Part of: Almetris Duren Documentary (Desegregation at UT) (3 objects)
Almetris Duren Documentary (Desegregation at UT)
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- Was during an era when all over United
- States especially, or maybe abroad too,
- blacks were having a hard time in trying
- to get in to state schools or other
- schools. So University of Texas was
- no different than any other aspect.
- Almetris Marsh Durin Student development advisor House
- mother and Mama Durin to UT's first generation of black
- students in the fifties and sixties.
- First we had to tried to integrate
- the community around the university and through
- the wide workers, the ministers, the liberal
- professors and faculty members and students,
- we were able to really
- make it worthwhile for the minority students, our black
- students. Then we went downtown, same groups of
- people, and integrated the downtown area. During the
- late fifties and sixties, Martin Luther King came
- to the campus, gave us instruction, and told us
- exactly how to perform the acts non
- violently. From every village
- and every hamlet, from every state and every
- city, we will be able to speed up
- that day when all of God's children, black men and white men,
- Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics,
- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the
- old negro spiritual, free at last, free at last.
- Thank God almighty, we are free at last.
- In attending some of the meetings at the y, we were bombed,
- and I think the administration was really
- afraid for us at that particular time.
- This is not new just for this campus, but that was
- what happened all over. We didn't
- have any shoveling
- or pushing on campus what we did in California,
- bad things on sidewalks, on boards, everything.
- The very first day, the young women I brought over
- on the campus ignored everything we had attended,
- the whole orientation session. We even went to the
- reception or the dance. We also learned the
- school yell, the school song and the yell.
- The next thing that happened to was,
- after we moved on to campus, was not being able
- to get a sandwich. Even if we
- didn't have the sandwiches in our house or the union. We had to
- go all the way to the East Austin. Now that's what happened to them.
- There was no place but the co op. When the
- classrooms were closed, the next incident for
- the students, the sit ins and
- the stand in, we were joined by most
- liberal people in helping us to
- open up the cafeterias, the restaurants,
- the theaters. Ed Gwinn
- came to UT in 1962.
- I have people that I work with, people that I'm in business with, in some
- cases people that have just come here,
- like from the north in the last two or three, four or five years that
- are flabbergasted to learn that I couldn't go see a movie at
- the goddamn varsity theater. When I came here to
- school, that's beyond anybody's comprehension that
- I could not go to the varsity theater. And if I didn't care a
- picket, I was passing coffee out, you know,
- that the wires, something like that.
- You know, I wasn't gonna let them go on campus without me.
- I guess I'm just that crazy because I didn't know what was gonna happen
- to them.
- Up and down the drag, first on,
- all up and down from Guadalupe,
- from 22nd street. Is that where the y is? All the
- way down past the show, past all the areas for the stores.
- And then once we open up the stores
- and the restaurants and all the places on drag,
- we marched from the Capitol. Now, where you have the bus, it was
- a railroad station. We went up and down on both sides
- every Saturday and every Sunday, and I carried a picket.
- Now, when they were in the seats and sitting down, I didn't,
- because I was always in the back watching because we
- were afraid they'd put cigarette things down the girls backs
- and wherever they went. Then once we finished there, we went out to
- the shopping malls. Can you remember that?
- I remember going to Al Mitra's co op when
- Kennedy was killed, because we all thought
- that meant we went next.
- These little 60 or 70 souls. We were terrified. I was,
- I guess, 18 by then. And I
- just went over there and cried with everybody else and stayed in the dormitory where
- we were safe, instead of in these wretched barracks or whatever places
- they had us stuck in around the campus. So we had some scary times.
- For instance,
- we had little
- symbols that we all wore. One hand was
- white and one hand was black.
- One morning the girls were screaming in the front part of
- the house, and I went to see what happened to
- them, and somebody drew a
- huge sign with both. Both hands and then blood dripping all
- the way down, for instance. That's some of the things that
- happened to us. And I could just name a number of things,
- but really, that was kind of personal.
- How would you feel if you woke up the
- next morning and picked up the daily text and you found
- a number of rules pertaining to what the
- blacks could do and what they couldn't do about housing
- the girls in the house? And the men in
- the community decided they were not going to take it anymore,
- so they had a stand in or sit in.
- We all went over to. To ken solvent
- at night, took seats around,
- went upstairs, used the water fountain, used the telephone.
- Everything they said we couldn't do for one solid hour.
- The house mother was absolutely frantic.
- I walked through the picket line at Ken solving, went into the
- waiting room where you waited for your date, you know, feral falsehood and
- sat down on a couch because
- nobody really thought I was black. They didn't think about it.
- And I said to hell with you. In some kind of perverse 17
- year old hysteria, I walked through the picket line and went in and sat down
- and just sat there, you know, like a little lump on the log while everybody's
- running around outside screaming and yelling and shouting. You know, they won't let
- blacks make them solve it. Some of the students used the piano
- and the others came down, helped them to start in,
- help them with the singing. And we just had a real good time to let
- them know we were not going to take it anymore.
- Yeah, I think people should know. I think they should be reminded.
- And I think the kids, the young kids that don't know need
- to, if not emotionally experience it. I don't think anybody should do
- that. They should be made aware that me
- and people like me were considered something less than first class
- citizens. Miss Durin gave her papers and memorabilia to
- UT's Barker, Texas History center in 1981 and processing
- archivist Julia Payne created an exhibit featuring these materials.
- The exhibit opened on February 20, 1983 during
- UT's first black alumni reunion.
- The reason why I saved material I just naturally like to say
- things anyway. My father always said that I was a pack rat.
- But once I felt there
- was a need for history since we were
- the very 1st, 1st undergraduates on
- campus and I could see that we needed
- to have a little history. And then after
- the Barbara Smith case, I saved everything for I
- knew I had to save everything in order to have something.
- And I couldn't find anything on campus pertaining
- to the blacks too much. So I started saving all the
- books, all the magazine, all the cutout articles.
- So through it all we made it.
- And I have a fond feeling for the university. I'm an
- orange blooded person too, because I feel like this is a
- state school and this is our school as much as it is anybody
- else. Even though we had to fight for it.