An afternoon of history, dialogue, and understanding occurred as several Garlandites, led by internationally recognized speaker Dale Long, spoke of challenges and victories in the area of race relations throughout the years. This occurred at the “In Their Words” symposium, sponsored by Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street, on February 15, 2025, at Garland's Granger Center.
Dale gave a gripping account of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four of his young friends and of his grandmother's counsel to him as an 11-year-old survivor. Four who grew up in the same era—Kay Moore, her GHS classmate Roger Poore and Carol Montgomery and Thomas Walls of Carver High—spoke of their childhood and youth in Garland during the waning days of segregation.
Ariel Merivil, minister of music at Wilshire Baptist Church, sang and played a moving number, "A Change Is Gonna Come" .
Chris Ott, representing Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street, gave outgoing MayorScott LeMay a plaque of recognition, thanking him for the fact that Scott has "always gotten our purpose" in his support for the nonprofit during his terms as mayor and councilmember.
Long recalls "horrible noise"
The event marked the 50th meeting of the Friends of Garland's Historic Magic 11th Street Board of Directors and served as the Annual Meeting of the organization.
Garlandite Long recounted that grim 1963 day that began with parishioners handing out American flags and celebrating Youth Day (theme "Love That Forgives") and ended with a horrible noise that left Dale disoriented, groping in the dark because smoke kept him from seeing his way out of the quaking structure, all the while searching for his brother, also inside the church.
"It could have been four little boys" instead of friends Addie, Denise, Cynthia, and Carole that were killed, his father pointed out to him. The situation produced a particular struggle for his parents. "They had to teach us how to survive without teaching hate."
Dale and his brother Kenneth at last were reunited outside. He looked up to see his dad, who worked nearby at the Gaston Motel, running toward him in panic.
A Grandmother's Admonition
Funerals for the deceased girls followed, with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. officiating. Dale saw King at the recessional, only about 10 feet from him. It was "the most powerful memory in my existence", Dale recalled. Interestingly Dale was best friends with King's nephews, who lived nearby, but had never met the noted civil rights leader himself. One day when visiting, Dale was told that King was resting in the next room and to be quiet. "Can't I even go look at
him?" Dale asked, but he was dissuaded.
In the days before any formal post-traumatic event counseling or mental-health resources, Dale's grandmother filled that role. She told him he had been "spared for a purpose" and to find that purpose in his life. Dale was surrounded by negative images of Black people and felt little hope. "Every ad I saw about blacks was negative" , such as blacks being escorted to the electric chair. Desks in their school were passed down from the white school.
Dale held up a drawing, the outline of a foot, that his mother took to the store to find the correct size shoes for him, since Blacks in Birmingham stores weren't allowed to try on shoes for themselves, while watching a white child try on shoes freely.
His grandmother told him in order to rise above the circumstances, he needed to "pray, have faith, walk upright, and get yourself a good education". (He said he also went to school with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.)
He said the Birmingham church bombing and the outrage over it that followed was ultimately the catalyst for the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and the Civil Rights Act.
A band scholarship to Texas Southern University brought Dale from Alabama to Texas. On his graduation, he went to work for NASA. A co-worker suggested he become involved in the BigBrothers and Big Sisters program by signing up to be a "Big Brother for a Day". Dale was reluctant but ultimately was snagged by an appealing youngster that was placed with him. He's been a leader in the program ever since and was awarded Big Brother of the Year in 1989.
Dale is an internationally recognized authority on '60s Jim Crow era and speaks throughout the country about his experiences and about volunteering.
"Tale of Two Garlands"
During the "Tale of Two Garlands" feature that followed, one Anglo panelist spoke of great fun while shopping in a Garland department store because kids could slide down its banister when no clerks watched. But a Black panelist said she shopped in the same store with fear and trembling, while always feeling observed by clerks wary of shoplifting.
Kay Wheeler Moore, an Anglo individual, and Carol A. Montgomery, who is Black, described Garland of the 1950s and 1960s as growing up in the proverbial "village" , each surrounded by loving teachers, parents, fellow church members, and other anchors who had their best interest at heart.
But their two communities—one all-white and the other all-Black—rarely if ever interacted with each other. Kay Moore spoke of knowing only one Black person—the woman who cleaned her home—in all of her childhood and youth. Montgomery was neighbors with some of the people that worked as maids for Moore's mother and for others in her neighborhood. Moore and Montgomery, though teens at the same time and though walking down the same city
streets, never met until about 18 months ago.
Their two high schools—Garland High and Carver High—were segregated until later years. Carol graduated in 1965 and Kay in 1966. Carol said that once integration occurred, she knew Black families that deliberately chose South Garland—opened in 1965 as Garland's second predominantly Anglo high school—over Garland High despite being surrounded by South Garland's prominent Civil War symbolism. She said they made this choice because they resented that they had been excluded from Garland High many years, although Carol said she
personally was not resentful.
Both women described the situation as "just the way it was" and said at the time they did not question the separate policies. "When adults that you respect tell you that you don't go to school together and that this is the way the separate groups want it, this is what you accept, " Kay Moore said.
Panelist Poore, an Anglo, spoke of being the grandson of firebrand newspaper editor Will A. Holford, who wrote editorials in the early days Garland News critical of the Ku Klux Klan and consequently receiving death threats. Walls, who is Black, said he fears "we're still fighting the same thing 200 years later" and said he believed the solution is following "God's plan" for unity, harmony, and compassionate treatment of others.
Interviewer Ricky McNeal, president of Garland's NAACP Unit, concluded, "We can't get complacent. We know better now. " He said "we have some generations" that aren't going to sustain the abuse and discriminatory treatment that earlier generations did. He called for putting "all our intellect together" to continue to work for common goals."
