R. L. Turner School alumna Annie Spears Edwards opens the page to her photo in her high school
yearbook outside the school on Feb. 12, 2014 in Carrollton. Edwards attended the school
they year it was integrated in 1963.  (Rose Baca/Neighborsgo Staff Photographer.

When Annie Spears Edwards arrived at R. L. Turner High School in September 1963, the incoming senior was terrified, she said.
"During my childhood I have seen the [Ku Klux Klan], and I was really frightened because I knew what was happening in Mississippi, Alabama and I just knew we were going to be bombed," said the 68-year-old Lancaster resident.

Like many African-American students in Carrollton during the 1960's, Edwards attended multiple high schools including Booker T. Washington in Dallas and Fred Moore High School in Denton. During that era, the former Carrollton High School and Turner, which opened in 1962, were segregated schools.

That division changed in 1963 when Annie Heads Rainwater filed a lawsuit against the school district and won, said Angela Shelley, director of Strategic Communication Services for Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.  Integration went into effect during the 1963-64 academic year, Shelley said.

Today, the school district consists of 39 schools, five of which are high schools, and 26,000 students.

On Saturday, the Carrollton Black History Program will be held at 3 p.m. in the Turner auditorium. The event, which is hosted by Christ Community Connection Inc., will include speeches, information on integration as well as community leaders such as Mry Heads Carter and Jimmy Porter, said group founder the Rev. Willie Rainwater.

CHANGING SCHOOLS

Dorothy Graves first arrived at Turner in 1963 as a junior. The former Turner student said she was "scared to death" to attend the newly integrated school.

That was something very new, and all the things that were going around the country at the same time, it was very scary," Graves said..

The now 66-year-old Lewisville resident encountered several new experiences, including entering Turner for the first time in her academic career and interacting with students of a different race.

"I had never been around that many white people in my life, because the only time that I would be around white people [is] when we went to the school and that was it," she said.

Edwards and Graves are both daughters of Otis Spears, who was an active participant in the lawsuit against the school district, and is also the namesake of Otis Spears Elementary School in Frisco ISD.

"The day that we went there, the school district, they tried to protect us from the cameras, you know, from people ... tried to hurry up and get us inside the school, I guess so we wouldn't be attacked by the reporters or anyone else," Graves said of her initial experience at Turner.

Despite the tumultuous, political and social events around the country during the 1960's, Graves said she personally never experienced incidents while at Turner.

"You would hear things in the hallway, you know how kids are, but as far as being verbally attacked or physically attacked, I didn't see anything like that," she said.

Nancy Williams, 67, daughter of Annie Heads Rainwater, said Booker T. Washington students who lived in Carrollton would initially take the Carrollton bus, which would drop them off at Keller Springs Road and Marsh Lane.

"Carrollton bus put us out up there to catch the Dallas bus, and there was no shelter at all, no shelter," she said. "Then the Carrollton bus couldn't wait with us, because they had to take the elementary kids back to school, so whatever the weather was, that's just what we had to deal with."

She also noted that some of the Dallas buses didn't have heat or would break down occasionally.

Williams said during the first days of her academic career at Turner, the students were "overly helpful and friendly," but by the second semester, everyone was beginning to relax around each other.

Edwards was particularly fond of her assistant principal, W. B. "Sky" Green.

"Every time I saw him, he had a smile and he made me feel welcome and safe," she said.

THROUGH THE DECADES

Williams and Edwards experienced differing effects of segregation in the community. Both women remembered a local hamburger restaurant that served African-American customers in the back and white customers in the front.  The former Plaza Theater, they said, seated black patrons upstairs in the balcony area and white moviegoers on the bottom or the second leve.

Williams said Carrollton's progress seemed to follow in the district's footsteps.

"Actually I noticed, if you stopped to think about it, once the school was integrated, the town just automatically integrated," Williams said.  "All of the sudden, you know, places you didn't go in, they could go. It was just once it was done, it was just done, for the most part."

Though Graves and Williams no longer live in Carrollton, member of their famileis attend public school in the city.

Williams' granddaughter, Rhythm Butler, attends Annie Heads Rainwater Elementary. Graves' daughter, Eva Graves, graduated from Newman Smith High School in 1983, while her son, Emagii Graves, graduated from Turner in 1990.

Graves has also been a member of the Christ Community Connection Inc. for at least 10 years and said she plans to participate in the black history program at Turner this year.

"It brings back a lot of memories," Graves said of participating in the prgram at her former school.  "You see on the news when they talk about people, how the schools were integrated, just to even think that I was part of something like that, is amazing."