applications. So I sent a second letter asking for a meeting.” The UT administrators treated the Robinsons (he was accompanied by his parents, Theotis Sr. and Alma Robinson), very cordially, but the answer, again, was no, so they made an appointment with Andy Holt, who asked why Robinson wanted to attend UT. “I told him I was a Tennessean by birth, my family paid taxes and I wanted to come to UT to study political science. He said UT didn’t admit ‘negroes,’ but asked if I would like for him to take the matter to the board of trustees. We said yes, and told him they needed to understand that if they didn’t change the policy, I planned to sue the university.”
Theotis Robinson Jr. The st ate at tor ney general attended the meeting and told the board they’d lose if the Robinsons sued. “So the board voted to change the policy and three of us enrolled in January, 1961,” Robinson said. Although racial turmoil in Knoxville was mild compared to other cities in the South, Knoxville’s black community was denied many services taken for granted by whites. They couldn’t see a movie at the Tennessee or Riviera Theater.
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Photo by Betty Bean
They couldn’t eat at downtown lunch counters. Neither Baptist nor St. Mary’s nor Ft. Sanders hospitals would treat them. Knoxville Transit Lines wouldn’t hire black bus drivers. The police and fire departments wouldn’t promote black employees. Robinson got active in these efforts as a teenager and continued during his college years and To page 3