HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — One cannot talk about Black history without mentioning the civil rights struggle in America. Alabama was the setting for many pivotal points in that struggle, from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Bloody Sunday in Selma and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham.
Schools and classrooms were also important points in the fight for equality. Now, 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we hear from pioneers of education desegregation in the state.
Huntsville was the site for one of those historic changes, one that would help change the course of public education in the state.
Recently, we sat down with Sonnie Hereford IV on a rainy day in the Rocket City. Despite the gloom of the outside conditions, the Hereford name was illuminated in many places throughout the school building. His father, Sonnie Hereford III, is the namesake.
"Everyone in my family is extremely proud of what he did to make this happen."
We turn back the clock to the tumultuous year of 1963. "I had just turned six years old. I turned six on August 30, and I was starting school September 9," Hereford recalled.
"When we first started the lawsuit to integrate the schools, there were, I believe, 27 families. That's black families that said they wanted their children to help, to integrate the schools."
However, a campaign of threats and intimidation soon whittled that number of supporters down to just four, to integrate what was then known as the Fifth Avenue School. And then, on September 6, Governor George Wallace sent his state troopers to make sure the school stayed closed and nobody went into those four schools, black or white.
"He just kept all four schools closed for that entire week," Hereford said, "and then he relented and the schools opened on September that Monday, September 9."
Fifth Avenue School is now defunct, and the area now transformed into what is Governors Drive.
Just north of us, at the FOX54 studios on North Memorial Parkway, is where producer Kye Harrell is also connected to our local history. She is connecting via Zoom to a relative.
"I could not say that it was a smooth process," says Phyliss Craig-Taylor, a former Choctaw County resident and Butler Elementary student ,who is now a professor at the historically-Black North Carolina Central University School of Law, when asked about her experience with integration. Harrell's great aunt was a student who struggled for an equal opportunity at her education. "By the time I had reached the third grade in our county, they decided to implement a program that was called Freedom of Choice. Your parents could opt for you to go into what had historically been the all-white schools."
Craig-Taylor had a fierce fighter for equality in education in her corner.
"My mother was concerned that I was upset every day, coming home and explaining to her that they were throwing things," she said. "She told me to put [a] cigar box on top of my books and that my job was every day to pick up as many of the items that I could pick up that were thrown at me. And it was going to be evidence. And eventually they were going to go to court and a judge was going to rule and say that they should not treat children that way."
Huntsville City Schools, the district that sparked the statewide movement for integration, has only just recently seen its first Black male superintendent installed in the summer of 2023.
Hereford IV reflects on that moment:
"I remember at the dedication of the historical marker that stands where Fifth Avenue School used to be, we had Dr. Ann Roy Moore, who was an African-American female, of course. But I remember her talking about standing on the shoulders of those who came before, because obviously the school system had to be integrated before an African-American could be the superintendent of the school system. And so I feel that's that's the case.
"We're helping people to have an equal opportunity for education."
{WEB EXTRA: SONNIE HEREFORD IV'S EXPERIENCE WHILE INTEGRATING 5TH AVENUE SCHOOL}
{WEB EXTRA: PHYLISS CRAIG-TAYLOR EXPERIENCE WHILE INTEGRATING CHOCTAW CO.}
{WEB EXTRA: FOX54'S PRODUCER KYE HARRELL PROVIDES REFLECTIONS}
