Who We Are: Cameron High School Alumni (1957-71), Nashville's Last Generation of Segregated Education

By Gloria Thomas Pillow

Who We Are is a memoir--and a study--of a generation of Black youth (including the author) who were the last to be educated under the system of segregation. Specifically, it profiles the Cameron High School classes of 1957-71 in Nashville, Tennessee. Neither a scholarly treatise nor a sociological study, this is more precisely a recollection of events and behaviors and an exposition of the consequent issues, challenges, and life lessons that evolved from this circumstance. In six chapters, this book addresses the what, when, how, and why of who we are. To this end, the book explores the perfect storm created by the confluence of the city of Nashville, the institution of segregation, and Nashville's Black community and its adult role models--especially the parents and teachers, and the Cameron High School experience itself.

Who We Are revisits the Cameron High School of the 1950s and '60s and the profound impact of this school upon its students. As such, Cameron is emblematic of so many Black institutions of that era known for the incredible dedication of their faculty and their determination to prepare students to live full lives in the larger world as educated, respected, and respectful citizens of tomorrow. To provide a wider view of Cameron than the author's perspective alone, the final chapter includes essays from other Cameron students and faculty.

Who We Are is a thoughtfully crafted journey back in time with a hopeful view toward the future. Framed by racial realities of that era and informed by historical, sociological, and psychological reference, it is, above all, a story of perseverance and possibility.

Front cover pictures courtesy of J C Cannon, President, Cameron High Alumni Association

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662475061

Book preview

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Who We Are

Cameron High School Alumni (1957-71), Nashville's Last Generation of Segregated Education

Gloria Thomas Pillow

Copyright © 2022 Gloria Thomas Pillow

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-7505-4 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7506-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

My Cameron Experience

Reflections of Cameron

Memories of Cameron High School

It Takes a Village: The Love that Flowed

My Cameron Experience

A Great Impact

Cameron Memories

Those Who Made Us Who We Are

My Cameron High School Experience

Hail to Dear Cameron

In the Way of LBJ

From Good to Great

Swinging in the Bandroom

Road to Cameron

Epilogue

Notes

Endnotes

About the Author

To our parents and teachers:

Thank you for such great love, education, and dedication.

You pushed through challenge so that we could live in freedom.

Who We Are:

Cameron High School Alumni (1957–71),

Nashville's Last Generation of Segregated Education

We Are The Panthers.

The Mighty, Mighty Panthers.

Everywhere we go,

People want to know

Who We Are.

—Cameron High Cheer and Fight Song

Acknowledgments

Thank you, God, for such extraordinary life blessings!

Mom and Dad, your beautiful spirits are a part of me forever. You are deeply loved and always missed.

Thanks to my most extraordinary circle of family and friends whose support and love mean the world to me. My loving sisters Meggie and Pat, we are all for one and one for all. Ezra, Glenda, Grace, Toots, Carl, Gracie, Lish, Phil, and so many others—I am especially touched by the special kind of encouragement and validation you provide.

Thank you, my John Wesley Church family and my Cameron High School family, for such sustained love and inspiration. I depend on you.

I deeply appreciate the silent understanding I received from my Cameron family and others close to me when, unable to write, I set this then-unfinished manuscript aside for some years.

Claudith, dearest friend and keen-eyed editor, thank you for always being there. You are both angel and rock.

Ashley, I remember you telling me, "Aunt Glo, sometimes there is no subtext!" I try to keep this in mind in my critical thinking, reading, writing, and treatment of others.

My sis Geneva Smitherman, MSU Distinguished Professor Emerita, your inimitable spirit and writing inspire me and countless others.

Raven, my favorite (and only) granddaughter, I think we learned so much from each other while you were growing up. I'm so proud of the person you have become.

Dr. Holloway, gifted healer, thank you so much for walking with me through health challenges with such determination and sensitivity.

Thomas, my heart: life with you is golden. I don't love the aging process, but I do love growing old with you.

Introduction

High school is its own unique universe. For better or worse, it stands alone in function, texture, experience, association, drama, memory. There is simply no angst like high school angst, no pain like high school heartache, no highs or lows with quite the frenetic pulse of those we experience during those all-important developmental years when we strive so hard to be accepted, to be liked, to be at ease in our own skin. So much potential and so many buds of knowledge and character are developed and honed to almost full bloom in high school. (Certainly, it did for my generation, when there was no such thing as middle school.)

In addition to its already established generic uniqueness, virtually every high school further asserts its own individual exceptionality, including the specific school of which I write. But our school truly was extraordinary. The group whose experience I attempt to capture on these pages attended Cameron High School in Nashville, Tennessee, between 1957 and 1971. I am one of them. We were all at Cameron because all things Southern were segregated, and we are Black.

I left Nashville after graduation in 1965 to attend college in Atlanta. Exactly forty years later, in 2005, I married a high school friend and returned here to live. It was a most comfortable homecoming—a place of warmth, known landmarks, treasured memories, comfortable mobility, pleasant encounters, and longtime friends. At the same time, it was like emerging from some kind of metaphysical time capsule as I tried to take in the wonderment of it all. This was a world that I knew, and it was one that I knew not—both familiar and foreign, predictable and surprising: plus ça change… While the city had gradually but dramatically undergone significant changes, I had not been a material witness to its evolution.

Through active involvement with my high school alumni association and reconnections with childhood friends, certain perceptions began to coalesce in my awareness about us as a group. Over and again, I was struck by our similarities and commonalities, notwithstanding the significant differences in experiences we share and behaviors—both proactive and responsive—we exhibit. Most importantly, there is something in the way we think and the way we view and approach the world that compels analysis. Having spent forty years away from the city, I found that notions that might be taken for granted by longtime residents stood out to me in bas-relief. From that perspective have come the thoughts, the questions, the considerations, and the awareness of those ineffable but unmistakable somethings that distinguish us as a group from other senior citizens, other persuasions, and other generations—even other generations of Black people.

It is both tricky and dangerous to generalize when speaking of an entire group of entities—especially of the human sort: we are so varied and uncategorizable. But also, when speaking of any multifaceted unit, such generalization—by definition—is virtually inescapable. Much of this portrait is a chronicle of majority positions that are posited in the attempt to create a more rounded, more full-bodied profile. Such a profile almost necessarily excludes, for the most part, exceptions and deviations from the norm. The reality is that on virtually all fronts, individuals of the group in question fall at all points on any given continuum—educational, economic, moral, psychological, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and otherwise.

While such contrasts might seem self-evident, I think that they bear noting, even reiterating. That said, it is also true that the group of which I write is firmly grounded in a specific time and space that figured profoundly in the formation of our psyches. This narrative is not a scientific study based upon any great degree of measurable empirical data; it does, however, attempt to honestly represent—as closely as is possible—the purest essence of us, exceptions notwithstanding. Any misrepresentations, omissions, and perhaps even inadvertently misleading generalizations are solely attributable to the author.

By the same token, it would be misrepresentative to idealize the Cameron experience as universally powerful, uplifting, and life-changing to all its students. For a few, that time was simply a necessary evil, a way to pass the time, while life happened. Some of our group's most outstanding citizens today were then students in a holding pattern, admittedly doing just enough to get by, while others had negative experiences that overshadowed the positive ones. As individual Cameron students, our high school years fell on all gradations of the continuum from best to worst experience ever. But as a group, we are, even today, fiercely loyal to the school that played such a crucial role in our development. What follows is an earnest attempt to render a profile, in broad strokes, of a particular group of people at a certain moment in time whose history bears sharing and repeating, especially for all the meaningful lessons in human nature that it can impart. If only we beautiful but flawed human beings could internalize them, respect and learn from them, and share them with our children and our children's children.

This narrative explores the major factors that helped form us, mold our worldview, and create our unique yet universally relatable story. It considers the bizarre set of circumstances that governed our lives, the Herculean and heroic efforts of our parents, our teachers, and our community to build a firm foundation upon which our potential could blossom and flourish. It traces a coming-of-age process that encouraged the never-say-die attitude that distinguishes our purposeful stride from the much-less-self-conscious gait of today's youth. It conveys the ways in which we met and still meet challenges, anticipated or not. It addresses our identity issues, including our varying levels of self-esteem and grasp of a solid sense of self. It shares our triumphs and our failings, our sometimes-compromised understanding that we are a culture of great promise and worth, despite pervasive messages to the contrary from the larger racist, rigidly and unapologetically segregated world in which we lived.

This book aspires to be more than a memoir. It also hopes to honor and memorialize the composite inner character that drove an entire determined and committed generation to provide extraordinary care for and guidance to us, their children. It follows the distinctive and sometimes serpentine course of our coming-of-age path. Further, it examines the reasons for our particular racial history in an effort to identify and discourage negative behaviors and to encourage more positive ways of living in our diverse society.

Chapter 1 describes and comments on the group character of Cameron alumni today—especially the ways which can be directly linked by our community, city, and high school environments. Chapter 2 revisits the system of segregation and probes into its effects upon the entire culture; it also hopes to contribute to the dialogue about issues of race and to approach a better understanding and awareness of the awesome power of racism. The next chapter sketches the character of the city that helped to form our then-and-now present worldview: Nashville today and Nashville half a century ago, when we attended Cameron.

Chapter 4 centers on the generation before us—our parents, teachers, and other committed adults in our community—as those who raised us to be who we are. This segment underscores the communal approach that helped our elders position us to take advantage of a world of opportunity that they would never know but that they would, in some cases, die for in order that we might know it.

Chapter 5 focuses on Cameron, remembering our special high school years, concentrating on our major forces of influence (Black world, White world) whose contradictory impulses produced a distinct synergy that helped make us who we are. The final chapter brings memories, stories, anecdotes, and perceptions from other Cameron students and Cameron faculty to add depth, breadth, and fine strokes to this verbal portrait.

This book was written, and is presented, neither as