EUGENE PERRY April 16, 1996 — Mame Warren, interviewer Warren: This is Mame Warren. Today is the sixteenth of April, 1996. I'm in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with Eugene Perry. Now, do you like to be called Gene or Eugene? Perry: It doesn’t matter. Whatever is more comfortable for you. Warren: Okay. So you grew up in Waynesboro? Perry: Yes. My family’s been there about three generations. I grew up reading about Washington and Lee, as a matter of fact. Warren: Reading what about Washington and Lee? Perry: Reading about the basketball team. I had attended Coach Canfield’s camp when he used to hold the basketball camp at Ferum Junior College. Warren: I don’t know anything about the basketball camp, so tell me about that. Perry: Well, he used to run a summer basketball camp for kids ages, I say, about ten to eighteen, I think. And I read about his camp in the Roanoke Times. I asked my folks if I could go and they said, “If you save enough money, you can go.” So my brother and I went and that’s where I met Coach Canfield, and that was my introduction to Washington and Lee. We had a great time at the camp. In fact, one year when we went, John Wooten, legendary coach of UCLA, was the speaker for the week. But that was my introduction to Washington and Lee back then. 1 Then being at Waynesboro High School, Lexington was one of our big rivals, so I had been to Lexington many times. The church there, on Main Street, First Baptist, used to have programs that our church used to attend. So I was very familiar with Lexington. After our band had played there for half time, my high school band played at the football games at Washington and Lee. I had been around quite a bit. But I followed the basketball team and in those days the basketball team was very good. So I just kept up with the school through the basketball team. Warren: So were you recruited to come to Washington and Lee to play basketball, or did you approach Washington and Lee? Perry: No. Warren: How did you come there as a student? Perry: I applied to Washington and Lee. It was one of the schools that I applied. Back in ‘71, spring of ‘71, when I graduated from high school, if you were a black male and had good grades and had done well on the SAT, you could go to any school you wanted. I think my mother and I counted eighty-three schools that wrote to me. I mean, I was accepted based on the fact that they sent me this letter. There were eighty- three schools. Warren: Good Lord! Perry: This was all based on academics. I played sports in high school, but none of the schools wrote me because of athletics. So Washington and Lee was a school that I applied to, because I had checked schools in Virginia that I wanted to attend, and that was one of them. Warren: So were they interested in you, like all the other schools were? Perry: I don’t think so, really. I don’t think they had much respect for the public schools that were close to them. I didn’t get that impression. Warren: That’s interesting. 2 Perry: Because I was recruited by Notre Dame, Stanford, Princeton, all these other schools. And I got a call on a Tuesday, one Tuesday evening. Someone from Washington and Lee called and spoke to my mother and said that they wanted me to come to Scholarship Weekend that Friday. I had been making visits, and I was actually getting tired of them. My mom said, “This is the school that you applied to. They want you to come for Scholarship Weekend, and they’re going to pay for everything, all we have to do is drive you up there.” Well, I knew right then that I hadn’t been on their “A” list. I suspected because it was too spur of the moment. But I said, “Fine, I’ll go. I want to go.” And so my dad and I went there. There were a number of young black men that were there that weekend. There must have been twenty of us, I guess. They were all invited there for that weekend. Warren: Were there non-black men? Perry: I really don’t remember. I think it was Scholarship Weekend. I think there were white students there, too. I think there were. Warren: They didn’t have a segregated weekend? Perry: No, I don’t think so. I think we were all there for Scholarship Weekend. Warren: You’re the first person who’s talked about Scholarship Weekend. I don’t know what that means. Tell me what that means. Perry: I hope that’s what they still call it. But that’s when they bring in the students that they really want, I think. You come there and they want to pitch the school to you, and they’re going to offer you scholarship monies. Warren: So what was their pitch? Perry: We’re really going back to ancient history. I’ll just tell you what happened. My dad and I drove up there, and the first person we met was James Farrar, Jim Farrar, Sr. He used to referee games in the Valley District where we played, that’s what that was called, so he knew me and I recognized him. And I was a little apprehensive about going. Even though it was the school I choose, I was still a little apprehensive about 3 visiting the college. He relaxed my dad and I immediately. I mean, he was so warm, and I really believed that he wanted me to come to that school and so did my dad. Any apprehension I had, I lost right there. And had he not been the man he was, I don’t think we would’ve gotten past that. Warren: Past your apprehension? Perry: Past my apprehension, because he was what I think a Washington and Lee gentleman is. Warren: I was hoping you’d use that expression. Perry: Because that was one of the reasons I went to see the school. I had read a lot about Robert E. Lee. I was a history buff, even in high school. And I liked Robert E. Lee and I liked Stonewall Jackson, even though they were on the wrong side, as far as I was concerned. I thought that Dean Farrar was what Washington and Lee was all about. He was a Washington and Lee gentleman, and I didn’t think it was fake. I thought he was genuine. Warren: Did you have that concept of a Washington and Lee gentleman before you went there? Perry: Oh, yes. Warren: Tell me what that concept was to you. Perry: Well, this kind of comes out of sports. Everything I talk about is probably going to come out of sports, but in Staunton, you may be familiar with Robert E. Lee High School. We used to lose to them all the time. I could not figure out who this Robert E. Lee was, what was this. I started to read about him and I found that he was more than a great gentleman, that his men admired him, they loved him. They worshipped him because of the man he was. Even Stonewall Jackson was a good man, but there was something special about Robert E. Lee, and I always admired that. When I read the catalog, they talk about the Honor Code. Then I talked to a man in my town, I think his name is Ross Hershey, who was a Washington and Lee 4 alumnus—actually there are several in town—he talked about the Washington and Lee gentleman. So I had an idea what that man was. It was based on Robert E. Lee, though. That was my idea of what a Washington and Lee man was, was him and his integrity and all that. And I bought into that, because my dad was like that and my grandfather was like thatand my uncles were like that. So that was what a man was. So that’s what I was looking for when I went up there, and that’s what I found in Jim Farrar. Warren: Did you find it in other people? Perry: Not that weekend, but as time went on, yes, I found some there. Dean Farrar set me up with a student host, Bob Ford. And Bob Ford was a wild man. He was in that first group of blacks that had arrived there. He was a sophomore when I got there. He had just had an operation for appendicitis, I don't know, maybe the week before. It seemed like he had just gotten out of bed to be my host. Warren: That was nice of him. Perry: I thought he was crazy. And my dad didn’t really know if he wanted to leave me with him. But I said, "Go back home. I can call you if I need you." And they put us up in the Robert E. Lee Hotel, whatever that little thing was on Main Street. And Bob Ford was my host, and he started to tell me all these horror stories, some funny stories and some horror stories about what it was like the first year and what it was like then, that particular year. And we visited some classes. I went to a history class. They had on my application that I wanted to be a history major, so I went to a history class. I don’t know who the professor was, but he was very interesting. I think Ford was bored, but I was excited, because he was teaching history, he wasn’t teaching dates. Whatever he was talking about, it was history. It was history that I liked. So I was pleased with that. Then we went to another class, and I don’t know what that was, and I was totally bored. We went to the gym. I met Coach Canfield and Buck Leslie and some of those 5 people. Then I started meeting some of the other guys on campus and seeing what the campus was like. I could feel the tension between the black students and the white students, even then, that day, but the guys that were there kept saying that they needed us. The whole time I was surrounded by other kids who were high school seniors, too, so we were comparing notes. When we would come out of class, we would always compare notes. If one guy saw something he thought was interesting, he would share it with the rest of us, so we were getting these reports. We were like scouts, and we had decided we would do it that way. We wanted to know. Because we all couldn’t be everywhere. But we had kind of organized ourselves that we would share information as the day went on. Warren: Where were all these other guys from? Perry: Atlanta. Virginia. There were some guys from, I think, Connecticut. It seemed that most of us were on the East Coast, as I recall. Warren: So you bonded real quickly? Perry: Oh, yeah. In those days black people bonded really quickly. We all knew why we were there. So it didn’t take long. We got in that hotel, we all looked around and we found each other very quickly. We were having fun, too. You were away from home and you’re in a hotel. So we were having fun. All of us had been through the same thing. We were all being recruited by all these other schools. We all had made visits. We were comparing notes. Have you been to this school? Have you been to that school? What are your first choices? It was really a great opportunity to met some other guys. I probably had an advantage because I was the one guy who had been there, had at least been on the campus. Warren: You were probably the tour guide around town. Perry: Oh, no, I didn’t want anybody to know that. But I knew what Lexington was all about. There was nothing there. So I kind of filled them in on what the town was like. 6 I couldn’t tell them much about the school, but in terms of where they were, I was able to give them a good idea of where they were. We had a lot of fun that weekend. We had some interesting experiences. One night, some of the local fellows walking on the sidewalk to the Cockpit, and hurled some names at us. So we went into the Cockpit where the upper-classmen were, we were supposed to meet them there. So we get in there and we say, “Look, these people called us names and they seemed like they don’t want us here.” Those guys, they said, “Where are they?” And we said, “They’re outside.” And when we went back outside, they were there. So this argument ensued and name-calling, and we kind of set back and watched this. And I said, “Does this happen every weekend? What is this all about?” And they told us that it had happened before and it would happen again. And it didn’t really get physical. I think someone came and stopped it. But it was interesting to see that, that weekend, because we got to see Lexington for what it was. We got to see what the experiences were like in the dorms, walking on campus, going to the dining hall. You knew that there was going to be some pressure that had nothing to do with academics, and that’s why most of the guys didn’t come back. Warren: That was my next question. Perry: There was four of us came back. Warren: There were four in your class? Perry: Four blacks. And I know that there actually may have been a little scuffle that night. That incident, "Look, guys. I don’t need this. I can go to Duke. I can go to Yale. I’m not coming here to deal with the academics and deal with this." So I know most of them decided that night. When we went back to the hotel, some of the guys were shook up about it. They said, “I’m not coming back here.” And if I had any sense at all, I wouldn’t have come back either, but that’s when I knew I probably didn’t have any good sense, because that kind of said these guys need help. I can go to these other schools and probably have a good time. But this is the struggle. 7 I had grown up in the sixties, the [Black] Panthers and all that. I was used to the struggle. My dad was the first black police officer in Waynesboro, Virginia. We had integrated some restaurants and some movie theaters. I had gone to an integrated high school and junior high school, so I was kind of used to that. So they kind of talked me into coming based on the fact that they needed help. They knew that a lot of us weren’t going to come back. The black guys that were there were very disturbed that we had seen that. And so I kind of decided that night that Washington and Lee would be in my first. I narrowed it down to five, so they went into the top five, based on that weekend. And I thought I could probably play basketball. I probably could make the team, even though I wanted to play football, but that came later. I actually made another visit up there, now that I think about it, there was another visit after that. Warren: Which way do you want to go? Perry: It’s up to you. But that was Scholarship Weekend. I went there, I met the people. It didn’t frighten me that they'd had the confrontation with the rednecks. Warren: It sounds like it sort of inspired you. Perry: I got a little psyched, you know, because I wanted some excitement. I grew up in a small town. I knew I didn’t want to go to a really big school. I knew that. My parents actually wanted me to go to the University of Virginia. They were going through the same things we were going through. In fact, I think the University of Virginia just went coed in ‘70. Warren: I think so, too. Perry: I was born on that campus. I started life there. I didn’t want to go there. A lot of kids from my high school were going there. That was the big thing, to go to UVA. I didn’t want to be around them. So that had more to do with it then anything. They offered me some good money, but I just didn’t want to go with people from Waynesboro. No one was going to Washington and Lee, so that had something to do with my decision also. There were a lot of little things that drove me there. 8 Warren: So what were the tensions as you came on as a student? What was it like day by day? And what were the good things, too? Let’s hear the whole story. Perry: My first day there, my mother and my grandmother took me to school. My dad was in the hospital. I was very disappointed he couldn't take me. We went there. So my mother and my grandmother were down in the Quad. I was on the fourth floor of the freshman dorm, taking my stuff up with everybody else. And I saw these other guys helping each other. Not one person helped my mother and my grandmother and I, the whole time. It took us an hour or so to get the stuff up there. Not one person helped, where the other guys were helping each other. And this was two women and me, and not one person helped. I couldn’t find the other three black guys. I didn’t know it was just three others beside me. I didn’t even see them that first day. But that was interesting, because where I grew up, you helped. Where I grew up, you didn’t let a woman do that—period. I would’ve never allowed you to do that, you see what I’m saying, no matter what color or anything. I was raised that that’s not what a gentleman does, right. So, I said, "Okay. Fine. Here we are. This is it. This is why they wanted me to come here with the other guys. So this is the challenge. This is what it’s going to be like." My mother didn’t realize it was all-male. I guess I never told her that until that day. It was so funny. And she was happy. She said, “This is great.” Because my grandma said, “Where are the women? Where are the girls?” I said, “There’s no girls here.” My mother said, “Great. That’s good.” But they were tired, going up and down the steps. Warren: I bet they were. Perry: But they didn’t say anything. I don’t think they noticed. If they did, they didn’t say anything. So that was the first day. And so I move in. My mother and grandmother leave. 9 I think one guy came down who happened to be Jewish. I didn’t know there was a difference between a Jewish person and a white person. So he comes in, and we get to talking. We both have this big thing about sports. He was from Detroit. We started talking sports, and he was a Marvin Gaye fan, and I had Marvin Gaye playing. That’s why he came in the room. Warren: That’s why he came in. Perry: He heard Marvin Gaye. So, we started talking. It was Mark Senel. We sat there and talked just like normal people would talk. Warren: Was he a freshman? Perry: Yeah. So we kind of bonded there. He was looking for a friend. I was looking for anything. I was just there, and I was going to be by myself for a while until I soaked it all in. Warren: Did you have a roommate? Perry: No, I would not have had a roommate. If they had told me that I had to have a roommate, I wouldn’t have gone. They said that you could have a single. In those days, if a black student said he didn’t want a roommate, he didn’t have one. So I didn’t want one. I wasn’t ready for that. So I never had a roommate my entire existence in Lexington. I never had roommates 'til I went to the Academy for the FBI. So that’s the way it started. We had a dorm meeting and everybody came in. We had a good dorm counselor. I don’t remember his name. He was a fair guy. He made an effort to keep me involved and tried to make me feel at home. At the dorm meeting, we all introduced and we talked, and then we went our separate ways after that. We talked, spoke on the hall, but it wasn’t like it should’ve been. You went through the orientation and you hear all this about what is expected of you as a Washington and Lee gentleman. Most of the guys in my hall had never went to school with a black. They didn’t know what I was. I had the advantage because I had been to school with whites since the eighth grade, and I had been in situations where I was the 10 only black in most of my classes, so I was used to that. They had no clue. As I got to know them individually, somewhat, they just had no idea how to deal with me or any black. Certainly not as an equal. They had black maids and they had their ideas of what blacks were like, I could tell. And I could tell in the first week who I was going to get along with and who I wasn’t. But Mark was a friend. I met another guy, he must’ve been on the hall adjacent to mine, who was from Pennsylvania. He didn’t know he should’ve been prejudiced. He didn’t know that. He loved everybody. He and I became friends—his name was John Clough. I actually was the best man at his wedding. Warren: Who is this? Perry: His name is John Clough. He went to Washington and Lee two years and then he transferred. He and I were very close. He was accused of being a "nigger lover" and all kinds of things he went through because he and I were friends. The same with Mark. They were accused, they were taunted. Little things were done to them because they were friends with me and another black student named Ernest Freeman, who we called Elf. We all used to hang together. We'd eat together. They were not too popular with the majority of the people there because they hung with us. The blacks used to eat at a table in Evans dining hall. We’d go to class and we’d come at lunch and we’d always sit together. People were annoyed that we did that. They didn’t understand why we did that. Some of the students were intimidated or they just didn’t understand why we always huddled together in Evans dining hall. But after you’ve been to class with people who don’t speak to you all day, then you don’t want to eat around people who don’t want to be bothered with you, so you gravitate to people that you can laugh with. We used to have a good time at that table. We used to get pretty loud there. Mr. Darrell, a great man, he kept the peace. He’d come by and tell us when we were a little loud. He would always come by and have something to 11 say about what was going on around us, if he found out something. He was a good man to have there at that particular time. Warren: This is Jerry Darrell? Perry: Yeah, Jerry Darrell. He would try to be a friend to us. He was a friend to us in those days. But the dining hall, there used to be tension in the dining hall. The white students would walk by and see us over there. I can imagine what thoughts used to go through their mind. Warren: So how many of you were sitting together? Perry: No more than— Warren: There were four in your class. Perry: Four in my class and fifteen, I think, in the class ahead of me. We were never all there at any one time. Warren: I’m sure it was real frightening to see all of you sitting at that table. Perry: Yeah, I mean, surrounded by four hundred other students. Warren: That’s real intimidating. [Laughter] Perry: Yeah, isn’t that something. They were intimidated by us and they didn’t like the idea. They thought that we were prejudiced because we sat together, you know what I mean. I used to eat breakfast, I’d get there early, seven, whenever it opened, I would get there early to eat breakfast, and I would be sitting at the table by myself. Now, if John Clough or Mark didn’t come by or one of my friends—I was on the freshman basketball team—so if one of those guys didn’t come by, no one sat with me. [Tape recorder turned off.] I never felt the school was prepared for the black males as they were for the females when they went coed. They did a lot of studying and they were very prepared when they made that decision. They did everything they could to make the transition easy for the women. 12 Warren: Of course, you were just a freshman and you weren’t there, but they didn’t make a decision to allow blacks, did they? I mean, they had to allow blacks when it happened. Perry: My understanding was the board got together and decided that we were going to integrate Washington and Lee. They didn’t have to integrate. That was my take on it. Warren: As a private school, I guess they didn’t have to? Perry: That was my understanding, freshman year. Because I used to wonder why did they make the decision when they did, and just from talking to people around, they said the board made a decision. I guess they were getting some federal money, because they were giving student loans. Warren: They were getting some federal money, so they probably had to. Perry: But I don’t think they were prepared for us at all, because when I got there I realized, I said these people—it’s a very well run school. I could tell immediately. But with all the intelligent people around, they didn’t have one black professor. No black assistant dean. Every white school in America, in the seventies, decided that when they were going to have these blacks on campus, "We’ve got to get us some assistant deans, if, for no other reason, just to have them there for show." Washington and Lee didn’t even have the sense to do that. So you have these eighteen- and nineteen-year-old young men running around there with no role models, no man to talk to, except for the janitors, the people who worked on campus, who were great, by the way. But we had no one to talk to. Like I said, it was a very well-run school, but they didn’t think about that. They didn’t think about, you know, we’d have these mixers and they’d go to Hollins and bring all these girls to these mixers. They couldn’t find the black girls, and I know they didn’t want us to talk to the white girls. Right? So I thought that was stupid. I thought it was stupid that there were no adults around there, except for Mrs. 13 Marjorie Poindexter, who was the secretary in the financial aid office, and the mother to us all. She kept us in school, kept us from fighting, all of that. When we got depressed and didn’t want to call home because we didn’t have enough money to call home, she had to be the mother to all of us. Warren: Marjorie Poindexter. Perry: Yes. Warren: Who is she? I’ve never heard that name. Perry: She was the secretary in the financial aid office, for Dean Knowles [phonetic]. She died. I always felt we should have started a scholarship for her, in her name. If I hit the lottery tomorrow, I’m going to do that, Thursday. Warren: What a lovely idea. Perry: I may do that anyway. They should’ve done that, really, the school, because they knew she was keeping us together. They knew that. We always ran to her. We had no one to talk to. When the ladies got on that campus, they were ready for the girls. They didn’t do anything for us. They figured we were just boys and we could just mix in with the other boys, and that was stupid for them to think that, in my opinion, it was stupid, because we didn’t mix with them, because nothing was done to make it easy for us. They just felt we could make it on our own. We knew that. We had a sense that we had to make it so that the other kids could come along after us. We were just guinea pigs. Pioneers is a better word. We were pioneers. There were days we would sit around, we resented that, that they didn’t think about what they were doing. We were just there. Then they would try to make up for the fact they hadn’t thought this out. Warren: What would they do? Perry: I don’t know. We would go to them and say, "There are no black girls at these things." Then one of them would say, "Well, take my car and go down the road." We 14 used this one, I can’t think of his name, a young guy, he was assistant dean of something, we used to use his car to go down the road, as they called it in those days. Warren: They still call it going down the road. Perry: Good. It’s a good thing some things still exist. But you know, they would do that. We'd sit around for a month or so, and they could see the tension. It was boiling. You’ve got to get out and do something. We had no place to have our own parties. We used the parties to go into town—to the parties in town. I think sometimes we’d party up at what was the Preston House, which is where some of the guys who were sophomores were staying, at the Preston House, and they’d have some parties up there. Warren: I guess it goes without saying that no one was offered to pledge in a fraternity. Perry: Not that I know of. I wouldn’t have done it anyway. Why would I do that? I’m a member of a fraternity now. I did it after I got out of school, a black fraternity. But what was the point of that? I was going through enough. Warren: What happened during Rush Week? Perry: I have no idea. Warren: You weren’t approached at all? Perry: Oh, God, no. Warren: None of you were approached? Perry: No! [Laughter] I didn’t know what rush was. There were guys I know who were friendly, and I would ask them, "What is this? What are you doing?" They would tell me what they were doing. I said, "That’s cool." A couple would ask me, "Are you participating in rush?" And I think you had to pay money to be involved with rush. I don’t know. I didn’t have the money if it cost any money, and no one asked me. They didn’t ask me a thing. I wanted to play basketball. I wanted to be on the basketball team, so I was practicing when I had some free time, for the tryouts for that. Warren: So how did that go? Perry: It was very competitive. Very competitive. It was very competitive. 15 Warren: Was it fairly competitive? Perry: Yeah, I thought it was fair. They kept a lot of kids; they kept fifteen guys. I don’t think there was any reason to keep fifteen guys. There’s never a reason to keep fifteen basketball players on a team. I mean, I’ve coached Little League youth sports, and you don’t keep fifteen kids on a basketball team because there’s not enough time. And especially you don’t keep fifteen players in college on the team, because you’re too competitive at that age. So I thought that was a joke. It just showed that they didn’t have the guts to make the cut. If I had been cut, then I’d just been cut. They should’ve cut it down to twelve, which is the normal number for a team, but they had fifteen. We got along. I don’t know if there were some guys who were prejudiced, there may have been. There were some guys from Dallas. Bo Williams was on the team. I don’t think Bo ever knew—I may have been the first black he talked to. He was a nice guy. We got along fine. There were times when we would talk, and I don’t think he knew exactly how to reach me, what we could talk about, but I don’t think he was a malicious guy or anything like that. I don’t think he was used to that. I hurt my knee before the season started, which was a very traumatic thing for me, because the first game was going to be played in the new gym that year. We were going to play the University of Virginia, to open up Doremus Gym [sic: Warner Center]. I had circled that day on my calendar. I mean, that was a big day. I mean, whether I played or not in the game, it was a big day. Opening the gym, historic occasion, and I would be there. Well, I wasn’t there. I had my knee operated on. That took a lot out of me that first semester. Warren: Freshmen year you had a knee operation? Perry: Yeah. Warren: What a drag. Perry: Napoleon says in every battle there’s a moment where either gentleman can win or lose, and that was my first moment in terms of whether I was going to stay there, 16 because I had put so much into being on the team, and at that age, that was very important, it was probably more important than going to class, but that was very important to me. My knee exploded. I’ll never forget that, and I would’ve cried, probably, had there not been all these white guys around me. The pain, I really wanted to cry. But the guys really took care of me. The school, in terms of—I got the best medical attention, everything was done for me. Warren: Was the operation at Stonewall Jackson? Perry: No, I went to UVA. I would have never allowed that. My parents wouldn’t have allowed that. Warren: No. Good move. Perry: I went to Charlottesville, which worked out fine, because I grew up fifteen, twenty minutes from Charlottesville. So I had the operation. My parents came, took me home, and I came back to school. And it was funny, when I was on the fourth floor, I had gotten used to the guys up there, and then I was moved down to the first floor, so I wouldn't have to go up the steps. I wasn’t well received on the first floor. It was like going from the North to the South. As I recall, I had this red, black, and green flag, the flag of liberation, it was on my door, just a little stick-on. I was in my room, in my cast, and the guys on the hall knew I was in there and I couldn’t get to them. So they came by and banged on the door and ripped the flag off, and poured something under the door. I don’t know what it was, water, whatever, beer or something, they poured under there. There was nothing I could do. And they banged on the door, just banged on the door. I said, "Wow," and I knew when I moved in that they didn’t care for me, and then they made it obvious that they didn’t care for me. So I got word to the upper-classmen that I was having problems. So they came over to talk to the guys on the hall and make sure they understood that that was not to happen again. They didn’t quite say it like I’m saying it to you, but they came over to 17 make sure that everybody understood that if that happened again, that we’d have to deal with that not as gentlemen, but we would deal with that. I think I told the dean of students that that had happened. Of course, he didn’t do anything, because he said, “Who was it?” And I’m saying, "I didn’t see who it was." He asked me did I see them. “No, I didn’t see them. I can’t see through the door.” But I know who it was and you’re not going to do anything about it." There’s nothing in the manual that says you can kick a kid out of school for being an asshole. Right? So nothing’s going to be done, that’s why I called my guys. I don’t know what they did, but they took care of that. The rest of my time there, I didn’t particularly care for it. I didn’t like living down there with them. I was really glad when that year was over. Warren: So it was only freshman year you had to live in the dorm, at that point, right? Perry: Yes. Warren: So where’d you go? Perry: There was an upperclass dorm across the street, Davis Dorm, and I moved there. Warren: So, you continued to live in dorms? Perry: Yes. Warren: All four years? Perry: Yes, because I was lazy. I liked the idea I could walk to my classes. That’s one of the reasons I applied for those type of schools. I didn’t want to have to drive to class. I liked the idea I could walk on campus. I liked the campus, and I liked walking to class. I liked walking on the Quad. I lost my wallet and I found it on the Quad, and I found it on the Quad. A guy, I think, returned it to the Quad. So I knew that the Honor Code worked. In spite of the racism, the Honor Code worked. Somebody borrowed my bike freshman year—I had a bike. Somebody borrowed my bike and they brought it back. I use the term "borrowed." But I don’t know if they borrowed it to use or if they were being mean. I 18 tried to always give them the benefit of the doubt. Because if you’re in a situation like that, you can’t get caught up in everything being racist, because it just eats at you. You don’t have enough tape for me to go on about that freshman year. Warren: Did you ever think about leaving? Perry: I thought about leaving when I had my knee operation, because I was just depressed about that. But I went back to school, and when I was on that bottom, first floor I thought about leaving. But I said they weren’t going to run me away. They were just punks, and they weren’t going to run me away from the school. So I became more determined. Warren: What did you think of it academically? What were your experiences like in the classroom? Perry: I was fortunate to have Charlie Turner for history. I don’t know if you’ve heard about Charlie Turner. But he could talk a mile a minute. He was famous when I got here, on detail, trivia, and all that. I had him at eight o’clock in the morning. I enjoyed him. I enjoyed the history. He was demonstrative and he was something else. But I enjoyed, at eight o’clock in the morning, going to his class. I had a calculus class with Felix Welch and I thought he was a racist and a redneck, and I didn’t enjoy that class at all. I probably wasn’t prepared for calculus, quite honestly. It was a big jump, so I struggled there. I’ve got to stop using these names, but my English professor— Warren: Oh, no, please. Please name names, because we’re real interested in talking about the faculty in particular, please. Perry: Dr. Ray was my English professor. We had to write a composition or something, and I wrote it, and I think he gave me a D or an F on this composition, and I was mad. I had never seen a D or an F on a report card beside a subject of mine. And it was also Parents Weekend. So I got my mid-term grade, and the man gave me an F on this thing. My parents were—it was bad timing—of course, that’s what they wanted, of course. So my parents come in, they definitely wanted to meet this man, and I wanted 19 to talk to him. When you write something, how can you tell me that what I wrote was a failure? How can you tell me that? Grammatically, anyway. I wasn’t too pleased with that. So we go in, my father and I and my mother were sitting there, and Dr. Ray says, “Well, I figured Gene would have these problems, you know, coming from a black high school.” My dad said, “What are you talking about? What are you talking about?” He said, “Well, you know, sometimes they have difficulties writing.” My dad said, “Well, let me explain something to you. My son went to a white high school, where the blacks made up about fifteen percent of the student body, a high school that has a good reputation. So he was trained and taught by white people and did very well at that white high school, and that’s why he’s at this white university. So give me another reason why my son got an F on this test. Tell me that he can’t write or he made some grammatical mistakes. Do not tell me that he got this F because he went to a black high school, which he did not.” And looked him right in his eye and said those very words. And Dr. Ray had nothing to say. Then he went through, "Well, he made these mistakes," and blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, a professor can give you an F for anything in English. I didn’t realize I had to be perfect, grammatically, when I went to Washington and Lee. That woke me up. Because in high school, my high school, you were penalized for making grammatical errors, but no one would ever give you an F for your thoughts. These were my thoughts, and I didn’t feel like I could get an F for my thoughts. But he gave me an F. I’m pretty sure it was an F. And I thought that was stupid. But he said that’s the way he graded. I said, "Fine. Those are the rules and I can play by the rules. But I know that you’re prejudiced. You played your trump card when you said to my dad that I did that because I went to a black school." 20 Now, I can no longer respect him. I could not respect him. For me to say that was a big thing, because I grew up, you respect your elders. My parents, I didn’t know the difference between black and white, even though I grew up in a segregated town. I was taught to respect white people, adults, unless they said something or did something, they you didn’t have respect. So I didn’t respect him anymore after that. I just wanted to get out of his class. I just wrote him up as one of the bad guys. I always resented that about professors who would do that to an eighteen-year-old. If you don’t want to teach black kids or Hispanic kids or Jewish kids, then you should say that and you shouldn’t teach them. Whether it’s in high school, college, that’s my opinion, don’t teach them. Over the years, Dr. Ray and I, we got along. He probably never thought that I felt that way. Warren: Did you take other classes from him? Perry: No, I don’t think so. No. I avoided him. Warren: I would think so. Perry: I didn’t even like the idea that he was chairman of the athletic—he had something to do with athletics. But I was never taught to hate. I was brought up in the church. I avoided him. I thought he was a bad person. He wasn’t what Robert E. Lee wanted. My opinion is probably extreme because I think Dr. Ray is probably a good man, I mean, I never had a problem with him after that. He would see me on campus and we'd talk. He was concerned when I hurt my knee. But I never forgot that. Warren: I bet you didn’t. I need to turn the tape over.