Oral History Interview with Sanford T. Roach

BETSY BRINSON: This is an interview with Mr. S. T. Roach in his residence in Lexington, Kentucky. Today is October 13, 1999, and the interviewer is Betsy Brinson. Well thank you Mr. Roach for agreeing to talk with me today. Tell me first off if you would please, what S. T. stands for in your name?

S. T. ROACH: Quite often people ask me that, S. is for Sanford, S A N F O R D. I was named after my grandfather, Sanford. T. is for Thomas, I was named after my father.

BRINSON: Can you tell me a little bit about where and when you were born and your early family, your early education?

ROACH: Yes. I was born in Frankfort, Kentucky in nineteen sixteen at six fourteen Washington Street, and my parents were Doctor Thomas Roach and Mrs. Jesse P. Roach. They were both students at Kentucky State Normal Institute at that time, that’s what it was called. And in my early years, of age five, my parents moved to Danville, Kentucky. Naturally I went along with them to Danville, where I entered into Bate High School, or into the elementary school, which was called Bate High School though.

BRINSON: Bate?

ROACH: B A T E. There I spent twelve great years at Bate High School. I graduated in nineteen thirty-three and went on to Kentucky State University. However, after graduating from Kentucky University I moved, I went back to Danville, Bate High School as a teacher.

BRINSON: Okay let me stop you there. I want to come back to that, but let me go back, you said your father was a doctor?

ROACH: Dentist.

BRINSON: A dentist. And he practiced in ...?

ROACH: In Danville, Kentucky.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: And surrounding counties such as Garrison and Lincoln, people from those counties came to his office, because there were no minority dentists around at that particular time. And he was the only one. But he had a big practice in Danville, Kentucky.

BRINSON: Did you have any brothers and sisters?

ROACH: No brothers and no sisters.

BRINSON: Okay, and tell me about your mother.

ROACH: My mother was born in Frankfort, Kentucky. I don’t remember the year at this point, but she became, after finishing Kentucky State Normal Institute at that time; she became a teacher, and she taught in Danville at Danville Bate High School as a fourth grade teacher. After my father passed in nineteen thirty-three, she moved on as a teacher to Mercer county, to a small town called Unity, just a blow-through community in Mercer county. But she did have some great years there. And after leaving Unity, she came back to Frankfort, Kentucky, her home and had an opportunity to become a dormitory director at Kentucky State College, now. At Kentucky State College, she became a dormitory director of Kentucky Hall, where she served for a number of years. And...

BRINSON: Go ahead.

ROACH: After leaving Kentucky State College, she became of age and she retired and lived in her home in Frankfort, Kentucky.

BRINSON: You mentioned that you graduated in nineteen thirty-three, but that was also the same year that your father died?

ROACH: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: That must have been a pretty traumatic year for everyone.

ROACH: Yes, it really was, it really was. In fact he died on the twenty-sixth of December, one day after Christmas. I told my mother, I’m not going back to school, but she couldn’t hear of that, so I went on back to Kentucky State University.

BRINSON: In your family genealogy do you know where your grandparents or earlier ancestors, where they came from before Kentucky?

ROACH: No, my mother’s folks to my knowledge were always around the Frankfort area. And my father’s folk were from Mercer county and around, but that’s as far back as I can go. I know some of my perhaps earlier relatives and things like that, but I don’t know whether, if they were natives of this community or not.

BRINSON: When you were growing up, were you active in any student or church organizations?

ROACH: Well, always active in the church. My father was a great church worker. My mother was a good church worker. We belonged to Saint James A. M. E. Church in Danville, Kentucky. And there I attended Sunday school and church and when I came back as an adult, I would say, I became a Sunday school teacher. And my father was at one time, the Superintendent of the Sunday school. But I took part in what we called the Allen Christian Endeavor, of course they don’t have these type things now for young people.

BRINSON: The Allen?

ROACH: The Allen Christian Endeavor, the A. M. E., it belonged to the A. M. E. Church and it was called the Allen C. Endeavor, Allen Christian Endeavor. It was just a Sunday evening, around five-thirty, religious meeting of young people. We had that every Sunday night. Well, the Baptist have it and might called it BYBU, we had the Allen Christian Endeavor; and quite informative, and a lot of young people, Baptist and Methodist and some Christian there, attended these meetings. We interchanged meetings. We didn’t shy away because someone’s a Baptist or a Christian. We intermingled quite a bit. So that’s the early part of my life.

BRINSON: I know that there was an NAACP chapter in Danville, that sort of went dormant for a while and was revived after World War II. Would you as a youth member or your parents, did you ever hear about them being involved?

ROACH: There was no NAACP when I was in Danville.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. I think that’s probably true.

ROACH: There was no NAACP. The only organized group in my life in Danville were lodges, the Elk’s Lodge, the Odd Fellows Lodge and there was another one. But anyway, these were the only two societal organizations that were in Boyle county at that particular time. There was no NAACP. There was no CORE. There was not, what else didn’t we have? [Laughing] Any of those things.

BRINSON: Was your father a member of the Elks or the Odd Fellows?

ROACH: He was a Mason.

BRINSON: A Mason, okay.

ROACH: In fact, he was the Exalted Ruler of the Masons.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: And a...Uh hmm, yes.

BRINSON: And how about women’s organizations at that time?

ROACH: Uh, very, very rare, very rare. I can’t really recall.

BRINSON: There used to be a National Council of Colored Women. I’m not sure they had a chapter there.

ROACH: In Danville at that time? No. I’m not aware of any.

BRINSON: Or Eastern Star?

ROACH: Eastern Star belonged to the Masons, yes, my mother was an Eastern Star. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Were you ever a Demolay?

ROACH: What was that now?

BRINSON: A Demolay, that was the boy’s union for the Masons.

ROACH: Oh no, no.

BRINSON: The girls were the Rainbow girls.

ROACH: No. Yes, my mother was an Eastern Star.

BRINSON: When were you first aware of a racially segregated culture? You have any recollections of that?

ROACH: [Laughing] I was first aware of that when I was five years of age. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew whites and blacks went separate ways. And even though we perhaps grew up in neighborhoods that were intertwined somewhat and we oft time had white playmates and vice versa, we knew at a certain time, we stayed in this area of town, whites stayed in the other area of town. I knew then there was a little something amiss, something wrong. At least I thought it wrong.

BRINSON: You went to an all black school.

ROACH: Oh yes. That’s all we had. That’s all we had, all black schools, all black everything at that particular time.

BRINSON: Were you aware of any differences between the black and the white school in Danville?

ROACH: Oh my gracious, yes, I became aware of the differences as I grew older, because I became aware of the ( ) textbooks. I became aware of the materials and the facilities, the school, the buildings and so forth. Our buildings were just inferior in construction. And as we grew older we were definitely aware of that. And then we had a very nice school building I must say. An addition was added to our building, and it was our gymnasium. And in building our gymnasium there was no comparison, quite a contrast to the gymnasium that the whites had at their high school. But nevertheless, we survived.

BRINSON: In some of the interviews that I’ve done around the state, in a couple of locations, people and women have told me about how, in their school system, for girls there would be a completely furnished apartment and a commercial laundry to teach them how to be Domestics. Do you remember anything like that?

ROACH: The only thing we had like that was Home Economics. I can remember Home Economics classes, but so far as special buildings or anything like that, I can’t recall that.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: But Home Economics and Trades were just the thing for blacks to take part in at that time.

BRINSON: And trades, right.

ROACH: Trades.

BRINSON: Did you ever know Helen Fisher?

ROACH: Ahh, well, I taught Helen Fisher.

BRINSON: You taught her? [Laughter - Roach]

ROACH: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Well that must have been later, right? [Laughing]

ROACH: Well, way back now, Miss Fisher must have been in school in, when I was back in Danville teaching thirty-eight. And I don’t think she told you she finished school. I guess you’ve talked with her?

BRINSON: Uh huh.

ROACH: Well I went to ( ) in thirty-eight, so either early, late thirty-eight or early thirty-nine, back in there somewhere.

BRINSON: Okay, okay. Well, I interrupted you when you were describing for me, your years at Kentucky State, because I wanted to go back. Talk to me a little bit about Kentucky State. What was it like when you were there?

ROACH: Well, to me it was a great place, not knowing anything else. I made a lot of friends at Kentucky State. And we had a lot of teachers who were very good. They were very empathetic with our plight and what not. They were persons who you could really relate to, became friends with, or vice versa. They weren’t stand-offish at all, but they were very much interested in our welfare. I recall just a number of my professors, who were very instrumental in my acquiring an education at K State. Of course, during my tenure there, our president was Doctor Rufus B. Atwood, a great man I would say. A man who never received credit for what he was doing at Kentucky State College. Incidentally when I was there, it was Kentucky State College, now you know, it is Kentucky State University. And when my mother and father were there it was Kentucky State Normal Institute. [Laughing] And there was a move afoot by some of the politicians to change the institution into the, ah—I call it for a lack of knowledge, the feeble mind institute, which was down the road from us. They wanted to relocate the school and make it where we are now. The feeble-mind institute, I don’t know if you ever heard of that or not. But that...

BRINSON: Well, what were they going to do with Kentucky State?

ROACH: And that move....Put it, we were going to move, shift down, we were going to shift.

BRINSON: Oh change places.

ROACH: Change positions, change locations for some reason, I don’t know why. But nevertheless that never came to fruition at all. And I think all that was due to the resource and efforts of Doctor R. B. Atwood, who along with some other folk....We had to have some white friends who didn’t believe in this move either. So Kentucky State is where it was when I was in school.

BRINSON: And you were there in the thirties, which was the time of the Depression.

ROACH: Thirty-three to thirty-seven.

BRINSON: And your father had died, and it must have been tight financially for you, or was it? How did you....

ROACH: Well I was fortunate enough to have--oh well, what should I say? For fear of being, I want to say braggadocio, I had--my condition, overall condition was just a little bit above, I might say, some of my classmates from Danville, Kentucky. Since my father was a dentist, he had some insurances that he left my mother. And my mother was a school teacher. And then I was able to get an athletic scholarship, that helped me quite a bit. See, I played basketball and I ran on the track team. And at that time, you had little jobs that you could do. You could get jobs also on the campus.

BRINSON: Do you remember what your jobs were?

ROACH: Oh yes. [Laughing] I was a plumber. [Laughing] I never shall forget. I was a plumber. Didn’t know a thing about plumbing. I was a plumber, only I carried a wrench or something like that; and we had to go out and dig trenches, lay pipes and things like that. It seemed like to me, really it was just a way of giving us help. Because we’d, we’d go out one day and maybe dig this trench and come back the next day and close it up and not put anything in it. I think it was just one way of really helping us out, which I could appreciate.

BRINSON: Do you think maybe they saw it also as trying to teach you something? That if you ever needed to know it...

ROACH: Right, some responsibility there. In that, I did pick up how to use a wrench, and what to use a wrench for, and this type of thing. I could pick up some mechanical things around, because they did have a very good mechanical school at that time. Now, I only spent, on the campus I stayed two years, maybe three years on the campus. My grandmother, my mother’s mother lived in town. And my first year, as a Freshman, I stayed downtown, we called it Craw, at the time. You ever heard of the word craw, C R A W?

BRINSON: Craw, right.

ROACH: Craw. That came from the fact that during the floods, the crawfish would float up out of the sewers and fill the streets, and it was called Craw. That was down where we lived and where they finally built a new high school in the area, called Male Underwood High School. I don’t know whether you’ve heard that in your travels or not. I would go back to Frankfort just about every summer. I was crazy about going to Frankfort. I was crazy about my grandmother, oh boy, really loved her. I would go to Frankfort in the summer, and go to what they called Clinton Street High School, that was the forerunner of the Male Underwood, Clinton Street High School. I loved to go the Clinton Street.

BRINSON: You would take courses in the summer?

ROACH: No, no, this was back in the elementary schools. Did I jump the gun on you? Maybe I’m...

BRINSON: I though I heard you say you would go to school in the summer there in Frankfort?

ROACH: Well, I should have said, back in the elementary school, when I was a youngster I would go back to Frankfort; because I was talking about Craw, and Clinton Street High School. At that time, boys and girls didn’t play together. Girls played on one side of the yard, boys played on the other side of the yard. But I did love going back to Frankfort.

BRINSON: What did you major in, in college?

ROACH: Uh, Bachelor of, I had a Bachelor of Science.

BRINSON: Bachelor of Science in any particular area?

ROACH: Well, I guess--my major was Biology.

BRINSON: Oh. Did you take any Education courses?

ROACH: Oh quite, I can’t recall the Education courses I took, but I know I had to take some.

BRINSON: You were planning I take it, or were you planning to be a teacher?

ROACH: Mixed emotions, mixed emotions. My father always wanted me to be a dentist. He wanted me to be a dentist. My grandfather wanted me to be a preacher. [Laughing] Anyway I still had Dental school on my brain when I was taking these Science courses. That’s why I think I even majored it in some, because I was interested in going to Dental school. Of course, that didn’t work out, because I got married.

BRINSON: Okay, at Kentucky State were you, did you belong to any student organizations?

ROACH: Yes, I belonged to what you might call the Alpha Pi Alpha Fraternity. I belonged to the, uh shucks, it was a little religious organization. I can’t recall the name of it, but it was a campus organization, just for religious purposes. And I was the Editor-in-Chief for the newspaper, called Kentucky Thoroughbred. Let’s see what else did I belong to on campus? Naturally athletic clubs I might have been in, because I was an athlete. I can’t recall any other.

BRINSON: Was there any NAACP presence on campus?

ROACH: No ma’am, no NAACP, none of these organizations like that.

BRINSON: Were there....what was the level of interest in eliminating legal segregation? Were there students or faculty who were concerned about those issues in the thirties?

ROACH: Oh yes, there was faculty and students interested, but not to the point of agitating, not to that point. We hadn’t, I guess become sophisticated enough to really get into that part; but nevertheless, no. It was easy to see the differences when you traveled with Kentucky State University, or Kentucky State College at that time, compared to how some of the other students in the white institutions would travel. The campuses and things like this. We knew that our campus, right back to the same old thing that happened to us in high school. Things were inferior, they were just inferior. When I say inferior, I mean construction-wise, the materials they put in the buildings.

BRINSON: When you traveled, I take it with the team?

ROACH: Uh hmm. Uh hmm

BRINSON: ...athletic teams to other communities, how did you find accommodations for the team?

ROACH: Well, since we had to travel either by car or by train, depending upon the distance, the accommodations in our travel--well, we knew there were Jim Crow Laws, so we went along with the Jim Crow Laws. We weren’t about to upset the applecart in any way, shape, form or fashion. So we just went along with it. The accommodations, the other institutions in other states, like Lincoln, Missouri. We were out there in Lincoln, we knew that--they were in Jefferson City, but it was called Lincoln Institute--they were on the same par with us, a segregated college, getting a few pennies from the state, our national government and ( ). So to us, the situation was pleasant. It was pleasant at that time.

BRINSON Did you tend to stay, if you had to stay overnight or whatnot on the other campuses?

ROACH: Oh, yes, in other words, unless there were some persons out in the city, who would open their homes to you, you had to stay on the campus. There were no accommodations elsewhere, hotels and things like this. So you just had to be at the mercy of some residents of the city or the campus facilities.

BRINSON: Okay, so you graduated in nineteen thirty...?

ROACH: Seven.

BRINSON: ...-seven and then what?

ROACH: I uh, after graduation from Kentucky State College, R. B. Atwood, no I had an opportunity to go to....I went to Ashland, really, I went to Ashland. I was a waiter for a while, during nineteen thirty, part of thirty-seven, after I finished school. I got a call from my president, R. B. Atwood, he asked me how would I like to be a teacher-guard at Kentucky Village. That’s now Blackburn. That’s where they used to keep all the indigent boys and girls.

BRINSON: That’s here.

ROACH: Yeah, right outside, right out there where Blackburn Institute is now, where the prison is.

BRINSON: A teacher-guard, is that what you said?

ROACH: Teacher-guard, yeah. I said, well I knew it would be a step up for me, so I said, “Yes, I’ll take it.” I took that job. It was one of the most rewarding jobs I’d ever have, because the fact that there was a number of boys--there was girls out there too, but we didn’t work with the girls--these young, these boys were oft times, they didn’t have parents. Those that did have parents, may as well not had. So they were just left alone to themselves. And all, that old song goes, all they needed was love. And you’d be surprised how caring helped a lot of those young people. My buddy and myself, who is deceased now, we, I think we helped quite a few. We never lost a boy ourselves. See, lots of times boys would run away. And we never, for the whole year I was there, we never lost a boy. And we did something unusual, which the guards had never done before, was to bring them to town. We’d bring these youngsters to town, and we would tell them, if you are going to go to the movie, well go to the movie, but meet us on this corner at a certain hour. We trusted them.

BRINSON: Why were they there?

ROACH: As I said, maybe some of them had gotten in trouble stealing. Maybe some of them had gotten into trouble because they had killed somebody, youngsters. But they were still there, they were just young men who had lost their way, I would say that.

BRINSON: And they were like high school age?

ROACH: Oh yeah, high school age, yes ma’am, high school age. We had something, we had a basketball team. We had a softball team. My mother was always telling me, said. She would always call me “Rookie”. That was my nickname when I was playing...

BRINSON: Rookie?

ROACH: “Rookie”, when I was playing basketball. My coach had given me the name, “Rookie”. Anyways, she called me “Rookie”. She would always tell me, said, “Those boys are going to catch you one night, and they are going beat you and they’re going to kill you.” And I said, “Momma, I’m not worried.” And I wasn’t. I wasn’t. Because those youngsters, I’d treat them well, I’d--sometimes they deserved a spanking and we administered the spanking, because the guys knew that they deserved it. [Laughing] So, they didn’t mind. And so, but during the day, we’d oft times after we’d have maybe some reading, writing and arithmetic, that’s about all we did. We’d play different types of games. And so I really enjoyed that job. I was there for one year. And then Mr. Atwood called me again, said, “There is going to be an opening at Bate High School in Danville, in Science and coaching. How would you like it?” Of course, you know, I jumped for joy, to go back to Bate High School in Danville, where I finished. But I still, me, I was apprehensive too. Because I said, “Going back home, how will these people accept me?” Three, I spent three happy years at Bate High School, Danville. I was head basketball coach, assistant football coach. I taught General Science. They didn’t have Biology as such. I taught General Science, and I loved it.

BRINSON: And then what happened after three years?

ROACH: After my three years in Danville, I got a call from P. L. Guthrie, who was the principal of Dunbar, here in Lexington. He asked me, “How would I like to come to Dunbar?” This happened because of an incident—it was--he found out that I was quite a disciplinarian when it came to athletes. And he understood that, plus the fact that I could teach. At least I was suppose to be able to teach some science courses. [Laughing] So he found out I was a strong administrator, and he asked me, “How would I like to come to Paul Dunbar to teach?” Well, see I’m going up a level again. So I said, “Great.” I relied on the experience of one of my parents’ great buddies. It was, oh shucks, President of Lincoln Institute, oh shucks, I can’t think. Mmm, mmm, I can’t see his name right now, it’s going out the window.

BRINSON: It will come back.

ROACH: It will come back. Oh, Young, Young, Young, Mr. Whitney Young.

BRINSON: Right.

ROACH: Whitney Young, the President, he was a great buddy of my Dad and Momma. He told me--he called me Sanford--“Sanford, I’d take the job, but don’t go over there and get lost.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “It’s a big town. It’s a big school. Don’t get lost, exert yourself.” That’s what he told me. And I always remember those words from him. Don’t get lost. Don’t do anything unethical, but just don’t get lost.

BRINSON: Had you married by then?

ROACH: Mmm I married in, yes, yes, yes, yes. I married a young lady by the name of Mary Louise Smothers when I was in my last year of teaching in Danville.

BRINSON: And how did you meet her?

ROACH: School. I...

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE

BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE

ROACH: I moved on to Lexington. She stayed back, stayed in Danville. I came on to Lexington to Paul S. Dunbar, where I began teaching General Science, from nineteen thirty-eight to forty-one, yeah. I came over here in thirty-eight. Through forty-one, forty-two I was the assistant basketball coach. And then forty-three, Mr. Guthrie made me the head basketball coach, and I also became assistant football coach. And then I started teaching Biology and Anatomy.

BRINSON: Were you able to continue that, once you had responsibility both for basketball and football?

ROACH: Well, I was just the assistant in football. I just followed along with what my head coach told me to do, which is a very good buddy of mine. We worked together for at least twenty some odd years. So I became the basketball coach and the assistant football coach. He became my assistant in basketball. His name was N. L. Passmore, Robert N. L. Passmore. N. L. Passmore.

BRINSON: Tell me about him, briefly. At some point I also want to ask you about some people, just see if you know them.

ROACH: N. L. Passmore, we met at Kentucky State College. He came there. I went in thirty-three, he came in class of thirty-four. Yeah, class of thirty-four. And we became very, very good friends, and we joined Alpha Fraternity together. And he was, incidentally from East Chicago. Then of course, after I went off to Bate School to teach, he became a teacher, the next year a teacher over here at Paul S. Dunbar. He preceded my coming to Dunbar. We worked together for twenty-some odd years and never, never had a cross, you know. It’s hard to believe, but we never had a cross thing. We were just good, very close friends.

BRINSON: Good friends.

ROACH: Good friends. And I introduced him to his wife, who passed, a very nice, young lady in Lexington. I introduced him to his wife and they had three, lovely children. In fact he is living in East Chicago now with his children.

BRINSON: Do you have any children?

ROACH: Yes ma’am. I didn’t mention my children?

BRINSON: Not yet. [Laughter]

ROACH: I guess I didn’t. Well anyway, by my first wife I had a boy named Thomas, and I had a daughter named Sandra. Thomas got his name from my father. And my wife’s father, the C. in his name is Carey, Thomas Carey Roach. And my daughter was Sandra, after me, Louise after my wife, Roach. And they are both living happily, thank goodness. My daughter is in Fayetteville, North Carolina, has a son thirty-two, thirty-two, thirty-three. My son’s boy lives in San Francisco and he’s twenty-six yesterday. Trying to get married, next, this month, gracious.

BRINSON: And your son lives where?

ROACH: My son lives here. He lives here, he’s a--he works for the state government in Frankfort. Took him a long time to find himself, because after going school, after he finished, well he ( ) Wilberforce, he majored in Education. Don’t now whether he liked it or not. And then he finally hooked up, came back here and taught a few classes in speech therapy to elementary kids. Then he became interested in Serology and blood techniques and this type of thing. So he went out to U. K. and got enough hours to kind of get some type of degree in that. He became very efficient in drawing blood, which sometimes people have a hard time doing, but he was very good at that. Then he said, shucks I need to do something else. I thought okay. [Laughing] After all if you’re a man of age, I guess you can do whatever you want to do. Anyway, he became interested in health. Naturally with the Serology training he was interested in Health. And he got tied up in state government, now he’s the head of, I forget the name of the department. Anyway they rate businesses, rate health restaurants. Say an A up there, a B up there, whatever the case may be. He has the chance to keep them open or close them if he wants to.

BRINSON: Right, right, health conditions.

ROACH: Yeah, health violations.

BRINSON: Sanitation

ROACH: So he has a very good job. Of course, my daughter, she was, she finally after, she finished Hampton Institute at Hampton, Virginia, majored in Business Education. And of course these youngsters--.see they were--.my wife died while they were still young. We raised them, thank the Good Lord we were able to get them through school. Then after leaving Hampton, she was able to work with IBM, the big IBM companies up there. Then after she retired from IBM, and she moved with her husband to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Where now, of course she retired from IBM, and now though she has a very good job with the, it is Tri-Sector Health Department there at Duke and North Carolina or North Carolina State, something like that.

BRINSON: Right.

ROACH: But she has a very good job with them, and she called me the other day.

BRINSON: I actually grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

ROACH: Sure enough? Oh yeah, Fayetteville, that’s about eight or nine miles from Fort Bragg.

BRINSON: Right. And you’re right, Duke and UNC, there’s a lot of health activity in that area. They’re moving around the state a good bit.

ROACH: She said the only part about that job she really, she didn’t say she doesn’t like it, but she rather not do it, is the travel. Quite a bit, with her position she has to travel. She’s adjusting to it, because right now it isn’t something she has to do it. Because I think she might feel that she is independent enough to stay at home if she wants to. Of course her husband was an Army officer and he retired. And he’s back in North Carolina, Fayetteville working, also. They have a beautiful home up there.

BRINSON: Well how many years were you at Dunbar?

ROACH: From forty-one through sixty-five.

BRINSON: So you retired in nineteen sixty-five?

ROACH: Sixty-five, uh huh.

BRINSON: And then what?

ROACH: After I retired in sixty-five, well, I lost my first wife in sixty-five, February of sixty-five. I don’t know, basketball just got to me some way or another, just seemed like I didn’t like it anymore, or something, I don’t know what. Mr. John Ridgeway, who was the Superintendent of Fayette County Schools at that time, asked me if I would like to become principal of George Washington Carver Elementary School. This is right at the height of integration. And I said, “Well, I’ll try it.” And so I retired from coaching and teaching, and became principal of George Washington Carver Elementary School.

BRINSON: Let me stop you just a minute. So Dunbar, all the years that you were there, was a totally black school.

ROACH: Yes ma’am, yes ma’am. And leaving Carver after being there for a year, I was asked by the Superintendent--was Ott at that time--if I would become the Associate Principal, it’s the Traditional school. It was Lexington Junior High School then. It is Traditional now. I said, “Yes.” A fellow by the name of Frank Bloss was going to be the principal.

BRINSON: Spell his last name.

ROACH: B L O S S

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: I said, “Yes.” We had met on several occasions, but we just--we knew each of us was interested in education, so Bloss, he didn’t hesitate to accept me as his associate principal. So through the end of sixty, I’d say sixty-five, probably by sixty-six, I moved into Lexington Junior High School as associate principal. Where, I stayed there three years as the associate. They built Winburn Junior High School. Bloss became the principal of Winburn Junior. I became the principal of Lexington Junior. My associate was a young man by the name of Ed Landers, who died several weeks ago. And at that time, we took over the school, we had fourteen hundred children. You wouldn’t believe it. Fourteen hundred children, it was just too, too many, for a junior high school. It was a junior high school then.

BRINSON: How did those fourteen hundred students break down in terms of race?

ROACH: I bet the majority, but it wasn’t that much majority, the majority was black. Because the area in which, well you know where Lexington Junior is, that area at that particular time was a black community. And the whites more or less had to be bussed in, moved in. But it wasn’t as great a difference in the number. I can’t give you percentages at this time, but it was one of those times, when nobody seemed to want to be where they were. And the children were very, very unhappy. And it took us quite a while with the staff we had--.we had a very, very strong staff of blacks and whites. That helped us with that situation. We never had any racial incidents at the school. Never had an racial incidents, but you could always tell people were on edge. And we had four physical education teachers, because of this enrollment. Four physical education teachers, we had two librarians, everything was doubled up in twos somewhere along there. Of course, our History department, English department, Math department, Science departments, they were all well staffed.

BRINSON: It was a big school.

ROACH: Oh we had a big school. And...

BRINSON: How long were you there as principal?

ROACH: Seventy-five.

BRINSON: Through seventy-five.

ROACH: Sixty-nine through seventy-five, and when I left there it reverted to more or less, predominantly white and fewer blacks, even the teaching staff was predominantly white.

BRINSON: I want to go back to the sixties and the early sixties with the whole effort to eliminate legal segregation. There was a march in Frankfort and Martin Luther King was here, and the organization of CORE, and NAACP activism. What can you tell me about that in terms of Lexington? What was happening here and were you part of it in any way?

ROACH: The only way I was a part of it primarily, I guess, was in the integration of athletics. Dunbar was the first all black school to enter into what you might call the Kentucky High School Athletic Association. See, when I was in Danville, and my early days in Dunbar, we belonged to Kentucky High School Athletic League. It was an all black league. So in nineteen fifty-seven, we became an applicant and were received into the Kentucky High School Athletic Association. We went to various parts of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, Western Kentucky. We just went all over Kentucky playing basketball. And we were the first schools to have an integrated officials group. We had two officials, one or two; I always had two when I played a white team. I’d have one white official and one black official. And that incidentally, I don’t have that piece with me now. Of course, they have it in Kentucky State. I don’t know whether you saw in the paper, several weeks ago they named fifty outstanding, uh, what should I say, persons who...

BRINSON: Sort of future leaders?

ROACH: Something like that, anyways there was fifty of us, and I was the number twenty-third.

BRINSON: No, I missed that.

ROACH: Yeah, I was twenty-third because of the fact, of my integration standing in athletics at that particular time. The first person on the list was Mohammad Ali and then it came on down to....Ali was even in front of Joe Hall.

BRINSON: Now this was in the Lexington paper?

ROACH: In the Lexington paper, quite an article in the Lexington paper.

BRINSON: Well, I’ll have to see it. I was out of town for a week and it must have been during that time.

ROACH: I sent my copy to Frankfort. They wanted to use it in one of their newsletters they send out. And I sent it to Frankfort. But anyway, then I marched some with the groups when they marched downtown. But not to a great extent, not to a great extent. Ah, we …

BRINSON: These were the marches to open up restaurants and theaters and stores?

ROACH: Yeah, the marches to open up restaurants and things like that. We had a Superintendent, who, well I don’t know, kind of kept his thumb on it to a certain extent. If you do this, then I’m going to do that, you know. So it kind of kept us from publicly showing our displeasure with integration. I know during our basketball games, we used to play at coliseums and different places like that. And our superintendent was always telling me, you stay on the bench. Don’t get up, because if you get up, that’s going to cause the crowd to get up. He put a halt on me. But a...

BRINSON: You couldn’t get up just to even instruct your team?

ROACH: I mean, let’s say there’s a controversial call. I couldn’t protest it or anything like that you know, because you know the crowd would get up whipping, so nevertheless. And back in those days, and that’s about all I did so far as integration is concerned, mainly was through the efforts of introducing our club’s teams to Eastern Kentucky. Where we--they were very, very hospitable in Eastern Kentucky. I never shall forget. No incidents at all in Eastern Kentucky. We couldn’t play the Central Kentucky teams, fight, so we had to move out. Our Superintendent wouldn’t let us play Central Kentucky teams. Now, we could play teams from Louisville.

BRINSON: Now, the Superintendent would have been over both, all schools at that point?

ROACH: Yes, yes.

BRINSON: Who was the Superintendent?

ROACH: John Ridgeway.

BRINSON: John Ridgeway. And so even though the law had opened up for integration, the Superintendent ....

ROACH: The competition as such, the competition--he didn’t care so much that we have competition with white schools.

BRINSON: He didn’t want that to happen?

ROACH: He didn’t want that.

BRINSON: Why was that?

ROACH: I don’t know. I really don’t know why he just didn’t want it. [Laughing] Because we had several youngsters from white schools, who wanted to enroll at Dunbar because we had strong athletic teams. He wouldn’t let them do it. He wouldn’t let these boys, and they were good students. They weren’t just out there to play football or basketball, they were good students; but he wouldn’t let them enroll. And of course, he had a Superintendent Sparks, name of Sparks at that time--used to run—a friend--buddy of Sparks and Telford Lumber Company. Anyway, those were the days. Take for an example, the University of Kentucky, my principal and I, P. L. Guthrie was a fair man. Fair and fair, F A I R, fair and F A I R, fair. [Laughing] Anyway, we went out to the University of Kentucky for a basketball game. We bought our tickets. The seller gave our tickets, they were very good seats, right down in front. You know about basketball courts? We were right there close to the center line. Well, before the game started, a boy scout came down and said, “You men will have to move.” And I said, “What?” He said, “Move.” We said, “We’re not going to move.” Next thing you know, here comes a scout master down, telling us, “You fellows will have to move. You have to move to the back.” So we still didn’t move.

BRINSON: And this would have been about when?

ROACH: Let’s see this is, fifty, fifty-five, about fifty-five.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: Yeah, about fifty-five. We still didn’t move. Next thing you know, Bernie Shively was there, Athletic Director out at U. K.. I don’t know whether you ever heard of him.

BRINSON: What was his?

ROACH: Bernie Shively.

BRINSON: Shively?

ROACH: Shively.

BRINSON: S H I V E L Y?

ROACH: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: He came and asked us to move. And my principal, we sat there a while, he said--my principal said, “Maybe we better move, because the Superintendent can give us trouble.” Because the Superintendent would take sides, naturally would take sides with Bernie Shively. Being black, you folks move in the back somewhere. Move back. So we decided that rather than move back, we’d leave. And so we left. That was the University of Kentucky back then. And believe it or not, since that time, I’ve been a member and still a member of the Athletic Committee at the University of Kentucky. But it didn’t happen at that particular time. I’ve been on the Board now for, since nineteen seventy-four.

BRINSON: Of the Athletic Board?

ROACH: Athletic Board and ticket committee. We have charge of distribution of tickets and things like that.

BRINSON: Well I knew you were active with U. K., because I went to the Bishop Tutu convocation and you were on the stage.

ROACH: Oh yes, yes, yes.

BRINSON: And so I....how did that come about? Tell me [Laughter - both] That’s a pretty big honor.

ROACH: Honor, really. I don’t know. I just got a call.

BRINSON: There weren’t but about seven of you all together on the stage.

ROACH: Stage, right. I just got a call from, oh, a fellow by the name of Terry Allen, who is one of the administrative assistants out there at U. K.. He asked me if I would mind giving the pledge for the program. Of course, I didn’t know what the pledge meant, entailed or anything like that, so I just told him yes. He said, well I’ll get with you, so he did and that’s what happened. And I’ve been knowing Doctor Wethington for a long period of time. In fact we have served on several screening committees together. We’ve screened for C. M. Newton, Pitino and people like that. And Doctor Roselle appointed me to the screening committee. And I’ve served with, well Doctor Wethington wasn’t the president at that time, Roselle was President.

BRINSON: And screening committees are like search committees, who hire people?

ROACH: Like search committees, right, in athletics. We had to hold most of our meetings, in fact they were all secret meetings, so far as the public was concerned, because once the newspapers got a hold of something, you know, out it goes. So we would always have to go out of town for some rendezvous and meet the people. I enjoy it.

BRINSON: Well it was, I think, the nicest convocation I’ve ever been to.

ROACH: At Tutu?

BRINSON: Yes. And of course the celebration of fifty years in Lyman Johnson’s mission to the University of Kentucky. And just, I thought the music and the speeches and Chester Grundy’s vivations. It was just all wonderful.

ROACH: Now incidentally, the Lyman Johnson banquet is tomorrow night.

BRINSON: Is it?

ROACH: At the Embassy. Now Lyman Johnson and myself, we were good buddies. He was...

BRINSON: ( )

ROACH: Huh?

BRINSON: Teachers, both educators?

ROACH: Right, he was at Central High School and I was at Dunbar. We were competitors too. And he was the secretary of the, what you might call the Bluegrass Athletic League that I was talking about it. He was one of the first, I think he was the first secretary. Now, I may be off there, but he was the secretary. And nice fellow, real nice guy. And I’ll be, I’m in the class of fifty, I’ll be out there tomorrow night as they give some honors to those who went to U. K. in the fifties.

BRINSON: So you went, you did additional graduate work at U. K.?

ROACH: I got my Master’s at U. K..

BRINSON: Okay, in nineteen....

ROACH: In the fifties, fifty-five it was.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: So uh, I’m going out to the program tomorrow night. And Lyman’s son, he was on the platform.

BRINSON: He was, yeah.

ROACH: Uh huh. ...[clears throat]

BRINSON: Well...

ROACH: So...

BRINSON: Go ahead.

ROACH: Go ahead.

BRINSON: Can I ask you some questions about the sixties here in Lexington from your perspective, just how you saw things, with the sit-ins, and the demonstrations, and whatnot? I’m interested in knowing what kind of coverage that the local papers at that time gave to the sit-ins and demonstrations. Do you have any recollection of that at all?

ROACH: Not....

BRINSON: Or television, or...

ROACH: No, I can only vaguely remember, well a lot of our ministers took part in the walk-ins, sit-ins. I don’t know too many of the people that took part. But there were never any, to my knowledge, any arrests made. Not like in some communities where they were put in patrol wagons and carried away and all that stuff. We didn’t have that type of disturbance. There was not a major disturbance here in Lexington.

BRINSON: Some people have said to me, that while those activities were happening here, they felt like, and the Lexington paper knew it, they just didn’t bother to cover it much.

ROACH: That may be true, just didn’t give it the publicity that they could have.

BRINSON: Okay. There wouldn’t have been a black paper here at that point?

ROACH: No, not that point. In fact the only black paper in Kentucky at that time was The Louisville Defender.

BRINSON: Right.

ROACH: Frank Stanley was the publisher.

BRINSON: Do you think Louisville was ahead of Lexington or behind in opening up public accommodations and jobs?

ROACH: I really can’t say. I really can’t say. I know Louisville being, they may have been behind us. They may have been behind us. I’m thinking about now when Cassius Clay, Mohammad Ali, returned to Louisville, what type of reception he got. It was really nothing. He was very, very disappointed, after winning all these gold medals for his country and this type of thing. His city is now just beginning to recognize him. Just beginning to recognize Mohammad Ali. So they may have been behind us, I’m not certain. Well, now Central High School. They eliminated Central. They didn’t eliminate Central as such, but all, most of the black students were bussed out to the various other schools. Where now, Central right now, is predominantly white, still right in the same spot.

BRINSON: Okay. Let me ask you about some individuals here in Lexington and tell me if you knew them, or what you remember about them. Reverend Robert Estill from Christ’s Church, he became the first Chair of the State Commission on Human Rights. Does that name ring a bell?

ROACH: Doesn’t mean anything.

BRINSON: How about Mrs. Laura Massey? She was the General Secretary of something called the Lexington Committee on Religion and Human Rights.

ROACH: I can only remember the name, Mrs. Massey. Her activities, I can’t say.

BRINSON: Okay. Julia Lewis, who’s the President of CORE?

ROACH: Oh.....CORE, yeah, Julia was very, very active. She was a graduate of Dunbar High School. Paul S. Dunbar High School and very active in political affairs. And became President, as you say, of CORE. And never, an instigator of anything malicious or anything like that. Everything she advocated was to be done about like Martin Luther King said, “Let’s do it peacefully.”

BRINSON: How about Abby Marlatt?

ROACH: Mrs. Marlatt, I served on a Human Rights Commission with her.

BRINSON: About when would that have been? [Laughter - Roach]

ROACH: Oh, I can’t, it was in the early, let me see...

BRINSON: In the sixties?

ROACH: It was in the sixties, yeah in the sixties. I can’t say.

BRINSON: Okay. What do you remember about her then?

ROACH: Nice lady. [Laughing]

BRINSON: Audrey Grevious.

ROACH: Yeah, Audrey Grevious is still living. She is a sister of Robert Jefferson, City Councilman person. She wasn’t the type of person, a leader, I’d say, like Julia Lewis was. But she, in her own right, was a person who took a stand. She was outspoken for the right, but so far as her ability to organize any type of group, I don’t know whether she did or not.

END OF TAPE ONE SIDE TWO

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

ROACH: ...college in Virginia. I don’t know whether it is the same person or not.

BRINSON: Okay, how about Gerald Cunningham?

ROACH: Gerald Cunningham, not June Cunningham, Gerald Cunningham.

BRINSON: Now he was also a Chair of CORE in like nineteen sixty-five.

ROACH: Five....No.

BRINSON: William Dodson.

ROACH: William Dodson, great individual. I was very good friends with Dodson. He was very interested in NAACP. I would say as black politicians went in those days, he was right up front.

BRINSON: He was a politician?

ROACH: Yes. And his wife is living now, a member of my church. Very fine individual.

BRINSON: Was he elected to a public office? You said he was a politician.

ROACH: I don’t know. He didn’t...he wasn’t....he wasn’t a council person or anything like that. He was the head of the local insurance company. I think it was Mammoth, was it Mammoth or Domestic. I think it was the Domestic Insurance Company. We had two major insurance companies then, Mammoth and Domestic. I know he was the head of the Domestic, I think Domestic Insurance Company. And he belonged to the Shiloh Baptist Church.

BRINSON: How about Michael Wilson, he was on the City Council?

[ Something ringing]

ROACH: Excuse me, did the doorbell ring?

ROACH: Now, where were we?

BRINSON: I was asking you about Michael Wilson, who was on City Council.

ROACH: Yeah, Michael Wilson was a youngster. These were, the movement was over when they came along.

BRINSON: Right, right. Did he go to Dunbar?

ROACH: Yes.

BRINSON: He did? Okay.

ROACH: Yeah he was, the movement was way over.

BRINSON: Did he play sports?

ROACH: No he didn’t, but he had a brother that was a very good sportsman. He played, but Michael didn’t. Of course, you know he is a minister now.

ROACH: How about Reverend W. A. Jones, from Pleasant Green Baptist Church?

BRINSON: Now Reverend Jones was one of the leaders in the sit-ins, back in those days. He was at the Baptist Church. Well-known, well respected in Lexington and around the community. His son, Billy, is speaking tomorrow night at the Lyman Johnson Banquet. Billy is a minister at one of the large Baptist Churches in Brooklyn, New Jersey, not New Jersey, New York. Billy’s mother died about six months ago. A graduate of Dunbar.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: But now at that point, now he was too young to be taking part in any these things.

BRINSON: Right, but his father.

ROACH: Oh, his father, if anybody was out, his father was. And his father, Pleasant Green, historic Pleasant Green Baptist Church.

BRINSON: Lamont Jones?

ROACH: Lamont Jones and Billy are brothers.

BRINSON: Oh, okay. Is Lamont older enough that he would...?

ROACH: Lamont, no Lamont is younger.

BRINSON: He’s younger?

ROACH: Younger, there’s Lamont, uh, Billy, Lamont, Henry, who’s a minister in Atlanta right now, were basketball players under me, and students at Dunbar High School. So, Billy Jones, his father, we’re talking about the father, he was the one that was very active in the movement back in those days.

BRINSON: And Jerry Williams?

ROACH: Jerry Williams? Oh yeah, he was a minister, but he didn’t take part.

BRINSON: Okay. There was a group here in the early seventies, called the Blacks United for Action, which had, they worked on school desegregation issues. Do you remember hearing about them at all?

ROACH: Yes, it was seventies or eighties, seventies you say?

BRINSON: Early seventies, seventy-two, seventy-three, and they had something at Douglas Park once that they called Liberation Monday, which was a boycott of the schools. And they marched from Douglas Park down to the Courthouse. They were protesting the fact that the schools were still not desegregated.

ROACH: That couldn’t have been a very large march.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: Could have been some faction, I just don’t know. That doesn’t ring a bell at all.

BRINSON: During the sixties, who were your heroes in the Civil Rights struggle?

ROACH: Whitney Young, Jr., of course King, Martin Luther King, but I knew Whitney much better because I almost grew up with him, almost. He lived with his daddy.

BRINSON: Well tell me about that. You did know him personally?

ROACH: Whitney? Yes, before Whitney became involved in the Urban League, he coached basketball at a school in Western Kentucky. I think it was Madisonville. But he was a fellow coach along with me. And naturally we, we weren’t around, because we didn’t play each other unless we were in the state tournament or something like that. But nevertheless, we were fellow coaches. My most, the most contact I had with Whitney, was when we had maybe a Thanksgiving dinner or a Christmas dinner, and we’d all be invited to Lincoln Institute, because that’s where they lived, down in Breckinridge. You ever heard of Breckinridge? So other than that--he was a very ambitious young man, very ambitious, real intelligent. He became, after he left education, he became the National President of the Urban League Association. Of course, that’s when he died in a swimming accident. I guess it was an accident, in Europe somewhere. He....

BRINSON: You guess...

ROACH: Ma’am?

BRINSON: You guess it was an accident?

ROACH: I guess--they have never--since he was such a swimmer. He was a strong swimmer. And they’ve never understood how he could drown like they said he did, being such a great swimmer like he was. Now he was buried here, at one time.

BRINSON: I didn’t know that.

ROACH: He was buried on, you know where the cemetery, well right now, you know where the fire station on Third Street is?

BRINSON: Right.

ROACH: Right down from that is a cemetery, from the fire station.

BRINSON: Okay. Is it on Third Street?

ROACH: And see, uh huh. Little cemetery right there. Down below that was Gunn Street, see right now where--see there was Gunn, Deweese Street ended. Deweese Street didn’t go on through like it does now. Deweese ended right there and became Gunn Street. And he was buried in that area over in that part.

BRINSON: Why was he buried here?

ROACH: I really don’t know.

BRINSON: Because he didn’t live here.

ROACH: But he wasn’t here long. His wife had his body exhumed and they moved, took his body to, I think New York somewhere.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: But he wasn’t here long. Jesse Jackson, that was my first encounter with Jesse Jackson. He came here for that funeral. It was quite a, quite a funeral.

BRINSON: A lot of people turned out?

ROACH: A lot of people, uh hmm.

BRINSON: Well, he made important contributions to...

ROACH: Oh yes, oh yes. But they never, and if you read any accounts of Whitney now, they talk about his death. It is a mystery. Of course, people can drown. They think during that time, because he was a leader of the movement for desegregating, things like that, that maybe he was killed. They don’t know.

BRINSON: When I’ve talked to teachers around the state, who have taught in the all black schools, they tell me stories, in many of the cases, about reunions that go on even today, of student bodies.

ROACH: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Usually I’ve been talking to smaller schools and I wonder, is there anything like that, that happens here in Lexington?

ROACH: Yes ma’am, Dunbar will have a big..

BRINSON: [Coughs] Excuse me.

ROACH: ...reunion in two thousand, in two thousand. It will be--it will be the week of July the sixth in two thousand. They will have a big reunion. The various classes of Dunbar have reunions quite often, different classes. But this is one event, where all the classes will go together and have on big reunion, which they have about every three years.

BRINSON: And it is just of the black students?

ROACH: Just the black students. Well, you see...

BRINSON: Did Dunbar ever become integrated?

ROACH: Well, see we didn’t have the Dunbar on Man O’War, until about what? Nine years ago.

BRINSON: Right.

ROACH: See that’s really a new school.

BRINSON: So the old Dunbar was located where?

ROACH: Up on North Upper Street, where the recreation center is on North Upper Street. And it’s the recreation center now, with a large gymnasium. They kept the gymnasium. They kept quite a few of the classrooms, which they are using as office rooms right now. And the door facing, which is really a masterpiece in architecture. They kept that. And Dunbar as it is now, sits back well off the street. I forget, I’d say about at least maybe fifty yards off the street, maybe further then that. Whereas the old Dunbar was right near the sidewalk.

BRINSON: When they have the class reunions, do they have them here?

ROACH: Uh huh.

BRINSON: Or do they hold them sometimes other places?

ROACH: No, they are always in Lexington. And they will be at the Campbell House again, like we’ve always had them at the Campbell House. But they will have one big event. It will be the Sports Banquet, they are going to have at the Marriot Hotel. We’ve outgrown ( ), seems like the Sports Banquet has just ballooned or mushroomed. [Laughing] So it will be at the Marriot, but the rest of the program will be at the Campbell House.

BRINSON: Are you working on any of that?

ROACH: See, I’m not a Dunbar Grad.

BRINSON: Oh..

ROACH: That’s right, I’m not an alumnus. So, but I spent as much time at Dunbar as some of those people did. [Laughing] No, I’ve been, I go in as a consultant every once in a while. Yes indeedy. And now, they have a very strong organization now. We have a lot of our trophies and other memorabilia over at, I call it the old Dunbar, where the recreation department is. There is a room over there set aside, it is called the Dunbar Alumni Room. It is a beautiful room in blue, blue, blue--green and white. That was our colors, green and white. And we have a lot of pictures and trophies and things like that. And out at the new Paul S. Dunbar, there’s also a room out there, but it’s just called the Dunbar Room. And we have some pictures and things out there. And of course, since we’re talking about Dunbar, they built this very, very nice gymnasium out there. It is called the S. T. Roach Sports Center.

BRINSON: Oooh.

ROACH: At Dunbar.

BRINSON: Well that’s a real tribute to you.

ROACH: Fine tribute, yes. Got my few flowers while I was still living.

[Laughter--Brinson]

ROACH: And my plaque is on the wall. They had a big ceremony of that type the day they dedicated the building.

BRINSON: I know you stay involved in community issues, because I actually was present at a meeting a few months ago of the Mayor and the Police Chief, to talk about the...

ROACH: Driving while black? [Laughing]

BRINSON: Right, right. And someone who was with me, pointed you out across the room, and said, you really need to go interview him.

ROACH: Oh yeah?

BRINSON: And then, is it Valerie Cummings, at Channel Twenty-Seven...

ROACH: Valeria.

BRINSON: Valeria, right. We’re working on a little project together and she said, you really need to go interview Mr. Roach.

ROACH: Uh huh. She’s a member of my church.

BRINSON: Oh is she?

ROACH: Yeah. One of our choir members.

BRINSON: Are there other issues that you stay active with?

ROACH: Let’s see. I’ve got one that is coming up pretty soon, but I am not at liberty to tell you, at this point. Because I don’t want to mention it until it comes out. But it’s dealing with the school system. And I have a meeting with the Equity Council on the first Tuesday.

BRINSON: Are you concerned about issues in the school system?

ROACH: Well this particular one, I’m very, very interested in, and I know it can be rendered. It can be helped.

BRINSON: Can you at least tell me what the issue is?

ROACH: Noo.

BRINSON: No, okay. [Laughter - Roach] So, I’ll watch for it in the newspaper.

ROACH: You can watch for it, it’s dealing with education. One that I know can be rendered through education, that’s about the only way it can be. This is nothing that’s just confined to Lexington public schools, this is general, general.

BRINSON: General across the country or across Kentucky?

ROACH: Throughout the country.

BRINSON: Across the country. Well, I will watch for that. You think I’ll see that in the paper?

ROACH: Well, I’m quite sure you’ll hear something about it; but I think we’re on the right track.

BRINSON: Where do you think we are in this country today, in terms of race relations and civil rights?

ROACH: Well, right now civil rights are not making any progress. I realize that there are a number of us, who have made strides in jobs and things like that, but the majority of us are still left at the post. We’re still left at the post. I don’t know whether it is our fault, and in some instances it could be; but in major instances, it is those who have control. If you have no power, you’re just left at the will of those who do have power. And it is unfortunate that we have to be like that right now, but I don’t see when we are going to come out of it. I really don’t. Because you can, I know a lot of organizations I attend, oh there’s politeness there, but get on the outside of the organization, people won’t speak.

BRINSON: Really won’t speak, if you see them on the street?

ROACH: Right. I’m standing on the street, they won’t speak. They can look you right in the face, they won’t speak. But in a meeting, it’s their court. See the thing about that, it’s very noticeable...uh you take uh.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE: How are you?

ROACH: Oh you want....this is a.. [Tape stops]

[Tape resumes]

ROACH: We as minorities or blacks in Fayette county, maybe it’s been our fault. We don’t have the businesses like we used to have. ( ) maybe some small businesses. But we used to have our own entrepreneurs who really made strides in this town.

BRINSON: Well, as I’ve interviewed retired teachers, who taught in the black school around the state, you know, some of them have said to me, and others, too. So this is coming not just from teachers, but parents, that have said in some ways integration was a mistake for black children, because they didn’t any longer have black teachers who really provided role models for them.

ROACH: Right. I have...

BRINSON: And discipline.

ROACH: I have to agree. I can’t--now my experience with my teachers at Lexington Junior, that was one of the first questions I would always ask. “Are you interested in teaching children? Are you interested in teaching black children?” And believe it or not, the eyes and countenance on a person’s face will just about tell you what they are interested in. At least I found that. Of all the teachers that I interviewed, I only had one. This young lady came from Eastern Kentucky. She said, “Mr. Roach, I’ve always been taught that blacks have tails.”

BRINSON: That blacks have what?

ROACH: Had tails.

BRINSON: Tails?

ROACH: Yeah see, that was taught over in Europe when we went to World War Two, that blacks had tails. So she came in there and she told me, “I’ve been taught that blacks have tails, but I don’t believe it. I’m interested, I want to teach the children. I want to teach the children.” And this young lady, after being in our school two or three years, she met a young, black man and they married. [Laughing] And they’re living happily together now in Michigan. But I don’t know--they’re disappointing.

BRINSON: In some school systems when integration occurred, a lot of the black teachers lost their jobs.

ROACH: Oh, yeah, sure.

BRINSON: What was the situation here in Lexington with that?

ROACH: I--well let me see now, I don’t think that really existed too much here in Lexington. I don’t think that really--.we didn’t have too many teachers losing their jobs. They retired or they were hired in other positions. But because at that time there was still Douglas, out on Price Road, and Paul S. Dunbar. And you know, statistics will tell us, that during that time, there were more Master teachers in the black schools than there were in the white schools. All of our degrees came, before integration, had to come from University of Indiana, Columbia in New York, places like that. All of our teachers, all had Master’s Degrees, I won’t say all, but most of them.

BRINSON: You mentioned Columbia, were there teachers here who actually did their...

ROACH: Yes ma’am.

BRINSON: ...graduate work at Columbia?

ROACH: Graduate work at Columbia, New York, uh hmm. And we had some from Rutgers, and several from Indiana. I can’t remember anybody from Ohio State: but, are things getting better? I don’t know, I just don’t know. So for our children, I don’t think they’re getting any better, because we’re right back to the same old--you see in the papers now, where they’re advertising for black Superintendents and this type of thing.

BRINSON: That’s right.

ROACH: School systems won’t hire these people. When I finished out of University of Kentucky, I never shall forget, Arthur Dickey, who was guiding me in my courses, choice of my courses, he told me, he said, “You may not want to take this course now, but it will help you. You will eventually, if you succeed in this course, become a Superintendent.” I said, “You got to be kidding. I never will be a Superintendent of schools.” Well, but he said, “It is a possibility.” That’s the future he saw. But right now, and the principals that we had, you know, they were relegated to jobs like, visual aide supervisors, bus drivers and things like this.

BRINSON: During integration?

ROACH: Yes. We had a principal, I never shall forget, down in Versailles, Kentucky. It was a school called Simmons High School. This fellow was a very good educator. He ended up driving a school bus. Of course, we used to kid him all the time. Of course you had to take this thing and laugh about some of it, otherwise you would crack up, if you didn’t laugh about some of it. [Laughing] He said, well, I’m driving a bus now, but you know, I’m the highest paid bus driver in the state of Kentucky.

BRINSON: But what a waste of talent.

ROACH: What a waste, yeah, what a waste. And a lot of young people who are very competent, and could do a good job in the school system, they are going away from education.

BRINSON: One of the arguments of the State that you read in the paper about why they haven’t been able to find a black superintendent is they say that blacks are going into other professions, that pay better.

ROACH: Well, part of that is true, but I know of a Mr. Lawson, one young man, who wanted to be a superintendent left here, and became immediately the Superintendent of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The great drawback in the schools right now, is the School Councils. You’ve heard about the Councils?

BRINSON: No.

ROACH: Well, each school has got to have a Council. I forget how many teachers, and so many parents and the principal.

BRINSON: Right, this is under the Kentucky Education Reform Act.

ROACH: Reform Act--uh hmm. And these Councils are made up of folk who, we don’t know whether they have an eighth grade education or not, they’re just parents. The criteria is just be a parent. Consequently if a black should come up, in the majority of cases, the Council says no. Principal may want the person. And to me this is crazy, but that’s the way it goes.

BRINSON: So the principal has lost the authority to hire teachers to the Council?

ROACH: That’s right. And this is sad. See, there are a lot of Councils. Of course, there are a lot of areas in Kentucky where there are no blacks living, consequently you wouldn’t expect to have any black teachers. And then there are a lot of areas where they are overpopulated with blacks, minorities.

BRINSON: Have you seen over the years, in the Lexington Black community, do you notice people migrating to other places where there are better opportunities, or do you think people stay in Lexington and work with what they have? Do you have any sense of that?

ROACH: This may be a two way split here, because of industry in Lexington, they’re not coming here to teach. They’re come here for Lexmark or some of this hi tech stuff. Now U. K. is doing a good job in hiring minorities. But otherwise, the school system--well, I’ll give you a good example of what happened to us here at the old, at the new Paul S. Dunbar. Here’s a young man, who opened the school as an assistant coach, when the school first opened. He was in charge of, it’s called the JV team. You know that’s the...

BRINSON: Junior Varsity.

ROACH: Junior High team, right the team that supplies the other; anyway he was in charge of that. He developed a number of very good players. But this year, past September, when they were ready to hire a coach, the principal--they had a new principal, just came in--who had worked with this young man for nine years, wouldn’t hire him. They hired a young, white fellow, from Henry Clay High School, who had been an assistant two years.

BRINSON: What happened eventually to the assistant?

ROACH: The other young man, he’s still teaching, the black fellow, he’s still teaching, but not as a coach. That was an incident where, an instance where, golly here’s a guy who’s put in all this time for nine years. He couldn’t be bad, otherwise you wouldn’t have kept him. And now here was a vacancy where he can move up, who’s going to move up? No, you bring in somebody from out of town. And that was a decision made by, in this case, this was made by the principal. And then he presented it to his Council, which they accept. And the superintendent went along with it. It could have been solved had the former coach, just said, I want this boy or man, whoever, to be the new coach, but he didn’t say it. Now he told me that he was going to recommend him, but he didn’t. I haven’t seen him yet. I’m going to see him, because he told me, “I’m going to recommend him. And I’ll send you a letter of recommendation that I send to them.” And I’ve been working with the former coach for a number of years. I have what you call, no, I don’t have it, but it’s in my name, the S. T. Roach Basketball clinic, at Paul S. Dunbar. We have, they bring in three teams every year, along with the Dunbar team, and have a little classic. It is called the S. T. Roach Classic. And I have an award that I give for, it’s called an achievement award. It’s a trophy that I give. But this old coach, he told me, I’ll recommend him, I’ll recommend him. By George, humph. I haven’t seen him since. I’ll see him. I mean, he didn’t have to tell me he was going to do it. If he wasn’t going to do it, he could just say, I can’t recommend him.

BRINSON: And this is all recently?

ROACH: Oh yeah, this year, this September.

BRINSON: Okay, okay.

ROACH: This is something that really, well really and truly--I don’t know of any other time maybe, or any other school, there would have been a lot said about it. But Dunbar, the new Dunbar is so far removed from the black population. They don’t know what is going on out there. [Laughing] Too much what’s going on out there.

BRINSON: I’ve heard others say that, too.

ROACH: Yes, that’s just so far removed.

BRINSON: I didn’t ask you. You mentioned World War Two. Did you serve in World War Two?

ROACH: You know what? I got as far as Cincinnati, that was one of those clearing places, where they either put you in the Army, Navy or someplace. They stamped my card, you’re in the Army now. I forget what day or what year.....

END OF TAPE TWO SIDE ONE

BEGIN TAPE TWO SIDE TWO

ROACH: :....haven’t heard from him since.

BRINSON: Really? You never heard from him again? [Laughter - Roach]

ROACH: Haven’t heard from him since.

BRINSON: What do you think happened?

ROACH: I don’t know and frankly I don’t care. [Laughing] I haven’t heard from him since.

BRINSON: I thought you were going to tell me that you, because you were teaching and you had a family at that point, that maybe they just...

ROACH: Well, they put me in the Army. They knew I was a teacher, but they stamped me in the Army.

BRINSON: You don’t think that was racial in any way. Do you?

ROACH: No, I don’t.

BRINSON: Maybe just poor paperwork on their part.

ROACH: They lost me.

BRINSON: They lost you. Well that certainly changed your life, didn’t it?

ROACH: Sure did.

[Tape stops and resumes because of Roach’s coughing fit.]

ROACH: One, two, three. Where was I? Tell you about, my not being a dentist I think. While I was teaching school at Dunbar, I matriculated in Howard University in Medical School. My wife, first wife, became ill and she had a kidney operation, stayed out at St. Joe about nine weeks. That was the old St. Joe. I couldn’t see myself leaving her, so I stayed on as a teacher. I was ready to go on to Dental School, but there she was. After all I just couldn’t leave her.

BRINSON: Well, that makes sense. Mr. Roach, we’re going to do a Civil Rights Symposium next February over at the new History Center.

ROACH: Where? In Frankfort?

BRINSON: In Frankfort, uh hmm. And I’m looking for some people right now to be on a panel. And I wonder how you’d feel about being on the panel and talking about school integration in Kentucky, what that was like?

ROACH: Well, see I couldn’t speak too general about schools in Kentucky.

BRINSON: You couldn’t speak...

ROACH: I couldn’t speak generally about schools in Kentucky other than the fact--well I knew that there were schools eliminated: buildings made into recreation centers and things like that. But other than that, I don’t know what happened to the people. Some of them lost jobs.

BRINSON: Well, you just told me the one story out of Versailles, about the bus driver.

ROACH: Oh yeah, the bus driver. Then there was a ( ) in Frankfort too, I didn’t mention. Young lady, oh was a really a very good principal at Mayo-Underwood High School, that was a new high school in Frankfort.

BRINSON Mayo-Underwood?

ROACH: Mayo-Underwood, named after two individuals. It was built right where the tall education building is down near the river. That used to be the site of the Mayo Underwood High School. You know what, this young lady ended up being the Video Supervisor; and she would carry the old cameras and whatnot from school to school, and she was principal.

BRINSON: So there are examples.

ROACH: Oh yes. I wouldn’t mind being on a symposium, but I just don’t know what I could offer.

BRINSON: Well, I think you’ve talked a little bit about it. Examples you’ve given me, we talked a little bit about the integration of the High School Athletic League.

ROACH: Oh yes.

BRINSON: Which sounds like you had a pretty good situation? At least in Eastern Kentucky.

ROACH: Oh yes.

BRINSON: But Central Kentucky you talked about.

ROACH: Well now, I did mention, we could play, well I wouldn’t call Louisville Central, otherwise Louisville would be Central Kentucky. But now we could play the Louisville schools. But we couldn’t play the Lexington schools, unless it was in a tournament. Of course Kentucky High School Athletic Association ran the tournaments, you know, so we could take part in that.

BRINSON: And you also talked to me about how many of the teachers had their Master’s Degrees in the black school, more so than in the white school. Well, would you think about that for me a little bit?

ROACH: Honey, I’ll think about it. When did you say this was going to take place?

BRINSON: February eleventh.

ROACH: Of two thousand.

BRINSON: Uh huh.

ROACH: Well let me think about it. Let me think about it.

BRINSON: It’s a Friday. I’ll get back to you.

ROACH: You get back with me.

BRINSON: Is there anything else you would like to add to this interview today?

ROACH: I’m just trying my best to think. Will you cut off, just so you won’t waste that tape.

[ TAPE RESUMES]

ROACH: We have a clinic for boys and girls in basketball and cheerleading, that we have at the old Paul S. Dunbar High School. We’ve had this now for seven years. And youngsters from, well mostly from the inner city, are in attendance, but youngsters from all over the city can come. There is no discrimination at all. And you can take part. It is a free camp. We receive donations from the city, donations from Bank One, who is a big contributor.

BRINSON: How long did it run, does it run?

ROACH: Two weeks.

BRINSON: Two weeks. In the summer?

ROACH: Yes ma’am, two weeks. Then we, the past two years we organized a cheerleader clinic. And this was conducted by Donna Robertson, who is the cheerleading sponsor at Henry Clay High School. We had a large camp of cheerleaders. A large group of cheerleaders, anywhere, they age from around seven to sixteen. It was large, well attended. And of course, we had a lot of boys, who took part in basketball. And as I mentioned we had a free lunch furnished by the Agricultural Department, through the city. And our instructors were mainly from Bryan Station under the direction of Bobby Washington, who is the coach at Bryan Station. Incidentally Bobby used to be one of my very good basketball players. And so his instructors, mainly were from Bryan Station. And we’ve had a successful camp now, for as I said, for seven years. So, it’s been very good

BRINSON: That’s a real accomplishment.

ROACH: So, we try to give back something to the youngsters, to the city for the years that we had at Dunbar. We had some very fruitful years over there. We had some very talented people, students, and wonderful co-operation from parents. And I don’t know whether that takes place these days or not. You know, parents are, then whatever the teacher said was the law.

BRINSON: Right. Let me ask you, one of the things as an historian, that I am interested in, is finding old records. I wonder about the old, black school records. Do you have any sense of where they are?

ROACH: I can tell you--which really makes me angry--when they tore down Dunbar High School, they tore down the files, too. Records.

BRINSON: So they’re gone.

ROACH: Had I not saved all of our trophies--see, I became principal over at Lexington Junior--our trophies would have been gone. But I was fortunate enough to get all of our trophies, took them to a room that I knew was vacant over there at Lexington Junior, it was kind of a closet like. But it housed all of our old trophies from Dunbar High School. So consequently we opened up this other room for the trophies, we had them. Trophies out at the new Dunbar High, we had them, but otherwise they would have been gone.

BRINSON: Do you have any of your personal records while you were involved in education?

ROACH: Such as?

BRINSON: Well, correspondence or reports or programs from school events, or...

ROACH: Hmmm. I had some. See, what did I have here? You mean something like that?

BRINSON: Oh my, you look younger there, don’t you? [Laughter] It says your basketball coaching record of six hundred and ten wins and only a hundred and sixty-seven losses, spanning twenty-five years, is recognized by four Athletic, State and National Halls of Fame. And you have an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from your Alma Mater, Kentucky State?

ROACH: Yes ma’am, yes ma’am.

BRINSON: I’m going to stop...

[TAPE RESUMES]

BRINSON: About the Flood of nineteen thirty-seven in Frankfort.

ROACH: Well, this [Laughs] is dealing primarily with my grandmother and myself. When this water...

BRINSON: Well, you were about what?

ROACH: Oh, I was in college.

BRINSON: Okay.

ROACH: Yeah, I was in college. But the water, if you know anything about the lower level of Frankfort, where it used to be the corner—the State Penitentiary used to be in Frankfort, right there on the corner. And I understand they lost several prisoners, because they couldn’t open the doors for these people to get out. But the water had come up over our church, St. John A.M.E. Church, in Frankfort and there is a Baptist Church on the corner. My grandmother, of course she had been through a flood once before about nineteen thirteen, just before I was born. So she figured I suppose, the water wasn’t going to come up this time any higher. But it kept coming and kept coming and kept coming. I said, “You better come on out of this.” “No, Sanford, I’m going to stay right here, because they swear it will be all right.” By that time, the water was up in the second water and she was up there fooling around in this water. I said, “If you don’t get yourself out of here, I’m going to shoot you.” You know, how you talk. And here I was in a rowboat, rowing her out of this two-story building, getting her out of this flood.

BRINSON: And there’s never been another one quite that bad there?

ROACH: No indeed. And we had a lot of refugees from surrounding areas, like Louisville, because the Ohio really flooded the lower parts of Louisville. And had a lot of refugees from Louisville. But it was some trying time, that time. But it’s a funny thing about disasters, how we all pull together, you know, black, white, red or green. We all pull together in disasters, but just as soon as it’s over, things fall right back again.

BRINSON: Separate again. That’s true....

END OF INTERVIEW