Ed Nelson
James Sears
Greg Walton
Brainerd home stands in 2019
David Everett
Born in 1952, James Sears is old enough to have been exposed to the last vestiges of the segregation era in Chattanooga while spending his younger years in St. Elmo.
He remembers sneaking off to watch from a distance a Ku Klux Klan rally, and also remembers that the Incline Railway station at the top of Lookout Mountain had separate water fountains. A restaurant that also still served black customers only at the back was also there.
He recalled that his mother, Vera Sears Moon, would take her children only to establishments where black people like them could gather with dignity. She also tried to make sure they still got to enjoy many of the positive offerings of Chattanooga, too, recalling they would have Easter picnics at Chickamauga Park.
“That’s what put a lot of things about civil rights in my mind because of our mom,” Mr. Sears recently recalled. “She has always been a strong woman. She wanted to expose us to as much as she could.”
That was part of the mindset when the family moved out to Greenwood Road in the Eastdale community near Tunnel and Wilcox boulevards in an area that was still mostly white. Mr. Sears went on to what was then Dalewood Junior High and then to Brainerd High in the fall of 1967 when the school still had only a handful of black students.
While Chattanooga and the rest of the country were changing due to civil rights gains and the integration of a number of places, panacea had still not been totally reached.
And at a place like Brainerd High, young teenagers were trying to navigate a rapidly changing world at a stage in life that was difficult enough on its own to figure out. As a result, additional problems seemed likely to result.
Throwing additional fuel to the fire was that the school was known as the Rebels, and Confederate flags and the playing of “Dixie” were part of the culture.
Yet another twist was that Brainerd was having one of its best football teams ever in 1969, and at a time when mostly white and mostly or all black teams had just started playing each other in what seemed to be friendly competition.
On Sept. 5, the predominantly white Brainerd Rebels traveled to Howard to play the Hustlin’ Tigers in front of what was described as nearly full stands.
With such stars as quarterback Freddie Rohrdanz, receiver Tom West and running backs Gary Belk, Joe Collins and Ed Nelson, Brainerd won, 12-0, over a Howard team coached by Fred White and quarterbacked by Lurone Jennings.
The next Friday at East Ridge’s Shanks Field, the Brainerd big man on campus -- Mr. Rohrdanz -- accounted for much of the scoring as the Rebels defeated the Pioneers, 27-0. One of East Ridge’s players was Chuck Strickland, who would later play for Alabama and coach Paul “Bear” Bryant.
Unknown to them at the time, the Rebels would surprisingly return to East Ridge’s stadium a few weeks later to play a Saturday afternoon game in an effort to quell any more trouble that was brewing.
On Sept 19, the Rebels enjoyed their first home game of the year, and the results were the same, as they moved to 3-0 with a 27-6 win over Soddy-Daisy. Allan Haggard scored two TDs and Bob Moseley recovered a fumble in the end zone for another score. Mr. Nelson had 182 yards rushing.
While everything was going well on the football field, such was not the situation in the school. And by the time the Rebels had their next game at home on Oct. 3 after a bye week, bedlam would result.
As Mr. Sears remembered, “There was always some racial tension, and it really, really escalated when we decided to voice our opinion.”
According to a story in the Chattanooga Times at the time, principal Ray Coleman, the successful former Brainerd football coach and a World War II infantry veteran, said the problems began during the pep rallies. He began to notice that black students were expressing displeasure or would walk out of the gym during the playing of “Dixie,” the school’s fight song.
He said in the newspaper that no black students or parents came to him to complain, but he decided to form a committee of black and white students to look at such issues as “Dixie” and the use of other Confederate symbols.
Apparently, that did little good.
Both Mr. Sears and Greg Walton, a black 11th-grader and a football player, remember that part of the escalation of tensions was due to enlightenment on the black students’ behalf.
“It got to the point where we started understanding a little more about racism and how it was connected to the Confederate flag and the playing of “Dixie,’ ” said Mr. Sears.
As a football player, Mr. Walton said the playing of “Dixie” and having a school mascot similar to what the Ole Miss Rebels had was initially to him just part of the fun of getting fired up over Brainerd football.
But then he said he had a conversation with student Albert Barnett. “He said, ‘Do you know what you are singing?’ ” remembered Mr. Walton. “He said, ‘I can’t get into it. I don’t wish I was in the land of cotton.’ And then I started looking at my friends, and they were sitting down.”
David Everett, a senior that year, admits that he can now see the black students’ perspectives of 1969 better and understands as a white person how they were upset. But at the time, he was just someone who had a deep love for Brainerd High School dating back to his younger days following the school’s sports teams and even getting to play sports like Dixie Youth baseball there.
"The whole community over there, we grew up as Rebels,” he said.
To him it was a school pride situation and not much else. He said his family had a black man who would do yard work for them, and he was treated with respect and even rode in the front seat of their car when they would pick him up.
Brainerd football player Ed Nelson, another senior that year, said he also grew up as a white youngster learning not to have prejudices. In fact, he jokingly added that everyone knew his progressive-thinking mother had cast the lone vote for the more liberal candidate when the Ridgeside precinct voting results would be listed in the paper the day after an election.
But he said that Chattanooga’s white community in 1969 collectively and generally had a mindset of racial prejudice, just as much of the rest of the South and others did. As an example, schools like Baylor, McCallie and Girls Preparatory School were just getting ready to admit black students, and some public schools in Hamilton County still had few to none.
“It was just as natural as apple pie,” he said of the racial perspective and still-segregated situation at the time.
But the world was changing, and Mr. Nelson – who had actually transferred from McCallie to Brainerd to play for coach Pete Potter and the then-better Rebel program -- said that Brainerd High had a greater influx of black students in 1969.
More black families were moving into the Brainerd area as they saw more opportunities, and many young black people were following the more confrontational push for more rights and opportunities for blacks.
All these factors would contribute to the flashpoint that occurred at the game against Riverside High at home on Oct. 3. In the contest, Joe Collins and Ed Nelson starred for the Rebels in the 27-6 win, while Vernon Pauls and Kenny Smith were among the defensive standouts.
But it was the activities in the stands that would be most memorable from that game.
Mr. Sears recalled that the black students, who had solidarity by this time, had made a decision to try and burn a Confederate flag they had at halftime of the game. However, as often happens with young people, the next few minutes did not go according to plan.
“One guy grabbed the flag at halftime, and took off with it,” Mr. Sears recalled. “He wasn’t supposed to do that. He was waving it on the cheerleader stand and stomping on it, and that’s when a fight broke out. He made all of us upset.”
Mr. Walton recalled other details. “A police officer showed up and grabbed the flag, and they couldn’t burn the flag. And as the kids were going back to their seats, the white patrons moved into the seats of the blacks. That was the beginning of the fights.”
It was not a pretty scene, and, as will be discussed in the next installment, it set off a very tense week the next week at Brainerd High and throughout the Brainerd community.
Jcshearer2@comcast.net
To see the previous story in this series, read here.
https://www.chattanoogan.com/2019/8/23/395071/John-Shearer-The-Brainerd-High-Crisis.aspx