Sweetness_ The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton - Jeff Pearlman [21]
It started with the toilets.
During the two-week Christmas break, Columbia’s white parents and black parents were asked to offer their insights into the town’s new schooling setup. Beginning on January 5, 1970, the school system would, at long last, become fully integrated. Columbia High School would house black and white high school students, while Jefferson High would become the middle schools for both races.
Before the plan kicked in, however, a handful of white parents made a demand: Every one of Jefferson High School’s toilet seat covers needed to be replaced. “That’s how screwed up the thinking was,” said Tommy Barber, a white student at Columbia High. “Like white people didn’t mess up toilet seats, too.”
“It was interesting,” adds Fred Idom, a black teacher who transferred from Jefferson High to Columbia High. “When the schools were separate, whites insisted everything was equal and that we needed to stop our complaining. But as soon as the ruling came down, they renovated Jefferson and fixed it up so it would be ready for the whites.”
The first physical act of integration took place on December 27, 1969, when four remaining members of Jefferson High’s varsity basketball team—including Walter—and seven remaining members of Columbia High’s varsity basketball team congregated in the Columbia High gymnasium to become one. The meeting occurred on an otherwise forgettable Saturday morning, and was—for lack of a better word—awkward. The whites mingled on one side of the gymnasium, the blacks on the other side. Ned Eades, Columbia High’s coach, forced all the boys to shake hands. They did so, but haltingly. A former minor league baseball player, Eades was—by Mississippi standards—open-minded about integration. If the black players could help win some games, he was all for it.
The sounds that day were familiar ones—sneakers squeaking against a wood floor, dribbling reverberating off the walls—but the faces were not. Walter Payton, all of sixteen years old, was the only black kid some of the whites had heard of; a football supernova whose name was increasingly recognizable within the town’s borders. “When Coach pulled us together to tell us the blacks would be joining us to integrate, we were all very skeptical,” recalled Don Bourne, a white member of the basketball team. “I was a starter at forward, and my biggest fear wasn’t having to play with blacks—it was losing my position.”
Much has been written about Walter Payton’s role in Columbia’s integration, and how his skills as a football player broke down certain barriers. What goes overlooked, however, are those early days on the court. An undisciplined ball hog lacking range and court savvy, Payton was hardly the best of the four blacks to come over from Jefferson (that honor belonged to the unforgettably named Myjelious Mingo, a six-foot-six center who owned the post). But his value as a disarming presence was invaluable. By the completion of that first meeting, Payton was cracking on white teammates he’d never before met and black teammates he’d known forever. “He was smiling the whole time—just a warm guy at a difficult moment,” said Roger Mallatte, a white basketball player. “If he was uncomfortable being there with us, it never showed. I think most of us left that first day feeling much more comfortable about what was happening. If all the black guys were like Walter Payton, we’d be OK.”
Nine days later, on the morning of January 5, 1970, the town’s blacks and whites woke up to a new world. The sun officially rose at 7:03 A.M. The temperature would reach a high of fifty-seven degrees, with a slight breeze from the north and nary a cloud in the sky. Whether people liked it or not, beginning on that Monday, Columbia High School was an integrated facility of learning.
Based upon a handful of highly publicized integration standoffs—most famously James