[The interview was conducted at the residence of Mr. Baugh's mother. In the opening part of the tape, the statement of purpose is read and interview procedures are discussed. This takes approximately 1 minute and 40 seconds of tape time. The transcript picks up with the biographical portion of the interview. Ed.]
Interviewer: The name of the interviewee?
T. Baugh: Tony R. Baugh, Sr.
Interviewer: And your birthdate?
T. Baugh: [1954].
Interviewer: Your place of birth?
T. Baugh: Richmond, Virginia.
Interviewer: What was your father's occupation?
T. Baugh: My father was a brickmason.
Interviewer: And your mother.
T. Baugh: She was a housewife.
Interviewer: How many brothers and sisters did you have.
T. Baugh: I have two sisters and three brothers.
Interviewer: And, older or younger?
T. Baugh: I have two older brothers, two older sisters and one younger brother.
Interviewer: And, did you go to kindergarten?
T. Baugh: Yes, I did.
Interviewer: What school?
T. Baugh: It was St. Gerard's Catholic kindergarten.
Interviewer: And elementary school?
T. Baugh: For the first grade, I went to Blackwell Annex, which is in the 2400 block of Bainbridge Street, and then I was transferred to Franklin Elementary School on Midlothian Turnpike in 1961. Previous to that time, Franklin was an all white elementary school and then another school was built for them. So it became open and they transferred us from Blackwell Elementary School.
Interviewer: Which grade did you get transferred?
T. Baugh: I was in the first grade. In other words I stayed in the first grade at Blackwell Elementary School, I guess now in today's terms, half a semester. And then for the rest of the year they transferred us, in the middle of the year, to Franklin Elementary School.
Interviewer: How about junior high school?
T. Baugh: I went to James H. Blackwell Junior High School.
Interviewer: That's also located here?
T. Baugh: That's located on Everett Street, at 16th and Everett Street.
Interviewer: How about high school?
T. Baugh: I went to George Wythe High School on Midlothian Turnpike in Richmond.
Interviewer: College?
T. Baugh: I went to Virginia State College in Petersburg.
Interviewer: And you also went to graduate school?
T. Baugh: Yes, in 1988-1990, I went to Golden Gate University. The main campus is in San Francisco, California, but I met my coursework at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia.
Interviewer: What sorts of degrees did you get from college?
T. Baugh: At Virginia State University, I received a B.S. in Business Administration. From Golden Gate University, I received an M.B.A. in management.
Interviewer: And your current occupation or previous occupations?
T. Baugh: My previous occupations--I was an administrator at Virginia State University for nine years. I was an accountant with the Richmond OIC, Inc. for a year and I was a traffic technician at the Highway Department for a year. Specific dates coming from college, when I first graduated from Virginia State in 1978, I received a position as assistant manager of G.C. Murphy's in Hampton, Virginia and that last until January of 1979 when I worked for the highway department from 1979 through 1980, and then Richmond OIC from 1980 and then Virginia State in 1981-1989.
Interviewer: And currently?
T. Baugh: Currently, I'm a substitute teacher and I work part-time in a clothing store.
Interviewer: Do you have any sort of religious affiliation?
T. Baugh: Yes, I'm a Christian.
Interviewer: How many children do you have?
T. Baugh: I have two children. [edit].
Interviewer: You obviously don't have any grandchildren? [Laughter].
T. Baugh: No, not yet.
Interviewer: How long have you been living in this house?
T. Baugh: I was born in this house in 1954. And I have lived here all my life. I had a previous stay after college in Petersburg, Virginia for nine years and my wife and I separated and I came back to live again at this address.
Interviewer: So concludes the biographical data. Now we will begin the interview. We will begin the interview with your early childhood experiences. When you were a small child, before you went to school, what were some of your earliest memories about your childhood?
T. Baugh: Some of my earliest memories were, I guess growing up and the environment. See the advantage was I had older sisters and brothers and so by coming as number 5, I was sort of afforded a lot of opportunities to see them grow up in front of me and go through different things, so the house was always in motion. In other words, what I mean, there were teenagers and I was a little kid. Now, my first memories was playing with my older brothers and sisters and that's basically it--and playing with my friends. Establishing friendships.
Interviewer: How were your neighborhood institutions, such as your church, other things, important to you as a child?
T. Baugh: Very impnrtant. My neighborhood was very close-knit. There were families--you knew every family in the neighborhood. Neighborhoods were closer then. People trusted one another. There was a congenial feeling between each family to look out for the child. If the child did something wrong, it was reported to the parent, the parents corrected the child, so there was a lot of congruency as far as a stabilized environment. In other words, you didn't go out in the streets and just do anything without getting corrected for it, even by your mother's friends or your father's friends. So, everybody knew you. Everybody knew that I was a Baugh because they knew my mother and they knew her sister and my father's people. It was that type of environment. So, it was a close-knit umbrella as far as protection and everything.
Interviewer: You said "then." So you mean now that, even in this community, it's changed? It's not as close- knit as it used to be?
T. Baugh: No. No, it's not.
Interviewer: How?
T. Baugh: Now, most of the people that live in this neighborhood now are senior citizens. There kids have grown up, they have moved on into their professions. They have moved out of the city or on to other parts of the country and that congruency, as far as the neighborhood, isn't there anymore. You still have people who have mutual friends around the neighborhood but you have new infiltration of people who come in and influenced the community in a different way now. As far as the church is concerned, the church was the center of the community. That was the place for activities, that was the place you went for stabilization as far as your friendships, as far a growth in your religion, and it had a very important influence on the family.
Interviewer: Was there a certain church?
T. Baugh: In this family, it was Second Baptist Church on Pilkington Street, which was started by my great-grandfather. He was one of the founders. There was a split group that came from First Baptist Church on Decatur Street.
Interviewer: Around what time was it founded?
T. Baugh: Around the turn of the century.
Interviewer: Some of your childhood playmates--did you have any playmates of another race?
T. Baugh: No.
Interviewer: Strictly black children?
T. Baugh: All black children. The only time that we ever saw a child of another race is when we ourselves would go into another neighborhood. And there really weren't any orientals or anyone else like that, it was either white kids or black kids. And on the other side of Semmes Avenue it was white kids, and down Porter Street towards the river, it was white kids; on the other side of Hull Street it was black kids. So, the network was that; all that was in my environment was black children.
Interviewer: Now, you said your family, your brothers and sisters, had a great deal of influence on you as a child. What sort of influence did they have in regards to school and the importance of school?
T. Baugh: Following them through school, especially Blackwell Junior High School, they set the precedent. Therefore, when I came along, I had to meet that precedent.
Interviewer: So, obviously, they did well in school?
T. Baugh: Yes. And, that was a goal of this household that every child completed their education. And not only completed their education, but performed well in school and so when I got to school, whether it was Franklin Elementary or Blackwell, the teachers knew that she was a top student--my sister that was fifteen months in front me was a top student. And so the standard was set, so you performed. And that's the way the teachers were at Blackwell. They required that you performed or else. [Laughter].
Interviewer: When you went to Blackwell, you had all black teachers or were there ... ?
T. Baugh: Had all black teachers.
Interviewer: But when you went to the elementary school...
T. Baugh: Had all black teachers.
Interviewer: Also in Midlothian after the....
T. Baugh: Well, George Wythe was my high school. I had white teachers at that time, because that was after bussing. Up to the ninth grade, schools were still segregated, for me. In 1969 I was in the ninth grade and in 1970 I went into the 10th grade and I was going to Armstrong because Armstrong and Maggie Walker were the only two black schools. Coming up as a black kid, you made a decision to go to either Maggie Walker or Armstrong. Families had been split because of that, you know. And so I had decided to go to Armstrong because I wanted to pursue sports there and Armstrong was an academic school. I wanted to go there, you know, I thought I could get challenged academically. But I was bussed to George Wythe. George Wythe was historically built in 1960, was built for the white kids of Southside.
Interviewer: I see.
T. Baugh: And, they used to have their homecoming parade right here at Fonticello Park right up here where the homecoming queen would come down, or whatever. But I was never interested in the red, white and blue bulldogs up there. I was interested in the orange and blue at Armstrong because it was a family tradition. The same thing with Virginia State, it was a family tradition. And the bussing sent me to George Wythe.
Interviewer: Now, you said that during first grade you were transferred to a previously all-white elementary school?
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: Were there white teachers there?
T. Baugh: No. The staff was completely [black], the principal all the way down to the janitor was black.
Interviewer: How do you feel about your early education in comparison to other students--other children--in Richmond?
T. Baugh: I feel pretty good about it.
Interviewer: Feel good?
T. Baugh: Yeah. One of the things that was a misconception about coming up through a black environment with all black teachers and everything. Because this society has such a negative image as far as black education, those misconceptions--I only ran into a problem with those misconceptions once I got to George Wythe. Franklin School had excellent teachers, teachers that took time to develop you and your skills as well as Blackwell. Just to give you an example about Blackwell, Blackwell was a model junior high school. It was run with a strict hand and the teachers really cared about you but they were hard. I mean, they were strict. I mean, they made you work. And, when they closed Blackwell down after bussing began, every teacher in Blackwell went to the high school level, and some of them did go to George Wythe. And some of the kids that met some of the teachers from Blackwell found out that they were really very good, they were good. I mean, they were hard, but they made you work your tail off for your grades. Blackwell had a very high grading scale. To get an "A" at Blackwell Junior High School, you had to score 96 or above, which was not the same with other city schools. It was very hard. But when you earned an "A" at Blackwell you earned an "A", or when you earned a "B" you earned a "B". There was no pushing you through, which was a fallacy that was developed about black education. At that time, if the black community, it was the goal of every family to push their kids to excel in education. That's Blackwell in a nutshell. You want me to discuss the problems I ran into at George Wythe?
Interviewer: Yeah, I was going to ask you about it. You said there were the misconceptions were realized once you went to George Wythe.
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: Could you go into further detail?
T. Baugh: When I went to George Wythe, they put me in a general course curriculum, which is not college prep curriculum, and I went in to talk to the counsellor. He was white, and he assumed--no one had ever called me in to talk about my classes--he assumed that I wanted just to finish high school. And I told him I wanted to go to college, I wanted to be in academic prep. Well, he said, `Well you need the following things. You need chemistry, you need physics, you need algebra,' and several other things he named to me. Then I told him I had physics at Blackwell, I had chemistry at Blackwell, I had biology at Blackwell and also I had the highest standard of English that was taught in the city of Richmond. And, then he really looked at my transcripts. He said, "Oh, you have had those, haven't you?" And that was the first barrier I ran into. And I told him that I was going to pursue college so he put me in academic course work. But it wasn't until the eleventh grade, so when I graduated, I still had a general diploma. Because I missed a year because of that error. Also, in dealing with [another] counsellor, [one who] was black, in the twelfth grade she told me I couldn't go to college because of my past background, [that] I hadn't had the full amount of courses for academia or whatever, and she was wrong. It was obvious that she was wrong because I have an MBA, also a college degree.
Interviewer: What do you think the reason was she told you that? Just because of your course work or because you were black?
T. Baugh: Because I was black and they felt that a black male, that most of them, would never achieve anything in this society. Basically, that's how they guided you, unless you were exceptional. If you showed yourself to be exceptional, then they would push you into an academic field. Whereas, I feel if I had went to Armstrong, that would have never happened, because they knew the reputation of a Blackwell, they already knew what standards were already set, and I have always felt that I never would have run into those type barriers. But I guess that bussing was a two-edged sword. And so, by sending me to George Wythe, I ran into those type of academic problems. But they didn't slow me down any.
Interviewer: Can we get some of the dates, starting from your elementary school all the way through high school?
T. Baugh: I began elementary school in the fall of 1960, September, 1960, and that lasted through the Spring of 1967, which was June of 1967. I started Blackwell Junior High School in the fall, September of 1967, and I finished Blackwell Junior High School in June, 1970. I started George Wythe in September of 1970, and I finished George Wythe in June of 1973.
Interviewer: And what year did you transfer to Franklin Elementary School?
T. Baugh: It was my first year. We met at Blackwell Elementary Annex, which was a small building built for the kids who lived in the upper part of South Side, not in what they call the Blackwell area now. We lived above the Jefferson Davis Highway boundary. And in the middle of that year, it was around October of 1960, they transferred us to Franklin Elementary School, and my duration at Franklin Elementary School lasted until June of 1967.
Interviewer: What was the reason for the transfer?
T. Baugh: Well, Franklin Elementary School was an all-white school, and that neighborhood [had] become predominantly black, which is right off Midlothian Turnpike, the Blake Lane area. Because of that, they had to bring the kids in to Franklin Elementary School, so they built a new school for them. I'm sorry I don't remember what school it was, but at the time they vacated the school, they felt that they needed to give the black kids in this area an elementary school and that's when we were transferred to Franklin Elementary. Blackwell Annex was overcrowded, it had six trailers which are like the trailer homes, and that's where they were holding classes for kids. Plus, the building itself didn't have but about 8 to 10 classrooms. And they had the trailers, so it was overcrowded and it couldn't handle the capacity of the children of this area.
Interviewer: Let me ask you something about the facilities at Blackwell Annex as opposed to those at Franklin?
T. Baugh: Okay. Blackwell Annex, it was overcrowded. All the classes had a lot of kids in them. We didn't have a library. If we went to a library, it was like a field trip. We would go to like the public library downtown. We didn't have a cafeteria to eat in. We ate at our desks. As far as morale, I don't think the moral was very high with the teachers at that time. But, they made do with what they had. And as far as Franklin School, when we went to Franklin it was a larger facility, larger classrooms, more classrooms, with a complete cafeteria; it had an extension for the first grade which was almost larger than the Blackwell Annex itself. And they had a gymnasium, a larger controlled school yard area and the facilities were much better. One distinct thing, though, that we always noticed as kids is that if we got any type of lab equipment or books, it had been used two or three times before us. And the way we knew that is because the names were always signed in them as they were issued. So when we got them, we were like the fourth or fifth person signing our name. And it never was explained to us. In other words, we were getting all the earlier editions of whatever subject it was.
Interviewer: At the time, did that make any difference to you or did you realize ... ?
T. Baugh: Yeah, we realized it. I mean, the kids realized it. We realized we were not getting the up-to-date materials and books for classroom time.
Interviewer: Did you ever discuss that with your teachers?
T. Baugh: The teachers discussed it with us and to let us know what was exactly happening and why this was happening. It was explained to us.
Interviewer: What was their reason? Just that the white kids got the new books?
T. Baugh: Well, they never lashed out at anyone; they never blamed anyone, but they did let us know that with what we had, we were going to still get a good education and that was the key thing.
Interviewer: Once you moved on to George Wythe, how were the facilities there compared to the traditional black schools such as Blackwell Annex and Blackwell Junior High?
T. Baugh: Well, Blackwell Junior High, again, was a crowded situation. A lot of the classes were large, and the building itself was inadequate for what we had, as far as the numbers of pupils. Blackwell, in itself, was very organized. It had to be because of the sheer numbers that they were dealing with. Because Blackwell was absorbing all the black children in South Side Richmond, and South Side Richmond was a pretty good-sized place. And the facilities at Blackwell, we had a gymnasium, we had freshman clubs, we had science clubs, we had different clubs and activities, and there was development academically. But, the facilities when I went to George Wythe is like night and day. When I went to George Wythe, it was a humongous, modern facility. To walk around George Wythe from class to class for a day, when you come home, you have to take a nap. It's a huge place. And it has a gymnasium that seats 1500 people. It was just a different type of atmosphere. You could tell, even to the place where I played athletics, the type of athletic dress, the things that were available, the sweatsuits that we put on. You could tell there was a definite difference, that there was money being poured into that school. The facilities were excellent, and the lab equipment was excellent. It was not used lab equipment; it was brand new down to the experiment flask.
Interviewer: So the books, everything else was also brand new?
T. Baugh: Everything else, yes.
Interviewer: You mention that there was two sorts of curriculums. One was a general curriculum, one was a college prep.
T. Baugh: There were really three curriculum: there was general, standard, and there was college prep, and college prep was the top of the line. That's where you received the latest math, English, science. And George Wythe is known for its athletics, but it's also known for its academics. It was one of the top academic schools in Central Virginia. It won several debate tournaments, academic tournaments, which they have a showcase just for those trophies, for the state of Virginia. This is before I got there, and after I was there. And a few people know about that. But it was known for academics, also.
Interviewer: Now, you mentioned that you played football, basketball, baseball in high school. Do you think that had any effect on which curriculum you were directed towards?
T. Baugh: Not really.
Interviewer: Because in today's society, the "jock" is perceived as not being very academically oriented.
T. Baugh: Not really.
Interviewer: Not at that time?
T. Baugh: No. I don't think that had any influence. I think the color of my skin had more influence that anything else.
Interviewer: About your high school experience -- what did you like most or dislike?
T. Baugh: I liked most the academic challenge that George Wythe gave me. There was stimulus there. There was a period of change and it's sort of hard to put it in words, I disliked the most, I guess, the turmoil that was going on. There was a lot of turmoil, a lot of racial tensions. There were a lot of kids who are working at Philip Morris now, who are working at A.H. Robins now, who were guided that way, but yet they were intelligent enough to go to college and be professional in some field. But they did not obtain that dream, because they were not guided that way. They were guided according to an assumption. With me, I was independent enough just to take my own steps. But I think if anything that I really dislike that I think about in the past, is how many guys who were my friends, who went to school with me, who are out here working at construction sites, digging ditches, who really could have been a contributor, a major contributor, to the community. But it was assumed that they couldn't, they didn't have the intelligence level or the wherewithal to really accomplish anything academically.
Interviewer: Just because they were black?
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: Now, it must been quite a big change or quite a big difference going from Blackwell Junior High School after ninth grade to an integrated school with white children at George Wythe. Was that you first contact with white kids?
T. Baugh: In that setting, yes. The only other setting I really had contact with white kids was with baseball. And, when I went to George Wythe, it was totally different having class with white kids. And that first year, George Wythe was about 50-50, white and black. By the time I graduated, it was less 25% [white because] most of the white kids were taken out of George Wythe and they were sent to St. Catherine's, Benedictine, Collegiate.
Interviewer: Was that a private school or public school?
T. Baugh: Those are three private schools, parochial schools, yes.
Interviewer: Now you said that you had contact with them through baseball. Would that be through recreational or youth league?
T. Baugh: Yeah. When I was four years old, I began to play baseball. That's when I played my first organized baseball. I don't really want to get off the track with this, [but] I played down at the field behind Blackwell Annex, and we couldn't afford baseball gloves, so the way we used to play, we used to find round rocks out in the alley out here. And I used to sneak in here and take two of my daddy's lunch bags, (my mother's listening now [laughter]), and all the other guys would do the same thing and shape them like a glove, and we used [them] to catch round rocks. We became very good at doing that, because you didn't want your eye to get knocked out [laughter]. So we would throw rocks. She can tell you [indicating his sister], I could throw a rock and I could knock a cat out [laughter] from a good distance, because we became good that way. We would play in that alley out there. Then, the city had a pretty strong recreation and parks system, so we went down to the Annex and they organized us into a team. They had pee-wees, which was 4-7; then they had the midgets; then they had the juniors; and then the seniors. Seniors were like guys of high school age. That second year, I think I was 5 or 6, we won the city championship as pee-wees. The only thing we ran into as a problem was they wouldn't let us play the white teams. We so badly wanted to play the white teams, and they wouldn't let us. So, one year, which [was] 1966, [when] I was 11, [I] was [in] the midgets, and we had a pretty good team. We didn't have enough for Blackwell Annex, so Mr. Smith, who was a gym teacher at Blackwell, came up here and recruited us and he put us with the boys down at what we call "the ball diamond" on Maury Street. I don't know the official name for the park, Blackwell Park down on Maury Street, and he put us together and he sat down and told us that it probably wouldn't be a team in Richmond that would beat us. So we played and we did lose one game that year, but it was an experience, because we had to really scramble to get our baseball gloves. And if you had spikes, it's like you were top of the hill, because most of us just had tennis shoes. And our uniforms -- we didn't have a uniform. The best Mr. Smith could do for us was get us a baseball cap. And, we had a baseball cap and we had a white t-shirt and bluejeans and sweatsocks and tennis shoes. No cups, [but] we did have protective helmets and we had bats. A lot of that stuff was donated, but we were determined to win. We played different teams around the city, [such as] Clark Springs, (and] we played Lucksfield in Church Hill, Chimborazo in Church Hill, [and] Murray Scott (which was the team that beat us), which was in Northside. And we played those different teams and this was in the summer of 1966. And Mr. Smith was very strict on us. If you cursed, you paid a quarter and the quarter went to buying chewing gum for the games, so you know there were a lot of quarters. He had a jar full of money. The little boys that I came up with, we were sort of loose with the words. A lot of them were very mean, but they were controlled and they put their temper into playing sports. A lot of them went on to play college; a few pro ball. Some went on to be definite stars in high school. That particular year, the reason I'm staying on 1966, this particular year I believe will probably bring some things out for you. I think my daddy bought me a baseball glove. This was the first one we bought. And we used to take the, gloves and break them in. And the way we broke them in, because we couldn't afford the oils and everything, so we would use our mother's juice from kale when she cooked kale. We used that and three-in-one oil. And we broke the glove in that way. Hang it out on the line, let it bake in the sun with that oil and stuff on it and it would emulate any movement of your hand. In other words, we had to improvise in different things. The money and funds weren't there for recreational type stuff like that and the only time we got to play with a uniform, a full uniform, which were borrowed from Mr. Charlie Sidney, because he worked at Philip Morris and he had teams that played softball and so he had Philip Morris sponsoring him. So he had everything, but he let us use the uniforms that particular year because we played for the championship against Clark Springs. when you made it to the championship, you played at Parker Field which is [now] the Diamond, which was a big thing. We won the city championrhip that year. They wouldn't let us play the white champions; they didn't let us cross boundaries like that. Only the black teams played the black teams, and the white teams played the white teams, but we knew that we were good and we knew we could probably beat their butt, but we never found out. Anyway, we played at Parker Field and we had to play 6 innings or an hour...
Interviewer: Whichever came first?
T. Baugh: Whichever came first. Whereas the white teams played the full time--7 innings. And you are aware of all these type things and it bothered us, but it didn't bother that bad because we won the championship. And I am just trying to show you how things were structured, even with sports. This area right here produced a lot of top athletes, especially in baseball, basketball and football. But I just wanted to show you, that's just one season, that was a championship season. And we won several championship seasons. In 1969, they began to see teams mixed a little bit more. Barriers started dropping a little bit, but it didn't make that much difference.
Interviewer: When you mean mixed, you mean white and black players on the same team?
T. Baugh: They started letting us play white teams.----Slinner Hill and teams like Ampthill, they were white teams.
Interviewer: So that was your first contact with white kids before high school?
T. Baugh: Yes, right before high school. Some of those guys played in high school with me. Some played at Armstrong because they had started sending them over to Armstrong, also.
Interviewer: When you started high school, did the black kids stick-together at George Wythe or was there sort of a ... ?
T. Baugh: The black kids hung with the black kids and the white kids hung with the white kids. And then there were some who would form relationships that were mutual relationships.
Interviewer: Were there a lot of racial tensions within the student body?
T. Baugh: Yes, there was. A lot of racial tension. One time in particular, when I was in the tenth grade, in September, I never figured out why they allowed Gerard X. Green to come speak at my school, but he came and he spoke. And that wasn't a good day.
Interviewer: I'm not familiar with ... ?
T. Baugh: El-Amin, the lawyer El-Amin. Yale law graduate. The lawyer's name is Sa`ad El-Amin and he came and spoke on the student body and bussing. Basically what he said, to put it in a nutshell, he said the guards and everything that they had at George Wythe was not there to protect the black kids; they were there to protect the white kids because the City of Richmond was insecure that the black kids would beat up the white kids or whatever, which was not a true statement, but it turned out to be a true statement because fights broke out. A lot of white kids got up and walked out. That caused problems. And you had a lot of fighting in the halls and by 12:00, by lunch time, parents' cars were lined up on Crutchfield Street as far as you could see, parents coming to get their kids out because Channel 12 came down and did a live report that they had rioted at George Wythe because of the bussing, blah, blah, blah. So after that, St. Catherine's, Benedictine's and Collegiate's [local private schools] enrollment went up considerably, and George Wythe's white population dropped to about 30%, and less than 25% by my senior year. By the time my baby brother graduated I think George Wythe was like 90% black.
Interviewer: So probably the only white students there couldn't afford private school?
T. Baugh: Yes, exactly.
Interviewer: And what year did you say your younger brother graduated?
T. Baugh: My brother graduated in 1978. So between 1973 and 1978, the white population at George Wythe dropped considerably.
Interviewer: As you said, you expected your high school education to be more college preparatory when you went through?
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: And what subjects turned out to be the most valuable for you at George Wythe?
T. Baugh: Math, English, history, government. I had one teacher, bless her heart, when I was in the 10th grade. We were taking earth science. I was a science person. I read every encyclopedia we had here. You know, I was science-type person. And I had had a lot of stuff at Blackwell that she was teaching. And she gave a test and I aced her first three tests. And I used to sit in the back of the class. And there were other black guys who were sitting in the back of the class that used to play a lot. So she assumed that I was with them. And this teacher was white. And so she used to give me a lot of f lack. But after I started acing her tests, she actually asked me was I cheating. So she sat me in front and gave me one test over. I don't think they even know this, that she gave me another test over and I aced that one, too. And I got an "A" out of her class, but that turned me off. And she was a white teacher and that wasn't a good thing for me. Because after that, I was very suspicious of white teachers because she wasn't assessing me by my academics, she was assessing me by the color of my skin. It was a bad experience.
Interviewer: When you went to George Wythe initially you said it was 50-50, black and white student body?
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: How was the teacher ratio? Was it all white teachers initially?
T. Baugh: I think two-thirds were black and one-third was white.
Interviewer: That's when you started?
T. Baugh: Yes. And my coaches, when I first went there in the 10th grade, were white. My football coach was white. He couldn't relate to the black players. He left after that year. The baseball coach was very prejudiced. He stayed there [during] my term at George Wythe. He was one of the reasons why I didn't play baseball right away, because we knew as far as his attitude--I mean he was outright boisterous about it--and so that was one of the reasons why I didn't excel in baseball like I should have. That's one of the reasons why one of the guys who played on the 1966 team, he didn't go to Wythe, he went to Armstrong. He changed to his grandmother's address and went to Armstrong. Sometimes I wish I had a grandmother; I wanted to do the same thing, but I wasn't afforded that. All my grandmothers lived in this side. So, I got stuck. And he went to Armstrong. He was All-Metro, he was everything in football, everything in baseball. Lavelle Stanley is his name. And he wanted me to come to Armstrong with him, but it was no way I could get there. We knew about "Coach ---" before we got to Wythe. We knew he was prejudiced, we knew he strictly liked white boys playing for him, but he was a good coach. I probably could have learned a lot of things from him, because he coached in the pros on the farm level. The lowest George Wythe finished in baseball when I was there was #3 in the state, [and they] played for the championship several times. He knew his stuff, but he was hard to play for, [and] if you were black, it was even harder. So a lot [of students] that eventually played for him, they went to the farm level A teams, AA team, and AAA teams. Eventually, when I did go out and play for him, I started and I lettered in the first seven games. You have to get a certain amount of innings to letter, and I lettered in the first seven games. [Later] he came to me and he apologized, [saying] he was really sorry that he didn't follow up on me when I first got to George Wythe because he said he felt that I probably could have played pro ball. So that barrier was there, and it was not all his fault. There were some of my prejudices, also. It was a two-way street. That's where that ball rolls. That's life.
Interviewer: Did the teachers, as the white kids started to leave George Wythe, did the white teachers also start filtering out?
T. Baugh: The coaches did first, then some of the white teachers hung in there. We didn't lose that many white teachers. They stayed, most of them. As matter of fact, a lot of them are still there now.
Interviewer: It was just the white students?
T. Baugh: Yes, the students. it was a great exodus. My English teacher left. Miss Alot. She didn't like for you to use [the term] "a lot," I remember that to this day. She left and began to teach on the college level, I think it was [at] Mary Washington.
Interviewer: So, what about your high school experience sticks with you the most? What do you remember most about that?
T. Baugh: The sports. That sticks out the most, because we had fun. Even in our classes, the way we related to our teachers, we had fun. The environment was enjoyable after that Fall, that first initial shock of going there, after that Fall of my 10th grade year, it smoothed out and was actually fun. I really enjoyed it.
Interviewer: There are some misconceptions that the black kids never adapted to the school or didn't like it once they integrated. So you're saying that it wasn't fully like that?
T. Baugh: No.
Interviewer: Once you did get over the initial shock?
T. Baugh: Yes. That Fall, it was rough, and the black kids were trapped because our parents didn't have money to send us to private schools. So we were there. The system had put us there, so we had to stay there. And we had to make the best of it. You know, you had to be about your business and you bad to achieve.
Interviewer: What years did you attend Virginia State?
T. Baugh: I attended Virginia State from 1974 to 1978. I graduated in 1978. I initially went to St. Paul's College to play basketball and football. I didn't like St. Paul's College. [It] was a small Episcopalian school in Lawrenceville, Virginia. To me it looked like an acre that they had cleared off and stuck two dorms in there. Guys were going in and getting bamboo out of the woods. I'd never even seen that before. You know, I didn't even know bamboo grew in Virginia. I thought it was just in Asia. And so I was young and 18, very impressionable. I really didn't like it. The coach was very nice. I made the JV team in basketball; football I had made the varsity squad. But I didn't like it. Grades were fine. But I didn't like it, [and] so I came back home, went to J. Sergeant Reynolds for a while. Didn't like J. Sergeant Reynolds--it was too loose. It didn't have any structure. So I worked that spring and that summer and my mother persuaded me to go to Virginia State, where my aunt, my cousins, my sister, you know....
Interviewer: So there was a one-year... ?
T. Baugh: There was a one-year transition period. And when I went to Virginia State I was 19. When I finished I was 23. And Virginia State, at that time, was a minority school, but a majority school for blacks. It was a black institution. It's a historically black college. It's a land grant college. It was run like a private school. You had to maintain a 2.5 average in your major. In historically black colleges, there was a saying: "When you came, you came to achieve, and if you didn't maintain your academic standard, you were given a comic book and an orange or a piece of fruit. And they put you on the bus or the train and they sent you home. And at Virginia State that standard was there. You had to maintain a 2.5 average. That doesn't sound like much, but Virginia State was a hard school as far as grading at that time, because there were a lot of old teachers from the forties, fifties and sixties were still there. Whereas now they have a whole different crop of teachers, different philosophy. But at that time it was very hard becaure a lot of those teachers couldn't teach at Division I schools. So they taught at Virginia State, and most of them were Ivy League school graduates: University of Pennsylvania, Yale, University of Maryland graduates. They had their doctorate degrees from these different various schools and they expected their students to learn. It was hard. Virginia State, again, was a predominantly black school. I am a product of the 1964-65 Civil Rights Act. You say, well why is that? Because the Pell Grant was made and created for me, the black male at that time, to get me off of the streets because of the riots of 1967, 1968, 1969, so they had to think of something. So they thought of GSL loans, they thought of the Pell Grant, they thought of the SEOG grant and the National Defense Student Loan. And so I'm a product of that. I'm the first male in my family to graduate from college. No one else, who was male, graduated from a college. All my other cousins and sisters and everything were female. And I took advantage of those grants and I went to school. And I didn't mind them getting me off the streets because I didn't want to be there. And it afforded me a chance to go to college that I didn't have to pay for it. So, that was 1974. All my other friends went to school on scholarships or whatever.
Interviewer: On athletic scholarships?
T. Baugh: Athletic scholarships. Some on academic scholarships. At Virginia State, we came and you had to conquer. You had to come and perform. And a lot of people who come in with me in my freshman year, a lot went home because they couldn't perform. I was determined to finish, which I did in four years. Virginia State at that time had it's largest population had it's largest population which was 6200 students. Now I think it's like 4000 students. It was a good experience for me. We were exposed to a lot of black art, some Count Basie, the different plays that came across campus. They made sure you learned your black culture. I did a family history in my freshman history class where I traced my roots and I did trace my family back to slavery. After that the records [stopped]. But I had a great resource. My grandfather was living and he was in his 80's at that time. So he went back to slavery. So he carried me back and told me about relatives I didn't know about. I got an "A" on the paper. I wish I really could show it to you, but I don't know where it is. So that pretty much lined out a lot of things. As far as Virginia State, I think that's all unless you have some other questions.
Interviewer: You mentioned black history. Was Virginia State the first place you really got into black history and black culture or did you get a lot of that at Blackwell Junior or before that?
T. Baugh: Not really, because they used standardized books in the public schools. Virginia State was the first place where you got a full dosage of black history and black literature. Several of the teachers were experts in their field in black history. Dr. Edgar Toppin, he taught at Yale, Harvard, William & Mary in the black history, black studies subjects. And he was one of my teachers. He was an expert on black history. I mean this guy could sit down and just run things past you. He was publishing. We used one of his books in our class. It wasn't black history, it was U.S. history. And black history was integrated into it. So it was a very good experience for me. It opened my eyes to a lot of things.
Interviewer: So most of the books you used in public schools didn't have black history at all, or a slight mention?
T. Baugh: Well, they did. Blackwell Junior High School, in the 7th grade, Ms. Walton taught us. They had what they called in the 7th grade Virginia History. And Virginia History was just what it says, Virginia history. It was about the state of Virginia. My teacher, she pretty much told us put that book away, because in that book we were "darkies". It had a lot of fallacies: black people were slaves, they were very happy to be slaves, blah, blah, blah. So that book we didn't use. She went out and got another book that the school system didn't approve of, but that's the book we learned from, because she would type out certain assignments that we learned from that book.
Interviewer: What are the most significant changes in schools that you've seen throughout your lifetime?
T. Baugh: Secondary?
Interviewer: Public -- I mean elementary education, junior-- basically public education.
T. Baugh: Personally, I feel that the changes I have seen, they haven't been positive. I feel like the focus of the students has been veered off, has been deluded. They are not being trained, they are not being put in a place where they are required to perform academically. Some [of it] could be the breakdown of the home, but then again I think a lot of it is the breakdown of the school system itself. A lot of people have a fallacy: integration was not for me to have a white kid sitting next to me in class; integration was to afford me to have just as good an education as the white kid. But what happened when we went into the schools, there was white flight and after the white flight came along, then also a lot of the academic standards dropped also. I think I said that correctly.
Interviewer: So you're saying that once white students started leaving the schools--like white flight as you put it--educational standards dropped?
T. Baugh: Because money dropped. I'll give you an example. At George Wythe, we had a fund set up just for academics. We had the Greenspans, we had the Kellys. The Greenspans and the Kellys were families that put megabucks into George Wythe as far as athletics, as far as academics. When the kids left, when they took their kids out, that money went with them. So a lot of the money fell back on the city and the city didn't provide that type of extra money that was needed to get the newer type things out here as far as academics were concerned, equipment and stuff like that. A lot of that stuff was donated. So that money went into the private schools.
Interviewer: So you think that situation still holds trte right now?
T. Baugh: Oh, there is no doubt about that. What has happened now, the schools have become overcrowded again because the extra money--see, there's the taxes, but then there's the money above that where you have community chests, you have organized community efforts to keep the academic standards high--they have been diluted. And it's reflecting now in the city schools.... Even though I think still the city schools are producing good students, but again it's that societal viewpoint that if its all black, it's inferior. And that's not true, but that is the society viewpoint, that's the way society has been set up. That's the structure that minorities have to deal with.
Interviewer: When did you first learn about the issue of segregation-desegregation?
T. Baugh: I knew about it all my life.
T. Baugh: To tell you the truth, you can give me a little spring of water and I can quench my thirst, but you haven't given me the ocean. But at least I am quenching my thirst. Before desegregation, I didn't have anything to even quench my thirst with. It was just total, total injustice. The degradation as far as black people were concerned, you were told that you were secondary or secondary citizens. You were taught that you were a secondary citizen. You weren't given any options. Whereas now, at least black kids have the option if they put forth the effort to achieve. And that, I feel, is [how] the 1954 Brown decision has changed things. I had friends at Virginia State who were at Prince Edward County. They grew up in that stuff. They didn't go to school for a year because they didn't have any school system because of the Brown decision. I feel desegregation provided some things, but it didn't provide the whole picture, the whole solution, I should say.
Interviewer: Could you discuss your post-graduate work or graduate school?
T. Baugh: When I graduated from Virginia State, I knew I was going to grad school to work on my master's degree. I didn't know when. I got involved, got married, got a family and after my wife and I broke up, I decided in 1988 to go back to grad school at that time. I looked around for several progress. The first program I looked at was VCU's MBA program. I looked at University of Richmond, Duke University, ODU. And then I had several friends who had graduated from Golden Gate university. One friend is the director of budgeting at the City of Richmond who I talked [to], and I had several friends that had graduated from VCU's program. So, in talking to my friends that graduated from VCU, they advised me not to go to VCU's MBA program. Basically, the reason why is because VCU has a very prejudiced MBA program. And I'm just going to be up front, blunt. They had to drop several classes because pretty much, one professor directly told them "If you're black, you're not going to get anything higher than a 'B' from me," and I'm talking about very intelligent men. These men--one of them has a CPA firm, so he told me he didn't advise me, he said go to Tech, go anywhere else, but don't go to VCU. Because if you're black, you're going to have a hard time there.
Interviewer: And this was in 1988?
T. Baugh: Oh, yes sir. This was 1988. First of all, the MBA program at any school, whether it is Harvard, if it's Ivy League, if it's in California, it's a white male-oriented program, first of all. And it's an elite group. I don't care if you get if from Golden Gate, Stanford or you come back on the east coast and get it from a school on the east coast. And that's the way it's set up. But VCU has a reputation in the black community as being a very hard program for black males.
Interviewer: That's the MBA program?
T. Baugh: That's the MBA program. Don't worry, it's not the medical. But the MBA program--this is the reputation it has. I had one friend who was a cost accountant, he's a manager cost accountant--I'm not going to call his name--at Philip Morris. Out of 10 classes he made 4 "A's" one "B-" and three "B+'s". Is that low? Just take it from me, he made more "Bs, " and he was the one that went into one class and the professor pretty much threatened the class. It's something that you know is there. And what you do, you go in and you don't, as a black person, you don't go running off at the mouth, you don't give people problems, you do the work and whatever grade you get, as long as it meets the standard or it's above the standard, you go on. And that's pretty much the tone. Mr - -------- the CPA, he basically had the same problem. He dropped two classes which delayed him almost a year, because he was going part-time, because of certain teachers. I will not call these teachers' names, but he told me. This put pressure on me then. The University of Richmond I could not afford. They were too expensive, they're a private school. So, I even looked at the executive program at Duke. Duke's program was expensive. North Carolina's program was expensive. I was willing to travel and spend the weekend, because they had mostly weekend executive classes at these schools. So I had a friend who worked at the City of Richmond, [and] he said why don't you look at Golden Gate's program. They're a California private school, 11,000 students, pretty good program, they are very well-known on the west coast for their finance and MBA program. So I called them up and I followed up on it. They had a satellite program here at Hampton at the Air Force Base because they had a contract with the federal government to keep their officers abreast in management. And so I looked at that top teacher, and I got all "A's" from him. He gave me the grade--if I made the grade, he gave it to me. It wasn't a matter of "He gets an 'A, because he is white, you get a 'B+' because you are black." No, it wasn't anything like that. And I have set a goal within the next two years to work on my doctoral degree. I will not go to VCU. I'll go to ODU, I'll go to American U., I'll go to George Mason. I've already decided that I'm not going to go, because I know that spirit is there.
Interviewer: That bias?
T. Baugh: Yes.
Interviewer: Is there anything you would like to add that you think we've missed about the issue of segregation [and] desegregation or racial tensions that you would like to add?
T. Baugh: Well, what I would just like to say is that I feel that, from my experience, there have been some very positive attributes as far as academic from the black schools. Even though the schools were segregated, people feel there are a lot of things that were incomplete, we had a lot of things as far as dealing with scientific equipment and stuff like that wasn't as good, but we still performed. And after we got into the environment where there were white teachers and black teachers we still performed. And I'd just like to say that I believe that even through all of that, a lot of the disadvantages, still we performed academically. I'd just like to close with that.
Interviewer: Thank you. Thank you very
much. This concludes
our interview with Mr. Tony
Baugh on March 28,
1992.
Questions
Index of Oral History Transcripts - African-American Richmond:
Educational Segregation and Desegregation.
http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/
school/baught.html
Last update 2/97 (rb)