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I ¤nished R. B. Hudson High School May 24, 1957, in Selma, Alabama. There were a hundred and thirty of us in the class of 1957. The occasion was on Friday night at seven in the school auditorium. It was a time of great anticipation for all of us. I had waited a long time for this moment, for I would be the ¤rst one of my siblings to graduate from high school. Only two members of my immediate family were there, my mother and a ¤rst cousin. Many close friends came, however. I had an older brother who would have graduated from Snow Hill Normal and Industrial Institute, but he had been drafted into the army during World War II, and when he returned, he was not well. In fact, he died on October 11, 1947. Thus, on one level, I would be graduating for both of us. I had no idea about what I was going to do with my life after high school. In high school, I took the college prep course, but I did not have any money with which to attend college. One of my high school teachers—Mr. Harrison— made an effort to get me and some other young men into Knoxville College in Tennessee. In fact, he took us to visit the college one weekend, and he also made an effort to help us ¤nd work during the summer so that we would be able to attend college in the fall. He did not have to do this; he did it on his own, simply because he wanted to help some young black men get a college education. As I look back from the vantage point of forty-four years, the trip was a memorable one because it was only my third time outside of Alabama. We 4 / I Go to College Frank E. Moorer took the trip to Knoxville during the spring vacation of 1957. Mr. Harrison took the time for us to stop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we visited Lookout Mountain. There were three other young men on the trip: Josephus Wesly, Robert Lilly, and, I believe, Smiley. (I do not recall his ¤rst name.) I returned from Knoxville with college on my mind. As seniors, recruiters from many of the historically black colleges had visited our school and talked to us about attending their respective colleges. So, I had an idea of what was involved in going to college. I applied to three colleges: Knoxville, Morehouse, and Oakwood, and I was accepted by all three. Oakwood was the only Alabama school that I applied to. I had known about this small Seventh-day Adventist College in Huntsville all my life. Because my aunt, Lula V. Moorer, sent the college a twenty-¤ve dollar donation , the college sent her a yearbook, which she highly prized. The pictures of the students in the yearbook impressed me, too. In the meantime, school was out, and I went from the tiny hamlet, Pink’s Bottom, where we lived, to Birmingham, looking for a job. I went to live with my sister Lillie Pearl and her husband—without alerting them to the fact that I was coming. They were living in Washington Park near our cousins, Gertrude (Henderson) and Frank Robinson. I did not ¤nd a job that summer, but I did grow up some. For example, I tried to drive my brother-in-law’s 1951 Chevrolet, and I was doing pretty well until I tried to turn a corner. As I was turning the corner, I ran up on the sidewalk and hit a new, parked Buick. My brother-in-law, Jesse Moultrie, paid for the damages. I did look for a job, but I could not ¤nd one. I am sure I was looking in the wrong places. And too, I had no concept of what would be involved in working at a full-time job. I had had one job while in high school, washing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen at the Of¤cers Club on Craig Air Force Base in Selma. Thus in the summer of 1957, I was incredibly naive about the larger society in general and work in particular. Yet I was no stranger to work, for I had grown up in rural Dallas County, working on farms, chopping and picking cotton, and doing many other tasks. I just did not know how to go about ¤nding a job in what for me was a large city...

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