Full Text of the Excerpt

BOB GILGOR:

You say that the first day you went to the junior high school that you were scared.

SHEILA FLORENCE:

Oh yeah, I was scared to death. I didn't know what to expect.

BOB GILGOR:

Had anyone talked to you of helped you to understand what things would be like and how to handle them?

SHEILA FLORENCE:

My Mama did, I'm trying to think, did anybody else, that was with the integration group, they might have talked about how it was gonna be, but I don't really think so.

BOB GILGOR:

Were you afraid that you would be beat up or spit on?

SHEILA FLORENCE:

Oh yeah, I don't think I ever got spit on, but spit at, but not spit on I don't remember. But it was pretty bad. But it got better when other black people came

BOB GILGOR:

Strength in numbers?

SHEILA FLORENCE:

Oh yeah, that must be what it was.

BOB GILGOR:

Do you think the white students were afraid after you add a certain number of blacks there that there would be fight?

SHEILA FLORENCE:

I think that's what it was. They could pick on us few, give us a hard time, but after the next year, everybody else came and I think a lot of the students didn't, I think they still had Lincoln High School if I'm not mistaken, I don't know when they closed Lincoln, but I think that's when a lot of the blacks stopped going to school cause they didn't want to go to school with white people. That was the way I looked at it. Could be so, couldn't be so.