support  and  boycotted  the city  buses.  This did not affect us personally, but many white people were forced to provide transportation for there maids.

History will record many events that followed the Rosa Parks incident. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor oa a Baptist church in Montgomery instigated a peaceful movement on behalf of the black community. Many events such as the Selma March, the Birmingham incident where little girls were killed while attending Sunday School, and other crises took place in the state. Nationally the Civil Rights Movement was then in full progress . History has recorded that story in detail.

In 1963 we moved to Mobile where my husband was employed in ne of the local colleges.. Since this college was just beginning, we had a number of adjustments to make. One of these adjustments was that I would work outside the home for the first time. I had never taught school before although, I had been trained to do so. I was employed by the Mobile County School Board to teach Home Economics and English at Baker High School. This was the year that Alabama Governor Wallace stood in the door at the University of Alabama and refused to allow Vivian Malone, a black student from Mobile, to enroll. At that same time a black student by the name of Birdie Mae Davis, attempted to enroll at Murphy High School in Mobile. When she was not accepted, she filed a law suit against the Mobile County School Board. If the Board had not been so stubborn and defiant in cooperating with national integration laws, Mobile schools could have been spared many, many problems. This defiance resulted in Mobile County schools being placed under Federal Court orders and it was thirty five years before the Birdie Mae Davis case was settled.

After teaching at Baker for one year, I transferred to Shaw High School, a new school near our home. I taught eighth grade science for two years and later, after obtaining a Masters Degree in Guidance and Counseling,  became the school counselor.

In 1966, after the School System had been placed under Federal Court order, minimum efforts, by state and local authorities were made to integrate schools. One of the first efforts was the closure of  Mobile’s black Hillsdale High, and the transfer those students to Shaw. The black students resented the fact that it was their school that was closed. They had made plans for their school annual and the seniors had ordered class rings. They came to Shaw with a "chip on their shoulder" Added to the problem ,we had many white parents who stated their children would never go to school with blacks.

It seemed that no one wanted the venture to succeed. Both black and white children came to school with strong prejudice. It was inevitable that conflict would come and it did. The teachers and administration at the school really tried to be fair and make integration a success. As the guidance counselor I was right in the middle, sometimes standing between students in an effort to break up fights. Black students did not trust me because I was white, no matter how hard I tried to reason with them and understand their concerns. At that point in history they could not forget or forgive the way they had been treated. On the other side, many white students and their parents considered us "nigger lovers" (their term) because we were trying to look at things from the black students' frame of reference. Fighting was common, bomb threats came often. A number of times we had to call police because the fighting was so intense. It came to the point where we had to search students for weapons. Along with female teachers I was assigned the task of frisking female students.

I remember an incident when we went to Montgomery to visit my husband’s parents. Newspapers over the state had been carrying stories about the fighting at Shaw. Police had been called in to quiet a riot and this was the big news at that time. While we were visiting with one of the parent’s friends, I mentioned that I was a counselor in a high school in Mobile. The friends' reply was "Oh, I hope you aren't at Shaw High School where they are having so much trouble."

To add to my concern during this time was the fact that all three of our children were students in the Shaw school. Many of our friends took their children out of public schools. They felt learning couldn't take place in all the conflict. I admit academic learning did suffer. It was a matter of principle to my husband and me that we felt our children should not be removed from the reality of integration even if they did not receive the best academic training. What they missed in "book learning", they could maybe make up for  what they missed in lessons in human relations.

In 1970 I left Shaw High School to become a Pupil Personnel Counselor at Barton Academy which was the Mobile School Board's central office. In this position I "wore many hats" ranging from truant officer to school social worker. There were ten of us in this position, serving 60,000 students. Of the ten, five were black and five white.

            I will never forget my nine co-workers, especially the black ones because I learned so much from them. Our relationship was not always loving and kind because these women were dedicated to improving the educational status of their race. They were intelligent, educated, articulate and well prepared for their jobs. As time went by and we became trusting enough of each other that we could risk hard feelings, they spoke out with bitterness and anger. I did not realize until then how sheltered and naive I was. Often I left work feeling hurt that they had so much bitterness against me simply because I was white. I remember defending myself by saying, "Sure, your race has been mistreated but don't take it out on me, I didn't do it."

From them I also learned that there was an elite group within the black race just as it is in the white. Some of these women were among that group. They had experienced a much better education as a child than I had in my small elementary school. None of the five black women had their own children in public school as I did. Their children were all being educated in private schools.

It is interesting to make these comparisons but I would not want to leave the impression that we were always in conflict. I greatly admired these women. Our supervisor, (a black lady}, had the unfortunate experience of having her home hit by gun fire on more than one occasion. A cross was burned in her yard, and other threats were made, yet she never faltered. In later years after she retired, she was elected to the Mobile County School Board and served as president more than one term.

Although we "aired" our convictions and prejudices freely to each other, the ten of us grew very close and came to the defense of each other when needed. One of those times was when the old Central High School, an all black school, was still in operation on what was then called Davis Avenue (now known as Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive). We were working there at the time a shooting took place. We were told to evacuate. My car was parked on a side street and it was necessary for me to walk several blocks to it. Angry blacks lined the streets. One of my co-workers, said, " Helen, you can't go out there by yourself."  She walked with me to my car through that angry crowd and waited until I was locked in and had driven away. I knew that she would face ridicule for walking a "honkie" to her car.

Since our job description covered so many areas we were the ones called for in emergencies and there were many of them. When a confrontation or riot took place, we were sent to try to bring order. We received the nickname of "Mob Squad", named after a popular TV show at the time. It would take up too much space and time to try to mention the many instances on which we were called to respond, but I will mention three.

Problems were so bad that highly skilled race relations experts were brought in to train principals, teachers and us. We were in a training session at Vigor High School when a riot broke out. The "so called experts" quietly slipped out, drove to the airport and left Mobile. It was probably the closest they ever came to the real thing. That day I had my first experience with the police as my "enemy". This experience opened by eyes to what many black students were feeling. The riot became so bad that we had to the police. They came with a bad attitude, their bully clubs in hand, and ordered us to vacate all classrooms. We educators felt we could control our classrooms but we knew from experience that if we put a large group together the rioting would increase.

 The police informed us they were in charge. They threatened to put my supervisor and a number of central office personnel in their paddy wagon because they disagreed with them. That day I took a black student, who had glass in her eyes from broken windows, to the emergency room. It was also my responsibility to go to the home and tell her parents—not a pleasant task.

At another time students from a black area were bussed to Murphy High School in an attempt to make it racially integrated. There was a great amount of stress created by this situation. Rumors were out that on a certain day the black students planned a riot. Many teachers did not go to school that day. I was sent to take the class of one of those teachers. We had total chaos. Students were climbing in and out windows, fighting, throwing objects. A brick was thrown in my general direction (not sure it was intended for me) but it missed me. No one could reason with the students. I did not even kn