Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210005
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: G-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIENNE BEE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``My father was a deacon in the church and he taught me that all men were created equal and we're supposed to respect our brothers and sisters,'' Walker says. ``What I saw was quite contrary to the Constitution and what my father had told me and it made me upset, quite upset.''
The first day of school in Floyd, Walker remembers " very well, the pressure, the mental pressure of going inside.'' He also remembers the faces.
Going from the all black Christiansburg Institute to Check, Walker remembers ``the awareness of being unwanted.''
It was the faces that imprinted in Walker's memory that first day.
``The state troopers standing there'' Walker says. ``Their expressions told you `this is my job, that's the only reason I'm here.'''
Floyd Deputy Sheriff J.A. Gillenwaters had recently told a reporter, "Let them go to their own school like they been doing."
``There was some name calling from both students and parents, they made certain sounds and noises,'' Walker remembers. ``Not on the first day but you heard it later.'' He also recalls nights when people would drive up to their family home ``hollering things sometimes.''
Today Walker lives in Copper Hill, a community just four miles down U.S. 221 from Check. ``Floyd County today is a very friendly place with friendly people,'' Walker says of the place he's called home again since 1990. ``Everyone still throws up their hand and speaks to me. The banks trust people. I think of Floyd as a haven.''
Walker thinks about 50 percent of the white students wouldn't have cared ``one way or the other'' about playing sports or attending dances with the new black students, but realized ``if Floyd had allowed us to play sports there wouldn't have been anyone to play against because other counties wouldn't participate with us.''
Walker remembers assimilating into the social scene. ``By senior year I was drinking beer with the boys'' he says with a smile. "We learned to live together."
Linda Thomson remembers Walker then. ``J.D. fit in great, he was a real nut." Seeing him frequently around town she laughs and says, "He still is."
She also says someone ``forgot to invite him to the last reunion'' and ``I really got on them about that.''
There were white students like Thomson, who, Walker remembers, ``tried to be as nice and as kind as could be.''
In 1968 Walker remembers standing in the railroad station of Norfolk Southern where he's been employed to this day. ``There was still two of everything, lunch counters, bathrooms, only the colored and white tags had been removed,'' Walker says. ``I remember someone younger asking me why there were two bathrooms on each side and I had to tell him `because at one time you wouldn't have been allowed to go into one of them.'"
Walker carried his father's determination to stand up for his rights with him when he left Floyd for Virginia State College in Petersburg.
``I found myself coming into the same thing I left'' Walker says as he tells of his involvement in the civil rights movement in college. "The police put dogs on us, there were sit-ins, I got pushed, shoved, treated rough but never went to jail.''
Looking back to 1960, Walker says ``we were merely trying to do the best we could, to make the grades. We had to illustrate we weren't animals or cannibals, that we were human beings like everyone else who had the ability to learn.''
by CNB